The Importance of Being Earnest (18 page)

L
ORD
G
ORING
. My dear Robert, it’s a very awkward business, very awkward indeed. You should have told your wife the whole thing. Secrets from other people’s wives are a necessary luxury in modern life. So, at least, I am always told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Arthur, I couldn’t tell my wife. When could I have told her? Not last night. It would have made a life-long separation between us, and I would have lost the love of the one woman in the world I worship, of the only woman who has ever stirred love within me. Last night it would have been quite impossible. she would have turned from me in horror … in horror and in contempt.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Is Lady Chiltern as perfect as all that?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Yes; my wife is as perfect as all that.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Taking off his left-hand glove.)
What a pity! I beg your pardon, my dear fellow, I didn’t quite mean that. But if what you tell me is true, I should like to have a serious talk about life with Lady Chiltern.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. It would be quite useless.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. May I try?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Yes; but nothing could make her alter her views.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Well, at the worst it would simply be a psychological experiment.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. All such experiments are terribly dangerous.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn’t so, life wouldn’t be worth living…. Well, I am bound to say that I think you should have told her years ago.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. When? When we were engaged? Do you think she would have married me if she had known that the origin of my fortune is such as it is, the basis of my career such as it is, and that I had done a thing that I suppose most men would call shameful and dishonourable?

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Slowly.)
Yes; most men would call it ugly names. There is no doubt of that.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(Bitterly.)
Men who every day do something of the same kind themselves. Men who, each one of them, have worse secrets in their own lives.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. That is the reason they are so pleased to find out other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did? No one.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Looking at him steadily.)
Except yourself, Robert.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(After a pause.)
Of course I had private information about a certain transaction contemplated by the Government of the day, and I acted on it. Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Tapping his boot with his cane.)
And public scandal invariably the result.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(Pacing up and down the room.)
Arthur, do you think that what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man’s whole career should be ruined for a fault done in one’s boyhood almost? I was twenty-two at the time, and I had the double misfortune of being
well-born and poor, two unforgivable things nowadays. Is it fair that the folly, the sin of one’s youth, if men choose to call it a sin, should wreck a life like mine, should place me in the pillory, should shatter all that I have worked for, all that I have built up? Is it fair, Arthur?

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. You underrate yourself, Robert. Believe me, without wealth you could have succeeded just as well.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. When I was old, perhaps. When I had lost my passion for power, or could not use it. When I was tired, worn out, disappointed. I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the time for success. I couldn’t wait.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Well, you certainly have had your success while you are still young. No one in our day has had such a brilliant success. Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the age of forty—that’s good enough for anyone, I should think.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. And if it is all taken away from me now? If I lose everything over a horrible scandal? If I am hounded from public life?

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Robert, how could you have sold yourself for money?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(Excitedly.)
I did not sell myself for money. I bought success at a great price. That is all.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Gravely.)
Yes; you certainly paid a great price for it.

But what first made you think of doing such a thing?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Baron Arnheim.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Damned scoundrel!

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most intellectual men I ever met.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Ah! I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is
more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose. But how did he do it? Tell me the whole thing.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(Throws himself into an armchair by the writing-table.)
One night after dinner at Lord Radley’s the Baron began talking about success in modern life as something that one could reduce to an absolutely definite science. With that wonderfully fascinating quiet voice of his he expounded to us the most terrible of all philosophies, the philosophy of power, preached to us the most marvellous of all gospels, the gospel of gold. I think he saw the effect he had produced on me, for some days afterwards he wrote and asked me to come and see him. He was living then in Park Lane, in the house Lord Woolcomb has now. I remember so well how, with a strange smile on his pale curved lips, he led me through his wonderful picture gallery, showed me his tapestries, his enamels, his jewels, his carved ivories, made me wonder at the strange loveliness of the luxury in which he lived; and then told me that luxury was nothing but a background, a painted scene in a play, and that power, power over other men, power over the world was the one thing worth having, the one supreme pleasure worth knowing, the one joy one never tired of, and that in our century only the rich possessed it.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(With great deliberation.)
A thoroughly shallow creed.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
.
(Rising.)
I didn’t think so then. I don’t think so now. Wealth has given me enormous power. It gave me at the very outset of my life freedom, and freedom is everything. You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is. You cannot understand what a wonderful chance the Baron gave me. such a chance as few men get.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Fortunately for them, if one is to judge by results. But tell me definitely, how did the Baron finally persuade you to—well, to do what you did?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. When I was going away he said to me that if I ever could give him any private information of real value he would make me a very rich man. I was dazed at the prospect he held out to me, and my ambition and my desire for power were
at that time boundless. Six weeks later certain private documents passed through my hands.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the carpet.)
State documents?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Yes.
(Lord Goring sighs, then passes his hand across his forehead and looks up.)

L
ORD
G
ORING
. I had no idea that you, of all men in the world, could have been so weak, Robert, as to yield to such a temptation as Baron Arnheim held out to you.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not—there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage. I had that courage. I sat down the same afternoon and wrote Baron Arnheim the letter this woman now holds. He made three-quarters of a million over the transaction.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. And you?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. I received from the Baron £110,000.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. You were worth more, Robert.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. No; that money gave me exactly what I wanted, power over others. I went into the House immediately. The Baron advised me in finance from time to time. Before five years I had almost trebled my fortune. Since then everything that I have touched has turned out a success. In all things connected with money I have had a luck so extraordinary that sometimes it has made me almost afraid. I remember having read somewhere, in some strange book, that when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. But tell me, Robert, did you never suffer any regret for what you had done?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. No. I felt that I had fought the century with its own weapons, and won.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Sadly.)
You thought you had won?

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. I thought so.
(After a long pause.)
Arthur, do you despise me for what I have told you?

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(With deep feeling in his voice.)
I am very sorry for you, Robert, very sorry indeed.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. I don’t say that I suffered any remorse. I didn’t. Not remorse in the ordinary, rather silly sense of the word. But I have paid conscience money many times. I had a wild hope that I might disarm destiny. The sum Baron Arnheim gave me I have distributed twice over in public charities since then.

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Looking up.)
In public charities? Dear me! what a lot of harm you must have done, Robert!

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Oh, don’t say that, Arthur; don’t talk like that.

L
ORD
G
ORING
. Never mind what I say, Robert. I am always saying what I shouldn’t say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great misfortune nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood. As regards this dreadful business, I will help you in whatever way I can. of course you know that.

S
IR
R
OBERT
C
HILTERN
. Thank you, Arthur, thank you. But what is to be done? What can be done?

L
ORD
G
ORING
.
(Leaning back with his hands in his pockets.)
Well, the English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them. However, in your case, Robert, a confession would not do. The money, if you will allow me to say so, is … awkward. Besides, if you did make a clean breast of the whole affair, you would never be able to talk morality again. And in England a man who can’t talk morality twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over as a serious politician. There would be nothing left for him as a profession except Botany or the Church. A confession would be of no use. It would ruin you.