The Autobiography of a Play | Page 4

tired of quarreling
with a man she does love." I dare not announce this as another law of
female human nature; it is merely the opinion of one of my
characters--a married man. Of course, there are women who do not
quarrel with any one; and there are angels; but, as a rule, the women we
feel at liberty to fall in love with do quarrel now and then; and they
almost invariably quarrel with their husbands or lovers first, their other
acquaintances must often be content with their smiles. But, when Lilian
announces to Harold Routledge that their engagement is broken forever,
he thinks she means to imply that she doesn't intend to marry him.
Women are often misunderstood by our more grossly practical sex; we
are too apt to judge of what they mean by what they say. The relations,
if there are any, between a woman's tongue and her thoughts form the
least understood section, perhaps, of dramatic law. You will get some
idea of the intricacies of this subject, if one of your literary professors
will draw you a diagram of what a woman doesn't mean when she uses
the English language. Harold Routledge, almost broken-hearted, bids
Lilian farewell, and leaves her presence. Lilian herself, proud and angry,
allows him to go; waits petulantly a moment for him to return; then,
forlorn and wretched, she bursts into the flood of tears which she
intended to shed upon his breast. Under ordinary circumstances, those

precious drops would not have been wasted. Young girls, when they
quarrel with their lovers, are not extravagant with their tears; they put
them carefully to the best possible use; and, I dare say, some of Lilian's
tears would have fallen on a sheet of notepaper; and the stained lines of
a letter would have reached Harold by the next post, begging him to
come back, and to let her forgive him for all the spiteful things she had
said to him. Unfortunately, however, just at this critical juncture in the
affairs of love--while Cupid was waiting, hat in hand, to accompany the
letter to its destination and keep an eye on the postman--Lilian's father
enters. He is on the verge of financial ruin, and he has just received a
letter from Mr. John Strebelow, a man of great wealth, asking him for
his daughter's hand in marriage. Mr. Westbrook urges her to accept him,
not from any selfish motives, but because he dreads to leave, in his old
age, a helpless girl, trained only to luxury and extravagance, to a
merciless world. Lilian, on her part, shudders at the thought of her
father renewing the struggle of life when years have exhausted his
strength. She knows that she will be the greatest burden that will fall
upon him; she remembers her dead mother's love for them both; and
she sacrifices her own heart. Mr. Strebelow is a man of about forty
years, of unquestioned honor, of noble personal character in every way.
Lilian had loved him, indeed, when she was a little child, and she feels
that she can at least respect and reverence him as her husband. Mr.
Strebelow marries her without knowing that she does not love him;
much less, that she loves another.
Act second--Paris. Lilian has been married five years, and is residing
with her husband in the French capital. As the curtain rises, Lilian is
teaching her little child, Natalie, her alphabet. All the warm affection of
a woman's nature, suppressed and thrown back upon her own heart, has
concentrated itself upon this child. Lilian has been a good wife, and she
does reverence her husband as she expected to do. He is a kind,
generous and noble man. But she does not love him as a wife. Mr.
Strebelow now enters, and, after a little domestic scene, the French
nurse is instructed to dress the child for a walk with its mother.
Strebelow then tells Lilian that he has just met an old friend of hers and
of himself--the American artist, Mr. Harold Routledge, passing thru
Paris on his way from his studio in Rome. He has insisted on a visit

from Mr. Routledge, and the two parted lovers are brought face to face
by the husband. They are afterwards left alone together. Routledge has
lived a solitary life, nursing his feelings toward a woman who had
heartlessly cast him off, as he thinks, to marry a man merely for his
wealth. He is bitter and cruel. But the cruelty to a woman which is born
of love for her has a wonderful, an almost irresistible fascination for the
female heart. Under the spell of this fascination, Lilian's old love
reasserts its authority against that of his will. She forgets everything
except the moment when her lover last