Part 11 (1/2)

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ That it was necessary, vitally necessary.

_Lady Chiltern._ It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.... Robert, tell me why you are going to do this dishonourable thing?

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ Gertrude, you have no right to use that word. I told you it was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.

But Lady Chiltern is not to be so easily put off as that. Her suspicions are aroused. She says she knows that there are ”men with horrible secrets in their lives--men who had done some shameful thing, and who, in some critical moment, have to pay for it, by doing some other act of shame.” She asks him boldly, is he one of these? Then, driven to bay, he tells her the one lie of his life.

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ Gertrude, there is nothing in my past life that you might not know.

She is satisfied. But he must write a letter to Mrs Cheveley, taking back any promise he may have given her, and that letter must be written at once. He tries to gain time, offers to go and see Mrs Cheveley to-morrow; it is too late to-night. But Lady Chiltern is inexorable, and so Sir Robert yields, and the missive is despatched to Claridge's Hotel.

Then, seized with a sudden terror of what the consequences may be, he turns, with nerves all a-quiver, to his wife, pleadingly--

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ O, love me always, Gertrude, love me always.

_Lady Chiltern._ I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love. We needs must love the highest when we see it!

(_Kisses him, rises and goes out._)

And the curtain falls upon this intensely emotional situation.

If I may seem to have quoted too freely from the dialogue, it is in part to refute the charge, so often urged by the critics, that Oscar Wilde's ”talk is often an end in itself, it has no vital connection with the particular play of which it forms a part, it might as well be put into the mouth of one character as another....” Now in the first act of ”The Ideal Husband,” when the action of the piece is being carried on at high pressure, there is not a word of the dialogue that is not pertinent, no sentence that is not significant. Whatever of wit the author may have allowed himself to indulge in springs spontaneously from the woof of the story, it is not, as was suggested in his earlier plays, ”a mere parasitic growth attached to it,” in which this particular comedy under consideration marks an immense advance on the methods of ”The Woman Of No Importance.” Here is strenuous drama, treated strenuously, and dealing with the whole gamut of human emotions. The playwright, as he progresses in his art, does not here permit himself to endanger the interest of the plot by any advent.i.tious pleasantries on the part of the characters.

In the second act we are again in Grosvenor Square, this time in a morning-room, where Sir Robert Chiltern and Lord Goring are discussing the awkward state of affairs. To Lord Goring the action of Sir Robert appears inexcusable.

_Lord Goring._ Robert, how could you have sold yourself for money?

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ (_Excitedly._) I did not sell myself for money. I bought success at a great price. That is all.

Such was his point of view. Lord Goring's now is that he should have told his wife. But Sir Robert a.s.sures him that such a confession to such a woman would mean a lifelong separation. She must remain in ignorance.

But now the vital question is--how is he to defend himself against Mrs Cheveley? Lord Goring answers that he must fight her.

_Sir Robert Chiltern._ But how?

_Lord Goring._ I can't tell you how at present. I have not the smallest idea. But everyone has some weak point. There is some flaw in each one of us.

The conversation is interrupted by the entrance of Lady Chiltern. Sir Robert goes out and leaves Lord Goring and his wife together. And there follows a scene, brief, but as fine as any in the play, in which Lord Goring endeavours to prepare Lady Chiltern very skilfully for the blow that may possibly fall upon her. He deals in generalities: ”I think that in practical life there is something about success that is a little unscrupulous, something about ambition that is unscrupulous always.” And again: ”In every nature there are elements of weakness, or worse than weakness. Supposing, for instance, that--that any public man, my father or Lord Merton, or Robert, say, had, years ago, written some foolish letter to someone....”

_Lady Chiltern._ What do you mean by a foolish letter?

_Lord Goring._ A letter gravely compromising one's position. I am only putting an imaginary case.

_Lady Chiltern._ Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing, as he is of doing a wrong thing.

She is still unshaken in the belief of her husband's rect.i.tude. And Lord Goring departs sorrowing, but not before he has a.s.sured her of his friends.h.i.+p that would serve her in any crisis.

_Lord Goring._ ... And if you are ever in trouble, Lady Chiltern, trust me absolutely, and I will help you in every way I can. If you ever want me ... come at once to me.

Then on the scene arrives Mrs Cheveley, accompanied by Lady Markby (for whose amusing _bavardage_ I wish I could find s.p.a.ce) evidently to revenge herself somehow for her rebuff, ostensibly to inquire after a ”diamond snake-brooch with a ruby,” which she has lost, probably at Lady Chiltern's. Now the audience knows all about this ”brooch-bracelet,” for has not Lord Goring found it on the sofa last night, when flirting with Mabel Chiltern, and recognising it as an old and somewhat ominous friend, quietly put it in his pocket, at the same time enjoining Mabel to say nothing about the incident. So, of course, the jewel has not been found in Grosvenor Square. But when the two women are left alone, Mrs Cheveley discovers that it was Lady Chiltern who dictated Sir Robert's letter to her. A bitter pa.s.sage of arms occurs between them, when Lady Chiltern discusses her adversary, who boasts herself the ally of her husband.

_Lady Chiltern._ How dare you cla.s.s my husband with yourself?...

Leave my house. You are unfit to enter it. (_Sir Robert enters from behind. He hears his wife's last words, and sees to whom they are addressed. He grows deadly pale._)