Plays
MRS PATRICK: How do you know they are? Where have you been for twenty
years?
ALLIE MAYO: Outside. Twenty years. That's why I know how brave _they_
are (_indicating the edge of the woods. Suddenly different_) You'll not
find peace there again! Go back and watch them _fight_!
MRS PATRICK: (_swiftly rising_) You're a cruel woman--a hard, insolent
woman! I knew what I was doing! What do you know about it? About me? I
didn't go to the Outside. I was left there. I'm only--trying to get
along. Everything that can hurt me I want buried--buried deep. Spring is
here. This morning I _knew_ it. Spring--coming through the storm--to
take me--take me to hurt me. That's why I couldn't bear--(_she looks at
the closed door_) things that made me know I feel. You haven't felt for
so long you don't know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here!
And now you'd take _that_ from me--(_looking now toward the edge of the
woods_) the thing that made me know they would be buried in my
heart--those things I can't _live_ and know I feel. You're more cruel
than the sea! 'But other things are true beside the things you want to
see!' Outside. Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring.
(_as if resentful of not more deeply believing what she says_) What
would there be for me but the Outside? What was there for you? What did
you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted?
ALLIE MAYO: I found--what I find now I know. The edge of life--to hold
life behind me--
(_A slight gesture toward_ MRS PATRICK.)
MRS PATRICK: (_stepping back_) You call what you are life? (_laughs_)
Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand!
ALLIE MAYO: (_under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty_)
Ugly!
MRS PATRICK: (_passionately_) I have _known_ life. I have known _life_.
You're like this Cape. A line of land way out to sea--land not life.
ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (_raises her arm, curves it in as if
around something she loves_) Land that encloses and gives shelter from
storm.
MRS PATRICK: (_facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else
out_) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes--land not life.
ALLIE MAYO: Outside sea--outer shore, dark with the wood that once was
ships--dunes, strange land not life--woods, town and harbor. The line!
Stunted straggly line that meets the Outside face to face--and fights
for what itself can never be. Lonely line. Brave growing.
MRS PATRICK: It loses.
ALLIE MAYO: It wins.
MRS PATRICK: The farthest life is buried.
ALLIE MAYO: And life grows over buried life! (_lifted into that; then,
as one who states a simple truth with feeling_) It will. And Springs
will come when you will want to know that it is Spring.
(_The_ CAPTAIN _and_ BRADFORD _appear behind the drift of sand. They
have a stretcher. To get away from them_ MRS PATRICK _steps farther into
the room_; ALLIE MAYO _shrinks into her corner. The men come in, open
the closed door and go in the room where they left the dead man. A
moment later they are seen outside the big open door, bearing the man
away_. MRS PATRICK _watches them from sight_.)
MRS PATRICK: (_bitter, exultant_) Savers of life! (_to_ ALLIE MAYO) You
savers of life! 'Meeting the Outside!' Meeting--(_but she cannot say it
mockingly again; in saying it, something of what it means has broken
through, rises. Herself lost, feeling her way into the wonder of life_)
Meeting the Outside!
(_It grows in her as_ CURTAIN _lowers slowly_.)
THE VERGE
First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14, 1921.
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
ANTHONY
HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband
HATTIE, The maid
CLAIRE
DICK, Richard Demming
TOM EDGEWORTHY
ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter
ADELAIDE, Claire's sister
DR EMMONS
ACT I
_The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light
from below which comes up through an open trap-door in the floor. This
slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of
a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is
seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment
later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the
buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY,
_a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the
darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._
ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the
stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down
to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and
approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine!
(_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself,
and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later
on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled
outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns
on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in
abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the
creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the
glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.
The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an
outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps lead
down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing wall
save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of plants
leads off.
This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual
workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with
plants, a laboratory.
At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful.
It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a little way up the
glass. You might see the form of a cross in it, if you happened to think
it that way. The leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have
been. They are at once repellent and significant_.
ANTHONY _is at work preparing soil--mixing, sifting. As the wind tries
the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured and
returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the
telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not
buzz once long and three short. Then he returns to his work. The buzzer
goes on and on in impatient jerks which mount in anger. Several times_
ANTHONY _is almost compelled by this insistence, but the thing that
holds him back is stronger. At last, after a particularly mad splutter,
to which_ ANTHONY _longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it up_.
ANTHONY _goes on preparing soil.
A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in, and
also_ MR HARRY ARCHER, _wrapped in a rug._)
ANTHONY: Oh, please close the door, sir.
HARRY: Do you think I'm not trying to? (_he holds it open to say this_)
ANTHONY: But please _do_. This stormy air is not good for the plants.
HARRY: I suppose it's just the thing for me! Now, what do you mean,
Anthony, by not answering the phone when I buzz for you?
ANTHONY: Miss Claire--Mrs Archer told me not to.
HARRY: Told you not to answer me?
ANTHONY: Not you especially--nobody but her.
HARRY: Well, I like her nerve--and yours.
ANTHONY: You see, she thought it took my mind from my work to be
interrupted when I'm out here. And so it does. So she buzzes once long
and--Well, she buzzes her way, and all other buzzing--
HARRY: May buzz.
ANTHONY: (_nodding gravely_) She thought it would be better for the
flowers.
HARRY: I am not a flower--true, but I too need a little attention--and a
little heat. Will you please tell me why the house is frigid?
ANTHONY: Miss Claire ordered all the heat turned out here, (_patiently
explaining it to_ MISS CLAIRE's _speechless husband_) You see the roses
need a great deal of heat.
HARRY: (_reading the thermometer_) The roses have seventy-three I have
forty-five.
ANTHONY: Yes, the roses need seventy-three.
HARRY: Anthony, this is an outrage!
ANTHONY: I think it is myself; when you consider what we paid for the
heating plant--but as long as it is defective--Why, Miss Claire would
never have done what she has if she hadn't looked out for her plants in
just such ways as this. Have you forgotten that Breath of Life is about
to flower?
HARRY: And where's my breakfast about to flower?--that's what I want to
know.
ANTHONY: Why, Miss Claire got up at five o'clock to order the heat
turned off from the house.
HARRY: I see you admire her vigilance.
ANTHONY: Oh, I do. (_fervently_) I do. Harm was near, and that woke her
up.
HARRY: And what about the harm to--(_tapping his chest_) Do roses get
pneumonia?
ANTHONY: Oh, yes--yes, indeed they do. Why, Mr Archer, look at Miss
Claire herself. Hasn't she given her heat to the roses?
HARRY: (_pulling the rug around him, preparing for the blizzard_) She
has the fire within.
ANTHONY: (_delighted_) Now isn't that true! How well you said it. (_with
a glare for this appreciation_, HARRY _opens the door. It blows away
from him_) Please do close the door!
HARRY: (_furiously_) You think it is the aim of my life to hold it open?
ANTHONY: (_getting hold of it_) Growing things need an even temperature,
(_while saying this he gets the man out into the snow_)
(ANTHONY _consults the thermometer, not as pleased this time as he was
before. He then looks minutely at two of the plants--one is a rose, the
other a flower without a name because it has not long enough been a
flower. Peers into the hearts of them. Then from a drawer under a shelf,
takes two paper bags, puts one over each of these flowers, closing them
down at the bottom. Again the door blows wildly in, also_ HATTIE, _a
maid with a basket_.)
ANTHONY: What do you mean--blowing in here like this? Mrs Archer has
ordered--
HATTIE: Mr Archer has ordered breakfast served here, (_she uncovers the
basket and takes out an electric toaster_)
ANTHONY: _Breakfast_--here? _Eat_--here? Where plants grow?
HATTIE: The plants won't poison him, will they? (_at a loss to know what
to do with things, she puts the toaster under the strange vine at the
back, whose leaves lift up against the glass which has frost leaves on
the outer side_)
ANTHONY: (_snatching it away_) You--you think you can cook eggs under
the Edge Vine?
HATTIE: I guess Mr Archer's eggs are as important as a vine. I guess my
work's as important as yours.
ANTHONY: There's a million people like you--and like Mr Archer. In all
the world there is only one Edge Vine.
HATTIE: Well, maybe one's enough. It don't look like nothin', anyhow.
ANTHONY: And you've not got the wit to know that that's why it's the
Edge Vine.
HATTIE: You want to look out, Anthony. You talk nutty. Everybody says
so.
ANTHONY: Miss Claire don't say so.
HATTIE: No, because she's--
ANTHONY: You talk too much!
(_Door opens, admitting_ HARRY; _after looking around for the best place
to eat breakfast, moves a box of earth from the table_.)
HARRY: Just give me a hand, will you, Hattie?
(_They bring it to the open space and he and_ HATTIE _arrange breakfast
things_, HATTIE _with triumphant glances at the distressed_ ANTHONY)
ANTHONY: (_deciding he must act_) Mr Archer, this is not the place to
eat breakfast!
HARRY: Dead wrong, old boy. The place that has heat is the place to eat
breakfast. (_to_ HATTIE) Tell the other gentlemen--I heard Mr Demming
up, and Mr Edgeworthy, if he appears, that as long as it is such a
pleasant morning, we're having breakfast outside. To the conservatory
for coffee.
(HATTIE _giggles, is leaving_.)