The Collected Dramas of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
do it then. Let her ring the bell if she dares. Let us see how this pure virtuous creature will face the scandal of what I will declare about her. Let us see how you will face it. I have nothing to lose. Everybody knows how you have treated me: you have boasted of your conquests, you poor pitiful, vain creature — I am the common talk of your acquaintances and hers. Oh, I have calculated my advantage (tearing off her mantle): I am a most unhappy and injured woman; but I am not the fool you take me to be. I am going to stay — see! (She flings the mantle on the round table; puts her bonnet on it, and sits down.) Now, Mrs. Tranfield: there is the bell: (pointing to the button beside the fireplace) why don’t you ring? (Grace, looking attentively at Charteris, does not move.) Ha! ha! I thought so.
CHARTERIS (quietly, without relaxing his watch on Julia). Mrs. Tranfield: I think you had better go into another room. (Grace makes a movement towards the door, but stops and looks inquiringly at Charteris as Julia springs up. He advances a step so as to prevent her from getting to the door.)
JULIA. She shall not. She shall stay here. She shall know what you are, and how you have been in love with me — how it is not two days since you kissed me and told me that the future would be as happy as the past. (Screaming at him) You did: deny it if you dare.
CHARTERIS (to Grace in a low voice). Go!
GRACE (with nonchalant disgust — going). Get her away as soon as you can, Leonard.
(Julia, with a stifled cry of rage, rushes at Grace, who is crossing behind the sofa towards door. Charteris seizes her and prevents her from getting past the sofa. Grace goes out. Charteris, holding Julia fast, looks around to the door to see whether Grace is safely out of the room.)
JULIA (suddenly ceasing to struggle and speaking with the most pathetic dignity). Oh, there is no need to be violent. (He passes her across to the left end of the sofa, and leans against the right end, panting and mopping his forehead). That is worthy of you! — to use brute force — to humiliate me before her! (She breaks down and bursts into tears.)
CHARTERIS (to himself with melancholy conviction). This is going to be a cheerful evening. Now patience, patience, patience! (Sits on a chair near the round table.)
JULIA (in anguish). Leonard, have you no feeling for me?
CHARTERIS. Only an intense desire to get you safely out of this.
JULIA (fiercely). I am not going to stir.
CHARTERIS (wearily). Well, well. (Heaves a long sigh. They sit silent for awhile, Julia struggling, not to regain her self control, but to maintain her rage at boiling point.)
JULIA (rising suddenly). I am going to speak to that woman.
CHARTERIS (jumping up). No, no. Hang it, Julia, don’t let’s have another wrestling match. I have the strength, but not the wind: you’re too young for me. Sit down or else let me take you home. Suppose her father comes in.
JULIA. I don’t care. It rests with you. I am ready to go if she will give you up: until then I stay. Those are my terms: you owe me that, (She sits down determinedly. Charteris looks at her for a moment; then, making up his mind, goes resolutely to the couch, sits down near the right hand end of it, she being at the left; and says with biting emphasis) —
CHARTERIS. I owe you just exactly nothing.
JULIA (reproachfully). Nothing! You can look me in the face and say that? Oh, Leonard!
CHARTERIS. Let me remind you, Julia, that when first we became acquainted, the position you took up was that of a woman of advanced views.
JULIA. That should have made you respect me the more.
CHARTERIS (placably). So it did, my dear. But that is not the point. As a woman of advanced views, you were determined to be free. You regarded marriage as a degrading bargain, by which a woman sold herself to a man for the social status of a wife and the right to be supported and pensioned in old age out of his income. That’s the advanced view — our view. Besides, if you had married me, I might have turned out a drunkard, a criminal, an imbecile, a horror to you; and you couldn’t have released yourself. Too big a risk, you see. That’s the rational view — our view. Accordingly, you reserved the right to leave me at any time if you found our companionship incompatible with — what was the expression you used? — with your full development as a human being: I think that was how you put the Ibsenist view — our view. So I had to be content with a charming philander, which taught me a great deal, and brought me some hours of exquisite happiness.
JULIA. Leonard: you confess then that you owe me something?
CHARTERIS (haughtily). No: what I received, I paid. Did you learn nothing from me? — was there no delight for you in our friendship?
JULIA (vehemently and movingly; for she is now sincere). No. You made me pay dearly for every moment of happiness. You revenged yourself on me for the humiliation of being the slave of your passion for me. I was never sure of you for a moment. I trembled whenever a letter came from you, lest it should contain some stab for me. I dreaded your visits almost as much as I longed for them. I was your plaything, not your companion. (She rises, exclaiming) Oh, there was such suffering in my happiness that I hardly knew joy from pain. (She sinks on the piano stool, and adds, as she buries her face in her hands and turns away from him) Better for me if I had never met you!
CHARTERIS (rising indignantly). You ungenerous wretch! Is this your gratitude for the way I have just been flattering you? What have I not endured from you — endured with angelic patience? Did I not find out, before our friendship was a fortnight old, that all your advanced views were merely a fashion picked up and followed like any other fashion, without understanding or meaning a word of them? Did you not, in spite of your care for your own liberty, set up claims on me compared to which the claims of the most jealous wife would have been trifles. Have I a single woman friend whom you have not abused as old, ugly, vicious —
JULIA (quickly looking up). So they are.
CHARTERIS. Well, then, I’ll come to grievances that even you can understand. I accuse you of habitual and intolerable jealousy and ill temper; of insulting me on imaginary provocation: of positively beating me; of stealing letters of mine —
JULIA (rising). Yes, nice letters.
CHARTERIS. — of breaking your solemn promises not to do it again; of spending hours — aye, days! piecing together the contents of my waste paper basket in your search for more letters; and then representing yourself as an ill used saint and martyr wantonly betrayed and deserted by a selfish monster of a man.
JULIA. I was justified in reading your letters. Our perfect confidence in one another gave me the right to do it.
CHARTERIS. Thank you. Then I hasten to break off a confidence which gives such rights. (Sits down sulkily on sofa.)
JULIA (with her right hand on the back of the sofa, bending over him threateningly). You have no right to break it off.
CHARTERIS. I have. You refused to marry me because —
JULIA. I did not. You never asked me. If we were married, you would never dare treat me as you are doing now.
CHARTERIS (laboriously going back to his argument). It was understood between us as people of advanced views that we were not to marry because, as the law stands, I might have become a drunkard, a —
JULIA. — a criminal, an imbecile or a horror. You said that before. (Sits down beside him with a fling.)
CHARTERIS (politely). I beg your pardon, my dear. I know I have a habit of repeating myself. The point is that you reserved your freedom to give me up when you pleased.
JULIA. Well, what of that? I do not please to give you up; and I will not. You have not become a drunkard or a criminal.
CHARTERIS. You don’t see the point yet, Julia. You seem to forget that in reserving your freedom to leave me in case I should turn out badly, you also reserved my freedom to leave you in case you should turn out badly.
JULIA. Very ingenious. And pray, have I become a drunkard, or a criminal, or an imbecile?