It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and independence as by what your precisians call thieving.
With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that I was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I found the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of my last misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, not daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting itself out of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the house itself, to my left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist gravel—for there is nothing to be gained on an expedition of this sort by advertising the size and shape of your boots to a morbidly inquisitive public—and reached the shelter of the veranda by walking across the lawn.
There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam from my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French windows gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from the reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the young wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also given me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could guess. So, thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe jewels were kept—and often a substantial bit of money as well—was situated in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected with it by a flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective point.
The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that I have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would give me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two men, and I ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and away, a good hour before sunrise.
The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something between a grunt and a squeak.
And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came the answer—a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement.
For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me.
“Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?”
So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought steadied me to action.
“Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”—and I put one foot backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to say——”
Click!—went something by the window, and the room was flooded with sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!—and I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young woman it has ever been my lot to meet.
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. “Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?”
As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands in the air—they had gone up quite involuntarily—I must have been the very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol. Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood wondering she repeated:
“Who are you? And what do you want?”
“Madame,” I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she had interrupted, “Charles sent me to—to say to you——”
“Charles who?” she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of merriment shot through her eyes. “Charles who?” she repeated.
Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me information.
The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. “You are not very clever, are you?” she said.
“If you will pardon me,” I said, “I think I had better be going. I seem to have mistaken the house.”
“You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter it,” she returned.
“Why, as to the mode of entrance,” I said, “I might plead that the mistake appears to have been less in that than in the person who employed it.”
I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for its oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in itself, and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty of the dark eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by virtue of the pistol.
“You will come in,” she said, “and sit there.” She indicated a seat beside a central table. “But first you will kindly let me have whatever weapons you may possess.” She took my revolver, examined it, and put her own in the breast of her gown. “Now you may put your hands down,” she said, “your arms must ache by now. Sit down.”
I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment.
“I am wondering what you are going to do with me,” I ventured.
In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited; that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her hair; an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have screamed at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and fainted. Or the ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would ordinarily have been inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to have given the alarm. She had done none of these things. She had merely taken me captive. She had set me down in a chair at the center of the room. She had not roused the house. And now she stood looking at me with a trace of abstraction in her manner; looking at me, for the moment, less as if I were a human being than as if I were a factor in some mathematical problem which it was the immediate task of that active, high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And there was a measure of irony in her glance, as if she alone tasted and enjoyed some ulterior jest.
“I am wondering,” I repeated, “what you are going to do with me.”
She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied.
“I believe,” she said slowly, “that I have nearly made up my mind what to do with you.”
“Well?” I asked.
But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and her diamonds—the diamonds I had come after!—and wondered again why she was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me?
At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side of the curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which I supposed to communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy enough, now that she had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull that rope, to set the bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not do so?
Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she was, and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least motion of mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat thus while the slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I steamed with sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her long searching glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and so complete that my scattered wits had never drawn themselves together again; I continued as one in a haze; as a person half under the power of the hypnotist; as a mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's paw. And yet one idea began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess me—the idea that she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did myself.
But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she did not wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be Charles—whoever Charles might be. But now?—it was too much for me. I could not find a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the conviction grew.
She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full knowledge of my thought.
“You are still wondering why I do not give you up?” she said.
I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips parted in a kind of silent laughter.
She touched the diamonds about her throat.
“It was these you came after?”
I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She asked questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none.
“Tell me,” she said, “Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?”
“'Convey, the wise it call,'” I quoted. “Accident, or fate, or destiny, I suppose,” I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but with a fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles—such things have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or something of that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when she asked the question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. “Fate, or destiny,” I went on, “or what you please, 'There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,'” I quoted again, in my best actor manner.
“Why,” she said, “you are a man with some air of better things about you. You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are a thief! Tell me,” she continued, “tell me—I dare say there were many struggles against that destiny?” There was a note almost of eagerness in her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain search out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea for the exercise of clemency. “Come—were there not?—I dare say there were—circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?”
“Why, as to that,” I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest with myself for once, “I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer usage at the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap where they have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting it to myself that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare against the unjust conditions of a hypocritical social order.”
“Warfare!” she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds again. “And you could justify it, too, could you not?”
And then she asked me: “Have you ever killed a man?”
“Why, no,” said I, “but I have tried to.”
“He lived?—and you were sorry that he lived?”
“No,” I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, “I was glad he lived.”
“And yet you hated him?”
“I would have taken his life in a rage,” I said. “He had wronged me as greatly as one man can wrong another.”
“And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief——”
“Higgins is the name,” said I. “You may call me Higgins.”
“My dear Higgins,” she went on, “you are inconsistent. You attempt to slay a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. It may have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not bold enough to face the thought of killing him. You are glib with justifications of your thievery; and perhaps that is also because you are too much of a coward to look steadily at it. You creep along a mean and despicable path in life, contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead soul. You are what you are because there is nothing positive in you for either good or evil. You are negative; you were better dead. Yes, better dead!”
Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death, was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would. But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My doubts as to her sanity returned.
“Still,” I said, for the sake of saying something, “if I killed a man, I should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death.”
“Even if he deserved death?” she repeated, and sprang up, as if the phrase had touched her. “You make yourself the judge, you do, of when a man 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he deserves to die?”
Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion which she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom that suffused her being with an awful beauty.
“When does he deserve to die?” she repeated. “Listen to me. I knew a woman once—no matter where—no matter when—who was sold—sold! I say—by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest beast that ever trod this earth. Her beauty—for she had beauty—her wit—for wit she had—became this husband's chattels before she turned her twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would have been faithful to him—she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite of all his drunkenness and bestiality—and abuse! It was not neglect alone that she had to complain of—she had never looked for understanding or sympathy. But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say, and worse than abuse. Before she had been married a year she knew what it was, not only to feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises from her maid, but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!—hate? She hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And then—love came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. Love, I say; and she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was measured only by the degree in which she hated her husband. And she would have left with him; but on the very night they would have flown together her lord and master——-”
She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise from her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps.
“Her—lord and master—found it out, and waited up to catch them; and coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her——”
“Look!” she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her bosom.
“Tell me,” she whispered hoarsely, “would it have been murder if she had killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing—to kill him, or to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she have regretted it?”
I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then Charles had come!
An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage.
And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice—a kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her.
“Charles,” she cried, “come in! Come in!”
Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question.
“I thought you would never come,” she said.
He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of us, with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the outer darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been awakened from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler.
“Katherine,” he finally stammered, “what is this? Who is this man?” He passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or not he dreams; and walked towards the table.
“Charles,” she said, “I have shot the old man.” I have seen a beef stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to the ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, and dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his hand. But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if through a mist. “Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to a child, “I mean that I have killed the old man.”
And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain at the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings.
The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the chest, and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty or thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched with evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to determine. Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, and there were powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at close range, evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted on my entrance; and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it was little wonder that the servants in the rooms above, and across the house, had not heard it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the floor, and it must have been a red nose in life; but now it was of a bluish-white color, like the skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and the thin, drawn-up legs, and the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed the sight, for me, of all the solemnity which (we are taught) exudes from the presence of death. It made me sick; and yet I cackled with sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained nerves jarred and laughed, if not myself. It was too damned grotesque.
Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; and he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the curtain to her face.
She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade Charles to enter still dominated her accents.
“Don't you understand, Charles? This man,” and she indicated me with the pistol, “this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just after—just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you see? Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!”
“Us?” queried Charles.
“Notus?” she asked.
“My God, Katherine,” he burst forth, “why did you do this thing? And you would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash this blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have—we might have———”
He broke down and sobbed. And then: “God knows the old man never did me any harm,” he said. “And she'd accuse the thief, too!” he cried a moment later, with a kind of wondering horror.
“Listen, Charles,” she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a sidelong glance she still took heed of me. “Listen, and understand me. We must act quickly—but after it happened it was necessary that I should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you came; I give him up—and we—we wait awhile, and then the rest of life is ours.”
I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in their presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck me as an impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of what she said, as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with waking force. I stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those two contending personalities, that were concerned just now with the question of my life or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater—as if it were someone else of whom they spoke.
“Go,” she cried to Charles again, “and I will give him up.”
“Katherine,” he said, “and you would do this thing?”
“Why?” she retorted, “what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain one ray of happiness! But go!—and leave the rest to me.”
And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not.
She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to ward off some unclean thing.
Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the floor.
“You—you abandon me?” she said slowly. “You desert me, then? Love, Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I have suffered—what I have done—still to purchase—nothing?”
She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her!
Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them both I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A door opened somewhere above, and a voice asked:
“You rang, Ma'am?”
From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with outstretched hands—hands that reached upward from the pit of torment, my fancy told me—and pleaded for a little love. “In all this world is there no little ray of love for me?”—it was so my imagination rather than my hearing translated the slight movement of her lips. And while she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one another, the servant spoke again from the stairway.
“You rang?” he asked.
She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still fixed upon those of Charles she cried:
“Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is—dead. Your master's murdered! And there, there,” and she stabbed an accusing finger at her erstwhile lover, “there is the man who murdered him!”
And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran I saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with blood-stained feet.
Characters:
Cousin Fanny Hemlock
John Speaker
Mary Speaker
John Thinker
Mary Thinker
Maid
Period, the present. Place, any American city.
The Scenerepresents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos, which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division is carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back.
John Speaker and Mary Speakerremain all the time in the room at the right of the stage. They are not aware ofJohn ThinkerandMary Thinker,who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. TheThinkers,however, are aware of theSpeakers.
In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the twoJohnsare precisely alike. The same is true ofMary Speaker and Mary Thinker.TheJohnsare conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40 years of age. The twoMarysare a few years younger.
Cousin Fanny Hemlockis a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy.
The Curtain, on rising, discovers the twoJohnsand the twoMarys.It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening dress, and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc.
John Speaker[Picking up over coat.]
Are you ready, Mary dear?
Mary Speaker[Holding out a gloved hand.]
Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love?
John Speaker[Busy with glove.]
It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of an evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, Mary.
Mary Speaker
You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. IloveCousin Fanny.
John Thinker
[Busy with Mary Thinker's glove.]
The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a horrible affliction!
Mary Thinker[Passionately.]
Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her!
John Speaker
[HelpingMary Speakeron with coat, which action is simultaneously imitated hy John andMary Thinker.]
Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny will not be with us many more years.
John Thinker[ToMary Thinker.]
One comfort is she'll die before long!
Mary Speaker[ToJohn Speaker.]
Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you?
Mary Thinker[ToJohn Thinker.]
Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck!
[Enter Maid through door in right back to John andMary Speaker, who look up. John andMary Thinkeralso notice entrance of Maid and listen.]
Maid
[ToMary Speaker.]
Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night.
Mary Thinker[ToJohn Thinker, quickly.]
The old cat's up to something!
Mary Speaker[To Maid.]
Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go to her if she wishes to speak with me.
Maid
She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell younotto do so.
Mary Speaker
Notto do so?
Maid
Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting ready to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home.
John Speaker[To Maid.]
Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake!
[Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John Speaker; and while she is doing soJohn Thinkersays toMary Thinker:]
John Thinker
Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight!
Maid
[ToJohn Speaker.]
No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were not to go out tonight.
[Maid bows and exits.]
John Speaker
Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would certainly have put her request in some other way.
Mary Speaker
If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that she deliberately tries at times to annoy us.
John Speaker
Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. We will have to bear with her.
[John Speakertakes his top coat and his wife's coat> and lays them on a chair, whileJohn Thinker, who has been frowning and brooding, flings himself into chair and says toMary Thinker:]
John Thinker
For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny certainly takes the cake, Mary!
Mary Thinker
She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant.
John Thinker
Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little trouble!
Mary Thinker
You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I who catch all the trouble!
John Thinker
Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to me.
Mary Thinker
She's my mother's third cousin, if you callthatnear!
John Thinker
Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you callthatnear!
Mary Speaker
What were you thinking of, John, dear?
John Speaker
Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that
Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all.
Mary Speaker
Poor, lonely old woman, indeed—it's odd, isn't it, that she is related to both you and me, John?
John Speaker
She's closer to you than to me, Mary.
Mary Speaker
You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John.
John Speaker
It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary!
Mary Speaker
No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water.
John SpeakerThicker than water!
John Thinker
Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins.
Mary Thinker
Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law!John Speaker
But even if she were onlymyrelation, Mary, and not related toyouat all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies.
[Enter Cousin Fanny, to John andMary Speaker, through door right hack. She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts her hand to her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles. John andMary Speakerleap forward, put their arms behind her, and, supporting and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair at center of room they are in. John andMary Thinker, near together at table in their room, lean forward eagerly and watch this entrance, and when the old woman stumbles,John Thinkersays toMary Thinker, nudging her:]
John Thinker
You see?
Mary Thinker
See what?
John Thinker
She totters!
Mary Thinker
She stumbled.
John Thinker
She's getting weaker.
[Mary Speakertenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, asMary Thinkersays:]
Mary Thinker
Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten!
John Thinker
Not she!
Mary Thinker
The mean kind always do!
John Speaker
[Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her.]
Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny?
Mary Speaker
Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny?
Mary Thinker
[Bitterly, frowning at other group.]
No draught will ever harm her!
Cousin Fanny
[ToJohn Speaker, sneeringly; petulantly.] You're mighty anxious about awrap, John! But you were thinking of going out and leaving me practically alone in the house.
John Speaker[Deprecatingly.]
But,Cousin Fanny——
Cousin Fanny[Interrupting.]
Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! You can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! Both of you were going out—bothof you!
Mary Speaker
Cousin Fanny, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us to stop at home with you. Didn't we, John?
Cousin Fanny
[Querulously, childishly, shrilly.]
Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you were going out! I can see your evening clothes!
Mary Speaker
We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John?
[She is going, as she speaks, butCousin Fannycries out:]
Cousin Fanny
Stop!
[Mary Speakerstops, andCousin Fannycontinues:]
Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want to take them off for? Are they too good formeto see? Are they too grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you went out? Heh?
Mary Speaker
Cousin Fanny, I didn't mean that. I meant——
Cousin Fanny[Interrupting.]
I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you in time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with the treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of hunger and neglect!
[She begins to cry, andMary Speakersays:]
Mary SpeakerNo, no, no,Cousin Fanny!
[Mary Speakersoothes her, in pantomime, and pets her, trying to take her hands away from her face,Cousin Fannyresisting, like a spoiled and spiteful child.John Speaker, behindCousin Fannyand his wife, walks up and down, with his eyes on them, running his hand nervously and excitedly through his hair. While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary Thinker are watching and saying:]
John Thinker
This is to be one ofCousin Fanny's pleasant evenings!
Mary Thinker
This happens a dozen times a day.
John ThinkerShe's not really crying.
Mary Thinker
Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant.
John ThinkerThe old she-devil!
John Speaker
[TakingCousin Fanny's hand.]
You know,Cousin Fanny, that we try to do our duty by you.
Cousin Fanny[Flinging his hand off.]
You try to do your duty by my money! I know!
I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may fool you—I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will. It's not too late to leave it all to charity!
[She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, andJohn Thinker, nudgingMary Thinkerand pointing to her, says:]
John ThinkerThe old cat is capable of it, too!
John Speaker[ToCousin Fanny.]
If you should leave your money to charity,Cousin Fanny, you would find it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than water,Cousin Fanny!
Cousin Fanny[Shrewdly, maliciously.]
So is sticky flypaper!
John Speaker
Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you,Cousin Fanny? You've known me from my boyhood,Cousin Fanny, and you've lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by this time! You ought to know us in ten years!
Mary ThinkerTen years of torture!
John ThinkerIt can't last much longer!
John Speaker
[Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly.]
You trust us, don't you,Cousin Fanny? You really are sure of our affection, aren't you?
Cousin Fanny
[ToJohn Speaker. She shows that she really is willing to be convinced; she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically eager.]
John, John, you reallydocare for me, don't you? [She takes a hand of each.]
It isn'tallon account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you?
John SpeakerandMary Speaker[Together.]
Yes, yes,Cousin Fanny!
Cousin Fanny
If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same, wouldn't you?
[John SpeakerandMary Speakerexchange glances over her head, and John Speaker drops her hand, whileJohn ThinkergrabsMary Thinkerexcitedly by the arm and says quickly:]
John Thinker
My God, you don't suppose she's reallylostit, do you?
Mary Thinker
No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as a witch.
Cousin Fanny
If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary?
Mary Speaker
Why,Cousin Fanny, you know I would!
Cousin Fanny
But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, but Iamspiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I know I'm not easy to live with, Mary.
Mary Speaker[KissingCousin Fanny.]
You get such strange notions,Cousin Fanny!
John Thinker
And such true ones,Cousin Fanny!
Cousin Fanny
Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me a trial!
Mary SpeakerandJohn Speaker[Together.]
Never,Cousin Fanny!
Mary ThinkerandJohn Thinker[Together.]
Always,Cousin Fanny!
Cousin FannyAnd that is the truth?
John Speaker,John Thinker,Mary SpeakerandMary Thinker[All together.]
And that is the truth,Cousin Fanny!
Cousin Fanny
You don't know how suspicious one gets!
Mary Speaker[Petting her.]
But suspicion never stays long in your good heart,Cousin Fanny. There's no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go to bed now? Let me call the maid.
Cousin Fanny
[Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again.]
To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I know why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you can talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know you! I know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've been waiting and hoping for the last ten years!
[Begins to cry.]
Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel it's almost here. You'll get the money soon enough!
Mary Speaker[Soothing her.]
There, there,Cousin Fanny, don't go on like this!
You know it isn't true—you know you'll live ten years yet!
[John Speakerruns his hands through his hair and looks silently atMary Speaker, andJohn Thinker, with the same gesture, says to Mary Thinker:]
John Thinker
If I thought she'd live ten years yet——!
[Pauses.]
Mary Thinker
Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet——?
John Thinker[With a gesture of de pair.]
My God—ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about earning money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over!
Mary Thinker
[Fiercely.]
You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every day. I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth. I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's blood drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive—just merely alive! I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I tell you!
Mary Speaker
[Still soothingCousin Fanny, but speaking with one hand nervously clutching her own head as she does so.]
Come, come,Cousin Fanny—you'd better go to bed now!
Cousin Fanny
I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine now. I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets.
John Speaker
Where are they,Cousin Fanny?
Cousin Fanny
On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [John Speakergoes to the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, whileJohn Thinkersays, meditatively:]
John Thinker
I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be called by some ugly name!
Mary Thinker
People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never take it by mistake themselves.
John Speaker[Finding bottle; examining it.]
See here,Cousin Fanny, didn't you have one of these about an hour ago? Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner?
Cousin Fanny[Peevishly.]
I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap here in the chair.
John Speaker[ToMary Speaker.]
She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let her have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the heart.
Mary SpeakerLet me see which ones they are.
[John Speakerholds the bottle out towardsMary Speaker, in front ofCousin Fanny.Cousin Fannysnatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs childishly.John SpeakerandMary Speakerlook at each other inquiringly over her head.]
John Speaker
She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be pretty serious. [ToCousin Fanny.]
Youdidtake one right after dinner, didn't you,Cousin Fanny?
Cousin Fanny
[Hugging bottle to her very excitedly.]
No! No! I tell you I didn't! Iwilltake one! You don't want me to get to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die!
John ThinkerIknowthat shedidhave one.
Mary Speaker[ToJohn Speaker.]
What can you do, dear?
John Speaker
[Taking hold ofCousin Fanny's hands, and trying to take phial gently.]
See here,Cousin Fanny, you must be reasonable... you mustn't be stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous. It might even kill you!
John Thinker
Itwouldkill her as certainly as she sits there.John Speaker
Come, come,Cousin Fanny... it might be dangerous.
Mary Speaker
John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her it is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says theleaststrain will prove fatal.
Cousin Fanny[Whimpering and struggling.]
Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! You want me to die so you can get my money!
John Speaker[Releasing her.]
No! No! No!Cousin Fanny... Come, be reasonable!
[He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it. He draws back and says:]
Damn!
[Nurses his hand.]
Mary Speaker
Did she bite you?
John Speaker
Yes.
[Nurses his hand, andMary Speakerexamines it, whileCousin Fannypulls cork from phial with teeth, andJohn Thinkersays:]
John Thinker
The old viper has teeth yet!
Mary Thinker
She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad heart....
John Speaker
[ToMary Speaker, pointing toCousin Fanny, who is shaking tablet out of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and shakes another more carefully, with air of childish triumph.]
Mary, whatcanI do? Shewillhave it! And if I struggle with her it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her to struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm!
Mary Speaker
Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John.
John Thinker
It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will andyouknow it will.
John Speaker
Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid... I'm afraid it reallymightharm her....
Cousin Fanny[Putting tablet into her mouth.]
There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. You hate me—both of you hate me—but you can't prevent me going to sleep!
Mary Speaker
She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she reallydidhave one before?
John Speaker[ToCousin Fanny.]
Cousin Fanny, youdidn'thave one before, did you?
Cousin Fanny
[She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth, laughing foolishly.]
Yes!
John Speaker
[Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head.]
I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know.
Cousin Fanny[Rocking and laughing sillily.]
Yes, I did! You know I did!
John Speaker
She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she had one before.
[As he speaksCousin Fannyceases rocking and leans hack in her chair, closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two Marys stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they speak.]
John Thinker
Shedidhave one before.
Mary Thinker
Iknowshe did.
John Thinker
Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die!
John Speaker
Shewouldhave that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have killed her.
John Thinker
Will I see her die? Will she die?
John Speaker
I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I quit struggling with her.
John Thinker
If she dies... butwillshe die?
Mary Thinker
She will die!
Cousin Fanny
[Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes.]
John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really... really...
[Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does not move after this.]
Mary Speaker
[They all speak with lowered voices now.] She is asleep. She really needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it has put her to sleep.
John Speaker
Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it has put her to sleep.
... And you know, Mary, shewouldhave t... if I hadstruggledwith her, she would havedied!A struggle would have killed her.
John Thinker
And now she will die because there was no struggle.
Mary Thinker
She will die.
John Speaker
Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary?
Mary SpeakerQuite. Quite naturally.
Mary ThinkerDeathis quite natural.
John ThinkerAnd she is dying.
John Speaker
Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault of mine... I would always have reproached myself....
Mary Speaker
You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach yourself with regard to her....
John Thinker
She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead.
Mary ThinkerShe is not quite dead.
John Speaker
I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing.... She doesn't seem to be breathing at all!
Mary SpeakerOld people breathe very quietly.
Mary ThinkerOld people die very quietly.
John ThinkerAnd she is dying.
Mary Thinker
She is dead!
John Thinker
Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all?Mary Speaker
Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid!
John ThinkerIt is too late for any doctor.
Mary Thinker
Too late!
John Speaker
Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't bedead!
Mary Speaker[Bending above her.]
John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is.... PoorCousin Fannyhas left us!
John Speaker
[Rapidly.]
PoorCousin Fanny.... PoorCousin Fanny.... PoorCousin Fanny....
John Thinker
Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it....
Mary SpeakerI'll go get the maid.
[Going.]
John Speaker
Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog....
[Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness.]
I'm all in the dark.
[Lights on again.]
[In the interim, which is very short,Cousin Fannyhas gone over to the room on the left in which are John andMary Thinker, and sits in chair corresponding to one which she has just left.]