Half the pretty women in London smoke cigarettes. Personally I prefer the other half.
MRS. CHEVELEY. Thanks. I never smoke. My dressmaker wouldn’t like it, and a woman’s first duty in life is to her dressmaker, isn’t it? What the second duty is, no one has as yet discovered.
LORD GORING. You have come here to sell me Robert Chiltern’s letter, haven’t you?
MRS. CHEVELEY. To offer it to you on conditions. How did you guess that?
LORD GORING. Because you haven’t mentioned the subject. Have you got it with you?
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Sitting down.] Oh, no! A well-made dress has no pockets.
LORD GORING. What is your price for it?
MRS. CHEVELEY. How absurdly English you are! The English think that a chequebook can solve every problem in life. Why, my dear Arthur, I have very much more money than you have, and quite as much as Robert Chiltern has got hold of. Money is not what I want.
LORD GORING. What do you want then, Mrs. Cheveley?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Why don’t you call me Laura?
LORD GORING. I don’t like the name.
MRS. CHEVELEY. You used to adore it.
LORD GORING. Yes: that’s why. [MRS. CHEVELEY motions to him to sit down beside her. He smiles, and does so.]
MRS. CHEVELEY. Arthur, you loved me once.
LORD GORING. Yes.
MRS. CHEVELEY. And you asked me to be your wife.
LORD GORING. That was the natural result of my loving you.
MRS. CHEVELEY. And you threw me over because you saw, or said you saw, poor old Lord Mortlake trying to have a violent flirtation with me in the conservatory at Tenby.
LORD GORING. I am under the impression that my lawyer settled that matter with you on certain terms … dictated by yourself.
MRS. CHEVELEY. At that time I was poor; you were rich.
LORD GORING. Quite so. That is why you pretended to love me.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Poor old Lord Mortlake, who had only two topics of conversation, his gout and his wife! I never could quite make out which of the two he was talking about. He used the most horrible language about them both. Well, you were silly, Arthur. Why, Lord Mortlake was never anything more to me than an amusement. One of those utterly tedious amusements one only finds at an English country house on an English country Sunday. I don’t think any one at all morally responsible for what he or she does at an English country house.
LORD GORING. Yes. I know lots of people think that.
MRS. CHEVELEY. I loved you, Arthur.
LORD GORING. My dear Mrs. Cheveley, you have always been far too clever to know anything about love.
MRS. CHEVELEY. I did love you. And you loved me. You know you loved me; and love is a very wonderful thing. I suppose that when a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her? [Puts her hand on his.]
LORD GORING. [Taking his hand away quietly.] Yes: except that.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [After a pause.] I am tired of living abroad. I want to come back to London. I want to have a charming house here. I want to have a salon. If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilised. Besides, I have arrived at the romantic stage. When I saw you last night at the Chilterns’, I knew you were the only person I had ever cared for, if I ever have cared for anybody, Arthur. And so, on the morning of the day you marry me, I will give you Robert Chiltern’s letter. That is my offer. I will give it to you now, if you promise to marry me.
LORD GORING. Now?
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Smiling.] Tomorrow.
LORD GORING. Are you really serious?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Yes, quite serious.
LORD GORING. I should make you a very bad husband.
MRS. CHEVELEY. I don’t mind bad husbands. I have had two. They amused me immensely.
LORD GORING. You mean that you amused yourself immensely, don’t you?
MRS. CHEVELEY. What do you know about my married life?
LORD GORING. Nothing: but I can read it like a book.
MRS. CHEVELEY. What book?
LORD GORING. [Rising.] The Book of Numbers.
MRS. CHEVELEY. Do you think it is quite charming of you to be so rude to a woman in your own house?
LORD GORING. In the case of very fascinating women, sex is a challenge, not a defence.
MRS. CHEVELEY. I suppose that is meant for a compliment. My dear Arthur, women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.
LORD GORING. Women are never disarmed by anything, as far as I know them.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [After a pause.] Then you are going to allow your greatest friend, Robert Chiltern, to be ruined, rather than marry some one who really has considerable attractions left. I thought you would have risen to some great height of self-sacrifice, Arthur. I think you should. And the rest of your life you could spend in contemplating your own perfections.
LORD GORING. Oh! I do that as it is. And self-sacrifice is a thing that should be put down by law. It is so demoralising to the people for whom one sacrifices oneself. They always go to the bad.
MRS. CHEVELEY. As if anything could demoralise Robert Chiltern! You seem to forget that I know his real character.
LORD GORING. What you know about him is not his real character. It was an act of folly done in his youth, dishonourable, I admit, shameful, I admit, unworthy of him, I admit, and therefore … not his true character.
MRS. CHEVELEY. How you men stand up for each other!
LORD GORING. How you women war against each other!
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Bitterly.] I only war against one woman, against Gertrude Chiltern. I hate her. I hate her now more than ever.
LORD GORING. Because you have brought a real tragedy into her life, I suppose.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [With a sneer.] Oh, there is only one real tragedy in a woman’s life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
LORD GORING. Lady Chiltern knows nothing of the kind of life to which you are alluding.
MRS. CHEVELEY. A woman whose size in gloves is seven and three-quarters never knows much about anything. You know Gertrude has always worn seven and three-quarters? That is one of the reasons why there was never any moral sympathy between us… . Well, Arthur, I suppose this romantic interview may be regarded as at an end. You admit it was romantic, don’t you? For the privilege of being your wife I was ready to surrender a great prize, the climax of my diplomatic career. You decline. Very well. If Sir Robert doesn’t uphold my Argentine scheme, I expose him. Voilà tout.
LORD GORING. You mustn’t do that. It would be vile, horrible, infamous.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Oh! don’t use big words. They mean so little. It is a commercial transaction. That is all. There is no good mixing up sentimentality in it. I offered to sell Robert Chiltern a certain thing. If he won’t pay me my price, he will have to pay the world a greater price. There is no more to be said. I must go. Goodbye. Won’t you shake hands?
LORD GORING. With you? No. Your transaction with Robert Chiltern may pass as a loathsome commercial transaction of a loathsome commercial age; but you seem to have forgotten that you came here tonight to talk of love, you whose lips desecrated the word love, you to whom the thing is a book closely sealed, went this afternoon to the house of one of the most noble and gentle women in the world to degrade her husband in her eyes,