Plays by Susan Glaspell Part 10

d.i.c.k: About New England?

CLAIRE: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant--about me.

HARRY: (_going on with his own entertainment_) Explain that this is what came of the men who made the laws that made New England, that here is the flower of those gentlemen of culture who--

d.i.c.k: Moulded the American mind!

CLAIRE: Oh! (_it is pain_)

HARRY: Now what's the matter?

CLAIRE: I want to get away from them!

HARRY: Rest easy, little one--you do.

CLAIRE: I'm not so sure--that I do. But it can be done! We need not be held in forms moulded for us. There is outness--and otherness.

HARRY: Now, Claire--I didn't mean to start anything serious.

CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I tell you, I want to break it up! If it were all in pieces, we'd be (_a little laugh_) shocked to aliveness (_to_ d.i.c.k)--wouldn't we? There would be strange new comings together--mad new comings together, and we would know what it is to be born, and then we might know--that we are. Smash it. (_her hand is near an egg_) As you'd smash an egg. (_she pushes the egg over the edge of the table and leans over and looks, as over a precipice_)

HARRY: (_with a sigh_) Well, all you've smashed is the egg, and all that amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So that's that.

CLAIRE: (_with difficulty, drawing herself back from the fascination of the precipice_) You think I can't smash anything? You think life can't break up, and go outside what it was? Because you've gone dead in the form in which you found yourself, you think that's all there is to the whole adventure? And that is called sanity. And made a virtue--to lock one in. You never worked with things that grow! Things that take a sporting chance--go mad--that sanity mayn't lock them in--from life untouched--from life--that waits, (_she turns toward the inner room_) Breath of Life. (_she goes in there_)

HARRY: Oh, I wish Claire wouldn't be strange like that, (_helplessly_) What is it? What's the matter?

d.i.c.k: It's merely the excess of a particularly rich temperament.

HARRY: But it's growing on her. I sometimes wonder if all this (_indicating the place around him_) is a good thing. It would be all right if she'd just do what she did in the beginning--make the flowers as good as possible of their kind. That's an awfully nice thing for a woman to do--raise flowers. But there's something about this--changing things into other things--putting things together and making queer new things--this--

d.i.c.k: Creating?

HARRY: Give it any name you want it to have--it's unsettling for a woman. They say Claire's a shark at it, but what's the good of it, if it gets her? What is the good of it, anyway? Suppose we can produce new things. Lord--look at the one ones we've got. (_looks outside; turns back_) Heavens, what a noise the wind does make around this place, (_but now it is not all the wind, but_ TOM EDGEWORTHY, _who is trying to let himself in at the locked door, their backs are to him_) I want my _egg_.

You can't eat an egg without salt. I must say I don't get Claire lately.

I'd like to have Charlie Emmons see her--he's fixed up a lot of people shot to pieces in the war. Claire needs something to tone her nerves _up_. You think it would irritate her?

d.i.c.k: She'd probably get no little entertainment out of it.

HARRY: Yes, dog-gone her, she would. (TOM _now takes more heroic measures to make himself heard at the door_) Funny--how the wind can fool you. Now by not looking around I could imagine--why, I could imagine anything. Funny, isn't it, about imagination? And Claire says I haven't got any!

d.i.c.k: It would make an amusing drawing--what the wind makes you think is there. (_first makes forms with his hands, then levelling the soil prepared by_ ANTHONY, _traces lines with his finger_) Yes, really--quite jolly.

(TOM, _after a moment of peering in at them, smiles, goes away._)

HARRY: You're another one of the queer ducks, aren't you? Come now--give me the dirt. Have you queer ones really got anything--or do you just put it over on us that you have?

d.i.c.k: (_smiles, draws on_) Not saying anything, eh? Well, I guess you're wise there. If you keep mum--how are we going to prove there's nothing there?

d.i.c.k: I don't keep mum. I draw.

HARRY: Lines that don't make anything--how can they tell you anything?

Well, all I ask is, don't make Claire queer. Claire's a first water good sport--really, so don't encourage her to be queer.

d.i.c.k: Trouble is, if you're queer enough to be amusing, it might--open the door to queerness.

HARRY: Now don't say things like that to Claire.

d.i.c.k: I don't have to.

HARRY: Then _you_ think she's queer, do you? Queer as you are, you think she's queer. I would like to have Dr Emmons come out. (_after a moment of silently watching_ d.i.c.k, _who is having a good time with his drawing_) You know, frankly, I doubt if you're a good influence for Claire. (d.i.c.k _lifts his head ever so slightly_) Oh, I don't worry a bit about--things a husband might worry about. I suppose an intellectual woman--and for all Claire's hate of her ancestors, she's got the bug herself. Why, she has times of boring into things until she doesn't know you're there. What do you think I caught her doing the other day?

Reading Latin. Well--a woman that reads Latin needn't worry a husband much.

d.i.c.k: They said a good deal in Latin.

HARRY: But I was saying, I suppose a woman who lives a good deal in her mind never does have much--well, what you might call pa.s.sion, (_uses the word as if it shouldn't be used. Brows knitted, is looking ahead, does not see_ d.i.c.k_'s face. Turning to him with a laugh_) I suppose you know pretty much all there is to know about women?

d.i.c.k: Perhaps one or two details have escaped me.

HARRY: Well, for that matter, you might know all there is to know about women and not know much about Claire. But now about (_does not want to say pa.s.sion again_)--oh, feeling--Claire has a certain--well, a certain--

d.i.c.k: Irony?

HARRY: Which is really more--more--

d.i.c.k: More fetching, perhaps.

HARRY: Yes! Than the thing itself. But of course--you wouldn't have much of a thing that you have irony about.

d.i.c.k: Oh--wouldn't you! I mean--a man might.

HARRY: I'd like to talk to Edgeworth about Claire. But it's not easy to talk to Tom about Claire--or to Claire about Tom.

d.i.c.k: (_alert_) They're very old friends, aren't they?

HARRY: Why--yes, they are. Though they've not been together much of late years, Edgeworthy always going to the ends of the earth to--meditate about something. I must say I don't get it. If you have a place--that's the place for you to be. And he did have a place--best kind of family connections, and it was a very good business his father left him.

Publishing business--in good shape, too, when old Edgeworthy died. I wouldn't call Tom a great success in life--but Claire does listen to what he says.

d.i.c.k: Yes, I've noticed that.

HARRY: So, I'd like to get him to tell her to quit this queer business of making things grow that never grew before.

d.i.c.k: But are you sure that's what he would tell her? Isn't he in the same business himself?

HARRY: Why, he doesn't raise anything.

(TOM _is again at the door_.)