Short Plays · Overruled (4/4) (2/2) (2/3)

| Juno | I felt it quite distinctly: I’m more thinly clad than you. He sits down again, and proceeds, with a sigh of satisfaction. What a relief to get off the ship and have a private room! That’s the worst of a ship. You’re under observation all the time. | | Mrs. Lunn | But why not? | | Juno | Well, of course there’s no reason: at least I suppose not. But, you know, part of the romance of a journey is that a man keeps imagining that something might happen; and he can’t do that if there are a lot of people about and it simply can’t happen. | | Mrs. Lunn | Mr. Juno: romance is all very well on board ship; but when your foot touches the soil of England there’s an end of it. | | Juno | No: believe me, that’s a foreigner’s mistake: we are the most romantic people in the world, we English. Why, my very presence here is a romance. | | Mrs. Lunn | Faintly ironical. Indeed? | | Juno | Yes. You’ve guessed, of course, that I’m a married man. | | Mrs. Lunn | Oh, that’s all right. I’m a married woman. | | Juno | Thank Heaven for that! To my English mind, passion is not real passion without guilt. I am a red-blooded man, Mrs. Lunn: I can’t help it. The tragedy of my life is that I married, when quite young, a woman whom I couldn’t help being very fond of. I longed for a guilty passion⁠—for the real thing⁠—the wicked thing; and yet I couldn’t care twopence for any other woman when my wife was about. Year after year went by: I felt my youth slipping away without ever having had a romance in my life; for marriage is all very well; but it isn’t romance. There’s nothing wrong in it, you see. | | Mrs. Lunn | Poor man! How you must have suffered! | | Juno | No: that was what was so tame about it. I wanted to suffer. You get so sick of being happily married. It’s always the happy marriages that break up. At last my wife and I agreed that we ought to take a holiday. | | Mrs. Lunn | Hadn’t you holidays every year? | | Juno | Oh, the seaside and so on! That’s not what we meant. We meant a holiday from one another. | | Mrs. Lunn | How very odd! | | Juno | She said it was an excellent idea; that domestic felicity was making us perfectly idiotic; that she wanted a holiday, too. So we agreed to go round the world in opposite directions. I started for Suez on the day she sailed for New York. | | Mrs. Lunn | Suddenly becoming attentive. That’s precisely what Gregory and I did. Now I wonder did he want a holiday from me! What he said was that he wanted the delight of meeting me after a long absence. | | Juno | Could anything be more romantic than that? Would anyone else than an Englishman have thought of it? I daresay my temperament seems tame to your boiling southern blood⁠— | | Mrs. Lunn | My what! | | Juno | Your southern blood. Don’t you remember how you told me, that night in the saloon when I sang “Farewell and adieu to you dear Spanish ladies,” that you were by birth a lady of Spain? Your splendid Andalusian beauty speaks for itself. | | Mrs. Lunn | Stuff! I was born in Gibraltar. My father was Captain Jenkins. In the artillery. | | Juno | Ardently. It is climate and not race that determines the temperament. The fiery sun of Spain blazed on your cradle; and it rocked to the roar of British cannon. | | Mrs. Lunn | What eloquence! It reminds me of my husband when he was in love⁠—before we were married. Are you in love? | | Juno | Yes; and with the same woman. | | Mrs. Lunn | Well, of course, I didn’t suppose you were in love with two women. | | Juno | I don’t think you quite understand. I meant that I am in love with you. | | Mrs. Lunn | Relapsing into deepest boredom. Oh, that! Men do fall in love with me. They all seem to think me a creature with volcanic passions: I’m sure I don’t know why; for all the volcanic women I know are plain little creatures with sandy hair. I don’t consider human volcanoes respectable. And I’m so tired of the subject! Our house is always full of women who are in love with my husband and men who are in love with me. We encourage it because it’s pleasant to have company. | | Juno | And is your husband as insensible as yourself? | | Mrs. Lunn | Oh, Gregory’s not insensible: very far from it; but I am the only woman in the world for him. | | Juno | But you? Are you really as insensible as you say you are? | | Mrs. Lunn | I never said anything of the kind. I’m not at all insensible by nature; but (I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it) I am what people call rather a fine figure of a woman. | | Juno | Passionately. Noticed it! Oh, Mrs. Lunn! Have I been able to notice anything else since we met? | | Mrs. Lunn | There you go, like all the rest of them! I ask you, how do you expect a woman to keep up what you call her sensibility when this sort of thing has happened to her about three times a week ever since she was seventeen? It used to upset me and terrify me at first. Then I got rather a taste for it. It came to a climax with Gregory: that was why I married him. Then it became a mild lark, hardly worth the trouble. After that I found it valuable once or twice as a spinal tonic when I was run down; but now it’s an unmitigated bore. I don’t mind your declaration: I daresay it gives you a certain pleasure to make it. I quite understand that you adore me; but (if you don’t mind) I’d rather you didn’t keep on saying so. | | Juno | Is there then no hope for me? | | Mrs. Lunn | Oh, yes. Gregory has an idea that married women keep lists of the men they’ll marry if they become widows. I’ll put your name down, if that will satisfy you. | | Juno | Is the list a long one? | | Mrs. Lunn | Do you mean the real list? Not the one I show to Gregory: there are hundreds of names on that; but the little private list that he’d better not see? | | Juno | Oh, will you really put me on that? Say you will. | | Mrs. Lunn | Well, perhaps I will. He kisses her hand. Now don’t begin abusing the privilege. | | Juno | May I call you by your Christian name? | | Mrs. Lunn | No: it’s too long. You can’t go about calling a woman Seraphita. | | Juno | Ecstatically. Seraphita! | | Mrs. Lunn | I used to be called Sally at home; but when I married a man named Lunn, of course that became ridiculous. That’s my one little pet joke. Call me Mrs. Lunn for short. And change the subject, or I shall go to sleep. | | Juno | I can’t change the subject. For me there is no other subject. Why else have you put me on your list? | | Mrs. Lunn | Because you’re a solicitor. Gregory’s a solicitor. I’m accustomed to my husband being a solicitor and telling me things he oughtn’t to tell anybody. | | Juno | Ruefully. Is that all? Oh, I can’t believe that the voice of love has ever thoroughly awakened you. | | Mrs. Lunn | No: it sends me to sleep. Juno appeals against this by an amorous demonstration. It’s no use, Mr. Juno: I’m hopelessly respectable: the Jenkinses always were. Don’t you realize that unless most women were like that, the world couldn’t go on as it does? | | Juno | Darkly. You think it goes on respectably; but I can tell you as a solicitor⁠— | | Mrs. Lunn | Stuff! of course all the disreputable people who get into trouble go to you, just as all the sick people go to the doctors; but most people never go to a solicitor. | | Juno | Rising, with a growing sense of injury. Look here, Mrs. Lunn: do you think a man’s heart is a potato? or a turnip? or a ball of knitting wool? that you can throw it away like this? | | Mrs. Lunn | I don’t throw away balls of knitting wool. A man’s heart seems to me much like a sponge: it sops up dirty water as well as clean. | | Juno | I have never been treated like this in my life. Here am I, a married man, with a most attractive wife: a wife I adore, and who adores me, and has never as much as looked at any other man since we were married. I come and throw all this at your feet. I! I, a solicitor! braving the risk of your husband putting me into the divorce court and making me a beggar and an outcast! I do this for your sake. And you go on as if I were making no sacrifice: as if I had told you it’s a fine evening, or asked you to have a cup of tea. It’s not human. It’s not right. Love has its rights as well as respectability. He sits down again, aloof and sulky. | | Mrs. Lunn | Nonsense! Here, here’s a flower. She gives him one. Go and dream over it until you feel hungry. Nothing brings people to their senses like hunger. | | Juno | Contemplating the flower without rapture. What good’s this? | | Mrs. Lunn | Snatching it from him. Oh! you don’t love me a bit. | | Juno | Yes I do. Or at least I did. But I’m an Englishman; and I think you ought to respect the conventions of English life. | | Mrs. Lunn | But I am respecting them; and you’re not. | | Juno | Pardon me. I may be doing wrong; but I’m doing it in a proper and customary manner. You may be doing right; but you’re doing it in an unusual and questionable manner. I am not prepared to put up with that. I can stand being badly treated: I’m no baby, and can take care of myself with anybody. And of course I can stand being well treated. But the thing I can’t stand is being unexpectedly treated. It’s outside my scheme of life. So come now! you’ve got to behave naturally and straightforwardly with me. You can leave husband and child, home, friends, and country, for my sake, and come with me to some southern isle⁠—or say South America⁠—where we can be all in all to one another. Or you can tell your husband and let him jolly well punch my head if he can. But I’m damned if I’m going to stand any eccentricity. It’s not respectable. | | Gregory | Coming in from the terrace and advancing with dignity to his wife’s end of the chesterfield. Will you have the goodness, sir, in addressing this lady, to keep your temper and refrain from using profane language? | | Mrs. Lunn | Rising, delighted. Gregory! Darling! She enfolds him in a copious embrace. | | Juno | Rising. You make love to another man to my face! | | Mrs. Lunn | Why, he’s my husband. | | Juno | That takes away the last rag of excuse for such conduct. A nice world it would be if married people were to carry on their endearments before everybody! | | Gregory | This is ridiculous. What the devil business is it of yours what passes between my wife and myself? You’re not her husband, are you? | | Juno | Not at present; but I’m on the list. I’m her prospective husband: you’re only her actual one. I’m the anticipation: you’re the disappointment. | | Mrs. Lunn | Oh, my Gregory is not a disappointment. Fondly. Are you, dear? | | Gregory | You just wait, my pet. I’ll settle this chap for you. *He disengages himself from her embrace, and faces Juno. She sits down placidly. You call me a disappointment, do you? Well, I suppose every husband’s a disappointment. What about yourself? Don’t try to look like an unmarried man. I happen to know the lady you disappointed. I travelled in the same ship with her; and⁠— | | Juno | And you fell in love with her. | | Gregory | Taken aback. Who told you that? | | Juno | Aha! you confess it. Well, if you want to know, nobody told me. Everybody falls in love with my wife. | | Gregory | And do you fall in love with everybody’s wife? | | Juno | Certainly not. Only with yours. | | Mrs. Lunn | But what’s the good of saying that, Mr. Juno? I’m married to him; and there’s an end of it. | | Juno | Not at all. You can get a divorce. | | Mrs. Lunn | What for? | | Juno | For his misconduct with my wife. | | Gregory | Deeply indignant. How dare you, sir, asperse the character of that sweet lady? a lady whom I have taken under my protection. | | Juno | Protection! | | Mrs. Juno | Returning hastily. Really you must be more careful what you say about me, Mr. Lunn. | | Juno | My precious! He embraces her. Pardon this betrayal of my feeling; but I’ve not seen my wife for several weeks; and she is very dear to me. | | Gregory | I call this cheek. Who is making love to his own wife before people now, pray? | | Mrs. Lunn | Won’t you introduce me to your wife, Mr. Juno? | | Mrs. Juno | How do you do? They shake hands; and Mrs. Juno sits down beside Mrs. Lunn, on her left. | | Mrs. Lunn | I’m so glad to find you do credit to Gregory’s taste. I’m naturally rather particular about the women he falls in love with. | | Juno | Sternly. This is no way to take your husband’s unfaithfulness. To Lunn. You ought to teach your wife better. Where’s her feelings? It’s scandalous. | | Gregory | What about your own conduct, pray? | | Juno | I don’t defend it; and there’s an end of the matter. | | Gregory | Well, upon my soul! What difference does your not defending it make? | | Juno | A fundamental difference. To serious people I may appear wicked. I don’t defend myself: I am wicked, though not bad at heart. To thoughtless people I may even appear comic. Well, laugh at me: I have given myself away. But Mrs. Lunn seems to have no opinion at all about me. She doesn’t seem to know whether I’m wicked or comic. She doesn’t seem to care. She has no moral sense. I say it’s not right. I repeat, I have sinned; and I’m prepared to suffer. | | Mrs. Juno | Have you really sinned, Tops? | | Mrs. Lunn | Blandly. I don’t remember your sinning. I have a shocking bad memory for trifles; but I think I should remember that⁠—if you mean me. | | Juno | Raging. Trifles! I have fallen in love with a monster. | | Gregory | Don’t you dare call my wife a monster. | | Mrs. Juno | Rising quickly and coming between them. Please don’t lose your temper, Mr. Lunn: I won’t have my Tops bullied. | | Gregory | Well, then, let him not brag about sinning with my wife. He turns impulsively to his wife; makes her rise; and takes her proudly on his arm. What pretension has he to any such honor? | | Juno | I sinned in intention. Mrs. Juno abandons him and resumes her seat, chilled. I’m as guilty as if I had actually sinned. And I insist on being treated as a sinner, and not walked over as if I’d done nothing, by your wife or any other man. | | Mrs. Lunn | Tush! She sits down again contemptuously. | | Juno | Furious. I won’t be belittled. | | Mrs. Lunn | To Mrs. Juno. I hope you’ll come and stay with us now that you and Gregory are such friends, Mrs. Juno. | | Juno | This insane magnanimity⁠— | | Mrs. Lunn | Don’t you think you’ve said enough, Mr. Juno? This is a matter for two women to settle. Won’t you take a stroll on the beach with my Gregory while we talk it over. Gregory is a splendid listener. | | Juno | I don’t think any good can come of a conversation between Mr. Lunn and myself. We can hardly be expected to improve one another’s morals. He passes behind the chesterfield to Mrs. Lunn’s end; seizes a chair; deliberately pushes it between Gregory and Mrs. Lunn; and sits down with folded arms, resolved not to budge. | | Gregory | Oh! Indeed! Oh, all right. If you come to that⁠—He crosses to Mrs. Juno; plants a chair by her side; and sits down with equal determination. | | Juno | Now we are both equally guilty. | | Gregory | Pardon me. I’m not guilty. | | Juno | In intention. Don’t quibble. You were guilty in intention, as I was. | | Gregory | No. I should rather describe myself guilty in fact, but not in intention. | | | Rising and exclaiming simultaneously. | | Juno | What! | | Mrs. Juno | No, really⁠— | | Mrs. Lunn | Gregory! | | Gregory | Yes: I maintain that I am responsible for my intentions only, and not for reflex actions over which I have no control. Mrs. Juno* sits down, ashamed. I promised my mother that I would never tell a lie, and that I would never make love to a married woman. I never have told a lie⁠— | | Mrs. Lunn | Remonstrating. Gregory! She sits down again. |