Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 156

GUSTAV. I have none--and shall never have one. I am not going home because I have no home, and shall never have one.

[_Waiter comes in on the lef._]

SCENE VI.

[_Previous characters--Waiter standing back._]

GUSTAV. Bring me the bill--I'm leaving by the twelve-o'clock boat.

[_Waiter bows and exit left._]

SCENE VII.

THEKLA. Without a reconciliation?

GUSTAV [_on her left_]. Reconciliation? You play about with so many words that they've quite lost their meaning. We reconcile ourselves?

Perhaps we are to live in a trinity, are we? The way for you to effect a reconciliation is to put matters straight. You can't do that alone. You have not only taken something, but you have destroyed what you took, and you can never put it back. Would you be satisfied if I were to say to you: "Forgive me because you mangled my heart with your claws; forgive me for the dishonor you brought upon me; forgive me for being seven years on end the laughing-stock of my pupils, forgive me for freeing you from the control of your parents; for releasing you from the tyranny of ignorance and superst.i.tion; for making you mistress over my house; for giving you a position and friends, I, the man who made you into a woman out of the child you were? Forgive me like I forgive you? Anyway, I now regard my account with you as squared. You go and settle up your accounts with the other man.

THEKLA. Where is he? What have you done with him? I've just got a suspicion--a--something dreadful!

GUSTAV. Done with him? Do you still love him?

THEKLA [_goes over to him toward the left_]. Yes.

GUSTAV. And a minute ago you loved me? Is that really so?

THEKLA. It is.

GUSTAV. Do you know what you are, then?

THEKLA. You despise me?

GUSTAV. No, I pity you. It's a characteristic--I don't say a defect, but certainly a characteristic--that is very fatal, by reason of its results. Poor Thekla! I don't know--but I almost think that I'm sorry for it, although I'm quite innocent--like you. But anyway it's perhaps all for the best that you've now got to feel what I felt then. Do you know where your husband is?

THEKLA. I think I know now. [_She points to the right._] He's in your room just here. He has heard everything, seen everything, and you know they say that he who looks upon his vampire dies.

SCENE VIII.

[_Adolf appears on the right, deadly pale, a streak of blood on his left cheek, a fixed expression in his eyes, white foam on his mouth._]

GUSTAV [_moves back_]. No, here he is--settle with him now! See if he'll be as generous to you as I was. Good-by.

[_He turns to the left, stops after a few steps, and remains standing._]

THEKLA [_goes toward Adolf with outstretched arms_]. Adolf! [_Adolf sinks down in his chair by the table on the left. Thekla throws herself over him and caresses him._] Adolf! My darling child, are you alive?

Speak! Speak! Forgive your wicked Thekla! Forgive me! Forgive me!

Forgive me! Little brother must answer. Does he hear? My G.o.d, he doesn't hear me! He's dead! Good G.o.d! O my G.o.d! Help! Help us!

GUSTAV. Quite true, she loves him as well--poor creature!

[_Curtain._]

AUTUMN FIRES

A COMEDY

BY GUSTAV WIED TRANSLATED BY BENJAMIN F. GLAZER.

Copyright, 1920, by Benjamin F. Glazer.

All rights reserved.

PERSONS

HELMS, } KRAKAU, } HANSEN, } JOHNSTON, } [_Old Men, inmates of an old men's home_].

HAMMER, } BUFFE, } BOLLING, } KNUT [_An eighteen-year-old boy_].

The professional and amateur stage rights are reserved by the translator, Mr. Benjamin F. Glazer, Editorial Department, _The Press_, Philadelphia, Pa., to whom all requests for permission to produce the play should be made.

AUTUMN FIRES

A COMEDY IN ONE ACT BY GUSTAV WIED

[_The room of Helms and Krakau in the Old Men's Home. The time is afternoon of a late September day. There is a window at right looking out on the street and another at left overlooking a courtyard. There is a single door back center which opens into a corridor on both sides of which are similar doors in long regular rows and at the end of which is a stairway from the lower floors._

_An imaginary line divides the room into two equal parts. Helms lives on the street side and Krakau on the side nearest the courtyard. In each division there is a bed, chiffonier, a cupboard, a table, a sofa and several chairs. The stove is on Krakau's side, but by way of compensation Helms has an upholstered arm chair with a tall back. A lamp hangs in the exact center of the ceiling._

_Though there is a low screen which can be used as partial part.i.tion between the two divisions it is now folded and standing against the back wall, and the two tables are placed down center, end to end, so that the place is for all present purposes a single room._

_Helms' side is conspicuously ill kept and in disorder; Krakau's side is spick and span. On Helms' table there is a vase filled with flowers and near it a pair of gray woolen socks and a pair of heavy mittens. There is also a photograph of a boy in a polished nickel standing-frame._

_Helms, his spectacles on his nose, sits in his great arm chair at the table and reads a newspaper._

_Krakau sits next to him working out a problem on a chess board._

_There is a short pause after the curtain rises._]