One of the smaller Bond Street Picture Galleries. The entrance is from a picture shop. Nearly in the middle of the gallery there is a writing-table, at which the Secretary, fashionably dressed, sits with his back to the entrance, correcting catalogue proofs. Some copies of a new book are on the desk, also the Secretary’s shining hat and a couple of magnifying glasses. At the side, on his left, a little behind him, is a small door marked PRIVATE. Near the same side is a cushioned bench parallel to the walls, which are covered with Dubedat’s works. Two screens, also covered with drawings, stand near the corners right and left of the entrance.
Jennifer, beautifully dressed and apparently very happy and prosperous, comes into the gallery through the private door.
JENNIFER. Have the catalogues come yet, Mr Danby?
THE SECRETARY. Not yet.
JENNIFER. What a shame! It’s a quarter past: the private view will begin in less than half an hour.
THE SECRETARY. I think I’d better run over to the printers to hurry them up.
JENNIFER. Oh, if you would be so good, Mr Danby. I’ll take your place while youre away.
THE SECRETARY. If anyone should come before the time dont take any notice. The commissionaire wont let anyone through unless he knows him. We have a few people who like to come before the crowd—people who really buy; and of course we’re glad to see them. Have you seen the notices in Brush and Crayon and in The Easel?
JENNIFER [indignantly] Yes: most disgraceful. They write quite patronizingly, as if they were Mr Dubedat’s superiors. After all the cigars and sandwiches they had from us on the press day, and all they drank, I really think it is infamous that they should write like that. I hope you have not sent them tickets for to-day.
THE SECRETARY. Oh, they wont come again: theres no lunch to-day. The advance copies of your book have come. [He indicates the new books].
JENNIFER [pouncing on a copy, wildly excited] Give it to me. Oh! excuse me a moment [she runs away with it through the private door].
The Secretary takes a mirror from his drawer and smartens himself before going out. Ridgeon comes in.
RIDGEON. Good morning. May I look round, as well, before the doors open?
THE SECRETARY. Certainly, Sir Colenso. I’m sorry catalogues have not come: I’m just going to see about them. Heres my own list, if you dont mind.
RIDGEON. Thanks. Whats this? [He takes up one the new books].
THE SECRETARY. Thats just come in. An advance copy of Mrs Dubedat’s Life of her late husband.
RIDGEON [reading the title] The Story of a King By His Wife. [He looks at the portrait frontise]. Ay: there he is. You knew him here, I suppose.
THE SECRETARY. Oh, we knew him. Better than she did, Sir Colenso, in some ways, perhaps.
RIDGEON. So did I. [They look significantly at one another]. I’ll take a look round.
The Secretary puts on the shining hat and goes out. Ridgeon begins looking at the pictures. Presently he comes back to the table for a magnifying glass, and scrutinizes a drawing very closely. He sighs; shakes his head, as if constrained to admit the extraordinary fascination and merit of the work; then marks the Secretary’s list. Proceeding with his survey, he disappears behind the screen. Jennifer comes back with her book. A look round satisfies her that she is alone. She seats herself at the table and admires the memoir—her first printed book—to her heart’s content. Ridgeon re-appears, face to the wall, scrutinizing the drawings. After using his glass again, he steps back to get a more distant view of one of the larger pictures. She hastily closes the book at the sound; looks round; recognizes him; and stares, petrified. He takes a further step back which brings him nearer to her.
RIDGEON [shaking his head as before, ejaculates] Clever brute! [She flushes as though he had struck her. He turns to put the glass down on the desk, and finds himself face to face with her intent gaze]. I beg your pardon. I thought I was alone.
JENNIFER [controlling herself, and speaking steadily and meaningly] I am glad we have met, Sir Colenso Ridgeon. I met Dr Blenkinsop yesterday. I congratulate you on a wonderful cure.
RIDGEON [can find no words; makes an embarrassed gesture of assent after a moment’s silence, and puts down the glass and the Secretary’s list on the table].
JENNIFER. He looked the picture of health and strength and prosperity. [She looks for a moment at the walls, contrasting Blenkinsop’s fortune with the artist’s fate].
RIDGEON [in low tones, still embarrassed] He has been fortunate.
JENNIFER. Very fortunate. His life has been spared.
RIDGEON. I mean that he has been made a Medical Officer of Health. He cured the Chairman of the Borough Council very successfully.
JENNIFER. With your medicines?
RIDGEON. No. I believe it was with a pound of ripe greengages.
JENNIFER [with deep gravity] Funny!
RIDGEON. Yes. Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
JENNIFER. Dr Blenkinsop said one very strange thing to me.
RIDGEON. What was that?
JENNIFER. He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murderers.
RIDGEON. That is what the public doctor always thinks of the private doctor. Well, Blenkinsop ought to know. He was a private doctor long enough himself. Come! you have talked at me long enough. Talk to me. You have something to reproach me with. There is reproach in your face, in your voice: you are full of it. Out with it.
JENNIFER. It is too late for reproaches now. When I turned and saw you just now, I wondered how you could come here coolly to look at his pictures. You answered the question. To you, he was only a clever brute.
RIDGEON [quivering] Oh, dont. You know I did not know you were here.
JENNIFER [raising her head a little with a quite gentle impulse of pride] You think it only mattered because I heard it. As if it could touch me, or touch him! Dont you see that what is really dreadful is that to you living things have no souls.
RIDGEON [with a sceptical shrug] The soul is an organ I have not come across in the course of my anatomical work.
JENNIFER. You know you would not dare to say such a silly thing as that to anybody but a woman whose mind you despise. If you dissected me you could not find my conscience. Do you think I have got none?
RIDGEON. I have met people who had none.
JENNIFER. Clever brutes? Do you know, doctor, that some of the dearest and most faithful friends I ever had were only brutes! You would have vivisected them. The dearest and greatest of all my friends had a sort of beauty and affectionateness that only animals have. I hope you may never feel what I felt when I had to put him into the hands of men who defend the torture of animals because they are only brutes.
RIDGEON. Well, did you find us so very cruel, after all? They tell me that though you have dropped me, you stay for weeks with the Bloomfield Boningtons and the Walpoles. I think it must be true, because they never mention you to me now.
JENNIFER. The animals in Sir Ralph’s house are like spoiled children. When Mr. Walpole had to take a splinter out of the mastiff’s paw, I had to hold the poor dog myself; and Mr Walpole had to turn Sir Ralph out of the room. And Mrs. Walpole has to tell the gardener not to kill wasps when Mr. Walpole is looking. But there are doctors who are naturally cruel; and there are others who get used to cruelty and are callous about it. They blind themselves to the souls of animals; and that blinds them to the souls of men and women. You made a dreadful mistake about Louis; but you would not have made it if you had not trained yourself to make the same mistake about dogs. You saw nothing in them but dumb brutes; and so you could see nothing in him but a clever brute.
RIDGEON [with sudden resolution] I made no mistake whatever about him.
JENNIFER. Oh, doctor!
RIDGEON [obstinately] I made no mistake whatever about him.
JENNIFER. Have you forgotten that he died?
RIDGEON [with a sweep of his hand towards the pictures] He is not dead. He is there. [Taking up the book] And there.
JENNIFER [springing up with blazing eyes] Put that down. How dare you touch it?
Ridgeon, amazed at the fierceness of the outburst, puts it down with a deprecatory shrug. She takes it up and looks at it as if he had profaned a relic.
RIDGEON. I am very sorry. I see I had better go.
JENNIFER [putting the book down] I beg your pardon. I forgot myself. But it is not yet—it is a private copy.
RIDGEON. But for me it would have been a very different book.
JENNIFER. But for you it would have been a longer one.
RIDGEON. You know then that I killed him?
JENNIFER [suddenly moved and softened] Oh, doctor, if you acknowledge that—if you have confessed it to yourself—if you realize what you have done, then there is forgiveness. I trusted in your strength instinctively at first; then I thought I had mistaken callousness for strength. Can you blame me? But if it was really strength—if it was only such a mistake as we all make sometimes—it will make me so happy to be friends with you again.
RIDGEON. I tell you I made no mistake. I cured Blenkinsop: was there any mistake there?
JENNIFER. He recovered. Oh, dont be foolishly proud, doctor. Confess to a failure, and save our friendship. Remember, Sir Ralph gave Louis your medicine; and it made him worse.
RIDGEON. I cant be your friend on false pretences. Something has got me by the throat: the truth must come out. I used that medicine myself on Blenkinsop. It did not make him worse. It is a dangerous medicine: it cured Blenkinsop: it killed Louis Dubedat. When I handle it, it cures. When another man handles it, it kills—sometimes.
JENNIFER [naively: not yet taking it all in] Then why did you let Sir Ralph give it to Louis?
RIDGEON. I’m going to tell you. I did it because I was in love with you.
JENNIFER [innocently surprised] In lo— You! elderly man!
RIDGEON [thunderstruck, raising his fists to heaven] Dubedat: thou art avenged! [He drops his hands and collapses on the bench]. I never thought of that. I suppose I appear to you a ridiculous old fogey.
JENNIFER. But surely—I did not mean to offend you, indeed—but you must be at least twenty years older than I am.
RIDGEON. Oh, quite. More, perhaps. In twenty years you will understand how little difference that makes.
JENNIFER. But even so, how could you think that I—his wife—could ever think of YOU—
RIDGEON [stopping her with a nervous waving of his fingers] Yes, yes, yes, yes: I quite understand: you neednt rub it in.
JENNIFER. But—oh, it is only dawning on me now—I was so surprised at first—do you dare to tell me that it was to gratify a miserable jealousy that you deliberately—oh! oh! you murdered him.
RIDGEON. I think I did. It really comes to that.
Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
I suppose—yes: I killed him.
JENNIFER. And you tell me that! to my face! callously! You are not afraid!
RIDGEON. I am a doctor: I have nothing to fear. It is not an indictable offense to call in B. B. Perhaps it ought to be; but it isnt.
JENNIFER. I did not mean that. I meant afraid of my taking the law into my own hands, and killing you.
RIDGEON. I am so hopelessly idiotic about you that I should not mind it a bit. You would always remember me if you did that.
JENNIFER. I shall remember you always as a little man who tried to kill a great one.
RIDGEON. Pardon me. I succeeded.
JENNIFER [with quiet conviction] No. Doctors think they hold the keys of life and death; but it is not their will that is fulfilled. I dont believe you made any difference at all.
RIDGEON. Perhaps not. But I intended to.
JENNIFER [looking at him amazedly: not without pity] And you tried to destroy that wonderful and beautiful life merely because you grudged him a woman whom you could never have expected to care for you!
RIDGEON. Who kissed my hands. Who believed in me. Who told me her friendship lasted until death.
JENNIFER. And whom you were betraying.
RIDGEON. No. Whom I was saving.
JENNIFER [gently] Pray, doctor, from what?
RIDGEON. From making a terrible discovery. From having your life laid waste.
JENNIFER. How?
RIDGEON. No matter. I have saved you. I have been the best friend you ever had. You are happy. You are well. His works are an imperishable joy and pride for you.
JENNIFER. And you think that is your doing. Oh doctor, doctor! Sir Patrick is right: you do think you are a little god. How can you be so silly? You did not paint those pictures which are my imperishable joy and pride: you did not speak the words that will always be heavenly music in my ears. I listen to them now whenever I am tired or sad. That is why I am always happy.
RIDGEON. Yes, now that he is dead. Were you always happy when he was alive?
JENNIFER [wounded] Oh, you are cruel, cruel. When he was alive I did not know the greatness of my blessing. I worried meanly about little things. I was unkind to him. I was unworthy of him.
RIDGEON [laughing bitterly] Ha!
JENNIFER. Dont insult me: dont blaspheme. [She snatches up the book and presses it to her heart in a paroxysm of remorse, exclaiming] Oh, my King of Men!
RIDGEON. King of Men! Oh, this is too monstrous, too grotesque. We cruel doctors have kept the secret from you faithfully; but it is like all secrets: it will not keep itself. The buried truth germinates and breaks through to the light.
JENNIFER. What truth?
RIDGEON. What truth! Why, that Louis Dubedat, King of Men, was the most entire and perfect scoundrel, the most miraculously mean rascal, the most callously selfish blackguard that ever made a wife miserable.
JENNIFER [unshaken: calm and lovely] He made his wife the happiest woman in the world, doctor.
RIDGEON. No: by all thats true on earth, he made his WIDOW the happiest woman in the world; but it was I who made her a widow. And her happiness is my justification and my reward. Now you know what I did and what I thought of him. Be as angry with me as you like: at least you know me as I really am. If you ever come to care for an elderly man, you will know what you are caring for.
JENNIFER [kind and quiet] I am not angry with you any more, Sir Colenso. I knew quite well that you did not like Louis; but it is not your fault: you dont understand: that is all. You never could have believed in him. It is just like your not believing in my religion: it is a sort of sixth sense that you have not got. And [with a gentle reassuring movement towards him] dont think that you have shocked me so dreadfully. I know quite well what you mean by his selfishness. He sacrificed everything for his art. In a certain sense he had even to sacrifice everybody—
RIDGEON. Everybody except himself. By keeping that back he lost the right to sacrifice you, and gave me the right to sacrifice him. Which I did.
JENNIFER [shaking her head, pitying his error] He was one of the men who know what women know: that self-sacrifice is vain and cowardly.
RIDGEON. Yes, when the sacrifice is rejected and thrown away. Not when it becomes the food of godhead.
JENNIFER. I dont understand that. And I cant argue with you: you are clever enough to puzzle me, but not to shake me. You are so utterly, so wildly wrong; so incapable of appreciating Louis—
RIDGEON. Oh! [taking up the Secretary’s list] I have marked five pictures as sold to me.
JENNIFER. They will not be sold to you. Louis’ creditors insisted on selling them; but this is my birthday; and they were all bought in for me this morning by my husband.
RIDGEON. By whom?!!!
JENNIFER. By my husband.
RIDGEON [gabbling and stuttering] What husband? Whose husband? Which husband? Whom? how? what? Do you mean to say that you have married again?
JENNIFER. Do you forget that Louis disliked widows, and that people who have married happily once always marry again?
The Secretary returns with a pile of catalogues.
THE SECRETARY. Just got the first batch of catalogues in time. The doors are open.
JENNIFER [to Ridgeon, politely] So glad you like the pictures, Sir Colenso. Good morning.
RIDGEON. Good morning. [He goes towards the door; hesitates; turns to say something more; gives it up as a bad job; and goes].
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg