the right people, which is so important at this solemn moment in your career.
GERALD. I don’t want to see the world: I’ve seen enough of it.
MRS. ALLONBY. I hope you don’t think you have exhausted life, Mr. Arbuthnot. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.
GERALD. I don’t wish to leave my mother.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Now, Gerald, that is pure laziness on your part. Not leave your mother! If I were your mother I would insist on your going.
[Enter ALICE L.C.]
ALICE. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s compliments, my lady, but she has a bad headache, and cannot see any one this morning. [Exit R.C.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. [Rising.] A bad headache! I am so sorry! Perhaps you’ll bring her up to Hunstanton this afternoon, if she is better, Gerald.
GERALD. I am afraid not this afternoon, Lady Hunstanton.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Well, tomorrow, then. Ah, if you had a father, Gerald, he wouldn’t let you waste your life here. He would send you off with Lord Illingworth at once. But mothers are so weak. They give up to their sons in everything. We are all heart, all heart. Come, dear, I must call at the rectory and inquire for Mrs. Daubeny, who, I am afraid, is far from well. It is wonderful how the Archdeacon bears up, quite wonderful. He is the most sympathetic of husbands. Quite a model. Goodbye, Gerald, give my fondest love to your mother.
MRS. ALLONBY. Goodbye, Mr. Arbuthnot.
GERALD. Goodbye.
[Exit LADY HUNSTANTON and MRS. ALLONBY. GERALD sits down and reads over his letter.]
GERALD. What name can I sign? I, who have no right to any name. [Signs name, puts letter into envelope, addresses it, and is about to seal it, when door L.C. opens and MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters. GERALD lays down sealing-wax. Mother and son look at each other.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. [Through French window at the back.] Goodbye again, Gerald. We are taking the short cut across your pretty garden. Now, remember my advice to you - start at once with Lord Illingworth.
MRS. ALLONBY. AU REVOIR, Mr. Arbuthnot. Mind you bring me back something nice from your travels - not an Indian shawl - on no account an Indian shawl.
[Exeunt.]
GERALD. Mother, I have just written to him.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. To whom?
GERALD. To my father. I have written to tell him to come here at four o’clock this afternoon.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. He shall not come here. He shall not cross the threshold of my house.
GERALD. He must come.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Gerald, if you are going away with Lord Illingworth, go at once. Go before it kills me: but don’t ask me to meet him.
GERALD. Mother, you don’t understand. Nothing in the world would induce me to go away with Lord Illingworth, or to leave you. Surely you know me well enough for that. No: I have written to him to say -
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. What can you have to say to him?
GERALD. Can’t you guess, mother, what I have written in this letter?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. No.
GERALD. Mother, surely you can. Think, think what must be done, now, at once, within the next few days.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. There is nothing to be done.
GERALD. I have written to Lord Illingworth to tell him that he must marry you.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Marry me?
GERALD. Mother, I will force him to do it. The wrong that has been done you must be repaired. Atonement must be made. Justice may be slow, mother, but it comes in the end. In a few days you shall be Lord Illingworth’s lawful wife.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. But, Gerald -
GERALD. I will insist upon his doing it. I will make him do it: he will not dare to refuse.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. But, Gerald, it is I who refuse. I will not marry
Lord Illingworth.
GERALD. Not marry him? Mother!
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I will not marry him.
GERALD. But you don’t understand: it is for your sake I am talking, not for mine. This marriage, this necessary marriage, this marriage which for obvious reasons must inevitably take place, will not help me, will not give me a name that will be really, rightly mine to bear. But surely it will be something for you, that you, my mother, should, however late, become the wife of the man who is my father. Will not that be something?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I will not marry him.
GERALD. Mother, you must.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I will not. You talk of atonement for a wrong done. What atonement can be made to me? There is no atonement possible. I am disgraced: he is not. That is all. It is the usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.
GERALD. I don’t know if that is the ordinary ending, mother: I hope it is not. But your life, at any rate, shall not end like that. The man shall make whatever reparation is possible. It is not enough. It does not wipe out the past, I know that. But at least it makes the future better, better for you, mother.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I refuse to marry Lord Illingworth.
GERALD. If he came to you himself and asked you to be his wife you would give him a different answer. Remember, he is my father.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. If he came himself, which he will not do, my answer would be the same. Remember I am your mother.
GERALD. Mother, you make it terribly difficult for me by talking like that; and I can’t understand why you won’t look at this matter from the right, from the only proper standpoint. It is to take away the bitterness out of your life, to take away the shadow that lies on your name, that this marriage must take place. There is no alternative: and after the marriage you and I can go away together. But the marriage must take place first. It is a duty that you owe, not merely to yourself, but to all other women - yes: to all the other women in the world, lest he betray more.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I owe nothing to other women. There is not one of them to help me. There is not one woman in the world to whom I could go for pity, if I would take it, or for sympathy, if I could win it. Women are hard on each other. That girl, last night, good though she is, fled from the room as though I were a tainted thing. She was right. I am a tainted thing. But my wrongs are my own, and I will bear them alone. I must bear them alone. What have women who have not sinned to do with me, or I with them? We do not understand each other.
[Enter HESTER behind.]
GERALD. I implore you to do what I ask you.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. What son has ever asked of his mother to make so hideous a sacrifice? None.
GERALD. What mother has ever refused to marry the father of her own child? None.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Let me be the first, then. I will not do it.
GERALD. Mother, you believe in religion, and you brought me up to believe in it also. Well, surely your religion, the religion that you taught me when I was a boy, mother, must tell you that I am right. You know it, you feel it.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I do not know it. I do not feel it, nor will I ever stand before God’s altar and ask God’s blessing on so hideous a mockery as a marriage between me and George Harford. I will not say the words the Church bids us to say. I will not say them. I dare not. How could I swear to love the man I loathe, to honour him who wrought you dishonour, to obey him who, in his mastery, made me to sin? No: marriage is a sacrament for those who love each other. It is not for such as him, or such as me. Gerald, to save you from the world’s sneers