Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 10

MARG. Heavens, when I think that I endured this twaddle for one whole year I--

GIL. Endure? You were intoxicated with joy. Don't try to be ungrateful.

I'm not. Admitting that you behaved never so execrably at the end, yet I can't bring myself to look upon it with bitterness. It had to come just that way.

MARG. Indeed!

GIL. I owe you an explanation. This: at the moment when you were beginning to drift away from me, when homesickness for the stables gripped you--_la nostalgie de l'ecurie_--at that moment I was done with you.

MARG. Impossible.

GIL. You failed to notice the least sign in your characteristic way. I was done with you. To be plain, I didn't need you any longer. What you had to give you gave me. Your uses were fulfilled. In the depths of your soul you knew, unconsciously you knew--

MARG. Please don't get so hot.

GIL. [_unruffled_]. That our day was over. Our relations had served their purpose. I don't regret having loved you.

MARG. I do!

GIL. Capital! This measly outburst must reveal to a person of any insight just one thing: the essential line of difference between the artist and the dilettante. To you, Margaret, our _liaison_ means nothing more than the memory of a few abandoned nights, a few heart-to-heart talks in the winding ways of the English gardens. But _I_ have made it over into a work of art.

MARG. So have I!

GIL. Eh? What do you mean?

MARG. I have done what you have done. I, too, have written a novel in which our relations are depicted. I, too, have embalmed our love--or what we thought was our love--for all time.

GIL. If I were you, I wouldn't talk of "for all time" before the appearance of the second edition.

MARG. Your writing a novel and my writing a novel are two different things.

GIL. Maybe.

MARG. You are a free man. You don't have to steal your hours devoted to artistic labor. And your future doesn't depend on the throw.

GIL. And you?

MARG. That's what I've done. Only a half hour ago Clement left me because I confessed to him that I had written a novel.

GIL. Left you--for good?

MARG. I don't know. But it isn't unlikely. He went away in a fit of anger. What he'll decide to do I can't say.

GIL. So he objects to your writing, does he? He can't bear to see his mistress put her intelligence to some use. Capital! And he represents the blood of the country! H'm! And you, you're not ashamed to give yourself up to the arms of an idiot of this sort, whom you once--

MARG. Don't you speak of him like that. You don't know him.

GIL. Ah!

MARG. You don't know why he objects to my writing. Purely out of love.

He feels that if I go on I will be living in a world entirely apart from him. He blushes at the thought that I should make copy of the most sacred feelings of my soul for unknown people to read. It is his wish that I belong to him only, and that is why he dashed out--no, not dashed out--for Clement doesn't belong to the cla.s.s that dashes out.

GIL. Your observation is well taken. In any case, he went away. We will not undertake to discuss the _tempo_ of his going forth. And he went away because he could not bear to see you surrender yourself to the creative impulse.

MARG. Ah, if he could only understand that! But, of course, that can never be! I could be the best, the faithfulest, the n.o.blest woman in the world if the right man only existed.

GIL. At all events, you admit he is not the right man.

MARG. I never said that!

GIL. But you ought to realize that he's fettering you, undoing you utterly, seeking through egotism, to destroy your inalienable self.

Look back for a moment at the Margaret you were; at the freedom that was yours while you loved me. Think of the younger set who gathered about me and who belonged no whit less to you? Do you never long for those days?

Do you never call to mind the small room with its balcony--Beneath us plunged the Isar--[_He seizes her hand and presses her near._]

MARG. Ah!

GIL. All's not beyond recall. It need not be the Isar, need it? I have something to propose to you, Margaret. Tell him, when he returns, that you still have some important matters to arrange at Munich, and spend the time with me. Margaret, you are so lovely! We shall be happy again as then. Do you remember [_very near her_] "Abandoned on thy breast and--"

MARG. [_retreating brusquely from him_]. Go, go away. No, no. Please go away. I don't love you any more.

GIL. Oh, h'm--indeed! Oh, in that case I beg your pardon. [_Pause._]

Adieu, Margaret.

MARG. Adieu.

GIL. Won't you present me with a copy of your novel as a parting gift, as I have done?

MARG. It hasn't come out yet. It won't be on sale before next week.

GIL. Pardon my inquisitiveness, what kind of a story is it?

MARG. The story of my life. So veiled, to be sure, that I am in no danger of being recognized.

GIL. I see. How did you manage to do it?

MARG. Very simple. For one thing, the heroine is not a writer but a painter.

GIL. Very clever.

MARG. Her first husband is not a cotton manufacturer, but a big financier, and, of course, it wouldn't do to deceive him with a tenor--

GIL. Ha! Ha!

MARG. What strikes you so funny?

GIL. So you deceived him with a tenor? I didn't know that.

MARG. Whoever said so?