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Read Ebook: How He Lied to Her Husband by Shaw Bernard
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Ebook has 229 lines and 10595 words, and 5 pages
HE. If you did, you would no longer be Aurora. Our course is perfectly simple, perfectly straightforward, perfectly stainless and true. We love one another. I am not ashamed of that: I am ready to go out and proclaim it to all London as simply as I will declare it to your husband when you see--as you soon will see--that this is the only way honorable enough for your feet to tread. Let us go out together to our own house, this evening, without concealment and without shame. Remember! we owe something to your husband. We are his guests here: he is an honorable man: he has been kind to us: he has perhaps loved you as well as his prosaic nature and his sordid commercial environment permitted. We owe it to him in all honor not to let him learn the truth from the lips of a scandalmonger. Let us go to him now quietly, hand in hand; bid him farewell; and walk out of the house without concealment and subterfuge, freely and honestly, in full honor and self-respect.
SHE And where shall we go to?
HE. We shall not depart by a hair's breadth from the ordinary natural current of our lives. We were going to the theatre when the loss of the poems compelled us to take action at once. We shall go to the theatre still; but we shall leave your diamonds here; for we cannot afford diamonds, and do not need them.
SHE I have told you already that I hate diamonds; only Teddy insists on hanging me all over with them. You need not preach simplicity to me.
HE. I never thought of doing so, dearest: I know that these trivialities are nothing to you. What was I saying--oh yes. Instead of coming back here from the theatre, you will come with me to my home--now and henceforth our home--and in due course of time, when you are divorced, we shall go through whatever idle legal ceremony you may desire. I attach no importance to the law: my love was not created in me by the law, nor can it be bound or loosed by it. That is simple enough, and sweet enough, is it not? . Here are flowers for you: I have the tickets: we will ask your husband to lend us the carriage to show that there is no malice, no grudge, between us. Come!
SHE Teddy isn't in yet.
HE. Well, let us take that calmly. Let us go to the theatre as if nothing had happened, and tell him when we come back. Now or three hours hence: to-day or to-morrow: what does it matter, provided all is done in honor, without shame or fear?
SHE. What did you get tickets for? Lohengrin?
HE. I tried; but Lohengrin was sold out for to-night. .
SHE. Then what did you get?
HE. Can you ask me? What is there besides Lohengrin that we two could endure, except Candida?
SHE Candida! No, I won't go to it again, Henry . It is that play that has done all the mischief. I'm very sorry I ever saw it: it ought to be stopped.
HE Aurora!
SHE. Yes: I mean it.
HE. That divinest love poem! the poem that gave us courage to speak to one another! that revealed to us what we really felt for one another! That--
SHE. Just so. It put a lot of stuff into my head that I should never have dreamt of for myself. I imagined myself just like Candida.
HE You were right. You are like Candida.
SHE Oh, stuff! And I thought you were just like Eugene. Now that I come to look at you, you are rather like him, too. .
HE Aurora: if Candida had loved Eugene she would have gone out into the night with him without a moment's hesitation.
SHE Henry: do you know what's wanting in that play?
HE. There is nothing wanting in it.
SHE. Yes there is. There's a Georgina wanting in it. If Georgina had been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life tragedy. Now I'll tell you something about it that I have never told you before.
HE. What is that?
SHE. I took Teddy to it. I thought it would do him good; and so it would if I could only have kept him awake. Georgina came too; and you should have heard the way she went on about it. She said it was downright immoral, and that she knew the sort of woman that encourages boys to sit on the hearthrug and make love to her. She was just preparing Teddy's mind to poison it about me.
HE. Let us be just to Georgina, dearest
SHE. Let her deserve it first. Just to Georgina, indeed!
HE. She really sees the world in that way. That is her punishment.
SHE. How can it be her punishment when she likes it? It'll be my punishment when she brings that budget of poems to Teddy. I wish you'd have some sense, and sympathize with my position a little.
HE. My dear: I really don't care about Georgina or about Teddy. All these squabbles belong to a plane on which I am, as you say, no use. I have counted the cost; and I do not fear the consequences. After all, what is there to fear? Where is the difficulty? What can Georgina do? What can your husband do? What can anybody do?
SHE. Do you mean to say that you propose that we should walk right bang up to Teddy and tell him we're going away together?
HE. Yes. What can be simpler?
SHE. And do you think for a moment he'd stand it, like that half-baked clergyman in the play? He'd just kill you.
HE You don't understand these things, my darling, how could you? In one respect I am unlike the poet in the play. I have followed the Greek ideal and not neglected the culture of my body. Your husband would make a tolerable second-rate heavy weight if he were in training and ten years younger. As it is, he could, if strung up to a great effort by a burst of passion, give a good account of himself for perhaps fifteen seconds. But I am active enough to keep out of his reach for fifteen seconds; and after that I should be simply all over him.
SHE What do you mean by all over him?
HE Don't ask me, dearest. At all events, I swear to you that you need not be anxious about me.
SHE. And what about Teddy? Do you mean to tell me that you are going to beat Teddy before my face like a brutal prizefighter?
HE. All this alarm is needless, dearest. Believe me, nothing will happen. Your husband knows that I am capable of defending myself. Under such circumstances nothing ever does happen. And of course I shall do nothing. The man who once loved you is sacred to me.
SHE Doesn't he love me still? Has he told you anything?
HE. No, no. . Dearest, dearest: how agitated you are! how unlike yourself! All these worries belong to the lower plane. Come up with me to the higher one. The heights, the solitudes, the soul world!
SHE No: stop: it's no use, Mr Apjohn.
HE Mr Apjohn!!!
SHE. Excuse me: I meant Henry, of course.
HE. How could you even think of me as Mr Apjohn? I never think of you as Mrs Bompas: it is always Cand-- I mean Aurora, Aurora, Auro--
SHE. Yes, yes: that's all very well, Mr Apjohn no: it's no use: I've suddenly begun to think of you as Mr Apjohn; and it's ridiculous to go on calling you Henry. I thought you were only a boy, a child, a dreamer. I thought you would be too much afraid to do anything. And now you want to beat Teddy and to break up my home and disgrace me and make a horrible scandal in the papers. It's cruel, unmanly, cowardly.
HE Are you afraid?
SHE. Oh, of course I'm afraid. So would you be if you had any common sense. .
HE Perfect love casteth out fear. That is why I am not afraid. Mrs Bompas: you do not love me.
SHE Oh, thank you, thank you! You really can be very nice, Henry.
HE. Why do you thank me?
SHE For calling me Mrs Bompas again. I feel now that you are going to be reasonable and behave like a gentleman. . What's the matter?
HE. Once or twice in my life I have dreamed that I was exquisitely happy and blessed. But oh! the misgiving at the first stir of consciousness! the stab of reality! the prison walls of the bedroom! the bitter, bitter disappointment of waking! And this time! oh, this time I thought I was awake.
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