MRS. ALLONBY. Ah! don’t become quite perfect all at once. Do it gradually!
LORD ILLINGWORTH. I don’t intend to grow perfect at all. At least, I hope I shan’t. It would be most inconvenient. Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
MRS. ALLONBY. It is premature to ask us to forgive analysis. We forgive adoration; that is quite as much as should be expected from us.
[Enter LORD ALFRED. He joins LADY STUTFIELD.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Ah! we women should forgive everything, shouldn’t we, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot? I am sure you agree with me in that.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I do not, Lady Hunstanton. I think there are many things women should never forgive.
LADY HUNSTANTON. What sort of things?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. The ruin of another woman’s life.
[Moves slowly away to back of stage.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Ah! those things are very sad, no doubt, but I believe there are admirable homes where people of that kind are looked after and reformed, and I think on the whole that the secret of life is to take things very, very easily.
MRS. ALLONBY. The secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
LADY STUTFIELD. The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
KELVIL. The secret of life is to resist temptation, Lady
Stutfield.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. There is no secret of life. Life’s aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough. I sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. It is quite dreadful. It makes one so nervous about the future.
LADY HUNSTANTON. [Shakes her fan at him.] I don’t know how it is, dear Lord Illingworth, but everything you have said to-day seems to me excessively immoral. It has been most interesting, listening to you.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
LADY HUNSTANTON. I don’t understand a word, Lord Illingworth. But I have no doubt it is all quite true. Personally, I have very little to reproach myself with, on the score of thinking. I don’t believe in women thinking too much. Women should think in moderation, as they should do all things in moderation.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton.
Nothing succeeds like excess.
LADY HUNSTANTON. I hope I shall remember that. It sounds an admirable maxim. But I’m beginning to forget everything. It’s a great misfortune.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. It is one of your most fascinating qualities, Lady Hunstanton. No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman’s bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.
LADY HUNSTANTON. How charming you are, dear Lord Illingworth. You always find out that one’s most glaring fault is one’s most important virtue. You have the most comforting views of life.
[Enter FARQUHAR.]
FARQUHAR. Doctor Daubeny’s carriage!
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear Archdeacon! It is only half-past ten.
THE ARCHDEACON. [Rising.] I am afraid I must go, Lady Hunstanton.
Tuesday is always one of Mrs. Daubeny’s bad nights.
LADY HUNSTANTON. [Rising.] Well, I won’t keep you from her. [Goes with him towards door.] I have told Farquhar to put a brace of partridge into the carriage. Mrs. Daubeny may fancy them.
THE ARCHDEACON. It is very kind of you, but Mrs. Daubeny never touches solids now. Lives entirely on jellies. But she is wonderfully cheerful, wonderfully cheerful. She has nothing to complain of.
[Exit with LADY HUNSTANTON.]
MRS. ALLONBY. [Goes over to LORD ILLINGWORTH.] There is a beautiful moon tonight.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Let us go and look at it. To look at anything that is inconstant is charming nowadays.
MRS. ALLONBY. You have your looking-glass.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. It is unkind. It merely shows me my wrinkles.
MRS. ALLONBY. Mine is better behaved. It never tells me the truth.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Then it is in love with you.
[Exeunt SIR JOHN, LADY STUTFIELD, MR. KELVIL and LORD ALFRED.]
GERALD. [To LORD ILLINGWORTH] May I come too?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Do, my dear boy. [Moves towards with MRS.
ALLONBY and GERALD.]
[LADY CAROLINE enters, looks rapidly round and goes off in opposite direction to that taken by SIR JOHN and LADY STUTFIELD.]
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Gerald!
GERALD. What, mother!
[Exit LORD ILLINGWORTH with MRS. ALLONBY.]
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. It is getting late. Let us go home.
GERALD. My dear mother. Do let us wait a little longer. Lord Illingworth is so delightful, and, by the way, mother, I have a great surprise for you. We are starting for India at the end of this month.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Let us go home.
GERALD. If you really want to, of course, mother, but I must bid goodbye to Lord Illingworth first. I’ll be back in five minutes. [Exit.]
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Let him leave me if he chooses, but not with him - not with him! I couldn’t bear it. [Walks up and down.]
[Enter HESTER.]
HESTER. What a lovely night it is, Mrs. Arbuthnot.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Is it?
HESTER. Mrs. Arbuthnot, I wish you would let us be friends. You are so different from the other women here. When you came into the Drawing-room this evening, somehow you brought with you a sense of what is good and pure in life. I had been foolish. There are things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I heard what you said. I agree with it, Miss
Worsley.
HESTER. I didn’t know you had heard it. But I knew you would agree with me. A woman who has sinned should be punished, shouldn’t she?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Yes.
HESTER. She shouldn’t be allowed to come into the society of good men and women?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. She should not.
HESTER. And the man should be punished in the same way?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. In the same way. And the children, if there are children, in the same way also?
HESTER. Yes, it is right that the sins of the parents should be visited on the children. It is a just law. It is God’s law.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. It is one of God’s terrible laws.
[Moves away to fireplace.]
HESTER. You are distressed about your son leaving you, Mrs.
Arbuthnot?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Yes.
HESTER. Do you like him going away with Lord Illingworth? Of course there is position,