Plays by

Susan Glaspell

TRIFLES

THE OUTSIDE

THE VERGE

INHERITORS

TRIFLES

First performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf
Theatre, Provincetown, Mass., August 8, 1916.

GEORGE HENDERSON (County Attorney)

HENRY PETERS (Sheriff)

LEWIS HALE, A neighboring farmer

MRS PETERS

MRS HALE

SCENE: The kitchen is the now abandoned
farmhouse of JOHN WRIGHT, a gloomy kitchen, and left without
having been put in order—unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf
of bread outside the bread-box, a dish-towel on the
table—other signs of incompleted work. At the rear the outer
door opens and the SHERIFF comes in followed by the
COUNTY ATTORNEY and HALE. The SHERIFF and HALE
are men in middle life, the COUNTY ATTORNEY is a young
man; all are much bundled up and go at once to the stove. They are
followed by the two women—the SHERIFF‘s wife first;
she is a slight wiry woman, a thin nervous face. MRS HALE is
larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking, but
she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters. The
women have come in slowly, and stand close together near the
door.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (rubbing his hands) This feels good.
Come up to the fire, ladies.

MRS PETERS: (after taking a step forward) I’m
not—cold.

SHERIFF: (unbuttoning his overcoat and stepping away from the
stove as if to mark the beginning of official business) Now, Mr
Hale, before we move things about, you explain to Mr Henderson just
what you saw when you came here yesterday morning.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: By the way, has anything been moved? Are things
just as you left them yesterday?

SHERIFF: (looking about) It’s just the same. When it
dropped below zero last night I thought I’d better send Frank out
this morning to make a fire for us—no use getting pneumonia
with a big case on, but I told him not to touch anything except the
stove—and you know Frank.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Somebody should have been left here
yesterday.

SHERIFF: Oh—yesterday. When I had to send Frank to Morris
Center for that man who went crazy—I want you to know I had
my hands full yesterday. I knew you could get back from Omaha by
today and as long as I went over everything here myself—

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, Mr Hale, tell just what happened when you
came here yesterday morning.

HALE: Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes.
We came along the road from my place and as I got here I said, I’m
going to see if I can’t get John Wright to go in with me on a party
telephone.’ I spoke to Wright about it once before and he put me
off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was
peace and quiet—I guess you know about how much he talked
himself; but I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked
about it before his wife, though I said to Harry that I didn’t know
as what his wife wanted made much difference to John—

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Let’s talk about that later, Mr Hale. I do want
to talk about that, but tell now just what happened when you got to
the house.

HALE: I didn’t hear or see anything; I knocked at the door, and
still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be up, it was past
eight o’clock. So I knocked again, and I thought I heard somebody
say, ‘Come in.’ I wasn’t sure, I’m not sure yet, but I opened the
door—this door (indicating the door by which the two women
are still standing) and there in that rocker—(pointing
to it) sat Mrs Wright.

(They all look at the rocker.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: What—was she doing?

HALE: She was rockin’ back and forth. She had her apron in her
hand and was kind of—pleating it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: And how did she—look?

HALE: Well, she looked queer.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: How do you mean—queer?

HALE: Well, as if she didn’t know what she was going to do next.
And kind of done up.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: How did she seem to feel about your coming?

HALE: Why, I don’t think she minded—one way or other. She
didn’t pay much attention. I said, ‘How do, Mrs Wright it’s cold,
ain’t it?’ And she said, ‘Is it?’—and went on kind of
pleating at her apron. Well, I was surprised; she didn’t ask me to
come up to the stove, or to set down, but just sat there, not even
looking at me, so I said, ‘I want to see John.’ And then
she—laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh. I thought of
Harry and the team outside, so I said a little sharp: ‘Can’t I see
John?’ ‘No’, she says, kind o’ dull like. ‘Ain’t he home?’ says I.
‘Yes’, says she, ‘he’s home’. ‘Then why can’t I see him?’ I asked
her, out of patience. ”Cause he’s dead’, says she. ‘Dead?’
says I. She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but
rockin’ back and forth. ‘Why—where is he?’ says I, not
knowing what to say. She just pointed upstairs—like that
(himself pointing to the room above) I got up, with the idea
of going up there. I walked from there to here—then I says,
‘Why, what did he die of?’ ‘He died of a rope round his neck’, says
she, and just went on pleatin’ at her apron. Well, I went out and
called Harry. I thought I might—need help. We went upstairs
and there he was lyin’—

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I think I’d rather have you go into that
upstairs, where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the
rest of the story.

HALE: Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It looked
… (stops, his face twitches) … but Harry, he went up to
him, and he said, ‘No, he’s dead all right, and we’d better not
touch anything.’ So we went back down stairs. She was still sitting
that same way. ‘Has anybody been notified?’ I asked. ‘No’, says she
unconcerned. ‘Who did this, Mrs Wright?’ said Harry. He said it
business-like—and she stopped pleatin’ of her apron. ‘I don’t
know’, she says. ‘You don’t know?’ says Harry. ‘No’, says
she. ‘Weren’t you sleepin’ in the bed with him?’ says Harry. ‘Yes’,
says she, ‘but I was on the inside’. ‘Somebody slipped a rope round
his neck and strangled him and you didn’t wake up?’ says Harry. ‘I
didn’t wake up’, she said after him. We must ‘a looked as if we
didn’t see how that could be, for after a minute she said, ‘I sleep
sound’. Harry was going to ask her more questions but I said maybe
we ought to let her tell her story first to the coroner, or the
sheriff, so Harry went fast as he could to Rivers’ place, where
there’s a telephone.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: And what did Mrs Wright do when she knew that
you had gone for the coroner?

HALE: She moved from that chair to this one over here
(pointing to a small chair in the corner) and just sat there
with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that
I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see
if John wanted to put in a telephone, and at that she started to
laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me—scared,
(the COUNTY ATTORNEY, who has had his notebook out, makes
a note) I dunno, maybe it wasn’t scared. I wouldn’t like to say
it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr Lloyd came, and you, Mr
Peters, and so I guess that’s all I know that you don’t.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (looking around) I guess we’ll go
upstairs first—and then out to the barn and around there,
(to the SHERIFF) You’re convinced that there was nothing
important here—nothing that would point to any motive.

SHERIFF: Nothing here but kitchen things.

(The COUNTY ATTORNEY, after again looking
around the kitchen, opens the door of a cupboard closet. He gets up
on a chair and looks on a shelf. Pulls his hand away,
sticky.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Here’s a nice mess.

(The women draw nearer.)

MRS PETERS: (to the other woman) Oh, her fruit; it did
freeze, (to the LAWYER) She worried about that when it
turned so cold. She said the fire’d go out and her jars would
break.

SHERIFF: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and
worryin’ about her preserves.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I guess before we’re through she may have
something more serious than preserves to worry about.

HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.

(The two women move a little closer
together.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (with the gallantry of a young
politician) And yet, for all their worries, what would we do
without the ladies? (the women do not unbend. He goes to the
sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and pouring it into
a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel,
turns it for a cleaner place) Dirty towels! (kicks his foot
against the pans under the sink) Not much of a housekeeper,
would you say, ladies?

MRS HALE: (stiffly) There’s a great deal of work to be
done on a farm.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: To be sure. And yet (with a little bow to
her) I know there are some Dickson county farmhouses which do
not have such roller towels. (He gives it a pull to expose its
length again.)

MRS HALE: Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t
always as clean as they might be.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Ah, loyal to your sex, I see. But you and Mrs
Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too.

MRS HALE: (shaking her head) I’ve not seen much of her of
late years. I’ve not been in this house—it’s more than a
year.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: And why was that? You didn’t like her?

MRS HALE: I liked her all well enough. Farmers’ wives have their
hands full, Mr Henderson. And then—

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Yes—?

MRS HALE: (looking about) It never seemed a very cheerful
place.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: No—it’s not cheerful. I shouldn’t say she
had the homemaking instinct.

MRS HALE: Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: You mean that they didn’t get on very well?

MRS HALE: No, I don’t mean anything. But I don’t think a place’d
be any cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I’d like to talk more of that a little later. I
want to get the lay of things upstairs now. (He goes to the
left, where three steps lead to a stair door.)

SHERIFF: I suppose anything Mrs Peters does’ll be all right. She
was to take in some clothes for her, you know, and a few little
things. We left in such a hurry yesterday.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Yes, but I would like to see what you take, Mrs
Peters, and keep an eye out for anything that might be of use to
us.

MRS PETERS: Yes, Mr Henderson.

(The women listen to the men’s steps on the
stairs, then look about the kitchen.)

MRS HALE: I’d hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping
around and criticising.

(She arranges the pans under sink which the
LAWYER had shoved out of place.)

MRS PETERS: Of course it’s no more than their duty.

MRS HALE: Duty’s all right, but I guess that deputy sheriff that
came out to make the fire might have got a little of this on.
(gives the roller towel a pull) Wish I’d thought of that
sooner. Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked
up when she had to come away in such a hurry.

MRS PETERS: (who has gone to a small table in the left rear
corner of the room, and lifted one end of a towel that covers a
pan) She had bread set. (Stands still.)

MRS HALE: (eyes fixed on a loaf of bread beside the
bread-box, which is on a low shelf at the other side of the room.
Moves slowly toward it) She was going to put this in there,
(picks up loaf, then abruptly drops it. In a manner of returning
to familiar things) It’s a shame about her fruit. I wonder if
it’s all gone. (gets up on the chair and looks) I think
there’s some here that’s all right, Mrs Peters. Yes—here;
(holding it toward the window) this is cherries, too.
(looking again) I declare I believe that’s the only one.
(gets down, bottle in her hand. Goes to the sink and wipes it
off on the outside) She’ll feel awful bad after all her hard
work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my
cherries last summer.

(She puts the bottle on the big kitchen table,
center of the room. With a sigh, is about to sit down in the
rocking-chair. Before she is seated realizes what chair it is; with
a slow look at it, steps back. The chair which she has touched
rocks back and forth.)

MRS PETERS: Well, I must get those things from the front room
closet, (she goes to the door at the right, but after looking
into the other room, steps back) You coming with me, Mrs Hale?
You could help me carry them.

(They go in the other room; reappear, MRS
PETERS carrying a dress and skirt, MRS HALE following
with a pair of shoes.)

MRS PETERS: My, it’s cold in there.

(She puts the clothes on the big table, and
hurries to the stove.)

MRS HALE: (examining the skirt) Wright was close. I think
maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. She didn’t even
belong to the Ladies Aid. I suppose she felt she couldn’t do her
part, and then you don’t enjoy things when you feel shabby. She
used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie
Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir. But
that—oh, that was thirty years ago. This all you was to take
in?

MRS PETERS: She said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want,
for there isn’t much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But
I suppose just to make her feel more natural. She said they was in
the top drawer in this cupboard. Yes, here. And then her little
shawl that always hung behind the door. (opens stair door and
looks) Yes, here it is.

(Quickly shuts door leading upstairs.)

MRS HALE: (abruptly moving toward her) Mrs Peters?

MRS PETERS: Yes, Mrs Hale?

MRS HALE: Do you think she did it?

MRS PETERS: (in a frightened voice) Oh, I don’t know.

MRS HALE: Well, I don’t think she did. Asking for an apron and
her little shawl. Worrying about her fruit.

MRS PETERS: (starts to speak, glances up, where footsteps are
heard in the room above. In a low voice) Mr Peters says it
looks bad for her. Mr Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech and
he’ll make fun of her sayin’ she didn’t wake up.

MRS HALE: Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake when they was
slipping that rope under his neck.

MRS PETERS: No, it’s strange. It must have been done awful
crafty and still. They say it was such a—funny way to kill a
man, rigging it all up like that.

MRS HALE: That’s just what Mr Hale said. There was a gun in the
house. He says that’s what he can’t understand.

MRS PETERS: Mr Henderson said coming out that what was needed
for the case was a motive; something to show anger, or—sudden
feeling.

MRS HALE: (who is standing by the table) Well, I don’t
see any signs of anger around here, (she puts her hand on the
dish towel which lies on the table, stands looking down at table,
one half of which is clean, the other half messy) It’s wiped to
here, (makes a move as if to finish work, then turns and looks
at loaf of bread outside the breadbox. Drops towel. In that voice
of coming back to familiar things.) Wonder how they are finding
things upstairs. I hope she had it a little more red-up up there.
You know, it seems kind of sneaking. Locking her up in town and
then coming out here and trying to get her own house to turn
against her!

MRS PETERS: But Mrs Hale, the law is the law.

MRS HALE: I s’pose ’tis, (unbuttoning her coat) Better
loosen up your things, Mrs Peters. You won’t feel them when you go
out.

(MRS PETERS takes off her fur tippet, goes to hang it on hook
at back of room, stands looking at the under part of the small
corner table.)

MRS PETERS: She was piecing a quilt. (She brings the large
sewing basket and they look at the bright pieces.)

MRS HALE: It’s log cabin pattern. Pretty, isn’t it? I wonder if
she was goin’ to quilt it or just knot it?

(Footsteps have been heard coming down the
stairs. The SHERIFF enters followed by HALE and the COUNTY
ATTORNEY.)

SHERIFF: They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot
it! (The men laugh, the women look abashed.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (rubbing his hands over the stove)
Frank’s fire didn’t do much up there, did it? Well, let’s go out to
the barn and get that cleared up. (The men go outside.)

MRS HALE: (resentfully) I don’t know as there’s anything
so strange, our takin’ up our time with little things while we’re
waiting for them to get the evidence. (she sits down at the big
table smoothing out a block with decision) I don’t see as it’s
anything to laugh about.

MRS PETERS: (apologetically) Of course they’ve got awful
important things on their minds.

(Pulls up a chair and joins MRS HALE at the
table.)

MRS HALE: (examining another block) Mrs Peters, look at
this one. Here, this is the one she was working on, and look at the
sewing! All the rest of it has been so nice and even. And look at
this! It’s all over the place! Why, it looks as if she didn’t know
what she was about!

(After she has said this they look at each other,
then start to glance back at the door. After an instant MRS
HALE has pulled at a knot and ripped the sewing.)

MRS PETERS: Oh, what are you doing, Mrs Hale?

MRS HALE: (mildly) Just pulling out a stitch or two
that’s not sewed very good. (threading a needle) Bad sewing
always made me fidgety.

MRS PETERS: (nervously) I don’t think we ought to touch
things.

MRS HALE: I’ll just finish up this end. (suddenly stopping
and leaning forward) Mrs Peters?

MRS PETERS: Yes, Mrs Hale?

MRS HALE: What do you suppose she was so nervous about?

MRS PETERS: Oh—I don’t know. I don’t know as she was
nervous. I sometimes sew awful queer when I’m just tired. (MRS HALE
starts to say something, looks at MRS PETERS, then goes
on sewing) Well I must get these things wrapped up. They may be
through sooner than we think, (putting apron and other things
together) I wonder where I can find a piece of paper, and
string.

MRS HALE: In that cupboard, maybe.

MRS PETERS: (looking in cupboard) Why, here’s a
bird-cage, (holds it up) Did she have a bird, Mrs Hale?

MRS HALE: Why, I don’t know whether she did or not—I’ve
not been here for so long. There was a man around last year selling
canaries cheap, but I don’t know as she took one; maybe she did.
She used to sing real pretty herself.

MRS PETERS: (glancing around) Seems funny to think of a
bird here. But she must have had one, or why would she have a cage?
I wonder what happened to it.

MRS HALE: I s’pose maybe the cat got it.

MRS PETERS: No, she didn’t have a cat. She’s got that feeling
some people have about cats—being afraid of them. My cat got
in her room and she was real upset and asked me to take it out.

MRS HALE: My sister Bessie was like that. Queer, ain’t it?

MRS PETERS: (examining the cage) Why, look at this door.
It’s broke. One hinge is pulled apart.

MRS HALE: (looking too) Looks as if someone must have
been rough with it.

MRS PETERS: Why, yes.

(She brings the cage forward and puts it on the
table.)

MRS HALE: I wish if they’re going to find any evidence they’d be
about it. I don’t like this place.

MRS PETERS: But I’m awful glad you came with me, Mrs Hale. It
would be lonesome for me sitting here alone.

MRS HALE: It would, wouldn’t it? (dropping her sewing)
But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs Peters. I wish I had come over
sometimes when she was here. I—(looking around the
room)—wish I had.

MRS PETERS: But of course you were awful busy, Mrs
Hale—your house and your children.

MRS HALE: I could’ve come. I stayed away because it weren’t
cheerful—and that’s why I ought to have come. I—I’ve
never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you
don’t see the road. I dunno what it is, but it’s a lonesome place
and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster
sometimes. I can see now—(shakes her head)

MRS PETERS: Well, you mustn’t reproach yourself, Mrs Hale.
Somehow we just don’t see how it is with other folks
until—something comes up.

MRS HALE: Not having children makes less work—but it makes
a quiet house, and Wright out to work all day, and no company when
he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs Peters?

MRS PETERS: Not to know him; I’ve seen him in town. They say he
was a good man.

MRS HALE: Yes—good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as
well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man,
Mrs Peters. Just to pass the time of day with
him—(shivers) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone,
(pauses, her eye falling on the cage) I should think she
would ‘a wanted a bird. But what do you suppose went with it?

MRS PETERS: I don’t know, unless it got sick and died.

(She reaches over and swings the broken door,
swings it again, both women watch it.)

MRS HALE: You weren’t raised round here, were you? (MRS
PETERS shakes her head) You didn’t know—her?

MRS PETERS: Not till they brought her yesterday.

MRS HALE: She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a
bird herself—real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid
and—fluttery. How—she—did—change.
(silence; then as if struck by a happy thought and relieved to
get back to everyday things) Tell you what, Mrs Peters, why
don’t you take the quilt in with you? It might take up her
mind.

MRS PETERS: Why, I think that’s a real nice idea, Mrs Hale.
There couldn’t possibly be any objection to it, could there? Now,
just what would I take? I wonder if her patches are in
here—and her things.

(They look in the sewing basket.)

MRS HALE: Here’s some red. I expect this has got sewing things
in it. (brings out a fancy box) What a pretty box. Looks
like something somebody would give you. Maybe her scissors are in
here. (Opens box. Suddenly puts her hand to her nose)
Why—(MRS PETERS bends nearer, then turns her face
away) There’s something wrapped up in this piece of silk.

MRS PETERS: Why, this isn’t her scissors.

MRS HALE: (lifting the silk) Oh, Mrs
Peters—it’s—

(MRS PETERS bends closer.)

MRS PETERS: It’s the bird.

MRS HALE: (jumping up) But, Mrs Peters—look at it!
It’s neck! Look at its neck!

It’s all—other side to.

MRS PETERS: Somebody—wrung—its—neck.

(Their eyes meet. A look of growing
comprehension, of horror. Steps are heard outside. MRS HALE
slips box under quilt pieces, and sinks into her chair.
Enter SHERIFF and COUNTY ATTORNEY. MRS PETERS
rises.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (as one turning from serious things to
little pleasantries) Well ladies, have you decided whether she
was going to quilt it or knot it?

MRS PETERS: We think she was going to—knot it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. (seeing
the birdcage) Has the bird flown?

MRS HALE: (putting more quilt pieces over the box) We
think the—cat got it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (preoccupied) Is there a cat?

(MRS HALE glances in a quick covert way at
MRS PETERS.)

MRS PETERS: Well, not now. They’re superstitious, you know. They
leave.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (to SHERIFF PETERS, continuing an
interrupted conversation) No sign at all of anyone having come
from the outside. Their own rope. Now let’s go up again and go over
it piece by piece. (they start upstairs) It would have to
have been someone who knew just the—

(MRS PETERS sits down. The two women sit there
not looking at one another, but as if peering into something and at
the same time holding back. When they talk now it is in the manner
of feeling their way over strange ground, as if afraid of what they
are saying, but as if they can not help saying it.)

MRS HALE: She liked the bird. She was going to bury it in that
pretty box.

MRS PETERS: (in a whisper) When I was a girl—my
kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my
eyes—and before I could get there—(covers her face
an instant) If they hadn’t held me back I would
have—(catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are
heard, falters weakly)—hurt him.

MRS HALE: (with a slow look around her) I wonder how it
would seem never to have had any children around, (pause)
No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—a thing that sang. She used
to sing. He killed that, too.

MRS PETERS: (moving uneasily) We don’t know who killed
the bird.

MRS HALE: I knew John Wright.

MRS PETERS: It was an awful thing was done in this house that
night, Mrs Hale. Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope
around his neck that choked the life out of him.

MRS HALE: His neck. Choked the life out of him.

(Her hand goes out and rests on the
bird-cage.)

MRS PETERS: (with rising voice) We don’t know who killed
him. We don’t know.

MRS HALE: (her own feeling not interrupted) If there’d
been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it
would be awful—still, after the bird was still.

MRS PETERS: (something within her speaking) I know what
stillness is. When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby
died—after he was two years old, and me with no other
then—

MRS HALE: (moving) How soon do you suppose they’ll be
through, looking for the evidence?

MRS PETERS: I know what stillness is. (pulling herself
back) The law has got to punish crime, Mrs Hale.

MRS HALE: (not as if answering that) I wish you’d seen
Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and
stood up there in the choir and sang. (a look around the
room) Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while!
That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?

MRS PETERS: (looking upstairs) We mustn’t—take
on.

MRS HALE: I might have known she needed help! I know how things
can be—for women. I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs Peters. We live
close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same
things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing,
(brushes her eyes, noticing the bottle of fruit, reaches out for
it) If I was you, I wouldn’t tell her her fruit was gone. Tell
her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right. Take this in to prove
it to her. She—she may never know whether it was broke or
not.

MRS PETERS: (takes the bottle, looks about for something to
wrap it in; takes petticoat from the clothes brought from the other
room, very nervously begins winding this around the bottle. In a
false voice) My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us.
Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little
thing like a—dead canary. As if that could have anything to
do with—with—wouldn’t they laugh!

(The men are heard coming down stairs.)

MRS HALE: (under her breath) Maybe they would—maybe
they wouldn’t.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: No, Peters, it’s all perfectly clear except a
reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If
there was some definite thing. Something to show—something to
make a story about—a thing that would connect up with this
strange way of doing it—

(The women’s eyes meet for an instant. Enter HALE
from outer door.)

HALE: Well, I’ve got the team around. Pretty cold out there.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: I’m going to stay here a while by myself,
(to the SHERIFF) You can send Frank out for me, can’t you? I
want to go over everything. I’m not satisfied that we can’t do
better.

SHERIFF: Do you want to see what Mrs Peters is going to take
in?

(The LAWYER goes to the table, picks up
the apron, laughs.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things
the ladies have picked out. (Moves a few things about,
disturbing the quilt pieces which cover the box. Steps back)
No, Mrs Peters doesn’t need supervising. For that matter, a
sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way,
Mrs Peters?

MRS PETERS: Not—just that way.

SHERIFF: (chuckling) Married to the law. (moves toward
the other room) I just want you to come in here a minute,
George. We ought to take a look at these windows.

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (scoffingly) Oh, windows!

SHERIFF: We’ll be right out, Mr Hale.

(HALE goes outside. The SHERIFF follows
the COUNTY ATTORNEY into the other room. Then MRS HALE
rises, hands tight together, looking intensely at MRS
PETERS, whose eyes make a slow turn, finally meeting MRS
HALE‘s. A moment MRS HALE holds her, then her own eyes
point the way to where the box is concealed. Suddenly MRS
PETERS throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the
bag she is wearing. It is too big. She opens box, starts to take
bird out, cannot touch it, goes to pieces, stands there helpless.
Sound of a knob turning in the other room. MRS HALE snatches
the box and puts it in the pocket of her big coat. Enter COUNTY
ATTORNEY and SHERIFF.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY: (facetiously) Well, Henry, at least we
found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going
to—what is it you call it, ladies?

MRS HALE: (her hand against her pocket) We call
it—knot it, Mr Henderson.

(CURTAIN)

THE OUTSIDE

First performed by the Provincetown Players at the Playwrights’
Theatre, December 28, 1917.

CAPTAIN (of ‘The Bars’ Life-Saving Station)

BRADFORD (a Life-Saver)

TONY (a Portuguese Life-Saver)

MRS PATRICK (who lives in the abandoned Station)

ALLIE MAYO (who works for her)

SCENE: A room in a house which was once a
life-saving station. Since ceasing to be that it has taken on no
other character, except that of a place which no one cares either
to preserve or change. It is painted the life-saving grey, but has
not the life-saving freshness. This is one end of what was the big
boat room, and at the ceiling is seen a part of the frame work from
which the boat once swung. About two thirds of the back wall is
open, because of the big sliding door, of the type of barn door,
and through this open door are seen the sand dunes, and beyond them
the woods. At one point the line where woods and dunes meet stands
out clearly and there are indicated the rude things, vines, bushes,
which form the outer uneven rim of the woods—the only things
that grow in the sand. At another point a sand-hill is menacing the
woods. This old life-saving station is at a point where the sea
curves, so through the open door the sea also is seen. (The station
is located on the outside shore of Cape Cod, at the point, near the
tip of the Cape, where it makes that final curve which forms the
Provincetown Harbor.) The dunes are hills and strange forms of sand
on which, in places, grows the stiff beach grass—struggle;
dogged growing against odds. At right of the big sliding door is a
drift of sand and the top of buried beach grass is seen on this.
There is a door left, and at right of big sliding door is a
slanting wall. Door in this is ajar at rise of curtain, and through
this door BRADFORD and TONY, life-savers, are seen
bending over a man’s body, attempting to restore respiration. The
captain of the life-savers comes into view outside the big open
door, at left; he appears to have been hurrying, peers in, sees the
men, goes quickly to them.

CAPTAIN: I’ll take this now, boys.

BRADFORD: No need for anybody to take it, Capt’n. He was dead
when we picked him up.

CAPTAIN: Dannie Sears was dead when we picked him up. But we
brought him back. I’ll go on awhile.

(The two men who have been bending over the body
rise, stretch to relax, and come into the room.)

BRADFORD: (pushing back his arms and putting his hands on his
chest) Work,—tryin to put life in the dead.

CAPTAIN: Where’d you find him, Joe?

BRADFORD: In front of this house. Not forty feet out.

CAPTAIN: What’d you bring him up here for?

(He speaks in an abstracted way, as if the
working part of his mind is on something else, and in the muffled
voice of one bending over.)

BRADFORD: (with a sheepish little laugh) Force of habit,
I guess. We brought so many of ’em back up here, (looks around
the room) And then it was kind of unfriendly down where he
was—the wind spittin’ the sea onto you till he’d have no way
of knowin’ he was ashore.

TONY: Lucky I was not sooner or later as I walk by from my
watch.

BRADFORD: You have accommodating ways, Tony. No sooner or later.
I wouldn’t say it of many Portagees. But the sea (calling it in
to the CAPTAIN) is friendly as a kitten alongside the women
that live here. Allie Mayo—they’re both
crazy—had that door open (moving his head toward the big
sliding door) sweepin’ out, and when we come along she backs
off and stands lookin’ at us, lookin‘—Lord, I just
wanted to get him somewhere else. So I kicked this door open with
my foot (jerking his hand toward the room where the CAPTAIN
is seen bending over the man) and got him away. (under
his voice) If he did have any notion of comin’ back to life, he
wouldn’t a come if he’d seen her. (more genially) I
wouldn’t.

CAPTAIN: You know who he is, Joe?

BRADFORD: I never saw him before.

CAPTAIN: Mitchell telephoned from High Head that a dory came
ashore there.

BRADFORD: Last night wasn’t the best night for a dory.
(to TONY, boastfully) Not that I couldn’t ‘a’ stayed
in one. Some men can stay in a dory and some can’t. (going to
the inner door) That boy’s dead, Capt’n.

CAPTAIN: Then I’m not doing him any harm.

BRADFORD: (going over and shaking the frame where the boat
once swung) This the first time you ever been in this place,
ain’t it, Tony?

TONY: I never was here before.

BRADFORD: Well, I was here before. (a laugh) And
the old man—(nodding toward the CAPTAIN) he lived here
for twenty-seven years. Lord, the things that happened here.
There’ve been dead ones carried through that door.
(pointing to the outside door) Lord—the ones
I’ve carried. I carried in Bill Collins, and Lou Harvey
and—huh! ‘sall over now. You ain’t seen no wrecks.
Don’t ever think you have. I was here the night the Jennie Snow was
out there. (pointing to the sea) There was a wreck.
We got the boat that stood here (again shaking the frame)
down that bank. (goes to the door and looks out) Lord, how’d
we ever do it? The sand has put his place on the blink all right.
And then when it gets too God-for-saken for a life-savin’ station,
a lady takes it for a summer residence—and then spends the
winter. She’s a cheerful one.

TONY: A woman—she makes things pretty. This not like a
place where a woman live. On the floor there is nothing—on
the wall there is nothing. Things—(trying to express it
with his hands) do not hang on other things.

BRADFORD: (imitating TONY‘s gesture)
No—things do not hang on other things. In my opinion the
woman’s crazy—sittin’ over there on the sand—(a
gesture towards the dunes) what’s she lookin’ at? There
ain’t nothin’ to see. And I know the woman that works for
her’s crazy—Allie Mayo. She’s a Provincetown girl. She was
all right once, but—

(MRS PATRICK comes in from the hall at the right.
She is a ‘city woman’, a sophisticated person who has been caught
into something as unlike the old life as the dunes are unlike a
meadow. At the moment she is excited and angry.)

MRS PATRICK: You have no right here. This isn’t the life-saving
station any more. Just because it used to be—I don’t see why
you should think—This is my house! And—I want my house
to myself!

CAPTAIN: (putting his head through the door. One arm of the
man he is working with is raised, and the hand reaches through the
doorway) Well I must say, lady, I would think that any house
could be a life-saving station when the sea had sent a man to
it.

MRS PATRICK: (who has turned away so she cannot see the
hand) I don’t want him here! I—(defiant, yet
choking) I must have my house to myself!

CAPTAIN: You’ll get your house to yourself when I’ve made up my
mind there’s no more life in this man. A good many lives have been
saved in this house, Mrs Patrick—I believe that’s your
name—and if there’s any chance of bringing one more back from
the dead, the fact that you own the house ain’t goin’ to make a
damn bit of difference to me!

MRS PATRICK: (in a thin wild way) I must have my house to
myself.

CAPTAIN: Hell with such a woman!

(Moves the man he is working with and slams the
door shut. As the CAPTAIN says, ‘And if there’s any chance
of bringing one more back from the dead‘, ALLIE MAYO has
appeared outside the wide door which gives on to the dunes, a bleak
woman, who at first seems little more than a part of the sand
before which she stands. But as she listens to this conflict one
suspects in her that peculiar intensity of twisted things which
grow in unfavoring places.)

MRS PATRICK: I—I don’t want them here! I must—

(But suddenly she retreats, and is gone.)

BRADFORD: Well, I couldn’t say, Allie Mayo, that you work for
any too kind-hearted a lady. What’s the matter with the woman? Does
she want folks to die? Appears to break her all up to see somebody
trying to save a life. What d’you work for such a fish for? A crazy
fish—that’s what I call the woman. I’ve seen her—day
after day—settin’ over there where the dunes meet the woods,
just sittin’ there, lookin’. (suddenly thinking of it) I
believe she likes to see the sand slippin’ down on the
woods. Pleases her to see somethin’ gettin’ buried, I guess.

(ALLIE MAYO, who has stepped inside the door and
moved half across the room, toward the corridor at the right, is
arrested by this last—stands a moment as if seeing through
something, then slowly on, and out.)

BRADFORD: Some coffee’d taste good. But coffee, in this house?
Oh, no. It might make somebody feel better. (opening the door
that was slammed shut) Want me now, Capt’n?

CAPTAIN: No.

BRADFORD: Oh, that boy’s dead, Capt’n.

CAPTAIN: (snarling) Dannie Sears was dead, too. Shut that
door. I don’t want to hear that woman’s voice again, ever.

(Closing the door and sitting on a bench built
into that corner between the big sliding door and the room where
the CAPTAIN is.)

BRADFORD: They’re a cheerful pair of women—livin’ in this
cheerful place—a place that life savers had to turn over to
the sand—huh! This Patrick woman used to be all right. She
and her husband was summer folks over in town. They used to picnic
over here on the outside. It was Joe Dyer—he’s always talkin’
to summer folks—told ’em the government was goin’ to build
the new station and sell this one by sealed bids. I heard them
talkin’ about it. They was sittin’ right down there on the beach,
eatin’ their supper. They was goin’ to put in a fire-place and they
was goin’ to paint it bright colors, and have parties over
here—summer folk notions. Their bid won it—who’d want
it?—a buried house you couldn’t move.

TONY: I see no bright colors.

BRADFORD: Don’t you? How astonishin’! You must be color blind.
And I guess we’re the first party. (laughs) I was in
Bill Joseph’s grocery store, one day last November, when in she
comes—Mrs Patrick, from New York. ‘I’ve come to take the old
life-saving station’, says she. ‘I’m going to sleep over there
tonight!’ Huh! Bill is used to queer ways—he deals with
summer folks, but that got him. November—an empty
house, a buried house, you might say, off here on the outside
shore—way across the sand from man or beast. He got it out of
her, not by what she said, but by the way she looked at what he
said, that her husband had died, and she was runnin’ off to hide
herself, I guess. A person’d feel sorry for her if she weren’t so
stand-offish, and so doggon mean. But mean folks have got
minds of their own. She slept here that night. Bill had men hauling
things till after dark—bed, stove, coal. And then she wanted
somebody to work for her. ‘Somebody’, says she, ‘that doesn’t say
an unnecessary word!’ Well, then Bill come to the back of the
store, I said, ‘Looks to me as if Allie Mayo was the party she’s
lookin’ for.’ Allie Mayo has got a prejudice against words. Or
maybe she likes ’em so well she’s savin’ of ’em. She’s not spoke an
unnecessary word for twenty years. She’s got her reasons. Women
whose men go to sea ain’t always talkative.

(The CAPTAIN comes out. He closes door
behind him and stands there beside it. He looks tired and
disappointed. Both look at him. Pause.)

CAPTAIN: Wonder who he was.

BRADFORD: Young. Guess he’s not been much at sea.

CAPTAIN: I hate to leave even the dead in this house. But we can
get right back for him. (a look around) The old place used
to be more friendly. (moves to outer door, hesitates, hating to
leave like this) Well, Joe, we brought a good many of them back
here.

BRADFORD: Dannie Sears is tendin’ bar in Boston now.

(The three men go; as they are going around the
drift of sand ALLIE MAYO comes in carrying a pot of coffee;
sees them leaving, puts down the coffee pot, looks at the door
the CAPTAIN has closed, moves toward it, as if drawn.
MRS PATRICK follows her in.)

MRS PATRICK: They’ve gone?

(MRS MAYO nods, facing the closed door.)

MRS PATRICK: And they’re leaving—him? (again the other
woman nods) Then he’s—? (MRS MAYO just stands
there) They have no right—just because it used to be
their place—! I want my house to myself!

(Snatches her coat and scarf from a hook and
starts through the big door toward the dunes.)

ALLIE MAYO: Wait.

(When she has said it she sinks into that corner
seat—as if overwhelmed by what she has done. The other woman
is held.)

ALLIE MAYO: (to herself.) If I could say that, I can say
more. (looking at woman she has arrested, but speaking more to
herself) That boy in there—his face—uncovered
something—(her open hand on her chest. But she waits, as
if she cannot go on; when she speaks it is in labored
way—slow, monotonous, as if snowed in by silent years)
For twenty years, I did what you are doing. And I can tell
you—it’s not the way. (her voice has fallen to a whisper;
she stops, looking ahead at something remote and veiled) We had
been married—two years. (a start, as of sudden pain. Says
it again, as if to make herself say it) Married—two
years. He had a chance to go north on a whaler. Times hard. He had
to go. A year and a half—it was to be. A year and a half. Two
years we’d been married.

(She sits silent, moving a little back and
forth.)

The day he went away. (not spoken, but breathed from
pain) The days after he was gone.

I heard at first. Last letter said farther north—not
another chance to write till on the way home. (a wait)

Six months. Another, I did not hear. (long wait) Nobody
ever heard. (after it seems she is held there, and will not go
on) I used to talk as much as any girl in Provincetown. Jim
used to tease me about my talking. But they’d come in to talk to
me. They’d say—’You may hear yet.‘ They’d talk about
what must have happened. And one day a woman who’d been my friend
all my life said—’Suppose he was to walk in!‘ I got up
and drove her from my kitchen—and from that time till this
I’ve not said a word I didn’t have to say. (she has become
almost wild in telling this. That passes. In a whisper) The ice
that caught Jim—caught me. (a moment as if held in ice.
Comes from it. To MRS PATRICK simply) It’s not the way.
(a sudden change) You’re not the only woman in the world
whose husband is dead!

MRS PATRICK: (with a cry of the hurt) Dead? My husband’s
not dead.

ALLIE MAYO: He’s not? (slowly understands) Oh.

(The woman in the door is crying. Suddenly picks
up her coat which has fallen to the floor and steps
outside.)

ALLIE MAYO: (almost failing to do it) Wait.

MRS PATRICK: Wait? Don’t you think you’ve said enough? They told
me you didn’t say an unnecessary word!

ALLIE MAYO: I don’t.

MRS PATRICK: And you can see, I should think, that you’ve
bungled into things you know nothing about!

(As she speaks, and crying under her breath, she
pushes the sand by the door down on the half buried
grass—though not as if knowing what she is doing.)

ALLIE MAYO: (slowly) When you keep still for twenty years
you know—things you didn’t know you knew. I know why you’re
doing that. (she looks up at her, startled) Don’t bury the
only thing that will grow. Let it grow.

(The woman outside still crying under her breath
turns abruptly and starts toward the line where dunes and woods
meet.)

ALLIE MAYO: I know where you’re going! (MRS PATRICK turns but
not as if she wants to) What you’ll try to do. Over there.
(pointing to the line of woods) Bury it. The life in you.
Bury it—watching the sand bury the woods. But I’ll tell you
something! They fight too. The woods! They fight for life
the way that Captain fought for life in there!

(Pointing to the closed door.)

MRS PATRICK: (with a strange exultation) And lose the way
he lost in there!

ALLIE MAYO: (sure, sombre) They don’t lose.

MRS PATRICK: Don’t lose? (triumphant) I have
walked on the tops of buried trees!

ALLIE MAYO: (slow, sombre, yet large) And vines will grow
over the sand that covers the trees, and hold it. And other trees
will grow over the buried trees.

MRS PATRICK: I’ve watched the sand slip down on the vines that
reach out farthest.

ALLIE MAYO: Another vine will reach that spot. (under her
breath, tenderly) Strange little things that reach out
farthest!

MRS PATRICK: And will be buried soonest!

ALLIE MAYO: And hold the sand for things behind them. They save
a wood that guards a town.

MRS PATRICK: I care nothing about a wood to guard a town. This
is the outside—these dunes where only beach grass grows, this
outer shore where men can’t live. The Outside. You who were born
here and who die here have named it that.

ALLIE MAYO: Yes, we named it that, and we had reason. He died
here (reaches her hand toward the closed door) and many a
one before him. But many another reached the harbor! (slowly
raises her arm, bends it to make the form of the Cape. Touches the
outside of her bent arm) The Outside. But an arm that bends to
make a harbor—where men are safe.

MRS PATRICK: I’m outside the harbor—on the dunes, land not
life.

ALLIE MAYO: Dunes meet woods and woods hold dunes from a town
that’s shore to a harbor.

MRS PATRICK: This is the Outside. Sand (picking some of it up
in her hand and letting it fall on the beach grass) Sand that
covers—hills of sand that move and cover.

ALLIE MAYO: Woods. Woods to hold the moving hills from
Provincetown. Provincetown—where they turn when boats can’t
live at sea. Did you ever see the sails come round here when the
sky is dark? A line of them—swift to the harbor—where
their children live. Go back! (pointing) Back to your edge
of the woods that’s the edge of the dunes.

MRS PATRICK: The edge of life. Where life trails off to dwarfed
things not worth a name.

(Suddenly sits down in the doorway.)

ALLIE MAYO: Not worth a name. And—meeting the Outside!

(Big with the sense of the wonder of
life.)

MRS PATRICK: (lifting sand and letting it drift through her
hand.) They’re what the sand will let them be. They take
strange shapes like shapes of blown sand.

ALLIE MAYO: Meeting the Outside. (moving nearer; speaking
more personally) I know why you came here. To this house that
had been given up; on this shore where only savers of life try to
live. I know what holds you on these dunes, and draws you over
there. But other things are true beside the things you want to
see.

MRS PATRICK: How do you know they are? Where have you been for
twenty years?

ALLIE MAYO: Outside. Twenty years. That’s why I know how brave
they are (indicating the edge of the woods. Suddenly
different) You’ll not find peace there again! Go back and watch
them fight!

MRS PATRICK: (swiftly rising) You’re a cruel
woman—a hard, insolent woman! I knew what I was doing! What
do you know about it? About me? I didn’t go to the Outside. I was
left there. I’m only—trying to get along. Everything that can
hurt me I want buried—buried deep. Spring is here. This
morning I knew it. Spring—coming through the
storm—to take me—take me to hurt me. That’s why I
couldn’t bear—(she looks at the closed door) things
that made me know I feel. You haven’t felt for so long you don’t
know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here! And now you’d
take that from me—(looking now toward the edge of
the woods) the thing that made me know they would be buried in
my heart—those things I can’t live and know I feel.
You’re more cruel than the sea! ‘But other things are true beside
the things you want to see!’ Outside. Springs will come when I will
not know that it is spring. (as if resentful of not more deeply
believing what she says) What would there be for me but the
Outside? What was there for you? What did you ever find after you
lost the thing you wanted?

ALLIE MAYO: I found—what I find now I know. The edge of
life—to hold life behind me—

(A slight gesture toward MRS PATRICK.)

MRS PATRICK: (stepping back) You call what you are life?
(laughs) Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the
sand!

ALLIE MAYO: (under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of
beauty) Ugly!

MRS PATRICK: (passionately) I have known life. I
have known life. You’re like this Cape. A line of land way
out to sea—land not life.

ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (raises her arm, curves it
in as if around something she loves) Land that encloses and
gives shelter from storm.

MRS PATRICK: (facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold
all else out) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes—land not
life.

ALLIE MAYO: Outside sea—outer shore, dark with the wood
that once was ships—dunes, strange land not life—woods,
town and harbor. The line! Stunted straggly line that meets the
Outside face to face—and fights for what itself can never be.
Lonely line. Brave growing.

MRS PATRICK: It loses.

ALLIE MAYO: It wins.

MRS PATRICK: The farthest life is buried.

ALLIE MAYO: And life grows over buried life! (lifted into
that; then, as one who states a simple truth with feeling) It
will. And Springs will come when you will want to know that it is
Spring.

(The CAPTAIN and BRADFORD appear
behind the drift of sand. They have a stretcher. To get away from
them MRS PATRICK steps farther into the room; ALLIE MAYO
shrinks into her corner. The men come in, open the closed door
and go in the room where they left the dead man. A moment later
they are seen outside the big open door, bearing the man away.
MRS PATRICK watches them from sight.)

MRS PATRICK: (bitter, exultant) Savers of life!
(to ALLIE MAYO) You savers of life! ‘Meeting the Outside!’
Meeting—(but she cannot say it mockingly again; in saying
it, something of what it means has broken through, rises. Herself
lost, feeling her way into the wonder of life) Meeting the
Outside!

(It grows in her as CURTAIN lowers
slowly.)

THE VERGE

First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14,
1921.

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

ANTHONY

HARRY ARCHER, Claire’s husband

HATTIE, The maid

CLAIRE

DICK, Richard Demming

TOM EDGEWORTHY

ELIZABETH, Claire’s daughter

ADELAIDE, Claire’s sister

DR EMMONS

ACT I

The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save
for a shaft of light from below which comes up through an open
trap-door in the floor. This slants up and strikes the long leaves
and the huge brilliant blossom of a strange plant whose twisted
stem projects from right front. Nothing is seen except this plant
and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer.
It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the buzzer.
Then from below—his shadow blocking the light, comes
ANTHONY, a rugged man past middle life;—he emerges from
the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up
a phone.

ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?—I’ll see. (he brings a
thermometer to the stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns
to the phone) It’s down to forty-nine. The plants are in
danger—(with great relief and approval) Oh, that’s
fine! (hangs up the receiver) Fine!

(He goes back down the stairway, closing the
trap-door upon himself, and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and
wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of
a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through
the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if—as
Plato would have it—the patterns inherent in abstract nature
and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat
within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass.
And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass
house.

The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is
an outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps
lead down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the
inner room. One sees a little way into this room. At right there is
no dividing wall save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle
between shelves of plants leads off.

This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor
the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place for
experiment with plants, a laboratory.

At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than
beautiful. It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a
little way up the glass. You might see the form of a cross in it,
if you happened to think it that way. The leaves of this vine are
not the form that leaves have been. They are at once repellent and
significant.

ANTHONY is at work preparing soil—mixing, sifting. As
the wind tries the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods
as if reassured and returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He
starts to answer the telephone, remembers something, halts and
listens sharply. It does not buzz once long and three short. Then
he returns to his work. The buzzer goes on and on in impatient
jerks which mount in anger. Several times ANTHONY is almost
compelled by this insistence, but the thing that holds him back is
stronger. At last, after a particularly mad splutter, to which
ANTHONY longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it up.
ANTHONY goes on preparing soil.

A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing
in, and also MR HARRY ARCHER, wrapped in a rug.)

ANTHONY: Oh, please close the door, sir.

HARRY: Do you think I’m not trying to? (he holds it open to
say this)

ANTHONY: But please do. This stormy air is not good for
the plants.

HARRY: I suppose it’s just the thing for me! Now, what do you
mean, Anthony, by not answering the phone when I buzz for you?

ANTHONY: Miss Claire—Mrs Archer told me not to.

HARRY: Told you not to answer me?

ANTHONY: Not you especially—nobody but her.

HARRY: Well, I like her nerve—and yours.

ANTHONY: You see, she thought it took my mind from my work to be
interrupted when I’m out here. And so it does. So she buzzes once
long and—Well, she buzzes her way, and all other
buzzing—

HARRY: May buzz.

ANTHONY: (nodding gravely) She thought it would be better
for the flowers.

HARRY: I am not a flower—true, but I too need a little
attention—and a little heat. Will you please tell me why the
house is frigid?

ANTHONY: Miss Claire ordered all the heat turned out here,
(patiently explaining it to MISS CLAIRE’s speechless
husband) You see the roses need a great deal of heat.

HARRY: (reading the thermometer) The roses have
seventy-three I have forty-five.

ANTHONY: Yes, the roses need seventy-three.

HARRY: Anthony, this is an outrage!

ANTHONY: I think it is myself; when you consider what we paid
for the heating plant—but as long as it is
defective—Why, Miss Claire would never have done what she has
if she hadn’t looked out for her plants in just such ways as this.
Have you forgotten that Breath of Life is about to flower?

HARRY: And where’s my breakfast about to flower?—that’s
what I want to know.

ANTHONY: Why, Miss Claire got up at five o’clock to order the
heat turned off from the house.

HARRY: I see you admire her vigilance.

ANTHONY: Oh, I do. (fervently) I do. Harm was near, and
that woke her up.

HARRY: And what about the harm to—(tapping his
chest) Do roses get pneumonia?

ANTHONY: Oh, yes—yes, indeed they do. Why, Mr Archer, look
at Miss Claire herself. Hasn’t she given her heat to the roses?

HARRY: (pulling the rug around him, preparing for the
blizzard) She has the fire within.

ANTHONY: (delighted) Now isn’t that true! How well you
said it. (with a glare for this appreciation, HARRY opens
the door. It blows away from him) Please do close the door!

HARRY: (furiously) You think it is the aim of my life to
hold it open?

ANTHONY: (getting hold of it) Growing things need an even
temperature, (while saying this he gets the man out into the
snow)

(ANTHONY consults the thermometer, not as pleased
this time as he was before. He then looks minutely at two of the
plants—one is a rose, the other a flower without a name
because it has not long enough been a flower. Peers into the hearts
of them. Then from a drawer under a shelf, takes two paper bags,
puts one over each of these flowers, closing them down at the
bottom. Again the door blows wildly in, also HATTIE, a maid
with a basket.)

ANTHONY: What do you mean—blowing in here like this? Mrs
Archer has ordered—

HATTIE: Mr Archer has ordered breakfast served here, (she
uncovers the basket and takes out an electric toaster)

ANTHONY: Breakfast—here? Eat—here?
Where plants grow?

HATTIE: The plants won’t poison him, will they? (at a loss to
know what to do with things, she puts the toaster under the strange
vine at the back, whose leaves lift up against the glass which has
frost leaves on the outer side)

ANTHONY: (snatching it away) You—you think you can
cook eggs under the Edge Vine?

HATTIE: I guess Mr Archer’s eggs are as important as a vine. I
guess my work’s as important as yours.

ANTHONY: There’s a million people like you—and like Mr
Archer. In all the world there is only one Edge Vine.

HATTIE: Well, maybe one’s enough. It don’t look like nothin’,
anyhow.

ANTHONY: And you’ve not got the wit to know that that’s why it’s
the Edge Vine.

HATTIE: You want to look out, Anthony. You talk nutty. Everybody
says so.

ANTHONY: Miss Claire don’t say so.

HATTIE: No, because she’s—

ANTHONY: You talk too much!

(Door opens, admitting HARRY; after
looking around for the best place to eat breakfast, moves a box of
earth from the table.)

HARRY: Just give me a hand, will you, Hattie?

(They bring it to the open space and he and
HATTIE arrange breakfast things, HATTIE with triumphant
glances at the distressed ANTHONY)

ANTHONY: (deciding he must act) Mr Archer, this is not
the place to eat breakfast!

HARRY: Dead wrong, old boy. The place that has heat is the place
to eat breakfast. (to HATTIE) Tell the other
gentlemen—I heard Mr Demming up, and Mr Edgeworthy, if he
appears, that as long as it is such a pleasant morning, we’re
having breakfast outside. To the conservatory for coffee.

(HATTIE giggles, is leaving.)

And let’s see, have we got everything? (takes the one shaker,
shakes a little pepper on his hand. Looks in vain for the other
shaker) And tell Mr Demming to bring the salt.

ANTHONY: But Miss Claire will be very angry.

HARRY: I am very angry. Did I choose to eat my breakfast at the
other end of a blizzard?

ANTHONY: (an exclamation of horror at the thermometer)
The temperature is falling. I must report. (he punches the
buzzer, takes up the phone) Miss Claire? It is Anthony. A
terrible thing has happened. Mr Archer—what? Yes, a terrible
thing.—Yes, it is about Mr Archer.—No—no, not
dead. But here. He is here. Yes, he is well, he seems well, but he
is eating his breakfast. Yes, he is having breakfast served out
here—for himself, and the other gentlemen are to come
too.—Well, he seemed to be annoyed because the heat had been
turned off from the house. But the door keeps opening—this
stormy wind blowing right over the plants. The temperature has
already fallen.—Yes, yes. I thought you would want to
come.

(ANTHONY opens the trap-door and goes below.
HARRY looks disapprovingly down into this openness at his feet,
returns to his breakfast. ANTHONY comes up, bearing a
box.)

HARRY: (turning his face away) Phew! What a smell.

ANTHONY: Yes. Fertilizer has to smell.

HARRY: Well, it doesn’t have to smell up my breakfast!

ANTHONY: (with a patient sense of order) The smell
belongs here. (he and the smell go to the inner room)

(The outer door opens just enough to admit
CLAIRE—is quickly closed. With CLAIRE in a room
another kind of aliveness is there.)

CLAIRE: What are you doing here?

HARRY: Getting breakfast. (all the while doing so)

CLAIRE: I’ll not have you in my place!

HARRY: If you take all the heat then you have to take me.

CLAIRE: I’ll show you how I have to take you. (with her hands
begins scooping upon him the soil ANTHONY has
prepared)

HARRY: (jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms, putting
his arms around her) Claire—be decent. What harm do I do
here?

CLAIRE: You pull down the temperature.

HARRY: Not after I’m in.

CLAIRE: And you told Tom and Dick to come and make it
uneven.

HARRY: Tom and Dick are our guests. We can’t eat where it’s warm
and leave them to eat where it’s cold.

CLAIRE: I don’t see why not.

HARRY: You only see what you want to see.

CLAIRE: That’s not true. I wish it were. No; no, I don’t either.
(she is disturbed—that troubled thing which rises from
within, from deep, and takes CLAIRE. She turns to the Edge
Vine, examines. Regretfully to ANTHONY, who has come in with
a plant) It’s turning back, isn’t it?

ANTHONY: Can you be sure yet, Miss Claire?

CLAIRE: Oh yes—it’s had its chance. It doesn’t want to
be—what hasn’t been.

HARRY: (who has turned at this note in her voice. Speaks
kindly) Don’t take it so seriously, Claire. (CLAIRE
laughs)

CLAIRE: No, I suppose not. But it does matter—and
why should I pretend it doesn’t, just because I’ve failed with
it?

HARRY: Well, I don’t want to see it get you—it’s not
important enough for that.

CLAIRE: (in her brooding way) Anything is important
enough for that—if it’s important at all. (to the
vine) I thought you were out, but you’re—going back
home.

ANTHONY: But you’re doing it this time, Miss Claire. When Breath
of Life opens—and we see its heart—

(CLAIRE looks toward the inner room. Because of
intervening plants they do not see what is seen from the
front—a plant like caught motion, and of a greater
transparency than plants have had. Its leaves, like waves that
curl, close around a heart that is not seen. This plant stands by
itself in what, because of the arrangement of things about it, is a
hidden place. But nothing is between it and the light.)

CLAIRE: Yes, if the heart has (a little laugh) held its
own, then Breath of Life is alive in its otherness. But Edge Vine
is running back to what it broke out of.

HARRY: Come, have some coffee, Claire.

(ANTHONY returns to the inner room, the outer
door opens. DICK is hurled in.)

CLAIRE: (going to the door, as he gasps for breath before
closing it) How dare you make my temperature uneven! (she
shuts the door and leans against it)

DICK: Is that what I do?

(A laugh, a look between them, which is held into
significance.)

HARRY: (who is not facing them) Where’s the salt?

DICK: Oh, I fell down in the snow. I must have left the salt
where I fell. I’ll go back and look for it.

CLAIRE: And change the temperature? We don’t need salt.

HARRY: You don’t need salt, Claire. But we eat eggs.

CLAIRE: I must tell you I don’t like the idea of any food being
eaten here, where things have their own way to go. Please eat as
little as possible, and as quickly.

HARRY: A hostess calculated to put one at one’s ease.

CLAIRE: (with no ill-nature) I care nothing about your
ease. Or about Dick’s ease.

DICK: And no doubt that’s what makes you so fascinating a
hostess.

CLAIRE: Was I a fascinating hostess last night, Dick? (softly
sings) ‘Oh, night of love—’ (from the Barcorole of
‘Tales of Hoffman’)

HARRY: We’ve got to have salt.

(He starts for the door. CLAIRE slips in
ahead of him, locks it, takes the key. He marches off,
right.)

CLAIRE: (calling after him) That end’s always locked.

DICK: Claire darling, I wish you wouldn’t say those startling
things. You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a
shock—and really, it’s unwise.

CLAIRE: Haven’t you learned that the best place to hide is in
the truth? (as HARRY returns) Why won’t you believe
me, Harry, when I tell you the truth—about doors being
locked?

HARRY: Claire, it’s selfish of you to keep us from eating salt
just because you don’t eat salt.

CLAIRE: (with one of her swift changes) Oh, Harry! Try
your egg without salt. Please—please try it without salt!
(an intensity which seems all out of proportion to the
subject)

HARRY: An egg demands salt.

CLAIRE: ‘An egg demands salt.’ Do you know, Harry, why you are
such an unseasoned person? ‘An egg demands salt.’

HARRY: Well, it doesn’t always get it.

CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.

HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (going back to his
breakfast)

CLAIRE: And pleased—so pleased with itself, for getting no
lift. Sure, it is just the right kind of spirit—because it
gets no lift. (more brightly) But, Dick, you must have tried
your egg without salt.

DICK: I’ll try it now. (he goes to the breakfast
table)

CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn’t that the way
one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?

HARRY: Claire.

DICK: (pushing back his egg) If so, I prefer to wait for
the salt.

HARRY: Claire, there is a limit.

CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is
a limit. So—the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever
does get out, I suppose it is—quite unexpectedly, and
perhaps—a bit terribly.

HARRY: Get out where?

CLAIRE: (with a bright smile) Where you, darling, will
never go.

HARRY: And from which you, darling, had better beat it.

CLAIRE: I wish I could. (to herself) No—no I don’t
either

(Again this troubled thing turns her to the
plant. She puts by themselves the two which ANTHONY covered
with paper bags. Is about to remove these papers. HARRY
strikes a match.)

CLAIRE: (turning sharply) You can’t smoke here. The
plants are not used to it.

HARRY: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for
them.

CLAIRE: There is design.

HARRY: (to DICK) Am I supposed to be answered? I never
can be quite sure at what moment I am answered.

(They both watch CLAIRE, who has uncovered
the plants and is looking intently into the flowers. From a drawer
she takes some tools. Very carefully gives the rose pollen to an
unfamiliar flower—rather wistfully unfamiliar, which stands
above on a small shelf near the door of the inner room.)

DICK: What is this you’re doing, Claire?

CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.

DICK: It’s all rather mysterious, isn’t it?

HARRY: And Claire doesn’t make it any less so.

CLAIRE: Can I make life any less mysterious?

HARRY: If you know what you are doing, why can’t you tell
Dick?

DICK: Never mind. After all, why should I be told? (he turns
away)

(At that she wants to tell him. Helpless, as one
who cannot get across a stream, starts uncertainly.)

CLAIRE: I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (faces the
room beyond the wall of glass)—the flower I have created
that is outside what flowers have been. What has gone out should
bring fragrance from what it has left. But no definite fragrance,
no limiting enclosing thing. I call the fragrance I am trying to
create Reminiscence. (her hand on the pot of the wistful little
flower she has just given pollen) Reminiscent of the rose, the
violet, arbutus—but a new thing—itself. Breath of Life
may be lonely out in what hasn’t been. Perhaps some day I can give
it reminiscence.

DICK: I see, Claire.

CLAIRE: I wonder if you do.

HARRY: Now, Claire, you’re going to be gay to-day, aren’t you?
These are Tom’s last couple of days with us.

CLAIRE: That doesn’t make me especially gay.

HARRY: Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don’t
you?

CLAIRE: I would like him to. Oh—I would like him to!

HARRY: Then be amusing. That’s really you, isn’t it, Dick?

DICK: Not quite all of her—I should say.

CLAIRE: (gaily) Careful, Dick. Aren’t you indiscreet?
Harry will be suspecting that I am your latest strumpet.

HARRY: Claire! What language you use! A person knowing you only
by certain moments could never be made to believe you are a refined
woman.

CLAIRE: True, isn’t it, Dick?

HARRY: It would be a good deal of a lark to let them listen in
at times—then tell them that here is the flower of New
England!

CLAIRE: Well, if this is the flower of New England, then the
half has never been told.

DICK: About New England?

CLAIRE: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant—about
me.

HARRY: (going on with his own entertainment) Explain that
this is what came of the men who made the laws that made New
England, that here is the flower of those gentlemen of culture
who—

DICK: Moulded the American mind!

CLAIRE: Oh! (it is pain)

HARRY: Now what’s the matter?

CLAIRE: I want to get away from them!

HARRY: Rest easy, little one—you do.

CLAIRE: I’m not so sure—that I do. But it can be done! We
need not be held in forms moulded for us. There is
outness—and otherness.

HARRY: Now, Claire—I didn’t mean to start anything
serious.

CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I
tell you, I want to break it up! If it were all in pieces, we’d be
(a little laugh) shocked to aliveness (to
DICK)—wouldn’t we? There would be strange new comings
together—mad new comings together, and we would know what it
is to be born, and then we might know—that we are. Smash it.
(her hand is near an egg) As you’d smash an egg. (she
pushes the egg over the edge of the table and leans over and looks,
as over a precipice)

HARRY: (with a sigh) Well, all you’ve smashed is the egg,
and all that amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So that’s
that.

CLAIRE: (with difficulty, drawing herself back from the
fascination of the precipice) You think I can’t smash anything?
You think life can’t break up, and go outside what it was? Because
you’ve gone dead in the form in which you found yourself, you think
that’s all there is to the whole adventure? And that is called
sanity. And made a virtue—to lock one in. You never worked
with things that grow! Things that take a sporting chance—go
mad—that sanity mayn’t lock them in—from life
untouched—from life—that waits, (she turns toward
the inner room) Breath of Life. (she goes in there)

HARRY: Oh, I wish Claire wouldn’t be strange like that,
(helplessly) What is it? What’s the matter?

DICK: It’s merely the excess of a particularly rich
temperament.

HARRY: But it’s growing on her. I sometimes wonder if all this
(indicating the place around him) is a good thing. It would
be all right if she’d just do what she did in the
beginning—make the flowers as good as possible of their kind.
That’s an awfully nice thing for a woman to do—raise flowers.
But there’s something about this—changing things into other
things—putting things together and making queer new
things—this—

DICK: Creating?

HARRY: Give it any name you want it to have—it’s
unsettling for a woman. They say Claire’s a shark at it, but what’s
the good of it, if it gets her? What is the good of it, anyway?
Suppose we can produce new things. Lord—look at the one ones
we’ve got. (looks outside; turns back) Heavens, what a noise
the wind does make around this place, (but now it is not all the
wind, but TOM EDGEWORTHY, who is trying to let himself in at
the locked door, their backs are to him) I want my egg.
You can’t eat an egg without salt. I must say I don’t get Claire
lately. I’d like to have Charlie Emmons see her—he’s fixed up
a lot of people shot to pieces in the war. Claire needs something
to tone her nerves up. You think it would irritate her?

DICK: She’d probably get no little entertainment out of it.

HARRY: Yes, dog-gone her, she would. (TOM now takes more
heroic measures to make himself heard at the door)
Funny—how the wind can fool you. Now by not looking around I
could imagine—why, I could imagine anything. Funny, isn’t it,
about imagination? And Claire says I haven’t got any!

DICK: It would make an amusing drawing—what the wind makes
you think is there. (first makes forms with his hands, then
levelling the soil prepared by ANTHONY, traces lines with
his finger) Yes, really—quite jolly.

(TOM, after a moment of peering in at them,
smiles, goes away.)

HARRY: You’re another one of the queer ducks, aren’t you? Come
now—give me the dirt. Have you queer ones really got
anything—or do you just put it over on us that you have?

DICK: (smiles, draws on) Not saying anything, eh? Well, I
guess you’re wise there. If you keep mum—how are we going to
prove there’s nothing there?

DICK: I don’t keep mum. I draw.

HARRY: Lines that don’t make anything—how can they tell
you anything? Well, all I ask is, don’t make Claire queer. Claire’s
a first water good sport—really, so don’t encourage her to be
queer.

DICK: Trouble is, if you’re queer enough to be amusing, it
might—open the door to queerness.

HARRY: Now don’t say things like that to Claire.

DICK: I don’t have to.

HARRY: Then you think she’s queer, do you? Queer as you
are, you think she’s queer. I would like to have Dr Emmons come
out. (after a moment of silently watching DICK, who is
having a good time with his drawing) You know, frankly, I doubt
if you’re a good influence for Claire. (DICK lifts his head ever
so slightly) Oh, I don’t worry a bit about—things a
husband might worry about. I suppose an intellectual
woman—and for all Claire’s hate of her ancestors, she’s got
the bug herself. Why, she has times of boring into things until she
doesn’t know you’re there. What do you think I caught her doing the
other day? Reading Latin. Well—a woman that reads Latin
needn’t worry a husband much.

DICK: They said a good deal in Latin.

HARRY: But I was saying, I suppose a woman who lives a good deal
in her mind never does have much—well, what you might call
passion, (uses the word as if it shouldn’t be used. Brows
knitted, is looking ahead, does not see DICK‘s face. Turning
to him with a laugh) I suppose you know pretty much all there
is to know about women?

DICK: Perhaps one or two details have escaped me.

HARRY: Well, for that matter, you might know all there is to
know about women and not know much about Claire. But now about
(does not want to say passion again)—oh,
feeling—Claire has a certain—well, a certain—

DICK: Irony?

HARRY: Which is really more—more—

DICK: More fetching, perhaps.

HARRY: Yes! Than the thing itself. But of course—you
wouldn’t have much of a thing that you have irony about.

DICK: Oh—wouldn’t you! I mean—a man might.

HARRY: I’d like to talk to Edgeworth about Claire. But it’s not
easy to talk to Tom about Claire—or to Claire about Tom.

DICK: (alert) They’re very old friends, aren’t they?

HARRY: Why—yes, they are. Though they’ve not been together
much of late years, Edgeworthy always going to the ends of the
earth to—meditate about something. I must say I don’t get it.
If you have a place—that’s the place for you to be. And he
did have a place—best kind of family connections, and it was
a very good business his father left him. Publishing
business—in good shape, too, when old Edgeworthy died. I
wouldn’t call Tom a great success in life—but Claire does
listen to what he says.

DICK: Yes, I’ve noticed that.

HARRY: So, I’d like to get him to tell her to quit this queer
business of making things grow that never grew before.

DICK: But are you sure that’s what he would tell her? Isn’t he
in the same business himself?

HARRY: Why, he doesn’t raise anything.

(TOM is again at the door.)

DICK: Anyway, I think he might have some idea that we can’t very
well reach each other.

HARRY: Damn nonsense. What have we got intelligence for?

DICK: To let each other alone, I suppose. Only we haven’t enough
to do it.

(TOM is now knocking on the door with a
revolver. HARRY half turns, decides to be too intelligent to
turn.)

HARRY: Don’t tell me I’m getting nerves. But the way some of you
people talk is enough to make even an aviator jumpy. Can’t reach
each other! Then we’re fools. If I’m here and you’re there, why
can’t we reach each other?

DICK: Because I am I and you are you.

HARRY: No wonder your drawing’s queer. A man who can’t reach
another man—(TOM here reaches them by pointing the
revolver in the air and firing it. DICK digs his hand into
the dirt. HARRY jumps to one side, fearfully looks
around. TOM, with a pleased smile to see he at last has
their attention, moves the handle to indicate he would be glad to
come in.)

HARRY: Why—it’s Tom! What the—? (going to the
door) He’s locked out. And Claire’s got the key. (goes to
the inner door, tries it) And she’s locked in! (trying to
see her in there) Claire! Claire! (returning to the outer
door) Claire’s got the key—and I can’t get to Claire.
(makes a futile attempt at getting the door open without a key,
goes back to inner door—peers, pounds) Claire! Are you
there? Didn’t you hear the revolver? Has she gone down the cellar?
(tries the trap-door) Bolted! Well, I love the way she keeps
people locked out!

DICK: And in.

HARRY: (getting angry, shouting at the trap-door) Didn’t
you hear the revolver? (going to TOM) Awfully sorry, old
man, but—(in astonishment to DICK) He can’t hear me.
(TOM, knocking with the revolver to get their attention, makes a
gesture of inquiry with it) No—no—no! Is he asking
if he shall shoot himself? (shaking his head violently) Oh,
no—no! Um—um!

DICK: Hardly seems a man would shoot himself because he can’t
get to his breakfast.

HARRY: I’m coming to believe people would do anything! (TOM
is making another inquiry with the revolver) No! not here.
Don’t shoot yourself. (trying hard to get the word through)
Shoot yourself. I mean—don’t, (petulantly to
DICK) It’s ridiculous that you can’t make a man understand you when
he looks right at you like that. (turning back to TOM) Read
my lips. Lips. I’m saying—Oh damn. Where is Claire? All
right—I’ll explain it with motions. We wanted the salt …
(going over it to himself) and Claire wouldn’t let us go out
for it on account of the temperature. Salt. Temperature. (takes
his egg-cup to the door, violent motion of shaking in salt)
But—no (shakes his head) No salt. (he then takes
the thermometer, a flower pot, holds them up to TOM) On account
of the temperature. Tem-per-a—(TOM is not getting it)
Oh—well, what can you do when a man don’t get a thing?
(TOM seems to be preparing the revolver for action. HARRY
pounds on the inner door) Claire! Do you want Tom to shoot
himself?

(As he looks in there, the trap-door lifts, and
CLAIRE comes half-way up.)

CLAIRE: Why, what is Tom doing out there, with a revolver?

HARRY: He is about to shoot himself because you’ve locked him
out from his breakfast.

CLAIRE: He must know more interesting ways of destroying
himself. (bowing to TOM) Good morning. (from his side of
the glass TOM bows and smiles back) Isn’t it
strange—our being in here—and he being out there?

HARRY: Claire, have you no ideas of hospitality? Let him in!

CLAIRE: In? Perhaps that isn’t hospitality.

HARRY: Well, whatever hospitality is, what is out there is
snow—and wind—and our guest—who was asked to come
here for his breakfast. To think a man has to such
things.

CLAIRE: I’m going to let him in. Though I like his looks out
there. (she takes the key from her pocket)

HARRY: Thank heaven the door’s coming open. Somebody can go for
salt, and we can have our eggs.

CLAIRE: And open the door again—to let the salt in? No. If
you insist on salt, tell Tom now to go back and get it. It’s a
stormy morning and there’ll be just one opening of the door.

HARRY: How can we tell him what we can’t make him hear? And why
does he think we’re holding this conversation instead of letting
him in?

CLAIRE: It would be interesting to know. I wonder if he’ll tell
us?

HARRY: Claire! Is this any time to wonder anything?

CLAIRE: Give up the idea of salt for your egg and I’ll let him
in. (holds up the key to TOM to indicate that for her part
she is quite ready to let him in)

HARRY: I want my egg!

CLAIRE: Then ask him to bring the salt. It’s quite simple.

(HARRY goes through another pantomime with the
egg-cup and the missing shaker. CLAIRE, still standing
half-way down cellar, sneezes. HARRY, growing all the while
less amiable, explains with thermometer and flower-pot that there
can only be one opening of the door. TOM looks interested,
but unenlightened. But suddenly he smiles, nods, vanishes.)

HARRY: Well, thank heaven (exhausted) that’s over.

CLAIRE: (sitting on the top step) It was all so queer. He
locked out on his side of the door. You locked in on yours. Looking
right at each other and—

HARRY: (in mockery) And me trying to tell him to kindly
fetch the salt!

CLAIRE: Yes.

HARRY: (to DICK) Well, I didn’t do so bad a job, did I?
Quite an idea, explaining our situation with the thermometer and
the flower-pot. That was really an apology for keeping him out
there. Heaven knows—some explanation was in order, (he is
watching, and sees TOM coming) Now there he is, Claire.
And probably pretty well fed up with the weather.

(CLAIRE goes to the door, stops before it. She
and TOM look at each other through the glass. Then she lets
him in.)

TOM: And now I am in. For a time it seemed I was not to be in.
But after I got the idea that you were keeping me out there to see
if I could get the idea—it would be too humiliating for a
wall of glass to keep one from understanding. (taking it from
his pocket) So there’s the other thermometer. Where do you want
it? (CLAIRE takes it)

CLAIRE: And where’s the pepper?

TOM: (putting it on the table) And here’s the pepper.

HARRY: Pepper?

TOM: When Claire sneezed I knew—

CLAIRE: Yes, I knew if I sneezed you would bring the pepper.

TOM: Funny how one always remembers the salt, but the pepper
gets overlooked in preparations. And what is an egg without
pepper?

HARRY: (nastily) There’s your egg, Edgeworth.
(pointing to it on the floor) Claire decided it would be a
good idea to smash everything, so she began with your egg.

TOM: (looking at his egg) The idea of smashing everything
is really more intriguing than an egg.

HARRY: Nice that you feel that way about it.

CLAIRE: (giving TOM his coffee) You want to hear
something amusing? I married Harry because I thought he would smash
something.

HARRY: Well, that was an error in judgment.

CLAIRE: I’m such a naive trusting person (HARRY
laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues
simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do
something to a man. But it didn’t take us out. We just took it
in.

TOM: It’s only our own spirit can take us out.

HARRY: Whatever you mean by out.

CLAIRE: (after looking intently at TOM, and
considering it) But our own spirit is not something on the
loose. Mine isn’t. It has something to do with what I do. To fly.
To be free in air. To look from above on the world of all my days.
Be where man has never been! Yes—wouldn’t you think the
spirit could get the idea? The earth grows smaller. I am leaving.
What are they—running around down there? Why do they run
around down there? Houses? Houses are funny lines and down-going
slants—houses are vanishing slants. I am alone. Can I breathe
this rarer air? Shall I go higher? Shall I go too high? I am loose.
I am out. But no; man flew, and returned to earth the man who left
it.

HARRY: And jolly well likely not to have returned at all if he’d
had those flighty notions while operating a machine.

CLAIRE: Oh, Harry! (not lightly asked) Can’t you see it
would be better not to have returned than to return the man who
left it?

HARRY: I have some regard for human life.

CLAIRE: Why, no—I am the one who has the regard for human
life, (more lightly) That was why I swiftly divorced my
stick-in-the-mud artist and married—the man of flight. But I
merely passed from a stick-in-the-mud artist to a—

DICK: Stick-in-the-air aviator?

HARRY: Speaking of your stick-in-the-mud artist, as you
romantically call your first blunder, isn’t his daughter—and
yours—due here to-day?

CLAIRE: I knew something was disturbing me. Elizabeth. A
daughter is being delivered unto me this morning. I have a feeling
it will be more painful than the original delivery. She has been,
as they quaintly say, educated; prepared for her place in life.

HARRY: And fortunately Claire has a sister who is willing to
give her young niece that place.

CLAIRE: The idea of giving anyone a place in life.

HARRY: Yes! The very idea!

CLAIRE: Yes! (as often, the mocking thing gives true
expression to what lies sombrely in her) The war. There was
another gorgeous chance.

HARRY: Chance for what? I call you, Claire. I ask you to say
what you mean.

CLAIRE: I don’t know—precisely. If I did—there’d be
no use saying it. (at HARRY’s impatient exclamation she
turns to TOM)

TOM: (nodding) The only thing left worth saying is the
thing we can’t say.

HARRY: Help!

CLAIRE: Yes. But the war didn’t help. Oh, it was a stunning
chance! But fast as we could—scuttled right back to the trim
little thing we’d been shocked out of.

HARRY: You bet we did—showing our good sense.

CLAIRE: Showing our incapacity—for madness.

HARRY: Oh, come now, Claire—snap out of it. You’re not
really trying to say that capacity for madness is a good thing to
have?

CLAIRE: (in simple surprise) Why yes, of course.

DICK: But I should say the war did leave enough madness to give
you a gleam of hope.

CLAIRE: Not the madness that—breaks through. And it
was—a stunning chance! Mankind massed to kill. We have
failed. We are through. We will destroy. Break this up—it
can’t go farther. In the air above—in the sea below—it
is to kill! All we had thought we were—we aren’t. We were
shut in with what wasn’t so. Is there one ounce of energy has not
gone to this killing? Is there one love not torn in two? Throw it
in! Now? Ready? Break up. Push. Harder. Break up. And
then—and then—But we didn’t say—’And then—’
The spirit didn’t take the tip.

HARRY: Claire! Come now (looking to the others for
help)—let’s talk of something else.

CLAIRE: Plants do it. The big leap—it’s called. Explode
their species—because something in them knows they’ve gone as
far as they can go. Something in them knows they’re shut in to just
that. So—go mad—that life may not be prisoned. Break
themselves up into crazy things—into lesser things, and from
the pieces—may come one sliver of life with vitality to find
the future. How beautiful. How brave.

TOM: (as if he would call her from too far—or would let
her know he has gone with her) Claire!

CLAIRE: (her eyes turning to him) Why should we mind
lying under the earth? We who have no such initiative—no
proud madness? Why think it death to lie under life so
flexible—so ruthless and ever-renewing?

ANTHONY: (from the door of the inner room) Miss
Claire?

CLAIRE: (after an instant) Yes? (she goes with him, as
they disappear his voice heard,’show me now … want those
violets bedded’)

HARRY: Oh, this has got to stop. I’ve got to—put a
stop to it some way. Why, Claire used to be the best sport a man
ever played around with. I can’t stand it to see her getting
hysterical.

TOM: That was not hysterical.

HARRY: What was it then—I want to know?

TOM: It was—a look.

HARRY: Oh, I might have known I’d get no help from either of
you. Even you, Edgeworthy—much as she thinks of you—and
fine sort as I’ve no doubt you are, you’re doing Claire no
good—encouraging her in these queer ways.

TOM: I couldn’t change Claire if I would.

HARRY: And wouldn’t if you could.

TOM: No. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’m going away in
a day or two. And I shall not be back.

HARRY: Trouble with you is, it makes little difference whether
you’re here or away. Just the fact of your existence does encourage
Claire in this—this way she’s going.

TOM: (with a smile) But you wouldn’t ask me to go so far
as to stop my existence? Though I would do that for Claire—if
it were the way to help her.

HARRY: By Jove, you say that as if you meant it.

TOM: Do you think I would say anything about Claire I didn’t
mean?

HARRY: You think a lot of her, don’t you? (TOM nods) You
don’t mean (a laugh letting him say it)—that
you’re—in love with Claire!

TOM: In love? Oh, that’s much too easy. Certainly I do love
Claire.

HARRY: Well, you’re a cool one!

TOM: Let her be herself. Can’t you see she’s troubled?

HARRY: Well, what is there to trouble Claire? Now I ask you. It
seems to me she has everything.

TOM: She’s left so—open. Too exposed, (as HARRY
moves impatiently) Please don’t be annoyed with me. I’m
doing my best at saying it. You see Claire isn’t hardened into one
of those forms she talks about. She’s too—aware. Always
pulled toward what could be—tormented by the lost
adventure.

HARRY: Well, there’s danger in all that. Of course there’s
danger.

TOM: But you can’t help that.

HARRY: Claire was the best fun a woman could be. Is yet—at
times.

TOM: Let her be—at times. As much as she can and will. She
does need that. Don’t keep her from it by making her feel you’re
holding her in it. Above all, don’t try to stop what she’s doing
here. If she can do it with plants, perhaps she won’t have to do it
with herself.

HARRY: Do what?

TOM: (low, after a pause) Break up what exists. Open the
door to destruction in the hope of—a door on the far side of
destruction.

HARRY: Well, you give me the willies, (moves around in
irritation, troubled. To ANTHONY, who is passing through
with a sprayer) Anthony, have any arrangements been made about
Miss Claire’s daughter?

ANTHONY: I haven’t heard of any arrangements.

HARRY: Well, she’ll have to have some heat in her room. We can’t
all live out here.

ANTHONY: Indeed you cannot. It is not good for the plants.

HARRY: I’m going where I can smoke, (goes out)

DICK: (lightly, but fascinated by the idea) You think
there is a door on the—hinter side of destruction?

TOM: How can one tell—where a door may be? One thing I
want to say to you—for it is about you. (regards DICK
and not with his usual impersonal contemplation) I don’t
think Claire should have—any door closed to her.
(pause) You know, I think, what I mean. And perhaps you can
guess how it hurts to say it. Whether it’s—mere escape
within,—rather shameful escape within, or the wild hope of
that door through, it’s—(suddenly all human) Be good
to her! (after a difficult moment, smiles) Going away for
ever is like dying, so one can say things.

DICK: Why do you do it—go away for ever?

TOM: I haven’t succeeded here.

DICK: But you’ve tried the going away before.

TOM: Never knowing I would not come back. So that wasn’t going
away. My hope is that this will be like looking at life from
outside life.

DICK: But then you’ll not be in it.

TOM: I haven’t been able to look at it while in it.

DICK: Isn’t it more important to be in it than to look at
it?

TOM: Not what I mean by look.

DICK: It’s hard for me to conceive of—loving Claire and
going away from her for ever.

TOM: Perhaps it’s harder to do than to conceive of.

DICK: Then why do it?

TOM: It’s my only way of keeping her.

DICK: I’m afraid I’m like Harry now. I don’t get you.

TOM: I suppose not. Your way is different, (with calm, with
sadness—not with malice) But I shall have her longer. And
from deeper.

DICK: I know that.

TOM: Though I miss much. Much, (the buzzer. TOM looks
around to see if anyone is coming to answer it, then goes to the
phone) Yes?… I’ll see if I can get her. (to DICK)
Claire’s daughter has arrived, (looking in the inner
room—returns to phone) I don’t see her. (catching a
glimpse of ANTHONY off right) Oh, Anthony, where’s Miss Claire?
Her daughter has arrived.

ANTHONY: She’s working at something very important in her
experiments.

DICK: But isn’t her daughter one of her experiments?

ANTHONY: (after a baffled moment) Her daughter is
finished.

TOM: (at the phone) Sorry—but I can’t get to
Claire. She appears to have gone below. (ANTHONY closes the
trap-door) I did speak to Anthony, but he says that Claire is
working at one of her experiments and that her daughter is
finished. I don’t know how to make her hear—I took the
revolver back to the house. Anyway you will remember Claire doesn’t
answer the revolver. I hate to reach Claire when she doesn’t want
to be reached. Why, of course—a daughter is very important,
but oh, that’s too bad. (putting down the receiver) He says
the girl’s feelings are hurt. Isn’t that annoying? (gingerly
pounds on the trap-door. Then with the other hand. Waits.
ANTHONY has a gentle smile for the gentle tapping—nods
approval as, TOM returns to the phone) She doesn’t come
up. Indeed I did—with both fists—Sorry.

ANTHONY: Please, you won’t try again to disturb Miss Claire,
will you?

DICK: Her daughter is here, Anthony. She hasn’t seen her
daughter for a year.

ANTHONY: Well, if she got along without a mother for a
year—(goes back to his work)

DICK: (smiling after ANTHONY) Plants are queer. Perhaps
it’s safer to do it with pencil (regards
TOM)—or with pure thought. Things that grow in the
earth—

TOM: (nodding) I suppose because we grew in the
earth.

DICK: I’m always shocked to find myself in agreement with Harry,
but I too am worried about Claire—and this, (looking at
the plants)

TOM: It’s her best chance.

DICK: Don’t you hate to go away to India—for
ever—leaving Claire’s future uncertain?

TOM: You’re cruel now. And you knew that you were being
cruel.

DICK: Yes, I like the lines of your face when you suffer.

TOM: The lines of yours when you’re causing suffering—I
don’t like them.

DICK: Perhaps that’s your limitation.

TOM: I grant you it may be. (They are silent) I had an
odd feeling that you and I sat here once before, long ago, and that
we were plants. And you were a beautiful plant, and I—I was a
very ugly plant. I confess it surprised me—finding myself so
ugly a plant.

(A young girl is seen outside. HARRY gets
the door open for her and brings ELIZABETH in.)

HARRY: There’s heat here. And two of your mother’s friends. Mr
Demming—Richard Demming—the artist—and I think
you and Mr Edgeworthy are old friends.

(ELIZABETH comes forward. She is the creditable
young American—well built, poised, ‘cultivated’, so sound an
expression of the usual as to be able to meet the world with
assurance—assurance which training has made rather graceful.
She is about seventeen—and mature. You feel solid things
behind her.)

TOM: I knew you when you were a baby. You used to kick a great
deal then.

ELIZABETH: (laughing, with ease) And scream, I haven’t a
doubt. But I’ve stopped that. One does, doesn’t one? And it was you
who gave me the idol.

TOM: Proselytizing, I’m afraid.

ELIZABETH: I beg—? Oh—yes (laughing
cordially) I see. (she doesn’t) I dressed the idol up in
my doll’s clothes. They fitted perfectly—the idol was just
the size of my doll Ailine. But mother didn’t like the idol that
way, and tore the clothes getting them off. (to HARRY,
after looking around) Is mother here?

HARRY: (crossly) Yes, she’s here. Of course she’s here.
And she must know you’re here, (after looking in the inner room
he goes to the trap-door and makes a great noise)

ELIZABETH: Oh—please. Really—it doesn’t make
the least difference.

HARRY: Well, all I can say is, your manners are better than your
mother’s.

ELIZABETH: But you see I don’t do anything interesting, so I
have to have good manners. (lightly, but leaving the impression
there is a certain superiority in not doing anything interesting.
Turning cordially to DICK) My father was an artist.

DICK: Yes, I know.

ELIZABETH: He was a portrait painter. Do you do portraits?

DICK: Well, not the kind people buy.

ELIZABETH: They bought father’s.

DICK: Yes, I know he did that kind.

HARRY: (still irritated) Why, you don’t do portraits.

DICK: I did one of you the other day. You thought it was a
milk-can.

ELIZABETH: (laughing delightedly) No? Not really? Did you
think—How could you think—(as HARRY does not
join the laugh) Oh, I beg your pardon. I—Does mother grow
beautiful roses now?

HARRY: No, she does not.

(The trap-door begins to move. CLAIRE’s
head appears.)

ELIZABETH: Mother! It’s been so long—(she tries to
overcome the difficulties and embrace her mother)

CLAIRE: (protecting a box she has) Careful, Elizabeth. We
mustn’t upset the lice.

ELIZABETH: (retreating) Lice? (but quickly equal even
to lice) Oh—yes. You take it—them—off plants,
don’t you?

CLAIRE: I’m putting them on certain plants.

ELIZABETH: (weakly) Oh, I thought you took them off.

CLAIRE: (calling) Anthony! (he comes) The lice.
(he takes them from her) (CLAIRE, who has not fully
ascended, looks at ELIZABETH, hesitates, then suddenly
starts back down the stairs.)

HARRY: (outraged) Claire! (slowly she
re-ascends—sits on the top step. After a long pause in which
he has waited for CLAIRE to open a conversation with her
daughter.) Well, and what have you been doing at school all
this time?

ELIZABETH: Oh—studying.

CLAIRE: Studying what?

ELIZABETH: Why—the things one studies, mother.

CLAIRE: Oh! The things one studies. (looks down cellar
again)

DICK: (after another wait) And what have you been doing
besides studying?

ELIZABETH: Oh—the things one does. Tennis and skating and
dancing and—

CLAIRE: The things one does.

ELIZABETH: Yes. All the things. The—the things one does.
Though I haven’t been in school these last few months, you know.
Miss Lane took us to Europe.

TOM: And how did you like Europe?

ELIZABETH: (capably) Oh, I thought it was awfully
amusing. All the girls were quite mad about Europe. Of course, I’m
glad I’m an American.

CLAIRE: Why?

ELIZABETH: (laughing) Why—mother! Of course one is
glad one is an American. All the girls—

CLAIRE: (turning away) O—h! (a moan under the
breath)

ELIZABETH: Why, mother—aren’t you well?

HARRY: Your mother has been working pretty hard at all this.

ELIZABETH: Oh, I do so want to know all about it? Perhaps I can
help you! I think it’s just awfully amusing that you’re doing
something. One does nowadays, doesn’t one?—if you know what I
mean. It was the war, wasn’t it, made it the thing to do
something?

DICK: (slyly) And you thought, Claire, that the war was
lost.

ELIZABETH: The war? Lost! (her capable laugh)
Fancy our losing a war! Miss Lane says we should give
thanks. She says we should each do some expressive
thing—you know what I mean? And that this is the
keynote of the age. Of course, one’s own kind of thing. Like
mother—growing flowers.

CLAIRE: You think that is one’s own kind of thing?

ELIZABETH: Why, of course I do, mother. And so does Miss Lane.
All the girls—

CLAIRE: (shaking her head as if to get something out)
S-hoo.

ELIZABETH: What is it, mother?

CLAIRE: A fly shut up in my ear—’All the girls!’

ELIZABETH: (laughing) Mother was always so amusing. So
different—if you know what I mean. Vacations I’ve
lived mostly with Aunt Adelaide, you know.

CLAIRE: My sister who is fitted to rear children.

HARRY: Well, somebody has to do it.

ELIZABETH: And I do love Aunt Adelaide, but I think its going to
be awfully amusing to be around with mother now—and help her
with her work. Help do some useful beautiful thing.

CLAIRE: I am not doing any useful beautiful thing.

ELIZABETH: Oh, but you are, mother. Of course you are. Miss Lane
says so. She says it is your splendid heritage gives you this
impulse to do a beautiful thing for the race. She says you are
doing in your way what the great teachers and preachers behind you
did in theirs.

CLAIRE: (who is good for little more) Well, all I can say
is, Miss Lane is stung.

ELIZABETH: Mother! What a thing to say of Miss Lane. (from
this slipping into more of a little girl manner) Oh, she gave
me a spiel one day about living up to the men I come from.

(CLAIRE turns and regards her daughter.)

CLAIRE: You’ll do it, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH: Well, I don’t know. Quite a job, I’ll say. Of course,
I’d have to do it in my way. I’m not going to teach or preach or be
a stuffy person. But now that—(she here becomes the
product of a superior school) values have shifted and such
sensitive new things have been liberated in the world—

CLAIRE: (low) Don’t use those words.

ELIZABETH: Why—why not?

CLAIRE: Because you don’t know what they mean.

ELIZABETH: Why, of course I know what they mean!

CLAIRE: (turning away) You’re—stepping on the
plants.

HARRY: (hastily) Your mother has been working awfully
hard at all this.

ELIZABETH: Well, now that I’m here you’ll let me help you, won’t
you, mother?

CLAIRE: (trying for control) You
needn’t—bother.

ELIZABETH: But I want to. Help add to the wealth of the
world.

CLAIRE: Will you please get it out of your head that I am adding
to the wealth of the world!

ELIZABETH: But, mother—of course you are. To produce a new
and better kind of plant—

CLAIRE: They may be new. I don’t give a damn whether they’re
better.

ELIZABETH: But—but what are they then?

CLAIRE: (as if choked out of her) They’re different.

ELIZABETH: (thinks a minute, then laughs triumphantly)
But what’s the use of making them different if they aren’t
better?

HARRY: A good square question, Claire. Why don’t you answer
it?

CLAIRE: I don’t have to answer it.

HARRY: Why not give the girl a fair show? You never have, you
know. Since she’s interested, why not tell her what it is you’re
doing?

CLAIRE: She is not interested.

ELIZABETH: But I am, mother. Indeed I am. I do want awfully to
understand what you are doing, and help you.

CLAIRE: You can’t help me, Elizabeth.

HARRY: Why not let her try?

CLAIRE: Why do you ask me to do that? This is my own thing. Why
do you make me feel I should—(goes to ELIZABETH) I
will be good to you, Elizabeth. We’ll go around together. I haven’t
done it, but—you’ll see. We’ll do gay things. I’ll have a lot
of beaus around for you. Anything else. Not—this is—Not
this.

ELIZABETH: As you like, mother, of course. I just would have
been so glad to—to share the thing that interests you.
(hurt borne with good breeding and a smile)

HARRY: Claire! (which says, ‘How can you?’)

CLAIRE: (who is looking at ELIZABETH) Yes, I will
try.

TOM: I don’t think so. As Claire says—anything else.

ELIZABETH: Why, of course—I don’t at all want to
intrude.

HARRY: It’ll do Claire good to take someone in. To get down to
brass tacks and actually say what she’s driving at.

CLAIRE: Oh—Harry. But yes—I will try.
(does try, but no words come. Laughs) When you come to say
it it’s not—One would rather not nail it to a cross of
words—(laughs again) with brass tacks.

HARRY: (affectionately) But I want to see you put things
into words, Claire, and realize just where you are.

CLAIRE: (oddly) You think that’s a—good idea?

ELIZABETH: (in her manner of holding the world capably in her
hands) Now let’s talk of something else. I hadn’t the least
idea of making mother feel badly.

CLAIRE: (desperately) No, we’ll go on. Though I don’t
know—where we’ll end. I can’t answer for that. These
plants—(beginning flounderingly) Perhaps they are less
beautiful—less sound—than the plants from which they
diverged. But they have found—otherness, (laughs a little
shrilly) If you know—what I mean.

TOM: Claire—stop this! (To HARRY) This is
wrong.

CLAIRE: (excitedly) No; I’m going on. They have been
shocked out of what they were—into something they were not;
they’ve broken from the forms in which they found themselves. They
are alien. Outside. That’s it, outside; if you—know what I
mean.

ELIZABETH: (not shocked from what she is) But of course,
the object of it all is to make them better plants. Otherwise, what
would be the sense of doing it?

CLAIRE: (not reached by ELIZABETH) Out
there—(giving it with her hands) lies all that’s not
been touched—lies life that waits. Back here—the old
pattern, done again, again and again. So long done it doesn’t even
know itself for a pattern—in immensity. But this—has
invaded. Crept a little way into—what wasn’t. Strange lines
in life unused. And when you make a pattern new you know a
pattern’s made with life. And then you know that anything may
be—if only you know how to reach it. (this has taken form,
not easily, but with great struggle between feeling and
words)

HARRY: (cordially) Now I begin to get you, Claire. I
never knew before why you called it the Edge Vine.

CLAIRE: I should destroy the Edge Vine. It isn’t—over the
edge. It’s running, back to—’all the girls’. It’s a little
afraid of Miss Lane, (looking sombrely at it) You are out,
but you are not alive.

ELIZABETH: Why, it looks all right, mother.

CLAIRE: Didn’t carry life with it from the life it left.
Dick—you know what I mean. At least you ought to. (her
ruthless way of not letting anyone’s feelings stand in the way of
truth) Then destroy it for me! It’s hard to do it—with
the hands that made it.

DICK: But what’s the point in destroying it, Claire?

CLAIRE: (impatiently) I’ve told you. It cannot
create.

DICK: But you say you can go on producing it, and it’s
interesting in form.

CLAIRE: And you think I’ll stop with that? Be shut in—with
different life—that can’t creep on? (after trying to put
destroying hands upon it) It’s hard to—get past what
we’ve done. Our own dead things—block the way.

TOM: But you’re doing it this next time, Claire, (nodding to
the inner room.) In there!

CLAIRE: (turning to that room) I’m not sure.

TOM: But you told me Breath of Life has already produced itself.
Doesn’t that show it has brought life from the life it left?

CLAIRE: But timidly, rather—wistfully. A little homesick.
If it is less sure this time, then it is going back to—Miss
Lane. But if the pattern’s clearer now, then it has made friends of
life that waits. I’ll know to-morrow.

ELIZABETH: You know, something tells me this is
wrong.

CLAIRE: The hymn-singing ancestors are tuning up.

ELIZABETH: I don’t know what you mean by that, mother
but—

CLAIRE: But we will now sing, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee: Nearer
to—’

ELIZABETH: (laughingly breaking in) Well, I don’t care.
Of course you can make fun at me, but something does tell me this
is wrong. To do what—what—

DICK: What God did?

ELIZABETH: Well—yes. Unless you do it to make them
better—to do it just to do it—that doesn’t seem
right to me.

CLAIRE: (roughly) ‘Right to you!’ And that’s all you know
of adventure—and of anguish. Do you know it is
you—world of which you’re so true a flower—makes me
have to leave? You’re there to hold the door shut! Because you’re
young and of a gayer world, you think I can’t see
them—those old men? Do you know why you’re so sure of
yourself? Because you can’t feel. Can’t feel—the
limitless—out there—a sea just over the hill. I will
not stay with you! (buries her hands in the earth around the
Edge Vine. But suddenly steps back from it as she had from
ELIZABETH) And I will not stay with you! (grasps it as we grasp
what we would kill, is trying to pull it up. They all step forward
in horror. ANTHONY is drawn in by this harm to the plant)

ANTHONY: Miss Claire! Miss Claire! The work of years!

CLAIRE: May only make a prison! (struggling with HARRY,
who is trying to stop her) You think I too will die on the
edge? (she has thrown him away, is now struggling with the
vine) Why did I make you? To get past you! (as she twists
it) Oh yes, I know you have thorns! The Edge Vine should have
thorns, (with a long tremendous pull for deep roots, she has it
up. As she holds the torn roots) Oh, I have loved you so! You
took me where I hadn’t been.

ELIZABETH: (who has been looking on with a certain practical
horror) Well, I’d say it would be better not to go there!

CLAIRE: Now I know what you are for! (flings her arm back to
strike ELIZABETH with the Edge Vine)

HARRY: (wresting it from her) Claire! Are you mad?

CLAIRE: No, I’m not mad. I’m—too sane! (pointing to
ELIZABETH—and the words come from mighty roots) To
think that object ever moved my belly and sucked my breast!
(ELIZABETH hides her face as if struck)

HARRY: (going to ELIZABETH, turning to CLAIRE)
This is atrocious! You’re cruel.

(He leads ELIZABETH to the door and out.
After an irresolute moment in which he looks from CLAIRE
to TOM, DICK follows. ANTHONY cannot bear to go.
He stoops to take the Edge Vine from the floor. CLAIRE’s
gesture stops him. He goes into the inner room.)

CLAIRE: (kicking the Edge Vine out of her way, drawing deep
breaths, smiling) O-h. How good I feel! Light! (a movement
as if she could fly) Read me something, Tom dear. Or say
something pleasant—about God. But be very careful what you
say about him! I have a feeling—he’s not far off.

(CURTAIN)

ACT II

Late afternoon of the following day. CLAIRE
is alone in the tower—a tower which is thought to be round
but does not complete the circle. The back is curved, then jagged
lines break from that, and the front is a queer bulging
window—in a curve that leans. The whole structure is as if
given a twist by some terrific force—like something wrong. It
is lighted by an old-fashioned watchman’s lantern hanging from the
ceiling; the innumerable pricks and slits in the metal throw a
marvellous pattern on the curved wall—like some masonry that
hasn’t been.

There are no windows at back, and there is no door
save an opening in the floor. The delicately distorted rail of a
spiral staircase winds up from below. CLAIRE is seen through the
huge ominous window as if shut into the tower. She is lying on a
seat at the back looking at a book of drawings. To do this she has
left the door of her lantern a little open—and her own face
is clearly seen.

A door is heard opening below; laughing voices,
CLAIRE listens, not pleased.

ADELAIDE: (voice coming up) Dear—dear, why do they
make such twisting steps.

HARRY: Take your time, most up now. (HARRY‘s head appears, he
looks back.) Making it all right?

ADELAIDE: I can’t tell yet. (laughingly) No, I don’t
think so.

HARRY: (reaching back a hand for her) The last
lap—is the bad lap. (ADELAIDE is up, and occupied with
getting her breath.)

HARRY: Since you wouldn’t come down, Claire, we thought we’d
come up.

ADELAIDE: (as CLAIRE does not greet her) I’m sorry
to intrude, but I have to see you, Claire. There are things to be
arranged. (CLAIRE volunteering nothing about arrangements,
ADELAIDE surveys the tower. An unsympathetic eye goes from the
curves to the lines which diverge. Then she looks from the
window) Well, at least you have a view.

HARRY: This is the first time you’ve been up here?

ADELAIDE: Yes, in the five years you’ve had the house I was
never asked up here before.

CLAIRE: (amiably enough) You weren’t asked up here
now.

ADELAIDE: Harry asked me.

CLAIRE: It isn’t Harry’s tower. But never mind—since you
don’t like it—it’s all right.

ADELAIDE: (her eyes again rebuking the irregularities of the
tower) No, I confess I do not care for it. A round tower should
go on being round.

HARRY: Claire calls this the thwarted tower. She bought the
house because of it. (going over and sitting by her, his hand on
her ankle) Didn’t you, old girl? She says she’d like to have
known the architect.

ADELAIDE: Probably a tiresome person too incompetent to make a
perfect tower.

CLAIRE: Well, now he’s disposed of, what next?

ADELAIDE: (sitting down in a manner of capably opening a
conference) Next, Elizabeth, and you, Claire. Just what is the
matter with Elizabeth?

CLAIRE: (whose voice is cool, even, as if herself is not
really engaged by this) Nothing is the matter with her. She is
a tower that is a tower.

ADELAIDE: Well, is that anything against her?

CLAIRE: She’s just like one of her father’s portraits. They
never interested me. Nor does she. (looks at the drawings which
do interest her)

ADELAIDE: A mother cannot cast off her own child simply because
she does not interest her!

CLAIRE: (an instant raising cool eyes to ADELAIDE) Why
can’t she?

ADELAIDE: Because it would be monstrous!

CLAIRE: And why can’t she be monstrous—if she has to
be?

ADELAIDE: You don’t have to be. That’s where I’m out of patience
with you Claire. You are really a particularly intelligent,
competent person, and it’s time for you to call a halt to this
nonsense and be the woman you were meant to be!

CLAIRE: (holding the book up to see another way) What
inside dope have you on what I was meant to be?

ADELAIDE: I know what you came from.

CLAIRE: Well, isn’t it about time somebody got loose from that?
What I came from made you, so—

ADELAIDE: (stiffly) I see.

CLAIRE: So—you being such a tower of strength, why need I
too be imprisoned in what I came from?

ADELAIDE: It isn’t being imprisoned. Right there is where you
make your mistake, Claire. Who’s in a tower—in an
unsuccessful tower? Not I. I go about in the world—free,
busy, happy. Among people, I have no time to think of myself.

CLAIRE: No.

ADELAIDE: No. My family. The things that interest them; from
morning till night it’s—

CLAIRE: Yes, I know you have a large family, Adelaide; five and
Elizabeth makes six.

ADELAIDE: We’ll speak of Elizabeth later. But if you would just
get out of yourself and enter into other people’s lives—

CLAIRE: Then I would become just like you. And we should all be
just alike in order to assure one another that we’re all just
right. But since you and Harry and Elizabeth and ten million other
people bolster each other up, why do you especially need me?

ADELAIDE: (not unkindly) We don’t need you as much as you
need us.

CLAIRE: (a wry face) I never liked what I needed.

HARRY: I am convinced I am the worst thing in the world for you,
Claire.

CLAIRE: (with a smile for his tactics, but shaking her
head) I’m afraid you’re not. I don’t know—perhaps you
are.

ADELAIDE: Well, what is it you want, Claire?

CLAIRE: (simply) You wouldn’t know if I told you.

ADELAIDE: That’s rather arrogant.

HARRY: Yes, take a chance, Claire. I have been known to get an
idea—and Adelaide quite frequently gets one.

CLAIRE: (the first resentment she has shown) You two feel
very superior, don’t you?

ADELAIDE: I don’t think we are the ones who are feeling
superior.

CLAIRE: Oh, yes, you are. Very superior to what you think is my
feeling of superiority, comparing my—isolation with your
‘heart of humanity’. Soon we will speak of the beauty of common
experiences, of the—Oh, I could say it all before we come to
it.

HARRY: Adelaide came up here to help you, Claire.

CLAIRE: Adelaide came up here to lock me in. Well, she can’t do
it.

ADELAIDE: (gently) But can’t you see that one may do that
to one’s self?

CLAIRE: (thinks of this, looks suddenly tired—then
smiles) Well, at least I’ve changed the keys.

HARRY: ‘Locked in.’ Bunkum. Get that our of your head, Claire.
Who’s locked in? Nobody that I know of, we’re all free Americans.
Free as air.

ADELAIDE: I wish you’d come and hear one of Mr Morley’s sermons,
Claire. You’re very old-fashioned if you think sermons are what
they used to be.

CLAIRE: (with interest) And do they still sing ‘Nearer,
my God, to Thee’?

ADELAIDE: They do, and a noble old hymn it is. It would do you
no harm at all to sing it.

CLAIRE: (eagerly) Sing it to me, Adelaide. I’d like to
hear you sing it.

ADELAIDE: It would be sacrilege to sing it to you in this
mood.

CLAIRE: (falling back) Oh, I don’t know. I’m not so sure
God would agree with you. That would be one on you, wouldn’t
it?

ADELAIDE: It’s easy to feel one’s self set apart!

CLAIRE: No, it isn’t.

ADELAIDE: (beginning anew) It’s a new age, Claire.
Spiritual values—

CLAIRE: Spiritual values! (in her brooding way) So you
have pulled that up. (with cunning) Don’t think I don’t know
what it is you do.

ADELAIDE: Well, what do I do? I’m sure I have no idea what
you’re talking about.

HARRY: (affectionately, as CLAIRE is looking with
intentness at what he does not see) What does she do,
Claire?

CLAIRE: It’s rather clever, what she does. Snatching the
phrase—(a movement as if pulling something up)
standing it up between her and—the life that’s there. And by
saying it enough—’We have life! We have life! We have life!’
Very good come-back at one who would really be—’Just so!
We are that. Right this way, please—’That, I suppose
is what we mean by needing each other. All join in the chorus,
‘This is it! This is it! This is it!’ And anyone who won’t join is
to be—visited by relatives, (regarding ADELAIDE
with curiosity) Do you really think that anything is going
on in you?

ADELAIDE: (stiffly) I am not one to hold myself up as a
perfect example of what the human race may be.

CLAIRE: (brightly) Well, that’s good.

HARRY: Claire!

CLAIRE: Humility’s a real thing—not just a fine
name for laziness.

HARRY: Well, Lord A’mighty, you can’t call Adelaide lazy.

CLAIRE: She stays in one place because she hasn’t the energy to
go anywhere else.

ADELAIDE: (as if the last word in absurdity has been said)
I haven’t energy?

CLAIRE: (mildly) You haven’t any energy at all, Adelaide.
That’s why you keep so busy.

ADELAIDE: Well—Claire’s nerves are in a worse state
than I had realized.

CLAIRE: So perhaps we’d better look at Blake’s drawings,
(takes up the book)

ADELAIDE: It would be all right for me to look at Blake’s
drawings. You’d better look at the Sistine Madonna,
(affectionately, after she has watched CLAIRE‘s face a
moment) What is it, Claire? Why do you shut yourself out from
us?

CLAIRE: I told you. Because I do not want to be shut in with
you.

ADELAIDE: All of this is not very pleasant for Harry.

HARRY: I want Claire to be gay.

CLAIRE: Funny—you should want that, (speaks
unwillingly, a curious, wistful unwillingness) Did you ever say
a preposterous thing, then go trailing after the thing you’ve said
and find it wasn’t so preposterous? Here is the circle we are
in.describes a big circle) Being gay. It shoots little darts
through the circle, and a minute later—gaiety all gone, and
you looking through that little hole the gaiety left.

ADELAIDE: (going to her, as she is still looking through that
little hole) Claire, dear, I wish I could make you feel how
much I care for you. (simply, with real feeling) You can
call me all the names you like—dull, commonplace,
lazy—that is a new idea, I confess, but the rest of our
family’s gone now, and the love that used to be there between us
all—the only place for it now is between you and me. You were
so much loved, Claire. You oughtn’t to try and get away from a
world in which you are so much loved, (to HARRY)
Mother—father—all of us, always loved Claire best. We
always loved Claire’s queer gaiety. Now you’ve got to hand it to us
for that, as the children say.

CLAIRE: (moved, but eyes shining with a queer bright
loneliness) But never one of you—once—looked with
me through the little pricks the gaiety made—never one of
you—once, looked with me at the queer light that came in
through the pricks.

ADELAIDE: And can’t you see, dear, that it’s better for us we
didn’t? And that it would be better for you now if you would just
resolutely look somewhere else? You must see yourself that you
haven’t the poise of people who are held—well, within the
circle, if you choose to put it that way. There’s something about
being in that main body, having one’s roots in the big common
experiences, gives a calm which you have missed. That’s why
I want you to take Elizabeth, forget yourself, and—

CLAIRE: I do want calm. But mine would have to be a calm
I—worked my way to. A calm all prepared for me—would
stink.

ADELAIDE: (less sympathetically) I know you have to be
yourself, Claire. But I don’t admit you have a right to hurt other
people.

HARRY: I think Claire and I had better take a nice long
trip.

ADELAIDE: Now why don’t you?

CLAIRE: I am taking a trip.

ADELAIDE: Well, Harry isn’t, and he’d like to go and wants you
to go with him. Go to Paris and get yourself some awfully
good-looking clothes—and have one grand fling at the gay
world. You really love that, Claire, and you’ve been awfully dull
lately. I think that’s the whole trouble.

HARRY: I think so too.

ADELAIDE: This sober business of growing plants—

CLAIRE: Not sober—it’s mad.

ADELAIDE: All the more reason for quitting it.

CLAIRE: But madness that is the only chance for sanity.

ADELAIDE: Come, come, now—let’s not juggle words.

CLAIRE: (springing up) How dare you say that to me,
Adelaide. You who are such a liar and thief and whore with
words!

ADELAIDE: (facing her, furious) How dare
you—

HARRY: Of course not, Claire. You have the most preposterous way
of using words.

CLAIRE: I respect words.

ADELAIDE: Well, you’ll please respect me enough not to dare use
certain words to me!

CLAIRE: Yes, I do dare. I’m tired of what you do—you and
all of you.
Life—experience—values—calm—sensitive words
which raise their heads as indications. And you pull them
up—to decorate your stagnant little minds—and think
that makes you—And because you have pulled that word from the
life that grew it you won’t let one who’s honest, and aware, and
troubled, try to reach through to—to what she doesn’t know is
there, (she is moved, excited, as if a cruel thing has been
done) Why did you come here?

ADELAIDE: To try and help you. But I begin to fear I can’t do
it. It’s pretty egotistical to claim that what so many people are,
is wrong.

(CLAIRE, after looking intently at ADELAIDE,
slowly, smiling a little, describes a circle. With deftly used
hands makes a quick vicious break in the circle which is there in
the air.)

HARRY: (going to her, taking her hands) It’s getting
close to dinner-time. You were thinking of something else, Claire,
when I told you Charlie Emmons was coming to dinner to-night,
(answering her look) Sure—he is a neurologist, and I
want him to see you. I’m perfectly honest with you—cards all
on the table, you know that. I’m hoping if you like him—and
he’s the best scout in the world, that he can help you. (talking
hurriedly against the stillness which follows her look from him to
ADELAIDE, where she sees between them an ‘understanding’ about
her) Sure you need help, Claire. Your nerves are a little on
the blink—from all you’ve been doing. No use making a mystery
of it—or a tragedy. Emmons is a cracker-jack, and naturally I
want you to get a move on yourself and be happy again.

CLAIRE: (who has gone over to the window) And this
neurologist can make me happy?

HARRY: Can make you well—and then you’ll be happy.

ADELAIDE: (in the voice of now fixing it all up) And I
had just an idea about Elizabeth. Instead of working with mere
plants, why not think of Elizabeth as a plant and—

(CLAIRE, who has been looking out of the window,
now throws open one of the panes that swings out—or seems to,
and calls down in great excitement.)

CLAIRE: Tom! Tom! Quick! Up here! I’m in trouble!

HARRY: (going to the window) That’s a rotten thing to do,
Claire! You’ve frightened him.

CLAIRE: Yes, how fast he can run. He was deep in thought and I
stabbed right through.

HARRY: Well, he’ll be none too pleased when he gets up here and
finds there was no reason for the stabbing!

(They wait for his footsteps, HARRY
annoyed, ADELAIDE offended, but stealing worried looks
at CLAIRE, who is looking fixedly at the place in the floor
where TOM will appear.—Running footsteps.)

TOM: (his voice getting there before he does) Yes,
Claire—yes—yes—(as his head appears) What
is it?

CLAIRE: (at once presenting him and answering his
question) My sister.

TOM: (gasping) Oh,—why—is that all? I
mean—how do you do? Pardon, I (panting) came
up—rather hurriedly.

HARRY: If you want to slap Claire, Tom, I for one have no
objection.

CLAIRE: Adelaide has the most interesting idea, Tom. She
proposes that I take Elizabeth and roll her in the gutter. Just let
her lie there until she breaks up into—

ADELAIDE: Claire! I don’t see how—even in
fun—pretty vulgar fun—you can speak in those terms of a
pure young girl. I’m beginning to think I had better take
Elizabeth.

CLAIRE: Oh, I’ve thought that all along.

ADELAIDE: And I’m also beginning to suspect that—oddity
may be just a way of shifting responsibility.

CLAIRE: (cordially interested in this possibility) Now
you know—that might be.

ADELAIDE: A mother who does not love her own child! You are an
unnatural woman, Claire.

CLAIRE: Well, at least it saves me from being a natural one.

ADELAIDE: Oh—I know, you think you have a great deal! But
let me tell you, you’ve missed a great deal! You’ve never known the
faintest stirring of a mother’s love.

CLAIRE: That’s not true.

HARRY: No. Claire loved our boy.

CLAIRE: I’m glad he didn’t live.

HARRY: (low) Claire!

CLAIRE: I loved him. Why should I want him to live?

HARRY: Come, dear, I’m sorry I spoke of him—when you’re
not feeling well.

CLAIRE: I’m feeling all right. Just because I’m seeing
something, it doesn’t mean I’m sick.

HARRY: Well, let’s go down now. About dinner-time. I shouldn’t
wonder if Emmons were here. (as ADELAIDE is starting down
stairs) Coming, Claire?

CLAIRE: No.

HARRY: But it’s time to go down for dinner.

CLAIRE: I’m not hungry.

HARRY: But we have a guest. Two guests—Adelaide’s staying
too.

CLAIRE: Then you’re not alone.

HARRY: But I invited Dr Emmons to meet you.

CLAIRE: (her smile flashing) Tell him I am violent
to-night.

HARRY: Dearest—how can you joke about such things!

CLAIRE: So you do think they’re serious?

HARRY: (irritated) No, I do not! But I want you to come
down for dinner!

ADELAIDE: Come, come, Claire; you know quite well this is not
the sort of thing one does.

CLAIRE: Why go on saying one doesn’t, when you are seeing one
does (to TOM) Will you stay with me a while? I want to
purify the tower.

(ADELAIDE begins to disappear)

HARRY: Fine time to choose for a
tête-à-tête. (as he is leaving) I’d think
more of you, Edgeworthy, if you refused to humour Claire in her
ill-breeding.

ADELAIDE: (her severe voice coming from below) It is not
what she was taught.

CLAIRE: No, it’s not what I was taught, (laughing rather
timidly) And perhaps you’d rather have your dinner?

TOM: No.

CLAIRE: We’ll get something later. I want to talk to you.
(but she does not—laughs) Absurd that I should feel
bashful with you. Why am I so awkward with words when I go to talk
to you?

TOM: The words know they’re not needed.

CLAIRE: No, they’re not needed. There’s something
underneath—an open way—down below the way that words
can go. (rather desperately) It is there, isn’t it?

TOM: Oh, yes, it is there.

CLAIRE: Then why do we never—go it?

TOM: If we went it, it would not be there.

CLAIRE: Is that true? How terrible, if that is true.

TOM: Not terrible, wonderful—that it should—of
itself—be there.

CLAIRE: (with the simplicity that can say anything) I
want to go it, Tom, I’m lonely up on top here. Is it that I have
more faith than you, or is it only that I’m greedier? You see, you
don’t know (her reckless laugh) what you’re missing. You
don’t know how I could love you.

TOM: Don’t, Claire; that isn’t—how it is—between you
and me.

CLAIRE: But why can’t it be—every way—between you
and me?

TOM: Because we’d lose—the open way. (the quality of
his denial shows how strong is his feeling for her) With anyone
else—not with you.

CLAIRE: But you are the only one I want. The only one—all
of me wants.

TOM: I know; but that’s the way it is.

CLAIRE: You’re cruel.

TOM: Oh, Claire, I’m trying so hard to—save it for us.
Isn’t it our beauty and our safeguard that underneath our separate
lives, no matter where we may be, with what other, there is this
open way between us? That’s so much more than anything we could
bring to being.

CLAIRE: Perhaps. But—it’s different with me. I’m
not—all spirit.

TOM: (his hand on her) Dear!

CLAIRE: No, don’t touch me—since (moving) you’re
going away to-morrow? (he nods) For—always? (his
head just moves assent) India is just another country. But
there are undiscovered countries.

TOM: Yes, but we are so feeble we have to reach our country
through the actual country lying nearest. Don’t you do that
yourself, Claire? Reach your country through the plants’
country?

CLAIRE: My country? You mean—outside?

TOM: No, I don’t think it that way.

CLAIRE: Oh, yes, you do.

TOM: Your country is the inside, Claire. The innermost. You are
disturbed because you lie too close upon the heart of life.

CLAIRE: (restlessly) I don’t know; you can think it one
way—or another. No way says it, and that’s good—at
least it’s not shut up in saying. (she is looking at her
enclosing hand, as if something is shut up there)

TOM: But also, you know, things may be freed by expression. Come
from the unrealized into the fabric of life.

CLAIRE: Yes, but why does the fabric of life have
to—freeze into its pattern? It should (doing it with her
hands) flow, (then turning like an unsatisfied child to
him) But I wanted to talk to you.

TOM: You are talking to me. Tell me about your flower that never
was before—your Breath of Life.

CLAIRE: I’ll know to-morrow. You’ll not go until I know?

TOM: I’ll try to stay.

CLAIRE: It seems to me, if it has—then I have, integrity
in—(smiles, it is as if the smile lets her say it)
otherness. I don’t want to die on the edge!

TOM: Not you!

CLAIRE: Many do. It’s what makes them too smug in
allness—those dead things on the edge, died,
distorted—trying to get through. Oh—don’t think I don’t
see—The Edge Vine! (a pause, then swiftly) Do you know
what I mean? Or do you think I’m just a fool, or crazy?

TOM: I think I know what you mean, and you know I don’t think
you are a fool, or crazy.

CLAIRE: Stabbed to awareness—no matter where it takes you,
isn’t that more than a safe place to stay? (telling him very
simply despite the pattern of pain in her voice) Anguish may be
a thread—making patterns that haven’t been. A
thread—blue and burning.

TOM: (to take her from what even he fears for her) But
you were telling me about the flower you breathed to life. What is
your Breath of Life?

CLAIRE: (an instant playing) It’s a secret. A
secret?—it’s a trick. Distilled from the most fragile flowers
there are. It’s only air—pausing—playing; except, far
in, one stab of red, its quivering heart—that asks a
question. But here’s the trick—I bred the air-form to
strength. The strength shut up behind us I’ve sent—far out.
(troubled) I’ll know tomorrow. And I have another gift for
Breath of Life; some day—though days of work lie in
between—some day I’ll give it reminiscence. Fragrance that
is—no one thing in here but—reminiscent. (silence,
she raises wet eyes) We need the haunting beauty from the life
we’ve left. I need that, (he takes her hands and breathes her
name) Let me reach my country with you. I’m not a plant. After
all, they don’t—accept me. Who does—accept me? Will
you?

TOM: My dear—dear, dear, Claire—you move me so! You
stand alone in a clearness that breaks my heart, (her hands move
up his arms. He takes them to hold them from where they would
go—though he can hardly do it) But you’ve asked what you
yourself could answer best. We’d only stop in the country where
everyone stops.

CLAIRE: We might come through—to radiance.

TOM: Radiance is an enclosing place.

CLAIRE: Perhaps radiance lighting forms undreamed, (her
reckless laugh) I’d be willing to—take a chance, I’d
rather lose than never know.

TOM: No, Claire. Knowing you from underneath, I know you
couldn’t bear to lose.

CLAIRE: Wouldn’t men say you were a fool!

TOM: They would.

CLAIRE: And perhaps you are. (he smiles a little) I feel
so desperate, because if only I could—show you what I am, you
might see I could have without losing. But I’m a stammering thing
with you.

TOM: You do show me what you are.

CLAIRE: I’ve known a few moments that were life. Why don’t they
help me now? One was in the air. I was up with
Harry—flying—high. It was about four months before
David was born—the doctor was furious—pregnant women
are supposed to keep to earth. We were going fast—I
was flying—I had left the earth. And then—within
me, movement, for the first time—stirred to life far in
air—movement within. The man unborn, he too, would fly. And
so—I always loved him. He was movement—and wonder. In
his short life were many flights. I never told anyone about the
last one. His little bed was by the window—he wasn’t four
years old. It was night, but him not asleep. He saw the morning
star—you know—the morning star.
Brighter—stranger—reminiscent—and a promise. He
pointed—’Mother’, he asked me, ‘what is there—beyond
the stars?’ A baby, a sick baby—the morning star. Next
night—the finger that pointed was—(suddenly bites
her own finger) But, yes, I am glad. He would always have tried
to move and too much would hold him. Wonder would die—and
he’d laugh at soaring, (looking down, sidewise) Though I
liked his voice. So I wish you’d stay near me—for I like your
voice, too.

TOM: Claire! That’s (choked) almost too much.

CLAIRE: (one of her swift glances—canny, almost
practical) Well, I’m glad if it is. How can I make it more?
(but what she sees brings its own change) I know what it is
you’re afraid of. It’s because I have so much—yes, why
shouldn’t I say it?—passion. You feel that in me, don’t you?
You think it would swamp everything. But that isn’t all there is to
me.

TOM: Oh, I know it! My dearest—why, it’s because I know
it! You think I am—a fool?

CLAIRE: It’s a thing that’s—sometimes more than I am. And
yet I—I am more than it is.

TOM: I know. I know about you.

CLAIRE: I don’t know that you do. Perhaps if you really knew
about me—you wouldn’t go away.

TOM: You’re making me suffer, Claire.

CLAIRE: I know I am. I want to. Why shouldn’t you suffer?
(now seeing it more clearly than she has ever seen it) You
know what I think about you? You’re afraid of suffering, and so you
stop this side—in what you persuade yourself is suffering,
(waits, then sends it straight) You know—how it
is—with me and Dick? (as she sees him suffer) Oh, no,
I don’t want to hurt you! Let it be you! I’ll teach you—you
needn’t scorn it. It’s rather wonderful.

TOM: Stop that, Claire! That isn’t you.

CLAIRE: Why are you so afraid—of letting me be
low—if that is low? You see—(cannily) I believe
in beauty. I have the faith that can be bad as well as good. And
you know why I have the faith? Because sometimes—from my
lowest moments—beauty has opened as the sea. From a cave I
saw immensity.

TOM: (and from the place where she had carried him)

CLAIRE:

(drenched in the feeling that has flowed through
her—but surprised—helpless) Why, I said your thing,
didn’t I? Opened my life to bring you to me, and what came—is
what sends you away.

TOM: No! What came is what holds us together. What came is what
saves us from ever going apart. (brokenly) My beautiful one.
You—you brave flower of all our knowing.

CLAIRE: I am not a flower. I am too torn. If you have
anything—help me. Breathe, Breathe the healing oneness, and
let me know in calm. (with a sob his head rests upon
her)

CLAIRE: (her hands on his head, but looking far)
Beauty—you pure one thing. Breathe—Let me know in calm.
Then—trouble me, trouble me, for other moments—in
farther calm. (slow, motionless, barely articulate)

TOM: (as she does not move he lifts his head. And even as he
looks at her, she does not move, nor look at him)
Claire—(his hand out to her, a little afraid) You went
away from me then. You are away from me now.

CLAIRE: Yes, and I could go on. But I will come back, (it is
hard to do. She brings much with her) That, too, I will give
you—my by-myself-ness. That’s the uttermost I can give. I
never thought—to try to give it. But let us do it—the
great sacrilege! Yes! (excited, she rises; she has his hands,
and bring him up beside her) Let us take the mad chance!
Perhaps it’s the only way to save—what’s there. How do we
know? How can we know? Risk. Risk everything. From all that flows
into us, let it rise! All that we never thought to use to make a
moment—let it flow into what could be! Bring all into life
between us—or send all down to death! Oh, do you know what I
am doing? Risk, risk everything, why are you so afraid to lose?
What holds you from me? Test all. Let it live or let it die. It is
our chance—our chance to bear—what’s there. My dear
one—I will love you so. With all of me. I am not afraid
now—of—all of me. Be generous. Be unafraid. Life is for
life—though it cuts us from the farthest life. How can
I make you know that’s true? All that we’re open
to—(hesitates, shudders) But yes—I will, I will
risk the life that waits. Perhaps only he who gives his
loneliness—shall find. You never keep by holding, (gesture
of giving) To the uttermost. And it is gone—or it is
there. You do not know and—that makes the
moment—(music has begun—a phonograph downstairs;
they do not heed it) Just as I would cut my
wrists—(holding them out) Yes, perhaps this lesser
thing will tell it—would cut my wrists and let the blood flow
out till all is gone if my last drop would make—would
make—(looking at them fascinated) I want to see it
doing that! Let me give my last chance for life to—

(He snatches her—they are on the brink of
their moment; now that there are no words the phonograph from
downstairs is louder. It is playing languorously the Barcarole;
they become conscious of this—they do not want to be touched
by the love song.)

CLAIRE: Don’t listen. That’s nothing. This isn’t that,
(fearing) I tell you—it isn’t that. Yes, I
know—that’s amorous—enclosing. I know—a little
place. This isn’t that, (her arms going around him—all the
lure of ‘that’ while she pleads against it as it comes up to
them) We will come out—to radiance—in far places
(admitting, using) Oh, then let it be that! Go with it. Give
up—the otherness. I will! And in the giving up—perhaps
a door—we’d never find by searching. And if it’s no
more—than all have known, I only say it’s worth the allness!
(her arms wrapped round him) My love—my love—let
go your pride in loneliness and let me give you joy!

TOM: (drenched in her passion, but fighting) It’s
you. (in anguish) You rare thing
untouched—not—not into this—not back into
this—by me—lover of your apartness.

(She steps back. She sees he cannot. She stands
there, before what she wanted more than life, and almost had, and
lost. A long moment. Then she runs down the stairs.)

CLAIRE: (her voice coming up) Harry! Choke that
phonograph! If you want to be lewd—do it yourselves! You
tawdry things—you cheap little lewd cowards, (a door heard
opening below) Harry! If you don’t stop that music, I’ll kill
myself.

(far down, steps on stairs)

HARRY: Claire, what is this?

CLAIRE: Stop that phonograph or I’ll—

HARRY: Why, of course I’ll stop it. What—what is there to
get so excited about? Now—now just a minute, dear. It’ll take
a minute.

(CLAIRE comes back upstairs, dragging steps, face
ghastly. The amorous song still comes up, and louder now that doors
are open. She and TOM do not look at one another. Then, on a
languorous swell the music comes to a grating stop. They do not
speak or move. Quick footsteps—HARRY comes
up.)

HARRY: What in the world were you saying, Claire? Certainly you
could have asked me more quietly to turn off the Victrola. Though
what harm was it doing you—way up here? (a sharp little
sound from CLAIRE; she checks it, her hand over her
mouth. HARRY looks from her to TOM) Well, I think you
two would better have had your dinner. Won’t you come down now and
have some?

CLAIRE: (only now taking her hand from her mouth) Harry,
tell him to come up here—that insanity man. I—want to
ask him something.

HARRY: ‘Insanity man!’ How absurd. He’s a nerve specialist.
There’s a vast difference.

CLAIRE: Is there? Anyway, ask him to come up here. Want
to—ask him something.

TOM: (speaking with difficulty) Wouldn’t it be better for
us to go down there?

CLAIRE: No. So nice up here! Everybody—up here!

HARRY: (worried) You’ll—be yourself, will you,
Claire? (She checks a laugh, nods.) I think he can help
you.

CLAIRE: Want to ask him to—help me.

HARRY: (as he is starting down) He’s here as a guest
to-night, you know, Claire.

CLAIRE: I suppose a guest can—help one.

TOM: (when the silence rejects it) Claire, you must know,
it’s because it is so much, so—

CLAIRE: Be still. There isn’t anything to say.

TOM: (torn—tortured) If it only weren’t
you!

CLAIRE: Yes,—so you said. If it weren’t. I suppose I
wouldn’t be so—interested! (hears them starting up
below—keeps looking at the place where they will
appear)

(HARRY is heard to call, ‘Coming, Dick?’
and DICK’s voice replies, ‘In a moment or two.’
ADELAIDE comes first.)

ADELAIDE: (as her head appears) Well, these stairs should
keep down weight. You missed an awfully good dinner, Claire. And
kept Mr Edgeworth from a good dinner.

CLAIRE: Yes. We missed our dinner. (her eyes do not leave the
place where DR EMMONS will come up)

HARRY: (as he and EMMONS appear) Claire, this
is—

CLAIRE: Yes, I know who he is. I want to ask you—

ADELAIDE: Let the poor man get his breath before you ask him
anything. (he nods, smiles, looks at CLAIRE with
interest. Careful not to look too long at her, surveys the
tower)

EMMONS: Curious place.

ADELAIDE: Yes; it lacks form, doesn’t it?

CLAIRE: What do you mean? How dare you?

(It is impossible to ignore her agitation; she is
backed against the curved wall, as far as possible from them.
HARRY looks at her in alarm, then in resentment at TOM,
who takes a step nearer CLAIRE.)

HARRY: (trying to be light) Don’t take it so hard,
Claire.

CLAIRE: (to EMMONS) It must be very
interesting—helping people go insane.

ADELAIDE: Claire! How preposterous.

EMMONS: (easily) I hope that’s not precisely what we
do.

ADELAIDE: (with the smile of one who is going to ‘cover
it’.) Trust Claire to put it in the unique and—amusing
way.

CLAIRE: Amusing? You are amused? But it doesn’t matter, (to
the doctor) I think it is very kind of you—helping people
go insane. I suppose they have all sorts of reasons for having to
do it—reasons why they can’t stay sane any longer. But tell
me, how do they do it? It’s not so easy to—get out. How do so
many manage it?

EMMONS: I’d like immensely to have a talk with you about all
this some day.

ADELAIDE: Certainly this is not the time, Claire.

CLAIRE: The time? When you—can’t go any
farther—isn’t that that—

ADELAIDE: (capably taking the whole thing into
matter-of-factness) What I think is, Claire has worked too long
with plants. There’s something—not quite sound about making
one thing into another thing. What we need is unity. (from
CLAIRE something like a moan) Yes, dear, we do need it.
(to the doctor) I can’t say that I believe in making life
over like this. I don’t think the new species are worth it. At
least I don’t believe in it for Claire. If one is an intense,
sensitive person—

CLAIRE: Isn’t there any way to stop her?
Always—always smothering it with the word for it?

EMMONS: (soothingly) But she can’t smother it. Anything
that’s really there—she can’t hurt with words.

CLAIRE: (looking at him with eyes too bright) Then you
don’t see it either, (angry) Yes, she can hurt it! Piling it
up—always piling it up—between us and—What there.
Clogging the way—always, (to EMMONS) I want to cease
to know! That’s all I ask. Darken it. Darken it. If you came to
help me, strike me blind!

EMMONS: You’re really all tired out, aren’t you? Oh, we’ve got
to get you rested.

CLAIRE: They—deny it saying they have it; and he (half
looks at TOM—quickly looks away)—others,
deny it—afraid of losing it. We’re in the way. Can’t you see
the dead stuff piled in the path? (Pointing.)

DICK: (voice coming up) Me too?

CLAIRE: (staring at the path, hearing his voice a moment
after it has come) Yes, Dick—you too. Why not—you
too. (after he has come up) What is there any more than you
are?

DICK: (embarrassed by the intensity, but laughing) A
question not at all displeasing to me. Who can answer it?

CLAIRE: (more and more excited) Yes! Who can answer it?
(going to him, in terror) Let me go with you—and be
with you—and know nothing else!

ADELAIDE: (gasping) Why—!

HARRY: Claire! This is going a little too—

CLAIRE: Far? But you have to go far to—(clinging to
DICK) Only a place to hide your head—what else is there to
hope for? I can’t stay with them—piling it up!
Always—piling it up! I can’t get through to—he won’t
let me through to—what I don’t know is there! (DICK would
help her regain herself) Don’t push me away! Don’t—don’t
stand me up, I will go back—to the worst we ever were! Go
back—and remember—what we’ve tried to forget!

ADELAIDE: It’s time to stop this by force—if there’s no
other way. (the doctor shakes his head)

CLAIRE: All I ask is to die in the gutter with everyone spitting
on me. (changes to a curious weary smiling quiet) Still, why
should they bother to do that?

HARRY: (brokenly) You’re sick, Claire. There’s no denying
it. (looks at EMMONS, who nods)

ADELAIDE: Something to quiet her—to stop it.

CLAIRE: (throwing her arms around DICK) You, Dick. Not
them. Not—any of them.

DICK: Claire, you are overwrought. You must—

HARRY: (to DICK, as if only now realizing that phase
of it) I’ll tell you one thing, you’ll answer to me for this!
(he starts for DICK—is restrained by EMMONS,
chiefly by his grave shake of the head. With HARRY‘s move
to them, DICK has shielded CLAIRE)

CLAIRE: Yes—hold me. Keep me. You have mercy! You will
have mercy. Anything—everything—that will let me be
nothing!

(CURTAIN)

ACT III

In the greenhouse, the same as Act I.
ANTHONY is bedding small plants where the Edge Vine grew. In the
inner room the plant like caught motion glows as from a light
within. HATTIE, the Maid, rushes in from outside.

ANTHONY: (turning angrily) You are not what this
place—

HATTIE: Anthony, come in the house. I’m afraid. Mr Archer, I
never saw him like this. He’s talking to Mr Demming—something
about Mrs Archer.

ANTHONY: (who in spite of himself is disturbed by her
agitation) And if it is, it’s no business of yours.

HATTIE: You don’t know how he is. I went in the room
and—

ANTHONY: Well, he won’t hurt you, will he?

HATTIE: How do I know who he’ll hurt—a person’s
whose—(seeing how to get him) Maybe he’ll hurt Mrs
Archer.

ANTHONY: (startled, then smiles) No; he won’t hurt Miss
Claire.

HATTIE: What do you know about it?—out here in the plant
house?

ANTHONY: And I don’t want to know about it. This is a very
important day for me. It’s Breath of Life I’m thinking of
today—not you and Mr Archer.

HATTIE: Well, suppose he does something to Mr Demming?

ANTHONY: Mr Demming will have to look out for himself, I am at
work.

(resuming work)

HATTIE: Don’t you think I ought to tell Mrs Archer
that—

ANTHONY: You let her alone! This is no day for her to be
bothered by you. At eleven o’clock (looks at watch) she
comes out here—to Breath of Life.

HATTIE: (with greed for gossip) Did you see any of them
when they came downstairs last night?

ANTHONY: I was attending to my own affairs.

HATTIE: They was all excited. Mr Edgeworth—he went away.
He was gone all night, I guess. I saw him coming back just as the
milkman woke me up. Now he’s packing his things. He wanted
to get to Mrs Archer too—just a little while ago. But she
won’t open her door for none of them. I can’t even get in to do her
room.

ANTHONY: Then do some other room—and leave me alone in
this room.

HATTIE: (a little afraid of what she is asking) Is she
sick, Anthony—or what? (vindicating herself, as he gives
her a look) The doctor, he stayed here late. But she’d locked
herself in. I heard Mr Archer—

ANTHONY: You heard too much! (he starts for the door, to make
her leave, but DICK rushes in. Looks around wildly, goes to
the trap-door, finds it locked)

ANTHONY: What are you doing here?

DICK: Trying not to be shot—if you must know. This is the
only place I can think of—till he comes to his senses and I
can get away. Open that, will you?
Rather—ignominious—but better be absurd than be
dead.

HATTIE: Has he got the revolver?

DICK: Gone for it. Thought I wouldn’t sit there till he got
back, (to ANTHONY) Look here—don’t you get the idea?
Get me some place where he can’t come.

ANTHONY: It is not what this place is for.

DICK: Any place is for saving a man’s life.

HATTIE: Sure, Anthony. Mrs Archer wouldn’t want Mr Demming
shot.

DICK: That’s right, Anthony. Miss Claire will be angry at you if
you get me shot. (he makes for the door of the inner
room)

ANTHONY: You can’t go in there. It’s locked. (HARRY rushes in
from outside.)

HARRY: I thought so! (he has the revolver. HATTIE
screams)

ANTHONY: Now, Mr Archer, if you’ll just stop and think, you’ll
know Miss Claire wouldn’t want Mr Demming shot.

HARRY: You think that can stop me? You think you can stop me?
(raising the revolver) A dog that—

ANTHONY: (keeping squarely between HARRY and DICK)
Well, you can’t shoot him in here. It is not good for the plants.
(HARRY is arrested by this reason) And especially not today.
Why, Mr Archer, Breath of Life may flower today. It’s years Miss
Claire’s been working for this day.

HARRY: I never thought to see this day!

ANTHONY: No, did you? Oh, it will be a wonderful day. And how
she has worked for it. She has an eye that sees what isn’t right in
what looks right. Many’s the time I’ve thought—Here the form
is set—and then she’d say, ‘We’ll try this one’, and it
had—what I hadn’t known was there. She’s like that.

HARRY: I’ve always been pleased, Anthony, at the way you’ve
worked with Miss Claire. This is hardly the time to stand there
eulogizing her. And she’s (can hardly say it) things you
don’t know she is.

ANTHONY: (proudly) Oh, I know that! You think I could
work with her and not know she’s more than I know she is?

HARRY: Well, if you love her you’ve got to let me shoot the
dirty dog that drags her down!

ANTHONY: Not in here. Not today. More than like you’d break the
glass. And Breath of Life’s in there.

HARRY: Anthony, this is pretty clever of
you—but—

ANTHONY: I’m not clever. But I know how easy it is to turn life
back. No, I’m not clever at all (CLAIRE has appeared and is
looking in from outside), but I do know—there are things
you mustn’t hurt, (he sees her) Yes, here’s Miss Claire.

(She comes in. She is looking
immaculate.)

CLAIRE: From the gutter I rise again, refreshed. One does, you
know. Nothing is fixed—not even the gutter, (smilingly
to HARRY and refusing to notice revolver or agitation)
How did you like the way I entertained the nerve specialist?

HARRY: Claire! You can joke about it?

CLAIRE: (taking the revolver from the hand she has shocked to
limpness) Whom are you trying to make hear?

HARRY: I’m trying to make the world hear that (pointing)
there stands a dirty dog who—

CLAIRE: Listen, Harry, (turning to HATTIE, who is over
by the tall plants at right, not wanting to be shot but not wanting
to miss the conversation) You can do my room now, Hattie.
(HATTIE goes) If you’re thinking of shooting Dick, you can’t
shoot him while he’s backed up against that door.

ANTHONY: Just what I told them, Miss Claire. Just what I told
them.

CLAIRE: And for that matter, it’s quite dull of you to have any
idea of shooting him.

HARRY: I may be dull—I know you think I am—but I’ll
show you that I’ve enough of the man in me to—

CLAIRE: To make yourself ridiculous? If I ran out and hid my
head in the mud, would you think you had to shoot the mud?

DICK: (stung out of fear) That’s pretty cruel!

CLAIRE: Well, would you rather be shot?

HARRY: So you just said it to protect him!

CLAIRE: I change it to grass, (nodding to DICK) Grass. If
I hid my face in the grass, would you have to burn the grass?

HARRY: Oh, Claire, how can you? When you know how I love
you—and how I’m suffering?

CLAIRE: (with interest) Are you suffering?

HARRY: Haven’t you eyes?

CLAIRE: I should think it would—do something to you.

HARRY: God! Have you no heart? (the door opens. TOM
comes in)

CLAIRE: (scarcely saying it) Yes, I have a heart.

TOM: (after a pause) I came to say good-bye.

CLAIRE: God! Have you no heart? Can’t you at least wait till
Dick is shot?

TOM: Claire! (now sees the revolver in her hand that is
turned from him. Going to her) Claire!

CLAIRE: And even you think this is so important? (carelessly
raises the revolver, and with her left hand out flat, tells TOM
not to touch her) Harry thinks it important he shoot Dick,
and Dick thinks it important not to be shot, and you think I
mustn’t shoot anybody—even myself—and can’t any of you
see that none of that is as important as—where revolvers
can’t reach? (putting revolver where there is no Edge Vine)
I shall never shoot myself. I’m too interested in destruction to
cut it short by shooting. (after looking from one to the other,
laughs. Pointing) One—two—three. You-love-me. But
why do you bring it out here?

ANTHONY: (who has resumed work) It is not what this place
is for.

CLAIRE: No this place is for the destruction that can get
through.

ANTHONY: Miss Claire, it is eleven. At eleven we are to go in
and see—

CLAIRE: Whether it has gone through. But how can we
go—with Dick against the door?

ANTHONY: He’ll have to move.

CLAIRE: And be shot?

HARRY: (irritably) Oh, he’ll not be shot. Claire can
spoil anything.

(DICK steps away from the door; CLAIRE
takes a step nearer it.)

CLAIRE: (halting) Have I spoiled everything? I don’t want
to go in there.

ANTHONY: We’re going in together, Miss Claire. Don’t you
remember? Oh (looking resentfully at the others) don’t let
any little thing spoil it for you—the work of all those
days—the hope of so many days.

CLAIRE: Yes—that’s it.

ANTHONY: You’re afraid you haven’t done it?

CLAIRE: Yes, but—afraid I have.

HARRY: (cross, but kindly) That’s just nervousness,
Claire. I’ve had the same feeling myself about making a record in
flying.

CLAIRE: (curiously grateful) You have, Harry?

HARRY: (glad enough to be back in a more usual world)
Sure. I’ve been afraid to know, and almost as afraid of having done
it as of not having done it.

(CLAIRE nods, steps nearer, then again pulls
back.)

CLAIRE: I can’t go in there. (she almost looks at TOM)
Not today.

ANTHONY: But, Miss Claire, there’ll be things to see today we
can’t see tomorrow.

CLAIRE: You bring it in here!

ANTHONY: In—out from its own place? (she nods)
And—where they are? (again she nods. Reluctantly he goes
to the door) I will not look into the heart. No one must know
before you know.

(In the inner room, his head a little turned
away, he is seen very carefully to lift the plant which glows from
within. As he brings it in, no one looks at it. HARRY takes
a box of seedlings from a stand and puts them on the floor, that
the newcomer may have a place.)

ANTHONY: Breath of Life is here, Miss Claire.

(CLAIRE half turns, then stops.)

CLAIRE: Look—and see—what you see.

ANTHONY: No one should see what you’ve not seen.

CLAIRE: I can’t see—until I know.

(ANTHONY looks into the flower.)

ANTHONY: (agitated) Miss Claire!

CLAIRE: It has come through?

ANTHONY: It has gone on.

CLAIRE: Stronger?

ANTHONY: Stronger, surer.

CLAIRE: And more fragile?

ANTHONY: And more fragile.

CLAIRE: Look deep. No—turning back?

ANTHONY: (after a searching look) The form is set. (he
steps back from it)

CLAIRE: Then it is—out. (from where she stands she
turns slowly to the plant) You weren’t. You are.

ANTHONY: But come and see, Miss Claire.

CLAIRE: It’s so much more than—I’d see.

HARRY: Well, I’m going to see. (looking into it) I never
saw anything like that before! There seems something
alive—inside this outer shell.

DICK: (he too looking in and he has an artist’s manner of a
hand up to make the light right) It’s quite new in form.
It—says something about form.

HARRY: (cordially to CLAIRE, who stands apart) So
you’ve really put it over. Well, well,—congratulations. It’s
a good deal of novelty, I should say, and I’ve no doubt you’ll have
a considerable success with it—people always like something
new. I’m mighty glad—after all your work, and I hope it
will—set you up.

CLAIRE: (low—and like a machine) Will you
all—go away?

(ANTHONY goes—into the other room.)

HARRY: Why—why, yes. But—oh, Claire! Can’t you take
some pleasure in your work? (as she stands there very still)
Emmons says you need a good long rest—and I think he’s
right.

TOM: Can’t this help you, Claire? Let this be release.
This—breath of the uncaptured.

CLAIRE: (and though speaking, she remains just as
still)

(TOM goes; HARRY hesitates, looking in
anxiety at CLAIRE. He starts to go, stops, looks at
DICK, from him to CLAIRE. But goes. A moment later
DICK moves near CLAIRE; stands uncertainly, then puts a
hand upon her. She starts, only then knowing he is there.)

CLAIRE: (a slight shrinking away, but not really reached)
Um, um.

(He goes. CLAIRE steps nearer her
creation. She looks into what hasn’t been. With her breath, and by
a gentle moving of her hands, she fans it to fuller openness. As
she does this TOM returns and from outside is looking in at
her. Softly he opens the door and comes in. She does not know that
he is there. In the way she looks at the flower he looks at
her.)

TOM: Claire, (she lifts her head) As you stood there,
looking into the womb you breathed to life, you were beautiful to
me beyond any other beauty. You were life and its reach and its
anguish. I can’t go away from you. I will never go away from you.
It shall all be—as you wish. I can go with you where I could
not go alone. If this is delusion, I want that delusion. It’s more
than any reality I could attain, (as she does not move)
Speak to me, Claire. You—are glad?

CLAIRE: (from far) Speak to you? (pause) Do I know
who you are?

TOM: I think you do.

CLAIRE: Oh, yes. I love you. That’s who you are. (waits
again) But why are you something—very far away?

TOM: Come nearer.

CLAIRE: Nearer? (feeling it with her voice) Nearer. But I
think I am going—the other way.

TOM: No, Claire—come to me. Did you understand, dear? I am
not going away.

CLAIRE: You’re not going away?

TOM: Not without you, Claire. And you and I will be together. Is
that—what you wanted?

CLAIRE: Wanted? (as if wanting is something that harks far
back. But the word calls to her passion) Wanted! (a sob,
hands out, she goes to him. But before his arms can take her, she
steps back) Are you trying to pull me down into what I wanted?
Are you here to make me stop?

TOM: How can you ask that? I love you because it is not in you
to stop.

CLAIRE: And loving me for that—would stop me? Oh, help me
see it! It is so important that I see it.

TOM: It is important. It is our lives.

CLAIRE: And more than that. I cannot see it because it is so
much more than that.

TOM: Don’t try to see all that it is. From peace you’ll see a
little more.

CLAIRE: Peace? (troubled as we are when looking at what we
cannot see clearly) What is peace? Peace is what the struggle
knows in moments very far apart. Peace—that is not a place to
rest. Are you resting? What are you? You who’d take me from what I
am to something else?

TOM: I thought you knew, Claire.

CLAIRE: I know—what you pass for. But are you beauty?
Beauty is that only living pattern—the trying to take
pattern. Are you trying?

TOM: Within myself, Claire. I never thought you doubted
that.

CLAIRE: Beauty is it. (she turns to Breath of Life, as if to
learn it there, but turns away with a sob) If I cannot go to
you now—I will always be alone.

(TOM takes her in his arms. She is shaken, then
comes to rest.)

TOM: Yes—rest. And then—come into joy. You have so
much life for joy.

CLAIRE: (raising her head, called by promised gladness)
We’ll run around together. (lovingly he nods) Up hills. All
night on hills.

TOM: (tenderly) All night on hills.

CLAIRE: We’ll go on the sea in a little boat.

TOM: On the sea in a little boat.

CLAIRE: But—there are other boats on other seas,
(drawing back from him, troubled) There are other boats on
other seas.

TOM: (drawing her back to him) My dearest—not now,
not now.

CLAIRE: (her arms going round him) Oh, I would love those
hours with you. I want them. I want you! (they kiss—but
deep in her is sobbing) Reminiscence, (her hand feeling his
arm as we touch what we would remember) Reminiscence. (with
one of her swift changes steps back from him) How dare you pass
for what you’re not? We are tired, and so we think it’s you. Stop
with you. Don’t get through—to what you’re in the way of.
Beauty is not something you say about beauty.

TOM: I say little about beauty, Claire.

CLAIRE: Your life says it. By standing far off you pass for it.
Smother it with a life that passes for it. But
beauty—(getting it from the flower) Beauty is the
humility breathed from the shame of succeeding.

TOM: But it may all be within one’s self, dear.

CLAIRE: (drawn by this, but held, and desperate because she
is held) When I have wanted you with all my wanting—why
must I distrust you now? When I love you—with all of me, why
do I know that only you are worth my hate?

TOM: It’s the fear of easy satisfactions. I love you for it.

CLAIRE: (over the flower) Breath of Life—you here?
Are you lonely—Breath of Life?

TOM: Claire—hear me! Don’t go where we can’t go. As there
you made a shell for life within, make for yourself a life in which
to live. It must be so.

CLAIRE: As you made for yourself a shell called beauty?

TOM: What is there for you, if you’ll have no touch with what we
have?

CLAIRE: What is there? There are the dreams we haven’t dreamed.
There is the long and flowing pattern, (she follows that, but
suddenly and as if blindly goes to him) I am tired. I am
lonely. I’m afraid, (he holds her, soothing. But she steps back
from him) And because we are tired—lonely—and
afraid, we stop with you. Don’t get through—to what you’re in
the way of.

TOM: Then you don’t love me?

CLAIRE: I’m fighting for my chance. I don’t know—which
chance.

(Is drawn to the other chance, to Breath of Life.
Looks into it as if to look through to the uncaptured. And through
this life just caught comes the truth she chants.)

(with effort raising her eyes to the man)

TOM: (coming to her, and with strength now) And I will
threaten you. I’m here to hold you from where I know you cannot go.
You’re trying what we can’t do.

CLAIRE: What else is there worth trying?

TOM: I love you, and I will keep you—from
fartherness—from harm. You are mine, and you will stay with
me! (roughly) You hear me? You will stay with me!

CLAIRE: (her head on his breast, in ecstasy of rest.
Drowsily) You can keep me?

TOM: Darling! I can keep you. I will keep you—safe.

CLAIRE: (troubled by the word, but barely able to raise her
head) Safe?

TOM: (bringing her to rest again) Trust me, Claire.

CLAIRE: (not lifting her head, but turning it so she sees
Breath of Life) Now can I trust—what is? (suddenly
pushing him roughly away) No! I will beat my life to pieces in
the struggle to—

TOM: To what, Claire?

CLAIRE: Not to stop it by seeming to have it. (with fury)
I will keep my life low—low—that I may never stop
myself—or anyone—with the thought it’s what I
have. I’d rather be the steam rising from the manure than be a
thing called beautiful! (with sight too clear) Now I know
who you are. It is you puts out the breath of life. Image of
beauty—You fill the place—should be a gate.
(in agony) Oh, that it is you—fill the
place—should be a gate! My darling! That it should be you
who—(her hands moving on him) Let me tell you
something. Never was loving strong as my loving of you! Do you know
that? Oh, know that! Know it now! (her arms go around his
neck) Hours with you—I’d give my life to have! That it
should be you—(he would loosen her hands, for he cannot
breathe. But when she knows she is choking him, that knowledge is
fire burning its way into the last passion) It is you.
It is you.

TOM: (words coming from a throat not free) Claire! What
are you doing? (then she knows what she is doing)

CLAIRE: (to his resistance) No! You are too much!
You are not enough. (still wanting not to hurt her, he is
slow in getting free. He keeps stepping backward trying, in growing
earnest, to loosen her hands. But he does not loosen them before
she has found the place in his throat that cuts off breath. As he
gasps)

Breath of Life—my gift—to you!

(She has pushed him against one of the plants at
right as he sways, strength she never had before pushes him over
backward, just as they have struggled from sight. Violent crash of
glass is heard.)

TOM: (faint smothered voice) No.
I’m—hurt.

CLAIRE: (in the frenzy and agony of killing) Oh, gift!
Oh, gift! (there is no sound.

CLAIRE rises—steps back—is seen now; is looking
down) Gift.

(Like one who does not know where she is, she
moves into the room—looks around. Takes a step toward Breath
of Life; turns and goes quickly to the door. Stops, as if stopped.
Sees the revolver where the Edge Vine was. Slowly goes to it. Holds
it as if she cannot think what it is for. Then raises it high and
fires above through the place in the glass left open for
ventilation. ANTHONY comes from the inner room. His eyes go
from her to the body beyond. HARRY rushes in from
outside.)

HARRY: Who fired that?

CLAIRE: I did. Lonely.

(Seeing ANTHONY’S look, HARRY ‘s
eyes follow it.)

HARRY: Oh! What? What? (DICK comes running in) Who?
Claire!

(DICK sees—goes to TOM)

CLAIRE: Yes. I did it. MY—Gift.

HARRY: Is he—? He isn’t—? He isn’t—?

(Tries to go in there. Cannot—there is the
sound of broken glass, of a position being changed—then
DICK reappears.)

DICK: (his voice in jerks) It’s—it’s no use, but
I’ll go for a doctor.

HARRY: No—no. Oh, I suppose—(falling down
beside CLAIRE—his face against her) My darling!
How can I save you now?

CLAIRE: (speaking each word very carefully)
Saved—myself.

ANTHONY: I did it. Don’t you see? I didn’t want so many around.
Not—what this place is for.

HARRY: (snatching at this but lets it go) She wouldn’t
let—(looking up at CLAIRE—then quickly hiding
his face) And—don’t you see?

CLAIRE: Out. (a little like a child’s pleased surprise)
Out.

(DICK stands there, as if unable to get to the
door—his face distorted, biting his hand.)

ANTHONY: Miss Claire! You can do anything—won’t you
try?

CLAIRE: Reminiscence? (speaking the word as if she has left
even that, but smiles a little)

(ANTHONY takes Reminiscence, the flower she was
breeding for fragrance for Breath of Life—holds it out to
her. But she has taken a step forward, past them all.)

CLAIRE: Out. (as if feeling her way)

(Her voice now feeling the way to it.)

(Voice almost upon it.)

(Falling upon it with surprise.)

(Breathing it.)

(A slight turn of the head toward the dead man
she loves—a mechanical turn just as far the other
way.)

(Her head going down.)

(Her head slowly coming up—singing
it.)

(Slowly the curtain begins to shut her out. The
last word heard is the final Nearer—a faint breath
from far.)

(CURTAIN)

INHERITORS

Inheritors was first performed at the Provincetown
Playhouse on April 27, 1921.

SMITH (a young business man)

GRANDMOTHER (SILAS MORTON’S mother)

SILAS MORTON (a pioneer farmer)

FELIX FEJEVARY, the First (an exiled Hungarian nobleman)

FELIX FEJEVARY, the Second (his son, a Harvard student)

FELIX FEJEVARY, the Second (a banker)

SENATOR LEWIS (a State Senator)

HORACE FEJEVARY (son of FELIX FEJEVARY, the Second)

DORIS (a student at Morton College)

FUSSIE (another college girl)

MADELINE FEJEVARY MORTON (daughter of IRA MORTON, and
granddaughter of

SILAS MORTON)

ISABEL FEJEVARY (wife of FELIX FEJEVARY, the Second, and
MADELINE’S aunt)

HARRY (a student clerk)

HOLDEN (Professor at Morton College)

IRA MORTON (son of SILAS MORTON, and MADELINE’S father)

EMIL JOHNSON (an Americanized Swede)

ACT I

SCENE: Sitting-room of the Mortons’ farmhouse
in the Middle West—on the rolling prairie just back from the
Mississippi. A room that has been long and comfortably lived in,
and showing that first-hand contact with materials which was
pioneer life. The hospitable table was made on the place—well
and strongly made; there are braided rugs, and the wooden chairs
have patchwork cushions. There is a corner closet—left rear.
A picture of Abraham Lincoln. On the floor a home-made toy boat. At
rise of curtain there are on the stage an old woman and a young
man. GRANDMOTHER MORTON is in her rocking-chair near the
open door, facing left. On both sides of door are windows, looking
out on a generous land. She has a sewing basket and is patching a
boy’s pants. She is very old. Her hands tremble. Her spirit
remembers the days of her strength.

SMITH has just come in and, hat in hand, is standing by the
table. This was lived in the year 1879, afternoon of Fourth of
July.

SMITH: But the celebration was over two hours ago.

GRANDMOTHER: Oh, celebration, that’s just the beginning of it.
Might as well set down. When them boys that fought together all get
in one square—they have to swap stories all over again.
That’s the worst of a war—you have to go on hearing about it
so long. Here it is—1879—and we haven’t taken
Gettysburg yet. Well, it was the same way with the war of 1832.

SMITH: (who is now seated at the table) The war of
1832?

GRANDMOTHER: News to you that we had a war with the Indians?

SMITH: That’s right—the Blackhawk war. I’ve heard of
it.

GRANDMOTHER: Heard of it!

SMITH: Were your men in that war?

GRANDMOTHER: I was in that war. I threw an Indian in the cellar
and stood on the door. I was heavier then.

SMITH: Those were stirring times.

GRANDMOTHER: More stirring than you’ll ever see. This
war—Lincoln’s war—it’s all a cut and dried business
now. We used to fight with anything we could lay hands
on—dish water—whatever was handy.

SMITH: I guess you believe the saying that the only good Indian
is a dead Indian.

GRANDMOTHER: I dunno. We roiled them up considerable. They was
mostly friendly when let be. Didn’t want to give up their
land—but I’ve noticed something of the same nature in white
folks.

SMITH: Your son has—something of that nature, hasn’t
he?

GRANDMOTHER: He’s not keen to sell. Why should he? It’ll never
be worth less.

SMITH: But since he has more land than any man can use, and if
he gets his price—

GRANDMOTHER: That what you’ve come to talk to him about?

SMITH: I—yes.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, you’re not the first. Many a man older than
you has come to argue it.

SMITH: (smiling) They thought they’d try a young one.

GRANDMOTHER: Some one that knew him thought that up. Silas’d
help a young one if he could. What is it you’re set on buying?

SMITH: Oh, I don’t know that we’re set on buying anything. If we
could have the hill (looking off to the right) at a fair
price—

GRANDMOTHER: The hill above the town? Silas’d rather sell me and
the cat.

SMITH: But what’s he going to do with it?

GRANDMOTHER: Maybe he’s going to climb it once a week.

SMITH: But if the development of the town demands its
use—

GRANDMOTHER: (smiling) You the development of the
town?

SMITH: I represent it. This town has been growing so
fast—

GRANDMOTHER: This town began to grow the day I got here.

SMITH: You—you began it?

GRANDMOTHER: My husband and I began it—and our baby
Silas.

SMITH: When was that?

GRANDMOTHER: 1820, that was.

SMITH: And—you mean you were here all alone?

GRANDMOTHER: No, we weren’t alone. We had the Owens ten miles
down the river.

SMITH: But how did you get here?

GRANDMOTHER: Got here in a wagon, how do you s’pose?
(gaily) Think we flew?

SMITH: But wasn’t it unsafe?

GRANDMOTHER: Them set on safety stayed back in Ohio.

SMITH: But one family! I should think the Indians would have
wiped you out.

GRANDMOTHER: The way they wiped us out was to bring fish and
corn. We’d have starved to death that first winter hadn’t been for
the Indians.

SMITH: But they were such good neighbours—why did you
throw dish water at them?

GRANDMOTHER: That was after other white folks had roiled them
up—white folks that didn’t know how to treat ’em. This very
land—land you want to buy—was the land they
loved—Blackhawk and his Indians. They came here for their
games. This was where their fathers—as they called
’em—were buried. I’ve seen my husband and Blackhawk climb
that hill together. (a backward point right) He used to love
that hill—Blackhawk. He talked how the red man and the white
man could live together. But poor old Blackhawk—what he
didn’t know was how many white man there was. After the
war—when he was beaten but not conquered in his
heart—they took him east—Washington, Philadelphia, New
York—and when he saw the white man’s cities—it was a
different Indian came back. He just let his heart break without
ever turning a hand.

SMITH: But we paid them for their lands. (she looks at
him) Paid them something.

GRANDMOTHER: Something. For fifteen million acres of this
Mississippi Valley land—best on this globe, we paid two
thousand two hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty cents, and
promised to deliver annually goods to the value of one thousand
dollars. Not a fancy price—even for them days, (children’s
voices are heard outside. She leans forward and looks through the
door, left) Ira! Let that cat be!

SMITH: (looking from the window) These, I suppose, are
your grandchildren?

GRANDMOTHER: The boy’s my grandson. The little girl is Madeline
Fejevary—Mr Fejevary’s youngest child.

SMITH: The Fejevary place adjoins on this side? (pointing
right, down)

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. We’ve been neighbours ever since the Fejevarys
came here from Hungary after 1848. He was a count at home—and
he’s a man of learning. But he was a refugee because he fought for
freedom in his country. Nothing Silas could do for him was too
good. Silas sets great store by learning—and freedom.

SMITH: (thinking of his own project, looking off toward the
hill—the hill is not seen from the front) I suppose then
Mr Fejevary has great influence with your son?

GRANDMOTHER: More ‘an anybody. Silas thinks ’twas a great thing
for our family to have a family like theirs next place to.
Well—so ’twas, for we’ve had no time for the things their
family was brought up on. Old Mrs Fejevary (with her shrewd
smile)—she weren’t stuck up—but she did have an
awful ladylike way of feeding the chickens. Silas thinks—oh,
my son has all kinds of notions—though a harder worker never
found his bed at night.

SMITH: And Mr Fejevary—is he a veteran too?

GRANDMOTHER: (dryly) You don’t seem to know these parts
well—for one that’s all stirred up about the development of
the town. Yes—Felix Fejevary and Silas Morton went off
together, down that road (motioning with her hand,
right)—when them of their age was wanted. Fejevary came
back with one arm less than he went with. Silas brought home
everything he took—and something he didn’t. Rheumatiz. So now
they set more store by each other ‘an ever. Seems nothing draws men
together like killing other men. (a boy’s voice teasingly
imitating a cat) Madeline, make Ira let that cat be. (a
whoop from the girl—a boy’s whoop) (looking) There
they go, off for the creek. If they set in it—(seems about
to call after them, gives this up) Well, they’re not the
first.

(rather dreams over this)

SMITH: You must feel as if you pretty near owned this
country.

GRANDMOTHER: We worked. A country don’t make itself. When the
sun was up we were up, and when the sun went down we didn’t. (as
if this renews the self of those days) Here—let me set
out something for you to eat. (gets up with difficulty)

SMITH: Oh, no, please—never mind. I had something in town
before I came out.

GRANDMOTHER: Dunno as that’s any reason you shouldn’t have
something here.

(She goes off, right; he stands at the door,
looking toward the hill until she returns with a glass of milk, a
plate of cookies.)

SMITH: Well, this looks good.

GRANDMOTHER: I’ve fed a lot of folks—take it by and large.
I didn’t care how many I had to feed in the daytime—what’s
ten or fifteen more when you’re up and around. But to get
up—after sixteen hours on your feet—I was
willin’, but my bones complained some.

SMITH: But did you—keep a tavern?

GRANDMOTHER: Keep a tavern? I guess we did. Every house is a
tavern when houses are sparse. You think the way to settle a
country is to go on ahead and build hotels? That’s all you folks
know. Why, I never went to bed without leaving something on the
stove for the new ones that might be coming. And we never went away
from home without seein’ there was a-plenty for them that might
stop.

SMITH: They’d come right in and take your food?

GRANDMOTHER: What else could they do? There was a woman I always
wanted to know. She made a kind of bread I never had
before—and left a-plenty for our supper when we got back with
the ducks and berries. And she left the kitchen handier than it had
ever been. I often wondered about her—where she came from,
and where she went, (as she dreams over this there is laughing
and talking at the side of the house) There come the boys.

(MR FEJEVARY comes in, followed by SILAS
MORTON. They are men not far from sixty, wearing their army
uniforms, carrying the muskets they used in the parade.
FEJEVARY has a lean, distinguished face, his dark eyes are
penetrating and rather wistful. The left sleeve of his old uniform
is empty. SILAS MORTON is a strong man who has borne the
burden of the land, and not for himself alone—the pioneer.
Seeing the stranger, he sets his musket against the wall and holds
out his hand to him, as MR FEJEVARY goes up to
GRANDMOTHER MORTON.)

SILAS: How do, stranger?

FEJEVARY: And how are you today, Mrs Morton?

GRANDMOTHER: I’m not abed—and don’t expect to be.

SILAS: (letting go of the balloons he has bought) Where’s
Ira? and Madeline?

GRANDMOTHER: Mr Fejevary’s Delia brought them home with her.
They’ve gone down to dam the creek, I guess. This young man’s been
waiting to see you, Silas.

SMITH: Yes, I wanted to have a little talk with you.

SILAS: Well, why not? (he is tying the gay balloons to his
gun, then as he talks, hangs his hat in the corner closet)
We’ve been having a little talk ourselves. Mother, Nat Rice was
there. I’ve not seen Nat Rice since the day we had to leave him on
the road with his torn leg—him cursing like a pirate. I
wanted to bring him home, but he had to go back to Chicago. His
wife’s dead, mother.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I guess she’s not sorry.

SILAS: Why, mother.

GRANDMOTHER: ‘Why, mother.’ Nat Rice is a mean, stingy,
complaining man—his leg notwithstanding. Where’d you leave
the folks?

SILAS: Oh—scattered around. Everybody visitin’ with
anybody that’ll visit with them. Wish you could have gone.

GRANDMOTHER: I’ve heard it all. (to FEJEVARY) Your folks
well?

FEJEVARY: All well, Mrs Morton. And my boy Felix is home. He’ll
stop in here to see you by and by.

SILAS: Oh, he’s a fine-looking boy, mother. And think of what he
knows! (cordially including the young man) Mr Fejevary’s son
has been to Harvard College.

SMITH: Well, well—quite a trip. Well, Mr Morton, I hope
this is not a bad time for me to—present a little matter to
you?

SILAS: (genially) That depends, of course, on what you’re
going to present. (attracted by a sound outside) Mind if I
present a little matter to your horse? Like to uncheck him so’s he
can geta a bit o’grass.

SMITH: Why—yes. I suppose he would like that.

SILAS: (going out) You bet he’d like it. Wouldn’t you,
old boy?

SMITH: Your son is fond of animals.

GRANDMOTHER: Lots of people’s fond of ’em—and good to ’em.
Silas—I dunno, it’s as if he was that animal.

FEJEVARY: He has imagination.

GRANDMOTHER: (with surprise) Think so?

SILAS: (returning and sitting down at the table by the young
man) Now, what’s in your mind, my boy?

SMITH: This town is growing very fast, Mr Morton.

SILAS: Yes. (slyly—with humour) I know that.

SMITH: I presume you, as one of the early settlers—as in
fact a son of the earliest settler, feel a certain responsibility
about the welfare of—

SILAS: I haven’t got in mind to do the town a bit of harm.
So—what’s your point?

SMITH: More people—more homes. And homes must be in the
healthiest places—the—the most beautiful places. Isn’t
it true, Mr Fejevary, that it means a great deal to people to have
a beautiful outlook from their homes? A—well, an expanse.

SILAS: What is it they want to buy—these fellows that are
figuring on making something out of—expanse? (a gesture
for expanse, then a reassuring gesture) It’s all right,
but—just what is it?

SMITH: I am prepared to make you an offer—a gilt-edged
offer for that (pointing toward it) hill above the town.

SILAS: (shaking his head—with the smile of the strong
man who is a dreamer) The hill is not for sale.

SMITH: But wouldn’t you consider a—particularly good
offer, Mr Morton?

(SILAS, who has turned so he can look out at the
hill, slowly shakes his head.)

SMITH: Do you feel you have the right—the moral right to
hold it?

SILAS: It’s not for myself I’m holding it.

SMITH: Oh,—for the children?

SILAS: Yes, the children.

SMITH: But—if you’ll excuse me—there are other
investments might do the children even more good.

SILAS: This seems to me—the best investment.

SMITH: But after all there are other people’s children to
consider.

SILAS: Yes, I know. That’s it.

SMITH: I wonder if I understand you, Mr Morton?

SILAS: (kindly) I don’t believe you do. I don’t see how
you could. And I can’t explain myself just now. So—the hill
is not for sale. I’m not making anybody homeless. There’s land
enough for all—all sides round. But the hill—

SMITH: (rising) Is yours.

SILAS: You’ll see.

SMITH: I am prepared to offer you—

SILAS: You’re not prepared to offer me anything I’d consider
alongside what I am considering. So—I wish you good luck in
your business undertakings.

SMITH: Sorry—you won’t let us try to help the town.

SILAS: Don’t sit up nights worrying about my chokin’ the
town.

SMITH: We could make you a rich man, Mr Morton. Do you think
what you have in mind will make you so much richer?

SILAS: Much richer.

SMITH: Well, good-bye. Good day, sir. Good day, ma’am.

SILAS: (following him to the door) Nice horse you’ve
got.

SMITH: Yes, seems all right.

(SILAS stands in the doorway and looks off at the
hill.)

GRANDMOTHER: What are you going to do with the hill, Silas?

SILAS: After I get a little glass of wine—to celebrate
Felix and me being here instead of farther south—I’d like to
tell you what I want for the hill. (to FEJEVARY rather
bashfully) I’ve been wanting to tell you.

FEJEVARY: I want to know.

SILAS: (getting the wine from the closet) Just a little
something to show our gratitude with.

(Goes off right for glasses.)

GRANDMOTHER: I dunno. Maybe it’d be better to sell the
hill—while they’re anxious.

FEJEVARY: He seems to have another plan for it.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. Well, I hope the other plan does bring him
something. Silas has worked—all the days of his life.

FEJEVARY: I know.

GRANDMOTHER: You don’t know the hull of it. But I know.
(rather to herself) Know too well to think about it.

GRANDMOTHER: (as SILAS returns) I’ll get more
cookies.

SILAS: I’ll get them, mother.

GRANDMOTHER: Get ’em myself. Pity if a woman can’t get out her
own cookies.

SILAS: (seeing how hard it is for her) I wish mother
would let us do things for her.

FEJEVARY: That strength is a flame frailness can’t put out. It’s
a great thing for us to have her,—this touch with the life
behind us.

SILAS: Yes. And it’s a great thing for us to have you—who
can see those things and say them. What a lot I’d ‘a’ missed if I
hadn’t had what you’ve seen.

FEJEVARY: Oh, you only think that because you’ve got to be
generous.

SILAS: I’m not generous. I’m seeing something now.
Something about you. I’ve been thinking of it a good deal
lately—it’s got something to do with—with the hill.
I’ve been thinkin’ what it’s meant all these years to have a family
like yours next place to. They did something pretty nice for the
corn belt when they drove you out of Hungary. Funny—how
things don’t end the way they begin. I mean, what begins don’t end.
It’s another thing ends. Set out to do something for your own
country—and maybe you don’t quite do the thing you set out to
do—

FEJEVARY: No.

SILAS: But do something for a country a long way off.

FEJEVARY: I’m afraid I’ve not done much for any country.

SILAS: (brusquely) Where’s your left arm—may I be
so bold as to inquire? Though your left arm’s nothing
alongside—what can’t be measured.

FEJEVARY: When I think of what I dreamed as a young man—it
seems to me my life has failed.

SILAS: (raising his glass) Well, if your life’s
failed—I like failure.

(GRANDMOTHER MORTON returns with her
cookies.)

GRANDMOTHER: There’s two kinds—Mr Fejevary. These have
seeds in ’em.

FEJEVARY: Thank you. I’ll try a seed cookie first.

SILAS: Mother, you’ll have a glass of wine?

GRANDMOTHER: I don’t need wine.

SILAS: Well, I don’t know as we need it.

GRANDMOTHER: No, I don’t know as you do. But I didn’t go to
war.

FEJEVARY: Then have a little wine to celebrate that.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, just a mite to warm me up. Not that it’s
cold. (FEJEVARY brings it to her, and the cookies) The
Indians used to like cookies. I was talking to that young
whippersnapper about the Indians. One time I saw an Indian watching
me from a bush, (points) Right out there. I was never afraid
of Indians when you could see the whole of ’em—but when you
could see nothin’ but their bright eyes—movin’ through
leaves—I declare they made me nervous. After he’d been there
an hour I couldn’t seem to put my mind on my work. So I thought,
Red or White, a man’s a man—I’ll take him some cookies.

FEJEVARY: It succeeded?

GRANDMOTHER: So well that those leaves had eyes next day. But he
brought me a fish to trade. He was a nice boy.

SILAS: Probably we killed him.

GRANDMOTHER: I dunno. Maybe he killed us. Will Owens’ family was
massacred just after this. Like as not my cookie Indian helped out
there. Something kind of uncertain about the Indians.

SILAS: I guess they found something kind of uncertain about
us.

GRANDMOTHER: Six o’ one and half a dozen of another. Usually
is.

SILAS: (to FEJEVARY) I wonder if I’m wrong. You see, I
never went to school—

GRANDMOTHER: I don’t know why you say that, Silas. There was two
winters you went to school.

SILAS: Yes, mother, and I’m glad I did, for I learned to read
there, and liked the geography globe. It made the earth so nice to
think about. And one day the teacher told us all about the stars,
and I had that to think of when I was driving at night. The other
boys didn’t believe it was so. But I knew it was so! But I mean
school—the way Mr Fejevary went to school. He went to
universities. In his own countries—in other countries. All
the things men have found out, the wisest and finest things men
have thought since first they began to think—all that was put
before them.

FEJEVARY: (with a gentle smile) I fear I left a good deal
of it untouched.

SILAS: You took a plenty. Tell in your eyes you’ve thought lots
about what’s been thought. And that’s what I was setting out to
say. It makes something of men—learning. A house that’s full
of books makes a different kind of people. Oh, of course, if the
books aren’t there just to show off.

GRANDMOTHER: Like in Mary Baldwin’s new house.

SILAS: (trying hard to see it) It’s not the learning
itself—it’s the life that grows up from learning. Learning’s
like soil. Like—like fertilizer. Get richer. See more. Feel
more. You believe that?

FEJEVARY: Culture should do it.

SILAS: Does in your house. You somehow know how it is for the
other fellow more’n we do.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, Silas Morton, when you’ve your wood to chop
an’ your water to carry, when you kill your own cattle and hogs,
tend your own horses and hens, make your butter, soap, and cook for
whoever the Lord sends—there’s none too many hours of the day
left to be polite in.

SILAS: You’re right, mother. It had to be that way. But now that
we buy our soap—we don’t want to say what soap-making made
us.

GRANDMOTHER: We’re honest.

SILAS: Yes. In a way. But there’s another kind o’ honesty, seems
to me, goes with that more seein’ kind of kindness. Our honesty
with the Indians was little to brag on.

GRANDMOTHER: You fret more about the Indians than anybody else
does.

SILAS: To look out at that hill sometimes makes me ashamed.

GRANDMOTHER: Land sakes, you didn’t do it. It was the
government. And what a government does is nothing for a person to
be ashamed of.

SILAS: I don’t know about that. Why is he here? Why is
Felix Fejevary not rich and grand in Hungary to-day? ‘Cause he was
ashamed of what his government was.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, that was a foreign government.

SILAS: A seeing how ’tis for the other person—a
bein’ that other person, kind of honesty. Joke of it, ‘twould
do something for you. ‘Twould ‘a’ done something for us to
have been Indians a little more. My father used to talk
about Blackhawk—they was friends. I saw Blackhawk
once—when I was a boy. (to FEJEVARY) Guess I told you.
You know what he looked like? He looked like the great of the
earth. Noble. Noble like the forests—and the
Mississippi—and the stars. His face was long and thin and you
could see the bones, and the bones were beautiful. Looked like
something that’s never been caught. He was something many nights in
his canoe had made him. Sometimes I feel that the land itself has
got a mind that the land would rather have had the Indians.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, don’t let folks hear you say it. They’d think
you was plum crazy.

SILAS: I s’pose they would, (turning to FEJEVARY) But
after you’ve walked a long time over the earth—and you all
alone, didn’t you ever feel something coming up from it that’s like
thought?

FEJEVARY: I’m afraid I never did. But—I wish I had.

SILAS: I love land—this land. I suppose that’s why I never
have the feeling that I own it.

GRANDMOTHER: If you don’t own it—I want to know! What do
you think we come here for—your father and me? What do you
think we left our folks for—left the world of white
folks—schools and stores and doctors, and set out in a
covered wagon for we didn’t know what? We lost a horse. Lost our
way—weeks longer than we thought ‘twould be. You were born in
that covered wagon. You know that. But what you don’t know is what
that’s like—without your own roof—or
fire—without—

(She turns her face away.)

SILAS: No. No, mother, of course not. Now—now isn’t this
too bad? I don’t say things right. It’s because I never went to
school.

GRANDMOTHER: (her face shielded) You went to school two
winters.

SILAS: Yes. Yes, mother. So I did. And I’m glad I did.

GRANDMOTHER: (with the determination of one who will not have
her own pain looked at) Mrs Fejevary’s pansy bed doing well
this summer?

FEJEVARY: It’s beautiful this summer. She was so pleased with
the new purple kind you gave her. I do wish you could get over to
see them.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. Well, I’ve seen lots of pansies. Suppose it
was pretty fine-sounding speeches they had in town?

FEJEVARY: Too fine-sounding to seem much like the war.

SILAS: I’d like to go to a war celebration where they never
mentioned war. There’d be a way to celebrate victory, (hearing a
step, looking out) Mother, here’s Felix.

(FELIX, a well-dressed young man, comes
in.)

GRANDMOTHER: How do, Felix?

FELIX: And how do you do, Grandmother Morton?

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I’m still here.

FELIX: Of course you are. It wouldn’t be coming home if you
weren’t.

GRANDMOTHER: I’ve got some cookies for you, Felix. I set ’em
out, so you wouldn’t have to steal them. John and Felix was hard on
the cookie jar.

FELIX: Where is John?

SILAS: (who is pouring a glass of wine for FELIX) You’ve
not seen John yet? He was in town for the exercises. I bet those
young devils ran off to the race-track. I heard whisperin’ goin’
round. But everybody’ll be home some time. Mary and the
girls—don’t ask me where they are. They’ll drive old Bess all
over the country before they drive her to the bam. Your father and
I come on home ’cause I wanted to have a talk with him.

FELIX: Getting into the old uniforms makes you want to talk it
all over again?

SILAS: The war? Well, we did do that. But all that makes me want
to talk about what’s to come, about—what ’twas all for. Great
things are to come, Felix. And before you are through.

FELIX: I’ve been thinking about them myself—walking around
the town to-day. It’s grown so much this year, and in a way that
means more growing—that big glucose plant going up down the
river, the new lumber mill—all that means many more
people.

FEJEVARY: And they’ve even bought ground for a steel works.

SILAS: Yes, a city will rise from these cornfields—a big
rich place—that’s bound to be. It’s written in the lay o’ the
land and the way the river flows. But first tell us about Harvard
College, Felix. Ain’t it a fine thing for us all to have Felix
coming home from that wonderful place!

FELIX: You make it seem wonderful.

SILAS: Ah, you know it’s wonderful—know it so well you
don’t have to say it. It’s something you’ve got. But to me it’s
wonderful the way the stars are wonderful—this place where
all that the world has learned is to be drawn from me—like a
spring.

FELIX: You almost say what Matthew Arnold says—a
distinguished new English writer who speaks of: ‘The best that has
been thought and said in the world’.

SILAS: ‘The best that has been thought and said in the world!’
(slowly rising, and as if the dream of years is bringing him to
his feet) That’s what that hill is for! (pointing) Don’t
you see it? End of our trail, we climb a hill and plant a college.
Plant a college, so’s after we are gone that college says for us,
says in people learning has made more: ‘That is why we took this
land.’

GRANDMOTHER: (incredulous) You mean, Silas, you’re going
to give the hill away?

SILAS: The hill at the end of our trail—how could we keep
that?

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I want to know why not! Hill or
level—land’s land and not a thing you give away.

SILAS: Well, don’t scold me. I’m not giving it away. It’s
giving itself away, get down to it.

GRANDMOTHER: Don’t talk to me as if I was feeble-minded.

SILAS: I’m talking with all the mind I’ve got. If there’s not
mind in what I say, it’s because I’ve got no mind. But I have got a
mind, (to FEJEVARY, humorously) Haven’t I? You ought
to know. Seeing as you gave it to me.

FEJEVARY: Ah, no—I didn’t give it to you.

SILAS: Well, you made me know ’twas there. You said things that
woke things in me and I thought about them as I ploughed. And that
made me know there had to be a college there—wake things in
minds—so ploughing’s more than ploughing. What do you say,
Felix?

FELIX: It—it’s a big idea, Uncle Silas. I love the way you
put it. It’s only that I’m wondering—

SILAS: Wondering how it can ever be a Harvard College? Well, it
can’t. And it needn’t be (stubbornly) It’s a college in the
cornfields—where the Indian maize once grew. And it’s for the
boys of the cornfields—and the girls. There’s few can go to
Harvard College—but more can climb that hill, (turn of the
head from the hill to FELIX) Harvard on a hill? (As
FELIX smiles no, SILAS turns back to the hill) A
college should be on a hill. They can see it then from far around.
See it as they go out to the barn in the morning; see it when
they’re shutting up at night. ‘Twill make a difference—even
to them that never go.

GRANDMOTHER: Now, Silas—don’t be hasty.

SILAS: Hasty? It’s been company to me for years. Came to me one
night—must ‘a’ been ten years ago—middle of a starry
night as I was comin’ home from your place (to FEJEVARY) I’d
gone over to lend a hand with a sick horse an’—

FEJEVARY: (with a grateful smile) That was nothing
new.

SILAS: Well, say, I’d sit up with a sick horse that belonged to
the meanest man unhung. But—there were stars that night had
never been there before. Leastways I’d not seen ’em. And the
hill—Felix, in all your travels east, did you ever see
anything more beautiful than that hill?

FELIX: It’s like sculpture.

SILAS: Hm. (the wistfulness with which he speaks of that
outside his knowledge) I s’pose ’tis. It’s the way it
rises—somehow—as if it knew it rose from wide and
fertile lands. I climbed the hill that night, (to FEJEVARY)
You’d been talkin’. As we waited between medicines you told me
about your life as a young man. All you’d lived through seemed
to—open up to you that night—way things do at times.
Guess it was ’cause you thought you was goin’ to lose your horse.
See, that was Colonel, the sorrel, wasn’t it?

FEJEVARY: Yes. Good old Colonel.

SILAS: You’d had a long run o’ off luck. Hadn’t got things back
in shape since the war. But say, you didn’t lose him, did you?

FEJEVARY: Thanks to you.

SILAS: Thanks to the medicine I keep in the back kitchen.

FEJEVARY: You encouraged him.

GRANDMOTHER: Silas has a way with all the beasts.

SILAS: We’ve got the same kind of minds—the beasts and
me.

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that—and
with Felix just home from Harvard College.

SILAS: Same kind of minds—except that mine goes on a
little farther.

GRANDMOTHER: Well I’m glad to hear you say that.

SILAS: Well, there we sat—you an’ me—middle of a
starry night, out beside your barn. And I guess it came over you
kind of funny you should be there with me—way off the
Mississippi, tryin’ to save a sick horse. Seemed to—bring
your life to life again. You told me what you studied in that fine
old university you loved—the Vienna,—and why you became
a revolutionist. The old dreams took hold o’ you and you
talked—way you used to, I suppose. The years, o’ course, had
rubbed some of it off. Your face as you went on about the
vision—you called it, vision of what life could be. I knew
that night there was things I never got wind of. When I went
away—knew I ought to go home to bed—hayin’ at daybreak.
‘Go to bed?’ I said to myself. ‘Strike this dead when you’ve never
had it before, may never have it again?’ I climbed the hill.
Blackhawk was there.

GRANDMOTHER: Why, he was dead.

SILAS: He was there—on his own old hill, with me and the
stars. And I said to him—

GRANDMOTHER: Silas!

SILAS: Says I to him, ‘Yes—that’s true; it’s more yours
than mine, you had it first and loved it best. But it’s neither
yours nor mine,—though both yours and mine. Not my hill, not
your hill, but—hill of vision’, said I to him. ‘Here shall
come visions of a better world than was ever seen by you or me, old
Indian chief.’ Oh, I was drunk, plum drunk.

GRANDMOTHER: I should think you was. And what about the next
day’s hay?

SILAS: A day in the hayfield is a day’s hayin’—but a night
on the hill—

FELIX: We don’t have them often, do we, Uncle Silas?

SILAS: I wouldn’t ‘a’ had that one but for your father, Felix.
Thank God they drove you out o’ Hungary! And it’s all so dog-gone
queer. Ain’t it queer how things blow from mind to
mind—like seeds. Lord A’mighty—you don’t know where
they’ll take hold.

(Children’s voices off.)

GRANDMOTHER: There come those children up from the
creek—soppin’ wet, I warrant. Well, I don’t know how children
ever get raised. But we raise more of ’em than we used to. I buried
three—first ten years I was here. Needn’t ‘a’
happened—if we’d known what we know now, and if we hadn’t
been alone. (With all her strength.) I don’t know what you
mean—the hill’s not yours!

SILAS: It’s the future’s, mother—so’s we can know more
than we know now.

GRANDMOTHER: We know it now. ‘Twas then we didn’t know it. I
worked for that hill! And I tell you to leave it to your own
children.

SILAS: There’s other land for my own children. This is for all
the children.

GRANDMOTHER: What’s all the children to you?

SILAS: (derisively) Oh, mother—what a thing for you
to say! You who were never too tired to give up your own bed so the
stranger could have a better bed.

GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their
way.

FEJEVARY: So are we.

(SILAS turns to him with quick
appreciation.)

GRANDMOTHER: That’s just talk. We’re settled now. Children of
other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you’d want
yours to.

SILAS: I want other things more. I want to pay my debts ‘fore
I’m too old to know they’re debts.

GRANDMOTHER: (momentarily startled) Debts? Huh! More
talk. You don’t owe any man.

SILAS: I owe him (nodding to FEJEVARY). And the red boys
here before me.

GRANDMOTHER: Fiddlesticks.

FELIX: You haven’t read Darwin, have you, Uncle Silas?

SILAS: Who?

FELIX: Darwin, the great new man—and his theory of the
survival of the fittest?

SILAS: No. No, I don’t know things like that, Felix.

FELIX: I think he might make you feel better about the Indians.
In the struggle for existence many must go down. The fittest
survive. This—had to be.

SILAS: Us and the Indians? Guess I don’t know what you
mean—fittest.

FELIX: He calls it that. Best fitted to the place in which one
finds one’s self, having the qualities that can best cope with
conditions—do things. From the beginning of life it’s been
like that. He shows the growth of life from forms that were hardly
alive, the lowest animal forms—jellyfish—up to man.

SILAS: Oh, yes, that’s the thing the churches are so upset
about—that we come from monkeys.

FELIX: Yes. One family of ape is the direct ancestor of man.

GRANDMOTHER: You’d better read your Bible, Felix.

SILAS: Do people believe this?

FELIX: The whole intellectual world is at war about it. The best
scientists accept it. Teachers are losing their positions for
believing it. Of course, ministers can’t believe it.

GRANDMOTHER: I should think not. Anyway, what’s the use
believing a thing that’s so discouraging?

FEJEVARY: (gently) But is it that? It almost seems to me
we have to accept it because it is so encouraging. (holding out
his hand) Why have we hands?

GRANDMOTHER: Cause God gave them to us, I s’pose.

FEJEVARY: But that’s rather general, and there isn’t much in it
to give us self-confidence. But when you think we have hands
because ages back—before life had taken form as man, there
was an impulse to do what had never been done—when you think
that we have hands today because from the first of life there have
been adventurers—those of best brain and courage who wanted
to be more than life had been, and that from aspiration has come
doing, and doing has shaped the thing with which to do—it
gives our hand a history which should make us want to use it
well.

SILAS: (breathed from deep) Well, by God! And you’ve
known this all this while! Dog-gone you—why didn’t you tell
me?

FEJEVARY: I’ve been thinking about it. I haven’t known what to
believe. This hurts—beliefs of earlier years.

FELIX: The things it hurts will have to go.

FEJEVARY: I don’t know about that, Felix. Perhaps in time we’ll
find truth in them.

FELIX: Oh, if you feel that way, father.

FEJEVARY: Don’t be kind to me, my boy, I’m not that old.

SILAS: But think what it is you’ve said! If it’s true that we
made ourselves—made ourselves out of the wanting to be
more—created ourselves you might say, by our own
courage—our—what is it?—aspiration. Why, I can’t
take it in. I haven’t got the mind to take it in. And what mind I
have got says no. It’s too—

FEJEVARY: It fights with what’s there.

SILAS: (nodding) But it’s like I got this (very
slowly) other way around. From underneath. As if I’d known it
all along—but have just found out I know it! Yes. The earth
told me. The beasts told me.

GRANDMOTHER: Fine place to learn things from.

SILAS: Anyhow, haven’t I seen it? (to FEJEVARY) In your
face haven’t I seen thinking make a finer face? How long has this
taken, Felix, to—well, you might say, bring us where we are
now?

FELIX: Oh, we don’t know how many millions of years since earth
first stirred.

SILAS: Then we are what we are because through all that time
there’ve been them that wanted to be more than life had been.

FELIX: That’s it, Uncle Silas.

SILAS: But—why, then we aren’t finished yet!

FEJEVARY: No. We take it on from here.

SILAS: (slowly) Then if we don’t be—the most we can
be, if we don’t be more than life has been, we go back on all that
life behind us; go back on—the—

(Unable to formulate it, he looks to
FEJEVARY.)

FEJEVARY: Go back on the dreaming and the daring of a million
years.

(After a moment’s pause SILAS gets up,
opens the closet door.)

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, what you doing?

SILAS: (who has taken out a box) I’m lookin’ for the deed
to the hill.

GRANDMOTHER: What you going to do with it?

SILAS: I’m going to get it out of my hands.

GRANDMOTHER: Get it out of your hands? (he has it now)
Deed your father got from the government the very year the
government got it from the Indians?

(rising) Give me that! (she turns to
FEJEVARY) Tell him he’s crazy. We got the best land ’cause we was
first here. We got a right to keep it.

FEJEVARY: (going soothingly to her) It’s true, Silas, it
is a serious thing to give away one’s land.

SILAS: You ought to know. You did it. Are you sorry you did
it?

FEJEVARY: No. But wasn’t that different?

SILAS: How was it different? Yours was a fight to make life
more, wasn’t it? Well, let this be our way.

GRANDMOTHER: What’s all that got to do with giving up the land
that should provide for our own children?

SILAS: Isn’t it providing for them to give them a better world
to live in? Felix—you’re young, I ask you, ain’t it providing
for them to give them a chance to be more than we are?

FELIX: I think you’re entirely right, Uncle Silas. But it’s the
practical question that—

SILAS: If you’re right, the practical question is just a thing
to fix up.

FEJEVARY: I fear you don’t realize the immense amount of money
required to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would
have to interest rich men; you’d have to have a community in
sympathy with the thing you wanted to do.

GRANDMOTHER: Can’t you see, Silas, that we’re all against
you?

SILAS: All against me? (to FEJEVARY) But how can you be?
Look at the land we walked in and took! Was there ever such a
chance to make life more? Why, the buffalo here before us was more
than we if we do nothing but prosper! God damn us if we sit here
rich and fat and forget man’s in the makin’. (affirming against
this) There will one day be a college in these cornfields by
the Mississippi because long ago a great dream was fought for in
Hungary. And I say to that old dream, Wake up, old dream! Wake up
and fight! You say rich men. (holding it out, but it is not
taken) I give you this deed to take to rich men to show them
one man believes enough in this to give the best land he’s got.
That ought to make rich men stop and think.

GRANDMOTHER: Stop and think he’s a fool.

SILAS: (to FEJEVARY) It’s you can make them know he’s not
a fool. When you tell this way you can tell it, they’ll feel in you
what’s more than them. They’ll listen.

GRANDMOTHER: I tell you, Silas, folks are too busy.

SILAS: Too busy!’ Too busy bein’ nothin’? If it’s true that we
created ourselves out of the thoughts that came, then thought is
not something outside the business of life.
Thought—(with his gift for wonder) why, thought’s our
chance. I know now. Why I can’t forget the Indians. We killed their
joy before we killed them. We made them less, (to FEJEVARY,
and as if sure he is now making it clear) I got to give it
back—their hill. I give it back to joy—a better
joy—joy o’aspiration.

FEJEVARY: (moved but unconvinced) But, my friend, there
are men who have no aspiration. That’s why, to me, this is as a
light shining from too far.

GRANDMOTHER: (old things waked in her) Light shining from
far. We used to do that. We never pulled the curtain. I used to
want to—you like to be to yourself when night
conies—but we always left a lighted window for the traveller
who’d lost his way.

FELIX: I should think that would have exposed you to the
Indians.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. (impatiently) Well, you can’t put out a
light just because it may light the wrong person.

FEJEVARY: No. (and this is as a light to him. He turns to the
hill) No.

SILAS: (with gentleness, and profoundly) That’s it. Look
again. Maybe your eyes are stronger now. Don’t you see it? I see
that college rising as from the soil itself, as if it was what come
at the last of that thinking that breathes from the earth. I see
it—but I want to know it’s real before I stop knowing. Then
maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be
ashamed. We’re not old! Let’s fight! Wake in other men what you
woke in me!

FEJEVARY: And so could I pay my debt to America. (His hand
goes out.)

SILAS: (giving him the deed) And to the dreams of a
million years! (Standing near the open door, their hands are
gripped in compact.)

(CURTAIN)

ACT II

SCENE: A corridor in the library of Morton
College, October of the year 1920, upon the occasion of the
fortieth anniversary of its founding. This is an open place in the
stacks of books, which are seen at both sides. There is a
reading-table before the big rear window. This window opens out,
but does not extend to the floor; only a part of its height is
seen, indicating a very high window. Outside is seen the top of a
tree. This outer wall of the building is on a slant, so that the
entrance right is near, and the left is front. Right front is a
section of a huge square column. On the rear of this, facing the
window, is hung a picture of SILAS MORTON. Two men are standing
before this portrait.

SENATOR LEWIS is the Midwestern state senator.
He is not of the city from which Morton College rises, but of a
more country community farther in-state. FELIX FEJEVARY, now
nearing the age of his father in the first act, is an American of
the more sophisticated type—prosperous, having the poise of
success in affairs and place in society.

SENATOR: And this was the boy who founded the place, eh? It was
his idea?

FEJEVARY: Yes, and his hill. I was there the afternoon he told
my father there must be a college here. I wasn’t any older then
than my boy is now.

(As if himself surprised by this.)

SENATOR: Well, he enlisted a good man when he let you in on it.
I’ve been told the college wouldn’t be what it is today but for
you, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: I have a sentiment about it, and where our sentiment
is, there our work goes also.

SENATOR: Yes. Well, it was those mainsprings of sentiment that
won the war.

(He is pleased with this.)

FEJEVARY: (nodding) Morton College did her part in
winning the war.

SENATOR: I know. A fine showing.

FEJEVARY: And we’re holding up our end right along. You’ll see
the boys drill this afternoon. It’s a great place for them, here on
the hill—shows up from so far around. They’re a fine lot of
fellows. You know, I presume, that they went in as strike-breakers
during the trouble down here at the steel works. The plant would
have had to close but for Morton College. That’s one reason I
venture to propose this thing of a state appropriation for
enlargement. Why don’t we sit down a moment? There’s no conflict
with the state university—they have their territory, we have
ours. Ours is an important one—industrially speaking. The
state will lose nothing in having a good strong college
here—a one-hundred-per-cent-American college.

SENATOR: I admit I am very favourably impressed.

FEJEVARY: I hope you’ll tell your committee so—and let me
have a chance to talk to them.

SENATOR: Let’s see, haven’t you a pretty radical man here?

FEJEVARY: I wonder if you mean Holden?

SENATOR: Holden’s the man. I’ve read things that make me
question his Americanism.

FEJEVARY: Oh—(gesture of depreciation) I don’t
think he is so much a radical as a particularly human
human-being.

SENATOR: But we don’t want radical human beings.

FEJEVARY: He has a genuine sympathy with youth. That’s
invaluable in a teacher, you know. And then—he’s a
scholar.

(He betrays here his feeling of superiority to
his companion, but too subtly for his companion to get it.)

SENATOR: Oh—scholar. We can get scholars enough. What we
want is Americans.

FEJEVARY: Americans who are scholars.

SENATOR: You can pick ’em off every bush—pay them a little
more than they’re paid in some other cheap John College. Excuse
me—I don’t mean this is a cheap John College.

FEJEVARY: Of course not. One couldn’t think that of Morton
College. But that—pay them a little more, interests me.
That’s another reason I want to talk to your committee on
appropriations. We claim to value education and then we let highly
trained, gifted men fall behind the plumber.

SENATOR: Well, that’s the plumber’s fault. Let the teachers talk
to the plumber.

FEJEVARY: (with a smile) No. Better not let them talk to
the plumber. He might tell them what to do about it. In fact, is
telling them.

SENATOR: That’s ridiculous. They can’t serve both God and
mammon.

FEJEVARY: Then let God give them mammon. I mean, let the state
appropriate.

SENATOR: Of course this state, Mr Fejevary, appropriates no
money for radicals. Excuse me, but why do you keep this man
Holden?

FEJEVARY: In the scholar’s world we’re known because of him. And
really, Holden’s not a radical—in the worst sense. What he
doesn’t see is—expediency. Not enough the man of affairs to
realize that we can’t always have literally what we have
theoretically. He’s an idealist. Something of the—man of
vision.

SENATOR: If he had the right vision he’d see that we don’t every
minute have literally what we have theoretically because we’re
fighting to keep the thing we have. Oh, I sometimes think the man
of affairs has the only vision. Take you, Mr Fejevary—a
banker. These teachers—books—books! (pushing all
books back) Why, if they had to take for one day the
responsibility that falls on your shoulders—big decisions to
make—man among men—and all the time worries,
irritations, particularly now with labour riding the high horse
like a fool! I know something about these things. I went to the
State House because my community persuaded me it was my duty. But
I’m the man of affairs myself.

FEJEVARY: Oh yes, I know. Your company did much to develop that
whole northern part of the state.

SENATOR: I think I may say we did. Well, that’s why, after three
sessions, I’m chairman of the appropriations committee. I know how
to use money to promote the state. So—teacher? That would be
a perpetual vacation to me. Now, if you want my advice, Mr
Fejevary,—I think your case before the state would be
stronger if you let this fellow Holden go.

FEJEVARY: I’m going to have a talk with Professor Holden.

SENATOR: Tell him it’s for his own good. The idea of a college
professor standing up for conscientious objectors!

FEJEVARY: That doesn’t quite state the case. Fred Jordan was one
of Holden’s students—a student he valued. He felt Jordan was
perfectly sincere in his objection.

SENATOR: Sincere in his objections! The nerve of him thinking it
was his business to be sincere!

FEJEVARY: He was expelled from college—you may remember;
that was how we felt about it.

SENATOR: I should hope so.

FEJEVARY: Holden fought that, but within the college. What
brought him into the papers was his protest against the way the boy
has been treated in prison.

SENATOR: What’s the difference how he’s treated? You know how
I’d treat him? (a movement as though pulling a trigger) If I
didn’t know you for the American you are, I wouldn’t understand
your speaking so calmly.

FEJEVARY: I’m simply trying to see it all sides around.

SENATOR: Makes me see red.

FEJEVARY: (with a smile) But we mustn’t meet red with
red.

SENATOR: What’s Holden fussing about—that they don’t give
him caviare on toast?

FEJEVARY: That they didn’t give him books. Holden felt it was
his business to fuss about that.

SENATOR: Well, when your own boy ‘stead of whining around about
his conscience, stood up and offered his life!

FEJEVARY: Yes. And my nephew gave his life.

SENATOR: That so?

FEJEVARY: Silas Morton’s grandson died in France. My sister
Madeline married Ira Morton, son of Silas Morton.

SENATOR: I knew there was a family connection between you and
the Mortons.

FEJEVARY: (speaking with reserve) They played together as
children and married as soon as they were grown up.

SENATOR: So this was your sister’s boy? (FEJEVARY nods)
One of the mothers to give her son!

FEJEVARY: (speaking of her with effort) My sister
died—long ago. (pulled to an old feeling; with an effort
releasing himself) But Ira is still out at the old
place—place the Mortons took up when they reached the end of
their trail—as Uncle Silas used to put it. Why, it’s a
hundred years ago that Grandmother Morton began—making
cookies here. She was the first white woman in this country.

SENATOR: Proud woman! To have begun the life of this state! Oh,
our pioneers! If they could only see us now, and know what they
did! (FEJEVARY is silent; he does not look quite happy) I
suppose Silas Morton’s son is active in the college management.

FEJEVARY: No, Ira is not a social being. Fred’s death about
finished him. He had been—strange for years, ever since my
sister died—when the children were little. It
was—(again pulled back to that old feeling) under
pretty terrible circumstances.

SENATOR: I can see that you thought a great deal of your sister,
Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: Oh, she was beautiful and—(bitterly) it
shouldn’t have gone like that.

SENATOR: Seems to me I’ve heard something about Silas Morton’s
son—though perhaps it wasn’t this one.

FEJEVARY: Ira is the only one living here now; the others have
gone farther west.

SENATOR: Isn’t there something about corn?

FEJEVARY: Yes. His corn has several years taken the
prize—best in the state. He’s experimented with
it—created a new kind. They’ve given it his name—Morton
corn. It seems corn is rather fascinating to work with—very
mutable stuff. It’s a good thing Ira has it, for it’s about the
only thing he does care for now. Oh, Madeline, of course. He has a
daughter here in the college—Madeline Morton, senior this
year—one of our best students. I’d like to have you meet
Madeline—she’s a great girl, though—peculiar.

SENATOR: Well, that makes a girl interesting, if she isn’t
peculiar the wrong way. Sounds as if her home life might make her a
little peculiar.

FEJEVARY: Madeline stays here in town with us a good part of the
time. Mrs Fejevary is devoted to her—we all are. (a boy
starts to come through from right) Hello, see who’s here. This
is my boy. Horace, this is Senator Lewis, who is interested in the
college.

HORACE: (shaking hands) How do you do, Senator Lewis?

SENATOR: Pleased to see you, my boy.

HORACE: Am I butting in?

FEJEVARY: Not seriously; but what are you doing in the library?
I thought this was a day off.

HORACE: I’m looking for a book.

FEJEVARY: (affectionately bantering) You are, Horace? Now
how does that happen?

HORACE: I want the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.

SENATOR: You couldn’t do better.

HORACE: I’ll show those dirty dagoes where they get off!

FEJEVARY: You couldn’t show them a little more elegantly?

HORACE: I’m going to sick the Legion on ’em.

FEJEVARY: Are you talking about the Hindus?

HORACE: Yes, the dirty dagoes.

FEJEVARY: Hindus aren’t dagoes you know, Horace.

HORACE: Well, what’s the difference? This foreign element gets
my goat.

SENATOR: My boy, you talk like an American. But what do you
mean—Hindus?

FEJEVARY: There are two young Hindus here as students. And
they’re good students.

HORACE: Sissies.

FEJEVARY: But they must preach the gospel of free
India—non-British India.

SENATOR: Oh, that won’t do.

HORACE: They’re nothing but Reds, I’ll say. Well, one of ’em’s
going back to get his. (grins)

FEJEVARY: There were three of them last year. One of them is
wanted back home.

SENATOR: I remember now. He’s to be deported.

HORACE: And when they get him—(movement as of pulling a
rope) They hang there.

FEJEVARY: The other two protest against our not fighting the
deportation of their comrade. They insist it means death to him.
(brushing off a thing that is inclined to worry him) But we
can’t handle India’s affairs.

SENATOR: I should think not!

HORACE: Why, England’s our ally! That’s what I told them. But
you can’t argue with people like that. Just wait till I find the
speeches of Abraham Lincoln!

(Passes through to left)

SENATOR: Fine boy you have, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: He’s a live one. You should see him in a football
game. Wouldn’t hurt my feelings in the least to have him a little
more of a student, but—

SENATOR: Oh, well, you want him to be a regular fellow, don’t
you, and grow into a man among men?

FEJEVARY: He’ll do that, I think. It was he who organized our
boys for the steel strike—went right in himself and took a
striker’s job. He came home with a black eye one night, presented
to him by a picket who started something by calling him a scab. But
Horace wasn’t thinking about his eye. According to him, it was not
in the class with the striker’s upper lip. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I
gave him more red than he could swallow. The blood just—’
Well, I’ll spare you—but Horace’s muscle is one hundred per
cent American. (going to the window) Let me show you
something. You can see the old Morton place off on that first
little hill. (pointing left) The first rise beyond the
valley.

SENATOR: The long low house?

FEJEVARY: That’s it. You see, the town for the most part swung
around the other side of the hill, so the Morton place is still a
farm.

SENATOR: But you’re growing all the while. The town’ll take the
cornfield yet.

FEJEVARY: Yes, our steel works is making us a city.

SENATOR: And this old boy (turning to the portrait of
SILAS MORTON) can look out on his old home—and watch the
valley grow.

FEJEVARY: Yes—that was my idea. His picture really should
be in Memorial Hall, but I thought Uncle Silas would like to be up
here among the books, and facing the old place. (with a
laugh) I confess to being a little sentimental.

SENATOR: We Americans have lots of sentiment, Mr Fejevary. It’s
what makes us—what we are. (FEJEVARY does not speak; there
are times when the senator seems to trouble him) Well, this is
a great site for a college. You can see it from the whole country
round.

FEJEVARY: Yes, that was Uncle Silas’ idea. He had a reverence
for education. It grew, in part, out of his feeling for my father.
He was a poet—really, Uncle Silas. (looking at the
picture) He gave this hill for a college that we might become a
deeper, more sensitive people—

(Two girls, convulsed with the giggles, come
tumbling in.)

DORIS: (confused) Oh—oh, excuse us.

FUSSIE: (foolishly) We didn’t know anybody was here.

(MR FEJEVARY looks at them sternly. The girls
retreat.)

SENATOR: (laughing) Oh, well girls will be girls. I’ve
got three of my own.

(HORACE comes back, carrying an open
book.)

HORACE: Say, this must be a misprint.

FEJEVARY: (glancing at the back of the book) Oh, I think
not.

HORACE: From his first inaugural address to Congress, March 4,
1861. (reads) ‘This country with its institutions belong to
the people who inhabit it.’ Well, that’s all right. ‘Whenever they
shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their
constitutional right of amending it’—(after a brief
consideration) I suppose that that’s all right—but
listen! ‘or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow
it.’

FEJEVARY: He was speaking in another age. An age of different
values.

SENATOR: Terms change their significance from generation to
generation.

HORACE: I suppose they do—but that puts me in bad with
these lice. They quoted this and I said they were liars.

SENATOR: And what’s the idea? They’re weary of our existing
government and are about to dismember or overthrow it?

HORACE: I guess that’s the dope.

FEJEVARY: Look here, Horace—speak accurately. Was it in
relation to America they quoted this?

HORACE: Well, maybe they were talking about India then. But they
were standing up for being revolutionists. We were giving them an
earful about it, and then they spring Lincoln on us. Got their
nerve—I’ll say—quoting Lincoln to us.

SENATOR: The fact that they are quoting it shows it’s being
misapplied.

HORACE: (approvingly) I’ll tell them that. But
gee—Lincoln oughta been more careful what he said. Ignorant
people don’t know how to take such things.

(Goes back with book.)

FEJEVARY: Want to take a look through the rest of the library?
We haven’t been up this way yet—(motioning left) We
need a better scientific library. (they are leaving now) Oh,
we simply must have more money. The whole thing is fairly bursting
its shell.

DORIS: (venturing in cautiously from the other side, looking
back, beckoning) They’ve gone.

FUSSIE: Sure?

DORIS: Well, are they here? And I saw them, I tell
you—they went up to science.

FUSSIE: (moving the SENATOR’S hat on the table)
But they’ll come back.

DORIS: What if they do? We’re only looking at a book.
(running her hand along the books) Matthew Arnold.

(Takes a paper from FUSSIE, puts it in the
book. They are bent with giggling as HORACE
returns.)

HORACE: For the love o’ Pete, what’s the joke? (taking the
book from the helpless girl) Matthew Arnold. My idea of nowhere
to go for a laugh. When I wrote my theme on him last week he was so
dry I had to go out and get a Morton Sundee (the girls are
freshly attacked, though all of this in a subdued way, mindful of
others in the library) Say, how’d you get that way?

DORIS: Now, Horace, don’t you tell.

HORACE: What’d I tell, except—(seeing the paper) Um
hum—what’s this?

DORIS: (trying to get it from him) Horace, now
don’t you (a tussle) You great strong mean thing!
Fussie! Make him stop.

(She gets the paper by tearing it.)

HORACE: My dad’s around here—showing the college off to a
politician. If you don’t come across with that sheet of mystery,
I’ll back you both out there (starts to do it)
and—

DORIS: Horace! You’re just horrid.

HORACE: Sure I’m horrid. That’s the way I want to be. (takes
the paper, reads)

What is this?

FUSSIE: Now, listen, Horace, and don’t you tell. You know
Eben Weeks. He’s the homeliest man in school. Wouldn’t you say
so?

HORACE: Awful jay. Like to get some of the jays out of here.

DORIS: But listen. Of course, no girl would look at him.
So we’ve thought up the most killing joke, (stopped by
giggles from herself and FUSSIE) Now, he hasn’t handed in his
Matthew Arnold dope. I heard old Mac hold him up for it—and
what’d you think he said? That he’d been ploughing. Said he
was trying to run a farm and go to college at the same time! Isn’t
it a scream?

HORACE: We oughta—make it more unpleasant for some of
those jays. Gives the school a bad name.

FUSSIE: But, listen, Horace, honest—you’ll just
die. He said he was going to get the book this afternoon.
Now you know what he looks like, but he turns
to—(both girls are convulsed)

DORIS: It’ll get him all fussed up! And for nothing at all!

HORACE: Too bad that class of people come here. I think I’ll go
to Harvard next year. Haven’t broken it to my parents—but
I’ve about made up my mind.

DORIS: Don’t you think Morton’s a good school, Horace?

HORACE: Morton’s all right. Fine for the—(kindly)
people who would naturally come here. But one gets an acquaintance
at Harvard. Wher’d’y’ want these passionate lines?

(FUSSIE and DORIS are off again
convulsed.)

HORACE: (eye falling on the page where he opens the book)
Say, old Bones could spill the English—what? Listen to this
flyer. ‘For when we say that culture is to know the best that has
been thought and said in the world, we simply imply that for
culture a system directly tending to that end is necessary in our
reading.’ (he reads it with mock solemnity, delighting
FUSSIE and DORIS) The best that has been thought and said in
the world!’

(MADELINE MORTON comes in from right; she carries
a tennis racket.)

MADELINE: (both critical and good-humoured) You haven’t
made a large contribution to that, have you, Horace?

HORACE: Madeline, you don’t want to let this sarcastic habit
grow on you.

MADELINE: Thanks for the tip.

FUSSIE: Oh—Madeline, (holds out her hand to take the
book from HORACE and shows it to MADELINE) You
know—

DORIS: S-h Don’t be silly, (to cover this) Who you
playing with?

HORACE: Want me to play with you, Madeline?

MADELINE: (genially) I’d rather play with you than talk
to you.

HORACE: Same here.

FUSSIE: Aren’t cousins affectionate?

MADELINE: (moving through to the other part of the
library) But first I’m looking for a book.

HORACE: Well, I can tell you without your looking it up, he did
say it. But that was an age of different values. Anyway, the fact
that they’re quoting it shows it’s being misapplied.

MADELINE: (smiling) Father said so.

HORACE: (on his dignity) Oh, of course—if you don’t
want to be serious.

(MADELINE laughs and passes on through.)

DORIS: What are you two talking about?

HORACE: Madeline happened to overhear a little discussion down
on the campus.

FUSSIE: Listen. You know something? Sometimes I think Madeline
Morton is a highbrow in disguise.

HORACE: Say, you don’t want to start anything like that.
Madeline’s all right. She and I treat each other rough—but
that’s being in the family.

FUSSIE: Well, I’ll tell you something. I heard Professor
Holden say Madeline Morton has a great deal more mind than she’d
let herself know.

HORACE: Oh, well—Holden, he’s erratic. Look at how popular
Madeline is.

DORIS: I should say. What’s the matter with you, Fussie?

FUSSIE: Oh, I didn’t mean it really hurt her.

HORACE: Guess it don’t hurt her much at a dance. Say, what’s
this new jazz they were springing last night?

DORIS: I know! Now look here, Horace—L’me show you.
(she shows him a step)

HORACE: I get you. (He begins to dance with her; the book he
holds slips to the floor. He kicks it under the table.)

FUSSIE: Be careful. They’ll be coming back here, (glances off
left)

DORIS: Keep an eye out, Fussie.

FUSSIE: (from her post) They’re coming! I tell you,
they’re coming!

DORIS: Horace, come on.

(He teasingly keeps hold of her, continuing the
dance. At sound of voices, they run off, right. FUSSIE
considers rescuing the book, decides she has not time.)

SENATOR: (at first speaking off) Yes, it could be done.
There is that surplus, and as long as Morton College is socially
valuable—right here above the steel works, and making this
feature of military training—(he has picked up his
hat) But your Americanism must be unimpeachable, Mr Fejevary.
This man Holden stands in the way.

FEJEVARY: I’m going to have a talk with Professor Holden this
afternoon. If he remains he will—(it is not easy for him
to say) give no trouble. (MADELINE returns) Oh, here’s
Madeline—Silas Morton’s granddaughter, Madeline Fejevary
Morton. This is Senator Lewis, Madeline.

SENATOR: (holding out his hand) How do you do, Miss
Morton. I suppose this is a great day for you.

MADELINE: Why—I don’t know.

SENATOR: The fortieth anniversary of the founding of your
grandfather’s college? You must be very proud of your illustrious
ancestor.

MADELINE: I get a bit bored with him.

SENATOR: Bored with him? My dear young lady!

MADELINE: I suppose because I’ve heard so many speeches about
him—’The sainted pioneer’—’the grand old man of the
prairies’—I’m sure I haven’t any idea what he really was
like.

FEJEVARY: I’ve tried to tell you, Madeline.

MADELINE: Yes.

SENATOR: I should think you would be proud to be the
granddaughter of this man of vision.

MADELINE: (her smile flashing) Wouldn’t you hate to be
the granddaughter of a phrase?

FEJEVARY: (trying to laugh it off) Madeline! How
absurd.

MADELINE: Well, I’m off for tennis.

(Nods good-bye and passes on.)

FEJEVARY: (calling to her) Oh, Madeline, if your Aunt
Isabel is out there—will you tell her where we are?

MADELINE: (calling back) All right.

FEJEVARY: (after a look at his companion) Queer girl,
Madeline. Rather—moody.

SENATOR: (disapprovingly) Well—yes.

FEJEVARY: (again trying to laugh it off) She’s been
hearing a great many speeches about her grandfather.

SENATOR: She should be proud to hear them.

FEJEVARY: Of course she should. (looking in the direction
MADELINE has gone) I want you to meet my wife, Senator
Lewis.

SENATOR: I should be pleased to meet Mrs Fejevary. I have heard
what she means to the college—socially.

FEJEVARY: I think she has given it something it wouldn’t have
had without her. Certainly a place in the town that is—good
for it. And you haven’t met our president yet.

SENATOR: Guess, I’ve met the real president.

FEJEVARY: Oh—no. I’m merely president of the board of
trustees.

SENATOR: ‘Merely!’

FEJEVARY: I want you to know President Welling. He’s very much
the cultivated gentleman.

SENATOR: Cultivated gentlemen are all right. I’d hate to see a
world they ran.

FEJEVARY: (with a laugh) I’ll just take a look up here,
then we can go down the shorter way.

(He goes out right. SENATOR LEWIS turns
and examines the books. FUSSIE slips in, looks at him,
hesitates, and then stoops under the table for the Matthew Arnold
(and her poem) which HORACE has kicked there. He
turns.)

FUSSIE: (not out from under the table) Oh, I was just
looking for a book.

SENATOR: Quite a place to look for a book.

FUSSIE: (crawling out) Yes, it got there. I thought I’d
put it back. Somebody—might want it.

SENATOR: I see, young lady, that you have a regard for
books.

FUSSIE: Oh, yes, I do have a regard for them.

SENATOR: (holding out his hand) And what is your
book?

FUSSIE: Oh—it’s—it’s nothing.

(As he continues to hold out his hand, she
reluctantly gives the book.)

SENATOR: (solemnly) Matthew Arnold? Nothing?

FUSSIE: Oh, I didn’t mean him.

SENATOR: A master of English! I am glad, young woman, that you
value this book.

FUSSIE: Oh yes, I’m—awfully fond of it.

(Growing more and more nervous as in turning the
pages he nears the poem.)

SENATOR: I am interested in you young people of Morton
College.

FUSSIE: That’s so good of you.

SENATOR: What is your favourite study?

FUSSIE: Well—(an inspiration) I like all of
them.

SENATOR: Morton College is coming on very fast, I
understand.

FUSSIE: Oh yes, it’s getting more and more of the right people.
It used to be a little jay, you know. Of course, the Fejevarys give
it class. Mrs Fejevary—isn’t she wonderful?

SENATOR: I haven’t seen her yet. Waiting here now to meet
her.

FUSSIE: (worried by this) Oh, I must—must be going.
Shall I put the book back? (holding out her hand)

SENATOR: No, I’ll just look it over a bit. (sits
down)

FUSSIE: (unable to think of any way of getting it) This
is where it belongs.

SENATOR: Thank you.

(Reluctantly she goes out. SENATOR LEWIS
pursues Matthew Arnold with the conscious air of a half literate
man reading a ‘great book’. The FEJEVARYS come in)

FEJEVARY: I found my wife, Senator Lewis.

AUNT ISABEL: (she is a woman of social distinction and
charm) How do you do, Senator Lewis? (They shake
hands.)

SENATOR: It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs Fejevary.

AUNT ISABEL: Why don’t we carry Senator Lewis home for
lunch?

SENATOR: Why, you’re very kind.

AUNT ISABEL: I’m sure there’s a great deal to talk about, so why
not talk comfortably, and really get acquainted? And we want to
tell you the whole story of Morton College—the good old
American spirit behind it.

SENATOR: I am glad to find you an American, Mrs Fejevary.

AUNT ISABEL: Oh, we are that. Morton College is one hundred per
cent American. Our boys—

(Her boy HORACE rushes in.)

HORACE: (wildly) Father! Will you go after Madeline? The
police have got her!

FEJEVARY: What!

AUNT ISABEL: (as he is getting his breath) What absurd
thing are you saying, Horace?

HORACE: Awful row down on the campus. The Hindus. I told them to
keep their mouths shut about Abraham Lincoln. I told them the fact
they were quoting him—

FEJEVARY: Never mind what you told them! What happened?

HORACE: We started—to rustle them along a bit. Why, they
had handbills (holding one up as if presenting
incriminating evidence—the SENATOR takes it from
him) telling America what to do about deportation! Not on this
campus—I say. So we were—we were putting a stop to it.
They resisted—particularly the fat one. The cop at the corner
saw the row—came up. He took hold of Bakhshish, and when the
dirty anarchist didn’t move along fast enough, he took hold of
him—well, a bit rough, you might say, when up rushes Madeline
and calls to the cop, ‘Let that boy alone!’ Gee—I don’t know
just what did happen—awful mix-up. Next thing I knew Madeline
hauled off and pasted the policeman a fierce one with her tennis
racket!

SENATOR: She struck the officer?

HORACE: I should say she did. Twice. The second time—

AUNT ISABEL: Horace. (looking at her husband)
I—I can’t believe it.

HORACE: I could have squared it, even then, but for Madeline
herself. I told the policeman that she didn’t understand—that
I was her cousin, and apologized for her. And she called over at
me, ‘Better apologize for yourself!’ As if there was any sense to
that—that she—she looked like a tiger. Honest,
everybody was afraid of her. I kept right on trying to square it,
told the cop she was the granddaughter of the man that founded the
college—that you were her uncle—he would have gone off
with just the Hindu, fixed this up later, but Madeline balled it up
again—didn’t care who was her uncle—Gee! (he throws
open the window) There! You can see them, at the foot of the
hill. A nice thing—member of our family led off to the police
station!

FEJEVARY: (to the SENATOR) Will you excuse me?

AUNT ISABEL: (trying to return to the manner of pleasant
social things) Senator Lewis will go on home with me, and
you—(he is hurrying out) come when you can. (to
the SENATOR) Madeline is such a high-spirited girl.

SENATOR: If she had no regard for the living, she might—on
this day of all others—have considered her grandfather’s
memory.

(Raises his eyes to the picture of SILAS
MORTON.)

HORACE: Gee! Wouldn’t you say so?

(CURTAIN)

ACT III

SCENE: The same as Act II three hours
later. PROFESSOR HOLDEN is seated at the table, books before
him. He is a man in the fifties. At the moment his care-worn face
is lighted by that lift of the spirit which sometimes rewards the
scholar who has imaginative feeling. HARRY, a student clerk,
comes hurrying in. Looks back.

HARRY: Here’s Professor Holden, Mr Fejevary.

HOLDEN: Mr Fejevary is looking for me?

HARRY: Yes.

(He goes back, a moment later MR FEJEVARY
enters. He has his hat, gloves, stick; seems tired and
disturbed.)

HOLDEN: Was I mistaken? I thought our appointment was for
five.

FEJEVARY: Quite right. But things have changed, so I wondered if
I might have a little talk with you now.

HOLDEN: To be sure. (rising) Shall we go downstairs?

FEJEVARY: I don’t know. Nice and quiet up here. (to
HARRY, who is now passing through) Harry, the library is
closed now, is it?

HARRY: Yes, it’s locked.

FEJEVARY: And there’s no one in here?

HARRY: No, I’ve been all through.

FEJEVARY: There’s a committee downstairs. Oh, this is a terrible
day. (putting his things on the table) We’d better stay up
here. Harry, when my niece—when Miss Morton arrives—I
want you to come and let me know. Ask her not to leave the building
without seeing me.

HARRY: Yes, sir. (he goes out)

FEJEVARY: Well, (wearily) it’s been a day. Not the day I
was looking for.

HOLDEN: No.

FEJEVARY: You’re very serene up here.

HOLDEN: Yes, I wanted to be—serene for a little while.

FEJEVARY: (looking at the books) Emerson. Whitman.
(with a smile) Have they anything new to say on
economics?

HOLDEN: Perhaps not; but I wanted to forget economics for a
time. I came up here by myself to try and celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the founding of Morton College. (answering the
other man’s look) Yes, I confess I’ve been disappointed in the
anniversary. As I left Memorial Hall after the exercises this
morning, Emerson’s words came into my mind—

Well, then I went home—(stops, troubled)

FEJEVARY: How is Mrs Holden?

HOLDEN: Better, thank you, but—not strong.

FEJEVARY: She needs the very best of care for a time, doesn’t
she?

HOLDEN: Yes. (silent a moment) Then, this is something
more than the fortieth anniversary, you know. It’s the first of the
month.

FEJEVARY: And illness hasn’t reduced the bills?

HOLDEN: (shaking his head) I didn’t want this day to go
like that; so I came up here to try and touch what used to be
here.

FEJEVARY: But you speak despondently of us. And there’s been
such a fine note of optimism in the exercises. (speaks with the
heartiness of one who would keep himself assured)

HOLDEN: I didn’t seem to want a fine note of optimism. (with
roughness) I wanted—a gleam from reality.

FEJEVARY: To me this is reality—the robust spirit created
by all these young people.

HOLDEN: Do you think it is robust? (hand affectionately on
the book before him) I’ve been reading Whitman.

FEJEVARY: This day has to be itself. Certain things
go—others come; life is change.

HOLDEN: Perhaps it’s myself I’m discouraged with. Do you
remember the tenth anniversary of the founding of Morton
College.

FEJEVARY: The tenth? Oh yes, that was when this library was
opened.

HOLDEN: I shall never forget your father, Mr Fejevary, as he
stood out there and said the few words which gave these books to
the students. Not many books, but he seemed to baptize them in the
very spirit from which books are born.

FEJEVARY: He died the following year.

HOLDEN: One felt death near. But that didn’t seem the important
thing. A student who had fought for liberty for mind. Of course his
face would be sensitive. You must be very proud of your
heritage.

FEJEVARY: Yes. (a little testily) Well, I have certainly
worked for the college. I’m doing my best now to keep it a part of
these times.

HOLDEN: (as if this has not reached him) It was later
that same afternoon I talked with Silas Morton. We stood at this
window and looked out over the valley to the lower hill that was
his home. He told me how from that hill he had for years looked up
to this one, and why there had to be a college here. I never felt
America as that old farmer made me feel it.

FEJEVARY: (drawn by this, then shifting in irritation because
he is drawn) I’m sorry to break in with practical things, but
alas, I am a practical man—forced to be. I too have made a
fight—though the fight to finance never appears an idealistic
one. But I’m deep in that now, and I must have a little help; at
least, I must not have—stumbling-blocks.

HOLDEN: Am I a stumbling-block?

FEJEVARY: Candidly (with a smile) you are a little hard
to finance. Here’s the situation. The time for being a little
college has passed. We must take our place as one of the important
colleges—I make bold to say one of the important
universities—of the Middle West. But we have to enlarge
before we can grow. (answering HOLDEN’s smile) Yes,
it is ironic, but that’s the way of it. It was a nice thing to open
the anniversary with fifty thousand from the steel works—but
fifty thousand dollars—nowadays—to an institution?
(waves the fifty thousand aside) They’ll do more later, I
think, when they see us coming into our own. Meanwhile, as you
know, there’s this chance for an appropriation from the state. I
find that the legislature, the members who count, are very friendly
to Morton College. They like the spirit we have here. Well, now I
come to you, and you are one of the big reasons for my wanting to
put this over. Your salary makes me blush. It’s all wrong that a
man like you should have these petty worries, particularly with Mrs
Holden so in need of the things a little money can do. Now this man
Lewis is a reactionary. So, naturally, he doesn’t approve of
you.

HOLDEN: So naturally I am to go.

FEJEVARY: Go? Not at all. What have I just been saying?

HOLDEN: Be silent, then.

FEJEVARY: Not that either—not—not really.
But—be a little more discreet. (seeing him harden)
This is what I want to put up to you. Why not give things a chance
to mature in your own mind? Candidly, I don’t feel you know just
what you do think; is it so awfully important to
express—confusion?

HOLDEN: The only man who knows just what he thinks at the
present moment is the man who hasn’t done any new thinking in the
past ten years.

FEJEVARY: (with a soothing gesture) You and I needn’t
quarrel about it. I understand you, but I find it a little hard to
interpret you to a man like Lewis.

HOLDEN: Then why not let a man like Lewis go to thunder?

FEJEVARY: And let the college go to thunder? I’m not willing to
do that. I’ve made a good many sacrifices for this college. Given
more money than I could afford to give; given time and thought that
I could have used for personal gain.

HOLDEN: That’s true, I know.

FEJEVARY: I don’t know just why I’ve done it. Sentiment, I
suppose. I had a very strong feeling about my father, Professor
Holden. And this friend Silas Morton. This college is the child of
that friendship. Those are noble words in our manifesto: ‘Morton
College was born because there came to this valley a man who held
his vision for mankind above his own advantage; and because that
man found in this valley a man who wanted beauty for his fellow-men
as he wanted no other thing.’

HOLDEN: (taking it up) ‘Born of the fight for freedom and
the aspiration to richer living, we believe that Morton
College—rising as from the soil itself—may strengthen
all those here and everywhere who fight for the life there is in
freedom, and may, to the measure it can, loosen for America the
beauty that breathes from knowledge.’ (moved by the words he has
spoken) Do you know, I would rather do that—really do
that—than—grow big.

FEJEVARY: Yes. But you see, or rather, what you don’t see is,
you have to look at the world in which you find yourself. The only
way to stay alive is to grow big. It’s been hard, but I have tried
to—carry on.

HOLDEN: And so have I tried to carry on. But it is very
hard—carrying on a dream.

FEJEVARY: Well, I’m trying to make it easier.

HOLDEN: Make it easier by destroying the dream?

FEJEVARY: Not at all. What I want is scope for dreams.

HOLDEN: Are you sure we’d have the dreams after we’ve paid this
price for the scope?

FEJEVARY: Now let’s not get rhetorical with one another.

HOLDEN: Mr Fejevary, you have got to let me be as honest with
you as you say you are being with me. You have got to let me say
what I feel.

FEJEVARY: Certainly. That’s why I wanted this talk with you.

HOLDEN: You say you have made sacrifices for Morton College. So
have I.

FEJEVARY: How well I know that.

HOLDEN: You don’t know all of it. I’m not sure you understand
any of it.

FEJEVARY: (charmingly) Oh, I think you’re hard on me.

HOLDEN: I spoke of the tenth anniversary. I was a young man
then, just home from Athens, (pulled back into an old
feeling) I don’t know why I felt I had to go to Greece. I knew
then that I was going to teach something within sociology, and I
didn’t want anything I felt about beauty to be left out of what I
formulated about society. The Greeks—

FEJEVARY: (as HOLDEN has paused before what he
sees) I remember you told me the Greeks were the passion of
your student days.

HOLDEN: Not so much because they created beauty, but because
they were able to let beauty flow into their lives—to create
themselves in beauty. So as a romantic young man (smiles),
it seemed if I could go where they had been—what I had felt
might take form. Anyway, I had a wonderful time there. Oh, what
wouldn’t I give to have again that feeling of life’s infinite
possibilities!

FEJEVARY: (nodding) A youthful feeling.

HOLDEN: (softly) I like youth. Well, I was just back,
visiting my sister here, at the time of the tenth anniversary. I
had a chance then to go to Harvard as instructor. A good chance,
for I would have been under a man who liked me. But that afternoon
I heard your father speak about books. I talked with Silas Morton.
I found myself telling him about Greece. No one had ever felt it as
he felt it. It seemed to become of the very bone of him.

FEJEVARY: (affectionately) I know how he used to do.

HOLDEN: He put his hands on my shoulders. He said, ‘Young man,
don’t go away. We need you here. Give us this great thing you’ve
got!’ And so I stayed, for I felt that here was soil in which I
could grow, and that one’s whole life was not too much to give to a
place with roots like that. (a little bitterly) Forgive me
if this seems rhetoric.

FEJEVARY: (a gesture of protest. Silent a moment) You
make it—hard for me. (with exasperation) Don’t you
think I’d like to indulge myself in an exalted mood? And why don’t
I? I can’t afford it—not now. Won’t you have a little
patience? And faith—faith that the thing we want will be
there for us after we’ve worked our way through the woods. We are
in the woods now. It’s going to take our combined brains to get us
out. I don’t mean just Morton College.

HOLDEN: No—America. As to getting out, I think you are all
wrong.

FEJEVARY: That’s one of your sweeping statements, Holden.
Nobody’s all wrong. Even you aren’t.

HOLDEN: And in what ways am I wrong—from the standpoint of
your Senator Lewis?

FEJEVARY: He’s not my Senator Lewis, he’s the state’s, and we
have to take him as he is. Why, he objects, of course, to your
radical activities. He spoke of your defence of conscientious
objectors.

HOLDEN: (slowly) I think a man who is willing to go to
prison for what he believes has stuff in him no college needs turn
its back on.

FEJEVARY: Well, he doesn’t agree with you—nor do I.

HOLDEN: (still quietly) And I think a society which
permits things to go on which I can prove go on in our federal
prisons had better stop and take a fresh look at itself. To stand
for that and then talk of democracy and idealism—oh, it shows
no mentality, for one thing.

FEJEVARY: (easily) I presume the prisons do need a
cleaning up. As to Fred Jordan, you can’t expect me to share your
admiration. Our own Fred—my nephew Fred Morton, went to
France and gave his life. There’s some little courage, Holden, in
doing that.

HOLDEN: I’m not trying to belittle it. But he had the whole
spirit of his age with him—fortunate boy. The man who stands
outside the idealism of this time—

FEJEVARY: Takes a good deal upon himself, I should say.

HOLDEN: There isn’t any other such loneliness. You know in your
heart it’s a noble courage.

FEJEVARY: It lacks—humility. (HOLDEN laughs
scoffingly) And I think you lack it. I’m asking you to
co-operate with me for the good of Morton College.

HOLDEN: Why not do it the other way? You say enlarge that we may
grow. That’s false. It isn’t of the nature of growth. Why not do it
the way of Silas Morton and Walt Whitman—each man being his
purest and intensest self. I was full of this fervour when you came
in. I’m more and more disappointed in our students. They’re
empty—flippant. No sensitive moment opens them to beauty. No
exaltation makes them—what they hadn’t known they were. I
concluded some of the fault must be mine. The only students I reach
are the Hindus. Perhaps Madeline Morton—I don’t quite make
her out. I too must have gone into a dead stratum. But I can get
back. Here alone this afternoon—(softly) I was
back.

FEJEVARY: I think we’ll have to let the Hindus go.

HOLDEN: (astonished) Go? Our best students?

FEJEVARY: This college is for Americans. I’m not going to have
foreign revolutionists come here and block the things I’ve spent my
life working for.

HOLDEN: I don’t seem to know what you mean at all.

FEJEVARY: Why, that disgraceful performance this morning. I can
settle Madeline all right, (looking at his watch) She should
be here by now. But I’m convinced our case before the legislature
will be stronger with the Hindus out of here.

HOLDEN: Well, I seem to have missed something—disgraceful
performance—the Hindus, Madeline—(stops,
bewildered)

FEJEVARY: You mean to say you don’t know about the disturbance
out here?

HOLDEN: I went right home after the address. Then came up here
alone.

FEJEVARY: Upon my word, you do lead a serene life. While you’ve
been sitting here in contemplation I’ve been to the police
court—trying to get my niece out of jail. That’s what comes
of having radicals around.

HOLDEN: What happened?

FEJEVARY: One of our beloved Hindus made himself obnoxious on
the campus. Giving out handbills about freedom for
India—howling over deportation. Our American boys wouldn’t
stand for it. A policeman saw the fuss—came up and started to
put the Hindu in his place. Then Madeline rushes in, and it ended
in her pounding the policeman with her tennis racket.

HOLDEN: Madeline Morton did that!

FEJEVARY: (sharply) You seem pleased.

HOLDEN: I am—interested.

FEJEVARY: Well, I’m not interested. I’m disgusted. My niece
mixing up in a free-for-all fight and getting taken to the police
station! It’s the first disgrace we’ve ever had in our family.

HOLDEN: (as one who has been given courage) Wasn’t there
another disgrace?

FEJEVARY: What do you mean?

HOLDEN: When your father fought his government and was banished
from his country.

FEJEVARY: That was not a disgrace!

HOLDEN: (as if in surprise) Wasn’t it?

FEJEVARY: See here, Holden, you can’t talk to me like that.

HOLDEN: I don’t admit you can talk to me as you please and that
I can’t talk to you. I’m a professor—not a servant.

FEJEVARY: Yes, and you’re a damned difficult professor. I
certainly have tried to—

HOLDEN: (smiling) Handle me?

FEJEVARY: I ask you this. Do you know any other institution
where you could sit and talk with the executive head as you have
here with me?

HOLDEN: I don’t know. Perhaps not.

FEJEVARY: Then be reasonable. No one is entirely free. That’s
naïve. It’s rather egotistical to want to be. We’re held by
our relations to others—by our obligations to the
(vaguely)—the ultimate thing. Come now—you admit
certain dissatisfactions with yourself, so—why not go with
intensity into just the things you teach—and not touch quite
so many other things?

HOLDEN: I couldn’t teach anything if I didn’t feel free to go
wherever that thing took me. Thirty years ago I was asked to come
to this college precisely because my science was not in isolation,
because of my vivid feeling of us as a moment in a long sweep,
because of my faith in the greater beauty our further living may
unfold.

(HARRY enters.)

HARRY: Excuse me. Miss Morton is here now, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: (frowns, hesitates) Ask her to come up here in
five minutes (After HARRY has gone) I think we’ve
thrown a scare into Madeline. I thought as long as she’d been taken
to jail it would be no worse for us to have her stay there awhile.
She’s been held since one o’clock. That ought to teach her
reason.

HOLDEN: Is there a case against her?

FEJEVARY: No, I got it fixed up. Explained that it was just
college girl foolishness—wouldn’t happen again. One reason I
wanted this talk with you first, if I do have any trouble with
Madeline I want you to help me.

HOLDEN: Oh, I can’t do that.

FEJEVARY: You aren’t running out and clubbing the police. Tell
her she’ll have to think things over and express herself with a
little more dignity.

HOLDEN: I ask to be excused from being present while you talk
with her.

FEJEVARY: But why not stay in the library—in case I should
need you. Just take your books over to the east alcove and go on
with what you were doing when I came in.

HOLDEN: (with a faint smile) I fear I can hardly do that.
As to Madeline—

FEJEVARY: You don’t want to see the girl destroy herself, do
you? I confess I’ve always worried about Madeline. If my sister had
lived—But Madeline’s mother died, you know, when she was a
baby. Her father—well, you and I talked that over just the
other day—there’s no getting to him. Fred never worried me a
bit—just the fine normal boy. But Madeline—(with an
effort throwing it off) Oh, it’ll be all right, I haven’t a
doubt. And it’ll be all right between you and me, won’t it? Caution
over a hard strip of the road, then—bigger things ahead.

HOLDEN: (slowly, knowing what it may mean) I shall
continue to do all I can toward getting Fred Jordan out of prison.
It’s a disgrace to America that two years after the war closes he
should be kept there—much of the time in solitary
confinement—because he couldn’t believe in war. It’s
small—vengeful—it’s the Russia of the Czars. I shall do
what is in my power to fight the deportation of Gurkul Singh. And
certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your
amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college. For
what—I ask you? Dismissed—for what? Because they
love liberty enough to give their lives to it! The day you dismiss
them, burn our high-sounding manifesto, Mr Fejevary, and admit that
Morton College now sells her soul to the—committee on
appropriations!

FEJEVARY: Well, you force me to be as specific as you are. If
you do these things, I can no longer fight for you.

HOLDEN: Very well then, I go.

FEJEVARY: Go where?

HOLDEN: I don’t know—at the moment.

FEJEVARY: I fear you’ll find it harder than you know. Meanwhile,
what of your family?

HOLDEN: We will have to manage some way.

FEJEVARY: It is not easy for a woman whose health—in fact,
whose life—is a matter of the best of care to ‘manage some
way’. (with real feeling) What is an intellectual position
alongside that reality? You’d like, of course, to be just what you
want to be—but isn’t there something selfish in that
satisfaction? I’m talking as a friend now—you must know that.
You and I have a good many ties, Holden. I don’t believe you know
how much Mrs Fejevary thinks of Mrs Holden.

HOLDEN: She has been very, very good to her.

FEJEVARY: And will be. She cares for her. And our children have
been growing up together—I love to watch it. Isn’t that the
reality? Doing for them as best we can, making sacrifices
of—of every kind. Don’t let some tenuous, remote thing
destroy this flesh and blood thing.

HOLDEN: (as one fighting to keep his head above water)
Honesty is not a tenuous, remote thing.

FEJEVARY: There’s a kind of honesty in selfishness. We can’t
always have it. Oh, I used to—go through things. But I’ve
struck a pace—one does—and goes ahead.

HOLDEN: Forgive me, but I don’t think you’ve had certain
temptations to—selfishness.

FEJEVARY: How do you know what I’ve had? You have no way of
knowing what’s in me—what other thing I might have been? You
know my heritage; you think that’s left nothing? But I find myself
here in America. I love those dependent on me. My wife—who’s
used to a certain manner of living; my children—who are to
become part of the America of their time. I’ve never said this to
another human being—I’ve never looked at myself—but
it’s pretty arrogant to think you’re the only man who has made a
sacrifice to fit himself into the age in which he lives. I hear
Madeline. This hasn’t left me in very good form for talking with
her. Please don’t go away. Just—

(MADELINE comes in, right. She has her tennis
racket. Nods to the two men. HOLDEN goes out, left.)

MADELINE: (looking after HOLDEN—feeling
something going on. Then turning to her uncle, who is still looking
after HOLDEN) You wanted to speak to me, Uncle Felix?

FEJEVARY: Of course I want to speak to you.

MADELINE: I feel just awfully sorry about—banging up my
racket like this. The second time it came down on this club. Why do
they carry those things? Perfectly fantastic, I’ll say, going
around with a club. But as long as you were asking me what I wanted
for my birthday—

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I am not here to discuss your birthday.

MADELINE: I’m sorry—(smiles) to hear that.

FEJEVARY: You don’t seem much chastened.

MADELINE: Chastened? Was that the idea? Well, if you think that
keeping a person where she doesn’t want to be chastens her! I never
felt less ‘chastened’ than when I walked out of that slimy spot and
looked across the street at your nice bank. I should think you’d
hate to—(with friendly concern) Why, Uncle Felix, you
look tired out.

FEJEVARY: I am tired out, Madeline. I’ve had a nerve-racking
day.

MADELINE: Isn’t that too bad? Those speeches were so boresome,
and that old senator person—wasn’t he a stuff? But can’t you
go home now and let auntie give you tea and—

FEJEVARY: (sharply) Madeline, have you no intelligence?
Hasn’t it occurred to you that your performance would worry me a
little?

MADELINE: I suppose it was a nuisance. And on such a busy day.
(changing) But if you’re going to worry, Horace is the one
you should worry about. (answering his look) Why, he got it
all up. He made me ashamed!

FEJEVARY: And you’re not at all ashamed of what you have
done?

MADELINE: Ashamed? Why—no.

FEJEVARY: Then you’d better be! A girl who rushes in and
assaults an officer!

MADELINE: (earnestly explaining it) But, Uncle Felix, I
had to stop him. No one else did.

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I don’t know whether you’re trying to be
naïve—

MADELINE: (angrily) Well, I’m not. I like that! I
think I’ll go home.

FEJEVARY: I think you will not! It’s stupid of you not to know
this is serious. You could be dismissed from school for what you
did.

MADELINE: Well, I’m good and ready to be dismissed from any
school that would dismiss for that!

FEJEVARY: (in a new manner—quietly, from feeling)
Madeline, have you no love for this place?

MADELINE: (doggedly, after thinking) Yes, I have. (she
sits down) And I don’t know why I have.

FEJEVARY: Certainly it’s not strange. If ever a girl had a
background, Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton’s
background. (he too now seated by the table) Do you remember
your Grandfather Morton?

MADELINE: Not very well. (a quality which seems
sullenness) I couldn’t bear to look at him. He shook so.

FEJEVARY: (turning away, real pain) Oh—how
cruel!

MADELINE: (surprised, gently) Cruel? Me—cruel?

FEJEVARY: Not just you. The way it passes—(to
himself) so fast it passes.

MADELINE: I’m sorry. (troubled) You see, he was too old
then—

FEJEVARY: (his hand up to stop her) I wish I could bring
him back for a moment, so you could see what he was before he
(bitterly) shook so. He was a powerful man, who was as real
as the earth. He was strangely of the earth, as if something went
from it to him. (looking at her intently) Queer you should
be the one to have no sentiment about him, for you and
he—sometimes when I’m with you it’s as if—he were near.
He had no personal ambition, Madeline. He was ambitious for the
earth and its people. I wonder if you can realize what it meant to
my father—in a strange land, where he might so easily have
been misunderstood, pushed down, to find a friend like that? It
wasn’t so much the material things—though Uncle Silas was
always making them right—and as if—oh, hardly conscious
what he was doing—so little it mattered. It was the way he
got father, and by that very valuing kept alive what was
there to value. Why, he literally laid this country at my father’s
feet—as if that was what this country was for, as if it made
up for the hard early things—for the wrong things.

MADELINE: He must really have been a pretty nice old party. No
doubt I would have hit it off with him all right. I don’t seem to
hit it off with the—speeches about him. Somehow I want to
say, ‘Oh, give us a rest.’

FEJEVARY: (offended) And that, I presume, is what you
want to say to me.

MADELINE: No, no, I didn’t mean you, Uncle. Though
(hesitatingly) I was wondering how you could think you were
talking on your side.

FEJEVARY: What do you mean—my side?

MADELINE: Oh, I don’t—exactly. That’s nice about him
being—of the earth. Sometimes when I’m out for a
tramp—way off by myself—yes, I know. And I wonder if
that doesn’t explain his feeling about the Indians. Father told me
how grandfather took it to heart about the Indians.

FEJEVARY: He felt it as you’d feel it if it were your brother.
So he must give his choicest land to the thing we might become.
‘Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not
be ashamed.’

(MADELINE nods, appreciatively.)

MADELINE: Yes, that’s really—all right.

FEJEVARY: (irritated by what seems charily stated
approval) ‘All right!’ Well, I am not willing to let this man’s
name pass from our time. And it seems rather bitter that Silas
Morton’s granddaughter should be the one to stand in my way.

MADELINE: Why, Uncle Felix, I’m not standing in your way. Of
course I wouldn’t do that. I—(rather bashfully) I love
the Hill. I was thinking about it in jail. I got fuddled on
direction in there, so I asked the woman who hung around which way
was College Hill. ‘Right through there’, she said. A blank wall. I
sat and looked through that wall—long time. (she looks
front, again looking through that blank wall) It was
all—kind of funny. Then later she came and told me you were
out there, and I thought it was corking of you to come and tell
them they couldn’t put that over on College Hill. And I know
Bakhshish will appreciate it too. I wonder where he went?

FEJEVARY: Went? I fancy he won’t go much of anywhere
to-night.

MADELINE: What do you mean?

FEJEVARY: Why, he’s held for this hearing, of course.

MADELINE: You mean—you came and got just me—and left
him there?

FEJEVARY: Certainly.

MADELINE: (rising) Then I’ll have to go and get him!

FEJEVARY: Madeline, don’t be so absurd. You don’t get people out
of jail by stopping in and calling for them.

MADELINE: But you got me.

FEJEVARY: Because of years of influence. At that, it wasn’t
simple. Things of this nature are pretty serious nowadays. It was
only your ignorance got you out.

MADELINE: I do seem ignorant. While you were fixing it up for
me, why didn’t you arrange for him too?

FEJEVARY: Because I am not in the business of getting foreign
revolutionists out of jail.

MADELINE: But he didn’t do as much as I did.

FEJEVARY: It isn’t what he did. It’s what he is. We don’t want
him here.

MADELINE: Well, I guess I’m not for that!

FEJEVARY: May I ask why you have appointed yourself guardian of
these strangers?

MADELINE: Perhaps because they are strangers.

FEJEVARY: Well, they’re the wrong kind of strangers.

MADELINE: Is it true that the Hindu who was here last year is to
be deported? Is America going to turn him over to the government he
fought?

FEJEVARY: I have an idea they will all be deported. I’m not so
sorry this thing happened. It will get them into the
courts—and I don’t think they have money to fight.

MADELINE: (giving it clean and straight) Gee, I think
that’s rotten!

FEJEVARY: Quite likely your inelegance will not affect it one
way or the other.

MADELINE: (she has taken her seat again, is thinking it
out) I’m twenty-one next Tuesday. Isn’t it on my twenty-first
birthday I get that money Grandfather Morton left me?

FEJEVARY: What are you driving at?

MADELINE: (simply) They can have my money.

FEJEVARY: Are you crazy? What are these people to
you?

MADELINE: They’re people from the other side of the world who
came here believing in us, drawn from the far side of the world by
things we say about ourselves. Well, I’m going to
pretend—just for fun—that the things we say about
ourselves are true. So if you’ll—arrange so I can get it,
Uncle Felix, as soon as it’s mine.

FEJEVARY: And this is what you say to me at the close of my
years of trusteeship! If you could know how I’ve nursed that little
legacy along—until now it is—(breaking off in
anger) I shall not permit you to destroy yourself!

MADELINE: (quietly) I don’t see how you can keep me from
‘destroying myself’.

FEJEVARY: (looking at her, seeing that this may be true. In
genuine amazement, and hurt) Why—but it’s incredible.
Have I—has my house—been nothing to you all these
years?

MADELINE: I’ve had my best times at your house. Things wouldn’t
have been—very gay for me—without you all—though
Horace gets my goat!

FEJEVARY: And does your Aunt Isabel—’get your goat’?

MADELINE: I love auntie. (rather resentfully) You know
that. What has that got to do with it?

FEJEVARY: So you are going to use Silas Morton’s money to knife
his college.

MADELINE: Oh, Uncle Felix, that’s silly.

FEJEVARY: It’s a long way from silly. You know a little about
what I’m trying to do—this appropriation that would assure
our future. If Silas Morton’s granddaughter casts in her lot with
revolutionists, Morton College will get no help from the state. Do
you know enough about what you are doing to assume this
responsibility?

MADELINE: I am not casting ‘in my lot with revolutionists’. If
it’s true, as you say, that you have to have money in order to get
justice—

FEJEVARY: I didn’t say it!

MADELINE: Why, you did, Uncle Felix. You said so. And if it’s
true that these strangers in our country are going to be abused
because they’re poor,—what else could I do with my money and
not feel like a skunk?

FEJEVARY: (trying a different tack, laughing) Oh, you’re
a romantic girl, Madeline—skunk and all. Rather nice, at
that. But the thing is perfectly fantastic, from every standpoint.
You speak as if you had millions. And if you did, it wouldn’t
matter, not really. You are going against the spirit of this
country; with or without money, that can’t be done. Take a man like
Professor Holden. He’s radical in his sympathies—but does he
run out and club the police?

MADELINE: (in a smouldering way) I thought America was a
democracy.

FEJEVARY: We have just fought a great war for democracy.

MADELINE: Well, is that any reason for not having it?

FEJEVARY: I should think you would have a little emotion about
the war—about America—when you consider where your
brother is.

MADELINE: Fred had—all kinds of reasons for going to
France. He wanted a trip. (answering his exclamation) Why,
he said so. Heavens, Fred didn’t make speeches about
himself. Wanted to see Paris—poor kid, he never did see
Paris. Wanted to be with a lot of fellows—knock the Kaiser’s
block off—end war, get a French girl. It was all mixed
up—the way things are. But Fred was a pretty decent sort.
I’ll say so. He had such kind, honest eyes. (this has somehow
said itself; her own eyes close and what her shut eyes see makes
feeling hot) One thing I do know! Fred never went over the top
and out to back up the argument you’re making now!

FEJEVARY: (stiffly) Very well, I will discontinue the
argument I’m making now. I’ve been trying to save you
from—pretty serious things. The regret of having stood in the
way of Morton College—(his voice falling) the horror
of having driven your father insane.

MADELINE: What?

FEJEVARY: One more thing would do it. Just the other day I was
talking with Professor Holden about your father. His idea of him
relates back to the pioneer life—another price paid for this
country. The lives back of him were too hard. Your
great-grandmother Morton—the first white woman in this
region—she dared too much, was too lonely, feared and bore
too much. They did it, for the task gave them a courage for the
task. But it—left a scar.

MADELINE: And father is that—(can hardly say
it)—scar. (fighting the idea) But Grandfather
Morton was not like that.

FEJEVARY: No; he had the vision of the future; he was robust
with feeling for others. (gently) But Holden feels your
father is the—dwarfed pioneer child. The way he concentrates
on corn—excludes all else—as if unable to free himself
from their old battle with the earth.

MADELINE: (almost crying) I think it’s pretty terrible
to—wish all that on poor father.

FEJEVARY: Well, my dear child, it’s life has ‘wished it on him’.
It’s just one other way of paying the price for his country. We
needn’t get it for nothing. I feel that all our chivalry should go
to your father in his—heritage of loneliness.

MADELINE: Father couldn’t always have been—dwarfed. Mother
wouldn’t have cared for him if he had always been—like
that.

FEJEVARY: No, if he could have had love to live in. But no
endurance for losing it. Too much had been endured just before life
got to him.

MADELINE: Do you know, Uncle Felix—I’m afraid that’s true?
(he nods) Sometimes when I’m with father I feel those things
near—the—the too much—the too hard,—feel
them as you’d feel the cold. And now that it’s
different—easier—he can’t come into the world that’s
been earned. Oh, I wish I could help him!

(As they sit there together, now for the first
time really together, there is a shrill shout of derision from
outside.)

MADELINE: What’s that? (a whistled call) Horace! That’s
Horace’s call. That’s for his gang. Are they going to start
something now that will get Atma in jail?

FEJEVARY: More likely he’s trying to start something. (they
are both listening intently) I don’t think our boys will stand
much more.

(A scoffing whoop. MADELINE springs to the
window; he reaches it ahead and holds it.)

FEJEVARY: This window stays closed.

(She starts to go away, he takes hold of
her.)

MADELINE: You think you can keep me in here?

FEJEVARY: Listen, Madeline—plain, straight truth. If you
go out there and get in trouble a second time, I can’t make it
right for you.

MADELINE: You needn’t!

FEJEVARY: You don’t know what it means. These things are not
child’s play—not today. You could get twenty years in prison
for things you’ll say if you rush out there now. (she
laughs) You laugh because you’re ignorant. Do you know that in
America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more
than you’ve said here to me!

MADELINE: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!

FEJEVARY: I? Ashamed of myself?

MADELINE: Yes! Aren’t you an American? (a whistle) Isn’t
that a policeman’s whistle? Are they coming back? Are they hanging
around here to—(pulling away from her uncle as he turns to
look, she jumps up in the deep sill and throws open the window.
Calling down) Here—Officer—You—Let
that boy alone!

FEJEVARY: (going left, calling sharply) Holden. Professor
Holden—here—quick!

VOICE: (coming up from below, outside) Who says so?

MADELINE: I say so!

VOICE: And who are you talking for?

MADELINE: I am talking for Morton College!

FEJEVARY: (returning—followed, reluctantly, by
HOLDEN) Indeed you are not. Close that window or you’ll be expelled
from Morton College.

(Sounds of a growing crowd outside.)

VOICE: Didn’t I see you at the station?

MADELINE: Sure you saw me at the station. And you’ll see me
there again, if you come bullying around here. You’re not what this
place is for! (her uncle comes up behind, right, and tries to
close the window—she holds it out) My grandfather gave
this hill to Morton College—a place where anybody—from
any land—can come and say what he believes to be true! Why,
you poor simp—this is America! Beat it from here! Atna! Don’t
let him take hold of you like that! He has no right to—Oh,
let me down there!

(Springs down, would go off right, her uncle
spreads out his arms to block that passage. She turns to go the
other way.)

FEJEVARY: Holden! Bring her to her senses. Stand there. (HOLDEN
has not moved from the place he entered, left, and so blocks the
doorway) Don’t let her pass.

(Shouts of derision outside.)

MADELINE: You think you can keep me in here—with that
going on out there? (Moves nearer HOLDEN, stands there
before him, taut, looking him straight in the eye. After a moment,
slowly, as one compelled, he steps aside for her to pass. Sound of
her running footsteps. The two men’s eyes meet. A door
slams.)

(CURTAIN)

ACT IV

SCENE: At the MORTON place, the same
room in which SILAS MORTON told his friend FELIX
FEJEVARY of his plan for the hill. The room has not altogether
changed since that day in 1879. The table around which they dreamed
for the race is in its old place. One of the old chairs is there,
the other two are modern chairs. In a corner is the rocker in
which GRANDMOTHER MORTON sat. This is early afternoon, a
week after the events of Act II.

MADELINE is sitting at the table, in her hand a
torn, wrinkled piece of brown paper-peering at writing almost too
fine to read. After a moment her hand goes out to a beautiful dish
on the table—an old dish of coloured Hungarian glass. She is
about to take something from this, but instead lets her hand rest
an instant on the dish itself Then turns and through the open door
looks out at the hill, sitting where her GRANDFATHER MORTON
sat when he looked out at the hill.

Her father, IRA MORTON, appears outside,
walking past the window, left. He enters, carrying a grain sack,
partly filled. He seems hardly aware of MADELINE, but taking
a chair near the door, turned from her, opens the sack and takes
out a couple of ears of corn. As he is bent over them, examining in
a shrewd, greedy way, MADELINE looks at that lean,
tormented, rather desperate profile, the look of one confirming a
thing she fears. Then takes up her piece of paper.

MADELINE: Do you remember Fred Jordan, father? Friend of our
Fred—and of mine?

IRA: (not wanting to take his mind from the corn) No. I
don’t remember him. (his voice has that timbre of one not
related to others)

MADELINE: He’s in prison now.

IRA: Well I can’t help that. (after taking out another
ear) This is the best corn I ever had. (he says it
gloatingly to himself)

MADELINE: He got this letter out to me—written on this
scrap of paper. They don’t give him paper. (peering) Written
so fine I can hardly read it. He’s in what they call ‘the hold’,
father—a punishment cell. (with difficulty reading it)
It’s two and a half feet at one end, three feet at the other, and
six feet long. He’d been there ten days when he wrote this. He gets
two slices of bread a day; he gets water; that’s all he gets. This
because he balled the deputy warden out for chaining another
prisoner up by the wrists.

IRA: Well, he’d better a-minded his own business. And you better
mind yours. I’ve got no money to spend in the courts. (with
excitement) I’ll not mortgage this farm! It’s been clear since
the day my father’s father got it from the government—and it
stays clear—till I’m gone. It grows the best corn in the
state—best corn in the Mississippi Valley. Not for
anything—you hear me?—would I mortgage this farm
my father handed down to me.

MADELINE: (hurt) Well, father, I’m not asking you to.

IRA: Then go and see your Uncle Felix. Make it up with him.
He’ll help you—if you say you’re sorry.

MADELINE: I’ll not go to Uncle Felix.

IRA: Who will you go to then? (pause) Who will help you
then? (again he waits) You come before this United States
Commissioner with no one behind you, he’ll hold you for the grand
jury. Judge Watkins told Felix there’s not a doubt of it. You know
what that means? It means you’re on your way to a cell. Nice thing
for a Morton, people who’ve had their own land since we got it from
the Indians. What’s the matter with your uncle? Ain’t he always
been good to you? I’d like to know what things would ‘a’ been for
you without Felix and Isabel and all their friends. You want to
think a little. You like good times too well to throw all that
away.

MADELINE: I do like good times. So does Fred Jordan like good
times. (smooths the wrinkled paper) I don’t know
anybody—unless it is myself—loves to be out, as he
does. (she tries to look out, but cannot; sits very still,
seeing what it is pain to see. Rises, goes to that corner closet,
the same one from which SILAS MORTON took the deed to the
hill. She gets a yard stick, looks in a box and finds a piece of
chalk. On the floor she marks off FRED JORDAN’S cell.
Slowly, at the end left unchalked, as for a door, she goes in. Her
hand goes up as against a wall; looks at her other hand, sees it is
out too far, brings it in, giving herself the width of the cell.
Walks its length, halts, looks up.) And one window—too
high up to see out.

(In the moment she stands there, she is in that
cell; she is all the people who are in those cells. EMIL
JOHNSON appears from outside; he is the young man brought up on
a farm, a crudely Americanized Swede.)

MADELINE: (stepping out of the cell door, and around it)
Hello, Emil.

EMIL: How are you, Madeline? How do, Mr Morton. (IRA barely
nods and does not turn. In an excited manner he begins gathering up
the corn he has taken from the sack. EMIL turns back to
MADELINE) Well, I’m just from the courthouse. Looks like you and I
might take a ride together, Madeline. You come before the
Commissioner at four.

IRA: What have you got to do with it?

MADELINE: Oh, Emil has a courthouse job now, father. He’s part
of the law.

IRA: Well, he’s not going to take you to the law! Anybody
else—not Emil Johnson!

MADELINE: (astonished—and gently, to make up for his
rudeness) Why—father, why not Emil? Since I’m going, I
think it’s nice to go in with someone I know—with a neighbour
like Emil.

IRA: If this is what he lived for! If this is
why—

(He twists the ear of corn until some of the
kernels drip off. MADELINE and EMIL look at one
another in bewilderment.)

EMIL: It’s too bad anybody has to take Madeline in. I should
think your uncle could fix it up. (low) And with your father
taking it like this—(to help IRA) That’s fine corn, Mr
Morton. My corn’s getting better all the time, but I’d like to get
some of this for seed.

IRA: (rising and turning on him) You get my corn? I raise
this corn for you? (not to them—his mind now going where
it is shut off from any other mind) If I could make the
wind stand still! I want to turn the wind around.

MADELINE: (going to him) Why—father. I don’t
understand at all.

IRA: Don’t understand. Nobody understands. (a curse with a
sob in it) God damn the wind!

(Sits down, his back to them.)

EMIL: (after a silence) Well, I’ll go. (but he
continues to look at IRA, who is holding the sack of com
shut, as if someone may take it) Too bad—(stopped by a
sign from MADELINE, not to speak of it) Well, I was
saying, I have go on to Beard’s Crossing. I’ll stop for you on my
way back. (confidentially) Couldn’t you telephone your
uncle? He could do something. You don’t know what you’re going up
against. You heard what the Hindus got, I suppose.

MADELINE: No. I haven’t seen anyone to-day.

EMIL: They’re held for the grand jury. They’re locked up now. No
bail for them. I’ve got the inside dope about them. They’re going
to get what this country can hand ’em; then after we’ve given them
a nice little taste of prison life in America, they’re going to be
sent back home—to see what India can treat them to.

MADELINE: Why are you so pleased about this, Emil?

EMIL: Pleased? It’s nothin’ to me—I’m just telling you.
Guess you don’t know much about the Espionage Act or you’d go and
make a little friendly call on your uncle. When your case comes to
trial—and Judge Lenon may be on the
bench—(whistles) He’s one fiend for Americanism. But
if your uncle was to tell the right parties that you’re just a
girl, and didn’t realize what you were saying—

MADELINE: I did realize what I was saying, and every word you’ve
just said makes me know I meant what I said. I said if this was
what our country has come to, then I’m not for our country. I said
that—and a-plenty more—and I’ll say it again!

EMIL: Well—gee, you don’t know what it means.

MADELINE: I do know what it means, but it means not being a
coward.

EMIL: Oh, well—Lord, you can’t say everything you think.
If everybody did that, things’d be worse off than they are now.

MADELINE: Once in a while you have to say what you
think—or hate yourself.

EMIL: (with a grin) Then hate yourself.

MADELINE: (smiling too) No thank you; it spoils my
fun.

EMIL: Well, look-a-here, Madeline, aren’t you spoiling your fun
now? You’re a girl who liked to be out. Ain’t I seen you from our
place, with this one and that one, sometimes all by yourself,
strikin’ out over the country as if you was crazy about it? How’d
you like to be where you couldn’t even see out?

MADELINE: (a step nearer the cell) There oughtn’t to be
such places.

EMIL: Oh, well—Jesus, if you’re going to talk about
that—! You can’t change the way things are.

MADELINE: (quietly) Why can’t I?

EMIL: Well, say, who do you think you are?

MADELINE: I think I’m an American. And for that reason I think I
have something to say about America.

EMIL: Huh! America’ll lock you up for your pains.

MADELINE: All right. If it’s come to that, maybe I’d rather be a
locked-up American than a free American.

EMIL: I don’t think you’d like the place, Madeline. There’s not
much tennis played there. Jesus—what’s Hindus?

MADELINE: You aren’t really asking Jesus, are you, Emil?
(smiles) You mightn’t like his answer.

EMIL: (from the door) Take a tip. Telephone your
uncle.

(He goes.)

IRA: (not looking at her) There might be a fine, and
they’d come down on me and take my land.

MADELINE: Oh, no, father, I think not. Anyway, I have a little
money of my own. Grandfather Morton left me something. Have you
forgotten that?

IRA: No. No, I know he left you something. (the words seem to
bother him) I know he left you something.

MADELINE: I get it to-day. (wistfully) This is my
birthday, father. I’m twenty-one.

IRA: Your birthday? Twenty-one? (in pain) Was that
twenty-one years ago? (it is not to his daughter this has turned
him)

MADELINE: It’s the first birthday I can remember that I haven’t
had a party.

IRA: It was your Aunt Isabel gave you your parties.

MADELINE: Yes.

IRA: Well, you see now.

MADELINE: (stoutly) Oh, well, I don’t need a party. I’m
grown up now.

(She reaches out for the old Hungarian dish on
the table; holding it, she looks to her father, whose back is still
turned. Her face tender, she is about to speak when he
speaks.)

IRA: Grown up now—and going off and leaving me alone. You
too—the last one. And—what for? (turning, looking
around the room as for those long gone) There used to be so
many in this house. My grandmother. She sat there. (pointing to
the place near the open door) Fine days like this—in that
chair (points to the rocker) she’d sit there—tell me
stories of the Indians. Father. It wasn’t ever lonely where father
was. Then Madeline Fejevary—my Madeline came to this house.
Lived with me in this house. Then one day she—walked out of
this house. Through that door—through the field—out of
this house. (bitter silence) Then Fred—out of this
house. Now you. With Emil Johnson! (insanely, and almost with
relief at leaving things more sane) Don’t let him touch my
corn. If he touches one kernel of this corn! (with the suspicion
of the tormented mind) I wonder where he went? How do I know he
went where he said he was going? (getting up) I dunno
as that south bin’s locked.

MADELINE: Oh—father!

IRA: I’ll find out. How do I know what he’s doing?

(He goes out, turning left. MADELINE goes
to the window and looks after him. A moment later, hearing someone
at the door, she turns and finds her AUNT ISABEL, who has
appeared from right. Goes swiftly to her, hands out.)

MADELINE: Oh, auntie—I’m glad you came! It’s my
birthday, and I’m—lonely.

AUNT ISABEL: You dear little girl! (again giving her a hug,
which MADELINE returns, lovingly) Don’t I know it’s your
birthday? Don’t think that day will ever get by while your Aunt
Isabel’s around. Just see what’s here for your birthday. (hands
her the package she is carrying)

MADELINE: (with a gasp—suspecting from its shape)
Oh! (her face aglow) Why—is it?

AUNT ISABEL: (laughing affectionately) Foolish child,
open it and see.

(MADELINE loosens the paper and pulls out a
tennis racket.)

MADELINE: (excited, and moved) Oh, aunt Isabel! that was
dear of you. I shouldn’t have thought you’d—quite do
that.

AUNT ISABEL: I couldn’t imagine Madeline without a racket.
(gathering up the paper, lightly reproachful) But be a
little careful of it, Madeline. It’s meant for tennis balls.
(they laugh together)

MADELINE: (making a return with it) It’s a peach.
(changing) Wonder where I’ll play now.

AUNT ISABEL: Why, you’ll play on the courts at Morton College.
Who has a better right?

MADELINE: Oh, I don’t know. It’s pretty much balled up, isn’t
it?

AUNT ISABEL: Yes; we’ll have to get it straightened out.
(gently) It was really dreadful of you, Madeline, to rush
out a second time. It isn’t as if they were people who were
anything to you.

MADELINE: But, auntie, they are something to me.

AUNT ISABEL: Oh, dear, that’s what Horace said.

MADELINE: What’s what Horace said?

AUNT ISABEL: That you must have a case on one of them.

MADELINE: That’s what Horace would say. That makes me sore!

AUNT ISABEL: I’m sorry I spoke of it. Horace is absurd in some
ways.

MADELINE: He’s a—

AUNT ISABEL: (stopping it with her hand) No, he isn’t.
He’s a headstrong boy, but a very loving one. He’s dear with me,
Madeline.

MADELINE: Yes. You are good to each other. (her eyes are
drawn to the cell)

AUNT ISABEL: Of course we are. We’d be a pretty poor sort if we
weren’t. And these are days when we have to stand
together—all of us who are the same kind of people must stand
together because the thing that makes us the same kind of people is
threatened.

MADELINE: Don’t you think we’re rather threatening it ourselves,
auntie?

AUNT ISABEL: Why, no, we’re fighting for it.

MADELINE: Fighting for what?

AUNT ISABEL: For Americanism; for—democracy.

MADELINE: Horace is fighting for it?

AUNT ISABEL: Well, Horace does go at it as if it were a football
game, but his heart’s in the right place.

MADELINE: Somehow, I don’t seem to see my heart in that
place.

AUNT ISABEL: In what place?

MADELINE: Where Horace’s heart is.

AUNT ISABEL: It’s too bad you and Horace quarrel. But you and I
don’t quarrel, Madeline.

MADELINE: (again drawn to the cell) No. You and I don’t
quarrel. (she is troubled)

AUNT ISABEL: Funny child! Do you want us to?

(MADELINE turns, laughing a little, takes the
dish from the table, holds it out to her aunt.)

MADELINE: Have some fudge, auntie.

AUNT ISABEL: (taking the dish) Do you use
them?—the old Hungarian dishes? (laughingly) I’m not
allowed to—your uncle is so choice of the few pieces we have.
And here are you with fudge in one of them.

MADELINE: I made the fudge because—oh, I don’t know, I had
to do something to celebrate my birthday.

AUNT ISABEL: (under her breath) Dearie!

MADELINE: And then that didn’t seem to—make a birthday, so
I happened to see this, way up on a top shelf, and I remembered
that it was my mother’s. It was nice to get it down and use
it—almost as if mother was giving me a birthday present.

AUNT ISABEL: And how she would love to give you a birthday
present.

MADELINE: It was her mother’s, I suppose, and they brought it
from Hungary.

AUNT ISABEL: Yes. They brought only a very few things with them,
and left—oh, so many beautiful ones behind.

MADELINE: (quietly) Rather nice of them, wasn’t it?
(her aunt waits inquiringly) To leave their own beautiful
things—their own beautiful life behind—simply because
they believed life should be more beautiful for more people.

AUNT ISABEL: (with constraint) Yes. (gayly turning
it) Well, now, as to the birthday. What do you suppose Sarah is
doing this instant? Putting red frosting on white frosting,
(writing it with her finger) Madeline. And what do you
suppose Horace is doing? (this a little reproachfully)
Running around buying twenty-one red candles. Twenty-two—one
to grow on. Big birthday cake. Party to-night.

MADELINE: But, auntie, I don’t see how I can be there.

AUNT ISABEL: Listen, dear. Now, we’ve got to use our wits and
all pull together. Of course we’d do anything in the world rather
than see you—left to outsiders. I’ve never seen your uncle as
worried, and—truly, Madeline, as sad. Oh, my dear, it’s these
human things that count! What would life be without the love we
have for each other?

MADELINE: The love we have for each other?

AUNT ISABEL: Why, yes, dearest. Don’t turn away from me
Madeline. Don’t—don’t be strange. I wonder if you realize how
your uncle has worked to have life a happy thing for all of us? Be
a little generous to him. He’s had this great burden of bringing
something from another day on into this day. It is not as simple as
it may seem. He’s done it as best he could. It will hurt him as
nothing has ever hurt him if you now undo that work of his life.
Truly, dear, do you feel you know enough about it to do that?
Another thing: people are a little absurd out of their own places.
We need to be held in our relationships—against our
background—or we are—I don’t know—grotesque. Come
now, Madeline, where’s your sense of humour? Isn’t it a little
absurd for you to leave home over India’s form of government?

MADELINE: It’s not India. It’s America. A sense of humour is
nothing to hide behind!

AUNT ISABEL: (with a laugh) I knew I wouldn’t be a
success at world affairs—better leave that to Professor
Holden. (a quick keen look from MADELINE) They’ve driven on
to the river—they’ll be back for me, and then he wants to
stop in for a visit with you while I take Mrs Holden for a further
ride. I’m worried about her. She doesn’t gain strength at all since
her operation. I’m going to try keeping her out in the air all I
can.

MADELINE: It’s dreadful about families!

AUNT ISABEL: Dreadful? Professor Holden’s devotion to his wife
is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

MADELINE: And is that all you see it in?

AUNT ISABEL: You mean the—responsibility it brings? Oh,
well—that’s what life is. Doing for one another. Sacrificing
for one another.

MADELINE: I hope I never have a family.

AUNT ISABEL: Well, I hope you do. You’ll miss the best of life
if you don’t. Anyway, you have a family. Where is your father?

MADELINE: I don’t know.

AUNT ISABEL: I’d like to see him.

MADELINE: There’s no use seeing him today.

AUNT ISABEL: He’s—?

MADELINE: Strange—shut in—afraid something’s going
to be taken from him.

AUNT ISABEL: Poor Ira. So much has been taken from him. And now
you. Don’t hurt him again, Madeline. He can’t bear it. You see what
it does to him.

MADELINE: He has—the wrong idea about things.

AUNT ISABEL: ‘The wrong idea!’ Oh, my child—that’s awfully
young and hard. It’s so much deeper than that. Life has made him
into something—something he can’t escape.

MADELINE: (with what seems sullenness) Well, I don’t want
to be made into that thing.

AUNT ISABEL: Of course not. But you want to help him, don’t you?
Now, dear—about your birthday party—

MADELINE: The United States Commissioner is giving me my
birthday party.

AUNT ISABEL: Well, he’ll have to put his party off. Your uncle
has been thinking it all out. We’re to go to his office and you’ll
have a talk with him and with Judge Watkins. He’s off the state
supreme bench now—practising again, and as a favour to your
uncle he will be your lawyer. You don’t know how relieved we are at
this, for Judge Watkins can do—anything he wants to do,
practically. Then you and I will go on home and call up some of the
crowd to come in and dance to-night. We have some beautiful new
records. There’s a Hungarian waltz—

MADELINE: And what’s the price of all this, auntie?

AUNT ISABEL: The—Oh, you mean—Why, simply say you
felt sorry for the Hindu students because they seemed rather alone;
that you hadn’t realized—what they were, hadn’t thought out
what you were saying—

MADELINE: And that I’m sorry and will never do it again.

AUNT ISABEL: I don’t know that you need say that. It would be
gracious, I think, to indicate it.

MADELINE: I’m sorry you—had the cake made. I suppose you
can eat it, anyway. I (turning away)—can’t eat it.

AUNT ISABEL: Why—Madeline.

(Seeing how she has hurt her, MADELINE
goes out to her aunt.)

MADELINE: Auntie, dear! I’m sorry—if I hurt your
feelings.

AUNT ISABEL: (quick to hold out a loving hand, laughing a
little) They’ve been good birthday cakes, haven’t they,
Madeline?

MADELINE: (she now trying not to cry) I don’t
know—what I’d have done without them. Don’t know—what I
will do without them. I don’t—see it.

AUNT ISABEL: Don’t try to. Please don’t see it! Just let me go
on helping you. That’s all I ask. (she draws MADELINE to
her) Ah, dearie, I held you when you were a little baby without
your mother. All those years count for something, Madeline. There’s
just nothing to life if years of love don’t count for something.
(listening) I think I hear them. And here are we, weeping
like two idiots. (MADELINE brushes away tears, AUNT ISABEL
arranges her veil, regaining her usual poise) Professor
Holden was hoping you’d take a tramp with him. Wouldn’t that do you
good? Anyway, a talk with him will be nice. I know he admires you
immensely, and really—perhaps I shouldn’t let you know
this—sympathizes with your feeling. So I think his maturer
way of looking at things will show you just the adjustment you need
to become a really big and useful person. There’s so much to be
done in the world, Madeline. Of course we ought to make it a better
world. (in a manner of agreement with MADELINE) I feel very
strongly about all that. Perhaps we can do some things together.
I’d love that. Don’t think I’m hopeless! Way down deep we have the
same feeling. Yes, here’s Professor Holden.

(HOLDEN comes in. He seems older.)

HOLDEN: And how are you, Madeline? (holding out his
hand)

MADELINE: I’m—all right.

HOLDEN: Many happy returns of the day. (embarrassed by her
half laugh) The birthday.

AUNT ISABEL: And did you have a nice look up the river?

HOLDEN: I never saw this country as lovely as it is to-day. Mary
is just drinking it in.

AUNT ISABEL: You don’t think the further ride will be too
much?

HOLDEN: Oh, no—not in that car.

AUNT ISABEL: Then we’ll go on—perhaps as far as Laughing
Creek. If you two decide on a tramp—take that road and we’ll
pick you up. (smiling warmly, she goes out)

HOLDEN: How good she is.

MADELINE: Yes. That’s just the trouble.

HOLDEN: (with difficulty getting past this) How about a
little tramp? There’ll never be another such day.

MADELINE: I used to tramp with Fred Jordan. This is where he is
now. (stepping inside the cell) He doesn’t even see out.

HOLDEN: It’s all wrong that he should be where he is. But for
you to stay indoors won’t help him, Madeline.

MADELINE: It won’t help him, but—today—I can’t go
out.

HOLDEN: I’m sorry, my child. When this sense of wrongs done
first comes down upon one, it does crush.

MADELINE: And later you get used to it and don’t care.

HOLDEN: You care. You try not to destroy yourself needlessly.
(he turns from her look)

MADELINE: Play safe.

HOLDEN: If it’s playing safe it’s that one you love more than
yourself be safe. It would be a luxury to—destroy one’s
self.

MADELINE: That sounds like Uncle Felix. (seeing she has hurt
him, she goes over and sits across from him at the table) I’m
sorry. I say the wrong things today.

HOLDEN: I don’t know that you do.

MADELINE: But isn’t uncle funny? His left mind doesn’t know what
his right mind is doing. He has to think of himself as a person of
sentiment—idealism, and—quite a job, at times.
Clever—how he gets away with it. The war must have been a
godsend to people who were in danger of getting on to themselves.
But I should think you could fool all of yourself all the time.

HOLDEN: You don’t. (he is rubbing his hand on the
table)

MADELINE: Grandfather Morton made this table. I suppose he and
Grandfather Fejevary used to sit here and talk—they were
great old pals. (slowly HOLDEN turns and looks out at the
hill) Yes. How beautiful the hill must have been—before
there was a college there. (he looks away from the hill) Did
you know Grandfather Morton?

HOLDEN: Yes, I knew him. (speaking of it against his
will) I had a wonderful talk with him once; about
Greece—and the cornfields, and life.

MADELINE: I’d like to have been a pioneer! Some ways they had it
fierce, but think of the fun they had! A whole big land to open up!
A big new life to begin! (her hands closing in from wideness to
a smaller thing) Why did so much get shut out? Just a little
way back—anything might have been. What happened?

HOLDEN: (speaking with difficulty) It got—set too
soon.

MADELINE: (all of her mind open, trying to know) And why
did it? Prosperous, I suppose. That seems to set things—set
them in fear. Silas Morton wasn’t afraid of Felix Fejevary, the
Hungarian revolutionist. He laid this country at that refugee’s
feet! That’s what Uncle Felix says himself—with the left half
of his mind. Now—the Hindu revolutionists—!
(pause) I took a walk late yesterday afternoon. Night came,
and for some reason I thought of how many nights have
come—nights the earth has known long before we knew the
earth. The moon came up and I thought of how moonlight made this
country beautiful before any man knew that moonlight was beautiful.
It gave me a feeling of coming from something a long way back.
Moving toward—what will be here when I’m not here. Moving. We
seem here, now, in America, to have forgotten we’re moving. Think
it’s just us—just now. Of course, that would make us
afraid, and—ridiculous.

(Her father comes in.)

IRA: Your Aunt Isabel—did she go away—and leave
you?

MADELINE: She’s coming back.

IRA: For you?

MADELINE: She—wants me to go with her. This is Professor
Holden, father.

HOLDEN: How do you do, Mr Morton?

IRA: (nods, not noticing HOLDEN‘s offered hand)
How’do. When is she coming back?

MADELINE: Soon.

IRA: And then you’re going with her?

MADELINE: I—don’t know.

IRA: I say you go with her. You want them all to come down on
us? (to HOLDEN) What are you here for?

MADELINE: Aunt Isabel brought Professor Holden, father.

IRA: Oh. Then you—you tell her what to do. You make her do
it. (he goes into the room at left)