CRAIG’S WIFE
123
Craig (turning to her)
- Hasn’t she her husband?
Mrs. Craig
- She could lose her husband, couldn’t she?—As many another woman has.
Craig
- Couldn’t she lose her home too?
Mrs. Craig
- She couldn’t if she knew how to secure it.
Craig (raising his finger solemnly)
- That’s the point in a nutshell, Harriet; if she knew how to fix it for herself.
- [He turns away and rests his hands on the piano.
Mrs. Craig
- Well, what if I have fixed things for myself? You haven’t lost anything by it, have you? If I’ve fixed them for myself I’ve fixed them for you too. Your home is here. And maybe if I hadn’t played the game so consistently it wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t be the first woman that’s lost her home, and her husband too, through letting the control of them get out of her hands. (She moves up towards the back of the room, in a crying temper) I saw what happened to my own mother, and I made up my mind it ’ud never happen to me. (She turns and comes forward again) She was one of those “I will follow thee, my husband” women—that believed everything my father told her; and all the time he was mortgaging her home over her head for another woman. And when she found it out, she did the only thing that women like her can do, and that was to die of a broken heart—within six months; and leave the door open for the other woman to come in as stepmother over
