An Ideal Husband Read Online Free PDF

it is not true, is it? You are not going to lend your support to this Argentine speculation? You couldn’t!
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Starting.] Who told you I intended to do so?
    LADY CHILTERN. That woman who has just gone out, Mrs. Cheveley, as she calls herself now. She seemed to taunt me with it. Robert, I know this woman. You don’t. We were at school together. She was untruthful, dishonest, an evil influence on every one whose trust or friendship she could win. I hated, I despised her. She stole things, she was a thief. She was sent away for being a thief. Why do you let her influence you?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude, what you tell me may be true, but it happened many years ago. It is best forgotten! Mrs. Cheveley may have changed since then. No one should be entirely judged by their past.
    LADY CHILTERN. [Sadly.] One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. That is a hard saying, Gertrude!
    LADY CHILTERN. It is a true saying, Robert. And what did she mean by boasting that she had got you to lend your support, your name, to a thing I have heard you describe as the most dishonest and fraudulent scheme there has ever been in political life?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Biting his lip.] I was mistaken in the view I took. We all may make mistakes.
    LADY CHILTERN. But you told me yesterday that you had received the report from the Commission, and that it entirely condemned the whole thing.
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Walking up and down.] I have reasons now to believe that the Commission was prejudiced, or, at any rate, misinformed. Besides, Gertrude, public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines.
    LADY CHILTERN. They should both represent man at his highest. I see no difference between them.
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Stopping.] In the present case, on a matter of practical politics, I have changed my mind. That is all.
    LADY CHILTERN. All!
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Sternly.] Yes!
    LADY CHILTERN. Robert! Oh! it is horrible that I should have to ask you such a question—Robert, are you telling me the whole truth?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Why do you ask me such a question?
    LADY CHILTERN. [After a pause.] Why do you not answer it?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Sitting down.] Gertrude, truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to compromise. Every one does.
    LADY CHILTERN. Compromise? Robert, why do you talk so differently to-night from the way I have always heard you talk? Why are you changed?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
    LADY CHILTERN. Circumstances should never alter principles!
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. But if I told you—
    LADY CHILTERN. What?
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. That it was necessary, vitally necessary?
    LADY CHILTERN. It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable. Or if it be necessary, then what is it that I have loved! But it is not, Robert; tell me it is not. Why should it be? What gain would you get? Money? We have no need of that! And money that comes from a tainted source is a degradation. Power? But power is nothing in itself. It is power to do good that is fine—that, and that only. What is it, then? Robert, tell me why you are going to do this dishonourable thing!
    SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude, you have no right to use that word. I told you it was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.
    LADY CHILTERN. Robert, that is all very well for other men, for men who treat life simply as a sordid speculation; but not for you, Robert, not for you. You are different. All your life you have stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that ideal still. That great inheritance throw not