Plays Part 41

(MADELINE comes in, right. She has her tennis racket. Nods to the two men. HOLDEN goes out, left.)

MADELINE: (looking after HOLDEN-feeling something going on. Then turning to her uncle, who is still looking after HOLDEN) You wanted to speak to me, Uncle Felix?

FEJEVARY: Of course I want to speak to you.

MADELINE: I feel just awfully sorry about-banging up my racket like this. The second time it came down on this club. Why do they carry those things? Perfectly fantastic, I'll say, going around with a club. But as long as you were asking me what I wanted for my birthday-

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I am not here to discuss your birthday.

MADELINE: I'm sorry-(smiles) to hear that.

FEJEVARY: You don't seem much chastened.

MADELINE: Chastened? Was that the idea? Well, if you think that keeping a person where she doesn't want to be chastens her! I never felt less 'chastened' than when I walked out of that slimy spot and looked across the street at your nice bank. I should think you'd hate to-(with friendly concern) Why, Uncle Felix, you look tired out.

FEJEVARY: I am tired out, Madeline. I've had a nerve-racking day.

MADELINE: Isn't that too bad? Those speeches were so boresome, and that old senator person-wasn't he a stuff? But can't you go home now and let auntie give you tea and-

FEJEVARY: (sharply) Madeline, have you no intelligence? Hasn't it occurred to you that your performance would worry me a little?

MADELINE: I suppose it was a nuisance. And on such a busy day. (changing) But if you're going to worry, Horace is the one you should worry about. (answering his look) Why, he got it all up. He made me ashamed!

FEJEVARY: And you're not at all ashamed of what you have done?

MADELINE: Ashamed? Why-no.

FEJEVARY: Then you'd better be! A girl who rushes in and a.s.saults an officer!

MADELINE: (earnestly explaining it) But, Uncle Felix, I had to stop him. No one else did.

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I don't know whether you're trying to be nave-

MADELINE: (angrily) Well, I'm not. I like that! I think I'll go home.

FEJEVARY: I think you will not! It's stupid of you not to know this is serious. You could be dismissed from school for what you did.

MADELINE: Well, I'm good and ready to be dismissed from any school that would dismiss for that!

FEJEVARY: (in a new manner-quietly, from feeling) Madeline, have you no love for this place?

MADELINE: (doggedly, after thinking) Yes, I have. (she sits down) And I don't know why I have.

FEJEVARY: Certainly it's not strange. If ever a girl had a background, Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton's background. (he too now seated by the table) Do you remember your Grandfather Morton?

MADELINE: Not very well. (a quality which seems sullenness) I couldn't bear to look at him. He shook so.

FEJEVARY: (turning away, real pain) Oh-how cruel!

MADELINE: (surprised, gently) Cruel? Me-cruel?

FEJEVARY: Not just you. The way it pa.s.ses-(to himself) so fast it pa.s.ses.

MADELINE: I'm sorry. (troubled) You see, he was too old then-

FEJEVARY: (his hand up to stop her) I wish I could bring him back for a moment, so you could see what he was before he (bitterly) shook so. He was a powerful man, who was as real as the earth. He was strangely of the earth, as if something went from it to him. (looking at her intently) Queer you should be the one to have no sentiment about him, for you and he-sometimes when I'm with you it's as if-he were near. He had no personal ambition, Madeline. He was ambitious for the earth and its people. I wonder if you can realize what it meant to my father-in a strange land, where he might so easily have been misunderstood, pushed down, to find a friend like that? It wasn't so much the material things-though Uncle Silas was always making them right-and as if-oh, hardly conscious what he was doing-so little it mattered. It was the way he got father, and by that very valuing kept alive what was there to value. Why, he literally laid this country at my father's feet-as if that was what this country was for, as if it made up for the hard early things-for the wrong things.

MADELINE: He must really have been a pretty nice old party. No doubt I would have hit it off with him all right. I don't seem to hit it off with the-speeches about him. Somehow I want to say, 'Oh, give us a rest.'

FEJEVARY: (offended) And that, I presume, is what you want to say to me.

MADELINE: No, no, I didn't mean you, Uncle. Though (hesitatingly) I was wondering how you could think you were talking on your side.

FEJEVARY: What do you mean-my side?

MADELINE: Oh, I don't-exactly. That's nice about him being-of the earth. Sometimes when I'm out for a tramp-way off by myself-yes, I know. And I wonder if that doesn't explain his feeling about the Indians. Father told me how grandfather took it to heart about the Indians.

FEJEVARY: He felt it as you'd feel it if it were your brother. So he must give his choicest land to the thing we might become. 'Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be ashamed.'

(MADELINE nods, appreciatively.)

MADELINE: Yes, that's really-all right.

FEJEVARY: (irritated by what seems charily stated approval) 'All right!' Well, I am not willing to let this man's name pa.s.s from our time. And it seems rather bitter that Silas Morton's granddaughter should be the one to stand in my way.

MADELINE: Why, Uncle Felix, I'm not standing in your way. Of course I wouldn't do that. I-(rather bashfully) I love the Hill. I was thinking about it in jail. I got fuddled on direction in there, so I asked the woman who hung around which way was College Hill. 'Right through there', she said. A blank wall. I sat and looked through that wall-long time. (she looks front, again looking through that blank wall) It was all-kind of funny. Then later she came and told me you were out there, and I thought it was corking of you to come and tell them they couldn't put that over on College Hill. And I know Bakhshish will appreciate it too. I wonder where he went?

FEJEVARY: Went? I fancy he won't go much of anywhere to-night.

MADELINE: What do you mean?

FEJEVARY: Why, he's held for this hearing, of course.

MADELINE: You mean-you came and got just me-and left him there?

FEJEVARY: Certainly.

MADELINE: (rising) Then I'll have to go and get him!

FEJEVARY: Madeline, don't be so absurd. You don't get people out of jail by stopping in and calling for them.

MADELINE: But you got me.

FEJEVARY: Because of years of influence. At that, it wasn't simple. Things of this nature are pretty serious nowadays. It was only your ignorance got you out.

MADELINE: I do seem ignorant. While you were fixing it up for me, why didn't you arrange for him too?

FEJEVARY: Because I am not in the business of getting foreign revolutionists out of jail.