Plays by Susan Glaspell Part 34

SILAS: If you're right, the practical question is just a thing to fix up.

FEJEVARY: I fear you don't realize the immense amount of money required to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would have to interest rich men; you'd have to have a community in sympathy with the thing you wanted to do.

GRANDMOTHER: Can't you see, Silas, that we're all against you?

SILAS: All against me? (_to_ FEJEVARY) But how can you be? Look at the land we walked in and took! Was there ever such a chance to make life more? Why, the buffalo here before us was more than we if we do nothing but prosper! G.o.d d.a.m.n us if we sit here rich and fat and forget man's in the makin'. (_affirming against this_) There will one day be a college in these cornfields by the Mississippi because long ago a great dream was fought for in Hungary. And I say to that old dream, Wake up, old dream! Wake up and fight! You say rich men. (_holding it out, but it is not taken_) I give you this deed to take to rich men to show them one man believes enough in this to give the best land he's got. That ought to make rich men stop and think.

GRANDMOTHER: Stop and think he's a fool.

SILAS: (_to_ FEJEVARY) It's you can make them know he's not a fool. When you tell this way you can tell it, they'll feel in you what's more than them. They'll listen.

GRANDMOTHER: I tell you, Silas, folks are too busy.

SILAS: Too busy!' Too busy bein' nothin'? If it's true that we created ourselves out of the thoughts that came, then thought is not something _outside_ the business of life. Thought--(_with his gift for wonder_) why, thought's our chance. I know now. Why I can't forget the Indians.

We killed their joy before we killed them. We made them less, (_to_ FEJEVARY, _and as if sure he is now making it clear_) I got to give it back--their hill. I give it back to joy--a better joy--joy o'aspiration.

FEJEVARY: (_moved but unconvinced_) But, my friend, there are men who have no aspiration. That's why, to me, this is as a light shining from too far.

GRANDMOTHER: (_old things waked in her_) Light shining from far. We used to do that. We never pulled the curtain. I used to want to--you like to be to yourself when night conies--but we always left a lighted window for the traveller who'd lost his way.

FELIX: I should think that would have exposed you to the Indians.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. (_impatiently_) Well, you can't put out a light just because it may light the wrong person.

FEJEVARY: No. (_and this is as a light to him. He turns to the hill_) No.

SILAS: (_with gentleness, and profoundly_) That's it. Look again. Maybe your eyes are stronger now. Don't you see it? I see that college rising as from the soil itself, as if it was what come at the last of that thinking that breathes from the earth. I see it--but I want to know it's real before I stop knowing. Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be ashamed. We're not old! Let's fight! Wake in other men what you woke in me!

FEJEVARY: And so could I pay my debt to America. (_His hand goes out_.)

SILAS: (_giving him the deed_) And to the dreams of a million years!

(_Standing near the open door, their hands are gripped in compact_.)

CURTAIN

ACT II

SCENE: _A corridor in the library of Morton College, October of the year 1920, upon the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its founding.

This is an open place in the stacks of books, which are seen at both sides. There is a reading-table before the big rear window. This window opens out, but does not extend to the floor; only a part of its height is seen, indicating a very high window. Outside is seen the top of a tree. This outer wall of the building is on a slant, so that the entrance right is near, and the left is front. Right front is a section of a huge square column. On the rear of this, facing the window, is hung a picture of SILAS MORTON. Two men are standing before this portrait_.

SENATOR LEWIS _is the Midwestern state senator. He is not of the city from which Morton College rises, but of a more country community farther in-state_. FELIX FEJEVARY, _now nearing the age of his father in the first act, is an American of the more sophisticated type--prosperous, having the poise of success in affairs and place in society_.

SENATOR: And this was the boy who founded the place, eh? It was his idea?

FEJEVARY: Yes, and his hill. I was there the afternoon he told my father there must be a college here. I wasn't any older then than my boy is now.

(_As if himself surprised by this_.)

SENATOR: Well, he enlisted a good man when he let you in on it. I've been told the college wouldn't be what it is today but for you, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: I have a sentiment about it, and where our sentiment is, there our work goes also.

SENATOR: Yes. Well, it was those mainsprings of sentiment that won the war.

(_He is pleased with this_.)

FEJEVARY: (_nodding_) Morton College did her part in winning the war.

SENATOR: I know. A fine showing.

FEJEVARY: And we're holding up our end right along. You'll see the boys drill this afternoon. It's a great place for them, here on the hill--shows up from so far around. They're a fine lot of fellows. You know, I presume, that they went in as strike-breakers during the trouble down here at the steel works. The plant would have had to close but for Morton College. That's one reason I venture to propose this thing of a state appropriation for enlargement. Why don't we sit down a moment?

There's no conflict with the state university--they have their territory, we have ours. Ours is an important one--industrially speaking. The state will lose nothing in having a good strong college here--a one-hundred-per-cent-American college.

SENATOR: I admit I am very favourably impressed.

FEJEVARY: I hope you'll tell your committee so--and let me have a chance to talk to them.

SENATOR: Let's see, haven't you a pretty radical man here?

FEJEVARY: I wonder if you mean Holden?

SENATOR: Holden's the man. I've read things that make me question his Americanism.

FEJEVARY: Oh--(_gesture of depreciation_) I don't think he is so much a radical as a particularly human human-being.

SENATOR: But we don't want radical human beings.

FEJEVARY: He has a genuine sympathy with youth. That's invaluable in a teacher, you know. And then--he's a scholar.

(_He betrays here his feeling of superiority to his companion, but too subtly for his companion to get it_.)

SENATOR: Oh--scholar. We can get scholars enough. What we want is Americans.

FEJEVARY: Americans who are scholars.

SENATOR: You can pick 'em off every bush--pay them a little more than they're paid in some other cheap John College. Excuse me--I don't mean this is a cheap John College.

FEJEVARY: Of course not. One couldn't think that of Morton College. But that--pay them a little more, interests me. That's another reason I want to talk to your committee on appropriations. We claim to value education and then we let highly trained, gifted men fall behind the plumber.

SENATOR: Well, that's the plumber's fault. Let the teachers talk to the plumber.

FEJEVARY: (_with a smile_) No. Better not let them talk to the plumber.

He might tell them what to do about it. In fact, is telling them.