SWIFT. DO you mean that you belong to these societies?

  WILKES. TO some of them; there is one of which you have probably heard. We call it the Hell Fire Club, to disarm suspicion.

  SWIFT. Sir, I can congratulate you on your conception of a euphemism.

  WILKES. The flames of hell are only painted on the gates to frighten away the fools. Within are the flowers of the earthly paradise; the paradise of the wise. There the old superstitious charms and chains fall from us without our knowing it, and friendships form themselves naturally; free and grand friendships such as those that moulded the ancient world; the union of Pericles and Aspasia.

  SWIFT [doubtfully]. I suppose Pericles had a wife.

  WILKES. Doubtless; but he did not expect his wife to be his muse; and, if I may take the freedom of this talk, neither can you. My dear Sir, it is not rational to suppose that the sentimental accident of eighteen can be the intellectual inspiration of thirty-five. Why should something mumbled years ago, in some village chapel thousands of miles away, condemn you or anyone else to unhappiness?

  SWIFT. What do you mean by unhappiness? I imagine we have been happy.

  WILKES. Who have been happy? You and your wife? Or you and your pamphlets? You have been content to write and declaim, and distinguish between the Whiggism of Mr. Burke and the Republicanism of Mr. Jefferson. Have you never noticed your wife growing restless under these things? Can you affirm in honesty that she has not grown weary of them? Have you never seen her pacing the room and throwing the books about? She was not meant to be imprisoned in a library. She was meant to reign in a salon.

  SWIFT. It is true she said she wanted a salon.

  WILKES. Remember that we are philosophers and have thrown away our swords; and let me call up an ideal or platonic fancy. I am a fantastic figure on the fringe of society; I lack nothing of the grotesque. I have even been Lord Mayor of London. But I tell you that if your wife and I were married, we could be a King and Queen.

  SWIFT. I thought you were both supposed to be republicans.

  WILKES. I do not think that would trouble us. That is the one resemblance between her and me. That is the one difference between us and you.

  SWIFT. And what part am I to play in your royal court? The Court fool?

  WILKES. NO; another king, with another and perhaps a better kingdom. You may still be shocked if I add another Queen, but since we are for once speaking frankly of the first truths of life, let us follow them into the future. Suppose that some fine day Pericles does meet Aspasia. Suppose you do meet a woman who is more than beautiful and more than good; who is more than a wife, because she can also be a friend. Suppose she does kindle at the right turn of words in the eloquence of Mr. Jefferson; suppose she can share the delight of detecting the precise fallacy of Mr. Burke. Suppose there is somewhere waiting, like a princess in a tower or on an island, the queen of your own intellectual kingdom. Suppose she is destined yet to cross your path.

  [A single knock is heard on the door, which is then thrown open, and the MARQUISE appears somewhat disordered with haste; with her brilliant eyes blazing with an excitement she still tries to control.

  MARQUISE. Oh, I know you will both stare at me as if I were a miracle.

  SWIFT. Just then... I thought you were a miracle.

  WILKES. NO. Like every other miracle, she is only a coincidence.

  MARQUISE. Well, I am a miracle at this moment; the sort of sudden miracle that is sent to snatch a man from a precipice or a shipwreck. There is not a moment to lose, if the miracle is to save your life.

  SWIFT. What does it all mean?

  MARQUISE. Mr. Swift, I have risked everything in coming here. But for you it is not risk, but certain death if you remain. That man Draper is a creature of Lord Sandwich and the government; and he is determined to hunt you down. He was baffled for the moment by Jack’s lies and Dr. Johnson’s forbearance; but he has made enquiries since, and orders are already out to arrest you. I saw Draper talking to Lieutenant Crockford, a friend of his, who was in uniform and evidently on duty. And there is a soldier with a fixed bayonet outside this house as I speak.

  SWIFT [with dignity]. In that case, Madam, it only remains to decide whether I shall receive the Captain with a bow or a drawn sword. In either case it is merely death.

  MARQUISE. YOU shall not die. I say you shall not die. There is but one thing to do, and I have come that you may do it. I have a coach waiting at the back entrance at the end of the garden, and it will take us at once to the Embassy.

  SWIFT. TO the Embassy?

  MARQUISE. Yes, to the French Embassy. You are officially attached to the French Embassy. That is why you came over from France about the same time as we did. You are one of my husband’s secretaries. Your diplomatic work for the French Embassy has been most industrious and intelligent.

  SWIFT. I am glad to hear it; but I hardly understand it. I am not very likely to show any fear of death, Madam, especially in your presence. But I fail to understand why one of your husband’s secretaries should be immortal.

  MARQUISE. One of my husband’s secretaries is at least inviolable. Anything connected with the Embassy is sacred; it is treated as French soil, and they dare not touch you there. Come, we are wasting time. They will raid this place, seize your papers and read the secrets of the whole revolution. It is not only yourself, but your country.

  SWIFT. My country... and my wife?

  MARQUISE. Your wife can follow in another. coach. Mr. Wilkes will attend to it. [Breaking out.] Oh, don’t you see we are in a world of real things now, as real as life and death, where our nearest neighbours are those that can help us? You know that nobody can help you but I. You know that you yourself could not carry your wife out of this trap so cleverly as Jack could do it.

  SWIFT [as if dazed]. In that case I suppose I ought... they must not get the papers... these are the only papers that matter. [Ransacks a drawer and stuffs them into his pocket.]

  MARQUISE. Take them and come. I can hear the soldiers under the window.

  [The voice of an officer is heard without calling out orders.

  SWIFT [abruptly and with firmness]. Mr. Wilkes, will you be so kind as to escort my wife?. [Goes out with MARQUISE.]

  [WILKES bows and passes into the inner room, reappearing with MARY.

  MARY. I do not understand. What has happened? Do you tell me that John wishes me to go with you?

  WILKES. He has done me that honour. It is a very short journey.

  MARY. It is a very great journey, I know; longer than the journey from America. Oh, I am not deceived about that; I have been thinking for myself, too; and I know we have come to the beginning of a new world. But to go now, to-night, in your company —

  WILKES. But by his permission.

  MARY. We shall be following my husband’s coach?

  WILKES. YOU will also be following your husband’s example.

  MARY. TO go after him, and yet with you —

  WILKES. Why do you hesitate? Do you think it is a fine point of casuistry?

  MARY. Nothing. I should not let it affect me, after all; I told you I had been thinking for myself. But a queer thought went through my head; it had nothing to do with anything; it was a piece of nonsense from nowhere.

  WILKES. Why, what are you talking about?

  MARY. I was wondering —

  WILKES. Well?

  MARY. I was wondering what Dr. Johnson would think. [Takes his arm and they go out.]

  ACT III

  SCENE. — The outer room of the Red Cock Coffee House. At the back there are folding doors which are shut, but through which comes fitfully the noise of talk or song. The room in front is furnished with tables and benches, but is at present deserted.

  [Enter CAPTAIN DRAPER and LIEUTENANT

  CROCKFORD in front from opposite sides; the latter is in uniform.

  CROCKFORD. This is a strange place for your appointment.

  DRAPER. It is a strange place meant for strange people. Some of the most dangerous characters in London meet behind those doors. The men of the old Hell Fire Club, with ladies to match. They are playing at revolution just now; and I am interested in one of the revolutionists.

  CROCKFORD. DO you mean your old friend the American spy? Are you still trying to arrest him?

  DRAPER. NO; I am trying to arrest her. She is the real American spy; at least, she is much the more important of the two.

  CROCKFORD. YOU mean his wife?

  DRAPER. Yes, the woman who is always going about with Jack Wilkes. She has adopted all the new ideas; including the notion of not troubling much about whose wife she is. Her husband pairs off with the Marquise de Montmarat, of course; and between them they are turning the town upside down. But she is the real queen of the revels, for all she was such a little Puritan when we first knew her. It’s always the quiet ones who surprise you in that style. But we can’t arrest her without him.

  CROCKFORD. YOU can’t arrest either of them. Your American spy has turned into a French diplomatist.

  DRAPER. We shall arrest them to-night.

  CROCKFORD. What is the use? You will only have the French Embassy after you to-morrow.

  DRAPER. There will be no French Embassy to-morrow.

  CROCKFORD. NO French Embassy? What on earth do you mean?

  DRAPER. I have very serious news. It is bad news, I suppose, but it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. The French King declared war on us this morning. He is supporting the American rebels.

  CROCKFORD. A good thing for them and a bad thing for us, I take it.

  DRAPER. A good thing for most of them, but a bad thing for one of them. If we can catch that fellow now, I fancy the lawyers will tell us a different tale.

  CROCKFORD. Well, and what do you want me to do?

  DRAPER. The situation should be defined by midnight at latest. I want you to be here when the clock strikes one, with a file or two of your grenadiers, that’s all. Till then, the less we are seen here the better, for the choice spirits are arriving. Till one o’clock, then.

  CROCKFORD. Very well, till one.

  [They go out at opposite sides. Enter SWIFT and the MARQUISE in front, but passing towards the inner room.

  MARQUISE. From news I hear, which I must not detail, you may have to go to France in earnest this time, my friend.

  SWIFT. And visit all those French friends that Jack was so kind as to provide for me. We must make sure that Mary is safe; though I admit, of course, that she is quite capable of taking care of herself. That is true, at least, in practice as well as principle.

  MARQUISE. She is a wonderful woman. I suppose all the petty respectable people would be surprised at my admiring her so much as I do. Oh, what a relief it is to have risen above all these envies and private rivalries. The respectable people point at us because we have free and philosophical opinions, as if we were only wallowing in the mire of self-indulgence and selfishness. How absurd they are! It is we who are unselfish. It is we who are generous and sympathetic and can yield to others. It is we heathens who do, in fact, fulfil the Christian ideal which is found impossible for Christians. Yes, it is we who can love our enemies.

  SWIFT. Yes, ours is surely the higher principle. I cannot see any answer to it. I am go glad that Mary takes the same view; indeed she takes it more vigorously.

  MARQUISE. Yes, it is the vigour that I admire; she has vigour more than vision. I will give you an example of the sort of thing that she can do and we could not. I happened to mention that a revolutionary society in France has adopted as a symbol the ancient cap of Phrygia, coloured red to represent a revolt for freedom. If somebody had told that to you or me we should have been lost in visions; we should have seen that strange archaic head-dress on the heads of ancient Phrygian priests who reared altars to nature and the earth; we should have wondered if the old Greek Mysteries had handed down some secret of the worship of liberty. But she saw at once that it might be a badge for our own club; the red cap of the Red Cock Tavern. With her own hands she set to work to make them; and with her servants and her friends had made fifty before morning. That is the way that revolutions are made.

  SWIFT. Yes, I feel that I for one am comparatively useless.

  MARQUISE. You are not useless; you are only something more than useful. Believe me, my friend, without us also there could be no hope for humanity. The world needs philosophers as well as politicians; philosophers are rarer than saints. Do you know what it is that I really admire in you? It is that you always listen to reason.

  SWIFT. Surely it is a man’s first duty to do so.

  MARQUISE. Very few men try to do it, and no women. They listen to friends, to foes, to faces and voices and gestures and intentions; to anything except the thing that is said to them. It is your strength that you think first of, whether the thing is true. You listened to poor Jack Wilkes as if he were an angel from heaven, because he made a logical deduction from liberty. You said, as you said just now, that you could not see the answer to it. Most men would have seen a hundred answers; that Wilkes was a liar, a looseliver, a man with a profligate motive, a man to whom no gentleman would listen, a rascal to be run through like a rat. Yes; there were any number of answers to Jack Wilkes; but there was no answer to what he said. You listened to what he said; and that is what I mean by the magnanimity of a philosopher. People would call you absent-minded and short-sighted; but when I see these things, I know what was meant when the gods made justice blind.

  SWIFT [after a pause]. You have one very divine gift, and a strange one. You can pay a convincing compliment. The trouble is that when people praise us we always know instantly that we do not deserve it. What you say is flattering, and yet in honesty I do not think it is false.

  MARQUISE. Those who follow truth never find falsehood. Truth often leads us into strange places, but it is always truth that leads.

  SWIFT [bowing]. Lead on.

  [She passes in front of him towards the inner room; he follows and opens the doors. As they disappear within WILKES and MARY appear in the foreground. She is much more fashionably dressed than before and flushed with some excitement or pleasure, anger or triumph.

  WILKES. The whole town is ringing with it. They say your encounter with Mrs. Montague was worthy of two Amazons in an epic. I would give a hundred pounds to have been there, especially as the money is my creditors’.

  MARY. It was truly very laughable; and I do not think she had the best of it. I am afraid I played a trick on her and told her that some of our dreadful demagogues in America were making demands; and I quoted whole passages. And when she cried out on them, I confessed they were quoted from her own friend the great patriotic Minister; from the speeches of my Lord Chatham himself. There, I said, it is your own great Minister, who conquered Canada and India, who says you cannot conquer America.

  WILKES. The practical joke did not amuse her, I fear.

  MARY. She was furious, and tried to say hateful things. Oh yes, she spoke about you. Your friend, Lord Sandwich, the old brute, who sold your secret to the Government was standing there leering like a satyr. And she asked in front of him,” Has Mr. Wilkes read you his Essay on Woman?” And I said, “He reserves his more scandalous works for his ministerial friends. I do not steal private papers; but if he had shown it me, I would never have betrayed him.” When I left Jemmy Twitcher was lowering instead of leering.

  WILKES. The work referred to is not one of which I am proud. But I ask you to remember that I wrote the Essay on Woman before I knew how great a woman can be.

  MARY. One doesn’t need to be very great to stick a pin in that stuck-up old woman; but I enjoyed doing it.

  WILKES. The revolutionary salon has met the respectable salon and defeated it.

  MARY [more thoughtfully]. It is odd that I used to say I wanted a salon; but I never thought it would be such a revolutionary one as it is. Of course our ideas alter; but it gave me a queer little twinge the other day to hear that Dr. Johnson had returned to London and had even mentioned my name.

  WILKES [rather sharply]. What, Dr. Johnson?

  MARY. It was like finding an old nursery doll covered with dust. Of course he would never understand us now; but somehow I hate to think of that funny snuffy old man being disappointed.

  WILKES. Dr. Johnson? And enquiring for you? I confess I do not like this. I think it is rather dangerous.

  MARY. What are you afraid of?

  WILKES. Nay, Madam, I hope I do not often boast. But when I say there is danger, ’tis scarce identical with saying I am afraid.

  MARY. But what danger do you mean?

  WILKES. The danger is that when Dr. Johnson finds that you have set the Thames on fire, he may have a shock. He is an old-fashioned old gentleman; and it may be a severe shock. In that case —

  MARY. Well?

  WILKES. The doctors tell us that a shock can sometimes restore the memory.

  MARY. Oh, I see now. You mean he will tell people about our landing in the Hebrides. You said he must have been mistaken being so shortsighted.

  WILKES. Short-sighted be damned; pardon the simplicity of my speech. Dr. Johnson is very seldom mistaken unless he wants to be mistaken. When you last met he did want to be mistaken; and he told us why. He said that so long as the domestic virtues were safe, he would not interfere with politics. I hardly think he would consider our present views purely political. The best chance is that he may treat all the scandal as slander; but if he really meets you, there will be an explosion. Therefore he must not meet you; I must see to that. Fortunately I asked his friend, Mr. Burke, to meet me here on political business; and I think he would help us. Anyhow, I do not suppose Dr. Johnson carries a horse pistol; but he shall not enter your presence but over my dead body.

  MARY. Then there is really danger?

  WILKES. Danger! What is danger? What is not danger? When is one alive except in danger? Come! [Draws the red cap from his coat-tails and flourishes it like a flag.] You are the goddess of freedom, and it is you should wear the Phrygian cap. That is our answer to all the arguments of danger. [Advances to the folding doors to throw them open.] Fling wide the palace gates and let the lackeys announce us. Wilkes and Liberty!