The Naturewoman Part 4

OCEANA. Mourning!

MRS. MASTERSON. Yes... for your grandfather.

OCEANA. But, my dear Aunt Sophronia, I couldn't possibly wear mourning! No, no! I couldn't do that!

MRS. MASTERSON. [Astonished.] Why not?

OCEANA. In the first place, I never mourn.

MRS. MASTERSON. But your own grandfather, my dear!

OCEANA. But I never knew him. Aunt Sophronia... I never saw him in my life!

MRS. MASTERSON. Even so, my dear! Hasn't he left you all his fortune?

OCEANA. But am I supposed to mourn over that? Why, I'd naturally be happy about that!

LEt.i.tIA. Oceana!

OCEANA. But surely.. wouldn't you be happy about it?

MRS. MASTERSON. My child, one is not supposed to set so much store by mere money...

OCEANA. But Aunt Sophronia, money is power! And isn't anybody glad to have power? What else did I come here for?

MRS. MASTERSON. I had hoped you had come home for some other things. .. to see your relatives, for instance.

ETHEL. Here's father!

OCEANA. Uncle Quincy!

DR. MASTERSON. [Enters.] My dear girl! You have come! [Embraces her.] Why, what a picture you are! A very storm from the tropics! My dear Oceana!

OCEANA. I'm so glad to get here.

DR. MASTERSON. Yes, indeed! I can believe it! And a strange experience it must have been... your first plunge into civilization!

OCEANA. Yes, Uncle Quincy! It's been horrible!

DR. MASTERSON. Horrible, my dear? In what way?

OCEANA. It's been almost too much for me. Really... I could understand how it might feel to be sick!

DR. MASTERSON. Why, what did you see?

OCEANA. Everything! It rushed over me, all at once! The people... their dreadful faces! And such noises and odors and sights!

DR. MASTERSON. I hadn't realized...

OCEANA. And then the saloons! Rows and rows of them! It is ghastly!

LEt.i.tIA. My dear cousin, mother and I contribute regularly to a temperance society.

OCEANA. But that hasn't helped, has it? I'm almost wild about such things-they were the real reason I came home, you know.

MRS. MASTERSON. How do you mean?

OCEANA. They had got to my island! They are turning it into a h.e.l.l!

DR. MASTERSON. In what way?

OCEANA. Why, it's a long story. I didn't write... it would have taken too long. Two years ago there was a ship laid up... and the crew found, quite by accident, that our island rock is all phosphate; something very valuable... for fertilizer, it seems. So they bought land from the natives, and now there's a company, and a trading-post, and all that. And oh, my people are going all to pieces!

MRS. MASTERSON. The natives, you mean?

OCEANA. Yes... the people I have loved all my life. And I've tried so hard... I've pleaded with them, I've wept and prayed with them! But they're lost!

LEt.i.tIA. You mean rum?

OCEANA. I mean everything. Rum, and cocaine, and sugar, and canned food, and clothes, and missionaries... all civilization! And worse yet, Aunt Sophronia... ah, I can't bear to think of it!

MRS. MASTERSON. What?

OCEANA. You wouldn't let me tell you what. [In a low voice.] Imagine my people, my beautiful people, with the soft, brown skins and the big black eyes, and hair like the curtains of night. They are not savages, you understand... they are gentle and kindly. They ride the rushing breakers in their frail canoes, they fish and gather fruits in the forests, they dream in the soft, warm sunshine... they are happy, they are care-free, their whole life is a song. And they are trusting, hospitable... the wonderful white strangers come, and they take them into their homes, and open their hearts to them. And the strangers go away and leave them a ghastly disease, that rages like a fire in their palm-thatched cabins, that sweeps through their villages like a tornado. And the women's hair falls out... they wither up... they're old hags in a year or two. And the babies... I've helped bring them into the world... and they had no lips... their noses were gone! They were idiots... blind...

MRS. MASTERSON. [Wildly.] Anna Talbot! I must beg you to have a little discretion!

LEt.i.tIA. Why should we hear about these things, Oceana?

OCEANA. My dear, it comes from America. The ships came from here! There was one of them I saw... "The Mary Jane, of Boston, Ma.s.s."

MRS. MASTERSON. No doubt, among such low men... men of vile life. .. sailors...

OCEANA. No, Aunt Sophronia... you're mistaken! It's everywhere. Isn't it, Uncle Quincy? You're a doctor... YOU must know!

DR. MASTERSON. Why, to tell the truth...

OCEANA. TELL the truth! Am I not right?

FREDDY. Of course you're right!

MRS. MASTERSON. Freddy!

OCEANA. Ah! You know!

MRS. MASTERSON. This is outrageous!

OCEANA. You mean you don't teach your children about it? Why...