PARAMORE (transported). You have called me Percy! Hurrah! (Charteris and Craven come in. Paramore hastens to meet them, beaming.) Delighted to see you here with me, Colonel Craven. And you, too, Charteris. Sit down. (The Colonel sits down on the end of the couch.) Where are the others?
CHARTERIS. Sylvia has dragged Cuthbertson off into the Burlington Arcade to buy some caramels. He likes to encourage her in eating caramels: he thinks it’s a womanly taste. Besides, he likes them himself. They’ll be here presently. (He strolls across to the cabinet and pretends to study the Rembrandt photograph, so as to be as far out of Julia’s reach as possible.)
CRAVEN. Yes; and Charteris has been trying to persuade me that there’s a short cut between Cork Street and Savile Row somewhere in Conduit Street. Now did you ever hear such nonsense? Then he said my coat was getting shabby, and wanted me to go into Poole’s and order a new one. Paramore: is my coat shabby?
PARAMORE. Not that I can see.
CRAVEN. I should think not. Then he wanted to draw me into a dispute about the Egyptian war. We should have been here quarter of an hour ago only for his nonsense.
CHARTERIS (still contemplating Rembrandt). I did my best to keep him from disturbing you, Paramore.
PARAMORE (gratefully). You have come in the nick of time. Colonel Craven: I have something very particular to say to you.
CRAVEN (springing up in alarm). In private, Paramore: now really it must be in private.
PARAMORE (surprised). Of course. I was about to suggest my consulting room: there’s nobody there. Miss Craven: will you excuse me: Charteris will entertain you until I return. (He leads the way to the green baize door.)
CHARTERIS (aghast). Oh, I say, hadn’t you better wait until the others come?
PARAMORE (exultant). No need for further delay now, my best friend. (He wrings Charteris’s hand.) Will you come, Colonel?
CRAVEN. At your service, Paramore: at your service. (Craven and Paramore go into the consulting room. Julia turns her head and stares insolently at Charteris. His nerves play him false: he is completely out of countenance in a moment. She rises suddenly. He starts, and comes hastily forward between the table and the bookcase. She crosses to that side behind the table; and he immediately crosses to the opposite side in front of it, dodging her.)
CHARTERIS (nervously). Don’t, Julia. Now don’t abuse your advantage. You’ve got me here at your mercy. Be good for once; and don’t make a scene.
JULIA (contemptuously). Do you suppose I am going to touch you?
CHARTERIS. No. Of course not. (She comes forward on her side of the table. He retreats on his side of it. She looks at him with utter scorn; sweeps across to the couch; and sits down imperially. With a great sigh of relief he drops into Paramore’s chair.)
JULIA. Come here. I have something to say to you.
CHARTERIS. Yes? (He rolls the chair a few inches towards her.)
JULIA. Come here, I say. I am not going to shout across the room at you. Are you afraid of me?
CHARTERIS. Horribly. (He moves the chair slowly, with great misgiving, to the end of the couch.)
JULIA (with studied insolence). Has that woman told you that she has given you up to me without an attempt to defend her conquest?
CHARTERIS (whispering persuasively). Shew that you are capable of the same sacrifice. Give me up, too.
JULIA. Sacrifice! And so you think I’m dying to marry you, do you?
CHARTERIS. I am afraid your intentions have been honourable, Julia.
JULIA. You cad!
CHARTERIS (with a sigh). I confess I am something either more or less than a gentleman, Julia. You once gave me the benefit of the doubt.
JULIA. Indeed! I never told you so. If you cannot behave like a gentleman, you had better go back to the society of the woman who has given you up — if such a coldblooded, cowardly creature can be called a woman. (She rises majestically; he makes his chair fly back to the table.) I know you now, Leonard Charteris, through and through, in all your falseness, your petty spite, your cruelty and your vanity. The place you coveted has been won by a man more worthy of it.
CHARTERIS (springing up, and coming close to her, gasping with eagerness). What do you mean? Out with it. Have you accep —
JULIA. I am engaged to Dr. Paramore.
CHARTERIS (enraptured). My own Julia! (He attempts to embrace her.)
JULIA (recoiling — he catching her hands and holding them). How dare you! Are you mad? Do you wish me to call Dr. Paramore?
CHARTERIS. Call everybody, my darling — everybody in London. Now I shall no longer have to be brutal — to defend myself — to go in fear of you. How I have looked forward to this day! You know now that I don’t want you to marry me or to love me: Paramore can have all that. I only want to look on and rejoice disinterestedly in the happiness of (kissing her hand) my dear Julia (kissing the other), my beautiful Julia. (She tears her hands away and raises them as if to strike him, as she did the night before at Cuthbertson’s.) No use to threaten me now: I am not afraid of those hands — the loveliest hands in the world.
JULIA. How have you the face to turn round like this after insulting and torturing me!
CHARTERIS. Never mind, dearest: you never did understand me; and you never will. Our vivisecting friend has made a successful experiment at last.
JULIA (earnestly). It is you who are the vivisector — a far crueller, more wanton vivisector than he.
CHARTERIS. Yes; but then I learn so much more from my experiments than he does! And the victims learn as much as I do. That’s where my moral superiority comes in.
JULIA (sitting down again on the couch with rueful humour). Well, you shall not experiment on me any more. Go to your Grace if you want a victim. She’ll be a tough one.
CHARTERIS (reproachfully sitting down beside her). And you drove me to propose to her to escape from you! Suppose she had accepted me, where should I be now?
JULIA. Where I am, I suppose, now that I have accepted Paramore.
CHARTERIS. But I should have made Grace unhappy. (Julia sneers). However, now I come to think of it, you’ll make Paramore unhappy. And yet if you refused him he would be in despair. Poor devil!
JULIA (her temper flashing up for a moment again). He is a better man than you.
CHARTERIS (humbly). I grant you that, my dear.
JULIA (impetuously). Don’t call me your dear. And what do you mean by saying that I shall make him unhappy? Am I not good enough for him?
CHARTERIS (dubiously). Well, that depends on what you mean by good enough.
JULIA (earnestly). You might have made me good if you had chosen to. You had a great power over me. I was like a child in your hands; and you knew it.
CHARTERIS (with comic acquiescence). Yes, my dear. That means that whenever you got jealous and flew into a violent rage, I could always depend on it’s ending happily if I only waited long enough, and petted you very hard all the time. When you had had your fling, and called the object of your jealousy every name you could lay your tongue to, and abused me to your heart’s content for a couple of hours, then the reaction would come; and you would at last subside into a soothing rapture of affection which gave you a sensation of being angelically good and forgiving. Oh, I know that sort of goodness! You may have thought on these occasions that I was bringing out your latent amiability; but I thought you were bringing out mine, and using up rather more than your fair share of it.