Plays - Susan Glaspell
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.