The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith | Page 5

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, 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