Plays
note of optimism in the exercises. (_speaks with the heartiness of one
who would keep himself assured_)
HOLDEN: I didn't seem to want a fine note of optimism. (_with
roughness_) I wanted--a gleam from reality.
FEJEVARY: To me this is reality--the robust spirit created by all these
young people.
HOLDEN: Do you think it is robust? (_hand affectionately on the book
before him_) I've been reading Whitman.
FEJEVARY: This day has to be itself. Certain things go--others come;
life is change.
HOLDEN: Perhaps it's myself I'm discouraged with. Do you remember the
tenth anniversary of the founding of Morton College.
FEJEVARY: The tenth? Oh yes, that was when this library was opened.
HOLDEN: I shall never forget your father, Mr Fejevary, as he stood out
there and said the few words which gave these books to the students. Not
many books, but he seemed to baptize them in the very spirit from which
books are born.
FEJEVARY: He died the following year.
HOLDEN: One felt death near. But that didn't seem the important thing. A
student who had fought for liberty for mind. Of course his face would be
sensitive. You must be very proud of your heritage.
FEJEVARY: Yes. (_a little testily_) Well, I have certainly worked for
the college. I'm doing my best now to keep it a part of these times.
HOLDEN: (_as if this has not reached him_) It was later that same
afternoon I talked with Silas Morton. We stood at this window and looked
out over the valley to the lower hill that was his home. He told me how
from that hill he had for years looked up to this one, and why there had
to be a college here. I never felt America as that old farmer made me
feel it.
FEJEVARY: (_drawn by this, then shifting in irritation because he is
drawn_) I'm sorry to break in with practical things, but alas, I am a
practical man--forced to be. I too have made a fight--though the fight
to finance never appears an idealistic one. But I'm deep in that now,
and I must have a little help; at least, I must not have--stumbling-blocks.
HOLDEN: Am I a stumbling-block?
FEJEVARY: Candidly (_with a smile_) you are a little hard to finance.
Here's the situation. The time for being a little college has passed. We
must take our place as one of the important colleges--I make bold to say
one of the important universities--of the Middle West. But we have to
enlarge before we can grow. (_answering_ HOLDEN's _smile_) Yes, it is
ironic, but that's the way of it. It was a nice thing to open the
anniversary with fifty thousand from the steel works--but fifty thousand
dollars--nowadays--to an institution? (_waves the fifty thousand aside_)
They'll do more later, I think, when they see us coming into our own.
Meanwhile, as you know, there's this chance for an appropriation from
the state. I find that the legislature, the members who count, are very
friendly to Morton College. They like the spirit we have here. Well, now
I come to you, and you are one of the big reasons for my wanting to put
this over. Your salary makes me blush. It's all wrong that a man like
you should have these petty worries, particularly with Mrs Holden so in
need of the things a little money can do. Now this man Lewis is a
reactionary. So, naturally, he doesn't approve of you.
HOLDEN: So naturally I am to go.
FEJEVARY: Go? Not at all. What have I just been saying?
HOLDEN: Be silent, then.
FEJEVARY: Not that either--not--not really. But--be a little more
discreet. (_seeing him harden_) This is what I want to put up to you.
Why not give things a chance to mature in your own mind? Candidly, I
don't feel you know just what you do think; is it so awfully important
to express--confusion?
HOLDEN: The only man who knows just what he thinks at the present moment
is the man who hasn't done any new thinking in the past ten years.
FEJEVARY: (_with a soothing gesture_) You and I needn't quarrel about
it. I understand you, but I find it a little hard to interpret you to a
man like Lewis.
HOLDEN: Then why not let a man like Lewis go to thunder?
FEJEVARY: And let the college go to thunder? I'm not willing to do that.
I've made a good many sacrifices for this college. Given more money than
I could afford to give; given time and thought that I could have used
for personal gain.
HOLDEN: That's true, I know.
FEJEVARY: I don't know just why I've done it. Sentiment, I suppose. I
had a very strong feeling about my father, Professor Holden. And this
friend Silas Morton. This college is the child of that friendship. Those
are noble words in our manifesto: 'Morton College was born because there
came to this valley a man who held his vision for mankind above his own
advantage; and because that man found in this valley a man who wanted
beauty for his fellow-men as he wanted no other thing.'
HOLDEN: (_taking it up_) 'Born of the fight for freedom and the
aspiration to richer living, we believe that Morton College--rising as
from the soil itself--may strengthen all those here and everywhere who
fight for the life there is in freedom, and may, to the measure it can,
loosen for America the beauty that breathes from knowledge.' (_moved by
the words he has spoken_) Do you know, I would rather do that--really do
that--than--grow big.
FEJEVARY: Yes. But you see, or rather, what you don't see is, you have
to look at the world in which you find yourself. The only way to stay
alive is to grow big. It's been hard, but I have tried to--carry on.
HOLDEN: And so have I tried to carry on. But it is very hard--carrying
on a dream.
FEJEVARY: Well, I'm trying to make it easier.
HOLDEN: Make it easier by destroying the dream?
FEJEVARY: Not at all. What I want is scope for dreams.
HOLDEN: Are you sure we'd have the dreams after we've paid this price
for the scope?
FEJEVARY: Now let's not get rhetorical with one another.
HOLDEN: Mr Fejevary, you have got to let me be as honest with you as you
say you are being with me. You have got to let me say what I feel.
FEJEVARY: Certainly. That's why I wanted this talk with you.
HOLDEN: You say you have made sacrifices for Morton College. So have I.
FEJEVARY: How well I know that.
HOLDEN: You don't know all of it. I'm not sure you understand any of it.
FEJEVARY: (_charmingly_) Oh, I think you're hard on me.
HOLDEN: I spoke of the tenth anniversary. I was a young man then, just
home from Athens, (_pulled back into an old feeling_) I don't know why I
felt I had to go to Greece. I knew then that I was going to teach
something within sociology, and I didn't want anything I felt about
beauty to be left out of what I formulated about society. The Greeks--
FEJEVARY: (_as_ HOLDEN _has paused before what he sees_) I remember you
told me the Greeks were the passion of your student days.
HOLDEN: Not so much because they created beauty, but because they were
able to let beauty flow into their lives--to create themselves in
beauty. So as a romantic young man (_smiles_), it seemed if I could go
where they had been--what I had felt might take form. Anyway, I had a
wonderful time there. Oh, what wouldn't I give to have again that
feeling of life's infinite possibilities!
FEJEVARY: (_nodding_) A youthful feeling.
HOLDEN: (_softly_) I like youth. Well, I was just back, visiting my
sister here, at the time of the tenth anniversary. I had a chance then
to go to Harvard as instructor. A good chance, for I would have been
under a man who liked me. But that afternoon I heard your father speak
about books. I talked with Silas Morton. I found myself telling him
about Greece. No one had ever felt it as he felt it. It seemed to become
of the very bone of him.
FEJEVARY: (_affectionately_) I know how he used to do.
HOLDEN: He put his hands on my shoulders. He said, 'Young man, don't go
away. We need you here. Give us this great thing you've got!' And so I
stayed, for I felt that here was soil in which I could grow, and that
one's whole life was not too much to give to a place with roots like
that. (_a little bitterly_) Forgive me if this seems rhetoric.
FEJEVARY: (_a gesture of protest. Silent a moment_) You make it--hard
for me. (_with exasperation_) Don't you think I'd like to indulge myself
in an exalted mood? And why don't I? I can't afford it--not now. Won't
you have a little patience? And faith--faith that the thing we want will
be there for us after we've worked our way through the woods. We are in
the woods now. It's going to take our combined brains to get us out. I
don't mean just Morton College.
HOLDEN: No--America. As to getting out, I think you are all wrong.
FEJEVARY: That's one of your sweeping statements, Holden. Nobody's all
wrong. Even you aren't.
HOLDEN: And in what ways am I wrong--from the standpoint of your Senator
Lewis?
FEJEVARY: He's not my Senator Lewis, he's the state's, and we have to
take him as he is. Why, he objects, of course, to your radical
activities. He spoke of your defence of conscientious objectors.
HOLDEN: (_slowly_) I think a man who is willing to go to prison for what
he believes has stuff in him no college needs turn its back on.
FEJEVARY: Well, he doesn't agree with you--nor do I.
HOLDEN: (_still quietly_) And I think a society which permits things to
go on which I can prove go on in our federal prisons had better stop and
take a fresh look at itself. To stand for that and then talk of
democracy and idealism--oh, it shows no mentality, for one thing.
FEJEVARY: (_easily_) I presume the prisons do need a cleaning up. As to
Fred Jordan, you can't expect me to share your admiration. Our own
Fred--my nephew Fred Morton, went to France and gave his life. There's
some little courage, Holden, in doing that.
HOLDEN: I'm not trying to belittle it. But he had the whole spirit of
his age with him--fortunate boy. The man who stands outside the idealism
of this time--
FEJEVARY: Takes a good deal upon himself, I should say.
HOLDEN: There isn't any other such loneliness. You know in your heart
it's a noble courage.
FEJEVARY: It lacks--humility. (HOLDEN _laughs scoffingly_) And I think
you lack it. I'm asking you to co-operate with me for the good of Morton
College.
HOLDEN: Why not do it the other way? You say enlarge that we may grow.
That's false. It isn't of the nature of growth. Why not do it the way of
Silas Morton and Walt Whitman--each man being his purest and intensest
self. I was full of this fervour when you came in. I'm more and more
disappointed in our students. They're empty--flippant. No sensitive
moment opens them to beauty. No exaltation makes them--what they hadn't
known they were. I concluded some of the fault must be mine. The only
students I reach are the Hindus. Perhaps Madeline Morton--I don't quite
make her out. I too must have gone into a dead stratum. But I can get
back. Here alone this afternoon--(_softly_) I was back.
FEJEVARY: I think we'll have to let the Hindus go.
HOLDEN: (_astonished_) Go? Our best students?
FEJEVARY: This college is for Americans. I'm not going to have foreign
revolutionists come here and block the things I've spent my life working
for.
HOLDEN: I don't seem to know what you mean at all.
FEJEVARY: Why, that disgraceful performance this morning. I can settle
Madeline all right, (_looking at his watch_) She should be here by now.
But I'm convinced our case before the legislature will be stronger with
the Hindus out of here.
HOLDEN: Well, I seem to have missed something--disgraceful
performance--the Hindus, Madeline--(_stops, bewildered_)
FEJEVARY: You mean to say you don't know about the disturbance out here?
HOLDEN: I went right home after the address. Then came up here alone.
FEJEVARY: Upon my word, you do lead a serene life. While you've been
sitting here in contemplation I've been to the police court--trying to