The Profligate 16
HUGH MURRAY.
You must not, I’m sorry to say, consider this the visit of a friend,
Mr. Renshaw.
LESLIE.
Have you travelled so many miles to talk only about business?
HUGH MURRAY.
Yes.
LESLIE.
Ah, be a friend first and let the business wait.
HUGH MURRAY.
I leave here to-night, and I must speak to Mr. Renshaw without delay.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
I can give you only five minutes. Leslie.
LESLIE.
I shall make a nosegay for my dear, and bring it when the five minutes
are gone. [_Tenderly to DUNSTAN._] You have made me forget there is
anything in the world called Business.
[_She follows WILFRID down the garden steps. DUNSTAN watches her for
a moment, then faces HUGH._]
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Do you come here, may I ask, to take up our acquaintance at the point
where it was broken a month ago?
HUGH MURRAY.
I regret that I must do so.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
As a friend--or as an enemy?
HUGH MURRAY.
Neither--as a man who feels he has a duty to follow, and who will
follow it.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
What do you consider your duty?
HUGH MURRAY.
This. There is no need to remind you of my knowledge of the doings of
Mr. Lawrence Kenward.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Murray!
HUGH MURRAY.
I did not use your name.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
You know the poor creature who--you know her?
HUGH MURRAY.
She came to me, in ignorance of my association with you, on the very
day, at the very moment, of your marriage.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
What did she want of you?
HUGH MURRAY.
My aid in searching for her betrayer.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Don’t tell me she is the girl whom my wife and her brother encountered
at the railway station in London!
HUGH MURRAY.
She is the girl.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
That’s fatality--fatality.
HUGH MURRAY.
Before she had been with me ten minutes, I discovered the actual
identity of the man Kenward.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Oh!
HUGH MURRAY.
And I deliberately and dishonestly concealed my knowledge from her.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
For _my_ sake?
HUGH MURRAY.
No--for the sake of the child you had made your wife.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
My wife. Janet Preece can have her revenge now. My wife--my wife.
HUGH MURRAY.
The girl left me on your marriage morning upon the understanding that I
would write to her.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Yes.
HUGH MURRAY.
I did write, the day following, to an address she gave me, in the
country. I wrote instructing her to take no steps till she heard from
me _a month thence_.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
That is a month ago!
HUGH MURRAY.
Exactly a month ago.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
What do you intend to do now?
HUGH MURRAY.
Write to her once more, confessing that I have done nothing, and intend
to do nothing to aid her.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Oh, Murray!
HUGH MURRAY.
Man, don’t thank me! For the sake of one poor creature, your wife, I
have been dishonest to another poor creature, your broken plaything!
For one month I have lied for you in act and in spirit. In the race
between you and your victim I have given the strong man a month’s
start; to her a month of suspense, to you a month of thoughtless
happiness. You have taken it, enjoyed it, steeped yourself to the lips
in it; and now, from this day, you play the game of your life without a
confederate. Our paths divide!
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Murray! Listen to me! You are the only man who may have it in his power
to help me!
HUGH MURRAY.
I have done so--for a month.
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
I don’t ask you to pity the girl I have ill-used or the girl I have
married--that you must do. But, wretch that I am, you might do a
greater injustice than to pity me.
HUGH MURRAY.
Pity _you_!
DUNSTAN RENSHAW.
Murray, a month ago I married this child. Perhaps, then, I was really
in love with her; I hardly know, for loving had been to me like a tune
a man hums for a day and can’t recall a week afterwards. But this I
_do_ know--I have grown to love her now with my whole soul!
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