The Autobiography of a Play | Page 4

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 parted from her. She is again the wayward girl that waited for his return; he has returned!--and she does what she would have done five years before; she turns, passionately, to throw herself into his arms. At this moment, her little