JUNO { rising and } What!MRS. JUNO { exclaiming } No, really—MRS. LUNN { simultaneously } Gregory!
GREGORY. Yes: I maintain that I am responsible for my intentions only, and not for reflex actions over which I have no control. [Mrs. Juno sits down, ashamed]. I promised my mother that I would never tell a lie, and that I would never make love to a married woman. I never have told a lie—
MRS. LUNN [remonstrating] Gregory! [She sits down again].
GREGORY. I say never. On many occasions I have resorted to prevarication; but on great occasions I have always told the truth. I regard this as a great occasion; and I won't be intimidated into breaking my promise. I solemnly declare that I did not know until this evening that Mrs. Juno was married. She will bear me out when I say that from that moment my intentions were strictly and resolutely honorable; though my conduct, which I could not control and am therefore not responsible for, was disgraceful—or would have been had this gentleman not walked in and begun making love to my wife under my very nose.
JUNO [flinging himself back into his chair] Well, I like this!
MRS. LUNN. Really, darling, there's no use in the pot calling the kettle black.
GREGORY. When you say darling, may I ask which of us you are addressing?
MRS. LUNN. I really don't know. I'm getting hopelessly confused.
JUNO. Why don't you let my wife say something? I don't think she ought to be thrust into the background like this.
MRS. LUNN. I'm sorry, I'm sure. Please excuse me, dear.
MRS. JUNO [thoughtfully] I don't know what to say. I must think over it. I have always been rather severe on this sort of thing; but when it came to the point I didn't behave as I thought I should behave. I didn't intend to be wicked; but somehow or other, Nature, or whatever you choose to call it, didn't take much notice of my intentions. [Gregory instinctively seeks her hand and presses it]. And I really did think, Tops, that I was the only woman in the world for you.
JUNO [cheerfully] Oh, that's all right, my precious. Mrs. Lunn thought she was the only woman in the world for him.
GREGORY [reflectively] So she is, in a sort of a way.
JUNO [flaring up] And so is my wife. Don't you set up to be a better husband than I am; for you're not. I've owned I'm wrong. You haven't.
MRS. LUNN. Are you sorry, Gregory?
GREGORY [perplexed] Sorry?
MRS. LUNN. Yes, sorry. I think it's time for you to say you're sorry, and to make friends with Mr. Juno before we all dine together.
GREGORY. Seraphita: I promised my mother—
MRS. JUNO [involuntarily] Oh, bother your mother! [Recovering herself] I beg your pardon.
GREGORY. A promise is a promise. I can't tell a deliberate lie. I know I ought to be sorry; but the flat fact is that I'm not sorry. I find that in this business, somehow or other, there is a disastrous separation between my moral principles and my conduct.
JUNO. There's nothing disastrous about it. It doesn't matter about your principles if your conduct is all right.
GREGORY. Bosh! It doesn't matter about your principles if your conduct is all right.
JUNO. But your conduct isn't all right; and my principles are.
GREGORY. What's the good of your principles being right if they won't work?
JUNO. They WILL work, sir, if you exercise self-sacrifice.
GREGORY. Oh yes: if, if, if. You know jolly well that self-sacrifice doesn't work either when you really want a thing. How much have you sacrificed yourself, pray?
MRS. LUNN. Oh, a great deal, Gregory. Don't be rude. Mr. Juno is a very nice man: he has been most attentive to me on the voyage.
GREGORY. And Mrs. Juno's a very nice woman. She oughtn't to be; but she is.
JUNO. Why oughtn't she to be a nice woman, pray?
GREGORY. I mean she oughtn't to be nice to me. And you oughtn't to be nice to my wife. And your wife oughtn't to like me. And my wife oughtn't to like you. And if they do, they oughtn't to go on liking us. And I oughtn't to like your wife; and you oughtn't to like mine; and if we do we oughtn't to go on liking them. But we do, all of us. We oughtn't; but we do.
JUNO. But, my dear boy, if we admit we are in the wrong where's the harm of it? We're not perfect; but as long as we keep the ideal before us—
GREGORY. How?
JUNO. By admitting we were wrong.
MRS. LUNN [springing up, out of patience, and pacing round the lounge intolerantly] Well, really, I must have my dinner. These two men, with their morality, and their promises to their mothers, and their admissions that they were wrong, and their sinning and suffering, and their going on at one another as if it meant anything, or as if it mattered, are getting on my nerves. [Stooping over the back of the chesterfield to address Mrs. Juno] If you will be so very good, my dear, as to take my sentimental husband off my hands occasionally, I shall be more than obliged to you: I'm sure you can stand more male sentimentality than I can. [Sweeping away to the fireplace] I, on my part, will do my best to amuse your excellent husband when you find him tiresome.
JUNO. I call this polyandry.
MRS. LUNN. I wish you wouldn't call innocent things by offensive names, Mr. Juno. What do you call your own conduct?
JUNO [rising] I tell you I have admitted—
GREGORY { } What's the good of keeping on at that?MRS. JUNO { together } Oh, not that again, please.MRS. LUNN { } Tops: I'll scream if you say that again.
JUNO. Oh, well, if you won't listen to me—! [He sits down again].
MRS. JUNO. What is the position now exactly? [Mrs. Lunn shrugs her shoulders and gives up the conundrum. Gregory looks at Juno. Juno turns away his head huffily]. I mean, what are we going to do?
MRS. LUNN. What would you advise, Mr. Juno?
JUNO. I should advise you to divorce your husband.
MRS. LUNN. Do you want me to drag your wife into court and disgrace her?
JUNO. No: I forgot that. Excuse me; but for the moment I thought I was married to you.
GREGORY. I think we had better let bygones be bygones. [To Mrs. Juno, very tenderly] You will forgive me, won't you? Why should you let a moment's forgetfulness embitter all our future life?
MRS. JUNO. But it's Mrs. Lunn who has to forgive you.
GREGORY. Oh, dash it, I forgot. This is getting ridiculous.
MRS. LUNN. I'm getting hungry.
MRS. JUNO. Do you really mind, Mrs. Lunn?
MRS. LUNN. My dear Mrs. Juno, Gregory is one of those terribly uxorious men who ought to have ten wives. If any really nice woman will take him off my hands for a day or two occasionally, I shall be greatly obliged to her.
GREGORY. Seraphita: you cut me to the soul [he weeps].
MRs. LUNN. Serve you right! You'd think it quite proper if it cut me to the soul.
MRS. JUNO. Am I to take Sibthorpe off your hands too, Mrs. Lunn?
JUNO [rising] Do you suppose I'll allow this?
MRS. JUNO. You've admitted that you've done wrong, Tops. What's the use of your allowing or not allowing after that?
JUNO. I do not admit that I have done wrong. I admit that what I did was wrong.
GREGORY. Can you explain the distinction?
JUNO. It's quite plain to anyone but an imbecile. If you tell me I've done something wrong you insult me. But if you say that something that I did is wrong you simply raise a question of morals. I tell you flatly if you say I did anything wrong you will have to fight me. In fact I think we ought to fight anyhow. I don't particularly want to; but I feel that England expects us to.
GREGORY. I won't fight. If you beat me my wife would share my humiliation. If I beat you, she would sympathize with you and loathe me for my brutality.
MRS. LUNN. Not to mention that as we are human beings and not reindeer or barndoor fowl, if two men presumed to fight for us we couldn't decently ever speak to either of them again.
GREGORY. Besides, neither of us could beat the other, as we neither of us know how to fight. We should only blacken each other's eyes and make fools of ourselves.
JUNO. I don't admit that. Every Englishman can use his fists.
GREGORY. You're an Englishman. Can you use yours?
JUNO. I presume so: I never tried.
MRS. JUNO. You never told me you couldn't fight, Tops. I thought you were an accomplished boxer.
JUNO. My precious: I never gave you any ground for such a belief.
MRS. JUNO. You always talked as if it were a matter of course. You spoke with the greatest contempt of men who didn't kick other men downstairs.
JUNO. Well, I can't kick Mr. Lunn downstairs. We're on the ground floor.
MRS. JUNO. You could throw him into the harbor.
GREGORY. Do you want me to be thrown into the harbor?
MRS. JUNO. No: I only want to show Tops that he's making a ghastly fool of himself.
GREGORY [rising and prowling disgustedly between the chesterfield and the windows] We're all making fools of ourselves.
JUNO [following him] Well, if we're not to fight, I must insist at least on your never speaking to my wife again.
GREGORY. Does my speaking to your wife do you any harm?
JUNO. No. But it's the proper course to take. [Emphatically]. We MUST behave with some sort of decency.
MRS. LUNN. And are you never going to speak to me again, Mr. Juno?
JUNO. I'm prepared to promise never to do so. I think your husband has a right to demand that. Then if I speak to you after, it will not be his fault. It will be a breach of my promise; and I shall not attempt to defend my conduct.
GREGORY [facing him] I shall talk to your wife as often as she'll let me.
MRS. JUNO. I have no objection to your speaking to me, Mr. Lunn.
JUNO. Then I shall take steps.
GREGORY. What steps?
JUNO. Steps. Measures. Proceedings. What steps as may seem advisable.
MRS. LUNN [to Mrs. Juno] Can your husband afford a scandal, Mrs. Juno?
MRS. JUNO. No.
MRS. LUNN. Neither can mine.
GREGORY. Mrs. Juno: I'm very sorry I let you in for all this. I don't know how it is that we contrive to make feelings like ours, which seems to me to be beautiful and sacred feelings, and which lead to such interesting and exciting adventures, end in vulgar squabbles and degrading scenes.
JUNO. I decline to admit that my conduct has been vulgar or degrading.
GREGORY. I promised—
JUNO. Look here, old chap: I don't say a word against your mother; and I'm sorry she's dead; but really, you know, most women are mothers; and they all die some time or other; yet that doesn't make them infallible authorities on morals, does it?
GREGORY. I was about to say so myself. Let me add that if you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.
JUNO. Lunn: I love your wife; and that's all about it.
GREGORY. Juno: I love yours. What then?
JUNO. Clearly she must never see you again.
MRS. JUNO. Why not?
JUNO. Why not! My love: I'm surprised at you.
MRS. JUNO. Am I to speak only to men who dislike me?
JUNO. Yes: I think that is, properly speaking, a married woman's duty.
MRS. JUNO. Then I won't do it: that's flat. I like to be liked. I like to be loved. I want everyone round me to love me. I don't want to meet or speak to anyone who doesn't like me.
JUNO. But, my precious, this is the most horrible immorality.
MRS. LUNN. I don't intend to give up meeting you, Mr. Juno. You amuse me very much. I don't like being loved: it bores me. But I do like to be amused.
JUNO. I hope we shall meet very often. But I hope also we shall not defend our conduct.
MRS. JUNO [rising] This is unendurable. We've all been flirting. Need we go on footling about it?
JUNO [huffily] I don't know what you call footling—
MRS. JUNO [cutting him short] You do. You're footling. Mr. Lunn is footling. Can't we admit that we're human and have done with it?
JUNO. I have admitted it all along. I—
MRS. JUNO [almost screaming] Then stop footling.
The dinner gong sounds.
MRS. LUNN [rising] Thank heaven! Let's go in to dinner. Gregory: take in Mrs. Juno.
GREGORY. But surely I ought to take in our guest, and not my own wife.
MRS. LUNN. Well, Mrs. Juno is not your wife, is she?
GREGORY. Oh, of course: I beg your pardon. I'm hopelessly confused. [He offers his arm to Mrs. Juno, rather apprehensively].
MRS. JUNO. You seem quite afraid of me [she takes his arm].
GREGORY. I am. I simply adore you. [They go out together; and as they pass through the door he turns and says in a ringing voice to the other couple] I have said to Mrs. Juno that I simply adore her. [He takes her out defiantly].
MRS. LUNN [calling after him] Yes, dear. She's a darling. [To Juno] Now, Sibthorpe.
JUNO [giving her his arm gallantly] You have called me Sibthorpe! Thank you. I think Lunn's conduct fully justifies me in allowing you to do it.
MRS. LUNN. Yes: I think you may let yourself go now.
JUNO. Seraphita: I worship you beyond expression.
MRS. LUNN. Sibthorpe: you amuse me beyond description. Come. [They go in to dinner together].