Oscar Wilde: The Complete Works. Knowledge house
Mrs. Erlynne has written a message on the card.
lady windermere
Oh, ask Mrs. Erlynne to be kind enough to come up. [Reads card.] Say I shall be very glad to see her.
[Exit Parker.
She wants to see me, Arthur.
lord windermere
[Takes card and looks at it.] Margaret, I beg you not to. Let me see her first, at any rate. She’s a very dangerous woman. She is the most dangerous woman I know. You don’t realise what you’re doing.
lady windermere
It is right that I should see her.
lord windermere
My child, you may be on the brink of a great sorrow. Don’t go to meet it. It is absolutely necessary that I should see her before you do.
·112· lady windermere
Why should it be necessary?
[Enter Parker.
parker
Mrs. Erlynne.
[Enter Mrs. Erlynne.
[Exit Parker.
mrs. erlynne
How do you do, Lady Windermere? [To Lord Windermere.] How do you do? Do you know, Lady Windermere, I am so sorry about your fan. I can’t imagine how I made such a silly mistake. Most stupid of me. And as I was driving in your direction, I thought I would take the opportunity of returning your property in person with many apologies for my carelessness, and of bidding you good-bye.
lady windermere
Good-bye? [Moves towards sofa with Mrs. Erlynne and sits down beside her.] Are you going away, then, Mrs. Erlynne?
mrs. erlynne
Yes; I am going to live abroad again. The English climate doesn’t suit me. My—heart is affected here, and that I don’t like. I prefer living in the south. London is too full of fogs and—and serious people, Lord Windermere. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know, but ·113· the whole thing rather gets on my nerves, and so I’m leaving this afternoon by the Club Train.
lady windermere
This afternoon? But I wanted so much to come and see you.
mrs. erlynne
How kind of you! But I am afraid I have to go.
lady windermere
Shall I never see you again, Mrs. Erlynne?
mrs. erlynne
I am afraid not. Our lives lie too far apart. But there is a little thing I would like you to do for me. I want a photograph of you, Lady Windermere—would you give me one? You don’t know how gratified I should be.
lady windermere
Oh, with pleasure. There is one on that table. I’ll show it to you. [Goes across to the table.]
lord windermere
[Coming up to Mrs. Erlynne and speaking in a low voice.] It is monstrous your intruding yourself here after your conduct last night.
mrs. erlynne
[With an amused smile.] My dear Windermere, manners before morals!
·114· lady windermere
[Returning.] I’m afraid it is very flattering—I am not so pretty as that. [Showing photograph.]
mrs. erlynne
You are much prettier. But haven’t you got one of yourself with your little boy?
lady windermere
I have. Would you prefer one of those?
mrs. erlynne
Yes.
lady windermere
I’ll go and get it for you, if you’ll excuse me for a moment. I have one upstairs.
mrs. erlynne
So sorry, Lady Windermere, to give you so much trouble.
lady windermere
[Moves to door R.] No trouble at all, Mrs. Erlynne.
mrs. erlynne
Thanks so much.
[Exit Lady Windermere R.
You seem rather out of temper this morning, Windermere. Why should you be? Margaret and I get on charmingly together.
·115· lord windermere
I can’t bear to see you with her. Besides, you have not told me the truth, Mrs. Erlynne.
mrs. erlynne
I have not told her the truth, you mean.
lord windermere
[Standing C.] I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know—that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her. [Moves L.C.] And then I used to think that with all your faults you were frank and honest. You are not.
mrs. erlynne
Why do you say that?
·116· lord windermere
You made me get you an invitation to my wife’s ball.
mrs. erlynne
For my daughter’s ball—yes.
lord windermere
You came, and within an hour of your leaving the house you are found in a man’s rooms—you are disgraced before every one. [Goes up stage C.]
mrs. erlynne
Yes.
lord windermere
[Turning round on her.] Therefore I have a right to look upon you as what you are—a worthless, vicious woman. I have the right to tell you never to enter this house, never to attempt to come near my wife——
mrs. erlynne
[Coldly.] My daughter, you mean.
lord windermere
You have no right to claim her as your daughter. You left her, abandoned her when she was but a child in the cradle, abandoned her for your lover, who abandoned you in turn.
·117· mrs. erlynne
[Rising.] Do you count that to his credit, Lord Windermere—or to mine?
lord windermere
To his, now that I know you.
mrs. erlynne
Take care—you had better be careful.
lord windermere
Oh, I am not going to mince words for you. I know you thoroughly.
mrs. erlynne
[Looking steadily at him.] I question that.
lord