Plays
get my niece out of jail. That's what comes of having radicals around.
HOLDEN: What happened?
FEJEVARY: One of our beloved Hindus made himself obnoxious on the
campus. Giving out handbills about freedom for India--howling over
deportation. Our American boys wouldn't stand for it. A policeman saw
the fuss--came up and started to put the Hindu in his place. Then
Madeline rushes in, and it ended in her pounding the policeman with her
tennis racket.
HOLDEN: Madeline Morton did that!
FEJEVARY: (_sharply_) You seem pleased.
HOLDEN: I am--interested.
FEJEVARY: Well, I'm not interested. I'm disgusted. My niece mixing up in
a free-for-all fight and getting taken to the police station! It's the
first disgrace we've ever had in our family.
HOLDEN: (_as one who has been given courage_) Wasn't there another
disgrace?
FEJEVARY: What do you mean?
HOLDEN: When your father fought his government and was banished from his
country.
FEJEVARY: That was not a disgrace!
HOLDEN: (_as if in surprise_) Wasn't it?
FEJEVARY: See here, Holden, you can't talk to me like that.
HOLDEN: I don't admit you can talk to me as you please and that I can't
talk to you. I'm a professor--not a servant.
FEJEVARY: Yes, and you're a damned difficult professor. I certainly have
tried to--
HOLDEN: (_smiling_) Handle me?
FEJEVARY: I ask you this. Do you know any other institution where you
could sit and talk with the executive head as you have here with me?
HOLDEN: I don't know. Perhaps not.
FEJEVARY: Then be reasonable. No one is entirely free. That's naïve.
It's rather egotistical to want to be. We're held by our relations to
others--by our obligations to the (_vaguely_)--the ultimate thing. Come
now--you admit certain dissatisfactions with yourself, so--why not go
with intensity into just the things you teach--and not touch quite so
many other things?
HOLDEN: I couldn't teach anything if I didn't feel free to go wherever
that thing took me. Thirty years ago I was asked to come to this college
precisely because my science was not in isolation, because of my vivid
feeling of us as a moment in a long sweep, because of my faith in the
greater beauty our further living may unfold.
(HARRY _enters_.)
HARRY: Excuse me. Miss Morton is here now, Mr Fejevary.
FEJEVARY: (_frowns, hesitates_) Ask her to come up here in five minutes
(_After_ HARRY _has gone_) I think we've thrown a scare into Madeline. I
thought as long as she'd been taken to jail it would be no worse for us
to have her stay there awhile. She's been held since one o'clock. That
ought to teach her reason.
HOLDEN: Is there a case against her?
FEJEVARY: No, I got it fixed up. Explained that it was just college girl
foolishness--wouldn't happen again. One reason I wanted this talk with
you first, if I do have any trouble with Madeline I want you to help me.
HOLDEN: Oh, I can't do that.
FEJEVARY: You aren't running out and clubbing the police. Tell her
she'll have to think things over and express herself with a little more
dignity.
HOLDEN: I ask to be excused from being present while you talk with her.
FEJEVARY: But why not stay in the library--in case I should need you.
Just take your books over to the east alcove and go on with what you
were doing when I came in.
HOLDEN: (_with a faint smile_) I fear I can hardly do that. As to
Madeline--
FEJEVARY: You don't want to see the girl destroy herself, do you? I
confess I've always worried about Madeline. If my sister had lived--But
Madeline's mother died, you know, when she was a baby. Her father--well,
you and I talked that over just the other day--there's no getting to
him. Fred never worried me a bit--just the fine normal boy. But
Madeline--(_with an effort throwing it off_) Oh, it'll be all right, I
haven't a doubt. And it'll be all right between you and me, won't it?
Caution over a hard strip of the road, then--bigger things ahead.
HOLDEN: (_slowly, knowing what it may mean_) I shall continue to do all
I can toward getting Fred Jordan out of prison. It's a disgrace to
America that two years after the war closes he should be kept
there--much of the time in solitary confinement--because he couldn't
believe in war. It's small--vengeful--it's the Russia of the Czars. I
shall do what is in my power to fight the deportation of Gurkul Singh.
And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your
amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college. For what--I
ask you? Dismissed--for _what_? Because they love liberty enough to give
their lives to it! The day you dismiss them, burn our high-sounding
manifesto, Mr Fejevary, and admit that Morton College now sells her soul
to the--committee on appropriations!
FEJEVARY: Well, you force me to be as specific as you are. If you do
these things, I can no longer fight for you.
HOLDEN: Very well then, I go.
FEJEVARY: Go where?
HOLDEN: I don't know--at the moment.
FEJEVARY: I fear you'll find it harder than you know. Meanwhile, what of
your family?
HOLDEN: We will have to manage some way.
FEJEVARY: It is not easy for a woman whose health--in fact, whose
life--is a matter of the best of care to 'manage some way'. (_with real
feeling_) What is an intellectual position alongside that reality? You'd
like, of course, to be just what you want to be--but isn't there
something selfish in that satisfaction? I'm talking as a friend now--you
must know that. You and I have a good many ties, Holden. I don't believe
you know how much Mrs Fejevary thinks of Mrs Holden.
HOLDEN: She has been very, very good to her.
FEJEVARY: And will be. She cares for her. And our children have been
growing up together--I love to watch it. Isn't that the reality? Doing
for them as best we can, making sacrifices of--of _every_ kind. Don't
let some tenuous, remote thing destroy this flesh and blood thing.
HOLDEN: (_as one fighting to keep his head above water_) Honesty is not
a tenuous, remote thing.
FEJEVARY: There's a kind of honesty in selfishness. We can't always have
it. Oh, I used to--go through things. But I've struck a pace--one
does--and goes ahead.
HOLDEN: Forgive me, but I don't think you've had certain temptations
to--selfishness.
FEJEVARY: How do you know what I've had? You have no way of knowing
what's in me--what other thing I might have been? You know my heritage;
you think that's left nothing? But I find myself here in America. I love
those dependent on me. My wife--who's used to a certain manner of
living; my children--who are to become part of the America of their
time. I've never said this to another human being--I've never looked at
myself--but it's pretty arrogant to think you're the only man who has
made a sacrifice to fit himself into the age in which he lives. I hear
Madeline. This hasn't left me in very good form for talking with her.
Please don't go away. Just--
(MADELINE _comes in, right. She has her tennis racket. Nods to the two
men_. HOLDEN _goes out, left_.)
MADELINE: (_looking after_ HOLDEN--_feeling something going on. Then
turning to her uncle, who is still looking after_ HOLDEN) You wanted to
speak to me, Uncle Felix?
FEJEVARY: Of course I want to speak to you.
MADELINE: I feel just awfully sorry about--banging up my racket like
this. The second time it came down on this club. Why do they carry those
things? Perfectly fantastic, I'll say, going around with a club. But as
long as you were asking me what I wanted for my birthday--
FEJEVARY: Madeline, I am not here to discuss your birthday.
MADELINE: I'm sorry--(_smiles_) to hear that.
FEJEVARY: You don't seem much chastened.
MADELINE: Chastened? Was that the idea? Well, if you think that keeping
a person where she doesn't want to be chastens her! I never felt less
'chastened' than when I walked out of that slimy spot and looked across
the street at your nice bank. I should think you'd hate to--(_with
friendly concern_) Why, Uncle Felix, you look tired out.
FEJEVARY: I am tired out, Madeline. I've had a nerve-racking day.
MADELINE: Isn't that too bad? Those speeches were so boresome, and that
old senator person--wasn't he a stuff? But can't you go home now and let
auntie give you tea and--
FEJEVARY: (_sharply_) Madeline, have you no intelligence? Hasn't it
occurred to you that your performance would worry me a little?
MADELINE: I suppose it was a nuisance. And on such a busy day.
(_changing_) But if you're going to worry, Horace is the one you should
worry about. (_answering his look_) Why, he got it all up. He made me
ashamed!
FEJEVARY: And you're not at all ashamed of what you have done?
MADELINE: Ashamed? Why--no.
FEJEVARY: Then you'd better be! A girl who rushes in and assaults an
officer!
MADELINE: (_earnestly explaining it_) But, Uncle Felix, I had to stop
him. No one else did.
FEJEVARY: Madeline, I don't know whether you're trying to be naïve--
MADELINE: (_angrily_) Well, I'm _not_. I like that! I think I'll go
home.
FEJEVARY: I think you will not! It's stupid of you not to know this is
serious. You could be dismissed from school for what you did.
MADELINE: Well, I'm good and ready to be dismissed from any school that
would dismiss for that!
FEJEVARY: (_in a new manner--quietly, from feeling_) Madeline, have you
no love for this place?
MADELINE: (_doggedly, after thinking_) Yes, I have. (_she sits down_)
And I don't know why I have.
FEJEVARY: Certainly it's not strange. If ever a girl had a background,
Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton's background. (_he too now
seated by the table_) Do you remember your Grandfather Morton?
MADELINE: Not very well. (_a quality which seems sullenness_) I couldn't
bear to look at him. He shook so.
FEJEVARY: (_turning away, real pain_) Oh--how cruel!
MADELINE: (_surprised, gently_) Cruel? Me--cruel?
FEJEVARY: Not just you. The way it passes--(_to himself_) so _fast_ it
passes.
MADELINE: I'm sorry. (_troubled_) You see, he was too old then--
FEJEVARY: (_his hand up to stop her_) I wish I could bring him back for
a moment, so you could see what he was before he (_bitterly_) shook so.
He was a powerful man, who was as real as the earth. He was strangely of
the earth, as if something went from it to him. (_looking at her
intently_) Queer you should be the one to have no sentiment about him,
for you and he--sometimes when I'm with you it's as if--he were near. He
had no personal ambition, Madeline. He was ambitious for the earth and
its people. I wonder if you can realize what it meant to my father--in a
strange land, where he might so easily have been misunderstood, pushed
down, to find a friend like that? It wasn't so much the material
things--though Uncle Silas was always making them right--and as if--oh,
hardly conscious what he was doing--so little it mattered. It was the
way he _got_ father, and by that very valuing kept alive what was there
to value. Why, he literally laid this country at my father's feet--as if
that was what this country was for, as if it made up for the hard early
things--for the wrong things.
MADELINE: He must really have been a pretty nice old party. No doubt I
would have hit it off with him all right. I don't seem to hit it off
with the--speeches about him. Somehow I want to say, 'Oh, give us a
rest.'
FEJEVARY: (_offended_) And that, I presume, is what you want to say to
me.
MADELINE: No, no, I didn't mean you, Uncle. Though (_hesitatingly_) I
was wondering how you could think you were talking on your side.
FEJEVARY: What do you mean--my side?
MADELINE: Oh, I don't--exactly. That's nice about him being--of the
earth. Sometimes when I'm out for a tramp--way off by myself--yes, I
know. And I wonder if that doesn't explain his feeling about the