The New Woman Part 53

MARGERY.

No, not a sc.r.a.p!

SYLVESTER.

Then what do you propose? To sacrifice your life to an idea--to be true to a phantom? You owe no faith to one who is unfaithful. Think!

You are young--your real life lies before you--would you end it before it's begun? A widow before you're a wife?

 

MARGERY.

I am a wife, and I shall not forget it. If I have lost my husband's love, at least I'll save his honour. A public scandal mayn't mean much to _you,_ but it means your wife's ruin--it means Gerald's. Gerald shall not be ruined! You _shall_ go back to her!

SYLVESTER.

Is it a challenge?

MARGERY.

Challenge or not, you _shall!_ It is ign.o.ble to desert her so! You are a coward to make love to me! If her love was unworthy, what is yours?

Is it for you to cast a stone at her? See! Read your letters!

[_Producing a packet._] Letters to me--love-letters! Letters to a woman you didn't respect in her grief and persecuted in her loneliness--a woman who would have none of you--who tells you to your face you're not a man! Your love's an insult! take the thing away!

[_Turns off. Pause._

SYLVESTER.

Do you propose to send those to my wife?

MARGERY.

No! but I want to make you realize you need more mercy than you show to her. These letters were written for my eye alone; to open them was to promise secrecy.

SYLVESTER.

Why have you kept them, then?

MARGERY.

To give them back to you.

[_Gives him the packet. Another pause._

SYLVESTER.

Margery, everything you say and do makes it more hard to go away from you.

MARGERY.

You're going, then?

SYLVESTER.

Your words leave me no choice.

MARGERY.

Where are you going? to her?

SYLVESTER.

I don't know yet. I don't know if I'm welcome.

[_Playing with the packet, mechanically._

MARGERY.

That rests with you. You say, she's been no wife to you; but have you been a husband to her?

SYLVESTER.

Why do you take her part? She's injured you enough.

MARGERY.

Yes; she _has_ injured me; but now I know what it is to live without love, and to want it, I can pardon her. Can't you? [_Goes to him and gives him both her hands._] Forgive her, Captain Sylvester--freely as I do you--give her the love that you have offered me--and you will find your wife's a woman just as much as I am.

SYLVESTER.

Margery--I may call you "Margery?"

MARGERY.

I'm "Margery" to everybody now.

SYLVESTER.

If there were more women like you, there would be fewer men like me.

[_Exit, L._

MARGERY [_looks after him, then goes, R. front and looks again_].

He'll go back to his wife; and if she isn't happy, it's her fault.

[_Exit, R._

_Re-enter ARMSTRONG, showing out, C., LADY WARGRAVE and the COLONEL._