Three Plays by Granville-Barker Part 93

WEDGECROFT. I met her one morning at Trebell's.

FARRANT. Actually at Trebell's!

WEDGECROFT. The day he came back from abroad.

FARRANT. Oh! No one seems to have noticed them together much at any time. My wife. . . No matter!

WEDGECROFT. She tackled me as a doctor with one part of her trouble . .

added she'd been with O'Connell in Ireland, which of course it turns out wasn't true . . asked me to help her. I had to say I couldn't.

HORSHAM. [_Echoing rather than querying._] You couldn't.

FARRANT. [_Shocked._] My dear Horsham!

WEDGECROFT. Well, if she'd told me the truth! . . No, anyhow I couldn't.

I'm sure there was no excuse. One can't run these risks.

FARRANT. Quite right, quite right.

WEDGECROFT. There are men who do on one pretext or another.

FARRANT. [_Not too shocked to be curious._] Are there really?

WEDGECROFT. Oh yes, men well known . . in other directions. I could give you four addresses . . but of course I wasn't going to give her one.

Though there again . . if she'd told me the whole truth! . . My G.o.d, women are such fools! And they prefer quackery . . look at the decent doctors they simply turn into charlatans. Though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy . . which is beside the question. But one day I'll make you sit up on the subject of the Medical Council, Horsham.

HORSHAM _a.s.sumes an impenetrable air of statesmanship_.

HORSHAM. I know. Very interesting . . very important . . very difficult to alter the status quo.

WEDGECROFT. Then the poor little liar said she'd go off to an appointment with her dressmaker; and I heard nothing more till she sent for me a week later, and I found her almost too ill to speak. Even then she didn't tell me the truth! So, when O'Connell arrived, of course I spoke to him quite openly and all he told me in reply was that it wouldn't have been his child.

FARRANT. Poor devil!

WEDGECROFT. O'Connell?

FARRANT. Yes, of course.

WEDGECROFT. I wonder. Perhaps she didn't realize he'd been sent for . .

or felt then she was dying and didn't care . . or lost her head. I don't know.

FARRANT. Such a pretty little woman!

WEDGECROFT. If I could have made him out and dealt with him, of course, I shouldn't have come to you. Farrant's known him even longer than I have.

FARRANT. I was with him at Harrow.

WEDGECROFT. So I went to Farrant first.

_That part of the subject drops._ CANTELUPE, _who has not moved, strikes in again_.

CANTELUPE. How was Trebell's guilt discovered?

FARRANT. He wrote her one letter which she didn't destroy. O'Connell found it.

WEDGECROFT. Picked it up from her desk . . it wasn't even locked up.

FARRANT. Not twenty words in it . . quite enough though.

HORSHAM. His habit of being explicit . . of writing things down . . I know!

_He shakes his head, deprecating all rashness. There is another pause._ FARRANT, _getting up to pace about, breaks it_.

FARRANT. Look here, Wedgecroft, one thing is worrying me. Had Trebell any foreknowledge of what she did and the risk she was running and could he have stopped it?

WEDGECROFT. [_Almost ill-temperedly._] How could he have stopped it?

FARRANT. Because . . well, I'm not a casuist . . but I know by instinct when I'm up against the wrong thing to do; and if he can't be cleared on that point I won't lift a finger to save him.

HORSHAM. [_With nice judgment._] In using the term Any Foreknowledge, Farrant, you may be more severe on him than you wish to be.

FARRANT, _unappreciative, continues_.

FARRANT. Otherwise . . well, we must admit, Cantelupe, that if it hadn't been for the particular consequence of this it wouldn't be anything to be so mightily shocked about.

CANTELUPE. I disagree.

FARRANT. My dear fellow, it's our business to make laws and we know the difference of saying in one of 'em you may or you must. Who ever proposed to insist on pillorying every case of spasmodic adultery? One would never have done! Some of these attachments do more harm . . to the third party, I mean . . some less. But it's only when a menage becomes socially impossible that a sensible man will interfere. [_He adds quite unnecessarily._] I'm speaking quite impersonally, of course.

CANTELUPE. [_As coldly as ever._] Trebell is morally responsible for every consequence of the original sin.

WEDGECROFT. That is a hard saying.

FARRANT. [_Continuing his own remarks quite independently._] And I put aside the possibility that he deliberately helped her to her death to save a scandal because I don't believe it is a possibility. But if that were so I'd lift my finger to help him to his. I'd see him hanged with pleasure.

WEDGECROFT. [_Settling this part of the matter._] Well, Farrant, to all intents and purposes he didn't know and he'd have stopped it if he could.

FARRANT. Yes, I believe that. But what makes you so sure?

WEDGECROFT. I asked him and he told me.

FARRANT. That's no proof.

WEDGECROFT. You read the letter that he sent her . . unless you think it was written as a blind.

FARRANT. Oh . . to be sure . . yes. I might have thought of that.

_He settles down again. Again no one has anything to say._