Plays
And let's see, have we got everything? (_takes the one shaker, shakes a
little pepper on his hand. Looks in vain for the other shaker_) And tell
Mr Demming to bring the salt.
ANTHONY: But Miss Claire will be very angry.
HARRY: I am very angry. Did I choose to eat my breakfast at the other
end of a blizzard?
ANTHONY: (_an exclamation of horror at the thermometer_) The temperature
is falling. I must report. (_he punches the buzzer, takes up the phone_)
Miss Claire? It is Anthony. A terrible thing has happened. Mr
Archer--what? Yes, a terrible thing.--Yes, it is about Mr
Archer.--No--no, not dead. But here. He is here. Yes, he is well, he
seems well, but he is eating his breakfast. Yes, he is having breakfast
served out here--for himself, and the other gentlemen are to come
too.--Well, he seemed to be annoyed because the heat had been turned off
from the house. But the door keeps opening--this stormy wind blowing
right over the plants. The temperature has already fallen.--Yes, yes. I
thought you would want to come.
(ANTHONY _opens the trap-door and goes below_. HARRY _looks
disapprovingly down into this openness at his feet, returns to his
breakfast_. ANTHONY _comes up, bearing a box_.)
HARRY: (_turning his face away_) Phew! What a smell.
ANTHONY: Yes. Fertilizer has to smell.
HARRY: Well, it doesn't have to smell up my breakfast!
ANTHONY: (_with a patient sense of order_) The smell belongs here. (_he
and the smell go to the inner room_)
(_The outer door opens just enough to admit_ CLAIRE--_is quickly closed.
With_ CLAIRE _in a room another kind of aliveness is there_.)
CLAIRE: What are you doing here?
HARRY: Getting breakfast. (_all the while doing so_)
CLAIRE: I'll not have you in my place!
HARRY: If you take all the heat then you have to take me.
CLAIRE: I'll show you how I have to take you. (_with her hands begins
scooping upon him the soil_ ANTHONY _has prepared_)
HARRY: (_jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms, putting his arms
around her_) Claire--be decent. What harm do I do here?
CLAIRE: You pull down the temperature.
HARRY: Not after I'm in.
CLAIRE: And you told Tom and Dick to come and make it uneven.
HARRY: Tom and Dick are our guests. We can't eat where it's warm and
leave them to eat where it's cold.
CLAIRE: I don't see why not.
HARRY: You only see what you want to see.
CLAIRE: That's not true. I wish it were. No; no, I don't either. (_she
is disturbed--that troubled thing which rises from within, from deep,
and takes_ CLAIRE. _She turns to the Edge Vine, examines. Regretfully
to_ ANTHONY, _who has come in with a plant_) It's turning back, isn't
it?
ANTHONY: Can you be sure yet, Miss Claire?
CLAIRE: Oh yes--it's had its chance. It doesn't want to be--what hasn't
been.
HARRY: (_who has turned at this note in her voice. Speaks kindly_) Don't
take it so seriously, Claire. (CLAIRE _laughs_)
CLAIRE: No, I suppose not. But it _does_ matter--and why should I
pretend it doesn't, just because I've failed with it?
HARRY: Well, I don't want to see it get you--it's not important enough
for that.
CLAIRE: (_in her brooding way_) Anything is important enough for
that--if it's important at all. (_to the vine_) I thought you were out,
but you're--going back home.
ANTHONY: But you're doing it this time, Miss Claire. When Breath of Life
opens--and we see its heart--
(CLAIRE _looks toward the inner room. Because of intervening plants they
do not see what is seen from the front--a plant like caught motion, and
of a greater transparency than plants have had. Its leaves, like waves
that curl, close around a heart that is not seen. This plant stands by
itself in what, because of the arrangement of things about it, is a
hidden place. But nothing is between it and the light_.)
CLAIRE: Yes, if the heart has (_a little laugh_) held its own, then
Breath of Life is alive in its otherness. But Edge Vine is running back
to what it broke out of.
HARRY: Come, have some coffee, Claire.
(ANTHONY _returns to the inner room, the outer door opens_. DICK _is
hurled in_.)
CLAIRE: (_going to the door, as he gasps for breath before closing it_)
How dare you make my temperature uneven! (_she shuts the door and leans
against it_)
DICK: Is that what I do?
(_A laugh, a look between them, which is held into significance_.)
HARRY: (_who is not facing them_) Where's the salt?
DICK: Oh, I fell down in the snow. I must have left the salt where I
fell. I'll go back and look for it.
CLAIRE: And change the temperature? We don't need salt.
HARRY: You don't need salt, Claire. But we eat eggs.
CLAIRE: I must tell you I don't like the idea of any food being eaten
here, where things have their own way to go. Please eat as little as
possible, and as quickly.
HARRY: A hostess calculated to put one at one's ease.
CLAIRE: (_with no ill-nature_) I care nothing about your ease. Or about
Dick's ease.
DICK: And no doubt that's what makes you so fascinating a hostess.
CLAIRE: Was I a fascinating hostess last night, Dick? (_softly sings_)
'Oh, night of love--' (_from the Barcorole of 'Tales of Hoffman'_)
HARRY: We've got to have salt.
(_He starts for the door._ CLAIRE _slips in ahead of him, locks it,
takes the key. He marches off, right_.)
CLAIRE: (_calling after him_) That end's always locked.
DICK: Claire darling, I wish you wouldn't say those startling things.
You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a shock--and really,
it's unwise.
CLAIRE: Haven't you learned that the best place to hide is in the truth?
(_as_ HARRY _returns_) Why won't you believe me, Harry, when I tell you
the truth--about doors being locked?
HARRY: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just
because you don't eat salt.
CLAIRE: (_with one of her swift changes_) Oh, Harry! Try your egg
without salt. Please--please try it without salt! (_an intensity which
seems all out of proportion to the subject_)
HARRY: An egg demands salt.
CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an
unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'
HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.
CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.
HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (_going back to his breakfast_)
CLAIRE: And pleased--so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure,
it is just the right kind of spirit--because it gets no lift. (_more
brightly_) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.
DICK: I'll try it now. (_he goes to the breakfast table_)
CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one
leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?
HARRY: Claire.
DICK: (_pushing back his egg_) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.
HARRY: Claire, there is a _limit_.
CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a
limit. So--the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get
out, I suppose it is--quite unexpectedly, and perhaps--a bit terribly.
HARRY: Get out where?
CLAIRE: (_with a bright smile_) Where you, darling, will never go.
HARRY: And from which you, darling, had better beat it.
CLAIRE: I wish I could. (_to herself_) No--no I don't either
(_Again this troubled thing turns her to the plant. She puts by
themselves the two which_ ANTHONY _covered with paper bags. Is about to
remove these papers_. HARRY _strikes a match_.)
CLAIRE: (_turning sharply_) You can't smoke here. The plants are not
used to it.
HARRY: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for them.
CLAIRE: There is design.
HARRY: (_to_ DICK) Am I supposed to be answered? I never can be quite
sure at what moment I am answered.
(_They both watch_ CLAIRE, _who has uncovered the plants and is looking
intently into the flowers. From a drawer she takes some tools. Very
carefully gives the rose pollen to an unfamiliar flower--rather
wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on a small shelf near the door
of the inner room_.)
DICK: What is this you're doing, Claire?
CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.
DICK: It's all rather mysterious, isn't it?
HARRY: And Claire doesn't make it any less so.
CLAIRE: Can I make life any less mysterious?
HARRY: If you know what you are doing, why can't you tell Dick?
DICK: Never mind. After all, why should I be told? (_he turns away_)
(_At that she wants to tell him. Helpless, as one who cannot get across
a stream, starts uncertainly_.)
CLAIRE: I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (_faces the room
beyond the wall of glass_)--the flower I have created that is outside
what flowers have been. What has gone out should bring fragrance from
what it has left. But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing
thing. I call the fragrance I am trying to create Reminiscence. (_her
hand on the pot of the wistful little flower she has just given pollen_)
Reminiscent of the rose, the violet, arbutus--but a new thing--itself.
Breath of Life may be lonely out in what hasn't been. Perhaps some day I
can give it reminiscence.
DICK: I see, Claire.
CLAIRE: I wonder if you do.
HARRY: Now, Claire, you're going to be gay to-day, aren't you? These are
Tom's last couple of days with us.
CLAIRE: That doesn't make me especially gay.
HARRY: Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don't you?
CLAIRE: I would like him to. Oh--I would like him to!
HARRY: Then be amusing. That's really you, isn't it, Dick?
DICK: Not quite all of her--I should say.
CLAIRE: (_gaily_) Careful, Dick. Aren't you indiscreet? Harry will be
suspecting that I am your latest strumpet.
HARRY: Claire! What language you use! A person knowing you only by
certain moments could never be made to believe you are a refined woman.
CLAIRE: True, isn't it, Dick?
HARRY: It would be a good deal of a lark to let them listen in at
times--then tell them that here is the flower of New England!
CLAIRE: Well, if this is the flower of New England, then the half has
never been told.
DICK: About New England?
CLAIRE: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant--about me.
HARRY: (_going on with his own entertainment_) Explain that this is what
came of the men who made the laws that made New England, that here is
the flower of those gentlemen of culture who--
DICK: Moulded the American mind!
CLAIRE: Oh! (_it is pain_)
HARRY: Now what's the matter?
CLAIRE: I want to get away from them!
HARRY: Rest easy, little one--you do.
CLAIRE: I'm not so sure--that I do. But it can be done! We need not be
held in forms moulded for us. There is outness--and otherness.
HARRY: Now, Claire--I didn't mean to start anything serious.
CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I tell
you, I want to break it up! If it were all in pieces, we'd be (_a little
laugh_) shocked to aliveness (_to_ DICK)--wouldn't we? There would be
strange new comings together--mad new comings together, and we would
know what it is to be born, and then we might know--that we are. Smash
it. (_her hand is near an egg_) As you'd smash an egg. (_she pushes the
egg over the edge of the table and leans over and looks, as over a
precipice_)
HARRY: (_with a sigh_) Well, all you've smashed is the egg, and all that
amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So that's that.
CLAIRE: (_with difficulty, drawing herself back from the fascination of
the precipice_) You think I can't smash anything? You think life can't
break up, and go outside what it was? Because you've gone dead in the
form in which you found yourself, you think that's all there is to the
whole adventure? And that is called sanity. And made a virtue--to lock
one in. You never worked with things that grow! Things that take a
sporting chance--go mad--that sanity mayn't lock them in--from life