Plays Part 29

SILAS: I'll get them, mother.

GRANDMOTHER: Get 'em myself. Pity if a woman can't get out her own cookies.

SILAS: (seeing how hard it is for her) I wish mother would let us do things for her.

FEJEVARY: That strength is a flame frailness can't put out. It's a great thing for us to have her,-this touch with the life behind us.

SILAS: Yes. And it's a great thing for us to have you-who can see those things and say them. What a lot I'd 'a' missed if I hadn't had what you've seen.

FEJEVARY: Oh, you only think that because you've got to be generous.

SILAS: I'm not generous. I'm seeing something now. Something about you. I've been thinking of it a good deal lately-it's got something to do with-with the hill. I've been thinkin' what it's meant all these years to have a family like yours next place to. They did something pretty nice for the corn belt when they drove you out of Hungary. Funny-how things don't end the way they begin. I mean, what begins don't end. It's another thing ends. Set out to do something for your own country-and maybe you don't quite do the thing you set out to do-

FEJEVARY: No.

SILAS: But do something for a country a long way off.

FEJEVARY: I'm afraid I've not done much for any country.

SILAS: (brusquely) Where's your left arm-may I be so bold as to inquire? Though your left arm's nothing alongside-what can't be measured.

FEJEVARY: When I think of what I dreamed as a young man-it seems to me my life has failed.

SILAS: (raising his gla.s.s) Well, if your life's failed-I like failure.

(GRANDMOTHER MORTON returns with her cookies.)

GRANDMOTHER: There's two kinds-Mr Fejevary. These have seeds in 'em.

FEJEVARY: Thank you. I'll try a seed cookie first.

SILAS: Mother, you'll have a gla.s.s of wine?

GRANDMOTHER: I don't need wine.

SILAS: Well, I don't know as we need it.

GRANDMOTHER: No, I don't know as you do. But I didn't go to war.

FEJEVARY: Then have a little wine to celebrate that.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, just a mite to warm me up. Not that it's cold. (FEJEVARY brings it to her, and the cookies) The Indians used to like cookies. I was talking to that young whippersnapper about the Indians. One time I saw an Indian watching me from a bush, (points) Right out there. I was never afraid of Indians when you could see the whole of 'em-but when you could see nothin' but their bright eyes-movin' through leaves-I declare they made me nervous. After he'd been there an hour I couldn't seem to put my mind on my work. So I thought, Red or White, a man's a man-I'll take him some cookies.

FEJEVARY: It succeeded?

GRANDMOTHER: So well that those leaves had eyes next day. But he brought me a fish to trade. He was a nice boy.

SILAS: Probably we killed him.

GRANDMOTHER: I dunno. Maybe he killed us. Will Owens' family was ma.s.sacred just after this. Like as not my cookie Indian helped out there. Something kind of uncertain about the Indians.

SILAS: I guess they found something kind of uncertain about us.

GRANDMOTHER: Six o' one and half a dozen of another. Usually is.

SILAS: (to FEJEVARY) I wonder if I'm wrong. You see, I never went to school-

GRANDMOTHER: I don't know why you say that, Silas. There was two winters you went to school.

SILAS: Yes, mother, and I'm glad I did, for I learned to read there, and liked the geography globe. It made the earth so nice to think about. And one day the teacher told us all about the stars, and I had that to think of when I was driving at night. The other boys didn't believe it was so. But I knew it was so! But I mean school-the way Mr Fejevary went to school. He went to universities. In his own countries-in other countries. All the things men have found out, the wisest and finest things men have thought since first they began to think-all that was put before them.

FEJEVARY: (with a gentle smile) I fear I left a good deal of it untouched.

SILAS: You took a plenty. Tell in your eyes you've thought lots about what's been thought. And that's what I was setting out to say. It makes something of men-learning. A house that's full of books makes a different kind of people. Oh, of course, if the books aren't there just to show off.

GRANDMOTHER: Like in Mary Baldwin's new house.

SILAS: (trying hard to see it) It's not the learning itself-it's the life that grows up from learning. Learning's like soil. Like-like fertilizer. Get richer. See more. Feel more. You believe that?

FEJEVARY: Culture should do it.

SILAS: Does in your house. You somehow know how it is for the other fellow more'n we do.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, Silas Morton, when you've your wood to chop an' your water to carry, when you kill your own cattle and hogs, tend your own horses and hens, make your b.u.t.ter, soap, and cook for whoever the Lord sends-there's none too many hours of the day left to be polite in.

SILAS: You're right, mother. It had to be that way. But now that we buy our soap-we don't want to say what soap-making made us.

GRANDMOTHER: We're honest.

SILAS: Yes. In a way. But there's another kind o' honesty, seems to me, goes with that more seein' kind of kindness. Our honesty with the Indians was little to brag on.

GRANDMOTHER: You fret more about the Indians than anybody else does.

SILAS: To look out at that hill sometimes makes me ashamed.

GRANDMOTHER: Land sakes, you didn't do it. It was the government. And what a government does is nothing for a person to be ashamed of.

SILAS: I don't know about that. Why is he here? Why is Felix Fejevary not rich and grand in Hungary to-day? 'Cause he was ashamed of what his government was.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, that was a foreign government.

SILAS: A seeing how 'tis for the other person-a bein' that other person, kind of honesty. Joke of it, 'twould do something for you. 'Twould 'a' done something for us to have been Indians a little more. My father used to talk about Blackhawk-they was friends. I saw Blackhawk once-when I was a boy. (to FEJEVARY) Guess I told you. You know what he looked like? He looked like the great of the earth. n.o.ble. n.o.ble like the forests-and the Mississippi-and the stars. His face was long and thin and you could see the bones, and the bones were beautiful. Looked like something that's never been caught. He was something many nights in his canoe had made him. Sometimes I feel that the land itself has got a mind that the land would rather have had the Indians.

GRANDMOTHER: Well, don't let folks hear you say it. They'd think you was plum crazy.

SILAS: I s'pose they would, (turning to FEJEVARY) But after you've walked a long time over the earth-and you all alone, didn't you ever feel something coming up from it that's like thought?

FEJEVARY: I'm afraid I never did. But-I wish I had.