The Philanderer | Page 5

to you; and you couldn't have released yourself. Too big a risk, you see. That's the rational view--our view. Accordingly, you reserved the right to leave me at any time if you found our companionship incompatible with--what was the expression you used?--with your full development as a human being: I think that was how you put the Ibsenist view--our view. So I had to be content with a charming philander, which taught me a great deal, and brought me some hours of exquisite happiness.
JULIA. Leonard: you confess then that you owe me something?
CHARTERIS (haughtily). No: what I received, I paid. Did you learn nothing from me?--was there no delight for you in our friendship?
JULIA (vehemently and movingly; for she is now sincere). No. You made me pay dearly for every moment of happiness. You revenged yourself on me for the humiliation of being the slave of your passion for me. I was never sure of you for a moment. I trembled whenever a letter came from you, lest it should contain some stab for me. I dreaded your visits almost as much as I longed for them. I was your plaything, not your companion. (She rises, exclaiming) Oh, there was such suffering in my happiness that I hardly knew joy from pain. (She sinks on the piano stool, and adds, as she buries her face in her hands and turns away from him) Better for me if I had never met you!
CHARTERIS (rising indignantly). You ungenerous wretch! Is this your gratitude for the way I have just been flattering you? What have I not endured from you--endured with angelic patience? Did I not find out, before our friendship was a fortnight old, that all your advanced views were merely a fashion picked up and followed like any other fashion, without understanding or meaning a word of them? Did you not, in spite of your care for your own liberty, set up claims on me compared to which the claims of the most jealous wife would have been trifles. Have I a single woman friend whom you have not abused as old, ugly, vicious--
JULIA (quickly looking up). So they are.
CHARTERIS. Well, then, I'll come to grievances that even you can understand. I accuse you of habitual and intolerable jealousy and ill temper; of insulting me on imaginary provocation: of positively beating me; of stealing letters of mine--
JULIA (rising). Yes, nice letters.
CHARTERIS. --of breaking your solemn promises not to do it again; of spending hours--aye, days! piecing together the contents of my waste paper basket in your search for more letters; and then representing yourself as an ill used saint and martyr wantonly betrayed and deserted by a selfish monster of a man.
JULIA. I was justified in reading your letters. Our perfect confidence in one another gave me the right to do it.
CHARTERIS. Thank you. Then I hasten to break off a confidence which gives such rights. (Sits down sulkily on sofa.)
JULIA (with her right hand on the back of the sofa, bending over him threateningly). You have no right to break it off.
CHARTERIS. I have. You refused to marry me because--
JULIA. I did not. You never asked me. If we were married, you would never dare treat me as you are doing now.
CHARTERIS (laboriously going back to his argument). It was understood between us as people of advanced views that we were not to marry because, as the law stands, I might have become a drunkard, a--
JULIA. --a criminal, an imbecile or a horror. You said that before. (Sits down beside him with a fling.)
CHARTERIS (politely). I beg your pardon, my dear. I know I have a habit of repeating myself. The point is that you reserved your freedom to give me up when you pleased.
JULIA. Well, what of that? I do not please to give you up; and I will not. You have not become a drunkard or a criminal.
CHARTERIS. You don't see the point yet, Julia. You seem to forget that in reserving your freedom to leave me in case I should turn out badly, you also reserved my freedom to leave you in case you should turn out badly.
JULIA. Very ingenious. And pray, have I become a drunkard, or a criminal, or an imbecile?
CHARTERIS (rising). You have become what is infinitely worse than all three together--a jealous termagant.
JULIA (shaking her head bitterly). Yes, abuse me--call me names.
CHARTERIS. I now assert the right I reserved--the right of breaking with you when I please. Advanced views, Julia, involve advanced duties: you cannot be an advanced woman when you want to bring a man to your feet, and a conventional woman when you want to hold him there against his will. Advanced people form charming friendships: conventional people marry. Marriage suits a good deal of people; and its first duty is