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Title: Theft
A Play In Four Acts
Author: Jack London
Release Date: June 25, 2007 [EBook #21936]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEFT ***
Produced by David Widger
THEFT
A Play In Four Acts
By Jack London
1910
ACT I A Room in the House of Senator Chalmers
ACT II Rooms of Howard Knox at Hotel Waltham
ACT III A Room in the Washington House of Anthony Starkweather
ACT IV Same as Act I
Time of Play, To-Day, in Washington, D. C. It Occurs in Twenty
Hours
CHARACTERS
Margaret Chalmers
Howard Knox
Thomas Chalmers
Master Thomas Chalmers
Ellery Jackson Hubbard
Anthony Starkweather
Mrs Starkweather
Connie Starkweather
Felix Dobleman
Linda Davis
Julius Rutland
John Gieford
Matsu Sakari
Dolores Ortega
Senator Dowsett Mrs Dowsett
Housekeeper, Servs
Wife of Senator Chalmers
A Congressman from Oregon
A United States Senator and several times millionaire
Son of Margaret and Senator Chalmers
A Journalist
A great magnate, and father of Margaret Chalmers
His wife
Their younger daughter
Secretary to Anthony Starkweather
Maid to Margaret Chalmers
Episcopalian Minister
Labor Agitator
Secretary of Japanese Embassy
Wife of Peruvian Minister
Agents, etc
ACTORS' DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS
Margaret Chalmers. Twenty-seven years of age; a strong, mature
woman, but quite feminine where her heart or sense of beauty are
concerned. Her eyes are wide apart. Has a dazzling smile, which
she knows how to use on occasion. Also, on occasion, she can be
firm and hard, even cynical An intellectual woman, and at the
same time a very womanly woman, capable of sudden tendernesses,
flashes of emotion, and abrupt actions. She is a finished product
of high culture and refinement, and at the same time possesses
robust vitality and instinctive right-promptings that augur well
for the future of the race.
Howard Knox. He might have been a poet, but was turned
politician. Inflamed with love for humanity. Thirty-five years
of age. He has his vision, and must follow it. He has suffered
ostracism because of it, and has followed his vision in spite
of abuse and ridicule. Physically, a well-built, powerful man.
Strong-featured rather than handsome. Very much in earnest, and,
despite his university training, a trifle awkward in carriage and
demeanor, lacking in social ease. He has been elected to Congress
on a reform ticket, and is almost alone in fight he is making.
He has no party to back him, though he has a following of a few
independents and insurgents.
Thomas Chalmers. Forty-five to fifty years of age. Iron-gray
mustache. Slightly stout. A good liver, much given to Scotch
and soda, with a weak heart. Is liable to collapse any time. If
anything, slightly lazy or lethargic in his emotional life.
One of the "owned" senators representing a decadent New England
state, himself master of the state political machine. Also, he is
nobody's fool. He possesses the brain and strength of
character to play his part. His most distinctive feature is his
temperamental opportunism.
Master Thomas Chalmers. Six years of age. Sturdy and healthy
despite his grandmother's belief to the contrary.
Ellery Jackson Hubbard. Thirty-eight to forty years of age.
Smooth-shaven. A star journalist with a national reputation; a
large, heavy-set man, with large head, large hands--everything
about him is large. A man radiating prosperity, optimism
and selfishness. Has no morality whatever. Is a conscious
individualist, cold-blooded, pitiless, working only for himself,
and believing in nothing but himself.
Anthony Starkweather. An elderly, well preserved gentleman,
slenderly built, showing all the signs of a man who has lived
clean and has been almost an ascetic. One to whom the joys of the
flesh have had little meaning. A cold, controlled man whose one
passion is for power. Distinctively a man of power. An eagle-like
man, who, by keenness of brain and force of character, has carved
out a fortune of hundreds of millions. In short, an industrial
and financial magnate of the first water and of the finest type
to be found in the United States. Essentially a moral man,
his rigid New England morality has suffered a sea change and
developed into the morality of the master-man of affairs, equally
rigid, equally uncompromising, but essentially Jesuitical in
that he believes in doing wrong that right may come of it. He
is absolutely certain that civilization and progress rest on his
shoulders and upon the shoulders of the small group of men like
him.
Mrs. Starkweather. Of the helpless, comfortably stout, elderly
type. She has not followed her husband in his moral evolution.
She is the creature of old customs, old prejudices, old New
England ethics. She is rather confused by the modern rush of
life.
Connie Starkweather. Margaret's younger sister, twenty years old.
She is nothing that Margaret is, and everything that Margaret
is not. No essential evil in her, but has no mind of her
own--hopelessly a creature of convention. Gay, laughing, healthy,
buxom--a natural product of her care-free environment.
Feux Dobleman. Private secretary to Anthony Starkweather. A young
man of correct social deportment, thoroughly and in all
things just the sort of private secretary a man like Anthony
Starkweather would have. He is a weak-souled creature, timorous,
almost effeminate.
Linda Davis. Maid to Margaret. A young woman of twenty-five or
so, blond, Scandinavian, though American-born. A cold woman,
almost featureless because of her long years of training, but
with a hot heart deep down, and characterized by an intense
devotion to her mistress. Wild horses could drag nothing from her
where her mistress is concerned.
Junus Rutland. Having no strong features about him, the type
realizes itself.
John Gifford. A labor agitator. A man of the people, rough-hewn,
narrow as a labor-leader may well be, earnest and sincere. He is
a proper, better type of labor-leader.
Matsu Sakari. Secretary of Japanese Embassy. He is the perfection
of politeness and talks classical book-English. He bows a great
deal.
Dolores Ortega. Wife of Peruvian Minister; bright and
vivacious, and uses her hands a great deal as she talks, in the
Latin-American fashion.
Senator Dowsett. Fifty years of age; well preserved.
Mrs. Dowsett. Stout and middle-aged.
ACT I
A ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF SENATOR CHALMERS
Scene. _In Senator Chalmers' home. It is four o'clock in the
afternoon, in a modern living room with appropriate furnishings.
In particular, in front, on left, a table prepared for the
serving of tea, all excepting the tea urn itself. At rear, right
of center, is main entrance to the room. Also, doorways at sides,
on left and right. Curtain discloses Chalmers and Hubbard seated
loungingly at the right front._
{Hubbard}
(_After an apparent pause for cogitation._) I can't understand why
an old wheel-horse like Elsworth should kick over the traces that
way.
{Chalmers}
Disgruntled. Thinks he didn't get his fair share of plums out of
the Tariff Committee. Besides, it's his last term. He's announced
that he's going to retire.
{Hubbard}
(_Snorting contemptuously, mimicking an old man's pompous
enunciation._) "A Resolution to Investigate the High Cost of
Living!"--old Senator Elsworth introducing a measure like that!
The old buck!---- How are you going to handle it?
{Chalmers}
It's already handled.
{Hubbard}
Yes?
{Chalmers}
(_Pulling his mustache._) Turned it over to the Committee to Audit
and Control the Contingent Expenses of the Senate.
{Hubbard}
(_Grinning his appreciation._) And you're chairman. Poor old
Elsworth. This way to the lethal chamber, and the bill's on its
way.
{Chalmers}
Elsworth will be retired before it's ever reported. In the
meantime, say after a decent interval, Senator Hodge will
introduce another resolution to investigate the high cost of
living. It will be like Elsworth's, only it won't.
{Hubbard}
(_Nodding his head and anticipating._) And it will go to the
Committee on Finance and come back for action inside of
twenty-four hours.
{Chalmers}
By the way, I see _Cartwright's Magazine_ has ceased muck-raking.
{Hubbard}
_Cartwrights_ never did muck-rake--that is, not the big
Interests--only the small independent businesses that didn't
advertise.
{Chalmers}
Yes, it deftly concealed its reactionary tendencies.
{Hubbard}
And from now on the concealment will be still more deft. I've
gone into it myself. I have a majority of the stock right now.
{Chalmers}
I thought I had noticed a subtle change in the last two numbers.
{Hubbard}
(_Nodding._) We're still going on muck-raking. We have a splendid
series on Aged Paupers, demanding better treatment and more
sanitary conditions. Also we are going to run "Barbarous
Venezuela" and show up thoroughly the rotten political management
of that benighted country.
{Chalmers}
(_Nods approvingly, and, after a pause._) And now concerning Knox.
That's what I sent for you about. His speech comes off tomorrow
per schedule. At last we've got him where we want him.
{Hubbard}
I have the ins and outs of it pretty well. Everything's arranged.
The boys have their cue, though they don't know just what's
going to be pulled off; and this time to-morrow afternoon their
dispatches will be singing along the wires.
{Chalmers}
(_Firmly and harshly._) This man Knox must be covered with
ridicule, swamped with ridicule, annihilated with ridicule.
{Hubbard}
It is to laugh. Trust the great American people for that. We'll
make those little Western editors sit up. They've been swearing
by Knox, like a little tin god. Roars of laughter for them.
{Chalmers}
Do you do anything yourself?
{Hubbard}
Trust me. I have my own article for Cartwright's blocked out.
They're holding the presses for it. I shall wire it along
hot-footed to-morrow evening. Say----?
{Chalmers}
(_After a pause._) Well?
{Hubbard}
Wasn't it a risky thing to give him his chance with that speech?
{Chalmers}
It was the only feasible thing. He never has given us an opening.
Our service men have camped on his trail night and day. Private
life as unimpeachable as his public life. But now is our chance.
The gods have given him into our hands. That speech will do more
to break his influence--
{Hubbard}
(_Interrupting._) Than a Fairbanks cocktail.
(_Both laugh._) But don't forget that this Knox is a live wire.
Somebody might get stung. Are you sure, when he gets up to make
that speech, that he won't be able to back it up?
{Chalmers}
No danger at all.
{Hubbard}
But there are hooks and crooks by which facts are sometimes
obtained.
{Chalmers}
(_Positively._) Knox has nothing to go on but suspicions and hints,
and unfounded assertions from the yellow press.
(_Man-servant enters, goes to tea-table, looks it over, and makes
slight rearrangements._) (_Lowering his voice._) He will make
himself a laughing stock. His charges will turn into boomerangs.
His speech will be like a sheet from a Sunday supplement, with
not a fact to back it up. (_Glances at Servant._) We'd better be
getting out of here. They're going to have tea.
(_The Servant, however, makes exit._) Come to the library and have
a high-ball. (_They pause as Hubbard speaks._)
{Hubbard}
(_With quiet glee._) And to-morrow Ali Baba gets his.
{Chalmers}
Ali Baba?
{Hubbard}
That's what your wife calls him--Knox.
{Chalmers}
Oh, yes, I believe I've heard it before. It's about time he
hanged himself, and now we've given him the rope.
{Hubbard}
(_Sinking voice and becoming deprecatingly confidential. _)
Oh, by the way, just a little friendly warning, Senator Chalmers.
Not so fast and loose up New York way. That certain lady, not to
be mentioned--there's gossip about it in the New York newspaper
offices. Of course, all such stories are killed. But be discreet,
be discreet If Gherst gets hold of it, he'll play it up against
the Administration in all his papers.
(_Chalmers, who throughout this speech is showing a growing
resentment, is about to speak, when voices are heard without and
he checks himself._)
(_Enter. Mrs. Starkweather, rather flustered and imminently in
danger of a collapse, followed by Connie Starkweather, fresh,
radiant, and joyous._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_With appeal and relief._)
Oh----Tom!
(_Chalmers takes her hand sympathetically and protectingly._)
{Connie}
(_Who is an exuberant young woman, bursts forth._) Oh,
brother-in-law! Such excitement! That's what's the matter with
mother. We ran into a go-cart. Our chauffeur was not to blame. It
was the woman's fault. She tried to cross just as we were turning
the corner. But we hardly grazed it. Fortunately the baby was
not hurt--only spilled. It was ridiculous. (_Catching sight of
Hubbard._) Oh, there you are, Mr. Hubbard. How de do.
(_Steps half way to meet him and shakes hands with him._) (_Mrs.
Starkweather looks around helplessly for a chair, and Chalmers
conducts her to one soothingly._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Oh, it was terrible! The little child might have been killed. And
such persons love their babies, I know.
{Connie}
(_To Chalmers._) Has father come? We were to pick him up here.
Where's Madge?
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Espying Hubbard, faintly._) Oh, there is Mr. Hubbard.
(_Hubbard comes to her and shakes hands._) I simply can't get
used to these rapid ways of modern life. The motor-car is the
invention of the devil. Everything is _too_ quick. When I was
a girl, we lived sedately, decorously. There was time for
meditation and repose. But in this age there is time for nothing.
How Anthony keeps his head is more than I can understand. But,
then, Anthony is a wonderful man.
{Hubbard}
I am sure Mr. Starkweather never lost his head in his life.
{Chalmers}
Unless when he was courting you, mother.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_A trifle grimly._) I'm not so sure about that.
{Connie}
(_Imitating a grave, business-like enunciation._) Father probably
conferred first with his associates, then turned the affair over
for consideration by his corporation lawyers, and, when they
reported no flaws, checked the first spare half hour in his
notebook to ask mother if she would have him.
(_They laugh._) And looked at his watch at least twice while he was
proposing.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Anthony was not so busy then as all that.
{Hubbard}
He hadn't yet taken up the job of running the United States.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
I'm sure I don't know what he is running, but he is a very busy
man--business, politics, and madness; madness, politics, and
business.
(_She stops breathlessly and glances at tea-table._) Tea. I should
like a cup of tea. Connie, I shall stay for a cup of tea, and
then, if your father hasn't come, we'll go home. (_To Chalmers._)
Where is Tommy?
{Chalmers}
Out in the car with Madge.
(_Glances at tea-table and consults watch._) She should be back
now.
{Connie}
Mother, you mustn't stay long. I have to dress.
{Chalmers}
Oh, yes, that dinner.
(_Yawns._) I wish I could loaf to-night.
{Connie}
(_Explaining to Hubbard._) The Turkish Charge d'Affaires--I never
can remember his name. But he's great fun--a positive joy. He's
giving the dinner to the British Ambassador.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Starting forward in her chair and listening intently._) There's
Tommy, now.
(_Voices of Margaret Chalmers and of Tommy heard from without.
Hers is laughingly protesting, while Tommy's is gleefully
insistent._) (_Margaret and Tommy appear and pause just outside
door, holding each other's hands, facing each other, too immersed
in each other to be aware of the presence of those inside the
room. Margaret and Tommy are in street costume._)
{Tommy} (_Laughing._)
But mama.
{Margaret}
(_Herself laughing, but shaking her head._) No. Tommy First--
{Margaret}
No; you must run along to Linda, now, mother's boy. And we'll
talk about that some other time.
(_Tommy notices for the first time that there are persons in the
room. He peeps in around the door and espies Mrs. Starkweather.
At the same moment, impulsively, he withdraws his hands and runs
in to Mrs. Starkweather._)
{Tommy}
(_Who is evidently fond of his grandmother._) Grandma!
(_They embrace and make much of each other._)
(_Margaret enters, appropriately greeting the others--a kiss
(_maybe_) to Connie, and a slightly cold handshake to Hubbard._)
{Margaret}
(_To Chalmers._) Now that you're here, Tom, you mustn't run away.
(_Greets Mrs. Starkweather._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Turning Tommy's face to the light and looking at it anxiously._)
A trifle thin, Margaret.
{Margaret}
On the contrary, mother----
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_To Chalmers._) Don't you think so, Tom?
{Connie}
(_Aside to Hubbard._) Mother continually worries about his health.
{Hubbard}
A sturdy youngster, I should say.
{Tommy}
(_To Chalmers._) I'm an Indian, aren't I, daddy?
{Chalmers}
(_Nodding his head emphatically._) And the stoutest-hearted in the
tribe.
(_Linda appears in doorway, evidently looking for Tommy, and
Chalmers notices her._) There's Linda looking for you, young stout
heart.
{Margaret}
Take Tommy, Linda. Run along, mother's boy.
{Tommy}
Come along, grandma. I want to show you something.
(_He catches Mrs. Starkweather by the hand. Protesting, but highly
pleased, she allows him to lead her to the door, where he extends
his other hand to Linda. Thus, pausing in doorway, leading a
woman by either hand, he looks back at Margaret._) (_Roguishly._)
Remember, mama, we're going to scout in a little while.
{Margaret}
(_Going to Tommy, and bending down with her arms around him._)
No, Tommy. Mama has to go to that horrid dinner to-night. But
to-morrow we'll play.
(_Tommy is cast down and looks as if he might pout._) Where is my
little Indian now?
{Hubbard}
Be an Indian, Tommy.
{Tommy}
(_Brightening up._)
All right, mama. To-morrow.----if you can't find time to-day.
(_Margaret kisses him._) (_Exit Tommy, Mrs. Starkweather, and Linda,
Tommy leading them by a hand in each of theirs._)
{Chalmers}
(_Nodding to Hubbard, in low voice to Hubbard and starting to make
exit to right._) That high-ball.
(_Hubbard disengages himself from proximity of Connie, and starts
to follow._)
{Connie}
(_Reproachfully._) If you run away, I won't stop for tea.
{Margaret}
Do stop, Tom. Father will be here in a few minutes.
{Connie}
A regular family party.
{Chalmers}
All right. We'll be back. We're just going to have a little talk.
(_Chalmers and Hubbard make exit to right._) (_Margaret puts her
arm impulsively around Connie--a sheerly spontaneous act of
affection--kisses her, and at same time evinces preparation to
leave._)
{Margaret}
I've got to get my things off. Won't you wait here, dear, in case
anybody comes? It's nearly time.
(_Starts toward exit to rear, but is stopped by Connie._) Madge.
(_Margaret immediately pauses and waits expectantly, smiling,
while Connie is hesitant._)
I want to speak to you about something, Madge. You don't mind?
(_Margaret, still smiling, shakes her head._) Just a warning. Not
that anybody could believe for a moment, there is anything wrong,
but----
{Margaret}
(_Dispelling a shadow of irritation that has crossed her face._)
If it concerns Tom, don't tell me, please. You know he does do
ridiculous things at times. But I don't let him worry me any
more; so don't worry me about him.
(_Connie remains silent, and Margaret grows curious._) Well?
{Connie}
It's not about Tom--
(_Pauses._) It's about you.
{Margaret}
Oh.
{Connie}
I don't know how to begin.
{Margaret}
By coming right out with it, the worst of it, all at once, first.
{Connie}
It isn't serious at all, but--well, mother is worrying about
it. You know how old-fashioned she is. And when you consider our
position--father's and Tom's, I mean--it doesn't seem just right
for you to be seeing so much of such an enemy of theirs. He
has abused them dreadfully, you know. And there's that dreadful
speech he is going to give to-morrow. You haven't seen the
afternoon papers. He has made the most terrible charges against
everybody--all of us, our friends, everybody.
{Margaret}
You mean Mr. Knox, of course. But he wouldn't harm anybody,
Connie, dear.
{Connie}
(_Bridling,_) Oh, he wouldn't? He as good as publicly called father
a thief.
{Margaret}
When did that happen? I never heard of it.
{Connie}
Well, he said that the money magnates had grown so unprincipled,
sunk so low, that they would steal a mouse from a blind kitten.
{Margaret}
I don't see what father has to do with that.
{Connie}
He meant him just the same.
{Margaret}
You silly goose. He couldn't have meant father. Father? Why,
father wouldn't look at anything less than fifty or a hundred
millions.
{Connie}
And you speak to him and make much of him when you meet him
places. You talked with him for half an hour at that Dugdale
reception. You have him here in your own house--Tom's house--when
he's such a bitter enemy of Tom's. (_During the foregoing speech,
Anthony Starkweather makes entrance from rear. His face is grave,
and he is in a brown study, as if pondering weighty problems.
At sight of the two women he pauses and surveys them. They are
unaware of his presence._)
{Margaret}
You are wrong, Connie. He is nobody's enemy. He is the truest,
cleanest, most right-seeking man I have ever seen.
{Connie}
(_Interrupting._) He is a trouble-maker, a disturber of the public
peace, a shallow-pated demagogue--
{Margaret}
(_Reprovingly._)
Now you're quoting somebody---- father, I suppose. To think of
him being so abused--poor, dear Ali Baba--
{Starkweather}
(_Clearing his throat in advertisement of his presence._) A-hem.
(_Margaret and Connie turn around abruptly and discover him._)
{Margaret}
And Connie Father!
(_Both come forward to greet him, Margaret leading._)
{Starkweather}
(_Anticipating, showing the deliberate method of the busy man
saving time by eliminating the superfluous._) Fine, thank you.
Quite well in every particular. This Ali Baba? Who is Ali Baba?
(_Margaret looks amused reproach at Connie._)
{Connie}
Mr. Howard Knox.
{Starkweather}
And why is he called Ali Baba?
{Margaret}
That is my nickname for him. In the den of thieves, you know. You
remember your Arabian Nights.
{Starkweather}
(_Severely._) I have been wanting to speak to you for some time,
Margaret, about that man. You know that I have never interfered
with your way of life since your marriage, nor with your and
Tom's housekeeping arrangements. But this man Knox. I understand
that you have even had him here in your house--
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting._) He is very liable to be here this afternoon, any
time, now.
(_Connie displays irritation at Margaret._)
{Starkweather}
(_Continuing imperturbably._) _Your_ house--_you_, my daughter, and
the wife of Senator Chalmers. As I said, I have not interfered
with you since your marriage. But this Knox affair transcends
household arrangements. It is of political importance. The man is
an enemy to our class, a firebrand. Why do you have him here?
{Margaret}
Because I like him. Because he is a man I am proud to call
"friend." Because I wish there were more men like him, many
more men like him, in the world. Because I have ever seen in him
nothing but the best and highest. And, besides, it's such good
fun to see how one virtuous man can so disconcert you captains of
industry and arbiters of destiny. Confess that you are very
much disconcerted, father, right now. He will be here in a few
minutes, and you will be more disconcerted. Why? Because it is
an affair that transcends family arrangements. And it is your
affair, not mine.
{Starkweather}
This man Knox is a dangerous character--one that I am not pleased
to see any of my family take up with. He is not a gentleman.
{Margaret}
He is a self-made man, if that is what you mean, and he certainly
hasn't any money.
{Connie}
(_Interrupting._) He says that money is theft--at least when it is
in the hands of a wealthy person.
{Starkweather}
He is uncouth--ignorant.
{Margaret}
I happen to know that he is a graduate of the University of
Oregon.
{Starkweather}
(_Sneeringly._) A cow college. But that is not what I mean. He is a
demagogue, stirring up the wild-beast passions of the people.
{Margaret}
Surely you would not call his advocacy of that child labor bill
and of the conservation of the forest and coal lands stirring up
the wild-beast passions of the people?
{Starkweather}
(_Wearily._) You don't understand. When I say he is dangerous it is
because he threatens all the stabilities, because he threatens
us who have made this country and upon whom this country and its
prosperity rest.
(_Connie, scenting trouble, walks across stage away from them._)
{Margaret}
The captains of industry--the banking magnates and the mergers?
{Starkweather}
Call it so. Call it what you will. Without us the country falls
into the hands of scoundrels like that man Knox and smashes to
ruin.
{Margaret}
(_Reprovingly._) Not a scoundrel, father.
{Starkweather}
He is a sentimental dreamer, a hair-brained enthusiast. It is the
foolish utterances of men like him that place the bomb and the
knife in the hand of the assassin.
{Margaret}
He is at least a good man, even if he does disagree with you on
political and industrial problems. And heaven knows that good men
are rare enough these days.
{Starkweather}
I impugn neither his morality nor his motives--only his
rationality. Really, Margaret, there is nothing inherently
vicious about him. I grant that. And it is precisely that which
makes him such a power for evil.
{Margaret}
When I think of all the misery and pain which he is trying to
remedy--I can see in him only a power for good. He is not working
for himself but for the many. That is why he has no money. You
have heaven alone knows how many millions--you don't; you have
worked for yourself.
{Starkweather}
I, too, work for the many. I give work to the many. I make
life possible for the many. I am only too keenly alive to the
responsibilities of my stewardship of wealth.
{Margaret}
But what of the child laborers working at the machines? Is that
necessary, O steward of wealth? How my heart has ached for them!
How I have longed to do something for them--to change conditions
so that it will no longer be necessary for the children to
toil, to have the playtime of childhood stolen away from them.
Theft--that is what it is, the playtime of the children coined
into profits. That is why I like Howard Knox. He calls theft
theft. He is trying to do something for those children. What are
you trying to do for them?
{Starkweather}
Sentiment. Sentiment. The question is too vast and complicated,
and you cannot understand. No woman can understand. That is
why you run to sentiment. That is what is the matter with this
Knox--sentiment. You can't run a government of ninety millions of
people on sentiment, nor on abstract ideas of justice and right.
{Margaret}
But if you eliminate justice and right, what remains?
{Starkweather}
This is a practical world, and it must be managed by practical
men--by thinkers, not by near-thinkers whose heads are addled
with the half-digested ideas of the French Encyclopedists and
Revolutionists of a century and a half ago.
(_Margaret shows signs of impatience--she is not particularly
perturbed by this passage-at-arms with her father, and is anxious
to get off her street things._)
Don't forget, my daughter, that your father knows the books
as well as any cow college graduate from Oregon. I, too, in my
student days, dabbled in theories of universal happiness and
righteousness, saw my vision and dreamed my dream. I did not know
then the weakness, and frailty, and grossness of the human clay.
But I grew out of that and into a man. Some men never grow out of
that stage. That is what is the trouble with Knox. He is still a
dreamer, and a dangerous one.
(_He pauses a moment, and then his thin lips shut grimly. But he
has just about shot his bolt._)
{Margaret}
What do you mean?
{Starkweather}
He has let himself in to give a speech to-morrow, wherein he will
be called upon to deliver the proofs of all the lurid charges he
has made against the Administration--against us, the stewards of
wealth if you please. He will be unable to deliver the proofs,
and the nation will laugh. And that will be the political end of
Mr. Ali Baba and his dream.
{Margaret}
It is a beautiful dream. Were there more like him the dream would
come true. After all, it is the dreamers that build and that
never die. Perhaps you will find that he is not so easily to be
destroyed. But I can't stay and argue with you, father. I simply
must go and get my things off.
(_To Connie._) You'll have to receive, dear. I'll be right back.
(_Julius Rutland enters. Margaret advances to meet him, shaking
his hand._) You must forgive me for deserting for a moment.
{Rutland}
(_Greeting the others._) A family council, I see.
{Margaret}
(_On way to exit at rear._) No; a discussion on dreams and
dreamers. I leave you to bear my part.
{Rutland}
(_Bowing._) With pleasure. The dreamers are the true architects.
But--a--what is the dream and who is the dreamer?
{Margaret}
(_Pausing in the doorway._) The dream of social justice, of fair
play and a square deal to everybody. The dreamer--Mr. Knox.
(_Rutland is so patently irritated, that Margaret lingers in the
doorway to enjoy._)
{Rutland}
That man! He has insulted and reviled the Church--my calling.
He--
{Connie}
(_Interrupting._) He said the churchmen stole from God. I remember
he once said there had been only one true Christian and that He
died on the Cross.
{Margaret}
He quoted that from Nietzsche.
{Starkweather}
(_To Rutland, in quiet glee._) He had you there.
{Rutland}
(_In composed fury._) Nietzsche is a blasphemer, sir. Any man who
reads Nietzsche or quotes Nietzsche is a blasphemer. It augurs
ill for the future of America when such pernicious literature has
the vogue it has.
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting, laughing._) I leave the quarrel in your hands, sir
knight. Remember--the dreamer and the dream. (_Margaret makes
exit._)
{Rutland}
(_Shaking his head._) I cannot understand what is coming over the
present generation. Take your daughter, for instance. Ten years
ago she was an earnest, sincere lieutenant of mine in all our
little charities.
{Starkweather}
Has she given charity up?
{Connie}
It's settlement work, now, and kindergartens.
{Rutland}
(_Ominously._) It's writers like Nietzsche, and men who read him,
like Knox, who are responsible.
(_Senator Dowsett and Mrs. Dowsett enter from rear._)
(_Connie advances to greet them. Rutland knows Mrs. Dowsett, and
Connie introduces him to Senator Dowsett._)
(_In the meantime, not bothering to greet anybody, evincing
his own will and way, Starkweather goes across to right front,
selects one of several chairs, seats himself, pulls a thin
note-book from inside coat pocket, and proceeds to immerse
himself in contents of same._) (_Dowsett and Rutland pair and
stroll to left rear and seat themselves, while Connie and Mrs.
Dowsett seat themselves at tea-table to left front. Connie rings
the bell for Servant._)
{Mrs. Dowsett}
(_Glancing significantly at Starkweather, and speaking in a low
voice._) That's your father, isn't it? I have so wanted to meet
him.
{Connie} (_Softly._) You know he's peculiar. He is liable to ignore
everybody here this afternoon, and get up and go away abruptly,
without saying good-bye.
{Mrs. Dowsett}
(_Sympathetically. _) Yes, I know, a man of such large affairs. He
must have so much on his mind. He is a wonderful man--my husband
says the greatest in contemporary history--more powerful than a
dozen presidents, the King of England, and the Kaiser, all rolled
into one.
(_Servant enters with tea urn and accessories, and Connie proceeds
to serve tea, all accompanied by appropriate patter--"Two lumps?"
"One, please." "Lemon;" etc._)
(_Rutland and Dowsett come forward to table for their tea, where
they remain._)
(_Connie, glancing apprehensively across at her father and
debating a moment, prepares a cup for him and a small plate
with crackers, and hands them to Dowsett, who likewise betrays
apprehensiveness._)
{Connie}
Take it to father, please, senator.
(_Note:--Throughout the rest of this act, Starkweather is like
a being apart, a king sitting on his throne. He divides the tea
function with Margaret. Men come up to him and speak with him.
He sends for men. They come and go at his bidding. The whole
attitude, perhaps unconsciously on his part, is that wherever he
may be he is master. This attitude is accepted by all the others;
forsooth, he is indeed a great man and master. The only one who
is not really afraid of him is Margaret; yet she gives in to him
in so far as she lets him do as he pleases at her afternoon tea._)
(_Dowsett carries the cup of tea and small plate across stage to
Starkweather. Starkweather does not notice him at first._)
{Connie}
(_Who has been watching._) Tea, father, won't you have a cup of
tea?
(_Through the following scene between Starkweather and Dowsett,
the latter holds cup of tea and crackers, helplessly, at a
disadvantage. At the same time Rutland is served with tea and
remains at the table, talking with the two women._)
{Starkweather}
(_Looking first at Connie, then peering into cup of tea. He grunts
refusal, and for the first time looks up into the other man's
face. He immediately closes note-book down on finger to keep the
place._) Oh, it's you. Dowsett.
(_Painfully endeavoring to be at ease._) A pleasure, Mr.
Starkweather, an entirely unexpected pleasure to meet you here. I
was not aware you frequented frivolous gatherings of this nature.
{Starkweather}
(_Abruptly and peremptorily._) Why didn't you come when you were
sent for this morning?
{Dowsett}
I was sick--I was in bed.
{Starkweather}
That is no excuse, sir. When you are sent for you are to come.
Understand? That bill was reported back. Why was it reported
back? You told Dobleman you would attend to it.
{Dowsett}
It was a slip up. Such things will happen.
{Starkweather}
What was the matter with that committee? Have you no influence
with the Senate crowd? If not, say so, and I'll get some one who
has.
{Dowsett}
(_Angrily._) I refuse to be treated in this manner, Mr.
Starkweather. I have some self-respect--
(_Starkweather grunts incredulously._) Some decency--
(_Starkweather grunts._) A position of prominence in my state.
You forget, sir, that in our state organization I occupy no mean
place.
{Starkweather}
(_Cutting him off so sharply that Dowsett drops cup and saucer._)
Don't you show your teeth to me. I can make you or break you.
That state organization of yours belongs to me.
(_Dowsett starts--he is learning something new. To hide his
feelings, he stoops to pick up cup and saucer._) Let it alone! I
am talking to you.
(_Dowsett straightens up to attention with alacrity._) (_Connie,
who has witnessed, rings for Servant._) I bought that state
organization, and paid for it. You are one of the chattels that
came along with the machine. You were made senator to obey my
orders. Understand? Do you understand?
{Dowsett}
(_Beaten._) I--I understand.
{Starkweather}
That bill is to be killed.
{Dowsett}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Quietly, no headlines about it.
(_Dowsett nods._) Now you can go.
(_Dowsett proceeds rather limply across to join group at
tea-table._) (_Chalmers and Hubbard enter from right, laughing
about something. At sight of Starkweather they immediately become
sober._) (_No hands are shaken. Starkweather barely acknowledges
Hubbard's greeting._)
{Starkweather}
Tom, I want to see you.
(_Hubbard takes his cue, and proceeds across to tea-table._)
(_Enter Servant. Connie directs him to remove broken cup and
saucer. While this is being done, Starkweather remains silent.
He consults note-book, and Chalmers stands, not quite at ease,
waiting the other's will. At the same time, patter at tea-table.
Hubbard, greeting others and accepting or declining cup of tea._)
(_Servant makes exit_).
{Starkweather}
(_Closing finger on book and looking sharply at Chalmers._) Tom,
this affair of yours in New York must come to an end. Understand?
{Chalmers}
(_Starting._) Hubbard has been talking.
{Starkweather}
No, it is not Hubbard. I have the reports from other sources.
{Chalmers}
It is a harmless affair.
{Starkweather}
I happen to know better. I have the whole record. If you wish,
I can give you every detail, every meeting. I know. There is no
discussion whatever. I want no more of it.
{Chalmers}
I never dreamed for a moment that I was--er--indiscreet.
{Starkweather}
Never forget that every indiscretion of a man in your position is
indiscreet. We have a duty, a great and solemn duty to perform.
Upon our shoulders rest the destinies of ninety million people.
If we fail in our duty, they go down to destruction. Ignorant
demagogues are working on the beast-passions of the people.
If they have their way, they are lost, the country is lost,
civilization is lost. We want no more Dark Ages.
{Chalmers}
Really, I never thought it was as serious as all that.
{Starkweather}
(_Shrugging shoulders and lifting eyebrows._) After all, why should
you? You are only a cog in the machine. I, and the several men
grouped with me, am the machine. You are a useful cog--too useful
to lose--
{Chalmers}
Lose?--Me?
{Starkweather}
I have but to raise my hand, any time--do you understand?--any
time, and you are lost. You control your state. Very well. But
never forget that to-morrow, if I wished, I could buy your whole
machine out from under you. I know you cannot change yourself,
but, for the sake of the big issues at stake, you must be
careful, exceedingly careful. We are compelled to work with weak
tools. You are a good liver, a flesh-pot man. You drink too
much. Your heart is weak.--Oh, I have the report of your doctor.
Nevertheless, don't make a fool of yourself, nor of us. Besides,
do not forget that your wife is my daughter. She is a strong
woman, a credit to both of us. Be careful that you are not a
discredit to her.
{Chalmers}
All right, I'll be careful. But while we are--er--on this
subject, there's something I'd like to speak to you about.
(_A pause, in which Starkweather waits non-committally._) It's
this man Knox, and Madge. He comes to the house. They are as
thick as thieves.
{Starkweather}
Yes?
{Chalmers}
(_Hastily._) Oh, not a breath of suspicion or anything of
that sort, I assure you. But it doesn't strike me as exactly
appropriate that your daughter and my wife should be friendly
with this fire-eating anarchist who is always attacking us and
all that we represent.
{Starkweather}
I started to speak with her on that subject, but was interrupted.
(_Puckers brow and thinks._) You are her husband. Why don't you
take her in hand yourself?
(_Enters Mrs. Starkweather from rear, looking about, bowing, then
locating Starkweather and proceeding toward him._)
{Chalmers}
What can I do? She has a will of her own--the same sort of a will
that you have. Besides, I think she knows about my--about some of
my--indiscretions.
{Starkweather}
(_Slyly._)
_Harmless_ indiscretions?
(_Chalmers is about to reply, but observes Mrs. Starkweather
approaching._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Speaks in a peevish, complaining voice, and during her harrangue
Starkweather immerses himself in notebook._) Oh, there you are,
Anthony. Talking politics, I suppose. Well, as soon as I get a
cup of tea we must go. Tommy is not looking as well as I could
wish. Margaret loves him, but she does not take the right care of
him. I don't know what the world is coming to when mothers do
not know how to rear their offspring. There is Margaret, with her
slum kindergartens, taking care of everybody else's children but
her own. If she only performed her church duties as eagerly!
Mr. Rutland is displeased with her. I shall give her a talking
to--only, you'd better do it, Anthony. Somehow, I have never
counted much with Margaret. She is as set in doing what she
pleases as you are. In my time children paid respect to their
parents. This is what comes of speed. There is no time for
anything. And now I must get my tea and run. Connie has to dress
for that dinner.
(_Mrs. Starkweather crosses to table, greets others
characteristically and is served with tea by Connie._)
(_Chalmers waits respectfully on Starkweather._)
{Starkweather}
(_Looking up from note-book._) That will do, Tom.
(_Chalmers is just starting across to join others, when voices are
heard outside rear entrance, and Margaret enters with Dolores
Ortega, wife of the Peruvian Minister, and Matsu Sakari,
Secretary of Japanese Legation--both of whom she has met as they
were entering the house._)
(_Chalmers changes his course, and meets the above advancing
group. He knows Dolores Ortega, whom he greets, and is introduced
to Sakari._)
(_Margaret passes on among guests, greeting them, etc. Then she
displaces Connie at tea-table and proceeds to dispense tea to the
newcomers._)
(_Groups slowly form and seat themselves about stage as follows:
Chalmers and Dolores Ortega; Rutland, Dowsett, Mrs. Starkweather;
Connie, Mr. Dowsett, and Hubbard._)
(_Chalmers carries tea to Dolores Ortega._)
(_Sakari has been lingering by table, waiting for tea and
pattering with Margaret, Chalmers, etc._)
{Margaret}
(_Handing cup to Sakari._) I am very timid in offering you this,
for I am sure you must be appalled by our barbarous methods of
making tea.
{Sakari}
(_Bowing._) It is true, your American tea, and the tea of the
English, are quite radically different from the tea in my
country. But one learns, you know. I served my apprenticeship
to American tea long years ago, when I was at Yale. It was
perplexing, I assure you--at first, only at first I really
believe that I am beginning to have a--how shall I call it?--a
tolerance for tea in your fashion.
{Margaret}
You are very kind in overlooking our shortcomings.
{Sakari}
(_Bowing._) On the contrary, I am unaware, always unaware, of any
shortcomings of this marvelous country of yours.
{Margaret}
(_Laughing._) You are incorrigibly gracious, Mr. Sakari. (_Knox
appears at threshold of rear entrance and pauses irresolutely for
a moment_)
{Sakari}
(_Noticing Knox, and looking about him to select which group he
will join._) If I may be allowed, I shall now retire and consume
this--tea.
(_Joins group composed of Connie, Mrs. Dowsett, and Hubbard._)
(_Knox comes forward to Margaret, betraying a certain awkwardness
due to lack of experience in such social functions. He greets
Margaret and those in the group nearest her._)
{Knox}
(_To Margaret._) I don't know why I come here. I do not belong. All
the ways are strange.
{Margaret}
(_Lightly, at the same time preparing his tea._) The same Ali
Baba--once again in the den of the forty thieves. But your watch
and pocket-book are safe here, really they are.
(_Knox makes a gesture of dissent at her facetiousness._) Now don't
be serious. You should relax sometimes. You live too tensely.
(_Looking at Starkweather._) There's the arch-anarch over there,
the dragon you are trying to slay.
(_Knox looks at Starkweather and is plainly perplexed._) The man
who handles all the life insurance funds, who controls more
strings of banks and trust companies than all the Rothschilds
a hundred times over--the merger of iron and steel and coal and
shipping and all the other things--the man who blocks your child
labor bill and all the rest of the remedial legislation you
advocate. In short, my father.
{Knox}
(_Looking intently at Starkweather._) I should have recognized him
from his photographs. But why do you say such things?
{Margaret}
Because they are true.
(_He remains silent._) Now, aren't they? (_She laughs._) Oh, you
don't need to answer. You know the truth, the whole bitter truth.
This _is_ a den of thieves. There is Mr. Hubbard over there, for
instance, the trusty journalist lieutenant of the corporations.
{Knox}
(_With an expression of disgust._) I know him. It was he that wrote
the Standard Oil side of the story, after having abused Standard
Oil for years in the pseudo-muck-raking magazines. He made them
come up to his price, that was all. He's the star writer on
_Cartwright's_, now, since that magazine changed its policy
and became subsidizedly reactionary. I know him--a thoroughly
dishonest man. Truly am I Ali Baba, and truly I wonder why I am
here.
{Margaret}
You are here, sir, because I like you to come.
{Knox}
We do have much in common, you and I.
{Margaret}
The future.
{Knox}
(_Gravely, looking at her with shining eyes._) I sometimes fear for
more immediate reasons than that.
(_Margaret looks at him in alarm, and at the same time betrays
pleasure in what he has said._) For you.
{Margaret}
(_Hastily._) Don't look at me that way. Your eyes are flashing.
Some one might see and misunderstand.
{Knox}
(_In confusion, awkwardly._) I was unaware that I--that I was
looking at you----in any way that----
{Margaret}
I'll tell you why you are here. Because I sent for you.
{Knox}
(_With signs of ardor._) I would come whenever you sent for me, and
go wherever you might send me.
{Margaret}
(_Reprovingly._)
Please, please---- It was about that speech. I have been hearing
about it from everybody--rumblings and mutterings and dire
prophecies. I know how busy you are, and I ought not to have
asked you to come. But there was no other way, and I was so
anxious.
{Knox}
(_Pleased._) It seems so strange that you, being what you are,
affiliated as you are, should be interested in the welfare of the
common people.
{Margaret}
(_Judicially._) I do seem like a traitor in my own camp. But as
father said a while ago, I, too, have dreamed my dream. I did it
as a girl--Plato's _Republic_, Moore's _Utopia_--I was steeped in
all the dreams of the social dreamers.
(_During all that follows of her speech, Knox is keenly
interested, his eyes glisten and he hangs on her words._)
And I dreamed that I, too, might do something to bring on the
era of universal justice and fair play. In my heart I dedicated
myself to the cause of humanity. I made Lincoln my hero-he
still is. But I was only a girl, and where was I to find
this cause?--how to work for it? I was shut in by a thousand
restrictions, hedged in by a thousand conventions. Everybody
laughed at me when I expressed the thoughts that burned in me.
What could I do? I was only a woman. I had neither vote nor right
of utterance. I must remain silent. I must do nothing. Men, in
their lordly wisdom, did all. They voted, orated, governed. The
place for women was in the home, taking care of some lordly man
who did all these lordly things.
{Knox}
You understand, then, why I am for equal suffrage.
{Margaret}
But I learned--or thought I learned. Power, I discovered early.
My father had power. He was a magnate--I believe that is the
correct phrase. Power was what I needed. But how? I was a woman.
Again I dreamed my dream--a modified dream. Only by marriage
could I win to power. And there you have the clew to me and what
I am and have become. I met the man who was to become my husband.
He was clean and strong and an athlete, an outdoor man, a wealthy
man and a rising politician. Father told me that if I married him
he would make him the power of his state, make him governor, send
him to the United States Senate. And there you have it all.
{Knox}
Yes?---- Yes?
{Margaret}
I married. I found that there were greater forces at work than I
had ever dreamed of. They took my husband away from me and molded
him into the political lieutenant of my father. And I was without
power. I could do nothing for the cause. I was beaten. Then it
was that I got a new vision. The future belonged to the children.
There I could play my woman's part. I was a mother. Very well. I
could do no better than to bring into the world a healthy son and
bring him up to manhood healthy and wholesome, clean, noble, and
alive. Did I do my part well, through him the results would be
achieved. Through him would the work of the world be done
in making the world healthier and happier for all the human
creatures in it. I played the mother's part. That is why I left
the pitiful little charities of the church and devoted myself
to settlement work and tenement house reform, established my
kindergartens, and worked for the little men and women who come
so blindly and to whom the future belongs to make or mar.
{Knox}
You are magnificent. I know, now, why I come when you bid me
come.
{Margaret}
And then you came. You were magnificent. You were my knight of
the windmills, tilting against all power and privilege, striving
to wrest the future from the future and realize it here in the
present, now. I was sure you would be destroyed. Yet you are
still here and fighting valiantly. And that speech of yours
to-morrow--
{Chalmers}
(_Who has approached, bearing Dolores Ortega's cup._) Yes, that
speech. How do you do, Mr. Knox.
(_They shake hands._) A cup of tea, Madge. For Mrs. Ortega. Two
lumps, please.
(_Margaret prepares the cup of tea._) Everybody is excited over
that speech. You are going to give us particular fits, to-morrow,
I understand.
{Knox}
(_Smiling._) Really, no more than is deserved.
{Chalmers}
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
{Knox}
Precisely.
(_Receiving back cup of tea from Margaret._)
{Chalmers}
Believe me, we are not so black as we're painted. There are two
sides to this question. Like you, we do our best to do what is
right. And we hope, we still hope, to win you over to our side.
(_Knox shakes his head with a quiet smile._)
{Margaret}
Oh, Tom, be truthful. You don't hope anything of the sort. You
know you are hoping to destroy him.
{Chalmers}
(_Smiling grimly._) That is what usually happens to those who are
not won over.
(_Preparing to depart with cup of tea; speaking to Knox._) You
might accomplish much good, were you with us. Against us you
accomplish nothing, absolutely nothing.
(_Returns to Dolores Ortega._)
{Margaret}
(_Hurriedly._) You see. That is why I was anxious--why I sent
for you. Even Tom admits that they who are not won over are
destroyed. This speech is a crucial event. You know how rigidly
they rule the House and gag men like you. It is they, and they
alone, who have given you opportunity for this speech? Why?--Why?
{Knox}
(_Smiling confidently._) I know their little scheme. They have
heard my charges. They think I am going to make a firebrand
speech, and they are ready to catch me without the proofs. They
are ready in every way for me. They are going to laugh me down.
The Associated Press, the Washington correspondents--all are
ready to manufacture, in every newspaper in the land, the great
laugh that will destroy me. But I am fully prepared, I have--
{Margaret}
The proofs?
{Knox}
Yes.
{Margaret}
Now?
{Knox}
They will be delivered to me to-night--original documents,
photographs of documents, affidavits--
{Margaret}
Tell me nothing. But oh, do be careful! Be careful!
{Mrs. Dowsett}
(_Appealing to Margaret._) Do give me some assistance, Mrs.
Chalmers.
(_Indicating Sakari._) Mr. Sakari is trying to make me ridiculous.
{Margaret}
Impossible.
{Mrs. Dowsett}
But he is. He has had the effrontery--
{Chalmers}
(_Mimicking Mrs. Dowsett._) Effrontery!--O, Sakari!
{Sakari}
The dear lady is pleased to be facetious.
{Mrs. Dowsett}
He has had the effrontery to ask me to explain the cause of high
prices. Mr. Dowsett says the reason is that the people are living
so high.
{Sakari}
Such a marvelous country. They are poor because they have so much
to spend.
{Chalmers}
Are not high prices due to the increased output of gold?
{Mrs. Dowsett}
Mr. Sakari suggested that himself, and when I agreed with him he
proceeded to demolish it. He has treated me dreadfully.
{Rutland}
(_Clearing his throat and expressing himself with ponderous
unction._) You will find the solution in the drink traffic. It
is liquor, alcohol, that is undermining our industry, our
institutions, our faith in God--everything. Yearly the working
people drink greater quantities of alcohol. Naturally, through
resulting inefficiency, the cost of production is higher, and
therefore prices are higher.
{Dowsett}
Partly so, partly so. And in line with it, and in addition to it,
prices are high because the working class is no longer thrifty.
If our working class saved as the French peasant does, we would
sell more in the world market and have better times.
{Sakari} (_Bowing._) As I understand it then, the more thrifty you
are the more you save, and the more you save the more you have to
sell, the more you sell, the better the times?
{Dowsett}
Exactly so. Exactly.
{Sakari}
The less you sell, the harder are the times?
{Dowsett}
Just so.
{Sakari}
Then if the people are thrifty, and buy less, times will be
harder?
{Dowsett}
(_Perplexed._) Er--it would seem so.
{Sakari}
Then it would seem that the present bad times are due to the fact
that the people are thrifty, rather than not thrifty?
(_Dowsett is nonplussed, and Mrs. Dowsett throws up her hands in
despair._)
{Mrs. Dowsett}
(_Turning to Knox._) Perhaps you can explain to us, Mr. Knox, the
reason for this terrible condition of affairs.
(_Starkweather closes note-book on finger and listens._) (_Knox
smiles, but does not speak._)
{Dolores Ortega}
Please do, Mr. Knox. I am so dreadfully anxious to know why
living is so high now. Only this morning I understand meat went
up again.
(_Knox hesitates and looks questioningly at Margaret._)
{Hubbard}
I am sure Mr. Knox can shed new light on this perplexing problem.
{Chalmers}
Surely you, the whirlwind of oratorical swords in the House, are
not timid here--among friends.
{Knox} (_Sparring._) I had no idea that questions of such nature
were topics of conversation at affairs like this.
{Starkweather}
(_Abruptly and imperatively._) What causes the high prices?
{Knox}
(_Equally abrupt and just as positive as the other was
imperative._) _Theft_!
(_It is a sort of a bombshell he has exploded, but they receive it
politely and smilingly, even though it has shaken them up._)
{Dolores Ortega}
What a romantic explanation. I suppose everybody who has anything
has stolen it.
{Knox}
Not quite, but almost quite. Take motorcars, for example. This
year five hundred million dollars has been spent for motor-cars.
It required men toiling in the mines and foundries, women sewing
their eyes out in sweat-shops, shop girls slaving for four and
five dollars a week, little children working in the factories and
cotton-mills--all these it required to produce those five hundred
millions spent this year in motor-cars. And all this has been
stolen from those who did the work.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
I always knew those motor-cars were to blame for terrible things.
{Dolores Ortega}
But Mr. Knox, I have a motor-car.
{Knox}
Somebody's labor made that car. Was it yours?
{Dolores Ortega}
Mercy, no! I bought it---- and paid for it.
{Knox}
Then did you labor at producing something else, and exchange the
fruits of that labor for the motor-car?
(_A pause._)
You do not answer. Then I am to understand that you have a
motor-car which was made by somebody else's labor and for which
you gave no labor of your own. This I call theft. You call it
property. Yet it is theft.
{Starkweather}
(_Interrupting Dolores Ortega who was just about to speak._)
But surely you have intelligence to see the question in larger
ways than stolen motor-cars. I am a man of affairs. I don't steal
motor-cars.
{Knox}
(_Smiling._) Not concrete little motor-cars, no. You do things on a
large scale.
{Starkweather}
Steal?
{Knox}
(_Shrugging his shoulders._) If you will have it so.
{Starkweather}
I am like a certain gentleman from Missouri. You've got to show
me.
{Knox}
And I'm like the man from Texas. It's got to be put in my hand.
{Starkweather}
I shift my residence at once to Texas. Put it in my hand that I
steal on a large scale.
{Knox}
Very well. You are the great financier, merger, and magnate. Do
you mind a few statistics?
{Starkweather}
Go ahead.
{Knox}
You exercise a controlling interest in nine billion dollars'
worth of railways; in two billion dollars' worth of industrial
concerns; in one billion dollars' worth of life insurance groups;
in one billion dollars' worth of banking groups; in two billion
dollars' worth of trust companies. Mind you, I do not say you own
all this, but that you exercise a controlling interest. That
is all that is necessary. In short, you exercise a controlling
interest in such a proportion of the total investments of the
United States, as to set the pace for all the rest. Now to my
point. In the last few years seventy billions of dollars have
been artificially added to the capitalization of the nation's
industries. By that I mean water--pure, unadulterated water. You,
the merger, know what water means. I say seventy billions. It
doesn't matter if we call it forty billions or eighty billions;
the amount, whatever it is, is a huge one. And what does seventy
billions of water mean? It means, at five per cent, that three
billions and a half must be paid for things this year, and every
year, more than things are really worth. The people who labor
have to pay this. There is theft for you. There is high prices
for you. Who put in the water? Who gets the theft of the water?
Have I put it in your hand?
{Starkweather}
Are there no wages for stewardship?
{Knox}
Call it any name you please.
{Starkweather}
Do I not make two dollars where one was before? Do I not make for
more happiness than was before I came?
{Knox}
Is that any more than the duty any man owes to his fellowman?
{Starkweather}
Oh, you unpractical dreamer. (_Returns to his note-book._)
{Rutland}
(_Throwing himself into the breach._) Where do I steal, Mr.
Knox?--I who get a mere salary for preaching the Lord's Word.
{Knox}
Your salary comes out of that water I mentioned. Do you want to
know who pays your salary? Not your parishioners. But the little
children toiling in the mills, and all the rest--all the slaves
on the wheel of labor pay you your salary.
{Rutland} I earn it.
{Knox}
They pay it.
{Mrs. Dowsett}
Why, I declare, Mr. Knox, you are worse than Mr. Sakari. You are
an anarchist.
(_She simulates shivering with fear._)
{Chalmers}
(_To Knox._) I suppose that's part of your speech to-morrow.
{Dolores Ortega}
(_Clapping her hands._) A rehearsal! He's trying it out on us!
{Sakari}
How would you remedy this--er--this theft?
(_Starkweather again closes note-book on finger and listens as
Knox begins to speak._)
{Knox}
Very simply. By changing the governmental machinery by which this
household of ninety millions of people conducts its affairs.
{Sakari}
I thought--I was taught so at Yale--that your governmental
machinery was excellent, most excellent.
{Knox}
It is antiquated. It is ready for the scrap-heap. Instead of
being our servant, it has mastered us. We are its slaves. All the
political brood of grafters and hypocrites have run away with it,
and with us as well. In short, from the municipalities up, we are
dominated by the grafters. It is a reign of theft.
{Hubbard}
But any government is representative of its people. No people
is worthy of a better government than it possesses. Were it
worthier, it would possess a better government.
(_Starkweather nods his head approvingly._)
{Knox}
That is a lie. And I say to you now that the average morality and
desire for right conduct of the people of the United States is
far higher than that of the government which misrepresents it.
The people are essentially worthy of a better government than
that which is at present in the hands of the politicians, for the
benefit of the politicians and of the interests the politicians
represent. I wonder, Mr. Sakari, if you have ever heard the story
of the four aces.
{Sakari}
I cannot say that I have.
{Knox}
Do you understand the game of poker?
{Sakari}
(_Considering._) Yes, a marvelous game. I have learned it--at Yale.
It was very expensive.
{Knox}
Well, that story reminds me of our grafting politicians.
They have no moral compunctions. They look upon theft as
right--eminently right. They see nothing wrong in the arrangement
that the man who deals the cards should give himself the best in
the deck. Never mind what he deals himself, they'll have the deal
next and make up for it.
{Dolores Ortega}
But the story, Mr. Knox. I, too, understand poker.
{Knox}
It occurred out in Nevada, in a mining camp. A tenderfoot was
watching a game of poker, He stood behind the dealer, and he saw
the dealer deal himself four aces from the bottom of the deck.
(_From now on, he tells the story in the slow, slightly drawling
Western fashion._) The tenderfoot went around to the player on the
opposite side of the table.
"Say," he says, "I just seen the dealer give himself four aces
off the bottom."
The player looked at him a moment, and said, "What of it?"
"Oh, nothing," said the tenderfoot, "only I thought you might
want to know. I tell you I seen the dealer give himself four aces
off the bottom."
"Look here, Mister," said the player, "you'd better get out of
this. You don't understand the game. It's HIS deal, ain't it?"
{Margaret}
(_Arising while they are laughing._) We've talked politics long
enough. Dolores, I want you to tell me about your new car.
{Knox}
(_As if suddenly recollecting himself._) And I must be going.
(_In a low voice to Margaret._) Do I have to shake hands with all
these people?
{Margaret}
(_Shaking her head, speaking low._) Dear delightful Ali Baba.
{Knox}
(_Glumly._) I suppose I've made a fool of myself.
{Margaret}
(_Earnestly._) On the contrary, you were delightful. I am proud of
you.
(_As Knox shakes hands with Margaret, Sakari arises and comes
forward_).
{Sakari}
I, too, must go. I have had a charming half hour, Mrs. Chalmers.
But I shall not attempt to thank you.
(_He shakes hands with Margaret._)
(_Knox and Sakari proceed to make exit to rear._)
(_Just as they go out, Servant enters, carrying card-tray, and
advances toward Starkweather._)
(_Margaret joins Dolores Ortega and Chalmers, seats herself with
them, and proceeds to talk motor-cars._)
(_Servant has reached Starkweather, who has taken a telegram from
tray, opened it, and is reading it._)
{Starkweather}
Damnation!
{Servant}
I beg your pardon, sir.
{Starkweather}
Send Senator Chalmers to me, and Mr. Hubbard.
{Servant}
Yes, sir.
(_Servant crosses to Chalmers and Hubbard, both of whom
immediately arise and cross to Starkweather._)
(_While this is being done, Margaret reassembles the three
broken groups into one, seating herself so that she can watch
Starkweather and his group across the stage._)
(_Servant lingers to receive a command from Margaret._)
(_Chalmers and Hubbard wait a moment, standing, while Starkweather
rereads telegram._)
{Starkweather}
(_Standing up._) Dobleman has just forwarded this telegram. It's
from New York--from Martinaw. There's been rottenness. My papers
and letter-files have been ransacked. It's the confidential
stenographer who has been tampered with--you remember that
middle-aged, youngish-oldish woman, Tom? That's the one.--Where's
that servant?
(_Servant is just making exit._) Here! Come here!
(_Servant comes over to Starkweather._) Go to the telephone and
call up Dobleman. Tell him to come here.
{Servant}
(_Perplexed._) I beg pardon, sir.
{Starkweather}
(_Irritably._) My secretary. At my house. Dobleman. Tell him to
come at once.
(_Servant makes exit._)
{Chalmers}
But who can be the principal behind this theft?
(_Starkweather shrugs his shoulders._)
{Hubbard}
A blackmailing device most probably. They will attempt to bleed
you--
{Chalmers}
Unless--
{Starkweather}
(_Impatiently._) Yes?
{Chalmers}
Unless they are to be used to-morrow in that speech of Knox.
(_Comprehension dawns on the faces of the other two men._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Who has arisen._) Anthony, we must go now. Are you ready? Connie
has to dress.
{Starkweather}
I am not going now. You and Connie take the car.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
You mustn't forget you are going to that dinner.
{Starkweather}
(_Wearily._) Do I ever forget?
(_Servant enters and proceeds toward Starkweather, where he
stands waiting while Mrs. Starkweather finishes the next speech.
Starkweather listens to her with a patient, stony face._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Oh, these everlasting politics! That is what it has been all
afternoon--high prices, graft, and theft; theft, graft, and high
prices. It is terrible. When I was a girl we did not talk of such
things. Well, come on, Connie.
{Mrs. Dowsett}
(_Rising and glancing at Dowsett._) And we must be going, too.
(_During the following scene, which takes place around
Starkweather, Margaret is saying good-bye to her departing
guests._)
(_Mrs. Starkweather and Connie make exit._)
(_Dowsett and Mrs. Dowsett make exit._)
(_The instant Mrs. Dowsett's remark puts a complete end to Mrs.
Starkweather's speech, Starkweather, without answer or noticing
his wife, turns and interrogates Servant with a glance._)
{Servant}
Mr. Dobleman has already left some time to come here, sir.
{Starkweather}
Show him in as soon as he comes.
{Servant}
Yes, sir.
(_Servant makes exit._)
(_Margaret, Dolores Ortega, and Rutland are left in a group
together, this time around tea-table, where Margaret serves
Rutland another cup of tea. From time to time Margaret glances
curiously at the serious group of men across the stage._)
(_Starkweather is thinking hard with knitted brows. Hubbard is
likewise pondering._)
{Chalmers}
If I were certain Knox had those papers I would take him by the
throat and shake them out of him.
{Starkweather}
No foolish talk like that, Tom. This is a serious matter.
{Hubbard}
But Knox has no money. A Starkweather stenographer comes high.
{Starkweather}
There is more than Knox behind this. (_Enter Dobleman, walking
quickly and in a state of controlled excitement._)
{Dobleman}
(_To Starkweather._) You received that telegram, sir?
(_Starkweather nods._) I got the New York office--Martinaw--right
along afterward, by long distance. I thought best to follow and
tell you.
{Starkweather}
What did Martinaw say?
{Dobleman}
The files seem in perfect order.
{Starkweather}
Thank God!
(_During the following speech of Dobleman, Rutland says good-bye
to Margaret and Dolores Ortega and makes exit._)
(_Margaret and Dolores Ortega rise a minute afterward and
go toward exit, throwing curious glances at the men but not
disturbing them._)
(_Dolores Ortega makes exit._)
(_Margaret pauses in doorway a moment, giving a final anxious
glance at the men, and makes exit._)
{Dobleman}
But they are not. The stenographer, Miss Standish, has confessed.
For a long time she has followed the practice of taking two or
three letters and documents at a time away from the office. Many
have been photographed and returned. But the more important ones
were retained and clever copies returned. Martinaw says that Miss
Standish herself does not know and cannot tell which of the ones
she returned are genuine and which are copies.
{Hubbard}
Knox never did this.
{Starkweather}
Did Martinaw say whom Miss Standish was acting for?
{Dobleman}
Gherst.
(_The alarm on the three men's faces is patent._)
{Starkweather}
Gherst!
(_Pauses to think._)
{Hubbard}
Then it is not so grave after all. A yellow journal sensation is
the best Gherst can make of it. And, documents or not, the very
medium by which it is made public discredits it.
{Starkweather}
Trust Gherst for more ability than that. He will certainly
exploit them in his newspapers, but not until after Knox has
used them in his speech. Oh, the cunning dog! Never could he
have chosen a better mode and moment to strike at me, at the
Administration, at everything. That is Gherst all over. Playing
to the gallery. Inducing Knox to make this spectacular exposure
on the floor of the House just at the critical time when so many
important bills are pending.
(_To Dobleman._)
Did Martinaw give you any idea of the nature of the stolen
documents?
{Dobleman}
(_Referring to notes he has brought._) Of course I don't know
anything about it, but he spoke of the Goodyear letters--
(_Starkweather betrays by his face the gravity of the
information._)
the Caledonian letters, all the Black Rider correspondence. He
mentioned, too, (_Referring to notes._) the Astonbury and Glutz
letters. And there were others, many others, not designated.
{Starkweather}
This is terrible!
(_Recollecting himself._)
Thank you, Dobleman. Will you please return to the house at once.
Get New York again, and fullest details. I'll follow you shortly.
Have you a machine?
{Dobleman}
A taxi, sir.
{Starkweather}
All right, and be careful.
(_Dobleman makes exit_)
{Chalmers}
I don't know the import of all these letters, but I can guess,
and it does seem serious.
{Starkweather}
(_Furiously._) Serious! Let me tell you that there has been no
exposure like this in the history of the country. It means
hundreds of millions of dollars. It means more--the loss of
power. And still more, it means the mob, the great mass of the
child-minded people rising up and destroying all that I have
labored to do for them. Oh, the fools! The fools!
{Hubbard}
(_Shaking his head ominously._) There is no telling what may happen
if Knox makes that speech and delivers the proofs.
{Chalmers}
It is unfortunate. The people are restless and excited as it
is. They are being constantly prodded on by the mouthings of
the radical press, of the muck-raking magazines and of the
demagogues. The people are like powder awaiting the spark.
{Starkweather}
This man Knox is no fool, if he _is_ a dreamer. He is a shrewd
knave. He is a fighter. He comes from the West--the old pioneer
stock. His father drove an ox-team across the Plains to Oregon.
He knows how to play his cards, and never could circumstances
have placed more advantageous cards in his hands.
{Chalmers}
And nothing like this has ever touched you before.
{Starkweather}
I have always stood above the muck and ruck--clear and clean and
unassailable. But this--this is too much! It is the spark. There
is no forecasting what it may develop into.
{Chalmers}
A political turnover.
{Starkweather}
(_Nodding savagely._) A new party, a party of demagogues, in power.
Government ownership of the railways and telegraphs. A graduated
income tax that will mean no less than the confiscation of
private capital.
{Chalmers}
And all that mass of radical legislation--the Child Labor Bill,
the new Employers' Liability Act, the government control of the
Alaskan coal fields, that interference with Mexico. And that big
power corporation you have worked so hard to form.
{Starkweather}
It must not be. It is an unthinkable calamity. It means that the
very process of capitalistic development is hindered, stopped.
It means a setback of ten years in the process. It means work,
endless work, to overcome the setback. It means not alone the
passage of all this radical legislation with the consequent
disadvantages, but it means the fingers of the mob clutching at
our grip of control. It means anarchy. It means ruin and misery
for all the blind fools and led-cattle of the mass who will
strike at the very sources of their own existence and comfort.
(_Tommy enters from left, evidently playing a game, in the course
of which he is running away. By his actions he shows that he is
pursued. He intends to cross stage, but is stopped by sight of
the men. Unobserved by them, he retraces his steps and crawls
under the tea-table._)
{Chalmers}
Without doubt, Knox is in possession of the letters right now.
{Starkweather}
There is but one thing to do, and that is--get them back.
(_He looks questioningly at the two men._)
(_Margaret enters from left, in flushed and happy pursuit of
Tommy--for it is a game she is playing with him. She startles at
sight of the three men, whom she first sees as she gains the side
of the tea-table, where she pauses abruptly, resting one hand on
the table._)
{Hubbard}
I'll undertake it.
{Starkweather}
There is little time to waste. In twenty hours from now he will
be on the floor making his speech. Try mild measures first. Offer
him inducements--any inducement. I empower you to act for me. You
will find he has a price.
{Hubbard}
And if not?
{Starkweather}
Then you must get them at any cost.
{Hubbard}
(_Tentatively._) You mean--?
{Starkweather}
I mean just that. But no matter what happens, I must never be
brought in. Do you understand?
{Hubbard}
Thoroughly.
{Margaret}
(_Acting her part, and speaking with assumed gayety._) What are you
three conspiring about? (_All three men are startled._)
{Chalmers}
We are arranging to boost prices a little higher.
{Hubbard}
And so be able to accumulate more motorcars.
{Starkweather}
(_Taking no notice of Margaret and starting toward exit to rear._)
I must be going. Hubbard, you have your work cut out for you.
Tom, I want you to come with me.
{Chalmers}
(_As the three men move toward exit._) Home?
{Starkweather}
Yes, we have much to do.
{Chalmers}
Then I'll dress first and follow you.
(_Turning to Margaret._) Pick me up on the way to that dinner.
(_Margaret nods. Starkweather makes exit without speaking.
Hub-bard says good-bye to Margaret and makes exit, followed by
Chalmers._)
(_Margaret remains standing, one hand resting on table, the other
hand to her breast. She is thinking, establishing in her mind
the connection between Knox and what she has overheard, and in
process of reaching the conclusion that Knox is in danger._)
(_Tommy, having vainly waited to be discovered, crawls out
dispiritedly, and takes Margaret by the hand. She scarcely
notices him._)
{Tommy} (_Dolefully._) Don't you want to play any more? (_Margaret
does not reply_). I was a good Indian.
{Margaret}
(_Suddenly becoming aware of herself and breaking down. She stoops
and clasps Tommy in her arms, crying out, in anxiety and fear,
and from love of her boy._) Oh, Tommy! Tommy!
Curtain
ACT II
Scene. _Sitting room of Howard Knox--dimly lighted. Time, eight
o'clock in the evening.
Entrance from hallway at side to right. At right rear is locked
door leading to a room which dees not belong to Knox's suite.
At rear center is fireplace. At left rear door leading to Knox's
bedroom. At left are windows facing on street. Near these
windows is a large library table littered with books, magazines,
government reports, etc. To the right of center, midway forward,
is a Hat-top desk. On it is a desk telephone. Behind it, so that
one sitting in it faces audience, is revolving desk-chair. Also,
on desk, are letters in their envelopes, etc. Against clear
wall-spaces are bookcases and filing cabinets. Of special note
is bookcase, containing large books, and not more than five
feet high, which is against wall between fireplace and door to
bedroom.
Curtain discloses empty stage._
(_After a slight interval, door at right rear is shaken and
agitated. After slight further interval, door is opened inward
upon stage. A Man's head appears, cautiously looking around_).
(_Man enters, turns up lights, is followed by second Man. Both
are clad decently, in knock-about business suits and starched
collars, cuffs, etc. They are trim, deft, determined men_).
(_Following upon them, enters Hubbard. He looks about room,
crosses to desk, picks up a letter, and reads address_).
{Hubbard}
This is Knox's room all right
{First Man}
Trust us for that.
{Second Man}
We were lucky the guy with the whiskers moved out of that other
room only this afternoon.
{First Man}
His key hadn't come down yet when I engaged it.
{Hubbard}
Well, get to work. That must be his bedroom.
(_He goes to door of bedroom, opens, and peers in, turns on
electric lights of bedroom, turns them out, then turns back to
men._) You know what it is--a bunch of documents and letters.
If we find it there is a clean five hundred each for you, in
addition to your regular pay.
(_While the conversation goes on, all three engage in a careful
search of desk, drawers, filing cabinets, bookcases, etc._)
{Second Man}
Old Starkweather must want them bad.
{Hubbard}
Sh-h. Don't even breathe his name.
{Second Man}
His nibs is damned exclusive, ain't he?
{First Man}
I've never got a direct instruction from him, and I've worked for
him longer than you.
{Second Man}
Yes, and you worked for him for over two years before you knew
who was hiring you.
{Hubbard}
(_To First Man._) You'd better go out in the hall and keep a watch
for Knox. He may come in any time.
(_First Man produces skeleton keys and goes to door at right. The
first key opens it. Leaving door slightly ajar, he makes exit._)
(_Desk telephone rings and startles Hubbard._)
{Second Man}
(_Grinning at Hubbard's alarm._)
It's only the phone.
{Hubbard}
(_Proceeding with search._) I suppose you've done lots of work for
Stark--
{Second Man}
(_Mimicking him._) Sh-h. Don't breathe his name.
(_Telephone rings again and again, insistently, urgently._)
{Hubbard}
(_Disguising his voice._) Hello--Yes.
(_Shows surprise, seems to recognize the voice, and smiles
knowingly._)
No, this is not Knox. Some mistake. Wrong number--
(_Hanging up receiver and speaking to Second Man in natural
voice._) She did hang up quick.
{Second Man}
You seemed to recognize her.
{Hubbard}
No, I only thought I did.
(_A pause, while they search._)
{Second Man}
I've never spoken a word to his nibs in my life. And I've drawn
his pay for years too.
{Hubbard}
What of it?
{Second Man}
(_Complainingly._) He don't know I exist.
{Hubbard}
(_Pulling open a desk drawer and examining contents._)
The pay's all right, isn't it?
{Second Man}
It sure is, but I guess I earn every cent of it. (_First Man
enters through door at right He moves hurriedly but cautiously.
Shuts door behind him, but neglects to re-lock it._)
{First Man}
Somebody just left the elevator and is coming down the hall.
(_Hubbard, First Man, and Second Man, all start for door at right
rear._)
(_First Man pauses and looks around to see if room is in order.
Sees desk-drawer which Hubbard has neglected to close, goes back
and closes it._)
(_Hubbard and Second Man make exit._)
(_First Man turns lights low and makes exit._)
(_Sound of locking door is heard._)
(_A pause._)
(_A knocking at door to right. A pause. Then door opens and
Gilford enters. He turns up lights, strolls about room, looks at
watch, and sits down in chair near right of fireplace._) (_Sound of
key in lock of door to right._) (_Door opens, and Knox enters, key
in hand. Sees Gifford._)
{Knox}
(_Advancing to meet him at fireplace and shaking hands._) How did
you get in?
{Gifford}
I let myself in. The door was unlocked.
{Knox}
I must have forgotten it.
{Gifford}
(_Drawing bundle of documents from inside breast pocket and
handing them to Knox._) Well, there they are.
{Knox}
(_Fingering them curiously._) You are sure they are originals?
(_Gifford nods._)
I can't take any chances, you know. If Gherst changed his mind
after I gave my speech and refused to show the originals--such
things have happened.
{Gifford}
That's what I told him. He was firm on giving duplicates, and
for awhile it looked as if my trip to New York was wasted. But I
stuck to my guns. It was originals or nothing with you, I said,
and he finally gave in.
{Knox}
(_Holding up documents._) I can't tell you what they mean to me,
nor how grateful--
{Gifford}
(_Interrupting._) That's all right. Don't mention it. Gherst is
wild for the chance. It will do organized labor a heap of good.
And you are able to say your own say at the same time. How's that
compensation act coming on?
{Knox}
(_Wearily._) The same old story. It will never come before the
House. It is dying in committee. What can you expect of the
Committee of Judiciary?--composed as it is of ex-railroad judges
and ex-railroad lawyers.
{Gifford}
The railroad brotherhoods are keen on getting that bill through.
{Knox}
Well, they won't, and they never will until they learn to vote
right. When will your labor leaders quit the strike and boycott
and lead your men to political action?
{Gifford}
(_Holding out hand._) Well, so long. I've got to trot, and I
haven't time to tell you why I think political action would
destroy the trade union movement.
(_Knox tosses documents on top of low bookcase between fireplace
and bedroom door, and starts to shake hands._) You're damn
careless with those papers. You wouldn't be if you knew how much
Gherst paid for them.
{Gifford}
You don't appreciate that other crowd. It stops at nothing.
{Knox}
I won't take my eyes off of them. And I'll take them to bed with
me to-night for safety. Besides, there is no danger. Nobody but
you knows I have them.
{Gifford}
(_Proceeding toward door to right._) I'd hate to be in
Starkweather's office when he discovers what's happened. There'll
be some bad half hours for somebody. (_Pausing at door._) Give them
hell to-morrow, good and plenty. I'm going to be in a gallery. So
long. (_Makes exit._)
(_Knox crosses to windows, which he opens, returns to desk,
seats himself in revolving chair, and begins opening his
correspondence. _) (_A knock at door to right._)
{Knox}
Come in.
(_Hubbard enters, advances to desk, but does not shake hands.
They greet each other, and Hubbard sits down in chair to left of
desk._) (_Knox, still holding an open letter, re-volves chair so as
to face his visitor. He waits for Hubbabd to speak._)
{Hubbard}
There is no use beating about the bush with a man like you. I
know that. You are direct, and so am I. You know my position well
enough to be assured that I am empowered to treat with you.
{Knox}
Oh, yes; I know.
{Hubbard}
What we want is to have you friendly.
{Knox}
That is easy enough. When the Interests become upright and
honest--
{Hubbard}
Save that for your speech. We are talking privately. We can make
it well worth your while--
{Knox} (_Angrily._) If you think you can bribe me--
{Hubbard} (_Suavely._) Not at all. Not the slightest suspicion of
it. The point is this. You are a congressman. A congressman's
career depends on his membership in good committees. At the
present you are buried in the dead Committee on Coinage, Weights,
and Measures. If you say the word you can be appointed to the
livest committee--
{Knox}
(_Interrupting._) You have these appointments to give?
{Hubbard}
Surely. Else why should I be here? It can be managed.
{Knox}
(_Meditatively._) I thought our government was rotten enough, but
I never dreamed that House appointments were hawked around by the
Interests in this fashion.
{Hubbard}
You have not given your answer.
{Knox}
You should have known my answer in advance.
{Hubbard}
There is an alternative. You are interested in social problems.
You are a student of sociology. Those whom I represent are
genuinely interested in you. We are prepared, so that you may
pursue your researches more deeply--we are prepared to send you
to Europe. There, in that vast sociological laboratory, far from
the jangling strife of politics, you will have every opportunity
to study. We are prepared to send you for a period of ten years.
You will receive ten thousand dollars a year, and, in addition,
the day your steamer leaves New York, you will receive a lump sum
of one hundred thousand dollars.
{Knox}
And this is the way men are bought
{Hubbard}
It is purely an educational matter.
{Knox}
Now it is you who are beating about the bush.
{Hubbard}
(_Decisively._) Very well then. What price do you set on yourself?
{Knox}
You want me to quit--to leave politics, everything? You want to
buy my soul?
{Hubbard}
More than that. We want to buy those documents and letters.
{Knox}
(_Showing a slight start._) What documents and letters?
{Hubbard}
You are beating around the bush in turn. There is no need for an
honest man to lie even--
{Knox}
(_Interrupting._) To you.
{Hubbard}
(_Smiling._) Even to me. I watched you closely when I mentioned
the letters. You gave yourself away. You knew I meant the letters
stolen by Gherst from Starkweather's private files--the letters
you intended using to-morrow.
{Knox}
Intend using to-morrow.
{Hubbard}
Precisely. It is the same thing. What is the price? Set it.
{Knox}
I have nothing to sell. I am not on the market.
{Hubbard}
One moment. Don't make up your mind hastily. You don't know with
whom you have to deal. Those letters will not appear in your
speech to-morrow. Take that from me. It would be far wiser to
sell for a fortune than to get nothing for them and at the same
time not use them.
(_A knock at door to right startles Hubbard._)
{Knox}
(_Intending to say, "Come in"_) Come--
{Hubbard}
(_Interrupting._) Hush. Don't. I cannot be seen here.
{Knox}
(_Laughing._) You fear the contamination of my company. (_The knock
is repeated._)
{Hubbard}
(_In alarm, rising, as Knox purses his lips to bid them enter._)
Don't let anybody in. I don't want to be seen here--with you.
Besides, my presence will not put you in a good light.
{Knox}
(_Also rising, starting toward door._) What I do is always open
to the world. I see no one whom I should not permit the world to
know I saw.
(_Knox starts toward door to open it._) (_Hubbabd, looking about him
in alarm, flees across stage and into bedroom, closing the door.
During all the following scene, Hubbard, from time to time, opens
door, and peers out at what is going on._)
{Knox}
(_Opening door, and recoiling._) Margaret! Mrs. Chalmers!
(_Margaret enters, followed by Tommy and Linda. Margaret is in
evening dress covered by evening cloak._)
{Margaret}
(_Shaking hands with Knox._) Forgive me, but I had to see you. I
could not get you on the telephone. I called and called, and the
best I could do was to get the wrong number.
{Knox}
(_Recovering from his astonishment._) Yes. I am glad.
(_Seeing Tommy._) Hello, Tommy.
(_Knox holds out his hand, and Tommy shakes it gravely. Linda
stays in back-ground. Her face is troubled._)
{Tommy}
How do you do?
{Margaret}
There was no other way, and it was so necessary for me to warn
you. I brought Tommy and Linda along to chaperon me.
(_She looks curiously around room, specially indicating filing
cabinets and the stacks of government reports on table._) Your
laboratory.
{Knox}
Ah, if I were only as great a sociological wizard as Edison is a
wizard in physical sciences.
{Margaret}
But you are. You labor more mightily than you admit--or dare to
think. Oh, I know you--better than you do yourself.
{Tommy}
Do you read all those books?
{Knox}
Yes, I am still going to school and studying hard. What are you
going to study to be when you grow up?
(_Tommy meditates but does not answer._)
President of these great United States?
{Tommy}
(_Shaking his head._) Father says the President doesn't amount to
much.
{Knox}
Not a Lincoln?
(_Tommy is in doubt._)
{Margaret}
But don't you remember what a great good man Lincoln was? You
remember I told you?
{Tommy}
(_Shaking his head slowly._) But I don't want to be killed.--I'll
tell you what!
{Knox}
What?
{Tommy}
I want to be a senator like father. He makes them dance.
(_Margaret is shocked, and Knox's eyes twinkle._)
{Knox}
Makes whom dance?
{Tommy} (_Puzzled._) I don't know.
(_With added confidence._) But he makes them dance just the same.
(_Margaret makes a signal to Linda to take Tommy across the room._)
{Linda}
(_Starting to cross stage to left._) Come, Tommy. Let us look out
of the window.
{Tommy}
I'd rather talk with Mr. Knox.
{Margaret}
Please do, Tommy. Mamma wants to talk to Mr. Knox.
(_Tommy yields, and crosses to right, where he joins Linda in
looking out of the window._)
{Margaret}
You might ask me to take a seat
{Knox}
Oh! I beg pardon.
(_He draws up a comfortable chair for her, and seats himself in
desk-chair, facing her._)
{Margaret}
I have only a few minutes. Tom is at father's, and I am to pick
him up there and go on to that dinner, after I've taken Tommy
home.
{Knox}
But your maid?
{Margaret}
Linda? Wild horses could not drag from her anything that she
thought would harm me. So intense is her fidelity that it almost
shames me. I do not deserve it. But this is not what I came to
you about.
(_She speaks the following hurriedly._) After you left this
afternoon, something happened. Father received a telegram. It
seemed most important. His secretary followed upon the heels of
the telegram. Father called Tom and Mr. Hubbard to him and they
held a conference. I think they have discovered the loss of the
documents, and that they believe you have them. I did not hear
them mention your name, yet I am absolutely certain that they
were talking about you. Also, I could tell from father's face
that something was terribly wrong. Oh, be careful! Do be careful!
{Knox}
There is no danger, I assure you.
{Margaret}
But you do not know them. I tell you you do not know them. They
will stop at nothing--at nothing. Father believes he is right in
all that he does.
{Knox}
I know. That is what makes him so formidable. He has an ethical
sanction.
{Margaret}
(_Nodding._) It is his religion.
{Knox}
And, like any religion with a narrow-minded man, it runs to
mania.
{Margaret}
He believes that civilization rests on him, and that it is his
sacred duty to preserve civilization.
{Knox}
I know. I know.
{Margaret}
But you? But you? You are in danger.
{Knox}
No; I shall remain in to-night. To-morrow, in the broad light of
midday, I shall proceed to the House and give my speech.
{Margaret}
(_Wildly._) Oh, if anything should happen to you!
{Knox}
(_Looking at her searchingly._) You do care?
(_Margaret nods, with eyes suddenly downcast._) For Howard Knox,
the reformer? Or for me, the man?
{Margaret}
(_Impulsively._) Oh, why must a woman forever remain quiet? Why
should I not tell you what you already know?--what you
must already know? I do care for you--for man and reformer,
both--for--
(_She is aflame, but abruptly ceases and glances across at Tommy
by the window, warned instinctively that she must not give way to
love in her child's presence._)
Linda! Will you take Tommy down to the machine--
{Knox}
(_Alarmed, interrupting, in low voice._) What are you doing?
{Margaret}
(_Hushing Knox with a gesture._) I'll follow you right down.
(_Linda and Tommy proceed across stage toward right exit._)
{Tommy}
(_Pausing before Knox and gravely extending his hand._) Good
evening, Mr. Knox.
{Knox}
(_Awkwardly._) Good evening, Tommy. You take my word for it, and
look up this Lincoln question.
{Tommy}
I shall. I'll ask father about it.
{Margaret}
(_Significantly._) You attend to that, Linda. Nobody must
know--this.
(_Linda nods._)
(_Linda and Tommy make exit to right._)
(_Margaret, seated, slips back her cloak, revealing herself
in evening gown, and looks at Knox sumptuously, lovingly, and
willingly._)
{Knox}
(_Inflamed by the sight of her._) Don't! Don't! I can't stand it.
Such sight of you fills me with madness.
(_Margaret laughs low and triumphantly._) I don't want to think of
you as a woman. I must not. Allow me.
(_He rises and attempts to draw cloak about her shoulders, but she
resists him. Yet does he succeed in partly cloaking her._)
{Margaret}
I want you to see me as a woman. I want you to think of me as a
woman. I want you mad for me.
(_She holds out her arms, the cloak slipping from them._)
I want--don't you see what I want?----
(_Knox sinks back in chair, attempting to shield his eyes with his
hand._)
(_Slipping cloak fully back from her again._)
Look at me.
{Knox}
(_Looking, coming to his feet, and approaching her, with extended
arms, murmuring softly._) Margaret. Margaret.
(_Margaret rises to meet him, and they are clasped in each other's
arms._)
(_Hubbard, peering forth through door, looks at them with an
expression of cynical amusement. His gaze wan-ders, and he sees
the documents, within arm's reach, on top of bookcase. He picks
up documents, holds them to the light of stage to glance at them,
and, with triumphant expression on face, disappears and closes
door._)
{Knox}
(_Holding Margaret from him and looking at her._) I love you. I do
love you. But I had resolved never to speak it, never to let you
know.
{Margaret}
Silly man. I have known long that you loved me. You have told me
so often and in so many ways. You could not look at me without
telling me.
{Knox}
You saw?
{Margaret}
How could I help seeing? I was a woman. Only, with your voice you
never spoke a word. Sit down, there, where I may look at you, and
let me tell you. I shall do the speaking now.
(_She urges him back into the desk-chair, and reseats herself._)
(_She makes as if to pull the cloak around 'her._) Shall I?
{Knox}
(_Vehemently._) No, no! As you are. Let me feast my eyes upon you
who are mine. I must be dreaming.
{Margaret}
(_With a low, satisfied laugh of triumph._) Oh, you men! As of
old, and as forever, you must be wooed through your senses. Did
I display the wisdom of an Hypatia, the science of a Madam Curie,
yet would you keep your iron control, throttling the voice of
your heart with silence. But let me for a moment be Lilith, for
a moment lay aside this garment constructed for the purpose of
keeping out the chill of night, and on the instant you are fire
and aflame, all voluble with love's desire.
{Knox}
(_Protestingly._) Margaret! It is not fair!
{Margaret}
I love you--and--you?
{Knox}
(_Fervently and reverently._) I love you.
{Margaret}
Then listen. I have told you of my girlhood and my dreams. I
wanted to do what you are so nobly doing. And I did nothing. I
could do nothing. I was not permitted. Always was I compelled
to hold myself in check. It was to do what you are doing, that I
married. And that, too, failed me. My husband became a henchman
of the Interests, my own father's tool for the perpetuation of
the evils against which I desired to fight.
(_She pauses._) It has been a long fight, and I have been very
tired, for always did I confront failure. My husband--I did not
love him. I never loved him. I sold myself for the Cause, and the
cause profited nothing. (_Pause._) Often, I have lost faith--faith
in everything, in God and man, in the hope of any righteousness
ever prevailing. But again and again, by what you are doing, have
you awakened me. I came to-night with no thought of self. I came
to warn you, to help the good work on. I remained--thank God!--I
remained to love you--and to be loved by you. I suddenly found
myself, looking at you, very weary. I wanted you--you, more than
anything in the world.
(_She holds out her arms._) Come to me. I want you--now.
(_Knox, in an ecstacy, comes to her. He seats himself on the broad
arm of the chair and is drawn into her arms._)
{Knox}
But I have been tired at times. I was very tired to-night--and
you came. And now I am glad, only glad.
{Margaret}
I have been wanton to-night. I confess it. I am proud of it.
But it was not--professional. It was the first time in my life.
Almost do I regret--almost do I regret that I did not do it
sooner--it has been crowned with such success. You have held me
in your arms--your arms. Oh, you will never know what that first
embrace meant to me. I am not a clod. I am not iron nor stone. I
am a woman--a warm, breathing woman--.
(_She rises, and draws him to his feet._)
Kiss me, my dear lord and lover. Kiss me. (_They embrace._)
{Knox}
(_Passionately, looking about him wildly as if in search of
something._) What shall we do?
(_Suddenly releasing her and sinking back in his own chair almost
in collapse._) No. It cannot be. It is impossible. Oh, why could
we not have met long ago? We would have worked together. What a
comradeship it would have been.
{Margaret}
But it is not too late.
{Knox}
I have no right to you.
{Margaret}
(_Misunderstanding. _) My husband? He has not been my husband
for years. He has no rights. Who, but you whom I love, has any
rights?
{Knox}
No; it is not that.
(_Snapping his fingers._) That for him.
(_Breaking down._) Oh, if I were only the man, and not the
reformer! If I had no work to do!
{Margaret}
(_Coming to the back of his chair and caressing his hair._) We can
work together.
{Knox}
(_Shaking his head under her fingers._) Don't! Don't!
(_She persists, and lays her cheek against his._) You make it so
hard. You tempt me so.
(_He rises suddenly, takes her two hands in his, leads her gently
to her chair, seats her, and reseats himself in desk-chair._)
Listen. It is not your husband. But I have no right to you. Nor
have you a right to me.
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting, jealously._) And who but I has any right to you?
{Knox}
(_Smiling sadly._) No; it is not that. There is no other woman.
You are the one woman for me. But there are many others who have
greater rights in me than you. I have been chosen by two hundred
thousand citizens to represent them in the Congress of the United
States. And there are many more--
(_He breaks off suddenly and looks at her, at her arms and
shoulders._) Yes, please. Cover them up. Help me not to forget.
(_Margaret does not obey._) There are many more who have rights in
me--the people, all the people, whose cause I have made mine. The
children--there are two million child laborers in these United
States. I cannot betray them. I cannot steal my happiness from
them. This afternoon I talked of theft. But would not this, too,
be theft?
{Margaret}
(_Sharply._) Howard! Wake up! Has our happiness turned your head?
{Knox}
(_Sadly._) Almost--and for a few wild moments, quite. There are all
the children. Did I ever tell you of the tenement child, who when
asked how he knew when spring came, answered: When he saw the
saloons put up their swing doors.
{Margaret}
(_Irritated._) But what has all that to do with one man and one
woman loving?
{Knox}
Suppose we loved--you and I; suppose we loosed all the reins
of our love. What would happen? You remember Gorki, the Russian
patriot, when he came to New York, aflame with passion for the
Russian revolution. His purpose in visiting the land of liberty
was to raise funds for that revolution. And because his marriage
to the woman he loved was not of the essentially legal sort
worshiped by the shopkeepers, and because the newspapers made a
sensation of it, his whole mission was brought to failure. He
was laughed and derided out of the esteem of the American people.
That is what would happen to me. I should be slandered and
laughed at. My power would be gone.
{Margaret}
And even if so--what of it? Be slandered and laughed at. We will
have each other. Other men will rise up to lead the people, and
leading the people is a thankless task. Life is so short. We must
clutch for the morsel of happiness that may be ours.
{Knox}
Ah, if you knew, as I look into your eyes, how easy it would be
to throw everything to the winds. But it would be theft.
{Margaret}
(_Rebelliously._) Let it be theft. Life is so short, dear. We are
the biggest facts in the world--to each other.
{Knox}
It is not myself alone, nor all my people. A moment ago you said
no one but I had any right to you. You were wrong. Your child--
{Margaret}
(_In sudden pain, pleadingly._) Don't!
{Knox}
I must. I must save myself--and you. Tommy has rights in you.
Theft again. What other name for it if you steal your happiness
from him?
{Margaret}
(_Bending her head forward on her hand and weeping._) I have been
so lonely--and then you--you came, and the world grew bright and
warm--a few short minutes ago you held me--in your arms--a few
short minutes ago and it seemed my dream of happiness had come
true--and now you dash it from me--
{Knox}
(_Struggling to control himself now that she is no longer looking
at him._) No; I ask you to dash it from yourself. I am not too
strong. You must help me. You must call your child to your aid in
helping me. I could go mad for you now--
(_Rising impulsively and coming to her with arms outstretched to
clasp her._) Right now--
{Margaret}
(_Abruptly raising her head, and with one outstretched arm
preventing the embrace._) Wait.
(_She bows her head on her hand for a moment, to think and to win
control of herself._)
(_Lifting her head and looking at him._) Sit down--please.
(_Knox reseats himself._)
(_A pause, during which she looks at him and loves him._) Dear, I
do so love you--
(_Knox loses control and starts to rise._) No! Sit there. I was
weak. Yet I am not sorry. You are right. We must forego each
other. We cannot be thieves, even for love's sake. Yet I am glad
that this has happened--that I have lain in your arms and had
your lips on mine. The memory of it will be sweet always.
(_She draws her cloak around her, and rises._)
(_Knox rises._) You are right. The future belongs to the children.
There lies duty--yours, and mine in my small way. I am going now.
We must not see each other ever again. We must work--and forget.
But remember, my heart goes with you into the fight. My prayers
will accompany every stroke.
(_She hesitates, pauses, draws her cloak thoroughly around her in
evidence of departure._) Dear--will you kiss me--once--one last
time? (_There is no passion in this kiss, which is the kiss of
renunciation. Margaret herself terminates the embrace._)
(_Knox accompanies her silently to the door and places hand on
knob._) I wish I had something of you to have with me always--a
photograph, that little one, you remember, which I liked so. (_She
nods._) Don't run the risk of sending it by messenger. Just mail
it ordinarily.
{Margaret}
I shall mail it to-morrow. I'll drop it in the box myself.
{Knox}
(_Kissing her hand._) Good-bye.
{Margaret}
(_lingeringly._) But oh, my dear, I am glad and proud for what has
happened. I would not erase a single line of it.
(_She indicates for Knox to open door, which he does, but which
he immediately closes as she continues speaking._) There must be
immortality. There must be a future life where you and I shall
meet again. Good-bye.
(_They press each other's hands._)
(_Exit Margaret._)
(_Knox stands a moment, staring at closed door, turns and looks
about him indecisively, sees chair in which Margaret sat, goes
over to it, kneels down, and buries his face._)
(_Door to bedroom opens slowly and Hubbard peers out cautiously.
He cannot see Knox._)
{Hubbard}
(_Advancing, surprised._) What the deuce? Everybody gone?
{Knox}
(_Startled to his feet._) Where the devil did you come from?
{Hubbard}
(_Indicating bedroom._) In there. I was in there all the time.
{Knox}
(_Endeavoring to pass it off._) Oh, I had forgotten about you.
Well, my callers are gone.
{Hubbard}
(_Walking over close to him and laughing at him with affected
amusement._) Honest men are such dubs when they do go wrong.
{Knox}
The door was closed all the time. You would not have dared to spy
upon me.
{Hubbard}
There was something familiar about the lady's voice.
{Knox}
You heard!--what did you hear?
{Hubbard}
Oh, nothing, nothing--a murmur of voices--and the woman's--I
could swear I have heard her voice before.
(_Knox shows his relief._) Well, so long.
(_Starts to move toward exit to right._) You won't reconsider your
decision?
{Knox}
(_Shaking his head._)
{Hubbard}
(_Pausing, open door in hand, and laughing cynically._) And yet it
was but a moment ago that it seemed I heard you say there was no
one whom you would not permit the world to know you saw.
(_Starting._) What do you mean?
{Hubbard}
Good-bye.
(_Hubbard makes exit and closes door._) (_Knox wanders aimlessly to
his desk, glances at the letter he was reading of which had been
interrupted by Hubbard's entry of first act, suddenly recollects
the package of documents, and walks to low bookcase and looks on
top._)
{Knox}
(_Stunned._) The thief!
(_He looks about him wildly, then rushes like a madman in pursuit
of Hubbard, making exit to right and leaving the door Hying
open._) (_Empty stage for a moment._)
Curtain
ACT III
Scene. _The library, used as a sort of semi-office by
Starkweather at such times when he is in Washington. Door to
right; also, door to right rear. At left rear is an alcove,
without hangings, which is dark. To left are windows. To
left, near windows, a fiat-top desk, with desk-chair and
desk-telephone. Also, on desk, conspicuously, is a heavy dispatch
box. At the center rear is a large screen. Extending across
center back of room are heavy, old-fashioned bookcases, with
swinging glass doors. The bookcases narrow about four feet from
the floor, thus forming a ledge. Between left end of bookcases
and alcove at left rear, high up on wall, hangs a large painting
or steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln. In design and furnishings,
it is a simple chaste room, coldly rigid and slightly
old-fashioned.
It is 9:30 in the morning of the day succeeding previous act.
Curtain discloses Starkweather seated at desk, and Dobleman, to
right of desk, standing._
{Starkweather}
All right, though it is an unimportant publication. I'll
subscribe.
{Dobleman}
(_Making note on pad._) Very well, sir. Two thousand.
(_He consults his notes._) Then there is _Vanderwater's Magazine_.
Your subscription is due.
{Starkweather}
How much?
{Dobleman}
You have been paying fifteen thousand.
{Starkweather}
It is too much. What is the regular subscription?
{Dobleman}
A dollar a year.
{Starkweather}
(_Shaking his head emphatically._) It is too much.
{Dobleman}
Professor Vanderwater also does good work with his lecturing. He
is regularly on the Chautauqua Courses, and at that big meeting
of the National Civic Federation, his speech was exceptionally
telling.
{Starkweather}
(_Doubtfully, about to give in._) All right--
(_He pauses, as if recollecting something._) (_Dobleman has begun to
write down the note._) No. I remember there was something in the
papers about this Professor Vanderwater--a divorce, wasn't it? He
has impaired his authority and his usefulness to me.
{Dobleman}
It was his wife's fault.
{Starkweather}
It is immaterial. His usefulness is impaired. Cut him down to ten
thousand. It will teach him a lesson.
{Dobleman}
Very good, sir.
{Starkweather}
And the customary twenty thousand to _Cartwrights_.
{Dobleman}
(_Hesitatingly._) They have asked for more. They have enlarged the
magazine, reorganized the stock, staff, everything.
{Starkweather}
Hubbard's writing for it, isn't he?
{Dobleman}
Yes, sir. And though I don't know, it is whispered that he is one
of the heavy stockholders.
{Starkweather}
A very capable man. He has served me well. How much do they want?
{Dobleman}
They say that Nettman series of articles cost them twelve
thousand alone, and that they believe, in view of the exceptional
service they are prepared to render, and are rendering, fifty
thousand--
{Starkweather}
(_Shortly._) All right. How much have I given to University of
Hanover this year?
{Dobleman}
Seven--nine millions, including that new library.
{Starkweather}
(_Sighing._) Education does cost. Anything more this morning?
{Dobleman}
(_Consulting notes._) Just one other--Mr. Rutland. His church, you
know, sir, and that theological college. He told me he had been
talking it over with you. He is anxious to know.
{Starkweather}
He's very keen, I must say. Fifty thousand for the church, and
a hundred thousand for the college--I ask you, candidly, is he
worth it?
{Dobleman}
The church is a very powerful molder of public opinion, and Mr.
Rutland is very impressive. (_Running over the notes and producing
a clipping._) This is what he said in his sermon two weeks ago:
"God has given to Mr. Starkweather the talent for making money
as truly as God has given to other men the genius which manifests
itself in literature and the arts and sciences."
{Starkweather}
(_Pleased._) He says it well.
{Dobleman}
(_Producing another clipping._) And this he said about you in last
Sunday's sermon: "We are to-day rejoicing in the great light
of the consecration of a great wealth to the advancement of the
race. This vast wealth has been so consecrated by a man who all
through life has walked in accord with the word, The love of
Christ constraineth me.'"
{Starkweather}
(_Meditatively._) Dobleman, I have meant well. I mean well. I shall
always mean well. I believe I am one of those few men, to whom
God, in his infinite wisdom, has given the stewardship of the
people's wealth. It is a high trust, and despite the abuse and
vilification heaped upon me, I shall remain faithful to it.
(_Changing his tone abruptly to businesslike briskness._) Very
well. See that Mr. Rutland gets what he has asked for.
{Dobleman}
Very good, sir. I shall telephone him. I know he is anxious to
hear.
(_Starting to leave the room._) Shall I make the checks out in the
usual way?
{Starkweather}
Yes: except the Rutland one. I'll sign that myself. Let the
others go through the regular channels. We take the 2:10 train
for New York. Are you ready?
{Dobleman}
(_Indicating dispatch box._) All, except the dispatch box.
{Starkweather}
I'll take care of that myself.
(_Dobleman starts to make exit to left, and Starkweather, taking
notebook from pocket, glances into it, and looks up._)
Dobleman.
{Dobleman} (_Pausing._) Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Mrs. Chalmers is here, isn't she?
{Dobleman}
Yes, sir. She came a few minutes ago, with her little boy. They
are with Mrs. Starkweather.
{Starkweather}
Please tell Mrs. Chalmers I wish to see her.
{Dobleman}
Yes, sir.
(_Dobleman makes exit._) (_Maidservant enters from right rear, with
card tray._)
{Starkweather}
(_Examining card._) Show him in.
(_Maidservant makes exit right rear_). (_Pause, during which
Starkweather consults notebook._) (_Maidservant re-enters, showing
in Hubbard._)
(_Hubbard advances to desk._) (_Starkweather is so glad to see him
that he half rises from his chair to shake hands._)
{Starkweather}
(_Heartily._) I can only tell you that what you did was wonderful.
Your telephone last night was a great relief. Where are they?
{Hubbard}
(_Drawing package of documents from inside breast pocket and
handing them over._) There they are--the complete set. I was
fortunate.
{Starkweather}
(_Opening package and glancing at a number of the documents while
he talks._) You are modest, Mr. Hubbard.--It required more--than
fortune.--It required ability--of no mean order.--The time was
short.--You had to think--and act--with too great immediacy to be
merely fortunate.
(_Hubbard bows, while Starkweather rearranges package._)
There is no need for me to tell you how I appreciate your
service. I have increased my subscription to _Cartwright's_ to
fifty thousand, and I shall speak to Dobleman, who will remit to
you a more substantial acknowledgment than my mere thanks for the
inestimable service you have rendered.
(_Hubbard bows._)
You--ah--you have read the documents?
{Hubbard}
I glanced through them. They were indeed serious. But we have
spiked Knox's guns. Without them, that speech of his this
afternoon becomes a farce--a howling farce. Be sure you take good
care of them.
(_Indicating documents, which Starkweather still holds._) Gherst
has a long arm.
{Starkweather}
He cannot reach me here. Besides, I go to New York to-day, and I
shall carry them with me. Mr. Hubbard, you will forgive me--
(_Starting to pack dispatch box with papers and letters lying on
desk._) I am very busy.
{Hubbard}
(_Taking the hint._) Yes, I understand. I shall be going now. I
have to be at the Club in five minutes.
{Starkweather}
(_In course of packing dispatch box, he sets certain packets of
papers and several medium-sized account books to one side in
an orderly pile. He talks while he packs, and Hubbard waits._) I
should like to talk with you some more--in New York. Next time
you are in town be sure to see me. I am thinking of buying the
_Parthenon Magazine_, and of changing its policy. I should like
to have you negotiate this, and there are other important
things as well. Good day, Mr. Hubbard. I shall see you in New
York--soon.
(_Hubbard and Starkweather shake hands._)
(_Hubbard starts to make exit to right rear._)
(_Margaret enters from right rear._)
(_Starkweather goes on packing dispatch box through following
scene._)
{Hubbard}
Mrs. Chalmers.
(_Holding out hand, which Margaret takes very coldly, scarcely
inclining her head, and starting to pass on._) (_Speaking suddenly
and savagely._) You needn't be so high and lofty, Mrs. Chalmers.
{Margaret}
(_Pausing and looking at him curiously as if to ascertain whether
he has been drinking._) I do not understand.
{Hubbard}
You always treated me this way, but the time for it is past.
I won't stand for your superior goodness any more. You really
impressed me with it for a long time, and you made me walk small.
But I know better now. A pretty game you've been playing--you,
who are like any other woman. Well, you know where you were last
night. So do I.
{Margaret}
You are impudent.
{Hubbard}
(_Doggedly._) I said I knew where you were last night. Mr. Knox
also knows where you were. But I'll wager your husband doesn't.
{Margaret}
You spy!
(_Indicating her father._) I suppose you have told--him.
{Hubbard}
Why should I?
{Margaret}
You are his creature.
{Hubbard}
If it will ease your suspense, let me tell you that I have not
told him. But I do protest to you that you must treat me with
more--more kindness.
(_Margaret makes no sign but passes on utterly oblivious of him._)
(_Hubbard stares angrily at her and makes exit_) (_Starkweather,
who is finishing packing, puts the documents last inside box,
and closes and locks it. To one side is the orderly stack of the
several account books and packets of papers._)
{Starkweather}
Good morning, Margaret. I sent for you because we did not finish
that talk last night. Sit down.
(_She gets a chair for herself and sits down._)
You always were hard to manage, Margaret. You have had too much
will for a woman. Yet I did my best for you. Your marriage with
Tom was especially auspicious--a rising man, of good family and a
gentleman, eminently suitable--
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting bitterly._) I don't think you were considering your
daughter at all in the matter. I know your views on woman and
woman's place. I have never counted for anything with you.
Neither has mother, nor Connie, when business was uppermost, and
business always is uppermost with you. I sometimes wonder if you
think a woman has a soul. As for my marriage--you saw that Tom
could be useful to you. He had the various distinctive points you
have mentioned. Better than that he was pliable, capable of being
molded to perform your work, to manipulate machine politics and
procure for you the legislation you desired. You did not consider
what kind of a husband he would make for your daughter whom you
did not know. But you gave your daughter to him--sold her to
him--because you needed him--
(_Laughs hysterically._) In your business.
{Starkweather}
(_Angrily._) Margaret! You must not speak that way. (_Relaxing._)
Ah, you do not change. You were always that way, always bent on
having your will--
{Margaret}
Would to God I had been more successful in having it.
{Starkweather}
(_Testily._) This is all beside the question. I sent for you to
tell you that this must stop--this association with a man of the
type and character of Knox--a dreamer, a charlatan, a scoundrel--
{Margaret}
It is not necessary to abuse him.
{Starkweather}
It must stop--that is all. Do you understand? It must stop.
{Margaret}
(_Quietly._) It has stopped. I doubt that I shall ever see him
again. He will never come to my house again, at any rate. Are you
satisfied?
{Starkweather}
Perfectly. Of course, you know I have never doubted
you--that--that way.
{Margaret}
(_Quietly._) How little you know women. In your comprehension we
are automatons, puppets, with no hearts nor heats of desire of
our own, with no springs of conduct save those of the immaculate
and puritanical sort that New England crystallized a century or
so ago.
{Starkweather}
(_Suspiciously._) You mean that you and this man--?
{Margaret}
I mean nothing has passed between us. I mean that I am Tom's wife
and Tommy's mother. What I did mean, you have no more understood
than you understand me--or any woman.
{Starkweather}
(_Relieved._) It is well.
{Margaret}
(_Continuing._) And it is so easy. The concept is simple. A woman
is human. That is all. Yet I do believe it is news to you.
(_Enters Dobleman from right carrying a check in his hand.
Starkweather, about to speak, pauses._) (_Dobleman hesitates, and
Starkweather nods for him to advance._)
{Dobleman}
(_Greeting Margaret, and addressing Starkweather._) This check. You
said you would sign it yourself.
{Starkweather}
Yes, that is Rutland's. (_Looks for pen._)
(_Dobleman offers his fountain pen._) No; my own pen.
(_Unlocks dispatch box, gets pen, and signs check. Leaves dispatch
box open._) (_Dobleman takes check and makes exit to right._)
{Starkweather}
(_Picking up documents from top of pile in open box._)
This man Knox. I studied him yesterday. A man of great energy and
ideals. Unfortunately, he is a sentimentalist. He means right--I
grant him that. But he does not understand practical conditions.
He is more dangerous to the welfare of the United States than
ten thousand anarchists. And he is not practical. (_Holding up
documents._)
Behold, stolen from my private files by a yellow journal sneak
thief and turned over to him. He thought to buttress his speech
with them this afternoon. And yet, so hopelessly unpractical is
he, that you see they are already back in the rightful owner's
hands.
{Margaret}
Then his speech is ruined?
{Starkweather}
Absolutely. The wheels are all ready to turn. The good people of
the United States will dismiss him with roars of laughter--a good
phrase, that: Hubbard's, I believe.
(_Dropping documents on the open cover of dispatch box, picking
up the pile of several account books and packets of papers, and
rising._) One moment. I must put these away.
(_Starkweather goes to alcove at left rear. He presses a button
and alcove is lighted by electricity, discovering the face of a
large safe. During the following scene he does not look around,
being occupied with working the combination, opening the safe,
putting away account books and packets of papers, and with
examining other packets which are in safe._)
(_Margaret looks at documents lying on open cover of dispatch box
and glancing quickly about room, takes a sudden resolution. She
seizes documents, makes as if to run wildly from the room, stops
abruptly to reconsider, and changes her mind. She looks about
room for a hiding place, and her eyes rest on portrait of
Lincoln. Moving swiftly, picking up a light chair on the way, she
goes to corner of bookcase nearest to portrait, steps on chair,
and from chair to ledge of bookcase where, clinging, she reaches
out and up and drops documents behind portrait. Stepping quickly
down, with handkerchief she wipes ledge on which she has stood,
also the seat of the chair. She carries chair back to where she
found it, and reseats herself in chair by desk._) (_Starkweather
locks safe, emerges from alcove, turns off alcove lights,
advances to desk chair, and sits down. He is about to close and
lock dispatch box when he discovers documents are missing. He is
very quiet about it, and examines contents of box care-fully._)
{Starkweather}
(_Quietly._) Has anybody been in the room?
{Margaret}
No.
{Starkweather}
(_Looking at her searchingly._) A most unprecedented thing has
occurred. When I went to the safe a moment ago, I left these
documents on the cover of the dispatch box. Nobody has been in
the room but you. The documents are gone. Give them to me.
{Margaret}
I have not been out of the room.
{Starkweather}
I know that. Give them to me.
(_A pause._) You have them. Give them to me
{Margaret}
I haven't them.
{Starkweather}
That is a lie. Give them to me.
{Margaret}
(_Rising._) I tell you I haven't them--
{Starkweather}
(_Also rising._) That is a lie.
{Margaret}
(_Turning and starting to cross room._) Very well, if you do not
believe me--
{Starkweather}
(_Interrupting._) Where are you going?
{Margaret}
Home.
{Starkweather}
(_Imperatively._) No, you are not. Come back here.
(_Margaret comes back and stands by chair._) You shall not leave
this room. Sit down.
{Margaret}
I prefer to stand.
{Starkweather}
Sit down.
(_She still stands, and he grips her by arm, forcing her down into
chair._) Sit down. Before you leave this room you shall return
those documents. This is more important than you realize. It
transcends all ordinary things of life as you have known it, and
you will compel me to do things far harsher than you can possibly
imagine. I can forget that you are a daughter of mine. I can
forget that you are even a woman. If I have to tear them from
you, I shall get them. Give them to me.
(_A pause._) What are you going to do?
(_Margaret shrugs her shoulders._) What have you to say?
(_Margaret again shrugs her shoulders._) What have you to say?
{Margaret}
Nothing.
{Starkweather}
(_Puzzled, changing tactics, sitting down, and talking calmly._)
Let us talk this over quietly. You have no shred of right of any
sort to those documents. They are mine. They were stolen by
a sneak thief from my private files. Only this morning--a few
minutes ago--did I get them back. They are mine, I tell you. They
belong to me. Give them back.
{Margaret}
I tell you I haven't them.
{Starkweather}
You have got them about you, somewhere, concealed in your breast
there. It will not save you. I tell you I shall have them. I warn
you. I don't want to proceed to extreme measures. Give them to
me.
(_He starts to press desk-button, pauses, and looks at her._) Well?
(_Margaret shrugs her shoulders._) (_He presses button twice._) I
have sent for Dobleman. You have one chance before he comes. Give
them to me.
{Margaret}
Father, will you believe me just this once? Let me go. I tell you
I haven't the documents. I tell you that if you let me leave this
room, I shall not carry them away with me. I tell you this on my
honor. Do you believe me? Tell me that you do believe me.
{Starkweather}
I do believe you. You say they are not on you. I believe you. Now
tell me where they are--you have them hidden somewhere--(_Glancing
about room._)--And you can go at once.
(_Dobleman enters from right and advances to desk. Starkweather
and Margaret remains silent._)
{Dobleman}
You rang for me.
{Starkweather}
(_With one last questioning glance at Margaret, who remains
impassive._) Yes, I did. Have you been in that other room all the
time?
{Dobleman}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Did anybody pass through and enter this room?
{Dobleman}
No, sir.
{Starkweather}
Very well. We'll see what the maid has to say.
(_He presses button once._) Margaret, I give you one last chance.
{Margaret}
I have told you that if I leave this room, I shall not take them
with me.
(_Maid enters from right rear and advances._)
{Starkweather}
Has anybody come into this room from the hall in the last few
minutes?
{Maid}
No, sir; not since Mrs. Chalmers came in.
{Starkweather}
How do you know?
{Maid}
I was in the hall, sir, dusting all the time.
{Starkweather}
That will do.
(_Maid makes exit to right rear._) Dobleman, a very unusual thing
has occurred.
Mrs. Chalmers and I have been alone in this room. Those letters
stolen by Gherst had been returned to me by Hubbard but the
moment before. They were on my desk. I turned my back for a
moment to go to the safe. When I came back they were gone.
{Dobleman}
(_Embarrassed._) Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Mrs. Chalmers took them. She has them now.
{Dobleman}
(_Attempts to speak, stammers._) Er--er--yes, sir
{Starkweather}
I want them back. What is to be done?
(_Dobleman remains in hopeless confusion._) Well!
{Dobleman}
(_Speaking hurriedly and hopefully._) S-send for Mr. Hubbard. He
got them for you before.
{Starkweather}
A good suggestion. Telephone for him. You should find him at the
Press Club.
(_Dobleman starts to make exit to right._) Don't leave the room.
Use this telephone. (_Indicating desk telephone._) (_Dobleman moves
around to left of desk and uses telephone standing up._) From now
on no one leaves the room. If my daughter can be guilty of such a
theft, it is plain I can trust no one--no one.
{Dobleman}
(_Speaking in transmitter._) Red 6-2-4. Yes, please.
(_Waits._)
{Starkweather}
(_Rising._) Call Senator Chalmers as well. Tell him to come
immediately.
{Dobleman}
Yes, sir--immediately.
{Starkweather}
(_Starting to cross stage to center and speaking to Margaret._)
Come over here.
(_Margaret follows. She is obedient, frightened, very subdued--but
resolved._)
Why have you done this? Were you truthful when you said there was
nothing between you and this man Knox?
{Margaret}
Father; don't discuss this before the--
(_Indicating Dobleman._)--the servants.
{Starkweather}
You should have considered that before you stole the documents.
(_Dobleman, in the meantime, is telephoning in a low voice._)
{Margaret}
There are certain dignities--
{Starkweather}
(_Interrupting._) Not for a thief.
(_Speaking intensely and in a low voice._) Margaret, it is not too
late. Give them back, and no one shall know.
(_A pause, in which Margaret is silent, in the throes of
indecision._)
{Dobleman}
Mr. Hubbard says he will be here in three minutes. Fortunately,
Senator Chalmers is with him.
(_Starkweather nods and looks at Margaret._) (_Door at left rear
opens, and enter Mrs. Starkweather and Connie. They are dressed
for the street and evidently just going out._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Speaking in a rush._) We are just going out, Anthony. You were
certainly wrong in making us attempt to take that 2:10 train.
I simply can't make it. I know I can't. It would have been much
wiser--
(_Suddenly apprehending the strain of the situation between
Starkweather and Margaret._)--Why, what is the matter?
{Starkweather}
(_Patently disturbed by their entrance, speaking to Dobleman, who
has finished with the telephone._) Lock the doors.
(_Dobleman proceeds to obey._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Mercy me! Anthony! What has happened?
(_A pause._) Madge! What has happened?
{Starkweather}
You will have to wait here a few minutes, that is all.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
But I must keep my engagements. And I haven't a minute to spare.
(_Looking at Dobleman locking doors._) I do not understand.
{Starkweather}
(_Grimly,_) You will, shortly. I can trust no one any more. When my
daughter sees fit to steal--
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Steal!--Margaret! What have you been doing now?
{Margaret}
Where is Tommy?
(_Mrs. Starkwater is too confounded to answer, and can only stare
from face to face._) (_Margaret looks her anxiety to Connie._)
{Connie}
He is already down in the machine waiting for us. You are coming,
aren't you?
{Starkweather}
Let him wait in the machine. Margaret will come when I get done
with her.
(_A knock is heard at right rear._) (_Starkweather looks at Dobleman
and signifies that he is to open door._)
(_Dobleman unlocks door, and Hubbabd and Chalmers enter. Beyond
the shortest of nods and recognitions with eyes, greetings are
cut short by the strain that is on all. Dobleman relocks door._)
{Starkweather}
(_Plunging into it._) Look here, Tom. You know those letters Gherst
stole. Mr. Hubbard recovered them from Knox and returned them
to me this morning. Within five minutes Margaret stole them from
me--here, right in this room. She has not left the room. They are
on her now. I want them.
{Chalmers}
(_Who is obviously incapable of coping with his wife, and who is
panting for breath, his hand pressed to his side._) Madge, is this
true?
{Margaret}
I haven't them. I tell you I haven't them.
{Starkweather}
Where are they, then?
(_She does not answer._)
If they are in the room we can find them. Search the room. Tom,
Mr. Hubbard, Dobleman. They must be recovered at any cost.
(_While a thorough search of the room is being made, Mrs.
Starkweather, overcome, has Connie assist her to seat at left.
Margaret also seats herself, in same chair at desk._)
{Chalmers}
(_Pausing from search, while others continue._) There is no place
to look for them. They are not in the room. Are you sure you
didn't mislay them?
{Starkweather}
Nonsense. Margaret took them. They are a bulky package and not
easily hidden. If they aren't in the room, then she has them on
her.
{Chalmers}
Madge, give them up.
{Margaret}
I haven't them.
(_Chalmers, stepping suddenly up to her, starts feeling for the
papers, running his hands over her dress._)
{Margaret}
(_Springing to her feet and striking him in the face with her open
palm._) How dare you!
(_Chalmers recoils, Mrs. Starkweather is threatened with hysteria
and is calmed by the frightened Connie, while Starkweather looks
on grimly._)
{Hubbard}
(_Giving up search of room._) Possibly it would be better to let me
retire, Mr. Starkweather.
{Starkweather}
No; those papers are here in this room. If nobody leaves there
will be no possible chance for the papers to get out of the room.
What would you recommend doing, Hubbard?
{Hubbard}
(_Hesitatingly._) Under the circumstances I don't like to suggest--
{Starkweather}
Go on.
{Hubbard}
First, I would make sure that she--er--Mrs. Chalmers has taken
them.
{Starkweather}
I have made that certain.
{Chalmers}
But what motive could she have for such an act?
(_Hubbard looks wise._)
{Starkweather}
(_To Hubbard._) You know more about this than would appear. What is
it?
{Hubbard}
I'd rather not. It is too--
(_Looks significantly at Mrs. Starkweather and
Connie._)--er--delicate.
{Starkweather}
This affair has gone beyond all delicacy. What is it?
{Margaret}
No! No!
(_Chalmers and Starkweather look at her with sudden suspicion._)
{Starkweather}
Go on, Mr. Hubbard.
{Hubbard}
I'd--I'd rather not.
{Starkweather}
(_Savagely._) I say go on.
{Hubbard}
(_With simulated reluctance._) Last night--I saw--I was in Knox's
rooms--
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting._) One moment; please. Let him speak, but first send
Connie away.
{Starkweather}
No one shall leave this room till the documents are produced.
Margaret, give me the letters, and Connie can leave quietly, and
even will Hubbard's lips remain sealed. They will never breathe a
word of whatever shameful thing his eyes saw. This I promise you.
(_A pause, wherein he waits vainly for Margaret to make a
decision._) Go on, Hubbard.
{Margaret}
(_Who is terror-stricken, and has been wavering._) No! Don't! I'll
tell. I'll give you back the documents.
(_All are expectant She wavers again, and steels herself to
resolution._) No; I haven't them. Say all you have to say.
{Starkweather}
You see. She has them. She said she would give them back.
(_To Hubbard._) Go on.
{Hubbard}
Last night--
{Connie}
(_Springing up._) I won't stay!
(_She rushes to left rear and finds door locked._) Let me out! Let
me out!
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Moaning and lying back in chair, legs stretched out and giving
preliminary twitches and jerks of hysteria._) I shall die! I shall
die! I know I shall die!
{Starkweather}
(_Sternly, to Connie._) Go back to your mother.
{Connie}
(_Returning reluctantly to side of Mrs. Starkweather, sitting down
beside her, and putting fingers in her own ears._) I won't listen!
I won't listen!
{Starkweather}
(_Sternly._) Take your fingers down.
{Hubbard}
Hang it all, Chalmers, I wish I were out of this. I don't want to
testify.
{Starkweather}
Take your fingers down.
(_Connie reluctantly removes her fingers._) Now, Hubbard.
{Hubbard}
I protest. I am being dragged into this.
{Chalmers}
You can't help yourself now. You have cast black suspicions on my
wife.
{Hubbard}
All right. She--Mrs. Chalmers visited Knox in his rooms last
night.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Bursting out._) Oh! Oh! My Madge! It is a lie! A lie! (_Kicks
violently with her legs._) (_Connie soothes her._)
{Chalmers}
You've got to prove that, Hubbard. If you have made any mistake
it will go hard with you.
{Hubbard}
(_Indicating Margaret._) Look at her. Ask her.
(_Chalmers looks at Margaret with growing suspicion._)
{Margaret}
Linda was with me. And Tommy. I had to see Mr. Knox on a very
important matter. I went there in the machine. I took Linda and
Tommy right into Mr. Knox's room.
{Chalmers}
(_Relieved._) Ah, that puts a different complexion on it.
{Hubbard}
That is not all. Mrs. Chalmers sent the maid and the boy down to
the machine and remained.
{Margaret}
(_Quickly._) But only for a moment
{Hubbard}
Much longer--much, much longer. I know how long I was kicking my
heels and waiting.
{Margaret}
(_Desperately._) I say it was but for a moment--a short moment.
{Starkweather}
(_Abruptly, to Hubbard._) Where were you?
{Hubbard}
In Knox's bedroom. The fool had forgotten all about me. He was
too delighted with his--er--new visitor.
{Starkweather}
You said you saw.
{Hubbard}
The bedroom door was ajar. I opened it.
{Starkweather}
What did you see?
{Margaret}
(_Appealing to Hubbard._) Have you no mercy? I say it was only a
moment.
(_Hubbard shrugs his shoulders._)
{Starkweather}
We'll settle the length of that moment Tommy is here, and so is
the maid. Connie, Margaret's maid is here, isn't she? (_Connie
does not answer._) Answer me!
{Connie}
Yes.
{Starkweather}
{Dobleman}.
Ring for a maid and tell her to fetch Tommy and Mrs. Chalmer's
maid.
(_Dobleman goes to desk and pushes button once._)
{Margaret}
No! Not Tommy!
{Starkweather}
(_Looking shrewdly at Margaret, to Dobleman._) Mrs. Chalmer's maid
will do.
(_A knock is heard at left rear. Dobleman opens door and talks to
maid. Closes door._)
{Starkweather}
Lock it.
(_Dobleman locks door._)
{Chalmers}
(_Coming over to Margaret._) So you, the immaculate one, have been
playing fast and loose.
{Margaret}
You have no right to talk to me that way, Tom--
{Chalmers}
I am your husband.
{Margaret}
You have long since ceased being that.
{Chalmers}
What do you mean?
{Margaret}
I mean just what you have in mind about yourself right now.
{Chalmers}
Madge, you are merely conjecturing. You know nothing against me.
{Margaret}
I know everything--and without evidence, if you please. I am
a woman. It is your atmosphere. Faugh! You have exhaled it for
years. I doubt not that proofs, as you would call them, could
have been easily obtained. But I was not interested. I had my
boy. When he came, I gave you up, Tom. You did not seem to need
me any more.
{Chalmers}
And so, in retaliation, you took up with this fellow Knox.
{Margaret}
No, no. It is not true, Tom. I tell you it is not true.
{Chalmers}
You were there, last night, in his rooms, alone--how long we
shall soon find out--
(_Knock is heard at left rear. Dobleman proceeds to unlock door._)
And now you have stolen your father's private papers for your
lover.
{Margaret}
He is not my lover.
{Chalmers}
But you have acknowledged that you have the papers. For whom,
save Knox, could you have stolen them?
(_Linda enters. She is white and strained, and looks at Margaret
for some cue as to what she is to do._)
{Starkweather}
That is the woman.
(_To Linda._) Come here.
(_Linda advances reluctantly._) Where were you last night? You know
what I mean.
(_She does not speak._) Answer me.
{Linda}
I don't know what you mean, sir--unless--
{Starkweather}
Yes, that's it. Go on.
{Linda}
But I don't think you have any right to ask me such questions.
What if I--if I did go out with my young man--
{Starkweather}
(_To Margaret._) A very faithful young woman you've got.
(_Briskly, to the others._) There's nothing to be got out of her.
Send for Tommy. Dobleman, ring the bell.
(_Dobleman starts to obey._)
{Margaret}
(_Stopping Dobleman._) No, no; not Tommy. Tell them, Linda.
(_Linda looks appealingly at her._)
(_Kindly._) Don't mind me. Tell them the truth.
{Chalmers}
(_Breaking in._) The whole truth.
{Margaret}
Yes, Linda, the whole truth.
(_Linda, looking very woeful, nerves herself for the ordeal._)
{Starkweather}
Never mind, Dobleman.
(_To Linda._) Very well. You were at Mr. Knox's rooms last night,
with your mistress and Tommy.
{Linda}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Your mistress sent you and Tommy out of the room.
{Linda}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
You waited in the machine.
{Linda}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
(_Abruptly springing the point he has been working up to._) How
long?
(_Linda perceives the gist of the questioning just as she is
opening her mouth to reply, and she does not speak._)
{Margaret}
(_With deliberate calmness of despair._) Half an hour--an hour--any
length of time your shameful minds dictate. That will do, Linda.
You can go.
{Starkweather}
No you don't. Stand over there to one side.
(_To the others._) The papers are in this room, and I shall keep my
mind certain on that point.
{Hubbard}
I think I have shown the motive.
{Connie}
You are a beast!
{Chalmers}
You haven't told what you saw.
{Hubbard}
I saw them in each other's arms--several times. Then I found the
stolen documents where Knox had thrown them down. So I pocketed
them and closed the door.
{Chalmers}
How long after that did they remain together?
{Hubbard}
Quite a time, quite a long time.
{Chalmers}
And when you last saw them?
{Hubbard}
They were in each other's arms--quite enthusiastically, I may
say, in each other's arms. (_Chalmers is crushed._)
{Margaret}
(_To Hubbard._) You coward.
(_Hubbard smiles._)
(_To Starkweather._) When are you going to call off this hound of
yours?
{Starkweather}
When I get the papers. You see what you've been made to pay for
them already. Now listen to me closely. Tom, you listen, too. You
know the value of these letters. If they are not recovered they
will precipitate a turn-over that means not merely money but
control and power. I doubt that even you would be re-elected.
So what we have heard in this room must be forgotten--absolutely
forgotten. Do you understand?
{Chalmers}
But it is adultery.
{Starkweather}
It is not necessary for that word to be mentioned. The point is
that everything must be as it was formerly.
{Chalmers}
Yes, I understand.
{Starkweather}
(_To Margaret._) You hear. Tom will make no trouble. Now give me
the papers. They are mine, you know.
{Margaret}
It seems to me the people, who have been lied to, and cajoled,
and stolen from, are the rightful owners, not you.
{Starkweather}
Are you doing this out of love for this--this man, this
demagogue?
{Margaret}
For the people, the children, the future.
{Starkweather}
Faugh! Answer me.
{Margaret}
(_Slowly._) Almost I do not know. Almost I do not know.
(_A knock is heard at left rear. Dobleman answers._)
{Dobleman}
(_Looking at card Maid has given him, to Starkweather._) Mr.
Rutland.
{Starkweather}
(_Making an impatient gesture, then abruptly changing his mind,
speaking grimly._) Very well. Bring him in. I've paid a lot for
the Church, now we'll see what the Church can do for me.
{Connie}
(_Impulsively crossing stage to Margaret, putting arms around her,
and weeping._)
Please, please, Madge, give up the papers, and everything will be
hushed up. You heard what father said. Think what it means to
me if this scandal comes out. Father will hush it up. Not a soul
will dare to breathe a word of it. Give him the papers.
{Margaret}
(_Kissing her, shaking head, and setting her aside._) No; I can't.
But Connie, dearest--
(_Connie pauses._) It is not true, Connie. He--he is not my lover.
Tell me that you believe me.
{Connie}
(_Caressing her._) I do believe you. But won't you return the
papers--for my sake?
(_A knock at door._)
{Margaret}
I can't.
(_Enter Rutland._)
(_Connie returns to take care of Mrs. Starkweather._)
{Rutland}
(_Advances beamingly upon Starkweather._) My, what a family
gathering. I hastened on at once, my dear Mr. Starkweather, to
thank you in person, ere you fled away to New York, for your
generously splendid--yes, generously splendid--contribution--
(_Here the strained situation dawns upon him, and he remains
helplessly with mouth open, looking from one to another._)
{Starkweather}
A theft has been committed, Mr. Rutland. My daughter has stolen
something very valuable from me--a package of private papers, so
important--well, if she succeeds in making them public I shall
be injured to such an extent financially that there won't be any
more generously splendid donations for you or anybody else. I
have done my best to persuade her to return what she has stolen.
Now you try. Bring her to a realization of the madness of what
she is doing.
{Rutland}
(_Quite at sea, hemming and hawing._) As your spiritual
adviser, Mrs. Chalmers--if this be true--I recommend--I
suggest--I--ahem--I entreat--
{Margaret}
Please, Mr. Rutland, don't be ridiculous. Father is only making a
stalking horse out of you. Whatever I may have done, or not done,
I believe I am doing right. The whole thing is infamous. The
people have been lied to and robbed, and you are merely lending
yourself to the infamy of perpetuating the lying and the robbing.
If you persist in obeying my father's orders--yes, orders--you
will lead me to believe that you are actuated by desire for more
of those generously splendid donations. (_Starkweather sneers._)
{Rutland}
(_Embarrassed, hopelessly at sea._) This is, I fear--ahem--too
delicate a matter, Mr. Starkweather, for me to interfere. I would
suggest that it be advisable for me to withdraw--ahem--
{Starkweather}
(_Musingly._) So the Church fails me, too.
(_To Rutland._) No, you shall stay right here.
{Margaret}
Father, Tommy is down in the machine alone. Won't you let me go?
{Starkweather}
Give me the papers.
(_Mrs. Starkweather rises and totters across to Margaret, moaning
and whimpering._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Madge, Madge, it can't be true. I don't believe it. I know you
have not done this awful thing. No daughter of mine could be
guilty of such wickedness. I refuse to believe my ears--
(_Mrs. Starkweather sinks suddenly on her knees before Margaret,
with clasped hands, weeping hysterically._)
{Starkweather}
(_Stepping to her side._) Get up.
(_Hesitates and thinks._) No; go on. She might listen to you.
{Margaret}
(_Attempting to raise her mother._) Don't, mother, don't. Please
get up.
(_Mrs. Starkweather resists her hysterically._) You don't
understand, mother. Please, please, get up.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
Madge, I, your mother, implore you, on my bended knees. Give up
the papers to your father, and I shall forget all I have heard.
Think of the family name. I don't believe it, not a word of
it; but think of the shame and disgrace. Think of me. Think of
Connie, your sister. Think of Tommy. You'll have your father in
a terrible state. And you'll kill me. (_Moaning and rolling her
head._)
I'm going to be sick. I know I am going to be sick.
{Margaret}
(_Bending over mother and raising her, while Connie comes across
stage to help support mother._) Mother, you do not understand.
More is at stake than the good name of the family or--(_Looking
at Rutland._)--God. You speak of Connie and Tommy. There are two
millions of Connies and Tommys working as child laborers in the
United States to-day. Think of them. And besides, mother, these
are all lies you have heard. There is nothing between Mr.
Knox and me. He is not my lover. I am not the--the shameful
thing--these men have said I am.
{Connie}
(_Appealingly._) Madge.
{Margaret}
(_Appealingly._) Connie. Trust me. I am right. I know I am right.
(_Mrs. Starkweather, supported by Connie, moaning incoherently, is
led back across stage to chair._)
{Starkweather}
{Margaret}, a few minutes ago, when you told me there was nothing
between you and this man, you lied to me--lied to me as only a
wicked woman can lie.
{Margaret}
It is clear that you believe the worst.
{Starkweather}
There is nothing less than the worst to be believed. Besides,
more heinous than your relations with this man is what you have
done here in this room, stolen from me, and practically before
my very eyes. Well, you have crossed your will with mine, and in
affairs beyond your province. This is a man's game in which you
are attempting to play, and you shall take the consequences. Tom
will apply for a divorce.
{Margaret}
That threat, at least, is without power.
{Starkweather}
And by that means we can break Knox as effectually as by any
other. That is one thing the good stupid people will not tolerate
in a chosen representative. We will make such a scandal of it--
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Shocked._) Anthony!
{Starkweather}
(_Glancing irritably at his wife and continuing._) Another thing.
Being proven an adulterous woman, morally unfit for companionship
with your child, your child will be taken away from you.
{Margaret}
No, no. That cannot be. I have done nothing wrong. No court, no
fair-minded judge, would so decree on the evidence of a creature
like that.
(_Indicating Hubbard._)
{Hubbard}
My evidence is supported. In an adjoining room were two men.
I happen to know, because I placed them there. They were your
father's men at that. There is such a thing as seeing through a
locked door. They saw.
{Margaret}
And they would swear to--to anything.
{Hubbard}
I doubt not they will know to what to swear.
{Starkweather}
Margaret, I have told you some, merely some, of the things I
shall do. It is not too late. Return the papers, and everything
will be forgotten.
{Margaret}
You would condone this--this adultery. You, who have just said
that I was morally unfit to have my own boy, will permit me to
retain him. I had never dreamed, father, that your own immorality
would descend to such vile depths. Believing this shameful thing
of me, you will forgive and forget it all for the sake of a few
scraps of paper that stand for money, that stand for a license to
rob and steal from the people. Is this your morality--money?
{Starkweather}
I have my morality. It is not money. I am only a steward; but so
highly do I conceive the duties of my stewardship--
{Margaret}
(_Interrupting, bitterly._) The thefts and lies and all common
little sins like adulteries are not to stand in the way of your
high duties--that the end hallows the means.
{Starkweather}
(_Shortly._) Precisely.
{Margaret}
(_To Rutland._) There is Jesuitism, Mr. Rutland. I would suggest
that you, as my father's spiritual adviser--
{Starkweather}
Enough of this foolery. Give me the papers.
{Margaret}
I haven't them.
{Starkweather}
What's to be done, Hubbard?
{Hubbard}
She has them. She has as much as acknowledged that they are not
elsewhere in the room. She has not been out of the room. There is
nothing to do but search her.
{Starkweather}
Nothing else remains to be done. Dobleman, and you, Hubbard, take
her behind the screen. Strip her. Recover the papers.
(_Dobleman is in a proper funk, but Hubbard betrays no
unwillingness._)
{Chalmers}
No; that I shall not permit. Hubbard shall have nothing to do
with this.
{Margaret}
It is too late, Tom. You have stood by and allowed me to be
stripped of everything else. A few clothes do not matter now. If
I am to be stripped and searched by men, Mr. Hubbard will serve
as well as any other man. Perhaps Mr. Rutland would like to lend
his assistance.
{Connie}
Oh, Madge! Give them up.
(_Margaret shakes her head._)
(_To Starkweather._) Then let me search her, father.
{Starkweather}
You are too willing. I don't want volunteers. I doubt that I can
trust you any more than your sister.
{Connie}
Let mother, then.
{Starkweather}
(_Sneering._) Margaret could smuggle a steamer-trunk of documents
past her.
{Connie}
But not the men, father! Not the men!
{Starkweather}
Why not? She has shown herself dead to all shame.
(_Imperatively._) Dobleman!
{Dobleman}
(_Thinking his time has come, and almost dying._) Y-y-yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Call in the servants.
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Crying out in protest._) Anthony!
{Starkweather}
Would you prefer her to be searched by the men?
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Subsiding._) I shall die, I shall die. I know I shall die.
{Starkweather}
Dobleman. Ring for the servants.
(_Dobleman, who has been hesitant, crosses to desk and pushes
button, then returns toward door._) Send in the maids and the
housekeeper.
(_Linda, blindly desiring to be of some assistance, starts
impulsively toward Margaret._) Stand over there--in the corner.
(_Indicating right front._)
(_Linda pauses irresolutely and Margaret nods to her to obey and
smiles encouragement. Linda, protesting in every fiber of her,
goes to right front._)
(_A knock at right rear and Dobleman unlocks door, confers with
maid, and closes and locks door._)
{Starkweather}
(_To Margaret._) This is no time for trifling, nor for mawkish
sentimentality. Return the papers or take the consequences.
(_Margaret makes no answer._)
{Chalmers}
You have taken a hand in a man's game, and you've got to play it
out or quit. Give up the papers.
(_Margaret remains resolved and impassive._)
{Hubbard}
(_Suavely._) Allow me to point out, my dear Mrs. Chalmers, that
you are not merely stealing from your father. You are playing the
traitor to your class.
{Starkweather}
And causing irreparable damage.
{Margaret}
(_Firing up suddenly and pointing to Lincoln's portrait_) I doubt
not he caused irreparable damage when he freed the slaves and
preserved the Union. Yet he recognized no classes. I'd rather be
a traitor to my class than to him.
{Starkweather}
Demagoguery. Demagoguery.
(_A knock at right rear. Dobleman opens door. Enter Mrs. Middleton
who is the housekeeper, followed by two Housemaids. They pause
at rear. Housekeeper to the fore and looking expectantly at
Starkweather. The Maids appear timid and frightened._)
{Housekeeper}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Mrs. Middleton, you have the two maids to assist you. Take Mrs.
Chalmers behind that screen there and search her. Strip all
her clothes from her and make a careful search. (_Maids show
perturbation._)
{Housekeeper}
(_Self-possessed. _) Yes, sir. What am I to search for?
{Starkweather}
Papers, documents, anything unusual. Turn them over to me when
you find them.
{Margaret}
(_In a sudden panic._) This is monstrous! This is monstrous!
{Starkweather}
So is your theft of the documents monstrous.
{Margaret}
(_Appealing to the other men, ignoring Rutland and not considering
Dobleman at all._)
You cowards! Will you stand by and permit this thing to be done?
Tom, have you one atom of manhood in you?
{Chalmers} (_Doggedly._) Return the papers, then.
{Margaret}
Mr. Rutland--
{Rutland}
(_Very awkwardly and oilily._) My dear Mrs. Chalmers. I assure you
the whole circumstance is unfortunate. But you are so palpably
in the wrong that I cannot interfere--(_Margaret turns from him in
withering scorn._)--That I cannot interfere.
{Dobleman}
(_Breaking down unexpectedly._) I cannot stand it. I leave your
employ, sir. It is outrageous. I resign now, at once. I cannot be
a party to this.
(_Striving to unlock door._) I am going at once. You brutes! You
brutes!
(_Breaks into convulsive sobbings._)
{Chalmers}
Ah, another lover, I see.
(_Dobleman manages to unlock door and starts to open it._)
{Starkweather}
You fool! Shut that door!
(_Dobleman hesitates._) Shut it!
(_Dobleman obeys._) Lock it!
(_Dobleman obeys._)
{Margaret}
(_Smiling wistfully, benignantly._) Thank you, Mr. Dobleman.
(_To Starkweather._) Father, you surely will not perpetrate this
outrage, when I tell you, I swear to you--
{Starkweather}
(_Interrupting._) Return the documents then.
{Margaret}
I swear to you that I haven't them. You will not find them on me.
{Starkweather}
You have lied to me about Knox, and I have no reason to believe
you will not lie to me about this matter.
{Margaret}
(_Steadily._) If you do this thing you shall cease to be my father
forever. You shall cease to exist so far as I am concerned.
{Starkweather}
You have too much of my own will in you for you ever to forget
whence it came. Mrs. Middleton, go ahead.
(_Housekeeper, summoning Maids with her eyes, begins to advance on
Margaret._)
{Connie}
(_In a passion._) Father, if you do this I shall never speak to you
again.
(_Breaks down weeping._) (_Mrs. Starkweather, during following
scene, has mild but continuous shuddering and weeping hysteria._)
{Starkweather}
(_Briskly, looking at watch._) I've wasted enough time on this.
Mrs. Middleton, proceed.
{Margaret}
(_Wildly, backing away from Housekeeper._) I will not tamely
submit. I will resist, I promise you.
{Starkweather}
Use force, if necessary.
(_The Maids are reluctant, but Housekeeper commands them with her
eyes to close in on Margaret, and they obey._)
(_Margaret backs away until she brings up against desk._)
{Housekeeper}
Come, Mrs. Chalmers.
(_Margaret stands trembling, but refuses to notice Housekeeper._)
(_Housekeeper places hand on Margaret's arm._)
{Margaret}
(_Violently flinging the hand off, crying imperiously._) Stand
back!
(_Housekeeper instinctively shrinks back, as do Maids. But it is
only for the moment. They close in upon Margaret to seise her._)
(_Crying frantically for help._) Linda! Linda!
(_Linda springs forward to help her mistress, but is caught and
held struggling by Chalmers, who twists her arm and finally
compels her to become quiet._)
(_Margaret, struggling and resisting, is hustled across stage and
behind screen, the Maids warming up to their work. One of them
emerges from behind screen for the purpose of getting a chair,
upon which Margaret is evidently forced to sit. The screen is of
such height, that occasionally, when standing up and struggling,
Margaret's bare arms are visible above the top of it. Muttered
exclamations are heard, and the voice of Housekeeper trying to
persuade Margaret to sub-mit._)
{Margaret}
(_Abruptly, piteously._) No! No!
(_The struggle becomes more violent, and the screen is overturned,
disclosing Margaret seated on chair, partly undressed, and
clutching an envelope in her hand which they are trying to force
her to relinquish._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Crying wildly._) Anthony! They are taking her clothes off!
(_Renewed struggle of Linda with Chalmers at the sight._)
(_Starkweather, calling Rutland to his assistance, stands screen
up again, then, as an afterthought, pulls screen a little further
away from Margaret._)
{Margaret}
No! No!
(_Housekeeper appears triumphantly with envelope in her hand and
hands it to Hubbard._)
{Hubbard}
(_Immediately._) That's not it.
(_Glances at address and starts._) It's addressed to Knox.
{Starkweather}
Tear it open. Read it.
(_Hubbard tears envelope open._) (_While this is going on, struggle
behind screen is suspended._)
{Hubbard}
(_Withdrawing contents of envelope._) It is only a photograph--of
Mrs. Chalmers.
(_Reading._) "For the future--Margaret."
{Chalmers}
(_Thrusting Linda back to right front and striding up to Hubbard._)
Give it to me. (_Hubbard passes it to him, and he looks at it,
crumples it in his hand, and grinds it under foot._)
{Starkweather}
That is not what we wanted, Mrs. Middleton. Go on with the
search.
(_The search goes on behind the screen without any further
struggling._) (_A pause, during which screen is occasionally
agitated by the searchers removing Margaret's garments._)
{Housekeeper}
(_Appearing around corner of screen._) I find nothing else, sir.
{Starkweather}
Is she stripped?
{Housekeeper}
Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Every stitch?
{Housekeeper}
(_Disappearing behind screen instead of answering for a pause,
during which it is patent that the ultimate stitch is being
removed, then reappearing._) Yes, sir.
{Starkweather}
Nothing?
{Housekeeper}
Nothing.
{Starkweather}
Throw out her clothes--everything.
(_A confused mass of feminine apparel is tossed out, falling near
Dobleman's feet, who, in consequence, is hugely mortified and
embarrassed._)
(_Chalmers examines garments, then steps behind screen a moment,
and reappears._)
{Chalmers}
Nothing.
(_Chalmers, Starkweather, and Hubbard gaze at each other
dumbfoundedly._)
(_The two Maids come out from behind screen and stand near door to
right rear._)
(_Starkweather is loath to believe, and steps to Margaret's
garments and overhauls them._)
{Starkweather}
(_To Chalmers, looking inquiringly toward screen._) Are you sure?
{Chalmers}
Yes; I made certain. She hasn't them.
{Starkweather}
(_To Housekeeper._) Mrs. Middleton, examine those girls.
{Housekeeper}
(_Passing hands over dresses of Maids._) No, sir.
{Margaret}
(_From behind screen, in a subdued, spiritless voice._) May I
dress--now?
(_Nobody answers._) It--it is quite chilly.
(_Nobody answers._) Will you let Linda come to me, please?
(_Starkweather nods savagely to Linda, to obey._) (_Linda crosses to
garments, gathers them up, and disappears behind screen._)
{Starkweather}
(_To Housekeeper._)
You may go.
(_Exit Housekeeper and the two Maids._)
{Dobleman}
(_Hesitating, after closing door._) Shall I lock it?
(_Starkweather does not answer, and Dobleman leaves door
unlocked._)
{Connie}
(_Rising._) May I take mother away?
(_Starkweather, who is in a brown study, nods._) (_Connie assists
Mrs. Starkweather to her feet._)
{Mrs. Starkweather}
(_Staggering weakly, and sinking back into chair._) Let me rest a
moment, Connie. I'll be better. (_To Starkweather, who takes no
notice._) Anthony, I am going to bed. This has been too much for
me. I shall be sick. I shall never catch that train to-day.
(_Shudders and sighs, leans head back, closes eyes, and Connie
fans her or administers smelling salts._)
{Chalmers}
(_To Hubbard._) What's to be done?
{Hubbard}
(_Shrugging shoulders._) I'm all at sea. I had just left the
letters with him, when Mrs. Chalmers entered the room. What's
become of them? She hasn't them, that's certain.
{Chalmers}
But why? Why should she have taken them?
{Hubbard}
(_Dryly, pointing to crumpled photograph on floor._) It seems very
clear to me.
{Chalmers}
You think so? You think so?
{Hubbard}
I told you what I saw last night at his rooms. There is no other
explanation.
{Chalmers}
(_Angrily._) And that's the sort he is--vaunting his moral
superiority--mouthing phrases about theft--our theft--and himself
the greatest thief of all, stealing the dearest and sacredest
things--
(_Margaret appears from behind screen, pinning on her hat. She is
dressed, but somewhat in disarray, and Linda follows, pulling and
touching and arranging. Margaret pauses near to Rutland, but does
not seem to see him._)
{Rutland}
(_Lamely._) It is a sad happening--ahem--a sad happening. I am
grieved, deeply grieved. I cannot tell you, Mrs. Chalmers,
how grieved I am to have been compelled to be present at
this--ahem--this unfortunate--
(_Margaret withers him with a look and he awkwardly ceases._)
{Margaret}
After this, father, there is one thing I shall do--
{Chalmers}
(_Interrupting._) Go to your lover, I suppose.
{Margaret} (_Coldly._) Have it that way if you choose.
{Chalmers}
And take him what you have stolen--
{Starkweather}
(_Arousing suddenly from brown study._) But she hasn't them on her.
She hasn't been out of the room. They are not in the room. Then
where are they?
(_During the following, Margaret goes to the door, which Dobleman
opens. She forces Linda to go out and herself pauses in open door
to listen._)
{Hubbard}
(_Uttering an exclamation of enlightenment, going rapidly across
to window at left and raising it._) It is not locked. It moves
noiselessly. There's the explanation.
(_To Starkweather._) While you were at the safe, with your back
turned, she lifted the window, tossed the papers out to somebody
waiting--
(_He sticks head and shoulders out of window, peers down, then
brings head and shoulders back._)--No; they are not there.
Somebody was waiting for them.
{Starkweather}
But how should she know I had them? You had only just recovered
them?
{Hubbard}
Didn't Knox know right away last night that I had taken them? I
took the up-elevator instead of the down when I heard him running
along the hall. Trust him to let her know what had happened. She
was the only one who could recover them for him. Else why did she
come here so immediately this morning? To steal the package, of
course. And she had some one waiting outside. She tossed them out
and closed the window--
(_He closes window._)--You notice it makes no sound.--and sat down
again--all while your back was turned.
{Starkweather}
Margaret, is this true?
{Margaret}
(_Excitedly._) Yes, the window. Why didn't you think of it before?
Of course, the window. He--somebody was waiting. They are gone
now--miles and miles away. You will never get them. They are in
his hands now. He will use them in his speech this afternoon.
(_Laughs wildly._)
(_Suddenly changing her tone to mock meekness, subtle with
defiance._) May I go--now?
(_Nobody answers, and she makes exit._) (_A moments pause, during
which Starkweather, Chalmers, and Hubbard look at each other in
stupefaction._)
ACT IV
Scene. _Same as Act I. It is half past one of same day. Curtain
discloses Knox seated at right front and waiting. He is dejected
in attitude._
(_Margaret enters from right rear, and advances to him. He rises
awkwardly and shakes hands. She is very calm and self-possessed._)
{Margaret}
I knew you would come. Strange that I had to send for you so soon
after last night--
(_With alarm and sudden change of manner._) What is the matter? You
are sick. Your hand is cold.
(_She warms it in both of her hands._)
{Knox}
It is flame or freeze with me.
(_Smiling._) And I'd rather flame.
{Margaret}
(_Becoming aware that she is warming his hand._)
Sit down and tell me what is the matter.
(_Leading him by the hand she seats him, at the same time seating
herself._)
{Knox}
(_Abruptly._) After you left last night, Hubbard stole those
documents back again.
{Margaret}
(_Very matter-of-fact._) Yes; he was in your bedroom while I was
there.
{Knox}
(_Startled._) How do you know that? Anyway, he did not know who you
were.
{Margaret}
Oh yes he did.
{Knox}
(_Angrily._) And he has dared--?
{Margaret}
Yes; not two hours ago. He announced the fact before my father,
my mother, Connie, the servants, everybody.
{Knox}
(_Rising to his feet and beginning to pace perturbedly up and
down._) The cur!
{Margaret} (_Quietly._) I believe, among other things, I told him
he was that myself.
(_She laughs cynically._) Oh, it was a pretty family party, I
assure you. Mother said she didn't believe it--but that was
only hysteria. Of course she believes it--the worst. So does
Connie--everybody.
{Knox}
(_Stopping abruptly and looking at her horror-stricken._) You don't
mean they charged----?
{Margaret}
No; I don't mean that. I mean more. They didn't charge. They
accepted it as a proven fact that I was guilty. That you were
my--lover.
{Knox}
On that man's testimony?
{Margaret}
He had two witnesses in an adjoining room.
{Knox}
(_Relieved._) All the better. They can testify to nothing more than
the truth, and the truth is not serious. In our case it is good,
for we renounced each other.
{Margaret}
You don't know these men. It is easy to guess that they have been
well trained. They would swear to anything.
(_She laughs bitterly._) They are my father's men, you know, his
paid sleuth-hounds.
{Knox}
(_Collapsing in chair, holding head in hands, and groaning._) How
you must have suffered. What a terrible time, what a terrible
time! I can see it all--before everybody--your nearest and
dearest. Ah, I could not understand, after our parting last
night, why you should have sent for me today. But now I know.
{Margaret}
No you don't, at all.
{Knox}
(_Ignoring her and again beginning to pace back and forth,
thinking on his feet._) What's the difference? I am ruined
politically. Their scheme has worked out only too well. Gifford
warned me, you warned me, everybody warned me. But I was a fool,
blind--with a fool's folly. There is nothing left but you now.
(_He pauses, and the light of a new thought irradiates his face._)
Do you know, Margaret, I thank God it has happened as it
has. What if my usefulness is destroyed? There will be other
men--other leaders. I but make way for another. The cause of the
people can never be lost. And though I am driven from the fight,
I am driven to you. We are driven together. It is fate. Again I
thank God for it.
(_He approaches her and tries to clasp her in his arms, but she
steps back._)
{Margaret}
(_Smiling sadly._) Ah, now you flame. The tables are reversed. Last
night it was I. We are fortunate that we choose diverse times for
our moods--else there would be naught but one sweet melting mad
disaster.
{Knox}
But it is not as if we had done this thing deliberately and
selfishly. We have renounced. We have struggled against it until
we were beaten. And now we are driven together, not by our doing
but Fate's. After this affair this morning there is nothing
for you but to come to me. And as for me, despite my best, I am
finished. I have failed. As I told you, the papers are stolen.
There will be no speech this afternoon.
{Margaret}
(_Quietly._) Yes there will.
{Knox}
Impossible. I would make a triple fool of myself. I would be
unable to substantiate my charges.
{Margaret}
You will substantiate them. What a chain of theft it is. My
father steals from the people. The documents that prove his
stealing are stolen by Gherst. Hubbard steals them from you and
returns them to my father. And I steal them from my father and
pass them back to you.
{Knox} (_Astounded._) You?--You?--
{Margaret}
Yes; this very morning. That was the cause of all the trouble.
If I hadn't stolen them nothing would have happened. Hubbard had
just returned them to my father.
{Knox}
(_Profoundly touched._) And you did this for me--?
{Margaret}
Dear man, I didn't do it for you. I wasn't brave enough. I should
have given in. I don't mind confessing that I started to do it
for you, but it soon grew so terrible that I was afraid. It
grew so terrible that had it been for you alone I should have
surrendered. But out of the terror of it all I caught a wider
vision, and all that you said last night rose before me. And I
knew that you were right. I thought of all the people, and of
the little children. I did it for them, after all. You speak for
them. I stole the papers so that you could use them in speaking
for the people. Don't you see, dear man?
(_Changing to angry recollection._) Do you know what they cost
me? Do you know what was done to me, to-day, this morning, in my
father's house? I was shamed, humiliated, as I would never
have dreamed it possible. Do you know what they did to me?
The servants were called in, and by them I was stripped before
everybody--my family, Hubbard, the Reverend Mr. Rutland, the
secretary, everybody.
{Knox}
(_Stunned._) Stripped--you?
{Margaret}
Every stitch. My father commanded it
{Knox}
(_Suddenly visioning the scene._) My God!
{Margaret}
(_Recovering herself and speaking cynically, with a laugh at his
shocked face._) No; it was not so bad as that. There was a screen.
(_Knox appears somewhat relieved._) But it fell down in the midst
of the struggle.
{Knox}
But in heaven's name why was this done to you?
{Margaret}
Searching for the lost letters. They knew I had taken them.
(_Speaking gravely._)
So you see, I have earned those papers. And I have earned the
right to say what shall be done with them. I shall give them to
you, and you will use them in your speech this afternoon.
{Knox}
I don't want them.
{Margaret}
(_Going to bell and ringing._) Oh yes you do. They are more
valuable right now than anything else in the world.
{Knox}
(_Shaking his head._) I wish it hadn't happened.
{Margaret}
(_Returning to him, pausing by his chair, and caressing his hair._)
What?
{Knox}
This morning--your recovering the letters. I had adjusted
myself to their loss, and the loss of the fight, and the finding
of--you.
(_He reaches up, draws down her hand, and presses it to his lips._)
So--give them back to your father.
(_Margaret draws quickly away from him._) (_Enter Man-servant at
right rear._)
{Margaret}
Send Linda to me.
(_Exit Man-servant._)
{Knox}
What are you doing?
{Margaret}
(_Sitting down._) I am going to send Linda for them. They are still
in my father's house, hidden, of all places, behind Lincoln's
portrait. He will guard them safely, I know.
{Knox}
(_With fervor._) Margaret! Margaret! Don't send for them. Let them
go. I don't want them.
(_Rising and going toward her impulsively._) (_Margaret rises and
retreats, holding him off._) I want you--you--you.
(_He catches her hand and kisses it. She tears it away from him,
but tenderly._)
{Margaret}
(_Still retreating, roguishly and tenderly._) Dear, dear man, I
love to see you so. But it cannot be.
(_Looking anxiously toward right rear._) No, no, please, please sit
down.
(_Enter Linda from right rear. She is dressed for the street._)
{Margaret}
(_Surprised._) Where are you going?
{Linda}
Tommy and the nurse and I were going down town. There is some
shopping she wants to do.
{Margaret}
Very good. But go first to my father's house. Listen closely. In
the library, behind the portrait of Lincoln--you know it? (_Linda
nods._)
You will find a packet of papers. It took me five seconds to put
it there. It will take you no longer to get it. Let no one see
you. Let it appear as though you had brought Tommy to see his
grandmother and cheer her up. You know she is not feeling very
well just now. After you get the papers, leave Tommy there and
bring them immediately back to me. Step on a chair to the ledge
of the bookcase, and reach behind the portrait. You should be
back inside fifteen minutes. Take the car.
{Linda}
Tommy and the nurse are already in it, waiting for me.
{Margaret}
Be careful. Be quick.
(_Linda nods to each instruction and makes exit._)
{Knox}
(_Bursting out passionately._) This is madness. You are sacrificing
yourself, and me. I don't want them. I want you. I am tired.
What does anything matter except love? I have pursued ideals long
enough. Now I want you.
{Margaret}
(_Gravely._) Ah, there you have expressed the pith of it. You will
now forsake ideals for me--(_He attempts to interrupt._) No, no;
not that I am less than an ideal. I have no silly vanity that
way. But I want you to remain ideal, and you can only by going
on--not by being turned back. Anybody can play the coward and
assert they are fatigued. I could not love a coward. It was your
strength that saved us last night. I could not have loved you
as I do, now, had you been weak last night. You can only keep my
love--
{Knox}
(_Interrupting, bitterly._) By foregoing it--for an ideal.
Margaret, what is the biggest thing in the world? Love. There is
the greatest ideal of all.
{Margaret}
(_Playfully._) Love of man and woman?
{Knox}
What else?
{Margaret}
(_Gravely._) There is one thing greater--love of man for his
fellowman.
{Knox}
Oh, how you turn my preachments back on me. It is a lesson.
Nevermore shall I preach. Henceforth--
{Margaret}
Yes.
(_Chalmers enters unobserved at left, pauses, and looks on._)
{Knox}
Henceforth I love. Listen.
{Margaret}
You are overwrought. It will pass, and you will see your path
straight before you, and know that I am right. You cannot run
away from the fight.
{Knox}
I can--and will. I want you, and you want me--the man's and
woman's need for each other. Come, go with me--now. Let us snatch
at happiness while we may.
(_He arises, approaches her, and gets her hand in his. She becomes
more complaisant, and, instead of repulsing him, is willing to
listen and receive._) As I have said, the fight will go on just
the same. Scores of men, better men, stronger men, than I, will
rise to take my place. Why do I talk this way? Because I love
you, love you, love you. Nothing else exists in all the world but
love of you.
{Margaret}
(_Melting and wavering._) Ah, you flame, you flame.
(_Chalmers utters an inarticulate cry of rage and rushes forward
at Knox_)
(_Margaret and Knox are startled by the cry and discover Chalmer's
presence._)
{Margaret}
(_Confronting Chalmers and thrusting him slightly back from Knox,
and continuing to hold him off from Knox._) No, Tom, no
dramatics, please. This excitement of yours is only automatic and
conventional. You really don't mean it. You don't even feel it.
You do it because it is expected of you and because it is your
training. Besides, it is bad for your heart. Remember Dr. West's
warning--
(_Chalmers, making an unusually violent effort to get at Knox,
suddenly staggers weakly back, signs of pain on his face, holding
a hand convulsively clasped over his heart. Margaret catches him
and supports him to a chair, into which he collapses._)
{Chalmers}
(_Muttering weakly._) My heart! My heart!
{Knox}
(_Approaching._) Can I do anything?
{Margaret}
(_Calmly._) No; it is all right. He will be better presently.
(_She is bending over Chalmers, her hand on his wrist, when
suddenly, as a sign he is recovering, he violently flings her
hand off and straightens up._)
{Knox}
(_Undecidedly._) I shall go now.
{Margaret}
No. You will wait until Linda comes back. Besides, you can't run
away from this and leave me alone to face it.
{Knox}
(_Hurt, showing that he will stay._) I am not a coward.
{Chalmers}
(_In a stifled voice that grows stronger._) Yes; wait I have a word
for you.
(_He pauses a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is all
right._)
(_Witheringly._) A nice specimen of a reformer, I must say. You,
who babbled yesterday about theft. The most high, righteous and
noble Ali Baba, who has come into the den of thieves and who is
also a thief.
(_Mimicking Margaret._) "Ah, you flame, you flame!"
(_In his natural voice._) I should call you; you thief, you thief,
you wife-stealer, you.
{Margaret}
(_Coolly._) I should scarcely call it theft.
{Chalmers}
(_Sneeringly._) Yes; I forgot. You mean it is not theft for him to
take what already belongs to him.
{Margaret}
Not quite that--but in taking what has been freely offered to
him.
{Chalmers}
You mean you have so forgotten your womanhood as to offer--
{Margaret}
Just that. Last night. And Mr. Knox did himself the honor of
refusing me.
{Knox}
(_Bursting forth._) You see, nothing else remains, Margaret.
{Chalmers}
(_Twittingly._) Ah, "Margaret."
{Knox}
(_Ignoring him._) The situation is intolerable.
{Chalmers}
(_Emphatically_). It is intolerable. Don't you think you had better
leave this house? Every moment of your presence dishonors it.
{Margaret}
Don't talk of honor, Tom.
{Chalmers}
I make no excuses for myself. I fancy I never fooled you
very much. But at any rate I never used my own house for such
purposes.
{Knox}
(_Springing at him._) You cur!
{Margaret}
(_Interposing._) No; don't. His heart.
{Chalmers}
(_Mimicking Margaret._) No dramatics, please.
{Margaret}
(_Plaintively, looking from one man to the other._) Men are so
strangely and wonderfully made. What am I to do with the pair of
you? Why won't you reason together like rational human beings?
{Chalmers}
(_Bitterly gay, rising to his feet._) Yes; let us come and reason
together. Be rational. Sit down and talk it over like civilized
humans. This is not the stone age. Be reassured, Mr. Knox. I
won't brain you. Margaret--
(_Indicating chair,_) Sit down. Mr. Knox--
(_Indicating chair._) Sit down.
(_All three seat themselves, in a triangle._) Behold the
problem--the ever ancient and ever young triangle of the
playwright and the short story writer--two men and a woman.
{Knox}
True, and yet not true. The triangle is incomplete. Only one of
the two men loves the woman.
{Chalmers}
Yes?
{Knox}
And I am that man.
{Chalmers}
I fancy you're right.
(_Nodding his head._) But how about the woman?
{Margaret}
She loves one of the two men.
{Knox}
And what are you going to do about it?
{Chalmers}
(_Judicially._) She has not yet indicated the man.
(_Margaret is about to indicate Knox._) Be careful, Madge. Remember
who is Tommy's father.
{Margaret}
Tom, honestly, remembering what the last years have been can you
imagine that I love you?
{Chalmers}
I'm afraid I've not--er--not flamed sufficiently.
{Margaret}
You have possibly spoken nearer the truth than you dreamed. I
married you, Tom, hoping great things of you. I hoped you would
be a power for good--
{Chalmers}
Politics again. When will women learn they must leave politics
alone?
{Margaret}
And also, I hoped for love. I knew you didn't love me when we
married, but I hoped for it to come.
{Chalmers}
And--er--may I be permitted to ask if you loved me?
{Margaret}
No; but I hoped that, too, would come.
{Chalmers}
It was, then, all a mistake.
{Margaret}
Yes; yours, and mine, and my father's.
{Knox}
We have sat down to reason this out, and we get nowhere. Margaret
and I love each other. Your triangle breaks.
{Chalmers}
It isn't a triangle after all. You forget Tommy.
{Knox} (_Petulantly._) Make it four-sided, then, but let us come to
some conclusion.
{Chalmers} (_Reflecting._) Ah, it is more than that. There is a
fifth side. There are the stolen letters which Madge has just
this morning restolen from her father. Whatever settlement takes
place, they must enter into it.
(_Changing his tone._) Look here, Madge, I am a fool. Let us talk
sensibly, you and Knox and I. Knox, you want my wife. You can
have her--on one consideration. Madge, you want Knox. You can
have him on one consideration, the same consideration. Give up
the letters and we'll forget everything.
{Margaret}
Everything?
{Chalmers}
Everything. Forgive and forget You know.
{Margaret}
You will forgive my--I--this--this adultery?
{Chalmers}
(_Doggedly._) I'll forgive anything for the letters. I've played
fast and loose with you, Madge, and I fancy your playing fast
and loose only evens things up. Return the letters and you can go
with Knox quietly. I'll see to that. There won't be a breath of
scandal. I'll give you a divorce. Or you can stay on with me
if you want to. I don't care. What I want is the letters. Is it
agreed?
(_Margaret seems to hesitate._)
{Knox}
(_Pleadingly._) Margaret.
{Margaret}
{Chalmers} (_Testily._) Am I not giving you each other? What more
do you want? Tommy stays with me. If you want Tommy, then stay
with me, but you must give up the letters.
{Margaret}
I shall not go with Mr. Knox. I shall not give up the letters. I
shall remain with Tommy.
{Chalmers}
So far as I am concerned, Knox doesn't count in this. I want the
letters and I want Tommy. If you don't give them up, I'll divorce
you on statutory grounds, and no woman, so divorced, can keep her
child. In any event, I shall keep Tommy.
{Margaret}
(_Speaking steadily and positively._) Listen, Tom; and you, too,
Howard. I have never for a moment entertained the thought of
giving up the letters. I may have led you to think so, but I
wanted to see just how low, you, Tom, could sink. I saw how low
you--all of you--this morning sank. I have learned--much. Where
is this fine honor, Tom, which put you on a man-killing rage a
moment ago? You'll barter it all for a few scraps of paper, and
forgive and forget adultery which does not exist--
(_Chalmers laughs skeptically._)--though I know when I say it
you will not believe me. At any rate, I shall not give up the
letters. Not if you do take Tommy away from me. Not even for
Tommy will I sacrifice all the people. As I told you this
morning, there are two million Tommys, child-laborers all, who
cannot be sacrificed for Tommy's sake or anybody's sake.
(_Chalmers shrugs his shoulders and smiles in ridicule._)
{Knox}
Surely, Margaret, there is a way out for us. Give up the letters.
What are they?--only scraps of paper. Why match them against
happiness--our happiness?
{Margaret}
But as you told me yourself, those scraps of paper represent the
happiness of millions of lives. It is not our happiness that is
matched against some scraps of paper. It is our happiness against
millions of lives--like ours. All these millions have hearts, and
loves, and desires, just like ours.
{Knox}
But it is a great social and cosmic process. It does not depend
on one man. Kill off, at this instant, every leader of the
people, and the process will go on just the same. The people will
come into their own. Theft will be unseated. It is destiny. It is
the process. Nothing can stop it.
{Margaret}
But it can be retarded.
{Knox}
You and I are no more than straws in relation to it. We cannot
stop it any more than straws can stop an ocean tide. We mean
nothing--except to each other, and to each other we mean all the
world.
{Margaret}
(_Sadly and tenderly._) All the world and immortality thrown in.
{Chalmers}
(_Breaking in._) Nice situation, sitting here and listening to
a strange man woo my wife in terms of sociology and scientific
slang.
(_Both Margaret and Knox ignore him._)
{Knox}
Dear, I want you so.
{Margaret}
(_Despairingly._) Oh! It is so hard to do right!
{Knox}
(_Eagerly._) He wants the letters very badly. Give them up for
Tommy. He will give Tommy for them.
{Chalmers}
No; emphatically no. If she wants Tommy she can stay on; but she
must give up the letters. If she wants you she may go; but she
must give up the letters.
{Knox}
(_Pleading for a decision._) Margaret.
{Margaret}
Howard. Don't tempt me and press me. It is hard enough as it is.
{Chalmers}
(_Standing up._) I've had enough of this. The thing must
be settled, and I leave it to you, Knox. Go on with your
love-making. But I won't be a witness to it. Perhaps
I--er--retard the--er--the flame process. You two must make up
your minds, and you can do it better without me. I am going to
get a drink and settle my nerves. I'll be back in a minute.
(_He moves toward exit to right._) She will yield, Knox. Be warm,
be warm.
(_Pausing in doorway._) Ah, you flame! Flame to some purpose. (_Exit
Chalmers._)
(_Knox rests his head despairingly on his hand, and Margaret,
pausing and looking at him sadly for a moment, crosses to him,
stands beside him, and caresses his hair._)
{Margaret}
It is hard, I know, dear. And it is hard for me as well.
{Knox}
It is so unnecessary.
{Margaret}
No, it is necessary. What you said last night, when I was weak,
was wise. We cannot steal from my child--
{Knox}
But if he gives you Tommy? Margaret
(_Shaking her head._) Nor can we steal from any other woman's
child--from all the children of all the women. And other things
I heard you say, and you were right. We cannot live by ourselves
alone. We are social animals. Our good and our ill--all is tied
up with all humanity.
{Knox}
(_Catching her hand and caressing it._) I do not follow you. I hear
your voice, but I do not know a word you say. Because I am loving
your voice--and you. I am so filled with love that there is no
room for anything else. And you, who yesterday were so remote and
unattainable, are so near and possible, so immediately possible.
All you have to do is to say the word, one little word. Say
it.--Say it.
(_He carries her hand to his lips and holds it there._)
{Margaret}
(_Wistfully._) I should like to. I should like to. But I can't.
{Knox}
You must.
{Margaret}
There are other and greater things that say must to me. Oh, my
dear, have you forgotten them? Things you yourself have spoken
to me--the great stinging things of the spirit, that are greater
than you and I, greater even than our love.
{Knox}
I exhaust my arguments--but still I love you.
{Margaret}
And I love you for it.
(_Chalmers enters from right, and sees Margaret still caressing
Knox's hair._)
{Chalmers}
(_With mild elation, touched with sarcasm._) Ah, I see you have
taken my advice, and reached a decision.
(_They do not answer. Margaret moves slowly away and seats
herself._) (_Knox remains with head bowed on hand._) No?
(_Margaret shakes her head._) Well, I've thought it over, and I've
changed my terms. Madge, go with Knox, take Tommy with you.
(_Margaret wavers, but Knox, head bowed on hand, does not see
her._) There will be no scandal. I'll give you a proper divorce.
And you can have Tommy.
{Knox}
(_Suddenly raising his head, joyfully, pleadingly._) Margaret!
(_Margaret is swayed, but does not speak._)
{Chalmers}
You and I never hit it off together any too extraordinarily well,
Madge; but I'm not altogether a bad sort. I am easy-going. I
always have been easy-going. I'll make everything easy for you
now. But you see the fix I am in. You love another man, and I
simply must regain those letters. It is more important than you
realize.
{Margaret}
(_Incisively._) You make me realize how important those letters
are.
{Knox}
Give him the letters, Margaret
{Chalmers}
So she hasn't turned them over to you yet?
{Margaret}
No; I still have them.
{Knox}
Give them to him.
{Chalmers}
Selling out for a petticoat. A pretty reformer.
{Knox} (_Proudly._)
A better lover.
{Margaret}
(_To Chalmers._)
He is weak to-day. What of it? He was strong last night. He will
win back his strength again. It is human to be weak. And in his
very weakness now, I have my pride, for it is the weakness of
love. God knows I have been weak, and I am not ashamed of it. It
was the weakness of love. It is hard to stifle one's womanhood
always with morality. (_Quickly._)
But do not mistake, Tom. This of mine is no conventional
morality. I do not care about nasty gossipy tongues and
sensation-mongering sheets; nor do I care what any persons of all
the persons I know, would say if I went away with Mr. Knox this
instant. I would go, and go gladly and proudly with him, divorce
or no divorce, scandal or scandal triple-fold--if--if no one else
were hurt by what I did. (_To Knox._)
Howard, I tell you that I would go with you now, in all
willingness and joy, with May-time and the songs of all singing
birds in my heart--were it not for the others. But there is a
higher morality. We must not hurt those others. We dare not steal
our happiness from them. The future belongs to them, and we must
not, dare not, sacrifice that future nor give it in pledge for
our own happiness. Last night I came to you. I was weak--yes;
more than that--I was ignorant. I did not know, even as late as
last night, the monstrous vileness, the consummate wickedness of
present-day conditions. I learned that today, this morning, and
now. I learned that the morality of the Church was a pretense.
Far deeper than it, and vastly more powerful, was the morality
of the dollar. My father, my family, my husband, were willing to
condone what they believed was my adultery. And for what? For a
few scraps of paper that to them represented only the privilege
to plunder, the privilege to steal from the people.
(_To Chalmers._) Here are you, Tom, not only willing and eager to
give me into the arms of the man you believe my lover, but you
throw in your boy--your child and mine--to make it good measure
and acceptable. And for what? Love of some woman?--any woman?
No. Love of humanity? No. Love of God? No. Then for what? For the
privilege of perpetuating your stealing from the people--money,
bread and butter, hats, shoes, and stockings--for stealing all
these things from the people.
(_To Knox._) Now, and at last, do I realize how stern and awful
is the fight that must be waged--the fight in which you and
I, Howard, must play our parts and play them bravely and
uncomplainingly--you as well as I, but I even more than you. This
is the den of thieves. I am a child of thieves. All my family is
composed of thieves. I have been fed and reared on the fruits of
thievery. I have been a party to it all my life. Somebody must
cease from this theft, and it is I. And you must help me, Howard.
{Chalmers}
(_Emitting a low long whistle._) Strange that you never went into
the suffragette business. With such speech-making ability you
would have been a shining light.
{Knox}
(_Sadly._) The worst of it is, Margaret, you are right. But it is
hard that we cannot be happy save by stealing from the happiness
of others. Yet it hurts, deep down and terribly, to forego you.
(_Margaret thanks him with her eyes._)
{Chalmers}
(_Sarcastically._) Oh, believe me, I am not too anxious to give up
my wife. Look at her. She's a pretty good woman for any man to
possess.
{Margaret}
Tom, I'll accept a quiet divorce, marry Mr. Knox, and take Tommy
with me--on one consideration.
{Chalmers}
And what is that?
{Margaret}
That I retain the letters. They are to be used in his speech this
afternoon.
{Chalmers}
No they're not.
{Margaret}
Whatever happens, do whatever worst you can possibly do, that
speech will be given this afternoon. Your worst to me will be
none too great a price for me to pay.
{Chalmers}
No letters, no divorce, no Tommy, nothing.
{Margaret}
Then will you compel me to remain here. I have done nothing
wrong, and I don't imagine you will make a scandal.
(_Enter Linda at right rear, pausing and looking inquiringly._)
There they are now.
(_To Linda._) Yes; give them to me.
(_Linda, advancing, draws package of documents from her breast.
As she is handing them to Margaret, Chalmers attempts to seise
them._)
{Knox}
(_Springing forward and thrusting Chalmers back._) That you shall
not!
(_Chalmers is afflicted with heart-seizure, and staggers._)
{Margaret}
(_Maternally, solicitously._) Tom, don't! Your heart! Be careful!
(_Chalmers starts to stagger toward bell_) Howard! Stop him! Don't
let him ring, or the servants will get the letters away from us.
(_Knox starts to interpose, but Chalmers, growing weaker, sinks
into a chair, head thrown back and legs out straight before him._)
Linda, a glass of water.
(_Linda gives documents to Margaret, and makes running exit to
right rear._) (_Margaret bends anxiously over Chalmers._) (_A pause._)
{Knox}
(_Touching her hand._) Give them to me.
(_Margaret gives him the documents, which he holds in his hand,
at the same time she thanks him with her eyes._) (_Enter Linda with
glass of water, which she hands to Margaret._) (_Margaret tries to
place the glass to Chalmer's lips._)
{Chalmers}
(_Dashing the glass violently from her hand to the floor and
speaking in smothered voice._) Bring me a whiskey and soda.
(_Linda looks at Margaret interrogatively. Margaret is undecided
what to say, shrugs her shoulders in helplessness, and nods her
head._)
(_Linda makes hurried exit to right._)
{Margaret}
(_To Knox._) You will go now and you will give the speech.
{Knox}
(_Placing documents in inside coat pocket._) I will give the
speech.
{Margaret}
And all the forces making for the good time coming will be
quickened by your words. Let the voices of the millions be in it.
(_Chalmers, legs still stretched out, laughs cynically._)
You know where my heart lies. Some day, in all pride and honor,
stealing from no one, hurting no one, we shall come together--to
be together always.
{Knox}
(_Drearily._) And in the meantime?
{Margaret}
We must wait
{Knox}
(_Decidedly._) We will wait.
{Chalmers}
(_Straightening up._) For me to die? eh?
(_During the following speech Linda enters from right with whiskey
and soda and gives it to Chalmers, who thirstily drinks half of
it. Margaret dismisses Linda with her eyes, and Linda makes exit
to right rear._)
{Knox}
I hadn't that in mind, but now that you mention it, it seems
to the point. That heart of yours isn't going to carry you
much farther. You have played fast and loose with it as with
everything else. You are like the carter who steals hay from his
horse that he may gamble. You have stolen from your heart. Some
day, soon, like the horse, it will quit We can afford to wait. It
won't be long.
{Chalmers}
(_After laughing incredulously and sipping his whiskey._) Well,
Knox, neither of us wins. You don't get the woman. Neither do I.
She remains under my roof, and I fancy that is about all. I won't
divorce her. What's the good? But I've got her tied hard and fast
by Tommy. You won't get her.
(_Knox, ignoring hint, goes to right rear and pauses in doorway._)
{Margaret}
Work. Bravely work. You are my knight. Go.
(_Knox makes exit._)
(_Margaret stands quietly, face averted from audience and turned
toward where Knox was last to be seen._)
{Chalmers}
Madge.
(_Margaret neither moves nor answers._) I say, Madge.
(_He stands up and moves toward her, holding whiskey glass in one
hand._) That speech is going to make a devil of a row. But I don't
think it will be so bad as your father says. It looks pretty
dark, but such things blow over. They always do blow over. And so
with you and me. Maybe we can manage to forget all this and patch
it up somehow.
(_She gives no sign that she is aware of his existence._) Why don't
you speak? (_Pause._)
(_He touches her arm._) Madge.
{Margaret}
(_Turning upon him in a blase of wrath and with unutterable
loathing._)
Don't touch me!
(_Chalmers recoils._)
Curtain
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