Plays - Susan Glaspell
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 naive.
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 naive--
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?