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Read Ebook: Overruled by Shaw Bernard
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Ebook has 380 lines and 15514 words, and 8 pages
MRS. JUNO. I wonder! It's quite true that when one feels in danger one talks like mad to stave it off, even when one doesn't quite want to stave it off.
GREGORY. One never does quite want to stave it off. Danger is delicious. But death isn't. We court the danger; but the real delight is in escaping, after all.
MRS. JUNO. I don't think we'll talk about it any more. Danger is all very well when you do escape; but sometimes one doesn't. I tell you frankly I don't feel as safe as you do--if you really do.
GREGORY. But surely you can do as you please without injuring anyone, Mrs. Juno. That is the whole secret of your extraordinary charm for me.
MRS. JUNO. I don't understand.
GREGORY. Well, I hardly know how to begin to explain. But the root of the matter is that I am what people call a good man.
MRS. JUNO. I thought so until you began making love to me.
GREGORY. But you knew I loved you all along.
MRS. JUNO. Yes, of course; but I depended on you not to tell me so; because I thought you were good. Your blurting it out spoilt it. And it was wicked besides.
GREGORY. Not at all. You see, it's a great many years since I've been able to allow myself to fall in love. I know lots of charming women; but the worst of it is, they're all married. Women don't become charming, to my taste, until they're fully developed; and by that time, if they're really nice, they're snapped up and married. And then, because I am a good man, I have to place a limit to my regard for them. I may be fortunate enough to gain friendship and even very warm affection from them; but my loyalty to their husbands and their hearths and their happiness obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of course I value such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am surrounded with women who are most dear to me. But every one of them has a post sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In every lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every fair hillside, we meet that confounded board; and there is always a gamekeeper round the corner. But what is that to the horror of meeting it on every beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a husband round the corner? I have had this accursed board standing between me and every dear and desirable woman until I thought I had lost the power of letting myself fall really and wholeheartedly in love.
MRS. JUNO. Wasn't there a widow?
GREGORY. No. Widows are extraordinarily scarce in modern society. Husbands live longer than they used to; and even when they do die, their widows have a string of names down for their next.
MRS. JUNO. Well, what about the young girls?
GREGORY. Oh, who cares for young girls? They're sympathetic. They're beginners. They don't attract me. I'm afraid of them.
MRS. JUNO. That's the correct thing to say to a woman of my age. But it doesn't explain why you seem to have put your scruples in your pocket when you met me.
GREGORY. Surely that's quite clear. I--
MRS. JUNO. No: please don't explain. I don't want to know. I take your word for it. Besides, it doesn't matter now. Our voyage is over; and to-morrow I start for the north to my poor father's place.
GREGORY . Your poor father! I thought he was alive.
MRS. JUNO. So he is. What made you think he wasn't?
GREGORY. You said your POOR father.
MRS. JUNO. Oh, that's a trick of mine. Rather a silly trick, I Suppose; but there's something pathetic to me about men: I find myself calling them poor So-and-So when there's nothing whatever the matter with them.
GREGORY . But--I--is?-- wa--? Oh, Lord!
MRS. JUNO. What's the matter?
GREGORY. Nothing.
MRS. JUNO. Nothing! . Nonsense: you're ill.
GREGORY. No. It was something about your late husband--
MRS. JUNO. My LATE husband! What do you mean? . Don't tell me he's dead.
GREGORY . Don't tell me he's alive.
MRS. JUNO. Oh, don't frighten me like this. Of course he's alive--unless you've heard anything.
GREGORY. The first day we met--on the boat--you spoke to me of your poor dear husband.
MRS. JUNO . Is that all?
GREGORY. Well, afterwards you called him poor Tops. Always poor Tops, Our poor dear Tops. What could I think?
MRS. JUNO . I wish you hadn't given me such a shock about him; for I haven't been treating him at all well. Neither have you.
GREGORY . And you mean to tell me you're not a widow!
MRS. JUNO. Gracious, no! I'm not in black.
GREGORY. Then I have been behaving like a blackguard. I have broken my promise to my mother. I shall never have an easy conscience again.
MRS. JUNO. I'm sorry. I thought you knew.
GREGORY. You thought I was a libertine?
MRS. JUNO. No: of course I shouldn't have spoken to you if I had thought that. I thought you liked me, but that you knew, and would be good.
GREGORY . I thought the burden of being good had fallen from my soul at last. I saw nothing there but a bosom to rest on: the bosom of a lovely woman of whom I could dream without guilt. What do I see now?
MRS. JUNO. Just what you saw before.
GREGORY . No, no.
MRS. JUNO. What else?
GREGORY. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.
MRS. JUNO. They won't if they hold their tongues. Don't be such a coward. My husband won't eat you.
GREGORY. I'm not afraid of your husband. I'm afraid of my conscience.
MRS. JUNO . Well! I don't consider myself at all a badly behaved woman; for nothing has passed between us that was not perfectly nice and friendly; but really! to hear a grown-up man talking about promises to his mother!
GREGORY . Yes, Yes: I know all about that. It's not romantic: it's not Don Juan: it's not advanced; but we feel it all the same. It's far deeper in our blood and bones than all the romantic stuff. My father got into a scandal once: that was why my mother made me promise never to make love to a married woman. And now I've done it I can't feel honest. Don't pretend to despise me or laugh at me. You feel it too. You said just now that your own conscience was uneasy when you thought of your husband. What must it be when you think of my wife?
MRS. JUNO . Your wife!!! You don't dare sit there and tell me coolly that you're a married man!
GREGORY. I never led you to believe I was unmarried.
MRS. JUNO. Oh! You never gave me the faintest hint that you had a wife.
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