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 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.
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 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!
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.
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?
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.
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 WINDERMERE: I do know you. For twenty years of your life you lived without your child, without a thought of your child. One day you read in the papers that she had married a rich man. You saw your hideous chance. You knew that to spare her the ignominy of learning that a woman like you was her mother, I would endure anything. You began your blackmailing.
MRS. ERLYNNE (shrugging her shoulders): Don’t use ugly words, Windermere. They are vulgar. I saw my chance, it is true, and took it.
LORD WINDERMERE: Yes, you took it – and spoiled it all last night by being found out.
MRS. ERLYNNE (with a strange smile): You are quite right, I spoiled it all last night.
LORD WINDERMERE: And as for your blunder in taking my wife’s fan from here and then leaving it about in Darlington’s rooms, it is unpardonable. I can’t bear the sight of it now. I shall never let my wife use it again. The thing is soiled for me. You should have kept it and not brought it back.
MRS. ERLYNNE: I think I shall keep it. (Goes up.) It’s extremely pretty. (Takes up fan.) I shall ask Margaret to give it to me.
LORD WINDERMERE: I hope my wife will give it to you.
MRS. ERLYNNE: Oh, I’m sure she will have no objection.
LORD WINDERMERE: I wish that at the same time she would give you a miniature she kisses every night before she prays. It’s the miniature of a young innocent-looking girl with beautiful dark hair.
MRS. ERLYNNE: Ah, yes, I remember. How long ago that seems! (Goes to sofa and sits down.) It was done before I was married. Dark hair and an innocent expression were the fashion then, Windermere! (A pause.)
LORD WINDERMERE: What do you mean by coming here this morning? What is your object? (Crossing L.C. and