Crucial Instances Part 10

_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well?

_Ventnor_. Your letters.

_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them?

_Ventnor_. When I don't, I reread them.

_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still?

_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven't mine, then?

_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.)_

_Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me.

_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You--

_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him fixedly.)_ I have them with me now.

_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now?

_Ventnor (embarra.s.sed)_. Why not? One never knows--

_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--?

_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round.

You forget I'm a married man.

_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes.

_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn't to anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about.

_(A pause.)_ You'll bear witness that it wasn't till you denied me all hope--

_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes--

_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you--

_Mrs. Dale_. It's so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn't realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what weary work it is gathering up the fragments.

_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall--

_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged?

_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one's self out of reach of the housemaid's brush. _(A pause.)_ If you're married you can't--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don't you hate to be taken down and dusted?

_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died.

It's fifteen years since I've been an object of interest to anybody but the public.

_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you've ever given the least encouragement!

_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased!

_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please?

_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven't_ kept my letters!

_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_

_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have you brought me these?

_Ventnor_. I didn't bring them; they came because I came--that's all.

_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome?

_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it's not a compromising doc.u.ment.

_Ventnor_. I'm afraid none of them are.

_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here's another I remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd!

_Ventnor_. What?

_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it's the most curious thing--I had a letter of this kind to do the other day, in the novel I'm at work on now--the letter of a woman who is just--just beginning--

_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--?

_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this!

_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there!

_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it's poorly done--very poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H'm--I didn't know how to leave off. It takes me forever to get out of the door.

_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return?

_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the cabinet.)_

_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all!

_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of packets)_. Don't you believe me now?

_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you were so very deaf.

_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it is--yes, I thought so!

_Ventnor_. What did you think?

_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you quoted _Epipsychidion_--

_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don't wonder you were cruel.