There is no alternative: and after the marriage you and I can go
away together. But the marriage must take place first. It is a
duty that you owe, not merely to yourself, but to all other
women- yes: to all the other women in the world, lest he betray
more.
MRS. ARB. I owe nothing to other women. There is not one of them to
help me. There is not one woman in the world to whom I could go
for pity, if I would take it, or for sympathy, if I could win
it. Women are hard on each other. That girl, last night, good
though she is, fled from the room as though I were a tainted
thing. She was right. I am a tainted thing. But my wrongs are my
own, and I will bear them alone. I must bear them alone. What
have women who have not sinned to do with me, or I with them? We
do not understand each other.
[Enter Hester behind.] -
GER. I implore you to do what I ask you.
MRS. ARB. What son has ever asked of his mother to make so hideous
a sacrifice? None.
GER. What mother has ever refused to marry the father of her own
child? None.
MRS. ARB. Let me be the first, then. I will not do it.
GER. Mother, you believe in religion, and you brought me up to
believe in it also. Well, surely your religion, the religion
that you taught me when I was a boy, mother, must tell you that
I am right. You know it, you feel it.
MRS. ARB. I do not know it. I do not feel it, nor will I ever stand
before God’s altar and ask God’s blessing on so hideous a
mockery as a marriage between me and George Harford. I will not
say the words the Church bids us to say. I will not say them. I
dare not. How could I swear to love the man I loathe, to honour
him who brought you dishonour, to obey him who, in his mastery,
made me to sin? No; marriage is a sacrament for those who love
each other. It is not for such as him or such as me. Gerald, to
save you from the world’s sneers and taunts I have lied to the
world. For twenty years I have lied to the world. I could not
tell the world the truth. Who can, ever? But not for my own sake
will I lie to God, and in God’s presence. No, Gerald, no
ceremony, Church-hallowed or State-made, shall ever bind me to
George Harford. It may be that I am too bound to him already,
who, robbing me, yet left me richer, so that in the mire of my
life, I found the pearl of price, or what I thought would be so.
GER. I don’t understand you now.
MRS. ARB. Men don’t understand what mothers are. I am no different
from other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I
did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And yet,
to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to
wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to
fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless,
wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I
clothed you, when you were hungry I gave you food. Night and day
all that long winter I tended you. No office is too mean, no
care too lowly for the thing we women love- and oh! how I loved
you . Not Hannah Samuel more. And you needed love, for you were
weakly, and only love could have kept you alive. Only love can
keep any one alive. And boys are careless often and without
thinking give pain, and we always fancy that when they come to
man’s estate and know us better, they will repay us. But it is
not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make
friends with whom they are happier than they are with us, and
have amusements from which we are barred, and interests that are
not ours: and they are unjust to us often, for when they find
life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we
do not taste its sweetness with them…. You made many friends
and went into their houses and were glad with them, and I,
knowing my secret did not dare to follow, but stayed at home and
closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness. What
should I have done in honest households? My past was ever with
me…. And you thought I didn’t care for the pleasant things of
life. I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to touch
them, feeling I had no right. You thought I was happier working
amongst the poor. That was my mission, you imagined. It was not,
but where else was I to go? The sick do not ask if the hand that
smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips
that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. It was you I
thought of all the time; I gave to them the love you did not
need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs…. And you
thought I spent too much of my time going to Church, and in
Church duties. But where else could I turn? God’s house is the
only house where sinners are made welcome, and you were always
in my heart, Gerald, too much in my heart. For, though day after
day, at morn or evensong, I have knelt in God’s house, I have
never repented of my sin. How could I repent of my sin when you,
my love, were its fruit! Even now that you are bitter to me I
cannot repent. I do not. You are more to me than innocence. I
would rather be your mother- oh! much rather!- than have been
always pure…. Oh, don’t you see? don’t you understand? It is
my dishonour that has made you so dear to me. It is my disgrace
that has bound you so closely to me. It is the price I paid for
you- the price of soul and body- that makes me love you as I do.
Oh, don’t ask me to do this horrible thing. Child of my shame,
be still the child of my shame!
GER. Mother, I didn’t know you loved me so much as that. And I will
be a better son to you than I have been. And you and I must never
leave each other… but, mother… I can’t help it… you must
become my father’s wife. You must marry him. It is your duty.
HES. [Running forward and embracing Mrs. Arbuthnot.] No, no; you
shall not. That would be real dishonour, the first you have ever
known. That would be real disgrace: the first to touch you.
Leave him and come with me. There are other countries than
England…. Oh! other countries over sea, better, wiser, and
less unjust lands. The world is very wide and very big.
MRS. ARB. No, not for me. For me the world is shrivelled to a
palm’s breadth, and where I walk there are thorns.
HES. It shall not be so. We shall somewhere find green valleys and
fresh waters, and if we weep, well, we shall weep together. Have
we not both loved him?
GER. Hester!
HES. [Waving him back.] Don’t, don’t! You cannot love me at all,
unless you love her also. You cannot honour me, unless she’s
holier to you. In her all womanhood is martyred. Not she alone,
but all of us are stricken in her house.
GER. Hester, Hester, what shall I do?
HES. Do you respect the man who is your father?
GER. Respect him? I despise him! He is infamous!
HES. I thank you for saving me from him last night.
GER. Ah, that is nothing. I would die to save you. But you don’t
tell me what to do now!
HES. Have I not thanked you for saving me?
GER. But what should I do?
HES. Ask your own heart, not mine. I never had a mother to save, or
shame.
MRS. ARB. He is hard- he is hard. Let me go away.
GER. [Rushes over and kneels down beside his mother.] Mother,
forgive me: I have been to blame.
MRS. ARB. Don’t kiss my hands: they are cold. My heart is cold:
something has broken it.
HES. Ah, don’t say that. Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may
turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow-
oh, sorrow cannot break it. Besides, what sorrows have you now?
Why at this moment you are more dear to him than ever, dear
though you have been , and oh! how dear you have been always.
Ah! be kind to him.
GER. You are my mother and my father all in one. I need no second
parent. It was for you I spoke, for you alone. Oh, say
something, mother. Have I but found one love to lose another?
Don’t tell me that. O mother, you are cruel. [Gets up and flings
himself sobbing on a sofa.]
MRS. ARB. [To Hester.] But has he found indeed another love?
HES. You know I have loved him always.
MRS. ARB. But we are very poor.
HES. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They
are a burden. Let him share it with me.
MRS. ARB. But we are disgraced. We rank among the outcasts. Gerald
is nameless. The sins of the parents should be visited on the
children. It is God’s law.
HES. I was wrong. God’s law is only Love.
MRS. ARB. [Rises, and taking Hester by the hand, goes slowly over
to where Gerald is lying on the sofa with his head buried in his
hands. She touches him and he looks up.] Gerald, I cannot give
you a father, but I have brought you a wife.
GER. Mother, I am not worthy either of her or you.
MRS. ARB. So she comes first, you are worthy. And when you are
away, Gerald… with… her- oh, think of
