Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 4

KATE. Only that you have the old confidence in your profound knowledge of the s.e.x.

SIR HARRY. [_Beginning to think as little of her intellect as of her morals._] I suppose I know my wife.

KATE. [_Hopelessly dense._] I suppose so. I was only remembering that you used to think you knew her in the days when I was the lady. [_He is merely wasting his time on her, and he indicates the door. She is not sufficiently the lady to retire worsted._] Well, good-by, Sir Harry.

Won't you ring, and the four men-servants will show me out? [_But he hesitates._

SIR HARRY. [_In spite of himself._] As you are here, there is something I want to get out of you. [_Wishing he could ask it less eagerly._] Tell me, who was the man?

[_The strange woman--it is evident now that she has always been strange to him--smiles tolerantly._

KATE. You never found out?

SIR HARRY. I could never be sure.

KATE. [_Reflectively._] I thought that would worry you.

SIR HARRY. [_Sneering._] It's plain that he soon left you.

KATE. Very soon.

SIR HARRY. As I could have told you. [_But still she surveys him with the smile of Mona Lisa. The badgered man has to entreat._] Who was he?

It was fourteen years ago, and cannot matter to any of us now. Kate, tell me who he was?

[_It is his first youthful moment, and perhaps because of that she does not wish to hurt him._

KATE. [_Shaking a motherly head._] Better not ask.

SIR HARRY. I do ask. Tell me.

KATE. It is kinder not to tell you.

SIR HARRY. [_Violently._] Then, by James, it was one of my own pals. Was it Bernard Roche? [_She shakes her head._] It may have been some one who comes to my house still.

KATE. I think not. [_Reflecting._] Fourteen years! You found my letter that night when you went home?

SIR HARRY. [_Impatient._] Yes.

KATE. I propped it against the decanters. I thought you would be sure to see it there. It was a room not unlike this, and the furniture was arranged in the same attractive way. How it all comes back to me. Don't you see me, Harry, in hat and cloak, putting the letter there, taking a last look round, and then stealing out into the night to meet----

SIR HARRY. Whom?

KATE. Him. Hours pa.s.s, no sound in the room but the tick-tack of the clock, and then about midnight you return alone. You take----

SIR HARRY. [_Gruffly._] I wasn't alone.

KATE. [_The picture spoiled._] No? Oh. [_Plaintively._] Here have I all these years been conceiving it wrongly. [_She studies his face._] I believe something interesting happened.

SIR HARRY. [_Growling._] Something confoundedly annoying.

KATE. [_Coaxing._] Do tell me.

SIR HARRY. We won't go into that. Who was the man? Surely a husband has a right to know with whom his wife bolted.

KATE. [_Who is detestably ready with her tongue._] Surely the wife has a right to know how he took it. [_The woman's love of bargaining comes to her aid._] A fair exchange. You tell me what happened, and I will tell you who he was.

SIR HARRY. You will? Very well.

[_It is the first point on which they have agreed, and, forgetting himself, he takes a place beside her on the fire-seat. He is thinking only of what he is to tell her, but she, womanlike, is conscious of their proximity._

KATE. [_Tastelessly._] Quite like old times. [_He moves away from her indignantly._] Go on, Harry.

SIR HARRY. [_Who has a manful shrinking from saying anything that is to his disadvantage._] Well, as you know, I was dining at the club that night.

KATE. Yes.

SIR HARRY. Jack Lamb drove me home. Mabbett Green was with us, and I asked them to come in for a few minutes.

KATE. Jack Lamb, Mabbett Green? I think I remember them. Jack was in Parliament.

SIR HARRY. No, that was Mabbett. They came into the house with me and--[_with sudden horror_]--was it him?

KATE. [_Bewildered._] Who?

SIR HARRY. Mabbett?

KATE. What?

SIR HARRY. The man?

KATE. What man? [_Understanding._] Oh, no. I thought you said he came into the house with you.

SIR HARRY. It might have been a blind.

KATE. Well, it wasn't. Go on.

SIR HARRY. They came in to finish a talk we had been having at the club.

KATE. An interesting talk, evidently.

SIR HARRY. The papers had been full that evening of the elopement of some countess woman with a fiddler. What was her name?

KATE. Does it matter?

SIR HARRY. No. [_Thus ends the countess._] We had been discussing the thing and--[_he pulls a wry face_]--and I had been rather warm----

KATE. [_With horrid relish._] I begin to see. You had been saying it served the husband right, that the man who could not look after his wife deserved to lose her. It was one of your favorite subjects. Oh, Harry, say it was that!

SIR HARRY. [_Sourly._] It may have been something like that.