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Read Ebook: A Bill of Divorcement: A Play in Three Acts by Dane Clemence
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Ebook has 1192 lines and 19658 words, and 24 pages
SYDNEY. I'm not actually engaged, if you mean that-- but I'm going to be.
MISS FAIRFIELD. Engaged at seventeen! Preposterous!
SYDNEY. Mother was married at seventeen.
MARGARET. That was the war.
SYDNEY. I don't see what that's got to do with it.
MARGARET. Sydney--at seventeen, one doesn't know enough--
SYDNEY. One doesn't know the same things, I dare say.
MARGARET. One doesn't know anything at all.
SYDNEY. Yes, but think of the hopeless sort of world you were seventeen in--even you. As for poor Auntie, as far as knowing things goes--
MARGARET. Sydney, my dear, be good!
SYDNEY. I am being good. I'm returning hint for hint.
MISS FAIRFIELD. Is this the way you let your daughter speak to me, Margaret?
SYDNEY. You see, she doesn't enjoy being hinted at either.
SYDNEY. I mean that I'm not going to let Aunt Hester interfere in my affairs like she does in yours. That's what I mean.
MISS FAIRFIELD. These are the manners they teach you at your fine school, I suppose!
SYDNEY. Never mind, Auntie, I've had my lessons in the holidays too. You needn't think I haven't watched the life you've led Mother over this divorce business.
MARGARET. Sydney! Sydney!
SYDNEY. Well, hasn't she? What prevented you from marrying Gray ages ago? Father's been out of his mind long enough, poor man! You knew you were free to be free. You knew you were making Gray miserable and yourself miserable--and yet, though that divorce law has been in force for years, it's taken you all this time to fight your scruples. At least, you call them scruples! What you really mean is Aunt Hester and her prayer book. And now, when you have at last consented to give yourself a chance of being happy--when it's Christmas Day and you're going to be married at New Year--still you let Aunt Hester sit at your own breakfast table and insult you with talk about deadly sin. It's no use pretending you didn't Auntie, because Mother left my door open and I heard you.
MARGARET. Sydney, I can take care of myself.
SYDNEY. Take care of yourself! As if everybody didn't ride rough-shod over you when I'm not there.
MARGARET. Yes, but my pet, you musn't break out like this. Of course your aunt knows you don't really mean to be rude--
SYDNEY. I do mean to be rude to her when she's rude to you.
MARGARET. My dear, you quite misunderstand your aunt.
SYDNEY. Oh, no, I don't, Mother!
MISS FAIRFIELD. I'm afraid you'll have to go to church without me, Margaret. I'm thoroughly upset. You've brought up your daughter to ignore me, and I know why. I'm the wrong side of the family. I'm the one person in this house who remembers poor Hilary. I shall read the service in the drawing-room.
SYDNEY. She owes me something. She's been dying for an excuse, with that cold. What's the use of crying, Mother? If Gray finds out there'll be a row, and then Aunt Hester'll be sorry she ever was born.
MARGARET. It isn't that. You get so excited, Sydney! You remind me--your father was so excitable. I don't like to see it.
SYDNEY. I'm not really. I needn't let myself go if I don't want to.
MARGARET. You musn't get impatient with your aunt. She can't get accustomed to the new ways, that's all. I--I can't myself, sometimes. I hope I'm doing right.
MARGARET. Don't, Sydney!
SYDNEY. Well, you are, and so he is with you. So what's the worry about? Aunt Hester! What people like Aunt Hester choose to think! I call it morbid.
MARGARET. I suppose I haven't brought you up properly. Your aunt's quite right!
SYDNEY. Yes. That's what it always comes back to. "Your aunt's quite right!" I can argue with you by the hour--
MARGARET. Oh, not this morning, darling, will you?
SYDNEY.--and Gray can argue with you by the hour--
MARGARET. Ah, but he never does.
SYDNEY.--and you pretend to agree with us; but underneath your common sense, your mind's really thinking--"Your aunt's quite right!"
MARGARET. She stands for the old ways, Sydney.
SYDNEY. She stands for Noah and the flood. She'd no business to go dragging up Father and the divorce on Christmas morning to upset you.
MARGARET. It wasn't your aunt.
SYDNEY. Then it was me, I suppose! "If I could only control my tongue and my temper," and all the rest of it!
MARGARET. No, it was about Kit.
SYDNEY. Kit? Oh, that's all right, Mother. Don't you worry about me and Kit.
MARGARET. I do.
SYDNEY. You needn't.
MARGARET. You see, I thought I was in love at seventeen, too.
SYDNEY. Oh, but I quite know what I'm doing.
MARGARET. And now I know I didn't know much about it. I don't want you to be--rushed.
SYDNEY. Nobody could make me do what I didn't want to do.
MARGARET. It was nobody's fault. It was the war--
SYDNEY. It's extraordinary to me--whenever you middle-aged people want to excuse yourselves for anything you've done that you know you oughtn't to have done, you say it was the war. How could a war make you get married if you didn't want to?
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