Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 288

DIANE. You were with him from the very beginning then.

NANETTE. I was an old maid of thirty-five. I had always lived alone. I hadn't ever had a dog to care for. Then all at once I had this baby, this little baby. I had his baby cries to call me. I had his tiny hands to kiss. I used to press my lips against his throbbing head, against the soft fissure where life and death meet, and I would say to myself, "Here, with one pressure I can crush away life. Here, with one pressure is where immortal life must have entered."

DIANE. Then later--when he grew up....

NANETTE. Day by day I watched over him. Madame was busy. Even after her husband died she was in the world. She had her writing. She had her friends. Her heart was fed in a hundred different ways. While I--I had only Maurice.

DIANE. I understand.

NANETTE. I lived only for Maurice. When I saw that it was raining I thought of Maurice. When I saw that the sun shone I thought of Maurice.

If I was awakened suddenly in the night his name was on my lips. It seemed to me I could not take a deep breath for fear of disturbing his image against my heart.

DIANE. Nanette! Can you believe that I have felt that way too?

NANETTE. You!

DIANE. Yes, yes, I have. Nanette, when he was little, when he was a boy growing up, did you never think of me?

NANETTE. Of you!

DIANE. Yes, of the woman who would eventually take your place. Didn't you think of what she would be like, didn't you plan her, didn't you pray that she might be fine and great and beautiful? I know you did. You must have! Well, I tried to mold myself that way. I tried to be worthy of every dream you could have had for him, that his mother could have had. That is how I loved him.

NANETTE. Do you know what I thought of when the idea of a woman for Maurice came into my mind? I thought that when she came--if she ever did--

[_She pauses, looking ahead of her._]

DIANE. Yes?

NANETTE [_turning and looking at Diane vindictively_]. I would kill her!

DIANE. Nanette, I would have killed myself rather than harm Maurice.

NANETTE. Then why did you allow him to throw himself away?

DIANE. Throw himself away! Nanette, I never knew what love was until Maurice came. I was older than he. I knew life better. I knew myself better. I had struggled. You say that you had to struggle because you weren't pretty. I had to struggle because I was. You can't know what it is to have every other man you meet want to possess you, not because he loves you, but because your face suggests love to him and he hasn't learned to know the difference. He finds that out later, and then he reproaches you for being beautiful.

NANETTE. To think that Maurice should fall so low!

DIANE. But I came to know things. I was determined to find love. From man to man, Nanette, I climbed up and up, picking my way, falling and getting up again. Only the truly educated can love. I loved Maurice with all the wisdom I had acc.u.mulated in years of suffering. I gave him a perfect gift I had molded in pain.

NANETTE. You! What had _you_ to give?

DIANE. Then the war broke out.

NANETTE. Yes, the war. Maurice was one of the first. He made up his mind at once.

DIANE. No, he did _not_ make up his mind at once.

NANETTE [_with a dreadful realization_]. Then it was....

DIANE. I made up his mind for him.

NANETTE [_vehemently_]. You did it! It was you then! You sent Maurice to war. After they excused him! After they gave him a post at home! You sent him to his death. Oh, I hated you before, but now....

DIANE. His mother and you clung to him. There was one excuse after the other. You made him believe that he was too delicate and sensitive. You used all of your influence. Madame le Bargy tried in every way to keep him. She even testified officially that Maurice was weak from birth and had dizzy spells and an unaccountable fear of the sea. And you testified under oath to a long and dangerous illness he had had in childhood.

NANETTE. I did that. And it was all a lie.

DIANE. But all the time I was urging him to go. We three women fought for mastery. But you see who won! I did! When he came to me at nights--in the country--to my little house where we had been so happy, there, there, in the very room where we were nearest, then I persuaded him. With my kisses, Nanette, with my arms, with all the power I had over him--then was when I thrust him away.

NANETTE [_triumphantly_]. You didn't love him then!

DIANE [_pa.s.sionately_]. Could I love Maurice and see him stay behind?

Could I really want him to save his body for me when thousands were giving theirs for France?

NANETTE. For France.... But what of us?

DIANE. Oh, the selfishness of those who have never really loved!

NANETTE. Never loved! How can you say that I have never loved?

DIANE. What can you know of my loss? Your love was a habit. It was the love you could have lavished on a dog, or a horse or anything. But with me--now that he is gone, I have lost everything. I have no place to turn. I haven't even memory, as you have. Your love always took on the color of memory, but mine was a living, flaming thing, necessary as food and drink--as life itself!

NANETTE [_white with pa.s.sion_]. But my love was pure and yours was not.

[_She crosses the room._] Good G.o.d, to think that this thing should ever have happened to us in this house! [_She covers her face with her hands and runs out back._]

[_After a moment Madame le Bargy enters, left. She is a handsome woman of fifty or more. She wears a long loose gown of white silk.

Her voice is perfectly modulated and beautiful. There is about her a gentleness and n.o.bility of perfect spiritual strength. She looks at Diane curiously for a moment, and then goes to her with hand outstretched. During the following the day is fast becoming dark, and the sun's setting is seen from the French window._]

MADAME LE BARGY. I heard Nanette's voice. She has a habit of keeping people from me, although I am always glad to see any one. May I know your name?

DIANE. My name is Diane Bertral.

MADAME LE BARGY. Diane Bertral. I have never heard of you.

DIANE. No. I am an actress. But I am not so very well known. Are you Madame le Bargy?

MADAME LE BARGY. Yes. Won't you sit down on the couch there? Why did you come to see me, Mademoiselle?

[_She sits at right forward._]

DIANE [_embarra.s.sed_]. I came.... I don't know why I came, Madame le Bargy.

MADAME LE BARGY. You know some one I know, perhaps--some friend of us both.

DIANE. Yes, that is it. Some one we have both--lost.

MADAME LE BARGY [_with a quick look at Diane_]. A _dear_ friend?