The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith | Page 5

the Piazza,
and suddenly he caught sight of your husband. [AGNES' hands pause
in their work.] "I do believe that's Lucas Cleeve," he said. And then the
girl had a peep, and said "Certainly it is." And the man said: "I must
find out where he's stopping; If Minerva is with him, you must call."

"Who's Minerva?" said the second man. "Minerva is Mrs. Lucas
Cleeve," the girl said, "it's a pet name--he married a chum of mine, a
daughter of Sir John Steyning's a year or so after I went out." Excuse
me, dear. Do these people really know you and your husband, or were
they talking nonsense?
[AGNES takes the vase of faded flowers, goes onto the balcony, and
empties the contents of the vase into the canal. Then she stands by the
window, her back towards GERTRUDE.]
AGNES. No, they evidently know Mr. Cleeve.
GERTRUDE. Your husband never calls you by that pet-name of yours.
Why is it you haven't told me you're a daughter of Admiral Steyning's?
AGNES. Mrs Thorpe--
GERTRUDE. [Warmly.] Oh, I must say what I mean! I have often
pulled myself up short in my gossips with you, conscious of a sort of
wall between us. [AGNES comes slowly from the window.] Somehow,
I feel now that you haven't in the least made a friend of me. I'm hurt.
St's stupid of me; I can't help it.
AGNES. [After a moment's pause.] I am not the lady these people were
speaking of yesterday.
GERTRUDE. Not--?
AGNES. Mr. Cleeve is no longer with his wife; he has left her.
GERTRUDE. Left--his wife!
AGNES. Like yourself, I am a widow. I don't know whether you've
ever heard my name--Ebbsmith. [GERTRUDE stares at her blankly.] I
beg your pardon sincerely. I never meant to conceal my true position;
such a course is opposed to every true principle of mind. But I grew so
attached to you in Florence and--well, it was contemptibly weak; I'll
never do such a thing again. [She goes back to the table and

commences to refill the vase with the fresh flowers.]
GERTRUDE. When you say that Mr. Cleeve has left his wife, I
suppose you mean to tell me that you have taken her place?
AGNES. Yes, I mean that.
[GERTRUDE rises and walks to the door.]
GERTRUDE [At the door.] You knew that I could not speak to you
after hearing this?
AGNES. I thought it almost certain that you would not.
[After a moment's irresolution, GERTRUDE returns, and stands by the
settee.]
GERTRUDE. I can hardly believe you.
AGNES. I should like you to hear more than just the bare fact.
GETRUDE. [Drumming on the back of the settee.] Why don't you tell
me more?
AGNES. You were going, you know.
GERTRUDE. [Sitting.] I won't go quite like that. Please tell me.
AGNES. [Calmly.] Well--did you ever read of John Thorold--"Jack
Thorold, the demagogue?" [GERTRUDE shakes her head.] I daresay
not. John Thorold, once a schoolmaster, was my father. In my time he
used to write for the two or three, so-called, inflammatory journals, and
hold forth in small lecture-halls, occasionally even from the top of a
wooden stool in the Park, upon trade and labour questions, division of
wealth, and the rest of it. He believed in nothing that people who go to
church are credited with believing in, Mrs. Thorpe; his scheme for the
readjustment of things was Force; his pet doctrine, the ultimate healthy
healing that follows the surgery of Revolution. But to me he was the
gentlest creature imaginable; and I was very fond of him, in spite of

his--as I then thought--strange ideas. Strange ideas! Ha! Many of 'em
luckily don't sound quite so irrational today!
GERTRUDE. [Under her breath.] Oh!
AGNES. My home was a wretched one. If dad was violent out of the
house, mother was violent enough in it; with her it was rage, sulk,
storm, from morning till night; till one day father turned a deaf ear to
mother and died in his bed. That was my first intimate experience of
the horrible curse that falls upon so many.
GERTRUDE. Curse?
AGNES. The curse of unhappy marriage. Though really I'd looked on
little else all my life. Most of our married friends were cursed in a like
way; and I remember taking an oath, when I was a mere child, that
nothing should ever push me over into the choked-up, seething pit.
Fool! When I was nineteen I was gazing like a pet sheep into a man's
eyes; and one morning I was married, at St. Andrew's Church in
Holborn, to Mr. Ebbsmith, a barrister.
GERTRUDE. In church?
AGNES. Yes, in church--in church. In spite of father's unbelief and
mother's indifference, at the time I married I was as simple--ay, in my
heart,