Plays by Susan Glaspell Part 31

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.

SILAS: I love land--this land. I suppose that's why I never have the feeling that I own it.

GRANDMOTHER: If you don't own it--I want to know! What do you think we come here for--your father and me? What do you think we left our folks for--left the world of white folks--schools and stores and doctors, and set out in a covered wagon for we didn't know what? We lost a horse.

Lost our way--weeks longer than we thought 'twould be. You were born in that covered wagon. You know that. But what you don't know is what _that's_ like--without your own roof--or fire--without--

(_She turns her face away._)

SILAS: No. No, mother, of course not. Now--now isn't this too bad? I don't say things right. It's because I never went to school.

GRANDMOTHER: (_her face shielded_) You went to school two winters.

SILAS: Yes. Yes, mother. So I did. And I'm glad I did.

GRANDMOTHER: (_with the determination of one who will not have her own pain looked at_) Mrs Fejevary's pansy bed doing well this summer?

FEJEVARY: It's beautiful this summer. She was so pleased with the new purple kind you gave her. I do wish you could get over to see them.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. Well, I've seen lots of pansies. Suppose it was pretty fine-sounding speeches they had in town?

FEJEVARY: Too fine-sounding to seem much like the war.

SILAS: I'd like to go to a war celebration where they never mentioned war. There'd be a way to celebrate victory, (_hearing a step, looking out_) Mother, here's Felix.

(FELIX, _a well-dressed young man, comes in_.)

GRANDMOTHER: How do, Felix?

FELIX: And how do you do, Grandmother Morton?

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I'm still here.

FELIX: Of course you are. It wouldn't be coming home if you weren't.

GRANDMOTHER: I've got some cookies for you, Felix. I set 'em out, so you wouldn't have to steal them. John and Felix was hard on the cookie jar.

FELIX: Where is John?

SILAS: (_who is pouring a gla.s.s of wine for_ FELIX) You've not seen John yet? He was in town for the exercises. I bet those young devils ran off to the race-track. I heard whisperin' goin' round. But everybody'll be home some time. Mary and the girls--don't ask me where they are. They'll drive old Bess all over the country before they drive her to the bam.

Your father and I come on home 'cause I wanted to have a talk with him.

FELIX: Getting into the old uniforms makes you want to talk it all over again?

SILAS: The war? Well, we did do that. But all that makes me want to talk about what's to come, about--what 'twas all for. Great things are to come, Felix. And before you are through.

FELIX: I've been thinking about them myself--walking around the town to-day. It's grown so much this year, and in a way that means more growing--that big glucose plant going up down the river, the new lumber mill--all that means many more people.

FEJEVARY: And they've even bought ground for a steel works.

SILAS: Yes, a city will rise from these cornfields--a big rich place--that's bound to be. It's written in the lay o' the land and the way the river flows. But first tell us about Harvard College, Felix.

Ain't it a fine thing for us all to have Felix coming home from that wonderful place!

FELIX: You make it seem wonderful.

SILAS: Ah, you know it's wonderful--know it so well you don't have to say it. It's something you've got. But to me it's wonderful the way the stars are wonderful--this place where all that the world has learned is to be drawn from me--like a spring.

FELIX: You almost say what Matthew Arnold says--a distinguished new English writer who speaks of: 'The best that has been thought and said in the world'.

SILAS: 'The best that has been thought and said in the world!' (_slowly rising, and as if the dream of years is bringing him to his feet_) That's what that hill is for! (_pointing_) Don't you see it? End of our trail, we climb a hill and plant a college. Plant a college, so's after we are gone that college says for us, says in people learning has made more: 'That is why we took this land.'

GRANDMOTHER: (_incredulous_) You mean, Silas, you're going to _give the hill away_?

SILAS: The hill at the end of our trail--how could we keep that?

GRANDMOTHER: Well, I want to know why not! Hill or level--land's land and not a thing you give away.