Chapter 3
Why not? The animals have it. Men have it at times, but we make each other forget. If we could only be each other's reminders instead of forgetters!
THE BOY
Yes! But I see the only thing to do is to go away, like you.
THE MAN
Not necessarily, I was merely a bad case, and required a desperate remedy, earth and air and freedom from others' will. I need the country, but the next man might require the city as passionately. Don't imagine that only the hermits, like me, live instinctively. It can be done in New York, too, only one mustn't be so sensitive to others.... After all, friend, we were wrong in saying that this power lies outside the world of skyscrapers and business. It doesn't lie outside nor inside. It cuts across everything. Do you see? For it's all a matter of the man's own soul.
THE BOY
Then?
THE MAN
We can't live in a vacuum. The more you feel the force, the more you must act. The more you can act. And in the long run it doesn't matter what you do, if you do what your own instinct bids.
THE BOY
Then I _could_ stay right in the midst of it?
THE MAN
Yes. And if you were thinking of writing poetry, it might even be better to stay in the midst of it. Drama, you know ... and it's time for a new drama.
THE BOY
It isn't that, with me. I can't write.... I had one splendid teacher. He used to talk about things right in class. He said that most educated people think that intellect is a matter of making fine distinctions--of seeing as two separate points what the unintelligent would believe was one point; but that this idea was _finicky_. He wanted us to see that intelligence might also be a matter of seeing the connection between two things so far apart that most people would think they were always separate. I like that. It made education _mean_ something, because it made it depend on imagination instead of grubbing. And then he told us about the history of our subject--grammar. How it began as poetry, when every word was an original creation; and then became philosophy, as people had to arrange speech with thought; and then science, with more or less exact, laws. I could _see_ it--the thing became alive. And he said all knowledge passed through the same stages, and there isn't anything that can't eventually be made scientific. That made me think a good deal. I wondered if somebody couldn't work out a way of preventing anybody from being poor. It seems so unnecessary, with so much work being done. That's what I want to do. Thanks to you, I--
THE MAN
Here's Rex! Rex, know my good friend. I know you will like him. Rex always cares for the people I do, don't you, Rex?
THE BOY
Of course, I see one thing: it's the people nearest one that make the most difference. Mother, now, she will understand.... You don't believe in marrying, though, do you?
THE MAN
I certainly do!
THE BOY
But I thought--
THE MAN
You thought because I left one woman and hadn't found another that I didn't care for women? Others believe that, too, but it isn't so. On the contrary. You see, I didn't so much leave her as get away from my own failure. Of course, there is such a thing as the wrong woman. She makes a man a fraction. The better she is in herself, the less she leaves him to live by. One twentieth is less than one half. But the right woman! She multiplies a man....
THE BOY
Oh!
THE MAN
Why, you might have told from my poems how I believe in love.
THE BOY
I don't remember any love poems.
THE MAN
Bless your heart! Every one of them was a love poem. Not the old-fashioned kind, about fading roses and tender hearts.... I sent that book out as a cry for the mate. It is charged with the fulness of love. That's why I could write about trees and storms.
THE BOY
I suppose if I had been older....
THE MAN
It isn't one's age but one's need. _She_ will understand. Look, the sun has gone round the corner of the house. Is that lunch you have in the parcel?
THE BOY
Yes.
THE MAN
Would you like to make it a picnic? I'll get something from the house, and then we can walk to the woods.
THE BOY
I'd love to!
THE MAN
All right, I'll be ready in no time. Come, Rex!
SURVIVAL
_The garden of a home in the suburbs. A man is walking up and down alone at dusk, occasionally stopping to water a plant, but more often falling into deep thought, unconscious of his surroundings. About the place there is an air of newness and prosperity._
_A young woman enters the garden from the lawn next door._
MARGARET
Look here, Roger, you can't keep this up!
ROGER
No, I can't keep this up. Besides, it's going to rain to-morrow.
MARGARET
What do you mean?
ROGER
Watering the plants. Isn't that what you meant?
MARGARET
You aren't watering the plants. I've been watching you for half an hour. If you only would! But you keep forgetting what you are at.
ROGER
I wish it were only forgetting--it's remembering.
MARGARET
Oh Roger, don't I know? But you mustn't!
ROGER
I suppose not. I suppose not.
MARGARET
I knew all along, and I kept away. How you felt, I mean. I ought to have come over a week ago. You haven't anybody to talk to--that's the trouble, Roger, really. I know. Now let's have the whole thing out. Come. And don't be afraid of me. Why, I could tie you all up in bandages if you needed it. And not flinch.
ROGER
Yes, I guess you could.... It's, it's absurd how well I keep!
MARGARET
Hm. Isn't it? You ought to be wilting away like a rose. But no, you keep your splendid strength and go on with two or three men's work! What would your mother think if she heard you talking like that? Don't you know that you couldn't please her better than by going on as you are?
ROGER
That's so. Of course. But that really isn't what I was thinking of. I was thinking how queer this whole business is. Take our family. As far back as I know we were always struggling along with many children and few means. I am the first one who could really make money. And just when I could make mother comfortable and easy ... besides, I'm all alone.
MARGARET
Ah, Roger, of course you feel that way! But you don't really appreciate that wonderful mother of yours. Do you think her happiness depended on having a new house, and a car?
ROGER
No....
MARGARET
Didn't she round out her life beautifully? Wasn't she repaid for her struggles by seeing you succeed? Didn't she pass away as quietly as going to sleep? And wasn't her marriage happy? You don't know how much a woman will meet with, if she's happy!
ROGER
That part of it I can face all right, though I suppose it's hard for the ordinary selfish man to realize that love like mother's is its own reward. But toward the end she suffered--she worried....
MARGARET
I know she did. She told me.
ROGER
She told you? I didn't know that.
MARGARET
We were good friends, your mother and I--and women. That's why she told me. And I think I reassured her.
ROGER
Oh! She did seem to get mightily comforted, just at the last. I never understood why.
MARGARET
I thank heaven I really did that!--And when I looked out the window and saw you standing here, I had to come over. I knew it wasn't your mother's death that was hurting you, but--but your brother's.
ROGER
Arthur ... I'm glad the accident happened after _she_ died.
MARGARET
Yes. But there's something else. Something that hurts. You've got to tell me. Everything. Don't be afraid. Face it.
ROGER
I have faced it. I--I've made up my mind.
MARGARET
There's still pain somewhere. Is it in the way you have made up your mind?
ROGER
How could that be?
MARGARET
It depends. But tell me what you thought--I mean during this last year or so. It didn't come to you all at once.
ROGER
Well.... Of course, I always took it for granted about his music. He seemed to be wonderful at that. And mother believed so in him. It really began when he left college, I found he had debts.
MARGARET
Debts?
ROGER
Yes. Not just clothes and living--other things. I paid up, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the things. But I thought it was just a boy's foolishness. I thought he would be all right after that, but--he wasn't.
MARGARET
He wasn't....
ROGER
No. After a couple of years I had to straighten it out again. I came down on him flat. He promised to cut it.
MARGARET
But he was doing such wonderful work!
ROGER
Yes, everybody began to say so. If he had only been that alone, the musician! But--
MARGARET
But afterward?
ROGER
Well, a year ago I began to hear things said again. And then I found letters and bills. It was the same thing all over. He hadn't kept his word.
MARGARET
But what did _he_ say?
ROGER
I let it go for weeks, hoping he would say something. But never a word.
MARGARET
He loved you so. How he must have suffered!
ROGER
Yes, I suppose he did suffer. But if he cared so for me why did he try to keep it hidden, the one thing I would hate most?
MARGARET
That was his way. It made him ashamed.
ROGER
Well, he couldn't keep it dark forever. Mother almost found out.
MARGARET
Almost found out?
ROGER
Yes. So of course I stepped in. We had a frightful row.
MARGARET
When was that?
ROGER
Six months ago. I got him clear. It was hard--this time the woman almost got him.
MARGARET
Oh!
ROGER
I helped him. But I did it on one condition--that he go to work.
MARGARET
Work? What about his music?
ROGER
That's what he said. But I asked him if he had thought about his music when he got into these scrapes. He couldn't say a word. So it was all arranged for him to go into my office, right under my eye, when mother was taken sick. Then she wanted him to stay near her, so.... And then she died. And the accident. Well I don't see what more I could have done.
MARGARET
No.... Of course, it wasn't as if you turned against him. And the office--he was to pay you back that way?
ROGER
Pay me back? Why, if he could, naturally; but that wasn't my idea, that was only incidental. My idea was to get him into the habit of hard work.
MARGARET
But he always _did_ work!
ROGER
Oh, he worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic--night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got into trouble: loafing in between.
MARGARET
Don't you remember how splendid he was the day he had just finished something? He seemed to have passed out of himself into a shining humility. It was said of Shelley: _"Sun-treader!"_... Don't you remember?
ROGER
Yes.... Oh hang it! Why couldn't he have been only that! Yes, I remember. I hoped that six months or so at the office--but no. Anyhow, it's all over now.
MARGARET
What were you going to say?
ROGER
I suppose I might as well say it: I don't believe the office would have changed him, after all. That is, permanently. He'd have done his best for a while, and then--. No, nothing could help him.
MARGARET
Is that what you have made up your mind about?
ROGER
Oh, that. Yes, that's what started me thinking. Everybody has difficulties, troubles, and I believe in helping a fellow every time. Life piles up too high against one sometimes, but a little shove from the other side will move it away. I never believed in the devil take the hindmost, at all. But this was different.
MARGARET
Different, how? What do you mean?
ROGER
I mean that as long as a fellow's difficulties are outside him you can help him, because as soon as they are removed he's himself again; but when they are inside, part of the man himself, there's nothing you can do. Nothing. You can save a person from the world, but not from himself. That's where the devil comes in. I see it now. I believe in the devil.
MARGARET
Oh! But _Arthur_....
ROGER
I know you think I'm a brute for speaking of Arthur in connection with the devil, but it wasn't the old-fashioned devil I meant. I meant the devil of unfitness. Arthur wasn't _fit_. He had every chance. We can't get away from what life is. Life shoves people to the wall every day. I've had to fight hard myself. I admit things aren't fair all round, but Arthur had his chance, two or three chances, and he just--dropped out. He couldn't _survive_. And it seems to me that for those who loved him it may be a good thing after all that he didn't have to go on.
MARGARET
Roger! You shan't say that! You shan't!
ROGER
I don't want to, Margaret, but that's what life itself says. We can't get behind life. We can't beat evolution and the law of survival.
MARGARET
But his talent, his fine talent--and his exquisite nature!
ROGER
I know. But there it is. It's kinder in the long run to be cruel, if the truth is cruel. We've got to be true to things as they are.
MARGARET
But take things as they are! He wasn't vicious about--about women, he was like a child. Of course they got his money, but even so, they weren't all mere schemers. Some of them were very decent. Why, one of them--
ROGER
What the deuce do _you_ know about them? What about one of them?
MARGARET
She cried. She said she knew it wasn't right, that he couldn't marry her, but she did like him, and she had children of her own.... I'm sure she was very tender to him.
ROGER
Who told you? Where did you see her?
MARGARET
_There._
ROGER
There! In my own house?
MARGARET
Yes.
ROGER
How did _she_ get there?
MARGARET
Your mother sent for her.
ROGER
My mother sent for her? Then she knew?
MARGARET
Yes. She knew everything.
ROGER
How?
MARGARET
_He_ told her--Arthur did.
ROGER
Good Lord! I never heard a word of it.
MARGARET
No. They were afraid--afraid you wouldn't understand.
ROGER
Afraid _I_ wouldn't understand? Why, _I_ understood only too well. It was mother that wouldn't have understood. I'd have cut my hand off rather than tell her.
MARGARET
Well, she did understand. She understood better than you did. She understood that part of him hadn't grown up. He was like a boy. He just walked into things....
ROGER
How did he ever come to tell _her_?
MARGARET
Once when he was sick. Your mother was taking care of him. He blurted it all out, like a homesick boy.
ROGER
And _she_ understood? Didn't break her heart, and all that?
MARGARET
Oh, it was a shock, naturally. But they talked it all over, and your mother sent for this woman. I knew. Arthur knew I knew....
ROGER
And mother packed her away without telling me?
MARGARET
Oh, she didn't pack her away. That is, right off.
ROGER
He kept on seeing her? With mother's knowledge?
MARGARET
Yes. Your mother liked her.
ROGER
Well, if women aren't the strangest things!
MARGARET
Yes, they are. Some of them. Fortunately. But you see how wrong you were, Roger?
ROGER
How was I wrong?
MARGARET
About this unfitness--this survival.
ROGER
On the contrary. It only proves it.
MARGARET
No, it doesn't. I've been thinking, too ... about saving people from themselves, and all that. You say it's the law of life, and we can't go beyond life.
ROGER
No, we can't. I still say it.
MARGARET
Then what about your mother? What about all women who--
ROGER
About mother?
MARGARET
Yes. Wasn't her love a part of life? And didn't she keep on loving him in spite of everything? Is that love blind and foolish--something for your old evolution to get rid of?
ROGER
I never thought of it. No, of course we don't want to get rid of _that_--but even so, she didn't save him.
MARGARET
She didn't know about it until lately--thanks to you. If she had known sooner--and anyhow, you don't know--Of course, she couldn't have saved him directly. But indirectly ... through another woman--
ROGER
Through another woman?
MARGARET
I mean, supposing there was another woman who loved him--one who could be to him all he needed, who would understand, and who was all right. One he could marry.
ROGER
Yes, but--
MARGARET
And supposing this other woman had heard things about Arthur, and was terribly hurt, and Arthur knew she was, and that's why he kept away; but your mother talked with her for a long while, and made her understand. Even sent for _that_ woman--you know. And then this woman, the right one, did understand, and was ready to marry Arthur....
ROGER
Margaret, are you crying? Are you crying, Margaret? _Margaret, was it you?_
THE TELEGRAM
_Perron, a stout, middle-aged figure, is seated in front of his watchmaker's establishment near the Place St. Sulpice. The awning sags, and the shop wears an air of sober discouragement. Whatever expression the years have left Perron's round face capable of is concentrated upon the changing scenes cinematographed to his mind's eye by some strong and unusual emotion. Alexandre, a tall, stooped man, with a flowing black tie, bows in passing with old-fashioned punctiliousness to Perron, who apparently is unaware of his presence. Suddenly Perron starts, rubs his eyes, and glares about._
PERRON
Alexandre! Alexandre!
ALEXANDRE
Good day, my friend. You seem distraught.
PERRON
Distraught! It was the strangest thing! But sit here with me. Do. I have something to tell you.
ALEXANDRE
I regret exceedingly, but a stupid engagement.... Later, perhaps--
PERRON
No! No! I insist! Only a great mind like yours can explain the strange thing which has happened.
ALEXANDRE
Ah, in that case--what is a mere business affair compared with divine philosophy? Far from being pressé, friend Perron, I have an eternity at your service.
PERRON
First of all, tell me the exact date!
ALEXANDRE
That I can do, and not on my own authority, which in such details is often unreliable. This morning my concierge announced with great delicacy and feeling that to-day is Friday, the fifteenth July, and my rent is once more due. My rent, which--
PERRON
Friday the fifteenth! Impossible!
ALEXANDRE
Alas. My concierge is of a precision the most meticulous. For all legal, financial and military affairs, throughout the French Republic at least, to-day is Friday the fifteenth. But why should this seem impossible to you, a scientist and a watchmaker?
PERRON
Only listen, and you will understand why I am tempted to doubt the calendar of the Church itself. Two weeks ago my wife announced to me that she had reason to expect the due arrival of a son. She said there could be no question it will be a son because in her mother's family for three generations it has been the same, three daughters followed by a son.
Eh bien, although I have always desired a son to follow me in this honorable and scientific profession, nevertheless I received the news with a certain consternation. In short, my affairs have not gone too well of late, and without my wife's assistance by her needle....
That evening I thought much how I might increase my funds, and so for two weeks--two weeks, mon ami--I have omitted my customary café after dejeuner, which all these years I have not failed to take with a serious group of friends at the Trois Arts, and even have I smoked no cigarettes. True, this has not added much to our wealth, though it has been some satisfaction to realize I have done my possible. My health has suffered somewhat--I have grown absent-minded, and in the morning my head feels strange. However, that may not be due entirely to my unnatural abstinence.
However, on Friday the fifteenth July, at three o'clock precisely, as I sat here in meditation having finished a small work, I saw a telegraph boy hurry toward me down the street. Then had I a premonition. My heart beat as it has not these twenty years. In an instant I was reading the message: my brother, who long ago ran away on adventure to Indo-China, had just died and left me a fortune in tea.
That was on Friday the fifteenth. And do you know what has happened since? I have lived two separate lives. Yes, two existences have unrolled before me. In one I saw myself as I would have been without the telegram. My business fell away; my son was born a daughter, to my wife's indignation and my own dismay; and having sold my little shop I sought work in a cursed factory. Ah me, it was terrible! But the other picture. With my brother's fortune I made aggrandisements and eventually moved to the Rue de la Paix. My scientific genius was at last appreciated, and my watches and clocks became the pride of the haute monde. My son grew into a fine man, much resembling myself, and after learning the profession opened a branch office at Buenos Ayres. I won the ribbon. In short, nothing lacked to make life agreeable and meritorious.
But then it was, just at that point, I came to myself and looking up recognized my friend the philosopher. Years seemed to have passed--two separate life times--and startled at finding myself seated in the same chair and wearing the same clothes, I demanded of you what day it was. And you answered Friday the fifteenth. How can such a thing be possible?
ALEXANDRE
To think that you, a watchmaker and a petit bourgeois, should experience what many a saint has died without realizing! I salute you, mystic, descendent of prophets and seers!
PERRON
But what was it then?
ALEXANDRE
What was it? A mystical experience, an experience of the highest order, like unto Saint Therese, though in symbols of mundane things. But that is the fault of the age more than yourself. With more practise your mind will exhibit even greater power. You must continue in the path. Who knows what you could do after years of self-denial, when a mere two weeks without cigarettes have brought you this vision?
PERRON
And without coffee. Don't forget the café! And now that I am rich I shall never go without it again. No, on the contrary, I shall have at least two, and on a silver tray.
ALEXANDRE
Do you mean to say you really believe?--But it doesn't matter. Whether or not the telegram came, the important fact is that you had the vision. It is for this you must be grateful.
PERRON
Can a philosopher really be such a fool? Of course the telegram came! And I am grateful!
ALEXANDRE
No. You are the most ungrateful of men. But why mention the telegram? What matters is whether your vision arose from seeing the telegram or seeing the telegraph boy? The philosophic truth is the same.
PERRON
Mon dieu! What difference does it make? But I swear I have the telegram, and it reads just as I told you!
ALEXANDRE
But no! You are ungrateful, and for that I despise you!
PERRON
But yes! And after reading it four times I locked it in my safe. Do I not _know_ I entered my shop and locked it up?
ALEXANDRE
Yes, and do you not know also that you moved to the Rue de la Paix?
PERRON
Oh! Could it have been--Then I am ruined, and my brother is the most selfish of men!
ALEXANDRE
But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. In the path shall you grow steadfast and contented.
PERRON
It doesn't matter!
ALEXANDRE
Not at all. And when you have become reasonable and grateful, I shall return and speak further with you. I shall devise for you such sacrifice as shall make the saints but as little children. Au revoir.
(_He turns away. The clock of St. Sulpice tones the half hour. The watchmaker listens to it with open mouth, and trembling violently, darts through the door of his shop._)
RAIN
PERSONS
CHARLES EVERITT MARY, his wife WALTER, seventeen ALICE, fifteen HAROLD, five
_The scene shows a hotel "parlor" in the White Mountains. Beneath the flashy ugliness of its modern wall paper and upholstery, a certain refinement persists from an older generation. The room itself is well proportioned, with a very good hearth. The parlor might once have been the ball room in a squire's mansion._
_It is about seven o'clock of an August evening, the room feebly lighted by a flickering acetylene burner. One feels the commencement of rain. A door to the rear opens and the Everitts enter, the younger children first._
HAROLD
She didn't give me any toast. I want some toast!
WALTER
A rotten supper!
MRS. EVERITT
Never mind, Harold, you had two cups of that beautiful milk.
ALICE
Of course it was rotten. Everything's second rate here. Ugh! what a musty smell!
WALTER