Complete Poems and Plays (62 page)

In the New Forest …

E
DWARD
.
                        How like you, Lavinia.

You always know of something better.

L
AVINIA
.
It’s only that I have a more practical mind

Than you have, Edward. You do know that.

E
DWARD.
Only because you’ve told me so often.

I’d like to see
you
filling up an income-tax form.

L
AVINIA
.
Don’t be silly, Edward. When I say practical,

I mean practical in the things that really matter.

R
EILLY
.
May I interrupt this interesting discussion?

I say you are both too ill. There are several symptoms

Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,

To qualify a patient for
my
sanatorium:

And one of them is an honest mind.

That is one of the causes of their suffering.

L
AVINIA
.
No one can say my husband has an honest mind.

E
DWARD
.
And I could not honestly say that of
you,
Lavinia.

R
EILLY
.
I congratulate you both on your perspicacity.

Your sympathetic understanding of each other

Will prepare you to appreciate what I have to say to you.

I do not trouble myself with the common cheat,

Or with the insuperably, innocently dull:

My patients such as you are the self-deceivers

Taking infinite pains, exhausting their energy,

Yet never quite successful. You have both of you pretended

To be consulting me; both, tried to impose upon me

Your own diagnosis, and prescribe your own cure.

But when you put yourselves into hands like mine

You surrender a great deal more than you meant to.

This is the consequence of trying to lie to me.

L
AVINIA
.
I did not come here to be insulted.

R
EILLY
.
You have come where the word ‘insult’ has no meaning;

And you must put up with that. All that you have told me —

Both of you — was true enough: you described your feelings —

Or some of them — omitting the important facts.

Let me take your husband first.

[
To
E
DWARD
]
                               You were lying to me

By concealing your relations with Miss Coplestone.

E
DWARD
.
This is monstrous! My wife knew nothing about it.

L
AVINIA
.
Really, Edward! Even if I’d been blind

There were plenty of people to let me know about it.

I wonder if there was anyone who didn’t know.

R
EILLY
.
There was one, in fact. But you, Mrs. Chamberlayne,

Tried to make me believe that it was this discovery

Precipitated what you called your nervous breakdown.

L
AVINIA.
But it’s true! I was completely prostrated;

Even if I have made a partial recovery.

R
EILLY
.
Certainly, you were completely prostrated,

And certainly, you have somewhat recovered.

But you failed to mention that the cause of your distress

Was the defection of your lover — who suddenly

For the first time in his life, fell in love with someone,

And with someone of whom you had reason to be jealous.

E
DWARD
.
Really, Lavinia! This is very interesting.

You seem to have been much more successful at concealment

Than I was. Now I wonder who it could have been.

L
AVINIA
.
Well, tell him if you like.

R
EILLY
.
                                            A young man named Peter.

E
DWARD
.
Peter? Peter who?

R
EILLY
.
                                  Mr. Peter Quilpe

Was a frequent guest.

E
DWARD
.
                         Peter Quilpe.

Peter Quilpe! Really Lavinia!

I congratulate you. You could not have chosen

Anyone I was less likely to suspect.

And then he came to
me
to confide about Celia!

I have never heard anything so utterly ludicrous:

This is the best joke that ever happened.

L
AVINIA
.
I never knew you had such a sense of humour.

R
EILLY
.
It is the first more hopeful symptom.

L
AVINIA
.
How did you know all this?

R
EILLY
.
                                                  That I cannot disclose.

I have my own method of collecting information

About my patients. You must not ask me to reveal it —

That is a matter of professional etiquette.

L
AVINIA
.
I have not noticed much professional etiquette

About your behaviour to-day.

R
EILLY
.
                                        A point well taken.

But permit me to remark that my revelations

About each of you, to one another,

Have not been of anything that you confided to me.

The information I have exchanged between you

Was all obtained from outside sources.

Mrs. Chamberlayne, when you came to me two months ago

I was dissatisfied with your explanation

Of your obvious symptoms of emotional strain

And so I made enquiries.

E
DWARD
.
                              It was two months ago

That your breakdown began! and I never noticed it.

L
AVINIA
.
You wouldn’t notice anything. You never noticed
me.

R
EILLY
.
Now, I want to point out to both of you

How much you have in common. Indeed, I consider

That you are exceptionally well-suited to each other.

Mr. Chamberlayne, when you thought your wife had left you,

You discovered, to your surprise and consternation,

That you were not really in love with Miss Coplestone …

L
AVINIA
.
My husband has never been in love with anybody.

R
EILLY
.
And were not prepared to make the least sacrifice

On her account. This injured your vanity.

You liked to think of yourself as a passionate lover.

Then you realised, what your wife has justly remarked,

That you had never been in love with anybody;

Which made you suspect that you were incapable

Of loving. To men of a certain type

The suspicion that they are incapable of loving

Is as disturbing to their self-esteem

As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

L
AVINIA
.
You
are
cold-hearted, Edward.

R
EILLY
.
                                                      So you say, Mrs. Chamberlayne.

And now, let us turn to your side of the problem.

When you discovered that your young friend

(Though you knew, in your heart, that he was not in love with you,

And were always humiliated by the awareness

That you had forced him into this position) —

When, I say, you discovered that your young friend

Had actually fallen in love with Miss Coplestone,

It took you some time, I have no doubt,

Before you would admit it. Though perhaps you knew it

Before he did. You pretended to yourself,

I suspect, and for as long as you could,

That he was aiming at a higher social distinction

Than the honour conferred by being
your
lover.

When you had to face the fact that his feelings towards her

Were different from any you had aroused in him —

It was a shock. You had wanted to be loved;

You had come to see that no one had ever loved you.

Then you began to fear that no one
could
love you.

E
DWARD
.
I’m beginning to feel very sorry for you, Lavinia.

You know, you really are exceptionally unlovable,

And I never quite knew why. I thought it was
my
fault.

R
EILLY
.
And now you begin to see, I hope,

How much you have in common. The same isolation.

A man who finds himself incapable of loving

And a woman who finds that no man can love her.

L
AVINIA
.
It seems to me that what we have in common

Might be just enough to make us loathe one another.

R
EILLY
.
See it rather as the bond which holds you together.

While still in a state of unenlightenment,

You
could always say: ‘he could not love any woman;’

You
could always say: ‘no man could love her.’

You could accuse each other of your own faults,

And so could avoid understanding each other.

Now, you have only to reverse the propositions

And put them together.

L
AVINIA
.
                          Is that possible?

R
EILLY
.
If I had sent either of you to the sanatorium

In the state in which you came to me — I tell you this:

It would have been a horror beyond your imagining,

For you would have been left with what you brought with you:

The shadow of desires of desires. A prey

To the devils who arrive at their plenitude of power

When they have you to themselves.

L
AVINIA
.
                                                 Then what can we do