The Devoted Friend



One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole.  He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber.  The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water.

“You will never be in the best society unless you can stand on your heads,” she kept saying to them; and every now and then she showed them how it was done.  But the little ducks paid no attention to her.  They were so young that they did not know what an advantage it is to be in society at all.

“What disobedient children!” cried the old Water-rat; “they really deserve to be drowned.”

“Nothing of the kind,” answered the Duck, “every one must make a beginning, and parents cannot be too patient.”

“Ah! I know nothing about the feelings of parents,” said the Water-rat; “I am not a family man.  In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be.  Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher.  Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.”

“And what, pray, is your idea of the duties of a devoted friend?” asked a Green Linnet, who was sitting in a willow-tree hard by, and had overheard the conversation.

“Yes, that is just what I want to know,” said the Duck; and she swam away to the end of the pond, and stood upon her head, in order to give her children a good example.

“What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat.  “I should expect my devoted friend to be devoted to me, of course.”

“And what would you do in return?” said the little bird, swinging upon a silver spray, and flapping his tiny wings.

“I don’t understand you,” answered the Water-rat.

“Let me tell you a story on the subject,” said the Linnet.

“Is the story about me?” asked the Water-rat.  “If so, I will listen to it, for I am extremely fond of fiction.”

“It is applicable to you,” answered the Linnet; and he flew down, and alighting upon the bank, he told the story of The Devoted Friend.

“Once upon a time,” said the Linnet, “there was an honest little fellow named Hans.”

“Was he very distinguished?” asked the Water-rat.

“No,” answered the Linnet, “I don’t think he was distinguished at all, except for his kind heart, and his funny round good-humoured face.  He lived in a tiny cottage all by himself, and every day he worked in his garden.  In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his.  Sweet-william grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds’-purses, and Fair-maids of France.  There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses, and gold, purple Violets and white.  Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months went by, one flower taking another flower’s place, so that there were always beautiful things to look at, and pleasant odours to smell.

“Little Hans had a great many friends, but the most devoted friend of all was big Hugh the Miller.  Indeed, so devoted was the rich Miller to little Hans, that be would never go by his garden without leaning over the wall and plucking a large nosegay, or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with plums and cherries if it was the fruit season.

“‘Real friends should have everything in common,’ the Miller used to say, and little Hans nodded and smiled, and felt very proud of having a friend with such noble ideas.

“Sometimes, indeed, the neighbours thought it strange that the rich Miller never gave little Hans anything in return, though he had a hundred sacks of flour stored away in his mill, and six milch cows, and a large flock of woolly sheep; but Hans never troubled his head about these things, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to listen to all the wonderful things the Miller used to say about the unselfishness of true friendship.

“So little Hans worked away in his garden.  During the spring, the summer, and the autumn he was very happy, but when the winter came, and he had no fruit or flowers to bring to the market, he suffered a good deal from cold and hunger, and often had to go to bed without any supper but a few dried pears or some hard nuts.  In the winter, also, he was extremely lonely, as the Miller never came to see him then.

“‘There is no good in my going to see little Hans as long as the snow lasts,’ the Miller used to say to his wife, ‘for when people are in trouble they should be left alone, and not be bothered by visitors.  That at least is my idea about friendship, and I am sure I am right.  So I shall wait till the spring comes, and then I shall pay him a visit, and he will be able to give me a large basket of primroses and that will make him so happy.’

“‘You are certainly very thoughtful about others,’ answered the Wife, as she sat in her comfortable armchair by the big pinewood fire; ‘very thoughtful indeed.  It is quite a treat to hear you talk about friendship.  I am sure the clergyman himself could not say such beautiful things as you do, though he does live in a three-storied house, and wear a gold ring on his little finger.’

“‘But could we not ask little Hans up here?’ said the Miller’s youngest son.  ‘If poor Hans is in trouble I will give him half my porridge, and show him my white rabbits.’

“‘What a silly boy you are’! cried the Miller; ‘I really don’t know what is the use of sending you to school.  You seem not to learn anything.  Why, if little Hans came up here, and saw our warm fire, and our good supper, and our great cask of red wine, he might get envious, and envy is a most terrible thing, and would spoil anybody’s nature.  I certainly will not allow Hans’ nature to be spoiled.  I am his best friend, and I will always watch over him, and see that he is not led into any temptations.  Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me to let him have some flour on credit, and that I could not do.  Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they should not be confused.  Why, the words are spelt differently, and mean quite different things.  Everybody can see that.’

“‘How well you talk’! said the Miller’s Wife, pouring herself out a large glass of warm ale; ‘really I feel quite drowsy.  It is just like being in church.’

“‘Lots of people act well,’ answered the Miller; ‘but very few people talk well, which shows that talking is much the more difficult thing of the two, and much the finer thing also’; and he looked sternly across the table at his little son, who felt so ashamed of himself that he hung his head down, and grew quite scarlet, and began to cry into his tea.  However, he was so young that you must excuse him.”

“Is that the end of the story?” asked the Water-rat.

“Certainly not,” answered the Linnet, “that is the beginning.”

“Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat.  “Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle.  That is the new method.  I heard all about it the other day from a critic who was walking round the pond with a young man.  He spoke of the matter at great length, and I am sure he must have been right, for he had blue spectacles and a bald head, and whenever the young man made any remark, he always answered ‘Pooh!’  But pray go on with your story.  I like the Miller immensely.  I have all kinds of beautiful sentiments myself, so there is a great sympathy between us.”

“Well,” said the Linnet, hopping now on one leg and now on the other, “as soon as the winter was over, and the primroses began to open their pale yellow stars, the Miller said to his wife that he would go down and see little Hans.

“‘Why, what a good heart you have’! cried his Wife; ‘you are always thinking of others.  And mind you take the big basket with you for the flowers.’

“So the Miller tied the sails of the windmill together with a strong iron chain, and went down the hill with the basket on his arm.

“‘Good morning, little Hans,’ said the Miller.

“‘Good morning,’ said Hans, leaning on his spade, and smiling from ear to ear.

“‘And how have you been all the winter?’ said the Miller.

“‘Well, really,’ cried Hans, ‘it is very good of you to ask, very good indeed.  I am afraid I had rather a hard time of it, but now the spring has come, and I am quite happy, and all my flowers are doing well.’

“‘We often talked of you during the winter, Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘and wondered how you were getting on.’

“‘That was kind of you,’ said Hans; ‘I was half afraid you had forgotten me.’

“‘Hans, I am surprised at you,’ said the Miller; ‘friendship never forgets.  That is the wonderful thing about it, but I am afraid you don’t understand the poetry of life.  How lovely your primroses are looking, by-the-bye”!

“‘They are certainly very lovely,’ said Hans, ‘and it is a most lucky thing for me that I have so many.  I am going to bring them into the market and sell them to the Burgomaster’s daughter, and buy back my wheelbarrow with the money.’

“‘Buy back your wheelbarrow?  You don’t mean to say you have sold it?  What a very stupid thing to do’!

“‘Well, the fact is,’ said Hans, ‘that I was obliged to.  You see the winter was a very bad time for me, and I really had no money at all to buy bread with.  So I first sold the silver buttons off my Sunday coat, and then I sold my silver chain, and then I sold my big pipe, and at last I sold my wheelbarrow.  But I am going to buy them all back again now.’

“‘Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘I will give you my wheelbarrow.  It is not in very good repair; indeed, one side is gone, and there is something wrong with the wheel-spokes; but in spite of that I will give it to you.  I know it is very generous of me, and a great many people would think me extremely foolish for parting with it, but I am not like the rest of the world.  I think that generosity is the essence of friendship, and, besides, I have got a new wheelbarrow for myself.  Yes, you may set your mind at ease, I will give you my wheelbarrow.’

“‘Well, really, that is generous of you,’ said little Hans, and his funny round face glowed all over with pleasure.  ‘I can easily put it in repair, as I have a plank of wood in the house.’

“‘A plank of wood’! said the Miller; ‘why, that is just what I want for the roof of my barn.  There is a very large hole in it, and the corn will all get damp if I don’t stop it up.  How lucky you mentioned it!  It is quite remarkable how one good action always breeds another.  I have given you my wheelbarrow, and now you are going to give me your plank.  Of course, the wheelbarrow is worth far more than the plank, but true, friendship never notices things like that.  Pray get it at once, and I will set to work at my barn this very day.’

“‘Certainly,’ cried little Hans, and he ran into the shed and dragged the plank out.

“‘It is not a very big plank,’ said the Miller, looking at it, ‘and I am afraid that after I have mended my barn-roof there won’t be any left for you to mend the wheelbarrow with; but, of course, that is not my fault.  And now, as I have given you my wheelbarrow, I am sure you would like to give me some flowers in return.  Here is the basket, and mind you fill it quite full.’

“‘Quite full?’ said little Hans, rather sorrowfully, for it was really a very big basket, and he knew that if he filled it he would have no flowers left for the market and he was very anxious to get his silver buttons back.

“‘Well, really,’ answered the Miller, ‘as I have given you my wheelbarrow, I don’t think that it is much to ask you for a few flowers.  I may be wrong, but I should have thought that friendship, true friendship, was quite free from selfishness of any kind.’

“‘My dear friend, my best friend,’ cried little Hans, ‘you are welcome to all the flowers in my garden.  I would much sooner have your good opinion than my silver buttons, any day’; and he ran and plucked all his pretty primroses, and filled the Miller’s basket.

“‘Good-bye, little Hans,’ said the Miller, as he went up the hill with the plank on his shoulder, and the big basket in his hand.

“‘Good-bye,’ said little Hans, and he began to dig away quite merrily, he was so pleased about the wheelbarrow.

“The next day he was nailing up some honeysuckle against the porch, when he heard the Miller’s voice calling to him from the road.  So he jumped off the ladder, and ran down the garden, and looked over the wall.

“There was the Miller with a large sack of flour on his back.

“‘Dear little Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘would you mind carrying this sack of flour for me to market?’

“‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ said Hans, ‘but I am really very busy to-day.  I have got all my creepers to nail up, and all my flowers to water, and all my grass to roll.’

“‘Well, really,’ said the Miller, ‘I think that, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, it is rather unfriendly of you to refuse.’

“‘Oh, don’t say that,’ cried little Hans, ‘I wouldn’t be unfriendly for the whole world’; and he ran in for his cap, and trudged off with the big sack on his shoulders.

“It was a very hot day, and the road was terribly dusty, and before Hans had reached the sixth milestone he was so tired that he had to sit down and rest.  However, he went on bravely, and as last he reached the market.  After he had waited there some time, he sold the sack of flour for a very good price, and then he returned home at once, for he was afraid that if he stopped too late he might meet some robbers on the way.

“‘It has certainly been a hard day,’ said little Hans to himself as he was going to bed, ‘but I am glad I did not refuse the Miller, for he is my best friend, and, besides, he is going to give me his wheelbarrow.’

“Early the next morning the Miller came down to get the money for his sack of flour, but little Hans was so tired that he was still in bed.

“‘Upon my word,’ said the Miller, ‘you are very lazy.  Really, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, I think you might work harder.  Idleness is a great sin, and I certainly don’t like any of my friends to be idle or sluggish.  You must not mind my speaking quite plainly to you.  Of course I should not dream of doing so if I were not your friend.  But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means?  Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain.  Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.’

“‘I am very sorry,’ said little Hans, rubbing his eyes and pulling off his night-cap, ‘but I was so tired that I thought I would lie in bed for a little time, and listen to the birds singing.  Do you know that I always work better after hearing the birds sing?’

“‘Well, I am glad of that,’ said the Miller, clapping little Hans on the back, ‘for I want you to come up to the mill as soon as you are dressed, and mend my barn-roof for me.’

“Poor little Hans was very anxious to go and work in his garden, for his flowers had not been watered for two days, but he did not like to refuse the Miller, as he was such a good friend to him.

“‘Do you think it would be unfriendly of me if I said I was busy?’ he inquired in a shy and timid voice.

“‘Well, really,’ answered the Miller, ‘I do not think it is much to ask of you, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow; but of course if you refuse I will go and do it myself.’

“‘Oh! on no account,’ cried little Hans and he jumped out of bed, and dressed himself, and went up to the barn.

“He worked there all day long, till sunset, and at sunset the Miller came to see how he was getting on.

“‘Have you mended the hole in the roof yet, little Hans?’ cried the Miller in a cheery voice.

“‘It is quite mended,’ answered little Hans, coming down the ladder.

“‘Ah’! said the Miller, ‘there is no work so delightful as the work one does for others.’

“‘It is certainly a great privilege to hear you talk,’ answered little Hans, sitting down, and wiping his forehead, ‘a very great privilege.  But I am afraid I shall never have such beautiful ideas as you have.’

“‘Oh! they will come to you,’ said the Miller, ‘but you must take more pains.  At present you have only the practice of friendship; some day you will have the theory also.’

“‘Do you really think I shall?’ asked little Hans.

“‘I have no doubt of it,’ answered the Miller, ‘but now that you have mended the roof, you had better go home and rest, for I want you to drive my sheep to the mountain to-morrow.’

“Poor little Hans was afraid to say anything to this, and early the next morning the Miller brought his sheep round to the cottage, and Hans started off with them to the mountain.  It took him the whole day to get there and back; and when he returned he was so tired that he went off to sleep in his chair, and did not wake up till it was broad daylight.

“‘What a delightful time I shall have in my garden,’ he said, and he went to work at once.

“But somehow he was never able to look after his flowers at all, for his friend the Miller was always coming round and sending him off on long errands, or getting him to help at the mill.  Little Hans was very much distressed at times, as he was afraid his flowers would think he had forgotten them, but he consoled himself by the reflection that the Miller was his best friend.  ‘Besides,’ he used to say, ‘he is going to give me his wheelbarrow, and that is an act of pure generosity.’

“So little Hans worked away for the Miller, and the Miller said all kinds of beautiful things about friendship, which Hans took down in a note-book, and used to read over at night, for he was a very good scholar.

“Now it happened that one evening little Hans was sitting by his fireside when a loud rap came at the door.  It was a very wild night, and the wind was blowing and roaring round the house so terribly that at first he thought it was merely the storm.  But a second rap came, and then a third, louder than any of the others.

“‘It is some poor traveller,’ said little Hans to himself, and he ran to the door.

“There stood the Miller with a lantern in one hand and a big stick in the other.

“‘Dear little Hans,’ cried the Miller, ‘I am in great trouble.  My little boy has fallen off a ladder and hurt himself, and I am going for the Doctor.  But he lives so far away, and it is such a bad night, that it has just occurred to me that it would be much better if you went instead of me.  You know I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, and so, it is only fair that you should do something for me in return.’

“‘Certainly,’ cried little Hans, ‘I take it quite as a compliment your coming to me, and I will start off at once.  But you must lend me your lantern, as the night is so dark that I am afraid I might fall into the ditch.’

“‘I am very sorry,’ answered the Miller, ‘but it is my new lantern, and it would be a great loss to me if anything happened to it.’

“‘Well, never mind, I will do without it,’ cried little Hans, and he took down his great fur coat, and his warm scarlet cap, and tied a muffler round his throat, and started off.

“What a dreadful storm it was!  The night was so black that little Hans could hardly see, and the wind was so strong that he could scarcely stand.  However, he was very courageous, and after he had been walking about three hours, he arrived at the Doctor’s house, and knocked at the door.

“‘Who is there?’ cried the Doctor, putting his head out of his bedroom window.

“‘Little Hans, Doctor.’

“’What do you want, little Hans?’

“‘The Miller’s son has fallen from a ladder, and has hurt himself, and the Miller wants you to come at once.’

“‘All right!’ said the Doctor; and he ordered his horse, and his big boots, and his lantern, and came downstairs, and rode off in the direction of the Miller’s house, little Hans trudging behind him.

“But the storm grew worse and worse, and the rain fell in torrents, and little Hans could not see where he was going, or keep up with the horse.  At last he lost his way, and wandered off on the moor, which was a very dangerous place, as it was full of deep holes, and there poor little Hans was drowned.  His body was found the next day by some goatherds, floating in a great pool of water, and was brought back by them to the cottage.

“Everybody went to little Hans’ funeral, as he was so popular, and the Miller was the chief mourner.

“‘As I was his best friend,’ said the Miller, ‘it is only fair that I should have the best place’; so he walked at the head of the procession in a long black cloak, and every now and then he wiped his eyes with a big pocket-handkerchief.

“‘Little Hans is certainly a great loss to every one,’ said the Blacksmith, when the funeral was over, and they were all seated comfortably in the inn, drinking spiced wine and eating sweet cakes.

“‘A great loss to me at any rate,’ answered the Miller; ‘why, I had as good as given him my wheelbarrow, and now I really don’t know what to do with it.  It is very much in my way at home, and it is in such bad repair that I could not get anything for it if I sold it.  I will certainly take care not to give away anything again.  One always suffers for being generous.’”

“Well?” said the Water-rat, after a long pause.

“Well, that is the end,” said the Linnet.

“But what became of the Miller?” asked the Water-rat.

“Oh!  I really don’t know,” replied the Linnet; “and I am sure that I don’t care.”

“It is quite evident then that you have no sympathy in your nature,” said the Water-rat.

“I am afraid you don’t quite see the moral of the story,” remarked the Linnet.

“The what?” screamed the Water-rat.

“The moral.”

“Do you mean to say that the story has a moral?”

“Certainly,” said the Linnet.

“Well, really,” said the Water-rat, in a very angry manner, “I think you should have told me that before you began.  If you had done so, I certainly would not have listened to you; in fact, I should have said ‘Pooh,’ like the critic.  However, I can say it now”; so he shouted out “Pooh” at the top of his voice, gave a whisk with his tail, and went back into his hole.

“And how do you like the Water-rat?” asked the Duck, who came paddling up some minutes afterwards.  “He has a great many good points, but for my own part I have a mother’s feelings, and I can never look at a confirmed bachelor without the tears coming into my eyes.”

“I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,” answered the Linnet.  “The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.”

“Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,” said the Duck.

And I quite agree with her.

The Remarkable Rocket



The King’s son was going to be married, so there were general rejoicings.  He had waited a whole year for his bride, and at last she had arrived.  She was a Russian Princess, and had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer.  The sledge was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan’s wings lay the little Princess herself.  Her long ermine-cloak reached right down to her feet, on her head was a tiny cap of silver tissue, and she was as pale as the Snow Palace in which she had always lived.  So pale was she that as she drove through the streets all the people wondered.  “She is like a white rose!” they cried, and they threw down flowers on her from the balconies.

At the gate of the Castle the Prince was waiting to receive her.  He had dreamy violet eyes, and his hair was like fine gold.  When he saw her he sank upon one knee, and kissed her hand.

“Your picture was beautiful,” he murmured, “but you are more beautiful than your picture”; and the little Princess blushed.

“She was like a white rose before,” said a young Page to his neighbour, “but she is like a red rose now”; and the whole Court was delighted.

For the next three days everybody went about saying, “White rose, Red rose, Red rose, White rose”; and the King gave orders that the Page’s salary was to be doubled.  As he received no salary at all this was not of much use to him, but it was considered a great honour, and was duly published in the Court Gazette.

When the three days were over the marriage was celebrated.  It was a magnificent ceremony, and the bride and bridegroom walked hand in hand under a canopy of purple velvet embroidered with little pearls.  Then there was a State Banquet, which lasted for five hours.  The Prince and Princess sat at the top of the Great Hall and drank out of a cup of clear crystal.  Only true lovers could drink out of this cup, for if false lips touched it, it grew grey and dull and cloudy.

“It’s quite clear that they love each other,” said the little Page, “as clear as crystal!” and the King doubled his salary a second time.  “What an honour!” cried all the courtiers.

After the banquet there was to be a Ball.  The bride and bridegroom were to dance the Rose-dance together, and the King had promised to play the flute.  He played very badly, but no one had ever dared to tell him so, because he was the King.  Indeed, he knew only two airs, and was never quite certain which one he was playing; but it made no matter, for, whatever he did, everybody cried out, “Charming! charming!”

The last item on the programme was a grand display of fireworks, to be let off exactly at midnight.  The little Princess had never seen a firework in her life, so the King had given orders that the Royal Pyrotechnist should be in attendance on the day of her marriage.

“What are fireworks like?” she had asked the Prince, one morning, as she was walking on the terrace.

“They are like the Aurora Borealis,” said the King, who always answered questions that were addressed to other people, “only much more natural.  I prefer them to stars myself, as you always know when they are going to appear, and they are as delightful as my own flute-playing.  You must certainly see them.”

So at the end of the King’s garden a great stand had been set up, and as soon as the Royal Pyrotechnist had put everything in its proper place, the fireworks began to talk to each other.

“The world is certainly very beautiful,” cried a little Squib.  “Just look at those yellow tulips.  Why! if they were real crackers they could not be lovelier.  I am very glad I have travelled.  Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.”

“The King’s garden is not the world, you foolish squib,” said a big Roman Candle; “the world is an enormous place, and it would take you three days to see it thoroughly.”

“Any place you love is the world to you,” exclaimed a pensive Catherine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; “but love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it.  They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised.  True love suffers, and is silent.  I remember myself once—But it is no matter now.  Romance is a thing of the past.”

“Nonsense!” said the Roman Candle, “Romance never dies.  It is like the moon, and lives for ever.  The bride and bridegroom, for instance, love each other very dearly.  I heard all about them this morning from a brown-paper cartridge, who happened to be staying in the same drawer as myself, and knew the latest Court news.”

But the Catherine Wheel shook her head.  “Romance is dead, Romance is dead, Romance is dead,” she murmured.  She was one of those people who think that, if you say the same thing over and over a great many times, it becomes true in the end.

Suddenly, a sharp, dry cough was heard, and they all looked round.

It came from a tall, supercilious-looking Rocket, who was tied to the end of a long stick.  He always coughed before he made any observation, so as to attract attention.

“Ahem! ahem!” he said, and everybody listened except the poor Catherine Wheel, who was still shaking her head, and murmuring, “Romance is dead.”

“Order! order!” cried out a Cracker.  He was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, so he knew the proper Parliamentary expressions to use.

“Quite dead,” whispered the Catherine Wheel, and she went off to sleep.

As soon as there was perfect silence, the Rocket coughed a third time and began.  He spoke with a very slow, distinct voice, as if he was dictating his memoirs, and always looked over the shoulder of the person to whom he was talking.  In fact, he had a most distinguished manner.

“How fortunate it is for the King’s son,” he remarked, “that he is to be married on the very day on which I am to be let off.  Really, if it had been arranged beforehand, it could not have turned out better for him; but, Princes are always lucky.”

“Dear me!” said the little Squib, “I thought it was quite the other way, and that we were to be let off in the Prince’s honour.”

“It may be so with you,” he answered; “indeed, I have no doubt that it is, but with me it is different.  I am a very remarkable Rocket, and come of remarkable parents.  My mother was the most celebrated Catherine Wheel of her day, and was renowned for her graceful dancing.  When she made her great public appearance she spun round nineteen times before she went out, and each time that she did so she threw into the air seven pink stars.  She was three feet and a half in diameter, and made of the very best gunpowder.  My father was a Rocket like myself, and of French extraction.  He flew so high that the people were afraid that he would never come down again.  He did, though, for he was of a kindly disposition, and he made a most brilliant descent in a shower of golden rain.  The newspapers wrote about his performance in very flattering terms.  Indeed, the Court Gazette called him a triumph of Pylotechnic art.”

“Pyrotechnic, Pyrotechnic, you mean,” said a Bengal Light; “I know it is Pyrotechnic, for I saw it written on my own canister.”

“Well, I said Pylotechnic,” answered the Rocket, in a severe tone of voice, and the Bengal Light felt so crushed that he began at once to bully the little squibs, in order to show that he was still a person of some importance.

“I was saying,” continued the Rocket, “I was saying—What was I saying?”

“You were talking about yourself,” replied the Roman Candle.

“Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so rudely interrupted.  I hate rudeness and bad manners of every kind, for I am extremely sensitive.  No one in the whole world is so sensitive as I am, I am quite sure of that.”

“What is a sensitive person?” said the Cracker to the Roman Candle.

“A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people’s toes,” answered the Roman Candle in a low whisper; and the Cracker nearly exploded with laughter.

“Pray, what are you laughing at?” inquired the Rocket; “I am not laughing.”

“I am laughing because I am happy,” replied the Cracker.

“That is a very selfish reason,” said the Rocket angrily.  “What right have you to be happy?  You should be thinking about others.  In fact, you should be thinking about me.  I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same.  That is what is called sympathy.  It is a beautiful virtue, and I possess it in a high degree.  Suppose, for instance, anything happened to me to-night, what a misfortune that would be for every one!  The Prince and Princess would never be happy again, their whole married life would be spoiled; and as for the King, I know he would not get over it.  Really, when I begin to reflect on the importance of my position, I am almost moved to tears.”

“If you want to give pleasure to others,” cried the Roman Candle, “you had better keep yourself dry.”

“Certainly,” exclaimed the Bengal Light, who was now in better spirits; “that is only common sense.”

“Common sense, indeed!” said the Rocket indignantly; “you forget that I am very uncommon, and very remarkable.  Why, anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination.  But I have imagination, for I never think of things as they really are; I always think of them as being quite different.  As for keeping myself dry, there is evidently no one here who can at all appreciate an emotional nature.  Fortunately for myself, I don’t care.  The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.  But none of you have any hearts.  Here you are laughing and making merry just as if the Prince and Princess had not just been married.”

“Well, really,” exclaimed a small Fire-balloon, “why not?  It is a most joyful occasion, and when I soar up into the air I intend to tell the stars all about it.  You will see them twinkle when I talk to them about the pretty bride.”

“Ah! what a trivial view of life!” said the Rocket; “but it is only what I expected.  There is nothing in you; you are hollow and empty.  Why, perhaps the Prince and Princess may go to live in a country where there is a deep river, and perhaps they may have one only son, a little fair-haired boy with violet eyes like the Prince himself; and perhaps some day he may go out to walk with his nurse; and perhaps the nurse may go to sleep under a great elder-tree; and perhaps the little boy may fall into the deep river and be drowned.  What a terrible misfortune!  Poor people, to lose their only son!  It is really too dreadful!  I shall never get over it.”

“But they have not lost their only son,” said the Roman Candle; “no misfortune has happened to them at all.”

“I never said that they had,” replied the Rocket; “I said that they might.  If they had lost their only son there would be no use in saying anything more about the matter.  I hate people who cry over spilt milk.  But when I think that they might lose their only son, I certainly am very much affected.”

“You certainly are!” cried the Bengal Light.  “In fact, you are the most affected person I ever met.”

“You are the rudest person I ever met,” said the Rocket, “and you cannot understand my friendship for the Prince.”

“Why, you don’t even know him,” growled the Roman Candle.

“I never said I knew him,” answered the Rocket.  “I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all.  It is a very dangerous thing to know one’s friends.”

“You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon.  “That is the important thing.”

“Very important for you, I have no doubt,” answered the Rocket, “but I shall weep if I choose”; and he actually burst into real tears, which flowed down his stick like rain-drops, and nearly drowned two little beetles, who were just thinking of setting up house together, and were looking for a nice dry spot to live in.

“He must have a truly romantic nature,” said the Catherine Wheel, “for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about”; and she heaved a deep sigh, and thought about the deal box.

But the Roman Candle and the Bengal Light were quite indignant, and kept saying, “Humbug! humbug!” at the top of their voices.  They were extremely practical, and whenever they objected to anything they called it humbug.

Then the moon rose like a wonderful silver shield; and the stars began to shine, and a sound of music came from the palace.

The Prince and Princess were leading the dance.  They danced so beautifully that the tall white lilies peeped in at the window and watched them, and the great red poppies nodded their heads and beat time.

Then ten o’clock struck, and then eleven, and then twelve, and at the last stroke of midnight every one came out on the terrace, and the King sent for the Royal Pyrotechnist.

“Let the fireworks begin,” said the King; and the Royal Pyrotechnist made a low bow, and marched down to the end of the garden.  He had six attendants with him, each of whom carried a lighted torch at the end of a long pole.

It was certainly a magnificent display.

Whizz! Whizz! went the Catherine Wheel, as she spun round and round.  Boom!  Boom! went the Roman Candle.  Then the Squibs danced all over the place, and the Bengal Lights made everything look scarlet.  “Good-bye,” cried the Fire-balloon, as he soared away, dropping tiny blue sparks.  Bang! Bang! answered the Crackers, who were enjoying themselves immensely.  Every one was a great success except the Remarkable Rocket.  He was so damp with crying that he could not go off at all.  The best thing in him was the gunpowder, and that was so wet with tears that it was of no use.  All his poor relations, to whom he would never speak, except with a sneer, shot up into the sky like wonderful golden flowers with blossoms of fire.  Huzza! Huzza! cried the Court; and the little Princess laughed with pleasure.

“I suppose they are reserving me for some grand occasion,” said the Rocket; “no doubt that is what it means,” and he looked more supercilious than ever.

The next day the workmen came to put everything tidy.  “This is evidently a deputation,” said the Rocket; “I will receive them with becoming dignity” so he put his nose in the air, and began to frown severely as if he were thinking about some very important subject.  But they took no notice of him at all till they were just going away.  Then one of them caught sight of him.  “Hallo!” he cried, “what a bad rocket!” and he threw him over the wall into the ditch.

“BAD Rocket?  BAD Rocket?” he said, as he whirled through the air; “impossible!  GRAND Rocket, that is what the man said.  BAD and GRAND sound very much the same, indeed they often are the same”; and he fell into the mud.

“It is not comfortable here,” he remarked, “but no doubt it is some fashionable watering-place, and they have sent me away to recruit my health.  My nerves are certainly very much shattered, and I require rest.”

Then a little Frog, with bright jewelled eyes, and a green mottled coat, swam up to him.

“A new arrival, I see!” said the Frog.  “Well, after all there is nothing like mud.  Give me rainy weather and a ditch, and I am quite happy.  Do you think it will be a wet afternoon?  I am sure I hope so, but the sky is quite blue and cloudless.  What a pity!”

“Ahem! ahem!” said the Rocket, and he began to cough.

“What a delightful voice you have!” cried the Frog.  “Really it is quite like a croak, and croaking is of course the most musical sound in the world.  You will hear our glee-club this evening.  We sit in the old duck pond close by the farmer’s house, and as soon as the moon rises we begin.  It is so entrancing that everybody lies awake to listen to us.  In fact, it was only yesterday that I heard the farmer’s wife say to her mother that she could not get a wink of sleep at night on account of us.  It is most gratifying to find oneself so popular.”

“Ahem! ahem!” said the Rocket angrily.  He was very much annoyed that he could not get a word in.

“A delightful voice, certainly,” continued the Frog; “I hope you will come over to the duck-pond.  I am off to look for my daughters.  I have six beautiful daughters, and I am so afraid the Pike may meet them.  He is a perfect monster, and would have no hesitation in breakfasting off them.  Well, good-bye: I have enjoyed our conversation very much, I assure you.”

“Conversation, indeed!” said the Rocket.  “You have talked the whole time yourself.  That is not conversation.”

“Somebody must listen,” answered the Frog, “and I like to do all the talking myself.  It saves time, and prevents arguments.”

“But I like arguments,” said the Rocket.

“I hope not,” said the Frog complacently.  “Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.  Good-bye a second time; I see my daughters in the distance and the little Frog swam away.

“You are a very irritating person,” said the Rocket, “and very ill-bred.  I hate people who talk about themselves, as you do, when one wants to talk about oneself, as I do.  It is what I call selfishness, and selfishness is a most detestable thing, especially to any one of my temperament, for I am well known for my sympathetic nature.  In fact, you should take example by me; you could not possibly have a better model.  Now that you have the chance you had better avail yourself of it, for I am going back to Court almost immediately.  I am a great favourite at Court; in fact, the Prince and Princess were married yesterday in my honour.  Of course you know nothing of these matters, for you are a provincial.”

“There is no good talking to him,” said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; “no good at all, for he has gone away.”

“Well, that is his loss, not mine,” answered the Rocket.  “I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention.  I like hearing myself talk.  It is one of my greatest pleasures.  I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”

“Then you should certainly lecture on Philosophy,” said the Dragon-fly; and he spread a pair of lovely gauze wings and soared away into the sky.

“How very silly of him not to stay here!” said the Rocket.  “I am sure that he has not often got such a chance of improving his mind.  However, I don’t care a bit.  Genius like mine is sure to be appreciated some day”; and he sank down a little deeper into the mud.

After some time a large White Duck swam up to him.  She had yellow legs, and webbed feet, and was considered a great beauty on account of her waddle.

“Quack, quack, quack,” she said.  “What a curious shape you are!  May I ask were you born like that, or is it the result of an accident?”

“It is quite evident that you have always lived in the country,” answered the Rocket, “otherwise you would know who I am.  However, I excuse your ignorance.  It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself.  You will no doubt be surprised to hear that I can fly up into the sky, and come down in a shower of golden rain.”

“I don’t think much of that,” said the Duck, “as I cannot see what use it is to any one.  Now, if you could plough the fields like the ox, or draw a cart like the horse, or look after the sheep like the collie-dog, that would be something.”

“My good creature,” cried the Rocket in a very haughty tone of voice, “I see that you belong to the lower orders.  A person of my position is never useful.  We have certain accomplishments, and that is more than sufficient.  I have no sympathy myself with industry of any kind, least of all with such industries as you seem to recommend.  Indeed, I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”

“Well, well,” said the Duck, who was of a very peaceable disposition, and never quarrelled with any one, “everybody has different tastes.  I hope, at any rate, that you are going to take up your residence here.”

“Oh! dear no,” cried the Rocket.  “I am merely a visitor, a distinguished visitor.  The fact is that I find this place rather tedious.  There is neither society here, nor solitude.  In fact, it is essentially suburban.  I shall probably go back to Court, for I know that I am destined to make a sensation in the world.”

“I had thoughts of entering public life once myself,” remarked the Duck; “there are so many things that need reforming.  Indeed, I took the chair at a meeting some time ago, and we passed resolutions condemning everything that we did not like.  However, they did not seem to have much effect.  Now I go in for domesticity, and look after my family.”

 “I am made for public life,” said the Rocket, “and so are all my relations, even the humblest of them.  Whenever we appear we excite great attention.  I have not actually appeared myself, but when I do so it will be a magnificent sight.  As for domesticity, it ages one rapidly, and distracts one’s mind from higher things.”

“Ah! the higher things of life, how fine they are!” said the Duck; “and that reminds me how hungry I feel”: and she swam away down the stream, saying, “Quack, quack, quack.”

“Come back! come back!” screamed the Rocket, “I have a great deal to say to you”; but the Duck paid no attention to him.  “I am glad that she has gone,” he said to himself, “she has a decidedly middle-class mind”; and he sank a little deeper still into the mud, and began to think about the loneliness of genius, when suddenly two little boys in white smocks came running down the bank, with a kettle and some faggots.

“This must be the deputation,” said the Rocket, and he tried to look very dignified.

“Hallo!” cried one of the boys, “look at this old stick!  I wonder how it came here”; and he picked the rocket out of the ditch.

“OLD Stick!” said the Rocket, “impossible!  GOLD Stick, that is what he said.  Gold Stick is very complimentary.  In fact, he mistakes me for one of the Court dignitaries!”

“Let us put it into the fire!” said the other boy, “it will help to boil the kettle.”

So they piled the faggots together, and put the Rocket on top, and lit the fire.

“This is magnificent,” cried the Rocket, “they are going to let me off in broad day-light, so that every one can see me.”

“We will go to sleep now,” they said, “and when we wake up the kettle will be boiled”; and they lay down on the grass, and shut their eyes.

The Rocket was very damp, so he took a long time to burn.  At last, however, the fire caught him.

“Now I am going off!” he cried, and he made himself very stiff and straight.  “I know I shall go much higher than the stars, much higher than the moon, much higher than the sun.  In fact, I shall go so high that—”

Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! and he went straight up into the air.

“Delightful!” he cried, “I shall go on like this for ever.  What a success I am!”

But nobody saw him.

Then he began to feel a curious tingling sensation all over him.

“Now I am going to explode,” he cried.  “I shall set the whole world on fire, and make such a noise that nobody will talk about anything else for a whole year.”  And he certainly did explode.  Bang! Bang! Bang! went the gunpowder.  There was no doubt about it.

But nobody heard him, not even the two little boys, for they were sound asleep.

Then all that was left of him was the stick, and this fell down on the back of a Goose who was taking a walk by the side of the ditch.

“Good heavens!” cried the Goose.  “It is going to rain sticks”; and she rushed into the water.

“I knew I should create a great sensation,” gasped the Rocket, and he went out.

A Woman of No Importance


The Persons Of The Play

Lord Illingworth
Sir John Pontefract
Lord Alfred Rufford
Mr. Kelvil, M.P.
The Ven. Archdeacon Daubeny, D.D.
Gerald Arbuthnot
Farquhar, Butler
Francis, Footman
Lady Hunstanton
Lady Caroline Pontefract
Lady Stutfield
Mrs. Allonby
Miss Hester Worsley
Alice, Maid
Mrs. Arbuthnot


The Scenes Of The Play

Act I.  The Terrace at Hunstanton Chase.
Act II.  The Drawing-room at Hunstanton Chase.
Act III.  The Hall at Hunstanton Chase.
Act IV.  Sitting-room in Mrs. Arbuthnot's House at Wrockley.

Time:  The Present.
Place:  The Shires.

The action of the play takes place within twenty-four hours.

First Act


Scene

Lawn in front of the terrace at Hunstanton.

[SIR JOHN and LADY CAROLINE PONTEFRACT, MISS WORSLEY, on chairs
under large yew tree.]

LADY CAROLINE.  I believe this is the first English country house
you have stayed at, Miss Worsley?

HESTER.  Yes, Lady Caroline.

LADY CAROLINE.  You have no country houses, I am told, in America?

HESTER.  We have not many.

LADY CAROLINE.  Have you any country?  What we should call country?

HESTER.  [Smiling.]  We have the largest country in the world, Lady
Caroline.  They used to tell us at school that some of our states
are as big as France and England put together.

LADY CAROLINE.  Ah! you must find it very draughty, I should fancy.
[To SIR JOHN.]  John, you should have your muffler.  What is the
use of my always knitting mufflers for you if you won't wear them?

SIR JOHN.  I am quite warm, Caroline, I assure you.

LADY CAROLINE.  I think not, John.  Well, you couldn't come to a
more charming place than this, Miss Worsley, though the house is
excessively damp, quite unpardonably damp, and dear Lady Hunstanton
is sometimes a little lax about the people she asks down here.  [To
SIR JOHN.]  Jane mixes too much.  Lord Illingworth, of course, is a
man of high distinction.  It is a privilege to meet him.  And that
member of Parliament, Mr. Kettle -

SIR JOHN.  Kelvil, my love, Kelvil.

LADY CAROLINE.  He must be quite respectable.  One has never heard
his name before in the whole course of one's life, which speaks
volumes for a man, nowadays.  But Mrs. Allonby is hardly a very
suitable person.

HESTER.  I dislike Mrs. Allonby.  I dislike her more than I can
say.

LADY CAROLINE.  I am not sure, Miss Worsley, that foreigners like
yourself should cultivate likes or dislikes about the people they
are invited to meet.  Mrs. Allonby is very well born.  She is a
niece of Lord Brancaster's.  It is said, of course, that she ran
away twice before she was married.  But you know how unfair people
often are.  I myself don't believe she ran away more than once.

HESTER.  Mr. Arbuthnot is very charming.

LADY CAROLINE.  Ah, yes! the young man who has a post in a bank.
Lady Hunstanton is most kind in asking him here, and Lord
Illingworth seems to have taken quite a fancy to him.  I am not
sure, however, that Jane is right in taking him out of his
position.  In my young days, Miss Worsley, one never met any one in
society who worked for their living.  It was not considered the
thing.

HESTER.  In America those are the people we respect most.

LADY CAROLINE.  I have no doubt of it.

HESTER.  Mr. Arbuthnot has a beautiful nature!  He is so simple, so
sincere.  He has one of the most beautiful natures I have ever come
across.  It is a privilege to meet HIM.

LADY CAROLINE.  It is not customary in England, Miss Worsley, for a
young lady to speak with such enthusiasm of any person of the
opposite sex.  English women conceal their feelings till after they
are married.  They show them then.

HESTER.  Do you, in England, allow no friendship to exist between a
young man and a young girl?

[Enter LADY HUNSTANTON, followed by Footman with shawls and a
cushion.]

LADY CAROLINE.  We think it very inadvisable.  Jane, I was just
saying what a pleasant party you have asked us to meet.  You have a
wonderful power of selection.  It is quite a gift.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Dear Caroline, how kind of you!  I think we all
do fit in very nicely together.  And I hope our charming American
visitor will carry back pleasant recollections of our English
country life.  [To Footman.]  The cushion, there, Francis.  And my
shawl.  The Shetland.  Get the Shetland.  [Exit Footman for shawl.]

[Enter GERALD ARBUTHNOT.]

GERALD.  Lady Hunstanton, I have such good news to tell you.  Lord
Illingworth has just offered to make me his secretary.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  His secretary?  That is good news indeed, Gerald.
It means a very brilliant future in store for you.  Your dear
mother will be delighted.  I really must try and induce her to come
up here to-night.  Do you think she would, Gerald?  I know how
difficult it is to get her to go anywhere.

GERALD.  Oh!  I am sure she would, Lady Hunstanton, if she knew
Lord Illingworth had made me such an offer.

[Enter Footman with shawl.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I will write and tell her about it, and ask her
to come up and meet him.  [To Footman.]  Just wait, Francis.
[Writes letter.]

LADY CAROLINE.  That is a very wonderful opening for so young a man
as you are, Mr. Arbuthnot.

GERALD.  It is indeed, Lady Caroline.  I trust I shall be able to
show myself worthy of it.

LADY CAROLINE.  I trust so.

GERALD.  [To HESTER.]  YOU have not congratulated me yet, Miss
Worsley.

HESTER.  Are you very pleased about it?

GERALD.  Of course I am.  It means everything to me - things that
were out of the reach of hope before may be within hope's reach
now.

HESTER.  Nothing should be out of the reach of hope.  Life is a
hope.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I fancy, Caroline, that Diplomacy is what Lord
Illingworth is aiming at.  I heard that he was offered Vienna.  But
that may not be true.

LADY CAROLINE.  I don't think that England should be represented
abroad by an unmarried man, Jane.  It might lead to complications.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You are too nervous, Caroline.  Believe me, you
are too nervous.  Besides, Lord Illingworth may marry any day.  I
was in hopes he would have married lady Kelso.  But I believe he
said her family was too large.  Or was it her feet?  I forget
which.  I regret it very much.  She was made to be an ambassador's
wife.

LADY CAROLINE.  She certainly has a wonderful faculty of
remembering people's names, and forgetting their faces.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, that is very natural, Caroline, is it not?
[To Footman.]  Tell Henry to wait for an answer.  I have written a
line to your dear mother, Gerald, to tell her your good news, and
to say she really must come to dinner.

[Exit Footman.]

GERALD.  That is awfully kind of you, Lady Hunstanton.  [To
HESTER.]  Will you come for a stroll, Miss Worsley?

HESTER.  With pleasure  [Exit with GERALD.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I am very much gratified at Gerald Arbuthnot's
good fortune.  He is quite a PROTEGE of mine.  And I am
particularly pleased that Lord Illingworth should have made the
offer of his own accord without my suggesting anything.  Nobody
likes to be asked favours.  I remember poor Charlotte Pagden making
herself quite unpopular one season, because she had a French
governess she wanted to recommend to every one.

LADY CAROLINE.  I saw the governess, Jane.  Lady Pagden sent her to
me.  It was before Eleanor came out.  She was far too good-looking
to be in any respectable household.  I don't wonder Lady Pagden was
so anxious to get rid of her.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, that explains it.

LADY CAROLINE.  John, the grass is too damp for you.  You had
better go and put on your overshoes at once.

SIR JOHN.  I am quite comfortable, Caroline, I assure you.

LADY CAROLINE.  You must allow me to be the best judge of that,
John.  Pray do as I tell you.

[SIR JOHN gets up and goes off.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You spoil him, Caroline, you do indeed!

[Enter MRS. ALLONBY and LADY STUTFIELD.]

 [To MRS. ALLONBY.]  Well, dear, I hope you like the park.  It is
said to be well timbered.

MRS. ALLONBY.  The trees are wonderful, Lady Hunstanton.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Quite, quite wonderful.

MRS. ALLONBY.  But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the
country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no
one would take the slightest notice of me.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I assure you, dear, that the country has not that
effect at all.  Why, it was from Melthorpe, which is only two miles
from here, that Lady Belton eloped with Lord Fethersdale.  I
remember the occurrence perfectly.  Poor Lord Belton died three
days afterwards of joy, or gout.  I forget which.  We had a large
party staying here at the time, so we were all very much interested
in the whole affair.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I think to elope is cowardly.  It's running away
from danger.  And danger has become so rare in modern life.

LADY CAROLINE.  As far as I can make out, the young women of the
present day seem to make it the sole object of their lives to be
always playing with fire.

MRS. ALLONBY.  The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady
Caroline, is that one never gets even singed.  It is the people who
don't know how to play with it who get burned up.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes; I see that.  It is very, very helpful.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I don't know how the world would get on with such
a theory as that, dear Mrs. Allonby.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Ah!  The world was made for men and not for women.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, don't say that, Lady Stutfield.  We have a much
better time than they have.  There are far more things forbidden to
us than are forbidden to them.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes; that is quite, quite true.  I had not thought
of that.

[Enter SIR JOHN and MR. KELVIL.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, Mr. Kelvil, have you got through your work?

KELVIL.  I have finished my writing for the day, Lady Hunstanton.
It has been an arduous task.  The demands on the time of a public

man are very heavy nowadays, very heavy indeed.  And I don't think
they meet with adequate recognition.

LADY CAROLINE.  John, have you got your overshoes on?

SIR JOHN.  Yes, my love.

LADY CAROLINE.  I think you had better come over here, John.  It is
more sheltered.

SIR JOHN.  I am quite comfortable, Caroline.

LADY CAROLINE.  I think not, John.  You had better sit beside me.
[SIR JOHN rises and goes across.]

LADY STUTFIELD.  And what have you been writing about this morning,
Mr. Kelvil?

KELVIL.  On the usual subject, Lady Stutfield.  On Purity.

LADY STUTFIELD.  That must be such a very, very interesting thing
to write about.

KELVIL.  It is the one subject of really national importance,
nowadays, Lady Stutfield.  I purpose addressing my constituents on
the question before Parliament meets.  I find that the poorer
classes of this country display a marked desire for a higher
ethical standard.

LADY STUTFIELD.  How quite, quite nice of them.

LADY CAROLINE.  Are you in favour of women taking part in politics,
Mr. Kettle?

SIR JOHN.  Kelvil, my love, Kelvil.

KELVIL.  The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing
in our political life, Lady Caroline.  Women are always on the side
of morality, public and private.

LADY STUTFIELD.  It is so very, very gratifying to hear you say
that.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, yes! - the moral qualities in women - that is
the important thing.  I am afraid, Caroline, that dear Lord
Illingworth doesn't value the moral qualities in women as much as
he should.

[Enter LORD ILLINGWORTH.]

LADY STUTFIELD.  The world says that Lord Illingworth is very, very
wicked.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  But what world says that, Lady Stutfield?  It
must be the next world.  This world and I are on excellent terms.
[Sits down beside MRS. ALLONBY.]

LADY STUTFIELD.  Every one I know says you are very, very wicked.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is perfectly monstrous the way people go
about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that
are absolutely and entirely true.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Dear Lord Illingworth is quite hopeless, Lady
Stutfield.  I have given up trying to reform him.  It would take a
Public Company with a Board of Directors and a paid Secretary to do
that.  But you have the secretary already, Lord Illingworth,
haven't you?  Gerald Arbuthnot has told us of his good fortune; it
is really most kind of you.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Oh, don't say that, Lady Hunstanton.  Kind is a
dreadful word.  I took a great fancy to young Arbuthnot the moment
I met him, and he'll be of considerable use to me in something I am
foolish enough to think of doing.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  He is an admirable young man.  And his mother is
one of my dearest friends.  He has just gone for a walk with our
pretty American.  She is very pretty, is she not?

LADY CAROLINE.  Far too pretty.  These American girls carry off all
the good matches.  Why can't they stay in their own country?  They
are always telling us it is the Paradise of women.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is, Lady Caroline.  That is why, like Eve,
they are so extremely anxious to get out of it.

LADY CAROLINE.  Who are Miss Worsley's parents?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  American women are wonderfully clever in
concealing their parents.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear Lord Illingworth, what do you mean?  Miss
Worsley, Caroline, is an orphan.  Her father was a very wealthy
millionaire or philanthropist, or both, I believe, who entertained
my son quite hospitably, when he visited Boston.  I don't know how
he made his money, originally.

KELVIL.  I fancy in American dry goods.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What are American dry goods?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  American novels.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  How very singular! . . . Well, from whatever
source her large fortune came, I have a great esteem for Miss
Worsley.  She dresses exceedingly well.  All Americans do dress
well.  They get their clothes in Paris.

MRS. ALLONBY.  They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans
die they go to Paris.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Indeed?  And when bad Americans die, where do
they go to?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Oh, they go to America.

KELVIL.  I am afraid you don't appreciate America, Lord
Illingworth.  It is a very remarkable country, especially
considering its youth.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  The youth of America is their oldest tradition.
It has been going on now for three hundred years.  To hear them
talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood.  As far
as civilisation goes they are in their second.

KELVIL.  There is undoubtedly a great deal of corruption in
American politics.  I suppose you allude to that?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I wonder.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Politics are in a sad way everywhere, I am told.
They certainly are in England.  Dear Mr. Cardew is ruining the
country.  I wonder Mrs. Cardew allows him.  I am sure, Lord
Illingworth, you don't think that uneducated people should be
allowed to have votes?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I think they are the only people who should.

KELVIL.  Do you take no side then in modern politics, Lord
Illingworth?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One should never take sides in anything, Mr.
Kelvil.  Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and
earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes
a bore.  However, the House of Commons really does very little
harm.  You can't make people good by Act of Parliament, - that is
something.

KELVIL.  You cannot deny that the House of Commons has always shown
great sympathy with the sufferings of the poor.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  That is its special vice.  That is the special
vice of the age.  One should sympathise with the joy, the beauty,
the colour of life.  The less said about life's sores the better,
Mr. Kelvil.

KELVIL.  Still our East End is a very important problem.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Quite so.  It is the problem of slavery.  And we
are trying to solve it by amusing the slaves.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Certainly, a great deal may be done by means of
cheap entertainments, as you say, Lord Illingworth.  Dear Dr.
Daubeny, our rector here, provides, with the assistance of his
curates, really admirable recreations for the poor during the
winter.  And much good may be done by means of a magic lantern, or
a missionary, or some popular amusement of that kind.

LADY CAROLINE.  I am not at all in favour of amusements for the
poor, Jane.  Blankets and coals are sufficient.  There is too much
love of pleasure amongst the upper classes as it is.  Health is
what we want in modern life.  The tone is not healthy, not healthy
at all.

KELVIL.  You are quite right, Lady Caroline.

LADY CAROLINE.  I believe I am usually right.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Horrid word 'health.'

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Silliest word in our language, and one knows so

well the popular idea of health.  The English country gentleman
galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the
uneatable.

KELVIL.  May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of
Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  A much better institution, of course.  We in the
House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion.  That makes
us a civilised body.

KELVIL.  Are you serious in putting forward such a view?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Quite serious, Mr. Kelvil.  [To MRS. ALLONBY.]
Vulgar habit that is people have nowadays of asking one, after one
has given them an idea, whether one is serious or not.  Nothing is
serious except passion.  The intellect is not a serious thing, and
never has been.  It is an instrument on which one plays, that is
all.  The only serious form of intellect I know is the British
intellect.  And on the British intellect the illiterates play the
drum.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What are you saying, Lord Illingworth, about the
drum?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I was merely talking to Mrs. Allonby about the
leading articles in the London newspapers.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  But do you believe all that is written in the
newspapers?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I do.  Nowadays it is only the unreadable that
occurs.  [Rises with MRS. ALLONBY.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Are you going, Mrs. Allonby?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Just as far as the conservatory.  Lord Illingworth
told me this morning that there was an orchid there m beautiful as
the seven deadly sins.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear, I hope there is nothing of the kind.  I
will certainly speak to the gardener.

[Exit MRS. ALLONBY and LORD ILLINGWORTH.]

LADY CAROLINE.  Remarkable type, Mrs. Allonby.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  She lets her clever tongue run away with her
sometimes.

LADY CAROLINE.  Is that the only thing, Jane, Mrs. Allonby allows
to run away with her?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I hope so, Caroline, I am sure.

[Enter LORD ALFRED.]

Dear Lord Alfred, do join us.  [LORD ALFRED sits down beside LADY
STUTFIELD.]

LADY CAROLINE.  You believe good of every one, Jane.  It is a great
fault.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Do you really, really think, Lady Caroline, that
one should believe evil of every one?

LADY CAROLINE.  I think it is much safer to do so, Lady Stutfield.
Until, of course, people are found out to be good.  But that
requires a great deal of investigation nowadays.

LADY STUTFIELD.  But there is so much unkind scandal in modern
life.

LADY CAROLINE.  Lord Illingworth remarked to me last night at
dinner that the basis of every scandal is an absolutely immoral
certainty.

KELVIL.  Lord Illingworth is, of course, a very brilliant man, but
he seems to me to be lacking in that fine faith in the nobility and
purity of life which is so important in this century.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes, quite, quite important, is it not?

KELVIL.  He gives me the impression of a man who does not
appreciate the beauty of our English home-life.  I would say that
he was tainted with foreign ideas on the subject.

LADY STUTFIELD.  There is nothing, nothing like the beauty of home-
life, is there?

KELVIL.  It is the mainstay of our moral system in England, Lady
Stutfield.  Without it we would become like our neighbours.

LADY STUTFIELD.  That would be so, so sad, would it not?

KELVIL.  I am afraid, too, that Lord Illingworth regards woman
simply as a toy.  Now, I have never regarded woman as a toy.  Woman
is the intellectual helpmeet of man in public as in private life.
Without her we should forget the true ideals.  [Sits down beside
LADY STUTFIELD.]

LADY STUTFIELD.  I am so very, very glad to hear you say that.

LADY CAROLINE.  You a married man, Mr. Kettle?

SIR JOHN.  Kelvil, dear, Kelvil.

KELVIL.  I am married, Lady Caroline.

LADY CAROLINE.  Family?

KELVIL.  Yes.

LADY CAROLINE.  How many?

KELVIL.  Eight.

[LADY STUTFIELD turns her attention to LORD ALFRED.]

LADY CAROLINE.  Mrs. Kettle and the children are, I suppose, at the
seaside?  [SIR JOHN shrugs his shoulders.]

KELVIL.  My wife is at the seaside with the children, Lady
Caroline.

LADY CAROLINE.  You will join them later on, no doubt?

KELVIL.  If my public engagements permit me.

LADY CAROLINE.  Your public life must be a great source of
gratification to Mrs. Kettle.

SIR JOHN.  Kelvil, my love, Kelvil.

LADY STUTFIELD.  [To LORD ALFRED.]  How very, very charming those
gold-tipped cigarettes of yours are, Lord Alfred.

LORD ALFRED.  They are awfully expensive.  I can only afford them
when I'm in debt.

LADY STUTFIELD.  It must be terribly, terribly distressing to be in
debt.

LORD ALFRED.  One must have some occupation nowadays.  If I hadn't
my debts I shouldn't have anything to think about.  All the chaps I
know are in debt.

LADY STUTFIELD.  But don't the people to whom you owe the money
give you a great, great deal of annoyance?

[Enter Footman.]

LORD ALFRED.  Oh, no, they write; I don't.

LADY STUTFIELD.  How very, very strange.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, here is a letter, Caroline, from dear Mrs.
Arbuthnot.  She won't dine.  I am so sorry.  But she will come in
the evening.  I am very pleased indeed.  She is one of the sweetest
of women.  Writes a beautiful hand, too, so large, so firm.  [Hands
letter to LADY CAROLINE.]

LADY CAROLINE.  [Looking at it.]  A little lacking in femininity,
Jane.  Femininity is the quality I admire most in women.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Taking back letter and leaving it on table.]
Oh! she is very feminine, Caroline, and so good too.  You should
hear what the Archdeacon says of her.  He regards her as his right
hand in the parish.  [Footman speaks to her.]  In the Yellow
Drawing-room.  Shall we all go in?  Lady Stutfield, shall we go in
to tea?

LADY STUTFIELD.  With pleasure, Lady Hunstanton.  [They rise and
proceed to go off.  SIR JOHN offers to carry LADY STUTFIELD'S
cloak.]

LADY CAROLINE.  John!  If you would allow your nephew to look after
Lady Stutfield's cloak, you might help me with my workbasket.

[Enter LORD ILLINGWORTH and MRS. ALLONBY.]

SIR JOHN.  Certainly, my love.  [Exeunt.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of
their husbands, beautiful women never are!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Beautiful women never have time.  They are
always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I should have thought Lady Caroline would have grown
tired of conjugal anxiety by this time!  Sir John is her fourth!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  So much marriage is certainly not becoming.
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty
years of marriage make her something like a public building.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Twenty years of romance!  Is there such a thing?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Not in our day.  Women have become too
brilliant.  Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour
in the woman.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Or the want of it in the man.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You are quite right.  In a Temple every one
should be serious, except the thing that is worshipped.

MRS. ALLONBY.  And that should be man?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Women kneel so gracefully; men don't.

MRS. ALLONBY.  You are thinking of Lady Stutfield!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I assure you I have not thought of Lady
Stutfield for the last quarter of an hour.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Is she such a mystery?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  She is more than a mystery - she is a mood.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Moods don't last.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is their chief charm.

[Enter HESTER and GERALD.]

GERALD.  Lord Illingworth, every one has been congratulating me,
Lady Hunstanton and Lady Caroline, and . . . every one.  I hope I
shall make a good secretary.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You will be the pattern secretary, Gerald.
[Talks to him.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  You enjoy country life, Miss Worsley?

HESTER.  Very much indeed.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Don't find yourself longing for a London dinner-
party?

HESTER.  I dislike London dinner-parties.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I adore them.  The clever people never listen, and
the stupid people never talk.

HESTER.  I think the stupid people talk a great deal.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, I never listen!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear boy, if I didn't like you I wouldn't
have made you the offer.  It is because I like you so much that I
want to have you with me.

[Exit HESTER with GERALD.]

Charming fellow, Gerald Arbuthnot!

MRS. ALLONBY.  He is very nice; very nice indeed.  But I can't
stand the American young lady.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Why?

MRS. ALLONBY.  She told me yesterday, and in quite a loud voice
too, that she was only eighteen.  It was most annoying.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One should never trust a woman who tells one her
real age.  A woman who would tell one that, would tell one
anything.

MRS. ALLONBY.  She is a Puritan besides -

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Ah, that is inexcusable.  I don't mind plain
women being Puritans.  It is the only excuse they have for being
plain.  But she is decidedly pretty.  I admire her immensely.
[Looks steadfastly at MRS. ALLONBY.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  What a thoroughly bad man you must be!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What do you call a bad man?

MRS. ALLONBY.  The sort of man who admires innocence.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  And a bad woman?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh! the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You are severe - on yourself.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Define us as a sex.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Sphinxes without secrets.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Does that include the Puritan women?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Do you know, I don't believe in the existence of
Puritan women?  I don't think there is a woman in the world who
would not be a little flattered if one made love to her.  It is
that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.

MRS. ALLONBY.  You think there is no woman in the world who would
object to being kissed?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Very few.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Miss Worsley would not let you kiss her.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Are you sure?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Quite.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What do you think she'd do if I kissed her?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Either marry you, or strike you across the face with
her glove.  What would you do if she struck you across the face
with her glove?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Fall in love with her, probably.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Then it is lucky you are not going to kiss her!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Is that a challenge?

MRS. ALLONBY.  It is an arrow shot into the air.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Don't you know that I always succeed in whatever
I try?

MRS. ALLONBY.  I am sorry to hear it.  We women adore failures.
They lean on us.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You worship successes.  You cling to them.

MRS. ALLONBY.  We are the laurels to hide their baldness.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  And they need you always, except at the moment
of triumph.

MRS. ALLONBY.  They are uninteresting then.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  How tantalising you are!  [A pause.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  Lord Illingworth, there is one thing I shall always
like you for.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Only one thing?  And I have so many bad
qualities.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, don't be too conceited about them.  You may lose
them as you grow old.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I never intend to grow old.  The soul is born
old but grows young.  That is the comedy of life.

MRS. ALLONBY.  And the body is born young and grows old.  That is
life's tragedy.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Its comedy also, sometimes.  But what is the
mysterious reason why you will always like me?

MRS. ALLONBY.  It is that you have never made love to me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I have never done anything else.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Really?  I have not noticed it.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  How fortunate!  It might have been a tragedy for
both of us.

MRS. ALLONBY.  We should each have survived.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One can survive everything nowadays, except
death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Have you tried a good reputation?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is one of the many annoyances to which I have
never been subjected.

MRS. ALLONBY.  It may come.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Why do you threaten me?

MRS. ALLONBY.  I will tell you when you have kissed the Puritan.

[Enter Footman.]

FRANCIS.  Tea is served in the Yellow Drawing-room, my lord.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Tell her ladyship we are coming in.

FRANCIS.  Yes, my lord.

[Exit.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Shall we go in to tea?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Do you like such simple pleasures?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I adore simple pleasures.  They are the last
refuge of the complex.  But, if you wish, let us stay here.  Yes,
let us stay here.  The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman
in a garden.

MRS. ALLONBY.  It ends with Revelations.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You fence divinely.  But the button has come of
your foil.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I have still the mask.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It makes your eyes lovelier.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Thank you.  Come.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Sees MRS. ARBUTHNOT'S letter on table, and
takes it up and looks at envelope.]  What a curious handwriting!
It reminds me of the handwriting of a woman I used to know years
ago.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Who?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Oh! no one.  No one in particular.  A woman of
no importance.  [Throws letter down, and passes up the steps of the
terrace with MRS. ALLONBY.  They smile at each other.]

Act Drop.

Second Act


Scene

Drawing-room at Hunstanton, after dinner, lamps lit.  Door L.C.
Door R.C.

[Ladies seated on sofas.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  What a comfort it is to have got rid of the men for
a little!

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes; men persecute us dreadfully, don't they?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Persecute us?  I wish they did.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear!

MRS. ALLONBY.  The annoying thing is that the wretches can be
perfectly happy without us.  That is why I think it is every
woman's duty never to leave them alone for a single moment, except
during this short breathing space after dinner; without which I
believe we poor women would be absolutely worn to shadows.

[Enter Servants with coffee.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Worn to shadows, dear?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Yes, Lady Hunstanton.  It is such a strain keeping
men up to the mark.  They are always trying to escape from us.

LADY STUTFIELD.  It seems to me that it is we who are always trying
to escape from them.  Men are so very, very heartless.  They know
their power and use it.

LADY CAROLINE.  [Takes coffee from Servant.]  What stuff and
nonsense all this about men is!  The thing to do is to keep men in
their proper place.

MRS. ALLONBY.  But what is their proper place, Lady Caroline?

LADY CAROLINE.  Looking after their wives, Mrs. Allonby.

MRS. ALLONBY.  [Takes coffee from Servant.]  Really?  And if
they're not married?

LADY CAROLINE.  If they are not married, they should be looking
after a wife.  It's perfectly scandalous the amount of bachelors
who are going about society.  There should be a law passed to
compel them all to marry within twelve months.

LADY STUTFIELD.  [Refuses coffee.]  But if they're in love with
some one who, perhaps, is tied to another?

LADY CAROLINE.  In that case, Lady Stutfield, they should be
married off in a week to some plain respectable girl, in order to
teach them not to meddle with other people's property.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I don't think that we should ever be spoken of as
other people's property.  All men are married women's property.
That is the only true definition of what married women's property
really is.  But we don't belong to any one.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Oh, I am so very, very glad to hear you say so.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  But do you really think, dear Caroline, that
legislation would improve matters in any way?  I am told that,
nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the
bachelors like married men.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I certainly never know one from the other.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Oh, I think one can always know at once whether a
man has home claims upon his life or not.  I have noticed a very,
very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, all that I have noticed is that they are
horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably
conceited when they are not.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, I suppose the type of husband has
completely changed since my young days, but I'm bound to state that
poor dear Hunstanton was the most delightful of creatures, and as
good as gold.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, my husband is a sort of promissory note; I'm
tired of meeting him.

LADY CAROLINE.  But you renew him from time to time, don't you?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh no, Lady Caroline.  I have only had one husband
as yet.  I suppose you look upon me as quite an amateur.

LADY CAROLINE.  With your views on life I wonder you married at
all.

MRS. ALLONBY.  So do I.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear child, I believe you are really very
happy in your married life, but that you like to hide your
happiness from others.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I assure you I was horribly deceived in Ernest.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Oh, I hope not, dear.  I knew his mother quite
well.  She was a Stratton, Caroline, one of Lord Crowland's
daughters

LADY CAROLINE.  Victoria Stratton?  I remember her perfectly.  A
silly fair-haired woman with no chin.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, Ernest has a chin.  He has a very strong chin, a
square chin.  Ernest's chin is far too square.

LADY STUTFIELD.  But do you really think a man's chin can be too
square?  I think a man should look very, very strong, and that his
chin should be quite, quite square.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Then you should certainly know Ernest, Lady
Stutfield.  It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no
conversation at all.

LADY STUTFIELD.  I adore silent men.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, Ernest isn't silent.  He talks the whole time.
But he has got no conversation.  What he talks about I don't know.
I haven't listened to him for years.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Have you never forgiven him then?  How sad that
seems!  But all life is very, very sad, is it not?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a MAUVAIS QUART
D'HEURE made up of exquisite moments.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes, there are moments, certainly.  But was it
something very, very wrong that Mr. Allonby did?  Did he become
angry with you, and say anything that was unkind or true?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh dear, no.  Ernest is invariably calm.  That is
one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves.  Nothing is so
aggravating as calmness.  There is something positively brutal
about the good temper of most modern men.  I wonder we women stand
it as well as we do.

LADY  STUTFIELD.  Yes; men's good temper shows they are not so
sensitive as we are, not so finely strung.  It makes a great
barrier often between husband and wife, does it not?  But I would
so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to
tell everybody else.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Thank you, thank you.  I will make a point of
repeating it.

MRS. ALLONBY.  When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me
positively on his knees that he had never loved any one before in
the whole course of his life.  I was very young at the time, so I
didn't believe him, I needn't tell you.  Unfortunately, however, I
made no enquiries of any kind till after I had been actually
married four or five months.  I found out then that what he had
told me was perfectly true.  And that sort of thing makes a man so
absolutely uninteresting.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear!

MRS. ALLONBY.  Men always want to be a woman's first love.  That is
their clumsy vanity.  We women have a more subtle instinct about
things.  What we like is to be a man's last romance.

LADY STUTFIELD.  I see what you mean.  It's very, very beautiful.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear child, you don't mean to tell me that you
won't forgive your husband because he never loved any one else?
Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline?  I am quite surprised.

LADY CAROLINE.  Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane,
that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages.
They apparently are getting remarkably rare.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, they're quite out of date.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Except amongst the middle classes, I have been
told.

MRS. ALLONBY.  How like the middle classes!

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes - is it not? - very, very like them.

LADY CAROLINE.  If what you tell us about the middle classes is
true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit.  It is
much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so
persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is
the proper thing to be.  It is to that I attribute the unhappiness
of so many marriages we all know of in society.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don't think the
frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More
marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband
than by anything else.  How can a woman be expected to be happy
with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly
rational being?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear!

MRS. ALLONBY.  Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs
to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years.
He can't help himself.  It is in his race.  The History of Woman is
very different.  We have always been picturesque protests against
the mere existence of common sense.  We saw its dangers from the
first.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly
most, most trying.  Do tell me your conception of the Ideal
Husband.  I think it would be so very, very helpful.

MRS. ALLONBY.  The Ideal Husband?  There couldn't be such a thing.
The institution is wrong.

LADY STUTFIELD.  The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to US.

LADY CAROLINE.  He would probably be extremely realistic.

MRS. CAROLINE.  The Ideal Man!  Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us
as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children.  He
should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of
our whims.  He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us
to have missions.  He should always say much more than he means,
and always mean much more than he says.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  But how could he do both, dear?

MRS. ALLONBY.  He should never run down other pretty women.  That
would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too
much.  No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow
they don't attract him.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear
about other women.

MRS. ALLONBY.  If we ask him a question about anything, he should
give us an answer all about ourselves.  He should invariably praise
us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got.  But he should
be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that
we have never dreamed of possessing.  He should never believe that
we know the use of useful things.  That would be unforgiveable.
But he should shower on us everything we don't want.

LADY CAROLINE.  As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay
bills and compliments.

MRS. ALLONBY.  He should persistently compromise us in public, and
treat us with absolute respect when we are alone.  And yet he
should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever
we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a
moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less
than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of
half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when
we have to go and dress for dinner.  And when, after that, one has
seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back
the little things he has given one, and promised never to
communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he
should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day
long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private
hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should
know how unhappy he was.  And after a whole dreadful week, during
which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to
show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last
parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite
irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should
be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and
when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive,
and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with
variations.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  How clever you are, my dear!  You never mean a
single word you say.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Thank you, thank you.  It has been quite, quite
entrancing.  I must try and remember it all.  There are such a
number of details that are so very, very important.

LADY CAROLINE.  But you have not told us yet what the reward of the
Ideal Man is to be.

MRS. ALLONBY.  His reward?  Oh, infinite expectation.  That is
quite enough for him.

LADY STUTFIELD.  But men are so terribly, terribly exacting, are
they not?

MRS. ALLONBY.  That makes no matter.  One should never surrender.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Not even to the Ideal Man?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Certainly not to him.  Unless, of course, one wants
to grow tired of him.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Oh! . . . yes.  I see that.  It is very, very
helpful.  Do you think, Mrs. Allonby, I shall ever meet the Ideal
Man?  Or are there more than one?

MRS. ALLONBY.  There are just four in London, Lady Stutfield.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Oh, my dear!

MRS. ALLONBY.  [Going over to her.]  What has happened?  Do tell
me.

LADY HUNSTANTON [in a low voice]  I had completely forgotten that
the American young lady has been in the room all the time.  I am
afraid some of this clever talk may have shocked her a little.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, that will do her so much good!

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Let us hope she didn't understand much.  I think
I had better go over and talk to her.  [Rises and goes across to
HESTER WORSLEY.]  Well, dear Miss Worsley. [Sitting down beside
her.]  How quiet you have been in your nice little corner all this
time!  I suppose you have been reading a book?  There are so many
books here in the library.

HESTER.  No, I have been listening to the conversation.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You mustn't believe everything that was said, you
know, dear.

HESTER.  I didn't believe any of it

LADY HUNSTANTON.  That is quite right, dear.

HESTER.  [Continuing.]  I couldn't believe that any women could
really hold such views of life as I have heard to-night from some
of your guests.  [An awkward pause.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I hear you have such pleasant society in America.
Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.

HESTER.  There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady
Hunstanton.  But true American society consists simply of all the
good women and good men we have in our country.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What a sensible system, and I dare say quite
pleasant too.  I am afraid in England we have too many artificial
social barriers.  We don't see as much as we should of the middle
and lower classes.

HESTER.  In America we have no lower classes.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Really?  What a very strange arrangement!

MRS. ALLONBY.  What is that dreadful girl talking about?

LADY STUTFIELD.  She is painfully natural, is she not?

LADY CAROLINE.  There are a great many things you haven't got in
America, I am told, Miss Worsley.  They say you have no ruins, and
no curiosities.

MRS. ALLONBY.  [To LADY STUTFIELD.]  What nonsense!  They have
their mothers and their manners.

HESTER.  The English aristocracy supply us with our curiosities,
Lady Caroline.  They are sent over to us every summer, regularly,
in the steamers, and propose to us the day after they land.  As for
ruins, we are trying to build up something that will last longer
than brick or stone.  [Gets up to take her fan from table.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What is that, dear?  Ah, yes, an iron Exhibition,
is it not, at that place that has the curious name?

HESTER.  [Standing by table.]  We are trying to build up life, Lady
Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on
here.  This sounds strange to you all, no doubt.  How could it
sound other than strange?  You rich people in England, you don't
know how you are living.  How could you know?  You shut out from
your society the gentle and the good.  You laugh at the simple and
the pure.  Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer
at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely
to keep them quiet for a season.  With all your pomp and wealth and
art you don't know how to live - you don't even know that.  You
love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty
that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of
life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.  You
have lost life's secret.  Oh, your English society seems to me
shallow, selfish, foolish.  It has blinded its eyes, and stopped
its ears.  It lies like a leper in purple.  It sits like a dead
thing smeared with gold.  It is all wrong, all wrong.

LADY STUTFIELD.  I don't think one should know of these things.  It
is not very, very nice, is it?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear Miss Worsley, I thought you liked English
society so much.  You were such a success in it.  And you were so
much admired by the best people.  I quite forget what Lord Henry
Weston said of you - but it was most complimentary, and you know
what an authority he is on beauty.

HESTER.  Lord Henry Weston!  I remember him, Lady Hunstanton.  A
man with a hideous smile and a hideous past.  He is asked
everywhere.  No dinner-party is complete without him.  What of
those whose ruin is due to him?  They are outcasts.  They are
nameless.  If you met them in the street you would turn your head
away.  I don't complain of their punishment.  Let all women who
have sinned be punished.

[MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters from terrace behind in a cloak with a lace
veil over her head.  She hears the last words and starts.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear young lady!

HESTER.  It is right that they should be punished, but don't let
them be the only ones to suffer.  If a man and woman have sinned,
let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other
there.  Let them both be branded.  Set a mark, if you wish, on
each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free.  Don't
have one law for men and another for women.  You are unjust to
women in England.  And till you count what is a shame in a woman to
be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that
pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim
to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded

LADY CAROLINE.  Might I, dear Miss Worsley, as you are standing up,
ask you for my cotton that is just behind you?  Thank you.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot!  I am so pleased you have
come up.  But I didn't hear you announced.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, I came straight in from the terrace, Lady
Hunstanton, just as I was.  You didn't tell me you had a party.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Not a party.  Only a few guests who are staying
in the house, and whom you must know.  Allow me.  [Tries to help
her.  Rings bell.]  Caroline, this is Mrs. Arbuthnot, one of my
sweetest friends.  Lady Caroline Pontefract, Lady Stutfield, Mrs.
Allonby, and my young American friend, Miss Worsley, who has just
been telling us all how wicked we are.

HESTER.  I am afraid you think I spoke too strongly, Lady
Hunstanton.  But there are some things in England -

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear young lady, there was a great deal of
truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty
while you said it, which is much more important, Lord Illingworth
would tell us.  The only point where I thought you were a little
hard was about Lady Caroline's brother, about poor Lord Henry.  He
is really such good company.

[Enter Footman.]

Take Mrs. Arbuthnot's things.

[Exit Footman with wraps.]

HESTER.  Lady Caroline, I had no idea it was your brother.  I am
sorry for the pain I must have caused you - I -

LADY CAROLINE.  My dear Miss Worsley, the only part of your little
speech, if I may so term it, with which I thoroughly agreed, was
the part about my brother.  Nothing that you could possibly say
could be too bad for him.  I regard Henry as infamous, absolutely
infamous.  But I am bound to state, as you were remarking, Jane,
that he is excellent company, and he has one of the best cooks in
London, and after a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's
own relations.

LADY HUNSTANTON [to MISS WORSLEY]  Now, do come, dear, and make
friends with Mrs. Arbuthnot.  She is one of the good, sweet, simple
people you told us we never admitted into society.  I am sorry to
say Mrs. Arbuthnot comes very rarely to me.  But that is not my
fault.

MRS. ALLONBY.  What a bore it is the men staying so long after
dinner!  I expect they are saying the most dreadful things about
us.

LADY STUTFIELD.  Do you really think so?

MRS. ALLONBY.  I was sure of it.

LADY STUTFIELD.  How very, very horrid of them!  Shall we go onto
the terrace?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, anything to get away from the dowagers and the
dowdies.  [Rises and goes with LADY STUTFIELD to door L.C.]  We are
only going to look at the stars, Lady Hunstanton.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You will find a great many, dear, a great many.
But don't catch cold.  [To MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  We shall all miss
Gerald so much, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  But has Lord Illingworth really offered to make
Gerald his secretary?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Oh, yes!  He has been most charming about it.  He
has the highest possible opinion of your boy.  You don't know Lord
Illingworth, I believe, dear.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I have never met him.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You know him by name, no doubt?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I am afraid I don't.  I live so much out of the
world, and see so few people.  I remember hearing years ago of an
old Lord Illingworth who lived in Yorkshire, I think.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, yes.  That would be the last Earl but one.
He was a very curious man.  He wanted to marry beneath him.  Or
wouldn't, I believe.  There was some scandal about it.  The present
Lord Illingworth is quite different.  He is very distinguished.  He
does - well, he does nothing, which I am afraid our pretty American
visitor here thinks very wrong of anybody, and I don't know that he
cares much for the subjects in which you are so interested, dear
Mrs. Arbuthnot.  Do you think, Caroline, that Lord Illingworth is
interested in the Housing of the Poor?

LADY CAROLINE.  I should fancy not at all, Jane.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  We all have our different tastes, have we not?
But Lord Illingworth has a very high position, and there is nothing
he couldn't get if he chose to ask for it.  Of course, he is
comparatively a young man still, and he has only come to his title
within - how long exactly is it, Caroline, since Lord Illingworth
succeeded?

LADY CAROLINE.  About four years, I think, Jane.  I know it was the
same year in which my brother had his last exposure in the evening
newspapers.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, I remember.  That would be about four years
ago.  Of course, there were a great many people between the present
Lord Illingworth and the title, Mrs. Arbuthnot.  There was - who
was there, Caroline?

LADY CAROLINE.  There was poor Margaret's baby.  You remember how
anxious she was to have a boy, and it was a boy, but it died, and
her husband died shortly afterwards, and she married almost
immediately one of Lord Ascot's sons, who, I am told, beats her.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, that is in the family, dear, that is in the
family.  And there was also, I remember, a clergyman who wanted to
be a lunatic, or a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman, I forget
which, but I know the Court of Chancery investigated the matter,
and decided that he was quite sane.  And I saw him afterwards at
poor Lord Plumstead's with straws in his hair, or something very
odd about him.  I can't recall what.  I often regret, Lady
Caroline, that dear Lady Cecilia never lived to see her son get the
title.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Lady Cecilia?

LADY  HUNSTANTON.  Lord Illingworth's mother, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,
was one of the Duchess of Jerningham's pretty daughters, and she
married Sir Thomas Harford, who wasn't considered a very good match
for her at the time, though he was said to be the handsomest man in
London.  I knew them all quite intimately, and both the sons,
Arthur and George.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It was the eldest son who succeeded, of course,
Lady Hunstanton?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  No, dear, he was killed in the hunting field.  Or
was it fishing, Caroline?  I forget.  But George came in for
everything.  I always tell him that no younger son has ever had
such good luck as he has had.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Lady Hunstanton, I want to speak to Gerald at
once.  Might I see him?  Can he be sent for?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Certainly, dear.  I will send one of the servants
into the dining-room to fetch him.  I don't know what keeps the
gentlemen so long.  [Rings bell.]  When I knew Lord Illingworth
first as plain George Harford, he was simply a very brilliant young
man about town, with not a penny of money except what poor dear
Lady Cecilia gave him.  She was quite devoted to him.  Chiefly, I
fancy, because he was on bad terms with his father.  Oh, here is
the dear Archdeacon.  [To Servant.]  It doesn't matter.

[Enter SIR JOHN and DOCTOR DAUBENY.  SIR JOHN goes over to LADY
STUTFIELD, DOCTOR DAUBENY to LADY HUNSTANTON.]

THE ARCHDEACON.  Lord Illingworth has been most entertaining.  I
have never enjoyed myself more.  [Sees MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  Ah, Mrs.
Arbuthnot.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [To DOCTOR DAUBENY.]  You see I have got Mrs.
Arbuthnot to come to me at last.

THE ARCHDEACON.  That is a great honour, Lady Hunstanton.  Mrs.

Daubeny will be quite jealous of you.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, I am so sorry Mrs. Daubeny could not come
with you to-night.  Headache as usual, I suppose.

THE ARCHDEACON.  Yes, Lady Hunstanton; a perfect martyr.  But she
is happiest alone.  She is happiest alone.

LADY CAROLINE.  [To her husband.]  John!  [SIR JOHN goes over to
his wife.  DOCTOR DAUBENY talks to LADY HUNSTANTON and MRS.
ARBUTHNOT.]

[MRS. ARBUTHNOT watches LORD ILLINGWORTH the whole time.  He has
passed across the room without noticing her, and approaches MRS.
ALLONBY, who with LADY STUTFIELD is standing by the door looking on
to the terrace.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  How is the most charming woman in the world?

MRS. ALLONBY.  [Taking LADY STUTFIELD by the hand.]  We are both
quite well, thank you, Lord Illingworth.  But what a short time you
have been in the dining-room!  It seems as if we had only just
left.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I was bored to death.  Never opened my lips the
whole time.  Absolutely longing to come in to you.

MRS. ALLONBY.  You should have.  The American girl has been giving
us a lecture.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Really?  All Americans lecture, I believe.  I
suppose it is something in their climate.  What did she lecture
about?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Oh, Puritanism, of course.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I am going to convert her, am I not?  How long
do you give me?

MRS. ALLONBY.  A week.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  A week is more than enough.

[Enter GERALD and LORD ALFRED.]

GERALD.  [Going to MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  Dear mother!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald, I don't feel at all well.  See me home,
Gerald.  I shouldn't have come.

GERALD.  I am so sorry, mother.  Certainly.  But you must know Lord
Illingworth first.  [Goes across room.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Not to-night, Gerald.

GERALD.  Lord Illingworth, I want you so much to know my mother.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  With the greatest pleasure.  [To MRS. ALLONBY.]
I'll be back in a moment.  People's mothers always bore me to
death.  All women become like their mothers.  That is their
tragedy.

MRS. ALLONBY.  No man does.  That is his.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What a delightful mood you are in to-night!
[Turns round and goes across with GERALD to MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  When
he sees her, he starts back in wonder.  Then slowly his eyes turn
towards GERALD.]

GERALD.  Mother, this is Lord Illingworth, who has offered to take
me as his private secretary.  [MRS. ARBUTHNOT bows coldly.]  It is
a wonderful opening for me, isn't it?  I hope he won't be
disappointed in me, that is all.  You'll thank Lord Illingworth,
mother, won't you?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Lord Illingworth in very good, I am sure, to
interest himself in you for the moment.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Putting his hand on GERALD's shoulder.]  Oh,
Gerald and I are great friends already, Mrs . . . Arbuthnot.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  There can be nothing in common between you and my
son, Lord Illingworth.

GERALD.  Dear mother, how can you say so?  Of course Lord
Illingworth is awfully clever and that sort of thing.  There is
nothing Lord Illingworth doesn't know.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear boy!

GERALD.  He knows more about life than any one I have ever met.  I
feel an awful duffer when I am with you, Lord Illingworth.  Of
course, I have had so few advantages.  I have not been to Eton or
Oxford like other chaps.  But Lord Illingworth doesn't seem to mind
that.  He has been awfully good to me, mother.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Lord Illingworth may change his mind.  He may not
really want you as his secretary.

GERALD.  Mother!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You must remember, as you said yourself, you have
had so few advantages.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Lord Illingworth, I want to speak to you for a
moment.  Do come over.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Will you excuse me, Mrs. Arbuthnot?  Now, don't
let your charming mother make any more difficulties, Gerald.  The
thing is quite settled, isn't it?

GERALD.  I hope so.  [LORD ILLINGWORTH goes across to MRS.
ARBUTHNOT.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  I thought you were never going to leave the lady in
black velvet.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  She is excessively handsome.  [Looks at MRS.
ARBUTHNOT.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Caroline, shall we all make a move to the music-
room?  Miss Worsley is going to play.  You'll come too, dear Mrs.
Arbuthnot, won't you?  You don't know what a treat is in store for
you.  [To DOCTOR DAUBENY.]  I must really take Miss Worsley down
some afternoon to the rectory.  I should so much like dear Mrs.
Daubeny to hear her on the violin.  Ah, I forgot.  Dear Mrs.
Daubeny's hearing is a little defective, is it not?

THE ARCHDEACON.  Her deafness is a great privation to her.  She
can't even hear my sermons now.  She reads them at home.  But she
has many resources in herself, many resources.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  She reads a good deal, I suppose?

THE ARCHDEACON.  Just the very largest print.  The eyesight is
rapidly going.  But she's never morbid, never morbid.

GERALD.  [To LORD ILLINGWORTH.]  Do speak to my mother, Lord
Illingworth, before you go into the music-room.  She seems to
think, somehow, you don't mean what you said to me.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Aren't you coming?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  In a few moments.  Lady Hunstanton, if Mrs.
Arbuthnot would allow me, I would like to say a few words to her,
and we will join you later on.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah, of course.  You will have a great deal to say
to her, and she will have a great deal to thank you for.  It is not
every son who gets such an offer, Mrs. Arbuthnot.  But I know you
appreciate that, dear.

LADY CAROLINE.  John!

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Now, don't keep Mrs. Arbuthnot too long, Lord
Illingworth.  We can't spare her.

[Exit following the other guests.  Sound of violin heard from
music-room.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  So that is our son, Rachel!  Well, I am very
proud of him.  He in a Harford, every inch of him.  By the way, why
Arbuthnot, Rachel?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  One name is as good as another, when one has no
right to any name.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I suppose so - but why Gerald?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  After a man whose heart I broke - after my father.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Well, Rachel, what in over is over.  All I have
got to say now in that I am very, very much pleased with our boy.
The world will know him merely as my private secretary, but to me
he will be something very near, and very dear.  It is a curious
thing, Rachel; my life seemed to be quite complete.  It was not so.
It lacked something, it lacked a son.  I have found my son now, I
am glad I have found him.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You have no right to claim him, or the smallest
part of him.  The boy is entirely mine, and shall remain mine.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear Rachel, you have had him to yourself for
over twenty years.  Why not let me have him for a little now?  He
is quite as much mine as yours.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Are you talking of the child you abandoned?  Of
the child who, as far as you are concerned, might have died of
hunger and of want?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You forget, Rachel, it was you who left me.  It
was not I who left you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I left you because you refused to give the child a
name.  Before my son was born, I implored you to marry me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I had no expectations then.  And besides,
Rachel, I wasn't much older than you were.  I was only twenty-two.
I was twenty-one, I believe, when the whole thing began in your
father's garden.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be
old enough to do right also.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear Rachel, intellectual generalities are
always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely
nothing.  As for saying I left our child to starve, that, of
course, is untrue and silly.  My mother offered you six hundred a
year.  But you wouldn't take anything.  You simply disappeared, and
carried the child away with you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I wouldn't have accepted a penny from her.  Your
father was different.  He told you, in my presence, when we were in
Paris, that it was your duty to marry me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is
not what one does oneself.  Of course, I was influenced by my
mother.  Every man is when he is young.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I am glad to hear you say so.  Gerald shall
certainly not go away with you.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What nonsense, Rachel!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Do you think I would allow my son -

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  OUR son.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  My son [LORD ILLINGWORTH shrugs his shoulders] -
to go away with the man who spoiled my youth, who ruined my life,
who has tainted every moment of my days?  You don't realise what my
past has been in suffering and in shame.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear Rachel, I must candidly say that I think
Gerald's future considerably more important than your past.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald cannot separate his future from my past.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  That is exactly what he should do.  That is
exactly what you should help him to do.  What a typical woman you
are!  You talk sentimentally, and you are thoroughly selfish the
whole time.  But don't let us have a scene.  Rachel, I want you to
look at this matter from the common-sense point of view, from the
point of view of what is best for our son, leaving you and me out
of the question.  What is our son at present?  An underpaid clerk
in a small Provincial Bank in a third-rate English town.  If you
imagine he is quite happy in such a position, you are mistaken.  He
is thoroughly discontented.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He was not discontented till he met you.  You have
made him so.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Of course, I made him so.  Discontent is the
first step in the progress of a man or a nation.  But I did not
leave him with a mere longing for things he could not get.  No, I
made him a charming offer.  He jumped at it, I need hardly say.
Any young man would.  And now, simply because it turns out that I
am the boy's own father and he my own son, you propose practically
to ruin his career.  That is to say, if I were a perfect stranger,
you would allow Gerald to go away with me, but as he is my own
flesh and blood you won't.  How utterly illogical you are!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will not allow him to go.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  How can you prevent it?  What excuse can you
give to him for making him decline such an offer as mine?  I won't
tell him in what relations I stand to him, I need hardly say.  But
you daren't tell him.  You know that.  Look how you have brought
him up.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I have brought him up to be a good man.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Quite so.  And what is the result?  You have
educated him to be your judge if he ever finds you out.  And a
bitter, an unjust judge he will be to you.  Don't be deceived,
Rachel.  Children begin by loving their parents.  After a time they
judge them.  Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  George, don't take my son away from me.  I have
had twenty years of sorrow, and I have only had one thing to love
me, only one thing to love.  You have had a life of joy, and
pleasure, and success.  You have been quite happy, you have never
thought of us.  There was no reason, according to your views of
life, why you should have remembered us at all.  Your meeting us
was a mere accident, a horrible accident.  Forget it.  Don't come
now, and rob me of . . . of all I have in the whole world.  You are
so rich in other things.  Leave me the little vineyard of my life;
leave me the walled-in garden and the well of water; the ewe-lamb
God sent me, in pity or in wrath, oh! leave me that.  George, don't
take Gerald from me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Rachel, at the present moment you are not
necessary to Gerald's career; I am.  There is nothing more to be
said on the subject.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will not let him go.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Here is Gerald.  He has a right to decide for
himself.

[Enter GERALD.]

GERALD.  Well, dear mother, I hope you have settled it all with
Lord Illingworth?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I have not, Gerald.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Your mother seems not to like your coming with
me, for some reason.

GERALD.  Why, mother?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I thought you were quite happy here with me,
Gerald.  I didn't know you were so anxious to leave me.

GERALD.  Mother, how can you talk like that?  Of course I have been
quite happy with you.  But a man can't stay always with his mother.
No chap does.  I want to make myself a position, to do something.
I thought you would have been proud to see me Lord Illingworth's
secretary.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I do not think you would be suitable as a private
secretary to Lord Illingworth.  You have no qualifications.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I don't wish to seem to interfere for a moment,
Mrs. Arbuthnot, but as far as your last objection is concerned, I
surely am the best judge.  And I can only tell you that your son
has all the qualifications I had hoped for.  He has more, in fact,
than I had even thought of.  Far more.  [MRS. ARBUTHNOT remains
silent.]  Have you any other reason, Mrs. Arbuthnot, why you don't
wish your son to accept this post?

GERALD.  Have you, mother?  Do answer.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  If you have, Mrs. Arbuthnot, pray, pray say it.
We are quite by ourselves here.  Whatever it is, I need not say I
will not repeat it.

GERALD.  Mother?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  If you would like to be alone with your son, I
will leave you.  You may have some other reason you don't wish me
to hear.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I have no other reason.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Then, my dear boy, we may look on the thing as
settled.  Come, you and I will smoke a cigarette on the terrace
together.  And Mrs. Arbuthnot, pray let me tell you, that I think
you have acted very, very wisely.

[Exit with GERALD.  MRS. ARBUTHNOT is left alone.  She stands
immobile with a look of unutterable sorrow on her face.]

ACT DROP

Third Act

Scene


The Picture Gallery at Hunstanton.  Door at back leading on to
terrace.

[Lord Illingworth and Gerald, R.C.  Lord Illingworth lolling on a
sofa.  Gerald in a chair.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Thoroughly sensible woman, your mother, Gerald.
I knew she would come round in the end.

GERALD.  My mother is awfully conscientious, Lord Illingworth, and
I know she doesn't think I am educated enough to be your secretary.
She is perfectly right, too.  I was fearfully idle when I was at
school, and I couldn't pass an examination now to save my life.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  My dear Gerald, examinations are of no value
whatsoever.  If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if
he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

GERALD.  But I am so ignorant of the world, Lord Illingworth.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Don't be afraid, Gerald.  Remember that you've
got on your side the most wonderful thing in the world - youth!
There is nothing like youth.  The middle-aged are mortgaged to
Life.  The old are in life's lumber-room.  But youth is the Lord of
Life.  Youth has a kingdom waiting for it.  Every one is born a
king, and most people die in exile, like most kings.  To win back
my youth, Gerald, there is nothing I wouldn't do - except take
exercise, get up early, or be a useful member of the community.

GERALD.  But you don't call yourself old, Lord Illingworth?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I am old enough to be your father, Gerald.

GERALD.  I don't remember my father; he died years ago.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  So Lady Hunstanton told me.

GERALD.  It is very curious, my mother never talks to me about my
father.  I sometimes think she must have married beneath her.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Winces slightly.]  Really?  [Goes over and puts
his hand on GERALD'S shoulder.]  You have missed not having a
father, I suppose, Gerald?

GERALD.  Oh, no; my mother has been so good to me.  No one ever had
such a mother as I have had.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I am quite sure of that.  Still I should imagine
that most mothers don't quite understand their sons.  Don't
realise, I mean, that a son has ambitions, a desire to see life, to
make himself a name.  After all, Gerald, you couldn't be expected
to pass all your life in such a hole as Wrockley, could you?

GERALD.  Oh, no!  It would be dreadful!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  A mother's love is very touching, of course, but
it is often curiously selfish.  I mean, there is a good deal of
selfishness in it.

GERALD.  [Slowly.]  I suppose there is.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Your mother is a thoroughly good woman.  But
good women have such limited views of life, their horizon is so
small, their interests are so petty, aren't they?

GERALD.  They are awfully interested, certainly, in things we don't
care much about.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I suppose your mother is very religious, and
that sort of thing.

GERALD.  Oh, yes, she's always going to church.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Ah! she is not modern, and to be modern is the
only thing worth being nowadays.  You want to be modern, don't you,
Gerald?  You want to know life as it really is.  Not to be put of
with any old-fashioned theories about life.  Well, what you have to
do at present is simply to fit yourself for the best society.  A
man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
The future belongs to the dandy.  It is the exquisites who are
going to rule.

GERALD.  I should like to wear nice things awfully, but I have
always been told that a man should not think too much about his
clothes.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  People nowadays are so absolutely superficial
that they don't understand the philosophy of the superficial.  By
the way, Gerald, you should learn how to tie your tie better.
Sentiment is all very well for the button-hole.  But the essential
thing for a necktie is style.  A well-tied tie is the first serious
step in life.

GERALD.  [Laughing.]  I might be able to learn how to tie a tie,
Lord Illingworth, but I should never be able to talk as you do.  I
don't know how to talk.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her, and
to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first
season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect
social tact.

GERALD.  But it is very difficult to get into society isn't it?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  To get into the best society, nowadays, one has
either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!

GERALD.  I suppose society is wonderfully delightful!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  To be in it is merely a bore.  But to be out of
it simply a tragedy.  Society is a necessary thing.  No man has any
real success in this world unless he has got women to back him, and
women rule society.  If you have not got women on your side you are
quite over.  You might just as well be a barrister, or a
stockbroker, or a journalist at once.

GERALD.  It is very difficult to understand women, is it not?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You should never try to understand them.  Women
are pictures.  Men are problems.  If you want to know what a woman
really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do
- look at her, don't listen to her.

GERALD.  But women are awfully clever, aren't they?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One should always tell them so.  But, to the
philosopher, my dear Gerald, women represent the triumph of matter
over mind - just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

GERALD.  How then can women have so much power as you say they
have?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  The history of women is the history of the worst
form of tyranny the world has ever known.  The tyranny of the weak
over the strong.  It is the only tyranny that lasts.

GERALD.  But haven't women got a refining influence?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Nothing refines but the intellect.

GERALD.  Still, there are many different kinds of women, aren't
there?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Only two kinds in society: the plain and the
coloured.

GERALD.  But there are good women in society, aren't there?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Far too many.

GERALD.  But do you think women shouldn't be good?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One should never tell them so, they'd all become
good at once.  Women are a fascinatingly wilful sex.  Every woman
is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

GERALD.  You have never been married, Lord Illingworth, have you?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Men marry because they are tired; women because
they are curious.  Both are disappointed.

GERALD.  But don't you think one can be happy when one is married?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Perfectly happy.  But the happiness of a married
man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married.

GERALD.  But if one is in love?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  One should always be in love.  That is the
reason one should never marry.

GERALD.  Love is a very wonderful thing, isn't it?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  When one is in love one begins by deceiving
oneself.  And one ends by deceiving others.  That is what the world
calls a romance.  But a really GRANDE PASSION is comparatively rare
nowadays.  It is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
That is the one use of the idle classes in a country, and the only
possible explanation of us Harfords.

GERALD.  Harfords, Lord Illingworth?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  That is my family name.  You should study the
Peerage, Gerald.  It is the one book a young man about town should
know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English
have ever done.  And now, Gerald, you are going into a perfectly
new life with me, and I want you to know how to live.  [MRS.
ARBUTHNOT appears on terrace behind.]  For the world has been made
by fools that wise men should live in it!

[Enter L.C. LADY HUNSTANTON and DR. DAUBENY.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! here you are, dear Lord Illingworth.  Well, I
suppose you have been telling our young friend, Gerald, what his
new duties are to be, and giving him a great deal of good advice
over a pleasant cigarette.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I have been giving him the best of advice, Lady
Hunstanton, and the best of cigarettes.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I am so sorry I was not here to listen to you,
but I suppose I am too old now to learn.  Except from you, dear
Archdeacon, when you are in your nice pulpit.  But then I always
know what you are going to say, so I don't feel alarmed.  [Sees
MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  Ah! dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, do come and join us.
Come, dear.  [Enter MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  Gerald has been having such a
long talk with Lord Illingworth; I am sure you must feel very much
flattered at the pleasant way in which everything has turned out
for him.  Let us sit down.  [They sit down.]  And how is your
beautiful embroidery going on?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I am always at work, Lady Hunstanton.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Mrs. Daubeny embroiders a little, too, doesn't
she?

THE ARCHDEACON.  She was very deft with her needle once, quite a
Dorcas.  But the gout has crippled her fingers a good deal.  She
has not touched the tambour frame for nine or ten years.  But she
has many other amusements.  She is very much interested in her own
health.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! that is always a nice distraction, in it not?
Now, what are you talking about, Lord Illingworth?  Do tell us.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that
the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the
only way in which it has been able to bear them.  And that,
consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to
the comedy side of things.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Now I am quite out of my depth.  I usually am
when Lord Illingworth says anything.  And the Humane Society is
most careless.  They never rescue me.  I am left to sink.  I have a
dim idea, dear Lord Illingworth, that you are always on the side of
the sinners, and I know I always try to be on the side of the
saints, but that is as far as I get.  And after all, it may be
merely the fancy of a drowning person.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  The only difference between the saint and the
sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a
future.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! that quite does for me.  I haven't a word to
say.  You and I, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, are behind the age.  We can't
follow Lord Illingworth.  Too much care was taken with our
education, I am afraid.  To have been well brought up is a great
drawback nowadays.  It shuts one out from so much.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I should be sorry to follow Lord Illingworth in
any of his opinions.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You are quite right, dear.

[GERALD shrugs his shoulders and looks irritably over at his
mother.  Enter LADY CAROLINE.]

LADY CAROLINE.  Jane, have you seen John anywhere?

LADY HUNSTANTON.  You needn't be anxious about him, dear.  He is
with Lady Stutfield; I saw them some time ago, in the Yellow
Drawing-room.  They seem quite happy together.  You are not going,
Caroline?  Pray sit down.

LADY CAROLINE.  I think I had better look after John.

[Exit LADY CAROLINE.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  It doesn't do to pay men so much attention.  And
Caroline has really nothing to be anxious about.  Lady Stutfield is
very sympathetic.  She is just as sympathetic about one thing as
she is about another.  A beautiful nature.

[Enter SIR JOHN and MRS. ALLONBY.]

Ah! here is Sir John!  And with Mrs. Allonby too!  I suppose it was
Mrs. Allonby I saw him with.  Sir John, Caroline has been looking
everywhere for you.

MRS. ALLONBY.  We have been waiting for her in the Music-room, dear
Lady Hunstanton.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! the Music-room, of course.  I thought it was
the Yellow Drawing-room, my memory is getting so defective.  [To
the ARCHDEACON.]  Mrs. Daubeny has a wonderful memory, hasn't she?

THE ARCHDEACON.  She used to be quite remarkable for her memory,
but since her last attack she recalls chiefly the events of her
early childhood.  But she finds great pleasure in such
retrospections, great pleasure.

[Enter LADY STUTFIELD and MR. KELVIL.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! dear Lady Stutfield! and what has Mr. Kelvil
been talking to you about?

LADY STUTFIELD.  About Bimetallism, as well as I remember.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Bimetallism!  Is that quite a nice subject?
However, I know people discuss everything very freely nowadays.
What did Sir John talk to you about, dear Mrs. Allonby?

MRS. ALLONBY.  About Patagonia.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Really?  What a remote topic!  But very
improving, I have no doubt.

MRS. ALLONBY.  He has been most interesting on the subject of
Patagonia.  Savages seem to have quite the same views as cultured
people on almost all subjects.  They are excessively advanced.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What do they do?

MRS. ALLONBY.  Apparently everything.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, it is very gratifying, dear Archdeacon, is
it not, to find that Human Nature is permanently one. - On the
whole, the world is the same world, is it not?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  The world is simply divided into two classes -
those who believe the incredible, like the public - and those who
do the improbable -

MRS. ALLONBY.  Like yourself?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Yes; I am always astonishing myself.  It is the
only thing that makes life worth living.

LADY STUTFIELD.  And what have you been doing lately that
astonishes you?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I have been discovering all kinds of beautiful
qualities in my own nature.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah! don't become quite perfect all at once.  Do it
gradually!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I don't intend to grow perfect at all.  At
least, I hope I shan't.  It would be most inconvenient.  Women love
us for our defects.  If we have enough of them, they will forgive
us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

MRS. ALLONBY.  It is premature to ask us to forgive analysis.  We
forgive adoration; that is quite as much as should be expected from
us.

[Enter LORD ALFRED.  He joins LADY STUTFIELD.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Ah! we women should forgive everything, shouldn't
we, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot?  I am sure you agree with me in that.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I do not, Lady Hunstanton.  I think there are many
things women should never forgive.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  What sort of things?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  The ruin of another woman's life.

[Moves slowly away to back of stage.]

LADY  HUNSTANTON.  Ah! those things are very sad, no doubt, but I
believe there are admirable homes where people of that kind are
looked after and reformed, and I think on the whole that the secret
of life is to take things very, very easily.

MRS. ALLONBY.  The secret of life is never to have an emotion that
is unbecoming.

LADY STUTFIELD.  The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure
of being terribly, terribly deceived.

KELVIL.  The secret of life is to resist temptation, Lady
Stutfield.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  There is no secret of life.  Life's aim, if it
has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations.  There are
not nearly enough.  I sometimes pass a whole day without coming
across a single one.  It is quite dreadful.  It makes one so
nervous about the future.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Shakes her fan at him.]  I don't know how it is,
dear Lord Illingworth, but everything you have said to-day seems to
me excessively immoral.  It has been most interesting, listening to
you.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  All thought is immoral.  Its very essence is
destruction.  If you think of anything, you kill it.  Nothing
survives being thought of.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I don't understand a word, Lord Illingworth.  But
I have no doubt it is all quite true.  Personally, I have very
little to reproach myself with, on the score of thinking.  I don't
believe in women thinking too much.  Women should think in
moderation, as they should do all things in moderation.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton.
Nothing succeeds like excess.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I hope I shall remember that.  It sounds an
admirable maxim.  But I'm beginning to forget everything.  It's a
great misfortune.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is one of your most fascinating qualities,
Lady Hunstanton.  No woman should have a memory.  Memory in a woman
is the beginning of dowdiness.  One can always tell from a woman's
bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  How charming you are, dear Lord Illingworth.  You
always find out that one's most glaring fault is one's most
important virtue.  You have the most comforting views of life.

[Enter FARQUHAR.]

FARQUHAR.  Doctor Daubeny's carriage!

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear Archdeacon!  It is only half-past ten.

THE ARCHDEACON.  [Rising.]  I am afraid I must go, Lady Hunstanton.
Tuesday is always one of Mrs. Daubeny's bad nights.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Rising.]  Well, I won't keep you from her.
[Goes with him towards door.]  I have told Farquhar to put a brace
of partridge into the carriage.  Mrs. Daubeny may fancy them.

THE ARCHDEACON.  It is very kind of you, but Mrs. Daubeny never
touches solids now.  Lives entirely on jellies.  But she is
wonderfully cheerful, wonderfully cheerful.  She has nothing to
complain of.

[Exit with LADY HUNSTANTON.]

MRS. ALLONBY.  [Goes over to LORD ILLINGWORTH.]  There is a
beautiful moon to-night.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Let us go and look at it.  To look at anything
that is inconstant is charming nowadays.

MRS. ALLONBY.  You have your looking-glass.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is unkind.  It merely shows me my wrinkles.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Mine is better behaved.  It never tells me the
truth.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Then it is in love with you.

[Exeunt SIR JOHN, LADY STUTFIELD, MR. KELVIL and LORD ALFRED.]

GERALD.  [To LORD ILLINGWORTH]  May I come too?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Do, my dear boy.  [Moves towards with MRS.
ALLONBY and GERALD.]

[LADY CAROLINE enters, looks rapidly round and goes off in opposite
direction to that taken by SIR JOHN and LADY STUTFIELD.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald!

GERALD.  What, mother!

[Exit LORD ILLINGWORTH with MRS. ALLONBY.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It is getting late.  Let us go home.

GERALD.  My dear mother.  Do let us wait a little longer.  Lord
Illingworth is so delightful, and, by the way, mother, I have a
great surprise for you.  We are starting for India at the end of
this month.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Let us go home.

GERALD.  If you really want to, of course, mother, but I must bid
good-bye to Lord Illingworth first.  I'll be back in five minutes.
[Exit.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Let him leave me if he chooses, but not with him -
not with him!  I couldn't bear it.  [Walks up and down.]

[Enter HESTER.]

HESTER.  What a lovely night it is, Mrs. Arbuthnot.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Is it?

HESTER.  Mrs. Arbuthnot, I wish you would let us be friends.  You
are so different from the other women here.  When you came into the
Drawing-room this evening, somehow you brought with you a sense of
what is good and pure in life.  I had been foolish.  There are
things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong
time and to the wrong people.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I heard what you said.  I agree with it, Miss
Worsley.

HESTER.  I didn't know you had heard it.  But I knew you would
agree with me.  A woman who has sinned should be punished,
shouldn't she?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes.

HESTER.  She shouldn't be allowed to come into the society of good
men and women?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  She should not.

HESTER.  And the man should be punished in the same way?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  In the same way.  And the children, if there are
children, in the same way also?

HESTER.  Yes, it is right that the sins of the parents should be
visited on the children.  It is a just law.  It is God's law.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It is one of God's terrible laws.

[Moves away to fireplace.]

HESTER.  You are distressed about your son leaving you, Mrs.
Arbuthnot?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes.

HESTER.  Do you like him going away with Lord Illingworth?  Of
course there is position, no doubt, and money, but position and
money are not everything, are they?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  They are nothing; they bring misery.

HESTER.  Then why do you let your son go with him?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He wishes it himself.

HESTER.  But if you asked him he would stay, would he not?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He has set his heart on going.

HESTER.  He couldn't refuse you anything.  He loves you too much.
Ask him to stay.  Let me send him in to you.  He is on the terrace
at this moment with Lord Illingworth.  I heard them laughing
together as I passed through the Music-room.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Don't trouble, Miss Worsley, I can wait.  It is of
no consequence.

HESTER.  No, I'll tell him you want him.  Do - do ask him to stay.
[Exit HESTER.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He won't come - I know he won't come.

[Enter LADY CAROLINE.  She looks round anxiously.  Enter GERALD.]

LADY CAROLINE.  Mr. Arbuthnot, may I ask you is Sir John anywhere
on the terrace?

GERALD.  No, Lady Caroline, he is not on the terrace.

LADY CAROLINE.  It is very curious.  It is time for him to retire.

[Exit LADY CAROLINE.]

GERALD.  Dear mother, I am afraid I kept you waiting.  I forgot all
about it.  I am so happy to-night, mother; I have never been so
happy.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  At the prospect of going away?

GERALD.  Don't put it like that, mother.  Of course I am sorry to
leave you.  Why, you are the best mother in the whole world.  But
after all, as Lord Illingworth says, it is impossible to live in
such a place as Wrockley.  You don't mind it.  But I'm ambitions; I
want something more than that.  I want to have a career.  I want to
do something that will make you proud of me, and Lord Illingworth
is going to help me.  He is going to do everything for me.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald, don't go away with Lord Illingworth.  I
implore you not to.  Gerald, I beg you!

GERALD.  Mother, how changeable you are!  You don't seem to know
your own mind for a single moment.  An hour and a half ago in the
Drawing-room you agreed to the whole thing; now you turn round and
make objections, and try to force me to give up my one chance in
life.  Yes, my one chance.  You don't suppose that men like Lord
Illingworth are to be found every day, do you, mother?  It is very
strange that when I have had such a wonderful piece of good luck,
the one person to put difficulties in my way should be my own
mother.  Besides, you know, mother, I love Hester Worsley.  Who
could help loving her?  I love her more than I have ever told you,
far more.  And if I had a position, if I had prospects, I could - I
could ask her to - Don't you understand now, mother, what it means
to me to be Lord Illingworth's secretary?  To start like that is to
find a career ready for one - before one - waiting for one.  If I
were Lord Illingworth's secretary I could ask Hester to be my wife.
As a wretched bank clerk with a hundred a year it would be an
impertinence.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I fear you need have no hopes of Miss Worsley.  I
know her views on life.  She has just told them to me.  [A pause.]

GERALD.  Then I have my ambition left, at any rate.  That is
something - I am glad I have that!  You have always tried to crush
my ambition, mother - haven't you?  You have told me that the world
is a wicked place, that success is not worth having, that society
is shallow, and all that sort of thing - well, I don't believe it,
mother.  I think the world must be delightful.  I think society
must be exquisite.  I think success is a thing worth having.  You
have been wrong in all that you taught me, mother, quite wrong.
Lord Illingworth is a successful man.  He is a fashionable man.  He
is a man who lives in the world and for it.  Well, I would give
anything to be just like Lord Illingworth.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I would sooner see you dead.

GERALD.  Mother, what is your objection to Lord Illingworth?  Tell
me - tell me right out.  What is it?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He is a bad man.

GERALD.  In what way bad?  I don't understand what you mean.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will tell you.

GERALD.  I suppose you think him bad, because he doesn't believe
the same things as you do.  Well, men are different from women,
mother.  It is natural that they should have different views.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It is not what Lord Illingworth believes, or what
he does not believe, that makes him bad.  It is what he is.

GERALD.  Mother, is it something you know of him?  Something you
actually know?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It is something I know.

GERALD.  Something you are quite sure of?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Quite sure of.

GERALD.  How long have you known it?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  For twenty years.

GERALD.  Is it fair to go back twenty years in any man's career?
And what have you or I to do with Lord Illingworth's early life?
What business is it of ours?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  What this man has been, he is now, and will be
always.

GERALD.  Mother, tell me what Lord Illingworth did?  If he did
anything shameful, I will not go away with him.  Surely you know me
well enough for that?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald, come near to me.  Quite close to me, as
you used to do when you were a little boy, when you were mother's
own boy.  [GERALD sits down betide his mother.  She runs her
fingers through his hair, and strokes his hands.]  Gerald, there
was a girl once, she was very young, she was little over eighteen
at the time.  George Harford - that was Lord Illingworth's name
then - George Harford met her.  She knew nothing about life.  He -
knew everything.  He made this girl love him.  He made her love him
so much that she left her father's house with him one morning.  She
loved him so much, and he had promised to marry her!  He had
solemnly promised to marry her, and she had believed him.  She was
very young, and - and ignorant of what life really is.  But he put
the marriage off from week to week, and month to month. - She
trusted in him all the while.  She loved him. - Before her child
was born - for she had a child - she implored him for the child's
sake to marry her, that the child might have a name, that her sin
might not be visited on the child, who was innocent.  He refused.
After the child was born she left him, taking the child away, and
her life was ruined, and her soul ruined, and all that was sweet,
and good, and pure in her ruined also.  She suffered terribly - she
suffers now.  She will always suffer.  For her there is no joy, no
peace, no atonement.  She is a woman who drags a chain like a
guilty thing.  She is a woman who wears a mask, like a thing that
is a leper.  The fire cannot purify her.  The waters cannot quench
her anguish.  Nothing can heal her! no anodyne can give her sleep!
no poppies forgetfulness!  She is lost!  She is a lost soul! - That
is why I call Lord Illingworth a bad man.  That is why I don't want
my boy to be with him.

GERALD.  My dear mother, it all sounds very tragic, of course.  But
I dare say the girl was just as much to blame as Lord Illingworth
was. - After all, would a really nice girl, a girl with any nice
feelings at all, go away from her home with a man to whom she was
not married, and live with him as his wife?  No nice girl would.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [After a pause.]  Gerald, I withdraw all my
objections.  You are at liberty to go away with Lord Illingworth,
when and where you choose.

GERALD.  Dear mother, I knew you wouldn't stand in my way.  You are
the best woman God ever made.  And, as for Lord Illingworth, I
don't believe he is capable of anything infamous or base.  I can't
believe it of him - I can't.

HESTER.  [Outside.]  Let me go!  Let me go!  [Enter HESTER in
terror, and rushes over to GERALD and flings herself in his arms.]

HESTER.  Oh! save me - save me from him!

GERALD.  From whom?

HESTER.  He has insulted me!  Horribly insulted me!  Save me!

GERALD.  Who?  Who has dared - ?

[LORD ILLINGWORTH enters at back of stage.  HESTER breaks from
GERALD'S arms and points to him.]

GERALD  [He is quite beside himself with rage and indignation.]
Lord Illingworth, you have insulted the purest thing on God's
earth, a thing as pure as my own mother.  You have insulted the
woman I love most in the world with my own mother.  As there is a
God in Heaven, I will kill you!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Rushing across and catching hold of him]  No! no!

GERALD.  [Thrusting her back.]  Don't hold me, mother.  Don't hold
me - I'll kill him!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald!

GERALD.  Let me go, I say!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Stop, Gerald, stop!  He is your own father!

[GERALD clutches his mother's hands and looks into her face.  She
sinks slowly on the ground in shame.  HESTER steals towards the
door.  LORD ILLINGWORTH frowns and bites his lip.  After a time
GERALD raises his mother up, puts his am round her, and leads her
from the room.]

Act Drop

Fourth Act


Scene

Sitting-room at Mrs. Arbuthnot's.  Large open French window at
back, looking on to garden.  Doors R.C. and L.C.

[GERALD ARBUTHNOT writing at table.]

[Enter ALICE R.C. followed by LADY HUNSTANTON and MRS. ALLONBY.]

ALICE.  Lady Hunstanton and Mrs. Allonby.

[Exit L.C.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Good morning, Gerald.

GERALD.  [Rising.]  Good morning, Lady Hunstanton.  Good morning,
Mrs. Allonby.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Sitting down.]  We came to inquire for your dear
mother, Gerald.  I hope she is better?

GERALD.  My mother has not come down yet, Lady Hunstanton.

LADY  HUNSTANTON.  Ah, I am afraid the heat was too much for her
last night.  I think there must have been thunder in the air.  Or
perhaps it was the music.  Music makes one feel so romantic - at
least it always gets on one's nerves.

MRS. ALLONBY.  It's the same thing, nowadays.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  I am so glad I don't know what you mean, dear.  I
am afraid you mean something wrong.  Ah, I see you're examining
Mrs. Arbuthnot's pretty room.  Isn't it nice and old-fashioned?

MRS. ALLONBY.  [Surveying the room through her lorgnette.]  It
looks quite the happy English home.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  That's just the word, dear; that just describes
it.  One feels your mother's good influence in everything she has
about her, Gerald.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Lord Illingworth says that all influence is bad, but
that a good influence is the worst in the world.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  When Lord Illingworth knows Mrs. Arbuthnot better
he will change his mind.  I must certainly bring him here.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I should like to see Lord Illingworth in a happy
English home.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  It would do him a great deal of good, dear.  Most
women in London, nowadays, seem to furnish their rooms with nothing
but orchids, foreigners, and French novels.  But here we have the
room of a sweet saint.  Fresh natural flowers, books that don't
shock one, pictures that one can look at without blushing.

MRS. ALLONBY.  But I like blushing.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, there IS a good deal to be said for
blushing, if one can do it at the proper moment.  Poor dear
Hunstanton used to tell me I didn't blush nearly often enough.  But
then he was so very particular.  He wouldn't let me know any of his
men friends, except those who were over seventy, like poor Lord
Ashton: who afterwards, by the way, was brought into the Divorce
Court.  A most unfortunate case.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I delight in men over seventy.  They always offer
one the devotion of a lifetime.  I think seventy an ideal age for a
man.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  She is quite incorrigible, Gerald, isn't she?
By-the-by, Gerald, I hope your dear mother will come and see me
more often now.  You and Lord Illingworth start almost immediately,
don't you?

GERALD.  I have given up my intention of being Lord Illingworth's
secretary.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Surely not, Gerald!  It would be most unwise of
you.  What reason can you have?

GERALD.  I don't think I should be suitable for the post.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I wish Lord Illingworth would ask me to be his
secretary.  But he says I am not serious enough.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear, you really mustn't talk like that in
this house.  Mrs. Arbuthnot doesn't know anything about the wicked
society in which we all live.  She won't go into it.  She is far
too good.  I consider it was a great honour her coming to me last
night.  It gave quite an atmosphere of respectability to the party.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Ah, that must have been what you thought was thunder
in the air.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  My dear, how can you say that?  There is no
resemblance between the two things at all.  But really, Gerald,
what do you mean by not being suitable?

GERALD.  Lord Illingworth's views of life and mine are too
different.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  But, my dear Gerald, at your age you shouldn't
have any views of life.  They are quite out of place.  You must be
guided by others in this matter.  Lord Illingworth has made you the
most flattering offer, and travelling with him you would see the
world - as much of it, at least, as one should look at - under the
best auspices possible, and stay with all the right people, which
is so important at this solemn moment in your career.

GERALD.  I don't want to see the world: I've seen enough of it.

MRS. ALLONBY.  I hope you don't think you have exhausted life, Mr.
Arbuthnot.  When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted
him.

GERALD.  I don't wish to leave my mother.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Now, Gerald, that is pure laziness on your part.
Not leave your mother!  If I were your mother I would insist on
your going.

[Enter ALICE L.C.]

ALICE.  Mrs. Arbuthnot's compliments, my lady, but she has a bad
headache, and cannot see any one this morning.  [Exit R.C.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Rising.]  A bad headache!  I am so sorry!
Perhaps you'll bring her up to Hunstanton this afternoon, if she is
better, Gerald.

GERALD.  I am afraid not this afternoon, Lady Hunstanton.

LADY HUNSTANTON.  Well, to-morrow, then.  Ah, if you had a father,
Gerald, he wouldn't let you waste your life here.  He would send
you off with Lord Illingworth at once.  But mothers are so weak.
They give up to their sons in everything.  We are all heart, all
heart.  Come, dear, I must call at the rectory and inquire for Mrs.
Daubeny, who, I am afraid, is far from well.  It is wonderful how
the Archdeacon bears up, quite wonderful.  He is the most
sympathetic of husbands.  Quite a model.  Good-bye, Gerald, give my
fondest love to your mother.

MRS. ALLONBY.  Good-bye, Mr. Arbuthnot.

GERALD.  Good-bye.

[Exit LADY HUNSTANTON and MRS. ALLONBY.  GERALD sits down and reads
over his letter.]

GERALD.  What name can I sign?  I, who have no right to any name.
[Signs name, puts letter into envelope, addresses it, and is about
to seal it, when door L.C. opens and MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters.  GERALD
lays down sealing-wax.  Mother and son look at each other.]

LADY HUNSTANTON.  [Through French window at the back.]  Good-bye
again, Gerald.  We are taking the short cut across your pretty
garden.  Now, remember my advice to you - start at once with Lord
Illingworth.

MRS. ALLONBY.  AU REVOIR, Mr. Arbuthnot.  Mind you bring me back
something nice from your travels - not an Indian shawl - on no
account an Indian shawl.

[Exeunt.]

GERALD.  Mother, I have just written to him.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  To whom?

GERALD.  To my father.  I have written to tell him to come here at
four o'clock this afternoon.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He shall not come here.  He shall not cross the
threshold of my house.

GERALD.  He must come.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Gerald, if you are going away with Lord
Illingworth, go at once.  Go before it kills me: but don't ask me
to meet him.

GERALD.  Mother, you don't understand.  Nothing in the world would
induce me to go away with Lord Illingworth, or to leave you.
Surely you know me well enough for that.  No: I have written to him
to say -

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  What can you have to say to him?

GERALD.  Can't you guess, mother, what I have written in this
letter?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  No.

GERALD.  Mother, surely you can.  Think, think what must be done,
now, at once, within the next few days.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  There is nothing to be done.

GERALD.  I have written to Lord Illingworth to tell him that he
must marry you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Marry me?

GERALD.  Mother, I will force him to do it.  The wrong that has
been done you must be repaired.  Atonement must be made.  Justice
may be slow, mother, but it comes in the end.  In a few days you
shall be Lord Illingworth's lawful wife.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  But, Gerald -

GERALD.  I will insist upon his doing it.  I will make him do it:
he will not dare to refuse.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  But, Gerald, it is I who refuse.  I will not marry
Lord Illingworth.

GERALD.  Not marry him?  Mother!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will not marry him.

GERALD.  But you don't understand: it is for your sake I am
talking, not for mine.  This marriage, this necessary marriage,
this marriage which for obvious reasons must inevitably take place,
will not help me, will not give me a name that will be really,
rightly mine to bear.  But surely it will be something for you,
that you, my mother, should, however late, become the wife of the
man who is my father.  Will not that be something?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will not marry him.

GERALD.  Mother, you must.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I will not.  You talk of atonement for a wrong
done.  What atonement can be made to me?  There is no atonement
possible.  I am disgraced: he is not.  That is all.  It is the
usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it
always happens.  And the ending is the ordinary ending.  The woman
suffers.  The man goes free.

GERALD.  I don't know if that is the ordinary ending, mother: I
hope it is not.  But your life, at any rate, shall not end like
that.  The man shall make whatever reparation is possible.  It is
not enough.  It does not wipe out the past, I know that.  But at
least it makes the future better, better for you, mother.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I refuse to marry Lord Illingworth.

GERALD.  If he came to you himself and asked you to be his wife you
would give him a different answer.  Remember, he is my father.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  If he came himself, which he will not do, my
answer would be the same.  Remember I am your mother.

GERALD.  Mother, you make it terribly difficult for me by talking
like that; and I can't understand why you won't look at this matter
from the right, from the only proper standpoint.  It is to take
away the bitterness out of your life, to take away the shadow that
lies on your name, that this marriage must take place.  There is no
alternative: and after the marriage you and I can go away together.
But the marriage must take place first.  It is a duty that you owe,
not merely to yourself, but to all other women - yes: to all the
other women in the world, lest he betray more.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I owe nothing to other women.  There is not one of
them to help me.  There is not one woman in the world to whom I
could go for pity, if I would take it, or for sympathy, if I could
win it.  Women are hard on each other.  That girl, last night, good
though she is, fled from the room as though I were a tainted thing.
She was right.  I am a tainted thing.  But my wrongs are my own,
and I will bear them alone.  I must bear them alone.  What have
women who have not sinned to do with me, or I with them?  We do not
understand each other.

[Enter HESTER behind.]

GERALD.  I implore you to do what I ask you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  What son has ever asked of his mother to make so
hideous a sacrifice?  None.

GERALD.  What mother has ever refused to marry the father of her
own child?  None.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Let me be the first, then.  I will not do it.

GERALD.  Mother, you believe in religion, and you brought me up to
believe in it also.  Well, surely your religion, the religion that
you taught me when I was a boy, mother, must tell you that I am
right.  You know it, you feel it.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I do not know it.  I do not feel it, nor will I
ever stand before God's altar and ask God's blessing on so hideous
a mockery as a marriage between me and George Harford.  I will not
say the words the Church bids us to say.  I will not say them.  I
dare not.  How could I swear to love the man I loathe, to honour
him who wrought you dishonour, to obey him who, in his mastery,
made me to sin?  No: marriage is a sacrament for those who love
each other.  It is not for such as him, or such as me.  Gerald, to
save you from the world's sneers and taunts I have lied to the
world.  For twenty years I have lied to the world.  I could not
tell the world the truth.  Who can, ever?  But not for my own sake
will I lie to God, and in God's presence.  No, Gerald, no ceremony,
Church-hallowed or State-made, shall ever bind me to George
Harford.  It may be that I am too bound to him already, who,
robbing me, yet left me richer, so that in the mire of my life I
found the pearl of price, or what I thought would be so.

GERALD.  I don't understand you now.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Men don't understand what mothers are.  I am no
different from other women except in the wrong done me and the
wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace.  And
yet, to bear you I had to look on death.  To nurture you I had to
wrestle with it.  Death fought with me for you.  All women have to
fight with death to keep their children.  Death, being childless,
wants our children from us.  Gerald, when you were naked I clothed
you, when you were hungry I gave you food.  Night and day all that
long winter I tended you.  No office is too mean, no care too lowly
for the thing we women love - and oh! how I loved YOU.  Not Hannah,
Samuel more.  And you needed love, for you were weakly, and only
love could have kept you alive.  Only love can keep any one alive.
And boys are careless often and without thinking give pain, and we
always fancy that when they come to man's estate and know us better
they will repay us.  But it is not so.  The world draws them from
our side, and they make friends with whom they are happier than
they are with us, and have amusements from which we are barred, and
interests that are not ours: and they are unjust to us often, for
when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find
it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them . . . You made
many friends and went into their houses and were glad with them,
and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed at
home and closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness.
What should I have done in honest households?  My past was ever
with me. . . . And you thought I didn't care for the pleasant
things of life.  I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to
touch them, feeling I had no right.  You thought I was happier
working amongst the poor.  That was my mission, you imagined.  It
was not, but where else was I to go?  The sick do not ask if the
hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the
lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.  It was you
I thought of all the time; I gave to them the love you did not
need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs . . . And you
thought I spent too much of my time in going to Church, and in
Church duties.  But where else could I turn?  God's house is the
only house where sinners are made welcome, and you were always in
my heart, Gerald, too much in my heart.  For, though day after day,
at morn or evensong, I have knelt in God's house, I have never
repented of my sin.  How could I repent of my sin when you, my
love, were its fruit!  Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot
repent.  I do not.  You are more to me than innocence.  I would
rather be your mother - oh! much rather! - than have been always
pure . . . Oh, don't you see? don't you understand?  It is my
dishonour that has made you so dear to me.  It is my disgrace that
has bound you so closely to me.  It is the price I paid for you -
the price of soul and body - that makes me love you as I do.  Oh,
don't ask me to do this horrible thing.  Child of my shame, be
still the child of my shame!

GERALD.  Mother, I didn't know you loved me so much as that.  And I
will be a better son to you than I have been.  And you and I must
never leave each other . . . but, mother . . . I can't help it . .
. you must become my father's wife.  You must marry him.  It is
your duty.

HESTER.  [Running forwards and embracing MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  No, no;
you shall not.  That would be real dishonour, the first you have
ever known.  That would be real disgrace: the first to touch you.
Leave him and come with me.  There are other countries than England
. . . Oh! other countries over sea, better, wiser, and less unjust
lands.  The world is very wide and very big.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  No, not for me.  For me the world is shrivelled to
a palm's breadth, and where I walk there are thorns.

HESTER.  It shall not be so.  We shall somewhere find green valleys
and fresh waters, and if we weep, well, we shall weep together.
Have we not both loved him?

GERALD.  Hester!

HESTER.  [Waving him back.]  Don't, don't!  You cannot love me at
all, unless you love her also.  You cannot honour me, unless she's
holier to you.  In her all womanhood is martyred.  Not she alone,
but all of us are stricken in her house.

GERALD.  Hester, Hester, what shall I do?

HESTER.  Do you respect the man who is your father?

GERALD.  Respect him?  I despise him!  He is infamous.

HESTER.  I thank you for saving me from him last night.

GERALD.  Ah, that is nothing.  I would die to save you.  But you
don't tell me what to do now!

HESTER.  Have I not thanked you for saving ME?

GERALD.  But what should I do?

HESTER.  Ask your own heart, not mine.  I never had a mother to
save, or shame.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He is hard - he is hard.  Let me go away.

GERALD.  [Rushes over and kneels down bedside his mother.]  Mother,
forgive me: I have been to blame.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Don't kiss my hands: they are cold.  My heart is
cold: something has broken it.

HESTER,  Ah, don't say that.  Hearts live by being wounded.
Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but
sorrow - oh, sorrow cannot break it.  Besides, what sorrows have
you now?  Why, at this moment you are more dear to him than ever,
DEAR though you have BEEN, and oh! how dear you HAVE been always.
Ah! be kind to him.

GERALD.  You are my mother and my father all in one.  I need no
second parent.  It was for you I spoke, for you alone.  Oh, say
something, mother.  Have I but found one love to lose another?
Don't tell me that.  O mother, you are cruel.  [Gets up and flings
himself sobbing on a sofa.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [To HESTER.]  But has he found indeed another
love?

HESTER.  You know I have loved him always.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  But we are very poor.

HESTER.  Who, being loved, is poor?  Oh, no one.  I hate my riches.
They are a burden.  Let him share it with me.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  But we are disgraced.  We rank among the outcasts
Gerald is nameless.  The sins of the parents should be visited on
the children.  It is God's law.

HESTER.  I was wrong.  God's law is only Love.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Rises, and taking HESTER by the hand, goes slowly
over to where GERALD is lying on the sofa with his head buried in
his hands.  She touches him and he looks up.]  Gerald, I cannot
give you a father, but I have brought you a wife.

GERALD.  Mother, I am not worthy either of her or you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  So she comes first, you are worthy.  And when you
are away, Gerald . . . with . . . her - oh, think of me sometimes.
Don't forget me.  And when you pray, pray for me.  We should pray
when we are happiest, and you will be happy, Gerald.

HESTER.  Oh, you don't think of leaving us?

GERALD.  Mother, you won't leave us?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I might bring shame upon you!

GERALD.  Mother!

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  For a little then: and if you let me, near you
always.

HESTER.  [To MRS. ARBUTHNOT.]  Come out with us to the garden.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Later on, later on.  [Exeunt HESTER and GERALD.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT goes towards door L.C.   Stops at looking-glass over
mantelpiece and looks into it.  Enter ALICE R.C.]

ALICE.  A gentleman to see you, ma'am.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Say I am not at home.  Show me the card.  [Takes
card from salver and looks at it.]  Say I will not see him.

[LORD ILLINGWORTH enters.  MRS. ARBUTHNOT sees him in the glass and
starts, but does not turn round.  Exit ALICE.]  What can you have
to say to me to-day, George Harford?  You can have nothing to say
to me.  You must leave this house.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Rachel, Gerald knows everything about you and me
now, so some arrangement must be come to that will suit us all
three.  I assure you, he will find in me the most charming and
generous of fathers.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  My son may come in at any moment.  I saved you
last night.  I may not be able to save you again.  My son feels my
dishonour strongly, terribly strongly.  I beg you to go.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Sitting down.]  Last night was excessively
unfortunate.  That silly Puritan girl making a scene merely because
I wanted to kiss her.  What harm is there in a kiss?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Turning round.]  A kiss may ruin a human life,
George Harford.  I know that.  I know that too well.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  We won't discuss that at present.  What is of
importance to-day, as yesterday, is still our son.  I am extremely
fond of him, as you know, and odd though it may seem to you, I
admired his conduct last night immensely.  He took up the cudgels
for that pretty prude with wonderful promptitude.  He is just what
I should have liked a son of mine to be.  Except that no son of
mine should ever take the side of the Puritans: that is always an
error.  Now, what I propose is this.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Lord Illingworth, no proposition of yours
interests me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  According to our ridiculous English laws, I
can't legitimise Gerald.  But I can leave him my property.
Illingworth is entailed, of course, but it is a tedious barrack of
a place.  He can have Ashby, which is much prettier, Harborough,
which has the best shooting in the north of England, and the house
in St. James Square.  What more can a gentleman require in this
world?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Nothing more, I am quite sure.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  As for a title, a title is really rather a
nuisance in these democratic days.  As George Harford I had
everything I wanted.  Now I have merely everything that other
people want, which isn't nearly so pleasant.  Well, my proposal is
this.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I told you I was not interested, and I beg you to
go.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  The boy is to be with you for six months in the
year, and with me for the other six.  That is perfectly fair, is it
not?  You can have whatever allowance you like, and live where you
choose.  As for your past, no one knows anything about it except
myself and Gerald.  There is the Puritan, of course, the Puritan in
white muslin, but she doesn't count.  She couldn't tell the story
without explaining that she objected to being kissed, could she?
And all the women would think her a fool and the men think her a
bore.  And you need not be afraid that Gerald won't be my heir.  I
needn't tell you I have not the slightest intention of marrying.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You come too late.  My son has no need of you.
You are not necessary.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What do you mean, Rachel?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  That you are not necessary to Gerald's career.  He
does not require you.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I do not understand you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Look into the garden.  [LORD ILLINGWORTH rises and
goes towards window.]  You had better not let them see you: you
bring unpleasant memories.  [LORD ILLINGWORTH looks out and
starts.]  She loves him.  They love each other.  We are safe from
you, and we are going away.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Where?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  We will not tell you, and if you find us we will
not know you.  You seem surprised.  What welcome would you get from
the girl whose lips you tried to soil, from the boy whose life you
have shamed, from the mother whose dishonour comes from you?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You have grown hard, Rachel.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I was too weak once.  It is well for me that I
have changed.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I was very young at the time.  We men know life
too early.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  And we women know life too late.  That is the
difference between men and women.  [A pause.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Rachel, I want my son.  My money may be of no
use to him now.  I may be of no use to him, but I want my son.
Bring us together, Rachel.  You can do it if you choose.  [Sees
letter on table.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  There is no room in my boy's life for you.  He is
not interested in YOU.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Then why does he write to me?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  What do you mean?

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What letter is this?  [Takes up letter.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  That - is nothing.  Give it to me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is addressed to ME.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You are not to open it.  I forbid you to open it.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  And in Gerald's handwriting.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It was not to have been sent.  It is a letter he
wrote to you this morning, before he saw me.  But he is sorry now
he wrote it, very sorry.  You are not to open it.  Give it to me.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It belongs to me.  [Opens it, sits down and
reads it slowly. MRS. ARBUTHNOT watches him all the time.]  You
have read this letter, I suppose, Rachel?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  No.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  You know what is in it?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I don't admit for a moment that the boy is right
in what he says.  I don't admit that it is any duty of mine to
marry you.  I deny it entirely.  But to get my son back I am ready
- yes, I am ready to marry you, Rachel - and to treat you always
with the deference and respect due to my wife.  I will marry you as
soon as you choose.  I give you my word of honour.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You made that promise to me once before and broke
it.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I will keep it now.  And that will show you that
I love my son, at least as much as you love him.  For when I marry
you, Rachel, there are some ambitions I shall have to surrender.
High ambitions, too, if any ambition is high.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I decline to marry you, Lord Illingworth.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Are you serious?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Do tell me your reasons.  They would interest me
enormously.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  I have already explained them to my son.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I suppose they were intensely sentimental,
weren't they?  You women live by your emotions and for them.  You
have no philosophy of life.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  You are right.  We women live by our emotions and
for them.  By our passions, and for them, if you will.  I have two
passions, Lord Illingworth: my love of him, my hate of you.  You
cannot kill those.  They feed each other.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What sort of love is that which needs to have
hate as its brother?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It is the sort of love I have for Gerald.  Do you
think that terrible?  Well it is terrible.  All love is terrible.
All love is a tragedy.  I loved you once, Lord Illingworth.  Oh,
what a tragedy for a woman to have loved you!

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  So you really refuse to marry me?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Because you hate me?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Yes.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  And does my son hate me as you do?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  No.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I am glad of that, Rachel.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  He merely despises you.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What a pity!  What a pity for him, I mean.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Don't be deceived, George.  Children begin by
loving their parents.  After a time they judge them.  Rarely if
ever do they forgive them.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Reads letter over again, very slowly.]  May I
ask by what arguments you made the boy who wrote this letter, this
beautiful, passionate letter, believe that you should not marry his
father, the father of your own child?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  It was not I who made him see it.  It was another.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  What FIN-DE-SIECLE person?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  The Puritan, Lord Illingworth.  [A pause.]

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  [Winces, then rises slowly and goes over to
table where his hat and gloves are.  MRS. ARBUTHNOT is standing
close to the table.  He picks up one of the gloves, and begins
pulling it on.]  There is not much then for me to do here, Rachel?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  Nothing.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  It is good-bye, is it?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  For ever, I hope, this time, Lord Illingworth.

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  How curious!  At this moment you look exactly as
you looked the night you left me twenty years ago.  You have just
the same expression in your mouth.  Upon my word, Rachel, no woman
ever loved me as you did.  Why, you gave yourself to me like a
flower, to do anything I liked with.  You were the prettiest of
playthings, the most fascinating of small romances . . . [Pulls out
watch.]  Quarter to two!  Must be strolling back to Hunstanton.
Don't suppose I shall see you there again.  I'm sorry, I am,
really.  It's been an amusing experience to have met amongst people
of one's own rank, and treated quite seriously too, one's mistress,
and one's -

[MRS. ARBUTHNOT snatches up glove and strikes LORD ILLINGWORTH
across the face with it.  LORD ILLINGWORTH starts.  He is dazed by
the insult of his punishment.  Then he controls himself, and goes
to window and looks out at his son.  Sighs and leaves the room.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Falls sobbing on the sofa.]  He would have said
it.  He would have said it.

[Enter GERALD and HESTER from the garden.]

GERALD.  Well, dear mother.  You never came out after all.  So we
have come in to fetch you.  Mother, you have not been crying?
[Kneels down beside her.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  My boy!  My boy!  My boy!  [Running her fingers
through his hair.]

HESTER.  [Coming over.]  But you have two children now.  You'll let
me be your daughter?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Looking up.]  Would you choose me for a mother?

HESTER.  You of all women I have ever known.

[They move towards the door leading into garden with their arms
round each other's waists.  GERALD goes to table L.C. for his hat.
On turning round he sees LORD ILLINGWORTH'S glove lying on the
floor, and picks it up.]

GERALD.  Hallo, mother, whose glove is this?  You have had a
visitor.  Who was it?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT.  [Turning round.]  Oh! no one.  No one in
particular.  A man of no importance.

Curtain

A House Of Pomegranates




Contents:

The Young King
The Birthday of the Infanta
The Fisherman and his Soul
The Star-child



The Young King



[To Margaret Lady Brooke - The Ranee Of Sarawak]


It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber.  His courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the ground, according to the ceremonious usage of the day, and had retired to the Great Hall of the Palace, to receive a few last lessons from the Professor of Etiquette; there being some of them who had still quite natural manners, which in a courtier is, I need hardly say, a very grave offence.

The lad - for he was only a lad, being but sixteen years of age - was not sorry at their departure, and had flung himself back with a deep sigh of relief on the soft cushions of his embroidered couch, lying there, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, like a brown woodland Faun, or some young animal of the forest newly snared by the hunters.

And, indeed, it was the hunters who had found him, coming upon him almost by chance as, bare-limbed and pipe in hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to be.  The child of the old King’s only daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her in station - a stranger, some said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing, had made the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist from Rimini, to whom the Princess had shown much, perhaps too much honour, and who had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his work in the Cathedral unfinished - he had been, when but a week old, stolen away from his mother’s side, as she slept, and given into the charge of a common peasant and his wife, who were without children of their own, and lived in a remote part of the forest, more than a day’s ride from the town.  Grief, or the plague, as the court physician stated, or, as some suggested, a swift Italian poison administered in a cup of spiced wine, slew, within an hour of her wakening, the white girl who had given him birth, and as the trusty messenger who bare the child across his saddle-bow stooped from his weary horse and knocked at the rude door of the goatherd’s hut, the body of the Princess was being lowered into an open grave that had been dug in a deserted churchyard, beyond the city gates, a grave where it was said that another body was also lying, that of a young man of marvellous and foreign beauty, whose hands were tied behind him with a knotted cord, and whose breast was stabbed with many red wounds.

Such, at least, was the story that men whispered to each other.  Certain it was that the old King, when on his deathbed, whether moved by remorse for his great sin, or merely desiring that the kingdom should not pass away from his line, had had the lad sent for, and, in the presence of the Council, had acknowledged him as his heir.

And it seems that from the very first moment of his recognition he had shown signs of that strange passion for beauty that was destined to have so great an influence over his life.  Those who accompanied him to the suite of rooms set apart for his service, often spoke of the cry of pleasure that broke from his lips when he saw the delicate raiment and rich jewels that had been prepared for him, and of the almost fierce joy with which he flung aside his rough leathern tunic and coarse sheepskin cloak.  He missed, indeed, at times the fine freedom of his forest life, and was always apt to chafe at the tedious Court ceremonies that occupied so much of each day, but the wonderful palace - Joyeuse, as they called it - of which he now found himself lord, seemed to him to be a new world fresh-fashioned for his delight; and as soon as he could escape from the council-board or audience-chamber, he would run down the great staircase, with its lions of gilt bronze and its steps of bright porphyry, and wander from room to room, and from corridor to corridor, like one who was seeking to find in beauty an anodyne from pain, a sort of restoration from sickness.

Upon these journeys of discovery, as he would call them - and, indeed, they were to him real voyages through a marvellous land, he would sometimes be accompanied by the slim, fair-haired Court pages, with their floating mantles, and gay fluttering ribands; but more often he would be alone, feeling through a certain quick instinct, which was almost a divination, that the secrets of art are best learned in secret, and that Beauty, like Wisdom, loves the lonely worshipper.


Many curious stories were related about him at this period.  It was said that a stout Burgo-master, who had come to deliver a florid oratorical address on behalf of the citizens of the town, had caught sight of him kneeling in real adoration before a great picture that had just been brought from Venice, and that seemed to herald the worship of some new gods.  On another occasion he had been missed for several hours, and after a lengthened search had been discovered in a little chamber in one of the northern turrets of the palace gazing, as one in a trance, at a Greek gem carved with the figure of Adonis.  He had been seen, so the tale ran, pressing his warm lips to the marble brow of an antique statue that had been discovered in the bed of the river on the occasion of the building of the stone bridge, and was inscribed with the name of the Bithynian slave of Hadrian.  He had passed a whole night in noting the effect of the moonlight on a silver image of Endymion.

All rare and costly materials had certainly a great fascination for him, and in his eagerness to procure them he had sent away many merchants, some to traffic for amber with the rough fisher-folk of the north seas, some to Egypt to look for that curious green turquoise which is found only in the tombs of kings, and is said to possess magical properties, some to Persia for silken carpets and painted pottery, and others to India to buy gauze and stained ivory, moonstones and bracelets of jade, sandal-wood and blue enamel and shawls of fine wool.

But what had occupied him most was the robe he was to wear at his coronation, the robe of tissued gold, and the ruby-studded crown, and the sceptre with its rows and rings of pearls.  Indeed, it was of this that he was thinking to-night, as he lay back on his luxurious couch, watching the great pinewood log that was burning itself out on the open hearth.  The designs, which were from the hands of the most famous artists of the time, had been submitted to him many months before, and he had given orders that the artificers were to toil night and day to carry them out, and that the whole world was to be searched for jewels that would be worthy of their work.  He saw himself in fancy standing at the high altar of the cathedral in the fair raiment of a King, and a smile played and lingered about his boyish lips, and lit up with a bright lustre his dark woodland eyes.

After some time he rose from his seat, and leaning against the carved penthouse of the chimney, looked round at the dimly-lit room.  The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty.  A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx.  Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling.  A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head.  On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst.

Outside he could see the huge dome of the cathedral, looming like a bubble over the shadowy houses, and the weary sentinels pacing up and down on the misty terrace by the river.  Far away, in an orchard, a nightingale was singing.  A faint perfume of jasmine came through the open window.  He brushed his brown curls back from his forehead, and taking up a lute, let his fingers stray across the cords.  His heavy eyelids drooped, and a strange languor came over him.  Never before had he felt so keenly, or with such exquisite joy, the magic and the mystery of beautiful things.

When midnight sounded from the clock-tower he touched a bell, and his pages entered and disrobed him with much ceremony, pouring rose-water over his hands, and strewing flowers on his pillow.  A few moments after that they had left the room, he fell asleep.


And as he slept he dreamed a dream, and this was his dream.

He thought that he was standing in a long, low attic, amidst the whir and clatter of many looms.  The meagre daylight peered in through the grated windows, and showed him the gaunt figures of the weavers bending over their cases.  Pale, sickly-looking children were crouched on the huge crossbeams.  As the shuttles dashed through the warp they lifted up the heavy battens, and when the shuttles stopped they let the battens fall and pressed the threads together.  Their faces were pinched with famine, and their thin hands shook and trembled.  Some haggard women were seated at a table sewing.  A horrible odour filled the place.  The air was foul and heavy, and the walls dripped and streamed with damp.

The young King went over to one of the weavers, and stood by him and watched him.

And the weaver looked at him angrily, and said, ‘Why art thou watching me?  Art thou a spy set on us by our master?’

‘Who is thy master?’ asked the young King.

‘Our master!’ cried the weaver, bitterly.  ‘He is a man like myself.  Indeed, there is but this difference between us - that he wears fine clothes while I go in rags, and that while I am weak from hunger he suffers not a little from overfeeding.’

‘The land is free,’ said the young King, ‘and thou art no man’s slave.’

‘In war,’ answered the weaver, ‘the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor.  We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die.  We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil.  We tread out the grapes, and another drinks the wine.  We sow the corn, and our own board is empty.  We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.’

‘Is it so with all?’ he asked,

‘It is so with all,’ answered the weaver, ‘with the young as well as with the old, with the women as well as with the men, with the little children as well as with those who are stricken in years.  The merchants grind us down, and we must needs do their bidding.  The priest rides by and tells his beads, and no man has care of us.  Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her.  Misery wakes us in the morning, and Shame sits with us at night.  But what are these things to thee?  Thou art not one of us.  Thy face is too happy.’  And he turned away scowling, and threw the shuttle across the loom, and the young King saw that it was threaded with a thread of gold.

And a great terror seized upon him, and he said to the weaver, ‘What robe is this that thou art weaving?’

‘It is the robe for the coronation of the young King,’ he answered; ‘what is that to thee?’

And the young King gave a loud cry and woke, and lo! he was in his own chamber, and through the window he saw the great honey-coloured moon hanging in the dusky air.


And he fell asleep again and dreamed, and this was his dream.

He thought that he was lying on the deck of a huge galley that was being rowed by a hundred slaves.  On a carpet by his side the master of the galley was seated.  He was black as ebony, and his turban was of crimson silk.  Great earrings of silver dragged down the thick lobes of his ears, and in his hands he had a pair of ivory scales.

The slaves were naked, but for a ragged loin-cloth, and each man was chained to his neighbour.  The hot sun beat brightly upon them, and the negroes ran up and down the gangway and lashed them with whips of hide.  They stretched out their lean arms and pulled the heavy oars through the water.  The salt spray flew from the blades.

At last they reached a little bay, and began to take soundings.  A light wind blew from the shore, and covered the deck and the great lateen sail with a fine red dust.  Three Arabs mounted on wild asses rode out and threw spears at them.  The master of the galley took a painted bow in his hand and shot one of them in the throat.  He fell heavily into the surf, and his companions galloped away.  A woman wrapped in a yellow veil followed slowly on a camel, looking back now and then at the dead body.

As soon as they had cast anchor and hauled down the sail, the negroes went into the hold and brought up a long rope-ladder, heavily weighted with lead.  The master of the galley threw it over the side, making the ends fast to two iron stanchions.  Then the negroes seized the youngest of the slaves and knocked his gyves off, and filled his nostrils and his ears with wax, and tied a big stone round his waist.  He crept wearily down the ladder, and disappeared into the sea.  A few bubbles rose where he sank.  Some of the other slaves peered curiously over the side.  At the prow of the galley sat a shark-charmer, beating monotonously upon a drum.

After some time the diver rose up out of the water, and clung panting to the ladder with a pearl in his right hand.  The negroes seized it from him, and thrust him back.  The slaves fell asleep over their oars.

Again and again he came up, and each time that he did so he brought with him a beautiful pearl.  The master of the galley weighed them, and put them into a little bag of green leather.

The young King tried to speak, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and his lips refused to move.  The negroes chattered to each other, and began to quarrel over a string of bright beads.  Two cranes flew round and round the vessel.

Then the diver came up for the last time, and the pearl that he brought with him was fairer than all the pearls of Ormuz, for it was shaped like the full moon, and whiter than the morning star.  But his face was strangely pale, and as he fell upon the deck the blood gushed from his ears and nostrils.  He quivered for a little, and then he was still.  The negroes shrugged their shoulders, and threw the body overboard.

And the master of the galley laughed, and, reaching out, he took the pearl, and when he saw it he pressed it to his forehead and bowed.  ‘It shall be,’ he said, ‘for the sceptre of the young King,’ and he made a sign to the negroes to draw up the anchor.

And when the young King heard this he gave a great cry, and woke, and through the window he saw the long grey fingers of the dawn clutching at the fading stars.


And he fell asleep again, and dreamed, and this was his dream.

He thought that he was wandering through a dim wood, hung with strange fruits and with beautiful poisonous flowers.  The adders hissed at him as he went by, and the bright parrots flew screaming from branch to branch.  Huge tortoises lay asleep upon the hot mud.  The trees were full of apes and peacocks.

On and on he went, till he reached the outskirts of the wood, and there he saw an immense multitude of men toiling in the bed of a dried-up river.  They swarmed up the crag like ants.  They dug deep pits in the ground and went down into them.  Some of them cleft the rocks with great axes; others grabbled in the sand.

They tore up the cactus by its roots, and trampled on the scarlet blossoms.  They hurried about, calling to each other, and no man was idle.

From the darkness of a cavern Death and Avarice watched them, and Death said, ‘I am weary; give me a third of them and let me go.’  But Avarice shook her head.  ‘They are my servants,’ she answered.

And Death said to her, ‘What hast thou in thy hand?’

‘I have three grains of corn,’ she answered; ‘what is that to thee?’

‘Give me one of them,’ cried Death, ‘to plant in my garden; only one of them, and I will go away.’

‘I will not give thee anything,’ said Avarice, and she hid her hand in the fold of her raiment.

And Death laughed, and took a cup, and dipped it into a pool of water, and out of the cup rose Ague.  She passed through the great multitude, and a third of them lay dead.  A cold mist followed her, and the water-snakes ran by her side.

And when Avarice saw that a third of the multitude was dead she beat her breast and wept.  She beat her barren bosom, and cried aloud.  ‘Thou hast slain a third of my servants,’ she cried, ‘get thee gone.  There is war in the mountains of Tartary, and the kings of each side are calling to thee.  The Afghans have slain the black ox, and are marching to battle.  They have beaten upon their shields with their spears, and have put on their helmets of iron.  What is my valley to thee, that thou shouldst tarry in it?  Get thee gone, and come here no more.’

‘Nay,’ answered Death, ‘but till thou hast given me a grain of corn I will not go.’

But Avarice shut her hand, and clenched her teeth.  ‘I will not give thee anything,’ she muttered.

And Death laughed, and took up a black stone, and threw it into the forest, and out of a thicket of wild hemlock came Fever in a robe of flame.  She passed through the multitude, and touched them, and each man that she touched died.  The grass withered beneath her feet as she walked.

And Avarice shuddered, and put ashes on her head.  ‘Thou art cruel,’ she cried; ‘thou art cruel.  There is famine in the walled cities of India, and the cisterns of Samarcand have run dry.  There is famine in the walled cities of Egypt, and the locusts have come up from the desert.  The Nile has not overflowed its banks, and the priests have cursed Isis and Osiris.  Get thee gone to those who need thee, and leave me my servants.’

‘Nay,’ answered Death, ‘but till thou hast given me a grain of corn I will not go.’

‘I will not give thee anything,’ said Avarice.

And Death laughed again, and he whistled through his fingers, and a woman came flying through the air.  Plague was written upon her forehead, and a crowd of lean vultures wheeled round her.  She covered the valley with her wings, and no man was left alive.

And Avarice fled shrieking through the forest, and Death leaped upon his red horse and galloped away, and his galloping was faster than the wind.

And out of the slime at the bottom of the valley crept dragons and horrible things with scales, and the jackals came trotting along the sand, sniffing up the air with their nostrils.

And the young King wept, and said: ‘Who were these men, and for what were they seeking?’

‘For rubies for a king’s crown,’ answered one who stood behind him.

And the young King started, and, turning round, he saw a man habited as a pilgrim and holding in his hand a mirror of silver.

And he grew pale, and said: ‘For what king?’

And the pilgrim answered: ‘Look in this mirror, and thou shalt see him.’

And he looked in the mirror, and, seeing his own face, he gave a great cry and woke, and the bright sunlight was streaming into the room, and from the trees of the garden and pleasaunce the birds were singing.


And the Chamberlain and the high officers of State came in and made obeisance to him, and the pages brought him the robe of tissued gold, and set the crown and the sceptre before him.

And the young King looked at them, and they were beautiful.  More beautiful were they than aught that he had ever seen.  But he remembered his dreams, and he said to his lords: ‘Take these things away, for I will not wear them.’

And the courtiers were amazed, and some of them laughed, for they thought that he was jesting.

But he spake sternly to them again, and said: ‘Take these things away, and hide them from me.  Though it be the day of my coronation, I will not wear them.  For on the loom of Sorrow, and by the white hands of Pain, has this my robe been woven.  There is Blood in the heart of the ruby, and Death in the heart of the pearl.’  And he told them his three dreams.

And when the courtiers heard them they looked at each other and whispered, saying: ‘Surely he is mad; for what is a dream but a dream, and a vision but a vision?  They are not real things that one should heed them.  And what have we to do with the lives of those who toil for us?  Shall a man not eat bread till he has seen the sower, nor drink wine till he has talked with the vinedresser?’

And the Chamberlain spake to the young King, and said, ‘My lord, I pray thee set aside these black thoughts of thine, and put on this fair robe, and set this crown upon thy head.  For how shall the people know that thou art a king, if thou hast not a king’s raiment?’

And the young King looked at him.  ‘Is it so, indeed?’ he questioned.  ‘Will they not know me for a king if I have not a king’s raiment?’

‘They will not know thee, my lord,’ cried the Chamberlain.

‘I had thought that there had been men who were kinglike,’ he answered, ‘but it may be as thou sayest.  And yet I will not wear this robe, nor will I be crowned with this crown, but even as I came to the palace so will I go forth from it.’

And he bade them all leave him, save one page whom he kept as his companion, a lad a year younger than himself.  Him he kept for his service, and when he had bathed himself in clear water, he opened a great painted chest, and from it he took the leathern tunic and rough sheepskin cloak that he had worn when he had watched on the hillside the shaggy goats of the goatherd.  These he put on, and in his hand he took his rude shepherd’s staff.

And the little page opened his big blue eyes in wonder, and said smiling to him, ‘My lord, I see thy robe and thy sceptre, but where is thy crown?’

And the young King plucked a spray of wild briar that was climbing over the balcony, and bent it, and made a circlet of it, and set it on his own head.

‘This shall he my crown,’ he answered.

And thus attired he passed out of his chamber into the Great Hall, where the nobles were waiting for him.

And the nobles made merry, and some of them cried out to him, ‘My lord, the people wait for their king, and thou showest them a beggar,’ and others were wroth and said, ‘He brings shame upon our state, and is unworthy to be our master.’  But he answered them not a word, but passed on, and went down the bright porphyry staircase, and out through the gates of bronze, and mounted upon his horse, and rode towards the cathedral, the little page running beside him.

And the people laughed and said, ‘It is the King’s fool who is riding by,’ and they mocked him.

And he drew rein and said, ‘Nay, but I am the King.’  And he told them his three dreams.

And a man came out of the crowd and spake bitterly to him, and said, ‘Sir, knowest thou not that out of the luxury of the rich cometh the life of the poor?  By your pomp we are nurtured, and your vices give us bread.  To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.  Thinkest thou that the ravens will feed us?  And what cure hast thou for these things?  Wilt thou say to the buyer, “Thou shalt buy for so much,” and to the seller, “Thou shalt sell at this price”?  I trow not.  Therefore go back to thy Palace and put on thy purple and fine linen.  What hast thou to do with us, and what we suffer?’

‘Are not the rich and the poor brothers?’ asked the young King.

‘Ay,’ answered the man, ‘and the name of the rich brother is Cain.’

And the young King’s eyes filled with tears, and he rode on through the murmurs of the people, and the little page grew afraid and left him.

And when he reached the great portal of the cathedral, the soldiers thrust their halberts out and said, ‘What dost thou seek here?  None enters by this door but the King.’

And his face flushed with anger, and he said to them, ‘I am the King,’ and waved their halberts aside and passed in.

And when the old Bishop saw him coming in his goatherd’s dress, he rose up in wonder from his throne, and went to meet him, and said to him, ‘My son, is this a king’s apparel?  And with what crown shall I crown thee, and what sceptre shall I place in thy hand?  Surely this should be to thee a day of joy, and not a day of abasement.’

‘Shall Joy wear what Grief has fashioned?’ said the young King.  And he told him his three dreams.

And when the Bishop had heard them he knit his brows, and said, ‘My son, I am an old man, and in the winter of my days, and I know that many evil things are done in the wide world.  The fierce robbers come down from the mountains, and carry off the little children, and sell them to the Moors.  The lions lie in wait for the caravans, and leap upon the camels.  The wild boar roots up the corn in the valley, and the foxes gnaw the vines upon the hill.  The pirates lay waste the sea-coast and burn the ships of the fishermen, and take their nets from them.  In the salt-marshes live the lepers; they have houses of wattled reeds, and none may come nigh them.  The beggars wander through the cities, and eat their food with the dogs.  Canst thou make these things not to be?  Wilt thou take the leper for thy bedfellow, and set the beggar at thy board?  Shall the lion do thy bidding, and the wild boar obey thee?  Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art?  Wherefore I praise thee not for this that thou hast done, but I bid thee ride back to the Palace and make thy face glad, and put on the raiment that beseemeth a king, and with the crown of gold I will crown thee, and the sceptre of pearl will I place in thy hand.  And as for thy dreams, think no more of them.  The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.’

‘Sayest thou that in this house?’ said the young King, and he strode past the Bishop, and climbed up the steps of the altar, and stood before the image of Christ.

He stood before the image of Christ, and on his right hand and on his left were the marvellous vessels of gold, the chalice with the yellow wine, and the vial with the holy oil.  He knelt before the image of Christ, and the great candles burned brightly by the jewelled shrine, and the smoke of the incense curled in thin blue wreaths through the dome.  He bowed his head in prayer, and the priests in their stiff copes crept away from the altar.

And suddenly a wild tumult came from the street outside, and in entered the nobles with drawn swords and nodding plumes, and shields of polished steel.  ‘Where is this dreamer of dreams?’ they cried.  ‘Where is this King who is apparelled like a beggar - this boy who brings shame upon our state?  Surely we will slay him, for he is unworthy to rule over us.’

And the young King bowed his head again, and prayed, and when he had finished his prayer he rose up, and turning round he looked at them sadly.

And lo! through the painted windows came the sunlight streaming upon him, and the sun-beams wove round him a tissued robe that was fairer than the robe that had been fashioned for his pleasure.  The dead staff blossomed, and bare lilies that were whiter than pearls.  The dry thorn blossomed, and bare roses that were redder than rubies.  Whiter than fine pearls were the lilies, and their stems were of bright silver.  Redder than male rubies were the roses, and their leaves were of beaten gold.

He stood there in the raiment of a king, and the gates of the jewelled shrine flew open, and from the crystal of the many-rayed monstrance shone a marvellous and mystical light.  He stood there in a king’s raiment, and the Glory of God filled the place, and the saints in their carven niches seemed to move.  In the fair raiment of a king he stood before them, and the organ pealed out its music, and the trumpeters blew upon their trumpets, and the singing boys sang.

And the people fell upon their knees in awe, and the nobles sheathed their swords and did homage, and the Bishop’s face grew pale, and his hands trembled.  ‘A greater than I hath crowned thee,’ he cried, and he knelt before him.

And the young King came down from the high altar, and passed home through the midst of the people.  But no man dared look upon his face, for it was like the face of an angel.

The Birthday Of The Infanta




[To Mrs. William H. Grenfell Of Taplow Court - Lady Desborough]


It was the birthday of the Infanta.  She was just twelve years of age, and the sun was shining brightly in the gardens of the palace.

Although she was a real Princess and the Infanta of Spain, she had only one birthday every year, just like the children of quite poor people, so it was naturally a matter of great importance to the whole country that she should have a really fine day for the occasion.  And a really fine day it certainly was.  The tall striped tulips stood straight up upon their stalks, like long rows of soldiers, and looked defiantly across the grass at the roses, and said: ‘We are quite as splendid as you are now.’  The purple butterflies fluttered about with gold dust on their wings, visiting each flower in turn; the little lizards crept out of the crevices of the wall, and lay basking in the white glare; and the pomegranates split and cracked with the heat, and showed their bleeding red hearts.  Even the pale yellow lemons, that hung in such profusion from the mouldering trellis and along the dim arcades, seemed to have caught a richer colour from the wonderful sunlight, and the magnolia trees opened their great globe-like blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy perfume.

The little Princess herself walked up and down the terrace with her companions, and played at hide and seek round the stone vases and the old moss-grown statues.  On ordinary days she was only allowed to play with children of her own rank, so she had always to play alone, but her birthday was an exception, and the King had given orders that she was to invite any of her young friends whom she liked to come and amuse themselves with her.  There was a stately grace about these slim Spanish children as they glided about, the boys with their large-plumed hats and short fluttering cloaks, the girls holding up the trains of their long brocaded gowns, and shielding the sun from their eyes with huge fans of black and silver.  But the Infanta was the most graceful of all, and the most tastefully attired, after the somewhat cumbrous fashion of the day.  Her robe was of grey satin, the skirt and the wide puffed sleeves heavily embroidered with silver, and the stiff corset studded with rows of fine pearls.  Two tiny slippers with big pink rosettes peeped out beneath her dress as she walked.  Pink and pearl was her great gauze fan, and in her hair, which like an aureole of faded gold stood out stiffly round her pale little face, she had a beautiful white rose.

From a window in the palace the sad melancholy King watched them.  Behind him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated, and his confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his side.  Sadder even than usual was the King, for as he looked at the Infanta bowing with childish gravity to the assembling counters, or laughing behind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who always accompanied her, he thought of the young Queen, her mother, who but a short time before - so it seemed to him - had come from the gay country of France, and had withered away in the sombre splendour of the Spanish court, dying just six months after the birth of her child, and before she had seen the almonds blossom twice in the orchard, or plucked the second year’s fruit from the old gnarled fig-tree that stood in the centre of the now grass-grown courtyard.  So great had been his love for her that he had not suffered even the grave to hide her from him.  She had been embalmed by a Moorish physician, who in return for this service had been granted his life, which for heresy and suspicion of magical practices had been already forfeited, men said, to the Holy Office, and her body was still lying on its tapestried bier in the black marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borne her in on that windy March day nearly twelve years before.  Once every month the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lantern in his hand, went in and knelt by her side calling out, ‘Mi reina!  Mi reina!’ and sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in Spain governs every separate action of life, and sets limits even to the sorrow of a King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands in a wild agony of grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the cold painted face.

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at the Castle of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and she still younger.  They had been formally betrothed on that occasion by the Papal Nuncio in the presence of the French King and all the Court, and he had returned to the Escurial bearing with him a little ringlet of yellow hair, and the memory of two childish lips bending down to kiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage.  Later on had followed the marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a small town on the frontier between the two countries, and the grand public entry into Madrid with the customary celebration of high mass at the Church of La Atocha, and a more than usually solemn auto-da-fé, in which nearly three hundred heretics, amongst whom were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular arm to be burned.

Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought, of his country, then at war with England for the possession of the empire of the New World.  He had hardly ever permitted her to be out of his sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten, all grave affairs of State; and, with that terrible blindness that passion brings upon its servants, he had failed to notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered.  When she died he was, for a time, like one bereft of reason.  Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having caused the Queen’s death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle in Aragon.  Even after the expiration of the three years of public mourning that he had ordained throughout his whole dominions by royal edict, he would never suffer his ministers to speak about any new alliance, and when the Emperor himself sent to him, and offered him the hand of the lovely Archduchess of Bohemia, his niece, in marriage, he bade the ambassadors tell their master that the King of Spain was already wedded to Sorrow, and that though she was but a barren bride he loved her better than Beauty; an answer that cost his crown the rich provinces of the Netherlands, which soon after, at the Emperor’s instigation, revolted against him under the leadership of some fanatics of the Reformed Church.

His whole married life, with its fierce, fiery-coloured joys and the terrible agony of its sudden ending, seemed to come back to him to-day as he watched the Infanta playing on the terrace.  She had all the Queen’s pretty petulance of manner, the same wilful way of tossing her head, the same proud curved beautiful mouth, the same wonderful smile - vrai sourire de France indeed - as she glanced up now and then at the window, or stretched out her little hand for the stately Spanish gentlemen to kiss.  But the shrill laughter of the children grated on his ears, and the bright pitiless sunlight mocked his sorrow, and a dull odour of strange spices, spices such as embalmers use, seemed to taint - or was it fancy? - the clear morning air.  He buried his face in his hands, and when the Infanta looked up again the curtains had been drawn, and the King had retired.

She made a little moue of disappointment, and shrugged her shoulders.  Surely he might have stayed with her on her birthday.  What did the stupid State-affairs matter?  Or had he gone to that gloomy chapel, where the candles were always burning, and where she was never allowed to enter?  How silly of him, when the sun was shining so brightly, and everybody was so happy!  Besides, he would miss the sham bull-fight for which the trumpet was already sounding, to say nothing of the puppet-show and the other wonderful things.  Her uncle and the Grand Inquisitor were much more sensible.  They had come out on the terrace, and paid her nice compliments.  So she tossed her pretty head, and taking Don Pedro by the hand, she walked slowly down the steps towards a long pavilion of purple silk that had been erected at the end of the garden, the other children following in strict order of precedence, those who had the longest names going first.


A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as toreadors, came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain, led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised dais above the arena.  The children grouped themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing at the entrance.  Even the Duchess - the Camerera-Mayor as she was called - a thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin bloodless lips.

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the Infanta thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought to see at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father.  Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobby-horses brandishing long javelins with gay streamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on foot waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightly over the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull himself, he was just like a live bull, though he was only made of wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on running round the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams of doing.  He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children got so excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lace handkerchiefs and cried out: Bravo toro!  Bravo toro! just as sensibly as if they had been grown-up people.  At last, however, after a prolonged combat, during which several of the hobby-horses were gored through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the young Count of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and having obtained permission from the Infanta to give the coup de grâce, he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with such violence that the head came right off, and disclosed the laughing face of little Monsieur de Lorraine, the son of the French Ambassador at Madrid.

The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead hobbyhorses dragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow and black liveries, and after a short interlude, during which a French posture-master performed upon the tightrope, some Italian puppets appeared in the semi-classical tragedy of Sophonisba on the stage of a small theatre that had been built up for the purpose.  They acted so well, and their gestures were so extremely natural, that at the close of the play the eyes of the Infanta were quite dim with tears.  Indeed some of the children really cried, and had to be comforted with sweetmeats, and the Grand Inquisitor himself was so affected that he could not help saying to Don Pedro that it seemed to him intolerable that things made simply out of wood and coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires, should be so unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.

An African juggler followed, who brought in a large flat basket covered with a red cloth, and having placed it in the centre of the arena, he took from his turban a curious reed pipe, and blew through it.  In a few moments the cloth began to move, and as the pipe grew shriller and shriller two green and gold snakes put out their strange wedge-shaped heads and rose slowly up, swaying to and fro with the music as a plant sways in the water.  The children, however, were rather frightened at their spotted hoods and quick darting tongues, and were much more pleased when the juggler made a tiny orange-tree grow out of the sand and bear pretty white blossoms and clusters of real fruit; and when he took the fan of the little daughter of the Marquess de Las-Torres, and changed it into a blue bird that flew all round the pavilion and sang, their delight and amazement knew no bounds.  The solemn minuet, too, performed by the dancing boys from the church of Nuestra Senora Del Pilar, was charming.  The Infanta had never before seen this wonderful ceremony which takes place every year at Maytime in front of the high altar of the Virgin, and in her honour; and indeed none of the royal family of Spain had entered the great cathedral of Saragossa since a mad priest, supposed by many to have been in the pay of Elizabeth of England, had tried to administer a poisoned wafer to the Prince of the Asturias.  So she had known only by hearsay of ‘Our Lady’s Dance,’ as it was called, and it certainly was a beautiful sight.  The boys wore old-fashioned court dresses of white velvet, and their curious three-cornered hats were fringed with silver and surmounted with huge plumes of ostrich feathers, the dazzling whiteness of their costumes, as they moved about in the sunlight, being still more accentuated by their swarthy faces and long black hair.  Everybody was fascinated by the grave dignity with which they moved through the intricate figures of the dance, and by the elaborate grace of their slow gestures, and stately bows, and when they had finished their performance and doffed their great plumed hats to the Infanta, she acknowledged their reverence with much courtesy, and made a vow that she would send a large wax candle to the shrine of Our Lady of Pilar in return for the pleasure that she had given her.

A troop of handsome Egyptians - as the gipsies were termed in those days - then advanced into the arena, and sitting down cross-legs, in a circle, began to play softly upon their zithers, moving their bodies to the tune, and humming, almost below their breath, a low dreamy air.  When they caught sight of Don Pedro they scowled at him, and some of them looked terrified, for only a few weeks before he had had two of their tribe hanged for sorcery in the market-place at Seville, but the pretty Infanta charmed them as she leaned back peeping over her fan with her great blue eyes, and they felt sure that one so lovely as she was could never be cruel to anybody.  So they played on very gently and just touching the cords of the zithers with their long pointed nails, and their heads began to nod as though they were falling asleep.  Suddenly, with a cry so shrill that all the children were startled and Don Pedro’s hand clutched at the agate pommel of his dagger, they leapt to their feet and whirled madly round the enclosure beating their tambourines, and chaunting some wild love-song in their strange guttural language.  Then at another signal they all flung themselves again to the ground and lay there quite still, the dull strumming of the zithers being the only sound that broke the silence.  After that they had done this several times, they disappeared for a moment and came back leading a brown shaggy bear by a chain, and carrying on their shoulders some little Barbary apes.  The bear stood upon his head with the utmost gravity, and the wizened apes played all kinds of amusing tricks with two gipsy boys who seemed to be their masters, and fought with tiny swords, and fired off guns, and went through a regular soldier’s drill just like the King’s own bodyguard.  In fact the gipsies were a great success.

But the funniest part of the whole morning’s entertainment, was undoubtedly the dancing of the little Dwarf.  When he stumbled into the arena, waddling on his crooked legs and wagging his huge misshapen head from side to side, the children went off into a loud shout of delight, and the Infanta herself laughed so much that the Camerera was obliged to remind her that although there were many precedents in Spain for a King’s daughter weeping before her equals, there were none for a Princess of the blood royal making so merry before those who were her inferiors in birth.  The Dwarf, however, was really quite irresistible, and even at the Spanish Court, always noted for its cultivated passion for the horrible, so fantastic a little monster had never been seen.  It was his first appearance, too.  He had been discovered only the day before, running wild through the forest, by two of the nobles who happened to have been hunting in a remote part of the great cork-wood that surrounded the town, and had been carried off by them to the Palace as a surprise for the Infanta; his father, who was a poor charcoal-burner, being but too well pleased to get rid of so ugly and useless a child.  Perhaps the most amusing thing about him was his complete unconsciousness of his own grotesque appearance.  Indeed he seemed quite happy and full of the highest spirits.  When the children laughed, he laughed as freely and as joyously as any of them, and at the close of each dance he made them each the funniest of bows, smiling and nodding at them just as if he was really one of themselves, and not a little misshapen thing that Nature, in some humourous mood, had fashioned for others to mock at.  As for the Infanta, she absolutely fascinated him.  He could not keep his eyes off her, and seemed to dance for her alone, and when at the close of the performance, remembering how she had seen the great ladies of the Court throw bouquets to Caffarelli, the famous Italian treble, whom the Pope had sent from his own chapel to Madrid that he might cure the King’s melancholy by the sweetness of his voice, she took out of her hair the beautiful white rose, and partly for a jest and partly to tease the Camerera, threw it to him across the arena with her sweetest smile, he took the whole matter quite seriously, and pressing the flower to his rough coarse lips he put his hand upon his heart, and sank on one knee before her, grinning from ear to ear, and with his little bright eyes sparkling with pleasure.

This so upset the gravity of the Infanta that she kept on laughing long after the little Dwarf had ran out of the arena, and expressed a desire to her uncle that the dance should be immediately repeated.  The Camerera, however, on the plea that the sun was too hot, decided that it would be better that her Highness should return without delay to the Palace, where a wonderful feast had been already prepared for her, including a real birthday cake with her own initials worked all over it in painted sugar and a lovely silver flag waving from the top.  The Infanta accordingly rose up with much dignity, and having given orders that the little dwarf was to dance again for her after the hour of siesta, and conveyed her thanks to the young Count of Tierra-Nueva for his charming reception, she went back to her apartments, the children following in the same order in which they had entered.


Now when the little Dwarf heard that he was to dance a second time before the Infanta, and by her own express command, he was so proud that he ran out into the garden, kissing the white rose in an absurd ecstasy of pleasure, and making the most uncouth and clumsy gestures of delight.

The Flowers were quite indignant at his daring to intrude into their beautiful home, and when they saw him capering up and down the walks, and waving his arms above his head in such a ridiculous manner, they could not restrain their feelings any longer.

‘He is really far too ugly to be allowed to play in any place where we are,’ cried the Tulips.

‘He should drink poppy-juice, and go to sleep for a thousand years,’ said the great scarlet Lilies, and they grew quite hot and angry.

‘He is a perfect horror!’ screamed the Cactus.  ‘Why, he is twisted and stumpy, and his head is completely out of proportion with his legs.  Really he makes me feel prickly all over, and if he comes near me I will sting him with my thorns.’

‘And he has actually got one of my best blooms,’ exclaimed the White Rose-Tree.  ‘I gave it to the Infanta this morning myself, as a birthday present, and he has stolen it from her.’  And she called out: ‘Thief, thief, thief!’ at the top of her voice.

Even the red Geraniums, who did not usually give themselves airs, and were known to have a great many poor relations themselves, curled up in disgust when they saw him, and when the Violets meekly remarked that though he was certainly extremely plain, still he could not help it, they retorted with a good deal of justice that that was his chief defect, and that there was no reason why one should admire a person because he was incurable; and, indeed, some of the Violets themselves felt that the ugliness of the little Dwarf was almost ostentatious, and that he would have shown much better taste if he had looked sad, or at least pensive, instead of jumping about merrily, and throwing himself into such grotesque and silly attitudes.

As for the old Sundial, who was an extremely remarkable individual, and had once told the time of day to no less a person than the Emperor Charles V. himself, he was so taken aback by the little Dwarf’s appearance, that he almost forgot to mark two whole minutes with his long shadowy finger, and could not help saying to the great milk-white Peacock, who was sunning herself on the balustrade, that every one knew that the children of Kings were Kings, and that the children of charcoal-burners were charcoal-burners, and that it was absurd to pretend that it wasn’t so; a statement with which the Peacock entirely agreed, and indeed screamed out, ‘Certainly, certainly,’ in such a loud, harsh voice, that the gold-fish who lived in the basin of the cool splashing fountain put their heads out of the water, and asked the huge stone Tritons what on earth was the matter.

But somehow the Birds liked him.  They had seen him often in the forest, dancing about like an elf after the eddying leaves, or crouched up in the hollow of some old oak-tree, sharing his nuts with the squirrels.  They did not mind his being ugly, a bit.  Why, even the nightingale herself, who sang so sweetly in the orange groves at night that sometimes the Moon leaned down to listen, was not much to look at after all; and, besides, he had been kind to them, and during that terribly bitter winter, when there were no berries on the trees, and the ground was as hard as iron, and the wolves had come down to the very gates of the city to look for food, he had never once forgotten them, but had always given them crumbs out of his little hunch of black bread, and divided with them whatever poor breakfast he had.

So they flew round and round him, just touching his cheek with their wings as they passed, and chattered to each other, and the little Dwarf was so pleased that he could not help showing them the beautiful white rose, and telling them that the Infanta herself had given it to him because she loved him.

They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

The Lizards also took an immense fancy to him, and when he grew tired of running about and flung himself down on the grass to rest, they played and romped all over him, and tried to amuse him in the best way they could.  ‘Every one cannot be as beautiful as a lizard,’ they cried; ‘that would be too much to expect.  And, though it sounds absurd to say so, he is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one’s eyes, and does not look at him.’  The Lizards were extremely philosophical by nature, and often sat thinking for hours and hours together, when there was nothing else to do, or when the weather was too rainy for them to go out.

The Flowers, however, were excessively annoyed at their behaviour, and at the behaviour of the birds.  ‘It only shows,’ they said, ‘what a vulgarising effect this incessant rushing and flying about has.  Well-bred people always stay exactly in the same place, as we do.  No one ever saw us hopping up and down the walks, or galloping madly through the grass after dragon-flies.  When we do want change of air, we send for the gardener, and he carries us to another bed.  This is dignified, and as it should be.  But birds and lizards have no sense of repose, and indeed birds have not even a permanent address.  They are mere vagrants like the gipsies, and should be treated in exactly the same manner.’  So they put their noses in the air, and looked very haughty, and were quite delighted when after some time they saw the little Dwarf scramble up from the grass, and make his way across the terrace to the palace.

‘He should certainly be kept indoors for the rest of his natural life,’ they said.  ‘Look at his hunched back, and his crooked legs,’ and they began to titter.

But the little Dwarf knew nothing of all this.  He liked the birds and the lizards immensely, and thought that the flowers were the most marvellous things in the whole world, except of course the Infanta, but then she had given him the beautiful white rose, and she loved him, and that made a great difference.  How he wished that he had gone back with her!  She would have put him on her right hand, and smiled at him, and he would have never left her side, but would have made her his playmate, and taught her all kinds of delightful tricks.  For though he had never been in a palace before, he knew a great many wonderful things.  He could make little cages out of rushes for the grasshoppers to sing in, and fashion the long jointed bamboo into the pipe that Pan loves to hear.  He knew the cry of every bird, and could call the starlings from the tree-top, or the heron from the mere.  He knew the trail of every animal, and could track the hare by its delicate footprints, and the boar by the trampled leaves.  All the wild-dances he knew, the mad dance in red raiment with the autumn, the light dance in blue sandals over the corn, the dance with white snow-wreaths in winter, and the blossom-dance through the orchards in spring.  He knew where the wood-pigeons built their nests, and once when a fowler had snared the parent birds, he had brought up the young ones himself, and had built a little dovecot for them in the cleft of a pollard elm.  They were quite tame, and used to feed out of his hands every morning.  She would like them, and the rabbits that scurried about in the long fern, and the jays with their steely feathers and black bills, and the hedgehogs that could curl themselves up into prickly balls, and the great wise tortoises that crawled slowly about, shaking their heads and nibbling at the young leaves.  Yes, she must certainly come to the forest and play with him.  He would give her his own little bed, and would watch outside the window till dawn, to see that the wild horned cattle did not harm her, nor the gaunt wolves creep too near the hut.  And at dawn he would tap at the shutters and wake her, and they would go out and dance together all the day long.  It was really not a bit lonely in the forest.  Sometimes a Bishop rode through on his white mule, reading out of a painted book.  Sometimes in their green velvet caps, and their jerkins of tanned deerskin, the falconers passed by, with hooded hawks on their wrists.  At vintage-time came the grape-treaders, with purple hands and feet, wreathed with glossy ivy and carrying dripping skins of wine; and the charcoal-burners sat round their huge braziers at night, watching the dry logs charring slowly in the fire, and roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the robbers came out of their caves and made merry with them.  Once, too, he had seen a beautiful procession winding up the long dusty road to Toledo.  The monks went in front singing sweetly, and carrying bright banners and crosses of gold, and then, in silver armour, with matchlocks and pikes, came the soldiers, and in their midst walked three barefooted men, in strange yellow dresses painted all over with wonderful figures, and carrying lighted candles in their hands.  Certainly there was a great deal to look at in the forest, and when she was tired he would find a soft bank of moss for her, or carry her in his arms, for he was very strong, though he knew that he was not tall.  He would make her a necklace of red bryony berries, that would be quite as pretty as the white berries that she wore on her dress, and when she was tired of them, she could throw them away, and he would find her others.  He would bring her acorn-cups and dew-drenched anemones, and tiny glow-worms to be stars in the pale gold of her hair.

But where was she?  He asked the white rose, and it made him no answer.  The whole palace seemed asleep, and even where the shutters had not been closed, heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows to keep out the glare.  He wandered all round looking for some place through which he might gain an entrance, and at last he caught sight of a little private door that was lying open.  He slipped through, and found himself in a splendid hall, far more splendid, he feared, than the forest, there was so much more gilding everywhere, and even the floor was made of great coloured stones, fitted together into a sort of geometrical pattern.  But the little Infanta was not there, only some wonderful white statues that looked down on him from their jasper pedestals, with sad blank eyes and strangely smiling lips.

At the end of the hall hung a richly embroidered curtain of black velvet, powdered with suns and stars, the King’s favourite devices, and broidered on the colour he loved best.  Perhaps she was hiding behind that?  He would try at any rate.

So he stole quietly across, and drew it aside.  No; there was only another room, though a prettier room, he thought, than the one he had just left.  The walls were hung with a many-figured green arras of needle-wrought tapestry representing a hunt, the work of some Flemish artists who had spent more than seven years in its composition.  It had once been the chamber of Jean le Fou, as he was called, that mad King who was so enamoured of the chase, that he had often tried in his delirium to mount the huge rearing horses, and to drag down the stag on which the great hounds were leaping, sounding his hunting horn, and stabbing with his dagger at the pale flying deer.  It was now used as the council-room, and on the centre table were lying the red portfolios of the ministers, stamped with the gold tulips of Spain, and with the arms and emblems of the house of Hapsburg.

The little Dwarf looked in wonder all round him, and was half-afraid to go on.  The strange silent horsemen that galloped so swiftly through the long glades without making any noise, seemed to him like those terrible phantoms of whom he had heard the charcoal-burners speaking - the Comprachos, who hunt only at night, and if they meet a man, turn him into a hind, and chase him.  But he thought of the pretty Infanta, and took courage.  He wanted to find her alone, and to tell her that he too loved her.  Perhaps she was in the room beyond.

He ran across the soft Moorish carpets, and opened the door.  No!  She was not here either.  The room was quite empty.

It was a throne-room, used for the reception of foreign ambassadors, when the King, which of late had not been often, consented to give them a personal audience; the same room in which, many years before, envoys had appeared from England to make arrangements for the marriage of their Queen, then one of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe, with the Emperor’s eldest son.  The hangings were of gilt Cordovan leather, and a heavy gilt chandelier with branches for three hundred wax lights hung down from the black and white ceiling.  Underneath a great canopy of gold cloth, on which the lions and towers of Castile were broidered in seed pearls, stood the throne itself, covered with a rich pall of black velvet studded with silver tulips and elaborately fringed with silver and pearls.  On the second step of the throne was placed the kneeling-stool of the Infanta, with its cushion of cloth of silver tissue, and below that again, and beyond the limit of the canopy, stood the chair for the Papal Nuncio, who alone had the right to be seated in the King’s presence on the occasion of any public ceremonial, and whose Cardinal’s hat, with its tangled scarlet tassels, lay on a purple tabouret in front.  On the wall, facing the throne, hung a life-sized portrait of Charles V. in hunting dress, with a great mastiff by his side, and a picture of Philip II. receiving the homage of the Netherlands occupied the centre of the other wall.  Between the windows stood a black ebony cabinet, inlaid with plates of ivory, on which the figures from Holbein’s Dance of Death had been graved - by the hand, some said, of that famous master himself.

But the little Dwarf cared nothing for all this magnificence.  He would not have given his rose for all the pearls on the canopy, nor one white petal of his rose for the throne itself.  What he wanted was to see the Infanta before she went down to the pavilion, and to ask her to come away with him when he had finished his dance.  Here, in the Palace, the air was close and heavy, but in the forest the wind blew free, and the sunlight with wandering hands of gold moved the tremulous leaves aside.  There were flowers, too, in the forest, not so splendid, perhaps, as the flowers in the garden, but more sweetly scented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and irises lilac and gold.  There were grey catkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted cells.  The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty.  Yes: surely she would come if he could only find her!  She would come with him to the fair forest, and all day long he would dance for her delight.  A smile lit up his eyes at the thought, and he passed into the next room.

Of all the rooms this was the brightest and the most beautiful.  The walls were covered with a pink-flowered Lucca damask, patterned with birds and dotted with dainty blossoms of silver; the furniture was of massive silver, festooned with florid wreaths, and swinging Cupids; in front of the two large fire-places stood great screens broidered with parrots and peacocks, and the floor, which was of sea-green onyx, seemed to stretch far away into the distance.  Nor was he alone.  Standing under the shadow of the doorway, at the extreme end of the room, he saw a little figure watching him.  His heart trembled, a cry of joy broke from his lips, and he moved out into the sunlight.  As he did so, the figure moved out also, and he saw it plainly.

The Infanta!  It was a monster, the most grotesque monster he had ever beheld.  Not properly shaped, as all other people were, but hunchbacked, and crooked-limbed, with huge lolling head and mane of black hair.  The little Dwarf frowned, and the monster frowned also.  He laughed, and it laughed with him, and held its hands to its sides, just as he himself was doing.  He made it a mocking bow, and it returned him a low reverence.  He went towards it, and it came to meet him, copying each step that he made, and stopping when he stopped himself.  He shouted with amusement, and ran forward, and reached out his hand, and the hand of the monster touched his, and it was as cold as ice.  He grew afraid, and moved his hand across, and the monster’s hand followed it quickly.  He tried to press on, but something smooth and hard stopped him.  The face of the monster was now close to his own, and seemed full of terror.  He brushed his hair off his eyes.  It imitated him.  He struck at it, and it returned blow for blow.  He loathed it, and it made hideous faces at him.  He drew back, and it retreated.

What is it?  He thought for a moment, and looked round at the rest of the room.  It was strange, but everything seemed to have its double in this invisible wall of clear water.  Yes, picture for picture was repeated, and couch for couch.  The sleeping Faun that lay in the alcove by the doorway had its twin brother that slumbered, and the silver Venus that stood in the sunlight held out her arms to a Venus as lovely as herself.

Was it Echo?  He had called to her once in the valley, and she had answered him word for word.  Could she mock the eye, as she mocked the voice?  Could she make a mimic world just like the real world?  Could the shadows of things have colour and life and movement?  Could it be that - ?

He started, and taking from his breast the beautiful white rose, he turned round, and kissed it.  The monster had a rose of its own, petal for petal the same!  It kissed it with like kisses, and pressed it to its heart with horrible gestures.

When the truth dawned upon him, he gave a wild cry of despair, and fell sobbing to the ground.  So it was he who was misshapen and hunchbacked, foul to look at and grotesque.  He himself was the monster, and it was at him that all the children had been laughing, and the little Princess who he had thought loved him - she too had been merely mocking at his ugliness, and making merry over his twisted limbs.  Why had they not left him in the forest, where there was no mirror to tell him how loathsome he was?  Why had his father not killed him, rather than sell him to his shame?  The hot tears poured down his cheeks, and he tore the white rose to pieces.  The sprawling monster did the same, and scattered the faint petals in the air.  It grovelled on the ground, and, when he looked at it, it watched him with a face drawn with pain.  He crept away, lest he should see it, and covered his eyes with his hands.  He crawled, like some wounded thing, into the shadow, and lay there moaning.

And at that moment the Infanta herself came in with her companions through the open window, and when they saw the ugly little dwarf lying on the ground and beating the floor with his clenched hands, in the most fantastic and exaggerated manner, they went off into shouts of happy laughter, and stood all round him and watched him.

‘His dancing was funny,’ said the Infanta; ‘but his acting is funnier still.  Indeed he is almost as good as the puppets, only of course not quite so natural.’  And she fluttered her big fan, and applauded.

But the little Dwarf never looked up, and his sobs grew fainter and fainter, and suddenly he gave a curious gasp, and clutched his side.  And then he fell back again, and lay quite still.

‘That is capital,’ said the Infanta, after a pause; ‘but now you must dance for me.’

‘Yes,’ cried all the children, ‘you must get up and dance, for you are as clever as the Barbary apes, and much more ridiculous.’  But the little Dwarf made no answer.

And the Infanta stamped her foot, and called out to her uncle, who was walking on the terrace with the Chamberlain, reading some despatches that had just arrived from Mexico, where the Holy Office had recently been established.  ‘My funny little dwarf is sulking,’ she cried, ‘you must wake him up, and tell him to dance for me.’

They smiled at each other, and sauntered in, and Don Pedro stooped down, and slapped the Dwarf on the cheek with his embroidered glove.  ‘You must dance,’ he said, ‘petit monsire.  You must dance.  The Infanta of Spain and the Indies wishes to be amused.’

But the little Dwarf never moved.

‘A whipping master should be sent for,’ said Don Pedro wearily, and he went back to the terrace.  But the Chamberlain looked grave, and he knelt beside the little dwarf, and put his hand upon his heart.  And after a few moments he shrugged his shoulders, and rose up, and having made a low bow to the Infanta, he said -

‘Mi bella Princesa, your funny little dwarf will never dance again.  It is a pity, for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile.’

‘But why will he not dance again?’ asked the Infanta, laughing.

‘Because his heart is broken,’ answered the Chamberlain.

And the Infanta frowned, and her dainty rose-leaf lips curled in pretty disdain.  ‘For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts,’ she cried, and she ran out into the garden.

The Fisherman And His Soul




[To H.S.H. Alice, Princess Of Monaco]


Every evening the young Fisherman went out upon the sea, and threw his nets into the water.

When the wind blew from the land he caught nothing, or but little at best, for it was a bitter and black-winged wind, and rough waves rose up to meet it.  But when the wind blew to the shore, the fish came in from the deep, and swam into the meshes of his nets, and he took them to the market-place and sold them.

Every evening he went out upon the sea, and one evening the net was so heavy that hardly could he draw it into the boat.  And he laughed, and said to himself, ‘Surely I have caught all the fish that swim, or snared some dull monster that will be a marvel to men, or some thing of horror that the great Queen will desire,’ and putting forth all his strength, he tugged at the coarse ropes till, like lines of blue enamel round a vase of bronze, the long veins rose up on his arms.  He tugged at the thin ropes, and nearer and nearer came the circle of flat corks, and the net rose at last to the top of the water.

But no fish at all was in it, nor any monster or thing of horror, but only a little Mermaid lying fast asleep.

Her hair was as a wet fleece of gold, and each separate hair as a thread of fine gold in a cup of glass.  Her body was as white ivory, and her tail was of silver and pearl.  Silver and pearl was her tail, and the green weeds of the sea coiled round it; and like sea-shells were her ears, and her lips were like sea-coral.  The cold waves dashed over her cold breasts, and the salt glistened upon her eyelids.

So beautiful was she that when the young Fisherman saw her he was filled with wonder, and he put out his hand and drew the net close to him, and leaning over the side he clasped her in his arms.  And when he touched her, she gave a cry like a startled sea-gull, and woke, and looked at him in terror with her mauve-amethyst eyes, and struggled that she might escape.  But he held her tightly to him, and would not suffer her to depart.

And when she saw that she could in no way escape from him, she began to weep, and said, ‘I pray thee let me go, for I am the only daughter of a King, and my father is aged and alone.’

But the young Fisherman answered, ‘I will not let thee go save thou makest me a promise that whenever I call thee, thou wilt come and sing to me, for the fish delight to listen to the song of the Sea-folk, and so shall my nets be full.’

‘Wilt thou in very truth let me go, if I promise thee this?’ cried the Mermaid.

‘In very truth I will let thee go,’ said the young Fisherman.

So she made him the promise he desired, and sware it by the oath of the Sea-folk.  And he loosened his arms from about her, and she sank down into the water, trembling with a strange fear.


Every evening the young Fisherman went out upon the sea, and called to the Mermaid, and she rose out of the water and sang to him.  Round and round her swam the dolphins, and the wild gulls wheeled above her head.

And she sang a marvellous song.  For she sang of the Sea-folk who drive their flocks from cave to cave, and carry the little calves on their shoulders; of the Tritons who have long green beards, and hairy breasts, and blow through twisted conchs when the King passes by; of the palace of the King which is all of amber, with a roof of clear emerald, and a pavement of bright pearl; and of the gardens of the sea where the great filigrane fans of coral wave all day long, and the fish dart about like silver birds, and the anemones cling to the rocks, and the pinks bourgeon in the ribbed yellow sand.  She sang of the big whales that come down from the north seas and have sharp icicles hanging to their fins; of the Sirens who tell of such wonderful things that the merchants have to stop their ears with wax lest they should hear them, and leap into the water and be drowned; of the sunken galleys with their tall masts, and the frozen sailors clinging to the rigging, and the mackerel swimming in and out of the open portholes; of the little barnacles who are great travellers, and cling to the keels of the ships and go round and round the world; and of the cuttlefish who live in the sides of the cliffs and stretch out their long black arms, and can make night come when they will it.  She sang of the nautilus who has a boat of her own that is carved out of an opal and steered with a silken sail; of the happy Mermen who play upon harps and can charm the great Kraken to sleep; of the little children who catch hold of the slippery porpoises and ride laughing upon their backs; of the Mermaids who lie in the white foam and hold out their arms to the mariners; and of the sea-lions with their curved tusks, and the sea-horses with their floating manes.

And as she sang, all the tunny-fish came in from the deep to listen to her, and the young Fisherman threw his nets round them and caught them, and others he took with a spear.  And when his boat was well-laden, the Mermaid would sink down into the sea, smiling at him.

Yet would she never come near him that he might touch her.  Oftentimes he called to her and prayed of her, but she would not; and when he sought to seize her she dived into the water as a seal might dive, nor did he see her again that day.  And each day the sound of her voice became sweeter to his ears.  So sweet was her voice that he forgot his nets and his cunning, and had no care of his craft.  Vermilion-finned and with eyes of bossy gold, the tunnies went by in shoals, but he heeded them not.  His spear lay by his side unused, and his baskets of plaited osier were empty.  With lips parted, and eyes dim with wonder, he sat idle in his boat and listened, listening till the sea-mists crept round him, and the wandering moon stained his brown limbs with silver.

And one evening he called to her, and said: ‘Little Mermaid, little Mermaid, I love thee.  Take me for thy bridegroom, for I love thee.’

But the Mermaid shook her head.  ‘Thou hast a human soul,’ she answered.  ‘If only thou wouldst send away thy soul, then could I love thee.’

And the young Fisherman said to himself, ‘Of what use is my soul to me?  I cannot see it.  I may not touch it.  I do not know it.  Surely I will send it away from me, and much gladness shall be mine.’  And a cry of joy broke from his lips, and standing up in the painted boat, he held out his arms to the Mermaid.  ‘I will send my soul away,’ he cried, ‘and you shall be my bride, and I will be thy bridegroom, and in the depth of the sea we will dwell together, and all that thou hast sung of thou shalt show me, and all that thou desirest I will do, nor shall our lives be divided.’

And the little Mermaid laughed for pleasure and hid her face in her hands.

‘But how shall I send my soul from me?’ cried the young Fisherman.  ‘Tell me how I may do it, and lo! it shall be done.’

‘Alas!  I know not,’ said the little Mermaid: ‘the Sea-folk have no souls.’  And she sank down into the deep, looking wistfully at him.


Now early on the next morning, before the sun was the span of a man’s hand above the hill, the young Fisherman went to the house of the Priest and knocked three times at the door.

The novice looked out through the wicket, and when he saw who it was, he drew back the latch and said to him, ‘Enter.’

And the young Fisherman passed in, and knelt down on the sweet-smelling rushes of the floor, and cried to the Priest who was reading out of the Holy Book and said to him, ‘Father, I am in love with one of the Sea-folk, and my soul hindereth me from having my desire.  Tell me how I can send my soul away from me, for in truth I have no need of it.  Of what value is my soul to me?  I cannot see it.  I may not touch it.  I do not know it.’

And the Priest beat his breast, and answered, ‘Alack, alack, thou art mad, or hast eaten of some poisonous herb, for the soul is the noblest part of man, and was given to us by God that we should nobly use it.  There is no thing more precious than a human soul, nor any earthly thing that can be weighed with it.  It is worth all the gold that is in the world, and is more precious than the rubies of the kings.  Therefore, my son, think not any more of this matter, for it is a sin that may not be forgiven.  And as for the Sea-folk, they are lost, and they who would traffic with them are lost also.  They are as the beasts of the field that know not good from evil, and for them the Lord has not died.’

The young Fisherman’s eyes filled with tears when he heard the bitter words of the Priest, and he rose up from his knees and said to him, ‘Father, the Fauns live in the forest and are glad, and on the rocks sit the Mermen with their harps of red gold.  Let me be as they are, I beseech thee, for their days are as the days of flowers.  And as for my soul, what doth my soul profit me, if it stand between me and the thing that I love?’

‘The love of the body is vile,’ cried the Priest, knitting his brows, ‘and vile and evil are the pagan things God suffers to wander through His world.  Accursed be the Fauns of the woodland, and accursed be the singers of the sea!  I have heard them at night-time, and they have sought to lure me from my beads.  They tap at the window, and laugh.  They whisper into my ears the tale of their perilous joys.  They tempt me with temptations, and when I would pray they make mouths at me.  They are lost, I tell thee, they are lost.  For them there is no heaven nor hell, and in neither shall they praise God’s name.’

‘Father,’ cried the young Fisherman, ‘thou knowest not what thou sayest.  Once in my net I snared the daughter of a King.  She is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon.  For her body I would give my soul, and for her love I would surrender heaven.  Tell me what I ask of thee, and let me go in peace.’

‘Away!  Away!’ cried the Priest: ‘thy leman is lost, and thou shalt be lost with her.’

And he gave him no blessing, but drove him from his door.

And the young Fisherman went down into the market-place, and he walked slowly, and with bowed head, as one who is in sorrow.

And when the merchants saw him coming, they began to whisper to each other, and one of them came forth to meet him, and called him by name, and said to him, ‘What hast thou to sell?’

‘I will sell thee my soul,’ he answered.  ‘I pray thee buy it of me, for I am weary of it.  Of what use is my soul to me?  I cannot see it.  I may not touch it.  I do not know it.’

But the merchants mocked at him, and said, ‘Of what use is a man’s soul to us?  It is not worth a clipped piece of silver.  Sell us thy body for a slave, and we will clothe thee in sea-purple, and put a ring upon thy finger, and make thee the minion of the great Queen.  But talk not of the soul, for to us it is nought, nor has it any value for our service.’

And the young Fisherman said to himself: ‘How strange a thing this is!  The Priest telleth me that the soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.’  And he passed out of the market-place, and went down to the shore of the sea, and began to ponder on what he should do.


And at noon he remembered how one of his companions, who was a gatherer of samphire, had told him of a certain young Witch who dwelt in a cave at the head of the bay and was very cunning in her witcheries.  And he set to and ran, so eager was he to get rid of his soul, and a cloud of dust followed him as he sped round the sand of the shore.  By the itching of her palm the young Witch knew his coming, and she laughed and let down her red hair.  With her red hair falling around her, she stood at the opening of the cave, and in her hand she had a spray of wild hemlock that was blossoming.

‘What d’ye lack?  What d’ye lack?’ she cried, as he came panting up the steep, and bent down before her.  ‘Fish for thy net, when the wind is foul?  I have a little reed-pipe, and when I blow on it the mullet come sailing into the bay.  But it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price.  What d’ye lack?  What d’ye lack?  A storm to wreck the ships, and wash the chests of rich treasure ashore?  I have more storms than the wind has, for I serve one who is stronger than the wind, and with a sieve and a pail of water I can send the great galleys to the bottom of the sea.  But I have a price, pretty boy, I have a price.  What d’ye lack?  What d’ye lack?  I know a flower that grows in the valley, none knows it but I.  It has purple leaves, and a star in its heart, and its juice is as white as milk.  Shouldst thou touch with this flower the hard lips of the Queen, she would follow thee all over the world.  Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee.  And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price.  What d’ye lack?  What d’ye lack?  I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man’s hand.  Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him.  With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death.  What d’ye lack?  What d’ye lack?  Tell me thy desire, and I will give it thee, and thou shalt pay me a price, pretty boy, thou shalt pay me a price.’

‘My desire is but for a little thing,’ said the young Fisherman, ‘yet hath the Priest been wroth with me, and driven me forth.  It is but for a little thing, and the merchants have mocked at me, and denied me.  Therefore am I come to thee, though men call thee evil, and whatever be thy price I shall pay it.’

‘What wouldst thou?’ asked the Witch, coming near to him.

‘I would send my soul away from me,’ answered the young Fisherman.

The Witch grew pale, and shuddered, and hid her face in her blue mantle.  ‘Pretty boy, pretty boy,’ she muttered, ‘that is a terrible thing to do.’

He tossed his brown curls and laughed.  ‘My soul is nought to me,’ he answered.  ‘I cannot see it.  I may not touch it.  I do not know it.’

‘What wilt thou give me if I tell thee?’ asked the Witch, looking down at him with her beautiful eyes.

‘Five pieces of gold,’ he said, ‘and my nets, and the wattled house where I live, and the painted boat in which I sail.  Only tell me how to get rid of my soul, and I will give thee all that I possess.’

She laughed mockingly at him, and struck him with the spray of hemlock.  ‘I can turn the autumn leaves into gold,’ she answered, ‘and I can weave the pale moonbeams into silver if I will it.  He whom I serve is richer than all the kings of this world, and has their dominions.’

‘What then shall I give thee,’ he cried, ‘if thy price be neither gold nor silver?’

The Witch stroked his hair with her thin white hand.  ‘Thou must dance with me, pretty boy,’ she murmured, and she smiled at him as she spoke.

‘Nought but that?’ cried the young Fisherman in wonder and he rose to his feet.

‘Nought but that,’ she answered, and she smiled at him again.

‘Then at sunset in some secret place we shall dance together,’ he said, ‘and after that we have danced thou shalt tell me the thing which I desire to know.’

She shook her head.  ‘When the moon is full, when the moon is full,’ she muttered.  Then she peered all round, and listened.  A blue bird rose screaming from its nest and circled over the dunes, and three spotted birds rustled through the coarse grey grass and whistled to each other.  There was no other sound save the sound of a wave fretting the smooth pebbles below.  So she reached out her hand, and drew him near to her and put her dry lips close to his ear.

‘To-night thou must come to the top of the mountain,’ she whispered.  ‘It is a Sabbath, and He will be there.’

The young Fisherman started and looked at her, and she showed her white teeth and laughed.  ‘Who is He of whom thou speakest?’ he asked.

‘It matters not,’ she answered.  ‘Go thou to-night, and stand under the branches of the hornbeam, and wait for my coming.  If a black dog run towards thee, strike it with a rod of willow, and it will go away.  If an owl speak to thee, make it no answer.  When the moon is full I shall be with thee, and we will dance together on the grass.’

‘But wilt thou swear to me to tell me how I may send my soul from me?’ he made question.

She moved out into the sunlight, and through her red hair rippled the wind.  ‘By the hoofs of the goat I swear it,’ she made answer.

‘Thou art the best of the witches,’ cried the young Fisherman, ‘and I will surely dance with thee to-night on the top of the mountain.  I would indeed that thou hadst asked of me either gold or silver.  But such as thy price is thou shalt have it, for it is but a little thing.’  And he doffed his cap to her, and bent his head low, and ran back to the town filled with a great joy.

And the Witch watched him as he went, and when he had passed from her sight she entered her cave, and having taken a mirror from a box of carved cedarwood, she set it up on a frame, and burned vervain on lighted charcoal before it, and peered through the coils of the smoke.  And after a time she clenched her hands in anger.  ‘He should have been mine,’ she muttered, ‘I am as fair as she is.’


And that evening, when the moon had risen, the young Fisherman climbed up to the top of the mountain, and stood under the branches of the hornbeam.  Like a targe of polished metal the round sea lay at his feet, and the shadows of the fishing-boats moved in the little bay.  A great owl, with yellow sulphurous eyes, called to him by his name, but he made it no answer.  A black dog ran towards him and snarled.  He struck it with a rod of willow, and it went away whining.

At midnight the witches came flying through the air like bats.  ‘Phew!’ they cried, as they lit upon the ground, ‘there is some one here we know not!’ and they sniffed about, and chattered to each other, and made signs.  Last of all came the young Witch, with her red hair streaming in the wind.  She wore a dress of gold tissue embroidered with peacocks’ eyes, and a little cap of green velvet was on her head.

‘Where is he, where is he?’ shrieked the witches when they saw her, but she only laughed, and ran to the hornbeam, and taking the Fisherman by the hand she led him out into the moonlight and began to dance.

Round and round they whirled, and the young Witch jumped so high that he could see the scarlet heels of her shoes.  Then right across the dancers came the sound of the galloping of a horse, but no horse was to be seen, and he felt afraid.

‘Faster,’ cried the Witch, and she threw her arms about his neck, and her breath was hot upon his face.  ‘Faster, faster!’ she cried, and the earth seemed to spin beneath his feet, and his brain grew troubled, and a great terror fell on him, as of some evil thing that was watching him, and at last he became aware that under the shadow of a rock there was a figure that had not been there before.

It was a man dressed in a suit of black velvet, cut in the Spanish fashion.  His face was strangely pale, but his lips were like a proud red flower.  He seemed weary, and was leaning back toying in a listless manner with the pommel of his dagger.  On the grass beside him lay a plumed hat, and a pair of riding-gloves gauntleted with gilt lace, and sewn with seed-pearls wrought into a curious device.  A short cloak lined with sables hang from his shoulder, and his delicate white hands were gemmed with rings.  Heavy eyelids drooped over his eyes.

The young Fisherman watched him, as one snared in a spell.  At last their eyes met, and wherever he danced it seemed to him that the eyes of the man were upon him.  He heard the Witch laugh, and caught her by the waist, and whirled her madly round and round.

Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man’s hands.  As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird’s wing touches the water and makes it laugh.  But there was disdain in it.  He kept looking at the young Fisherman.

‘Come! let us worship,’ whispered the Witch, and she led him up, and a great desire to do as she besought him seized on him, and he followed her.  But when he came close, and without knowing why he did it, he made on his breast the sign of the Cross, and called upon the holy name.

No sooner had he done so than the witches screamed like hawks and flew away, and the pallid face that had been watching him twitched with a spasm of pain.  The man went over to a little wood, and whistled.  A jennet with silver trappings came running to meet him.  As he leapt upon the saddle he turned round, and looked at the young Fisherman sadly.

And the Witch with the red hair tried to fly away also, but the Fisherman caught her by her wrists, and held her fast.

‘Loose me,’ she cried, ‘and let me go.  For thou hast named what should not be named, and shown the sign that may not be looked at.’

‘Nay,’ he answered, ‘but I will not let thee go till thou hast told me the secret.’

‘What secret?’ said the Witch, wrestling with him like a wild cat, and biting her foam-flecked lips.

‘Thou knowest,’ he made answer.

Her grass-green eyes grew dim with tears, and she said to the Fisherman, ‘Ask me anything but that!’

He laughed, and held her all the more tightly.

And when she saw that she could not free herself, she whispered to him, ‘Surely I am as fair as the daughters of the sea, and as comely as those that dwell in the blue waters,’ and she fawned on him and put her face close to his.

But he thrust her back frowning, and said to her, ‘If thou keepest not the promise that thou madest to me I will slay thee for a false witch.’

 She grew grey as a blossom of the Judas tree, and shuddered.  ‘Be it so,’ she muttered.  ‘It is thy soul and not mine.  Do with it as thou wilt.’  And she took from her girdle a little knife that had a handle of green viper’s skin, and gave it to him.

‘What shall this serve me?’ he asked of her, wondering.

She was silent for a few moments, and a look of terror came over her face.  Then she brushed her hair back from her forehead, and smiling strangely she said to him, ‘What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.  Stand on the sea-shore with thy back to the moon, and cut away from around thy feet thy shadow, which is thy soul’s body, and bid thy soul leave thee, and it will do so.’

The young Fisherman trembled.  ‘Is this true?’ he murmured.

‘It is true, and I would that I had not told thee of it,’ she cried, and she clung to his knees weeping.

He put her from him and left her in the rank grass, and going to the edge of the mountain he placed the knife in his belt and began to climb down.

And his Soul that was within him called out to him and said, ‘Lo!  I have dwelt with thee for all these years, and have been thy servant.  Send me not away from thee now, for what evil have I done thee?’

And the young Fisherman laughed.  ‘Thou hast done me no evil, but I have no need of thee,’ he answered.  ‘The world is wide, and there is Heaven also, and Hell, and that dim twilight house that lies between.  Go wherever thou wilt, but trouble me not, for my love is calling to me.’

And his Soul besought him piteously, but he heeded it not, but leapt from crag to crag, being sure-footed as a wild goat, and at last he reached the level ground and the yellow shore of the sea.

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim forms that did him homage.  Before him lay his shadow, which was the body of his soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air.

And his Soul said to him, ‘If indeed thou must drive me from thee, send me not forth without a heart.  The world is cruel, give me thy heart to take with me.’

He tossed his head and smiled.  ‘With what should I love my love if I gave thee my heart?’ he cried.

‘Nay, but be merciful,’ said his Soul: ‘give me thy heart, for the world is very cruel, and I am afraid.’

‘My heart is my love’s,’ he answered, ‘therefore tarry not, but get thee gone.’

‘Should I not love also?’ asked his Soul.

‘Get thee gone, for I have no need of thee,’ cried the young Fisherman, and he took the little knife with its handle of green viper’s skin, and cut away his shadow from around his feet, and it rose up and stood before him, and looked at him, and it was even as himself.

He crept back, and thrust the knife into his belt, and a feeling of awe came over him.  ‘Get thee gone,’ he murmured, ‘and let me see thy face no more.’

‘Nay, but we must meet again,’ said the Soul.  Its voice was low and flute-like, and its lips hardly moved while it spake.

‘How shall we meet?’ cried the young Fisherman.  ‘Thou wilt not follow me into the depths of the sea?’

‘Once every year I will come to this place, and call to thee,’ said the Soul.  ‘It may be that thou wilt have need of me.’

‘What need should I have of thee?’ cried the young Fisherman, ‘but be it as thou wilt,’ and he plunged into the waters and the Tritons blew their horns and the little Mermaid rose up to meet him, and put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

And the Soul stood on the lonely beach and watched them.  And when they had sunk down into the sea, it went weeping away over the marshes.


And after a year was over the Soul came down to the shore of the sea and called to the young Fisherman, and he rose out of the deep, and said, ‘Why dost thou call to me?’

And the Soul answered, ‘Come nearer, that I may speak with thee, for I have seen marvellous things.’

So he came nearer, and couched in the shallow water, and leaned his head upon his hand and listened.


And the Soul said to him, ‘When I left thee I turned my face to the East and journeyed.  From the East cometh everything that is wise.  Six days I journeyed, and on the morning of the seventh day I came to a hill that is in the country of the Tartars.  I sat down under the shade of a tamarisk tree to shelter myself from the sun.  The land was dry and burnt up with the heat.  The people went to and fro over the plain like flies crawling upon a disk of polished copper.

‘When it was noon a cloud of red dust rose up from the flat rim of the land.  When the Tartars saw it, they strung their painted bows, and having leapt upon their little horses they galloped to meet it.  The women fled screaming to the waggons, and hid themselves behind the felt curtains.

‘At twilight the Tartars returned, but five of them were missing, and of those that came back not a few had been wounded.  They harnessed their horses to the waggons and drove hastily away.  Three jackals came out of a cave and peered after them.  Then they sniffed up the air with their nostrils, and trotted off in the opposite direction.

‘When the moon rose I saw a camp-fire burning on the plain, and went towards it.  A company of merchants were seated round it on carpets.  Their camels were picketed behind them, and the negroes who were their servants were pitching tents of tanned skin upon the sand, and making a high wall of the prickly pear.

‘As I came near them, the chief of the merchants rose up and drew his sword, and asked me my business.

‘I answered that I was a Prince in my own land, and that I had escaped from the Tartars, who had sought to make me their slave.  The chief smiled, and showed me five heads fixed upon long reeds of bamboo.

‘Then he asked me who was the prophet of God, and I answered him Mohammed.

‘When he heard the name of the false prophet, he bowed and took me by the hand, and placed me by his side.  A negro brought me some mare’s milk in a wooden dish, and a piece of lamb’s flesh roasted.

‘At daybreak we started on our journey.  I rode on a red-haired camel by the side of the chief, and a runner ran before us carrying a spear.  The men of war were on either hand, and the mules followed with the merchandise.  There were forty camels in the caravan, and the mules were twice forty in number.

‘We went from the country of the Tartars into the country of those who curse the Moon.  We saw the Gryphons guarding their gold on the white rocks, and the scaled Dragons sleeping in their caves.  As we passed over the mountains we held our breath lest the snows might fall on us, and each man tied a veil of gauze before his eyes.  As we passed through the valleys the Pygmies shot arrows at us from the hollows of the trees, and at night-time we heard the wild men beating on their drums.  When we came to the Tower of Apes we set fruits before them, and they did not harm us.  When we came to the Tower of Serpents we gave them warm milk in howls of brass, and they let us go by.  Three times in our journey we came to the banks of the Oxus.  We crossed it on rafts of wood with great bladders of blown hide.  The river-horses raged against us and sought to slay us.  When the camels saw them they trembled.

‘The kings of each city levied tolls on us, but would not suffer us to enter their gates.  They threw us bread over the walls, little maize-cakes baked in honey and cakes of fine flour filled with dates.  For every hundred baskets we gave them a bead of amber.

‘When the dwellers in the villages saw us coming, they poisoned the wells and fled to the hill-summits.  We fought with the Magadae who are born old, and grow younger and younger every year, and die when they are little children; and with the Laktroi who say that they are the sons of tigers, and paint themselves yellow and black; and with the Aurantes who bury their dead on the tops of trees, and themselves live in dark caverns lest the Sun, who is their god, should slay them; and with the Krimnians who worship a crocodile, and give it earrings of green glass, and feed it with butter and fresh fowls; and with the Agazonbae, who are dog-faced; and with the Sibans, who have horses’ feet, and run more swiftly than horses.  A third of our company died in battle, and a third died of want.  The rest murmured against me, and said that I had brought them an evil fortune.  I took a horned adder from beneath a stone and let it sting me.  When they saw that I did not sicken they grew afraid.

‘In the fourth month we reached the city of Illel.  It was night-time when we came to the grove that is outside the walls, and the air was sultry, for the Moon was travelling in Scorpion.  We took the ripe pomegranates from the trees, and brake them, and drank their sweet juices.  Then we lay down on our carpets, and waited for the dawn.

‘And at dawn we rose and knocked at the gate of the city.  It was wrought out of red bronze, and carved with sea-dragons and dragons that have wings.  The guards looked down from the battlements and asked us our business.  The interpreter of the caravan answered that we had come from the island of Syria with much merchandise.  They took hostages, and told us that they would open the gate to us at noon, and bade us tarry till then.

‘When it was noon they opened the gate, and as we entered in the people came crowding out of the houses to look at us, and a crier went round the city crying through a shell.  We stood in the market-place, and the negroes uncorded the bales of figured cloths and opened the carved chests of sycamore.  And when they had ended their task, the merchants set forth their strange wares, the waxed linen from Egypt and the painted linen from the country of the Ethiops, the purple sponges from Tyre and the blue hangings from Sidon, the cups of cold amber and the fine vessels of glass and the curious vessels of burnt clay.  From the roof of a house a company of women watched us.  One of them wore a mask of gilded leather.

‘And on the first day the priests came and bartered with us, and on the second day came the nobles, and on the third day came the craftsmen and the slaves.  And this is their custom with all merchants as long as they tarry in the city.

‘And we tarried for a moon, and when the moon was waning, I wearied and wandered away through the streets of the city and came to the garden of its god.  The priests in their yellow robes moved silently through the green trees, and on a pavement of black marble stood the rose-red house in which the god had his dwelling.  Its doors were of powdered lacquer, and bulls and peacocks were wrought on them in raised and polished gold.  The tilted roof was of sea-green porcelain, and the jutting eaves were festooned with little bells.  When the white doves flew past, they struck the bells with their wings and made them tinkle.

‘In front of the temple was a pool of clear water paved with veined onyx.  I lay down beside it, and with my pale fingers I touched the broad leaves.  One of the priests came towards me and stood behind me.  He had sandals on his feet, one of soft serpent-skin and the other of birds’ plumage.  On his head was a mitre of black felt decorated with silver crescents.  Seven yellows were woven into his robe, and his frizzed hair was stained with antimony.

‘After a little while he spake to me, and asked me my desire.

‘I told him that my desire was to see the god.

‘“The god is hunting,” said the priest, looking strangely at me with his small slanting eyes.

‘“Tell me in what forest, and I will ride with him,” I answered.

‘He combed out the soft fringes of his tunic with his long pointed nails.  “The god is asleep,” he murmured.

‘“Tell me on what couch, and I will watch by him,” I answered.

‘“The god is at the feast,” he cried.

‘“If the wine be sweet I will drink it with him, and if it be bitter I will drink it with him also,” was my answer.

‘He bowed his head in wonder, and, taking me by the hand, he raised me up, and led me into the temple.

‘And in the first chamber I saw an idol seated on a throne of jasper bordered with great orient pearls.  It was carved out of ebony, and in stature was of the stature of a man.  On its forehead was a ruby, and thick oil dripped from its hair on to its thighs.  Its feet were red with the blood of a newly-slain kid, and its loins girt with a copper belt that was studded with seven beryls.

‘And I said to the priest, “Is this the god?”  And he answered me, “This is the god.”

‘“Show me the god,” I cried, “or I will surely slay thee.”  And I touched his hand, and it became withered.

‘And the priest besought me, saying, “Let my lord heal his servant, and I will show him the god.”

‘So I breathed with my breath upon his hand, and it became whole again, and he trembled and led me into the second chamber, and I saw an idol standing on a lotus of jade hung with great emeralds.  It was carved out of ivory, and in stature was twice the stature of a man.  On its forehead was a chrysolite, and its breasts were smeared with myrrh and cinnamon.  In one hand it held a crooked sceptre of jade, and in the other a round crystal.  It ware buskins of brass, and its thick neck was circled with a circle of selenites.

‘And I said to the priest, “Is this the god?”

‘And he answered me, “This is the god.”

‘“Show me the god,” I cried, “or I will surely slay thee.”  And I touched his eyes, and they became blind.

‘And the priest besought me, saying, “Let my lord heal his servant, and I will show him the god.”

‘So I breathed with my breath upon his eyes, and the sight came back to them, and he trembled again, and led me into the third chamber, and lo! there was no idol in it, nor image of any kind, but only a mirror of round metal set on an altar of stone.

‘And I said to the priest, “Where is the god?”

‘And he answered me: “There is no god but this mirror that thou seest, for this is the Mirror of Wisdom.  And it reflecteth all things that are in heaven and on earth, save only the face of him who looketh into it.  This it reflecteth not, so that he who looketh into it may be wise.  Many other mirrors are there, but they are mirrors of Opinion.  This only is the Mirror of Wisdom.  And they who possess this mirror know everything, nor is there anything hidden from them.  And they who possess it not have not Wisdom.  Therefore is it the god, and we worship it.”  And I looked into the mirror, and it was even as he had said to me.

‘And I did a strange thing, but what I did matters not, for in a valley that is but a day’s journey from this place have I hidden the Mirror of Wisdom.  Do but suffer me to enter into thee again and be thy servant, and thou shalt be wiser than all the wise men, and Wisdom shall be thine.  Suffer me to enter into thee, and none will be as wise as thou.’

But the young Fisherman laughed.  ‘Love is better than Wisdom,’ he cried, ‘and the little Mermaid loves me.’

‘Nay, but there is nothing better than Wisdom,’ said the Soul.

‘Love is better,’ answered the young Fisherman, and he plunged into the deep, and the Soul went weeping away over the marshes.


And after the second year was over, the Soul came down to the shore of the sea, and called to the young Fisherman, and he rose out of the deep and said, ‘Why dost thou call to me?’

And the Soul answered, ‘Come nearer, that I may speak with thee, for I have seen marvellous things.’

So he came nearer, and couched in the shallow water, and leaned his head upon his hand and listened.

And the Soul said to him, ‘When I left thee, I turned my face to the South and journeyed.  From the South cometh everything that is precious.  Six days I journeyed along the highways that lead to the city of Ashter, along the dusty red-dyed highways by which the pilgrims are wont to go did I journey, and on the morning of the seventh day I lifted up my eyes, and lo! the city lay at my feet, for it is in a valley.

‘There are nine gates to this city, and in front of each gate stands a bronze horse that neighs when the Bedouins come down from the mountains.  The walls are cased with copper, and the watch-towers on the walls are roofed with brass.  In every tower stands an archer with a bow in his hand.  At sunrise he strikes with an arrow on a gong, and at sunset he blows through a horn of horn.

‘When I sought to enter, the guards stopped me and asked of me who I was.  I made answer that I was a Dervish and on my way to the city of Mecca, where there was a green veil on which the Koran was embroidered in silver letters by the hands of the angels.  They were filled with wonder, and entreated me to pass in.

‘Inside it is even as a bazaar.  Surely thou shouldst have been with me.  Across the narrow streets the gay lanterns of paper flutter like large butterflies.  When the wind blows over the roofs they rise and fall as painted bubbles do.  In front of their booths sit the merchants on silken carpets.  They have straight black beards, and their turbans are covered with golden sequins, and long strings of amber and carved peach-stones glide through their cool fingers.  Some of them sell galbanum and nard, and curious perfumes from the islands of the Indian Sea, and the thick oil of red roses, and myrrh and little nail-shaped cloves.  When one stops to speak to them, they throw pinches of frankincense upon a charcoal brazier and make the air sweet.  I saw a Syrian who held in his hands a thin rod like a reed.  Grey threads of smoke came from it, and its odour as it burned was as the odour of the pink almond in spring.  Others sell silver bracelets embossed all over with creamy blue turquoise stones, and anklets of brass wire fringed with little pearls, and tigers’ claws set in gold, and the claws of that gilt cat, the leopard, set in gold also, and earrings of pierced emerald, and finger-rings of hollowed jade.  From the tea-houses comes the sound of the guitar, and the opium-smokers with their white smiling faces look out at the passers-by.

‘Of a truth thou shouldst have been with me.  The wine-sellers elbow their way through the crowd with great black skins on their shoulders.  Most of them sell the wine of Schiraz, which is as sweet as honey.  They serve it in little metal cups and strew rose leaves upon it.  In the market-place stand the fruitsellers, who sell all kinds of fruit: ripe figs, with their bruised purple flesh, melons, smelling of musk and yellow as topazes, citrons and rose-apples and clusters of white grapes, round red-gold oranges, and oval lemons of green gold.  Once I saw an elephant go by.  Its trunk was painted with vermilion and turmeric, and over its ears it had a net of crimson silk cord.  It stopped opposite one of the booths and began eating the oranges, and the man only laughed.  Thou canst not think how strange a people they are.  When they are glad they go to the bird-sellers and buy of them a caged bird, and set it free that their joy may be greater, and when they are sad they scourge themselves with thorns that their sorrow may not grow less.

‘One evening I met some negroes carrying a heavy palanquin through the bazaar.  It was made of gilded bamboo, and the poles were of vermilion lacquer studded with brass peacocks.  Across the windows hung thin curtains of muslin embroidered with beetles’ wings and with tiny seed-pearls, and as it passed by a pale-faced Circassian looked out and smiled at me.  I followed behind, and the negroes hurried their steps and scowled.  But I did not care.  I felt a great curiosity come over me.

‘At last they stopped at a square white house.  There were no windows to it, only a little door like the door of a tomb.  They set down the palanquin and knocked three times with a copper hammer.  An Armenian in a caftan of green leather peered through the wicket, and when he saw them he opened, and spread a carpet on the ground, and the woman stepped out.  As she went in, she turned round and smiled at me again.  I had never seen any one so pale.

‘When the moon rose I returned to the same place and sought for the house, but it was no longer there.  When I saw that, I knew who the woman was, and wherefore she had smiled at me.

‘Certainly thou shouldst have been with me.  On the feast of the New Moon the young Emperor came forth from his palace and went into the mosque to pray.  His hair and beard were dyed with rose-leaves, and his cheeks were powdered with a fine gold dust.  The palms of his feet and hands were yellow with saffron.

‘At sunrise he went forth from his palace in a robe of silver, and at sunset he returned to it again in a robe of gold.  The people flung themselves on the ground and hid their faces, but I would not do so.  I stood by the stall of a seller of dates and waited.  When the Emperor saw me, he raised his painted eyebrows and stopped.  I stood quite still, and made him no obeisance.  The people marvelled at my boldness, and counselled me to flee from the city.  I paid no heed to them, but went and sat with the sellers of strange gods, who by reason of their craft are abominated.  When I told them what I had done, each of them gave me a god and prayed me to leave them.

‘That night, as I lay on a cushion in the tea-house that is in the Street of Pomegranates, the guards of the Emperor entered and led me to the palace.  As I went in they closed each door behind me, and put a chain across it.  Inside was a great court with an arcade running all round.  The walls were of white alabaster, set here and there with blue and green tiles.  The pillars were of green marble, and the pavement of a kind of peach-blossom marble.  I had never seen anything like it before.

‘As I passed across the court two veiled women looked down from a balcony and cursed me.  The guards hastened on, and the butts of the lances rang upon the polished floor.  They opened a gate of wrought ivory, and I found myself in a watered garden of seven terraces.  It was planted with tulip-cups and moonflowers, and silver-studded aloes.  Like a slim reed of crystal a fountain hung in the dusky air.  The cypress-trees were like burnt-out torches.  From one of them a nightingale was singing.

‘At the end of the garden stood a little pavilion.  As we approached it two eunuchs came out to meet us.  Their fat bodies swayed as they walked, and they glanced curiously at me with their yellow-lidded eyes.  One of them drew aside the captain of the guard, and in a low voice whispered to him.  The other kept munching scented pastilles, which he took with an affected gesture out of an oval box of lilac enamel.

‘After a few moments the captain of the guard dismissed the soldiers.  They went back to the palace, the eunuchs following slowly behind and plucking the sweet mulberries from the trees as they passed.  Once the elder of the two turned round, and smiled at me with an evil smile.

‘Then the captain of the guard motioned me towards the entrance of the pavilion.  I walked on without trembling, and drawing the heavy curtain aside I entered in.

‘The young Emperor was stretched on a couch of dyed lion skins, and a gerfalcon perched upon his wrist.  Behind him stood a brass-turbaned Nubian, naked down to the waist, and with heavy earrings in his split ears.  On a table by the side of the couch lay a mighty scimitar of steel.

‘When the Emperor saw me he frowned, and said to me, “What is thy name?  Knowest thou not that I am Emperor of this city?”  But I made him no answer.

‘He pointed with his finger at the scimitar, and the Nubian seized it, and rushing forward struck at me with great violence.  The blade whizzed through me, and did me no hurt.  The man fell sprawling on the floor, and when he rose up his teeth chattered with terror and he hid himself behind the couch.

‘The Emperor leapt to his feet, and taking a lance from a stand of arms, he threw it at me.  I caught it in its flight, and brake the shaft into two pieces.  He shot at me with an arrow, but I held up my hands and it stopped in mid-air.  Then he drew a dagger from a belt of white leather, and stabbed the Nubian in the throat lest the slave should tell of his dishonour.  The man writhed like a trampled snake, and a red foam bubbled from his lips.

‘As soon as he was dead the Emperor turned to me, and when he had wiped away the bright sweat from his brow with a little napkin of purfled and purple silk, he said to me, “Art thou a prophet, that I may not harm thee, or the son of a prophet, that I can do thee no hurt?  I pray thee leave my city to-night, for while thou art in it I am no longer its lord.”

‘And I answered him, “I will go for half of thy treasure.  Give me half of thy treasure, and I will go away.”

‘He took me by the hand, and led me out into the garden.  When the captain of the guard saw me, he wondered.  When the eunuchs saw me, their knees shook and they fell upon the ground in fear.

‘There is a chamber in the palace that has eight walls of red porphyry, and a brass-sealed ceiling hung with lamps.  The Emperor touched one of the walls and it opened, and we passed down a corridor that was lit with many torches.  In niches upon each side stood great wine-jars filled to the brim with silver pieces.  When we reached the centre of the corridor the Emperor spake the word that may not be spoken, and a granite door swung back on a secret spring, and he put his hands before his face lest his eyes should be dazzled.

‘Thou couldst not believe how marvellous a place it was.  There were huge tortoise-shells full of pearls, and hollowed moonstones of great size piled up with red rubies.  The gold was stored in coffers of elephant-hide, and the gold-dust in leather bottles.  There were opals and sapphires, the former in cups of crystal, and the latter in cups of jade.  Round green emeralds were ranged in order upon thin plates of ivory, and in one corner were silk bags filled, some with turquoise-stones, and others with beryls.  The ivory horns were heaped with purple amethysts, and the horns of brass with chalcedonies and sards.  The pillars, which were of cedar, were hung with strings of yellow lynx-stones.  In the flat oval shields there were carbuncles, both wine-coloured and coloured like grass.  And yet I have told thee but a tithe of what was there.

‘And when the Emperor had taken away his hands from before his face he said to me: “This is my house of treasure, and half that is in it is thine, even as I promised to thee.  And I will give thee camels and camel drivers, and they shall do thy bidding and take thy share of the treasure to whatever part of the world thou desirest to go.  And the thing shall be done to-night, for I would not that the Sun, who is my father, should see that there is in my city a man whom I cannot slay.”

‘But I answered him, “The gold that is here is thine, and the silver also is thine, and thine are the precious jewels and the things of price.  As for me, I have no need of these.  Nor shall I take aught from thee but that little ring that thou wearest on the finger of thy hand.”

‘And the Emperor frowned.  “It is but a ring of lead,” he cried, “nor has it any value.  Therefore take thy half of the treasure and go from my city.”

‘“Nay,” I answered, “but I will take nought but that leaden ring, for I know what is written within it, and for what purpose.”

‘And the Emperor trembled, and besought me and said, “Take all the treasure and go from my city.  The half that is mine shall be thine also.”

‘And I did a strange thing, but what I did matters not, for in a cave that is but a day’s journey from this place have, I hidden the Ring of Riches.  It is but a day’s journey from this place, and it waits for thy coming.  He who has this Ring is richer than all the kings of the world.  Come therefore and take it, and the world’s riches shall be thine.’

But the young Fisherman laughed.  ‘Love is better than Riches,’ he cried, ‘and the little Mermaid loves me.’

‘Nay, but there is nothing better than Riches,’ said the Soul.

‘Love is better,’ answered the young Fisherman, and he plunged into the deep, and the Soul went weeping away over the marshes.


And after the third year was over, the Soul came down to the shore of the sea, and called to the young Fisherman, and he rose out of the deep and said, ‘Why dost thou call to me?’

And the Soul answered, ‘Come nearer, that I may speak with thee, for I have seen marvellous things.’

So he came nearer, and couched in the shallow water, and leaned his head upon his hand and listened.

And the Soul said to him, ‘In a city that I know of there is an inn that standeth by a river.  I sat there with sailors who drank of two different-coloured wines, and ate bread made of barley, and little salt fish served in bay leaves with vinegar.  And as we sat and made merry, there entered to us an old man bearing a leathern carpet and a lute that had two horns of amber.  And when he had laid out the carpet on the floor, he struck with a quill on the wire strings of his lute, and a girl whose face was veiled ran in and began to dance before us.  Her face was veiled with a veil of gauze, but her feet were naked.  Naked were her feet, and they moved over the carpet like little white pigeons.  Never have I seen anything so marvellous; and the city in which she dances is but a day’s journey from this place.’

Now when the young Fisherman heard the words of his Soul, he remembered that the little Mermaid had no feet and could not dance.  And a great desire came over him, and he said to himself, ‘It is but a day’s journey, and I can return to my love,’ and he laughed, and stood up in the shallow water, and strode towards the shore.

And when he had reached the dry shore he laughed again, and held out his arms to his Soul.  And his Soul gave a great cry of joy and ran to meet him, and entered into him, and the young Fisherman saw stretched before him upon the sand that shadow of the body that is the body of the Soul.

And his Soul said to him, ‘Let us not tarry, but get hence at once, for the Sea-gods are jealous, and have monsters that do their bidding.’


So they made haste, and all that night they journeyed beneath the moon, and all the next day they journeyed beneath the sun, and on the evening of the day they came to a city.

And the young Fisherman said to his Soul, ‘Is this the city in which she dances of whom thou didst speak to me?’

And his Soul answered him, ‘It is not this city, but another.  Nevertheless let us enter in.’  So they entered in and passed through the streets, and as they passed through the Street of the Jewellers the young Fisherman saw a fair silver cup set forth in a booth.  And his Soul said to him, ‘Take that silver cup and hide it.’

So he took the cup and hid it in the fold of his tunic, and they went hurriedly out of the city.

And after that they had gone a league from the city, the young Fisherman frowned, and flung the cup away, and said to his Soul, ‘Why didst thou tell me to take this cup and hide it, for it was an evil thing to do?’

But his Soul answered him, ‘Be at peace, be at peace.’

And on the evening of the second day they came to a city, and the young Fisherman said to his Soul, ‘Is this the city in which she dances of whom thou didst speak to me?’

And his Soul answered him, ‘It is not this city, but another.  Nevertheless let us enter in.’  So they entered in and passed through the streets, and as they passed through the Street of the Sellers of Sandals, the young Fisherman saw a child standing by a jar of water.  And his Soul said to him, ‘Smite that child.’  So he smote the child till it wept, and when he had done this they went hurriedly out of the city.

And after that they had gone a league from the city the young Fisherman grew wroth, and said to his Soul, ‘Why didst thou tell me to smite the child, for it was an evil thing to do?’

But his Soul answered him, ‘Be at peace, be at peace.’

And on the evening of the third day they came to a city, and the young Fisherman said to his Soul, ‘Is this the city in which she dances of whom thou didst speak to me?’

And his Soul answered him, ‘It may be that it is in this city, therefore let us enter in.’

So they entered in and passed through the streets, but nowhere could the young Fisherman find the river or the inn that stood by its side.  And the people of the city looked curiously at him, and he grew afraid and said to his Soul, ‘Let us go hence, for she who dances with white feet is not here.’

But his Soul answered, ‘Nay, but let us tarry, for the night is dark and there will be robbers on the way.’

So he sat him down in the market-place and rested, and after a time there went by a hooded merchant who had a cloak of cloth of Tartary, and bare a lantern of pierced horn at the end of a jointed reed.  And the merchant said to him, ‘Why dost thou sit in the market-place, seeing that the booths are closed and the bales corded?’

And the young Fisherman answered him, ‘I can find no inn in this city, nor have I any kinsman who might give me shelter.’

‘Are we not all kinsmen?’ said the merchant.  ‘And did not one God make us?  Therefore come with me, for I have a guest-chamber.’

So the young Fisherman rose up and followed the merchant to his house.  And when he had passed through a garden of pomegranates and entered into the house, the merchant brought him rose-water in a copper dish that he might wash his hands, and ripe melons that he might quench his thirst, and set a bowl of rice and a piece of roasted kid before him.

And after that he had finished, the merchant led him to the guest-chamber, and bade him sleep and be at rest.  And the young Fisherman gave him thanks, and kissed the ring that was on his hand, and flung himself down on the carpets of dyed goat’s-hair.  And when he had covered himself with a covering of black lamb’s-wool he fell asleep.

And three hours before dawn, and while it was still night, his Soul waked him and said to him, ‘Rise up and go to the room of the merchant, even to the room in which he sleepeth, and slay him, and take from him his gold, for we have need of it.’

And the young Fisherman rose up and crept towards the room of the merchant, and over the feet of the merchant there was lying a curved sword, and the tray by the side of the merchant held nine purses of gold.  And he reached out his hand and touched the sword, and when he touched it the merchant started and awoke, and leaping up seized himself the sword and cried to the young Fisherman, ‘Dost thou return evil for good, and pay with the shedding of blood for the kindness that I have shown thee?’

And his Soul said to the young Fisherman, ‘Strike him,’ and he struck him so that he swooned and he seized then the nine purses of gold, and fled hastily through the garden of pomegranates, and set his face to the star that is the star of morning.

And when they had gone a league from the city, the young Fisherman beat his breast, and said to his Soul, ‘Why didst thou bid me slay the merchant and take his gold?  Surely thou art evil.’

But his Soul answered him, ‘Be at peace, be at peace.’

‘Nay,’ cried the young Fisherman, ‘I may not be at peace, for all that thou hast made me to do I hate.  Thee also I hate, and I bid thee tell me wherefore thou hast wrought with me in this wise.’

And his Soul answered him, ‘When thou didst send me forth into the world thou gavest me no heart, so I learned to do all these things and love them.’

‘What sayest thou?’ murmured the young Fisherman.

‘Thou knowest,’ answered his Soul, ‘thou knowest it well.  Hast thou forgotten that thou gavest me no heart?  I trow not.  And so trouble not thyself nor me, but be at peace, for there is no pain that thou shalt not give away, nor any pleasure that thou shalt not receive.’

And when the young Fisherman heard these words he trembled and said to his Soul, ‘Nay, but thou art evil, and hast made me forget my love, and hast tempted me with temptations, and hast set my feet in the ways of sin.’

And his Soul answered him, ‘Thou hast not forgotten that when thou didst send me forth into the world thou gavest me no heart.  Come, let us go to another city, and make merry, for we have nine purses of gold.’

But the young Fisherman took the nine purses of gold, and flung them down, and trampled on them.

‘Nay,’ he cried, ‘but I will have nought to do with thee, nor will I journey with thee anywhere, but even as I sent thee away before, so will I send thee away now, for thou hast wrought me no good.’  And he turned his back to the moon, and with the little knife that had the handle of green viper’s skin he strove to cut from his feet that shadow of the body which is the body of the Soul.

Yet his Soul stirred not from him, nor paid heed to his command, but said to him, ‘The spell that the Witch told thee avails thee no more, for I may not leave thee, nor mayest thou drive me forth.  Once in his life may a man send his Soul away, but he who receiveth back his Soul must keep it with him for ever, and this is his punishment and his reward.’

And the young Fisherman grew pale and clenched his hands and cried, ‘She was a false Witch in that she told me not that.’

‘Nay,’ answered his Soul, ‘but she was true to Him she worships, and whose servant she will be ever.’

And when the young Fisherman knew that he could no longer get rid of his Soul, and that it was an evil Soul and would abide with him always, he fell upon the ground weeping bitterly.


And when it was day the young Fisherman rose up and said to his Soul, ‘I will bind my hands that I may not do thy bidding, and close my lips that I may not speak thy words, and I will return to the place where she whom I love has her dwelling.  Even to the sea will I return, and to the little bay where she is wont to sing, and I will call to her and tell her the evil I have done and the evil thou hast wrought on me.’

And his Soul tempted him and said, ‘Who is thy love, that thou shouldst return to her?  The world has many fairer than she is.  There are the dancing-girls of Samaris who dance in the manner of all kinds of birds and beasts.  Their feet are painted with henna, and in their hands they have little copper bells.  They laugh while they dance, and their laughter is as clear as the laughter of water.  Come with me and I will show them to thee.  For what is this trouble of thine about the things of sin?  Is that which is pleasant to eat not made for the ea