The Apple Cart

common women who do their domestic duty, and sacrifice themselves, and run Trade departments and all the rest of the vulgarities. Has all the tedious public work you have done made you any the better? I have seen you before and after your boasted strokes of policy; and you were the same man, and would have been the same man to me and to yourself if you had never done them. Thank God my self-consciousness is something nobler than vulgar conceit in having done something. It is what I am, not what I do, that you must worship in me. If you want deeds, go to your men and women of action, as you call them, who are all in a conspiracy to pretend that the mechanical things they do, the foolhardy way they risk their worthless lives, or their getting up in the morning at four and working sixteen hours a day for thirty years, like coral insects, make them great. What are they for? these dull slaves? To keep the streets swept for me. To enable me to reign over them in beauty like the stars without having anything to do with their slavery except to console it, to dazzle it, to enable them to forget it in adoring dreams of me. Am I not worth it? She sits, fascinating him. Look into my eyes and tell the truth. Am I worth it or not? Magnus To me, who love beauty, yes. But you should hear the speeches Balbus makes about your pension. Orinthia And my debts: do not forget my debts, my mortgages, the bill of sale on my furniture, the thousands I have had from the moneylenders to save me from being sold up because I will not borrow from my friends. Lecture me again about them; but do not dare pretend that the people grudge me my pension. They glory in it, and in my extravagance, as you call it. Magnus More gravely. By the way, Orinthia, when your dressmakers took up that last bill for you, they were speculating, were they not, in your chances of becoming my queen some day? Orinthia Well, what if they were? Magnus They would hardly have ventured on that without a hint from somebody. Was it from you? Orinthia You think me capable of that! You have a very low side to you, Magnus. Magnus No doubt: like other mortal fabrics I have a wrong side and a right side. But it is no use your giving yourself airs, belovèdest. You are capable of anything. Do you deny that there was some suggestion of the kind? Orinthia How dare you challenge me to deny it? I never deny. Of course there was a suggestion of the kind. Magnus I thought so. Orinthia Oh, stupid! stupid! Go keep a grocer’s shop: that is what you are fit for. Do you suppose that the suggestion came from me? Why, you great oaf, it is in the air: when my dressmaker hinted at it I told her that if she ever dared to repeat such a thing she should never get another order from me. But can I help people seeing what is as plain as the sun in the heavens? Rising again. Everyone knows that I am the real queen. Everyone treats me as the real queen. They cheer me in the streets. When I open one of the art exhibitions or launch a new ship they crowd the place out. I am one of Nature’s queens; and they know it. If you do not, you are not one of Nature’s kings. Magnus Sublime! Nothing but genuine inspiration could give a woman such cheek. Orinthia Yes: inspiration, not cheek. Sitting as before. Magnus: when are you going to face my destiny, and your own? Magnus But my wife? the queen? What is to become of my poor dear Jemima? Orinthia Oh, drown her: shoot her: tell your chauffeur to drive her into the Serpentine and leave her there. The woman makes you ridiculous. Magnus I don’t think I should like that. And the public would think it ill-natured. Orinthia Oh, you know what I mean. Divorce her. Make her divorce you. It is quite easy. That was how Ronny married me. Everybody does it when they need a change. Magnus But I can’t imagine what I should do without Jemima. Orinthia Nobody else can imagine what you do with her. But you need not do without her. You can see as much of her as you like when we are married. I shall not be jealous and make scenes. Magnus That is very magnanimous of you. But I am afraid it does not settle the difficulty. Jemima would not think it right to keep up her present intimacy with me if I were married to you. Orinthia What a woman! Would she be in any worse position then than I am in now? Magnus No. Orinthia You mean, then, that you do not mind placing me in a position that you do not think good enough for her? Magnus Orinthia: I did not place you in your present position. You placed yourself in it. I could not resist you. You gathered me like a daisy. Orinthia Did you want to resist me? Magnus Oh no. I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me. Orinthia Well, then, what are we talking about? Magnus I forget. I think I was explaining the impossibility of my wife changing places with you. Orinthia Why impossible, pray? Magnus I cannot make you understand: you see you have never been really married, though you have led two captives to the altar, and borne children to one of them. Being your husband is only a job for which one man will do as well as another, and which the last man holds subject to six months notice in the divorce court. Being my wife is something quite different. The smallest derogation to Jemima’s dignity would hit me like the lash of a whip across the face. About yours, somehow, I do