"Like a language I did not speak."

[breakinglight11]

When I was doing 31 Plays in 31 Days, I felt slightly guilty that I ended this scene, #29 - How You Hated Him, on kind of an abrupt note. I knew there was more to that scene, but I was having a busy day at the time, and I didn't feel prepared to do the rest at the time, so I ended it there. But today I decided to take a crack at writing the next bit of it. So this little scenelet picks up where 31P31D 2015 #29 leaves off. It's super-rough, but I like a lot of the ideas in it, and there's a few good line as well.

I think this would be used in Mrs. Hawking part 4, which will be all about family history, and explaining Mrs. Hawking's origins. Which includes how her relationship with the Colonel came to be.

“Like a Language I Did Not Speak”
by Phoebe Roberts

VICTORIA HAWKING, lady’s society avenger
NATHANIEL HAWKING, her nephew and assistant

London, England, 1885
~~~

NATHANIEL: Forgive me. Even now, it’s still difficult to accept how you hated him.

MRS. HAWKING: Oh, spare me.

NATHANIEL: What else would you call it? An indifference so morbid to the life of someone who wanted nothing more than to share it with you.

MRS. HAWKING: You know nothing, Nathaniel.

NATHANIEL: I’m sorry, but I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to think of such hate.

MRS. HAWKING: For God’s sake, boy! It wasn’t that I hated him!

(NATHANIEL stares.)

MRS. HAWKING: At least… I didn’t at first.

NATHANIEL: You didn’t?

MRS. HAWKING: Do you think I’m completely blind to the man he was? I knew him half my life, Nathaniel. I know why you all love him. He was brave, decent, honest in a way like no one I’d met before. Anyone could see that.

NATHANIEL: Then what happened?

MRS. HAWKING: I didn’t understand at first. What he meant when things changed for him. They say the signs were there, but… I couldn’t see, couldn’t grasp. Other know from their own ways, but not me. Like a language I did not speak. And by the time it was clear… it was too late. He was too far gone, and he couldn’t leave it be.

NATHANIEL: You never knew that he loved you?

MRS. HAWKING: He didn’t love me! He never knew me! He loved a nineteen-year-old girl who showed him a fraction more of her spirit than he’d ever seen before. And from his own imagination he filled in the rest. That girl was who he loved, who he married, and who he mourned ever after he realized she never was.

(Pause.)

NATHANIEL: And that made him a monster?

MRS. HAWKING: No. It was trapping me in her place did that.

NATHANIEL: You showed him something. You said it yourself. Why, if you felt nothing for him?

MRS. HAWKING: Because I liked him! When first we met, before things turned. I thought we could… be friends. But then he ruined everything. And whatever he was, whatever he intended, I can’t forgive him for that.