Short Plays

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