Read-Aloud Plays Part 16

How did _she_ get there?

MARGARET

Your mother sent for her.

ROGER

My mother sent for her? Then she knew?

 

MARGARET

Yes. She knew everything.

ROGER

How?

MARGARET

_He_ told her--Arthur did.

ROGER

Good Lord! I never heard a word of it.

MARGARET

No. They were afraid--afraid you wouldn't understand.

ROGER

Afraid _I_ wouldn't understand? Why, _I_ understood only too well. It was mother that wouldn't have understood. I'd have cut my hand off rather than tell her.

MARGARET

Well, she did understand. She understood better than you did. She understood that part of him hadn't grown up. He was like a boy. He just walked into things....

ROGER

How did he ever come to tell _her_?

MARGARET

Once when he was sick. Your mother was taking care of him. He blurted it all out, like a homesick boy.

ROGER

And _she_ understood? Didn't break her heart, and all that?

MARGARET

Oh, it was a shock, naturally. But they talked it all over, and your mother sent for this woman. I knew. Arthur knew I knew....

ROGER

And mother packed her away without telling me?

MARGARET

Oh, she didn't pack her away. That is, right off.

ROGER

He kept on seeing her? With mother's knowledge?

MARGARET

Yes. Your mother liked her.

ROGER

Well, if women aren't the strangest things!

MARGARET

Yes, they are. Some of them. Fortunately. But you see how wrong you were, Roger?

ROGER

How was I wrong?

MARGARET

About this unfitness--this survival.

ROGER

On the contrary. It only proves it.

MARGARET

No, it doesn't. I've been thinking, too ... about saving people from themselves, and all that. You say it's the law of life, and we can't go beyond life.

ROGER

No, we can't. I still say it.

MARGARET