[Enter Sir Robert Chiltern.]
sir robert chiltern
My dear Arthur, you are not going? Do stop a little!
lord goring
Afraid I can’t, thanks. I have promised to look in at the Hartlocks. I believe they have got a mauve Hungarian band that plays mauve Hungarian music. See you soon. Good-bye! [Exit]
sir robert chiltern
How beautiful you look to-night, Gertrude!
lady chiltern
Robert, it is not true, is it? You are not going to lend your support to this Argentine speculation? You couldn’t!
sir robert chiltern
[Starting.] Who told you I intended to do so?
·54· lady chiltern
That woman who has just gone out, Mrs. Cheveley, as she calls herself now. She seemed to taunt me with it. Robert, I know this woman. You don’t. We were at school together. She was untruthful, dishonest, an evil influence on everyone whose trust or friendship she could win. I hated, I despised her. She stole things, she was a thief. She was sent away for being a thief. Why do you let her influence you?
sir robert chiltern
Gertrude, what you tell me may be true, but it happened many years ago. It is best forgotten! Mrs. Cheveley may have changed since then. No one should be entirely judged by their past.
lady chiltern
[Sadly.] One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
sir robert chiltern
That is a hard saying, Gertrude!
lady chiltern
It is a true saying, Robert. And what did she mean by boasting that she had got you to lend your support, your name to a thing I have heard you describe as the most dishonest and fraudulent scheme there has ever been in political life?
·55· sir robert chiltern
[Biting his lip.] I was mistaken in the view I took. We all may make mistakes.
lady chiltern
But you told me yesterday that you had received the report from the Commission, and that it entirely condemned the whole thing.
sir robert chiltern
[Walking up and down.] I have reasons now to believe that the Commission was prejudiced, or, at any rate, misinformed. Besides, Gertrude, public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines.
lady chiltern
They should both represent man at his highest. I see no difference between them.
sir robert chiltern
[Stopping.] In the present case, on a matter of practical politics, I have changed my mind. That is all.
lady chiltern
All!
sir robert chiltern
[Sternly.] Yes!
·56· lady chiltern
Robert! Oh! it is horrible that I should have to ask you such a question—Robert, are you telling me the whole truth?
sir robert chiltern
Why do you ask me such a question?
lady chiltern
[After a pause.] Why do you not answer it?
sir robert chiltern
[Sitting down.] Gertrude, truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to compromise. Everyone does.
lady chiltern
Compromise? Robert, why do you talk so differently to-night from the way I have always heard you talk? Why are you changed?
sir robert chiltern
I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
lady chiltern
Circumstances should never alter principles!
·57· sir robert chiltern
But if I told you——
lady chiltern
What?
sir robert chiltern
That it was necessary, vitally necessary.
lady chiltern
It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable. Or if it be necessary, then what is it that I have loved! But it is not, Robert; tell me it is not. Why should it be? What gain would you get? Money? We have no need of that! And money that comes from a tainted source is a degradation. Power? But power is nothing in itself. It is power to do good that is fine—that, and that only. What is it, then? Robert, tell me why you are going to do this dishonourable thing!
sir robert chiltern
Gertrude, you have no right to use that word. I told you it was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.
lady chiltern
Robert, that is all very well for other men, for men who treat life simply as a sordid speculation; but not for you, Robert, not for you. You are ·58· different. All your life you have stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that ideal still. That great inheritance throw not away—that tower of ivory do not destroy. Robert, men can love what is beneath them—things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Oh! don’t kill my love for you, don’t kill that!
sir robert chiltern
Gertrude!
lady chiltern
I know that there are men with horrible secrets in their lives—men who have done some shameful thing, and who in some critical moment have to pay for it, by doing some other act of shame—oh! don’t tell me you are such as they are! Robert, is there in your life any secret dishonour or disgrace? Tell me, tell me at once, that——
sir robert chiltern
That
