(Parker enters, and crosses towards the ballroom, R. Enter Mrs Erlynne.)
Mrs Erlynne. Is Lady Windermere in the ballroom?
Parker. Her ladyship has just gone out.
Mrs Erlynne. Gone out? She's not on the terrace?
Parker. No, madam. Her Ladyship has just gone out of the house.
Mrs Erlynne (Starts and looks at the servant with a puzzled expression on her face). Out of the house?
Parker. Yes, madam—her Ladyship told me she had left a letter for his Lordship on the table.
Mrs Erlynne. A letter for Lord Windermere?
Parker. Yes, madam.
Mrs Erlynne. Thank you.
(Exit Parker. The music in the ballroom stops.)
Gone out of her house! A letter addressed to her husband!
(Goes over to bureau and looks at letter. Takes it up and lays it down again with a shudder of fear.)
No, no! it would be impossible! Life doesn't repeat its tragedies like that! Oh, why does this horrible fancy come across me? Why do I remember now the one moment of my life I most wish to forget? Does life repeat its tragedies?
(Tears letter open and reads it, then sinks down into a chair with a gesture of anguish.)
Oh, how terrible! the same words that twenty years ago I wrote to her father! And how bitterly I have been punished for it! No; my punishment, my real punishment is to-night, is now!
I have quoted these two episodes from the second act to demonstrate how equal was the playwright to the exigencies of his art. But it is in the third act, laid in Lord Darlington's rooms, that he reaches the level of high dramatic skill. First, in the scene between the mother and daughter, written with extraordinary power and pathos, and later on, when each of the women are hidden, the "man's scene" which ranks with the famous club scene in Lord Lytton's "Money." The blasé and genial tone of these men of the world is admirably caught. Their conversation sparkles with wit and wisdom—of the world bien entendu. But it is in Mrs Erlynne's appeal to her daughter, with all its tragic intent that the author surpasses himself. Just read it over. It is a masterpiece of restrained emotion.
Mrs Erlynne. (Starts with a gesture of pain. Then restrains herself, and comes over to where Lady Windermere is sitting. As she speaks, she stretches out her hands towards her, but does not dare to touch her.) Believe what you choose about me. I am not without a moment's sorrow. But don't spoil your beautiful young life on my account. You don't know what may be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don't know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at—to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should be stripped from one's face, and all the while to hear the laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed. You don't know what it is. One pays for one's sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one pays. You must never know that. As for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it. But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not let you wreck yours. You—why you are a mere girl, you would be lost. You haven't got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn't stand dishonour. No! go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. You have a child, Lady Windermere. Go back to that child who even now, in pain or in joy, may be calling to you. (Lady Windermere rises.) God gave you that child. He will require from you that you make his life fine, that you watch over him. What answer will you make to God, if his life is ruined through you? Back to your house, Lady Windermere—your husband loves you. He has never swerved for a moment from the love he bears you. But even if he had a thousand loves, you must stay with your child. If he was harsh to you, you must stay with your child. If he ill-treated you, you must stay with your child. If he abandoned you your place is with your child.
(Lady Windermere bursts into tears and buries her face in her hands.)
(Rushing to her). Lady Windermere!
Lady Windermere (holding out her hands to her, helplessly, as a child might do). Take me home. Take me home.
Few people who witnessed that situation could have done so without being deeply moved. It is Oscar Wilde the poet who speaks, not to the brain but to the heart.
Then turn from the shadow of that scene to the shimmer of the one that follows immediately, full of smartness and jeu d'esprit. The sprightly and irresponsible chatter of men of the world.
Dumby. Awfully commercial, women nowadays. Our grandmothers threw their caps over the mill, of course, but, by Jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them.
Lord Augustus. You want to make her out a wicked woman. She is not!
Cecil Graham. Oh! wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them.
Dumby. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst, the last is a real tragedy.
Cecil Graham. What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington. A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.
Dumby. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Lord Windermere. What is the difference between scandal and gossip?
Cecil Graham. Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I'm glad to say.
And so we take our leave of "Lady Windermere's Fan."