Read-Aloud Plays Part 12

THE BOY

Then?

THE MAN

We can't live in a vacuum. The more you feel the force, the more you must act. The more you can act. And in the long run it doesn't matter what you do, if you do what your own instinct bids.

THE BOY

Then I _could_ stay right in the midst of it?

THE MAN

Yes. And if you were thinking of writing poetry, it might even be better to stay in the midst of it. Drama, you know ... and it's time for a new drama.

THE BOY

It isn't that, with me. I can't write.... I had one splendid teacher. He used to talk about things right in cla.s.s. He said that most educated people think that intellect is a matter of making fine distinctions--of seeing as two separate points what the unintelligent would believe was one point; but that this idea was _finicky_. He wanted us to see that intelligence might also be a matter of seeing the connection between two things so far apart that most people would think they were always separate. I like that. It made education _mean_ something, because it made it depend on imagination instead of grubbing. And then he told us about the history of our subject--grammar. How it began as poetry, when every word was an original creation; and then became philosophy, as people had to arrange speech with thought; and then science, with more or less exact, laws. I could _see_ it--the thing became alive. And he said all knowledge pa.s.sed through the same stages, and there isn't anything that can't eventually be made scientific. That made me think a good deal. I wondered if somebody couldn't work out a way of preventing anybody from being poor.

It seems so unnecessary, with so much work being done. That's what I want to do. Thanks to you, I--

THE MAN

Here's Rex! Rex, know my good friend. I know you will like him. Rex always cares for the people I do, don't you, Rex?

THE BOY

Of course, I see one thing: it's the people nearest one that make the most difference. Mother, now, she will understand.... You don't believe in marrying, though, do you?

THE MAN

I certainly do!

THE BOY

But I thought--

THE MAN

You thought because I left one woman and hadn't found another that I didn't care for women? Others believe that, too, but it isn't so. On the contrary. You see, I didn't so much leave her as get away from my own failure. Of course, there is such a thing as the wrong woman. She makes a man a fraction. The better she is in herself, the less she leaves him to live by. One twentieth is less than one half. But the right woman! She multiplies a man....

THE BOY

Oh!

THE MAN

Why, you might have told from my poems how I believe in love.

THE BOY

I don't remember any love poems.

THE MAN

Bless your heart! Every one of them was a love poem. Not the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind, about fading roses and tender hearts.... I sent that book out as a cry for the mate. It is charged with the fulness of love. That's why I could write about trees and storms.

THE BOY

I suppose if I had been older....

THE MAN

It isn't one's age but one's need. _She_ will understand. Look, the sun has gone round the corner of the house. Is that lunch you have in the parcel?

THE BOY

Yes.

THE MAN

Would you like to make it a picnic? I'll get something from the house, and then we can walk to the woods.

THE BOY

I'd love to!

THE MAN

All right, I'll be ready in no time. Come, Rex!

SURVIVAL

_The garden of a home in the suburbs. A man is walking up and down alone at dusk, occasionally stopping to water a plant, but more often falling into deep thought, unconscious of his surroundings. About the place there is an air of newness and prosperity._

_A young woman enters the garden from the lawn next door._

MARGARET

Look here, Roger, you can't keep this up!

ROGER

No, I can't keep this up. Besides, it's going to rain to-morrow.