The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith | Page 6

as devout--as any girl in a parsonage. The other thing hadn't
soaked into me. Whenever I could escape from our stifling rooms at
home, and slam the front door behind me, the air blew away
uncertainty and scepticism; I seemed only to have to take a long, deep
breath to be full of hope and faith. And it was like this till that man
married me.
GERTRUDE. Of course, I guess your marriage was an unfortunate one.
AGNES. It lasted eight years. For about twelve months he treated me
like a woman in a harem, for the rest of the time like a beast of burden.
Oh! When I think of it! [Wiping her brow with her handkerchief.]
Phew!

GERTRUDE. It changed you?
AGNES. Oh, yes, it changed me.
GERTRUDE. You spoke of yourself just now as a widow. He's dead?
AGNES. He died on our wedding day--the eighth anniversary.
GERTRUDE. You were free then--free to begin again.
AGNES. Eh? [Looking at GERTRUDE.] Yes; but you don't begin to
believe all over again. [She gathers up the stalks of the flowers from the
tray, and, kneeling, crams them into the stove.] However, this is an old
story. I'm thirty-three now.
GERTRUDE. [Hesitatingly.] You and Mr. Cleeve--?
AGNES. We've known each other since last November--no longer. Six
years of my life unaccounted for, eh? Well, for a couple of years or so I
was lecturing.
GERTRUDE. Lecturing?
AGNES. Ah, I'd become an out-and-out child of my father by that
time-- spouting, perhaps you'd call it, standing on the identical little
platforms he used to speak from, lashing abuses with my tongue as he
had done. Oh, and I was fond, too, of warning women.
GERTRUDE. Against what?
AGNES. Falling into the pit.
GERTRUDE. Marriage?
AGNES. The chocked-up, seething pit--until I found my bones almost
through my skin and my voice too weak to travel across a room.
GERTRUDE. From what cause?

AGNES. Starvation, my dear. So, after lying in a hospital for a month
or two, I took up nursing for a living. Last November I was sent for by
Dr. Bickerstaff to go through to Rome to look after a young man who'd
broken down there, and who declined to send for his friends. My
patient was Mr. Cleeve--[taking up the tray]--and that's where his
fortunes join mine. [She crosses the room, and puts the tray upon the
cabinet.]
GERTRUDE. And yet, judging from what that girl said yesterday, Mr.
Cleeve married quite recently?
AGNES. Less than three years ago. Men don't suffer as patiently as
women. In many respects his marriage story is my own, reversed--the
man in place of the woman. I endured my hell, though; he broke the
gates of his.
GERTRUDE. I have often seen Mr. Cleeve's name in the papers. His
future promised to be brilliant, didn't it?
AGNES. [Tidying the table, folding the newspapers, &c.] There's a
great career for him still.
GERTRUDE. In Parliament--now?
AGNES. No, he abandons that, and devotes himself to writing. We
shall write much together, urging our views on this subject of Marriage.
We shall have to be poor, I expect, but we shall be content.
GERTRUDE. Content!
AGNES. Quite content. Don't judge us by my one piece of cowardly
folly in keeping the truth from you, Mrs. Thorpe, Indeed, it's our great
plan to live the life we have mapped out for ourselves, fearlessly,
openly; faithful to each other, helpful to each other, so long as we
remain together.
GERTRUDE. But tell me--you don't know how I--how I have liked
you!-- tell me, if Mr. Cleeve's wife divorces him, he will marry you?

AGNES. No.
GERTRUDE. No!
AGNES. No. I haven't made you quite understand--Lucas and I don't
desire to marry, in your sense.
GERTRUDE. But you are devoted to each other!
AGNES. Thoroughly.
GERTRUDE. What, is that the meaning of "for as long as you are
together?" You would go your different ways if ever you found that one
of you was making the other unhappy?
AGNES. I do mean that. We remain together only to help, to heal, to
console. Why should men and women be so eager to grant to each other
the power of wasting life? That is what marriage gives--the right to
destroy years and years of life. And the right, once given, it attracts
--attracts! We have both suffered from it. So many rich years out of my
life have been squandered by it. And out of his life, so much force,
energy--spent in battling with the shrew, the termagant he has now fled
from; strength never to be replenished, never to be repaid--all wasted,
wasted!
GERTRUDE. Your legal marriage with him might not bring further
miseries.
AGNES. Too late! We have done with marriage; we distrust it. We are
not now among those who