Plays by Susan Glaspell Part 41

HOLDEN: That's true, I know.

FEJEVARY: I don't know just why I've done it. Sentiment, I suppose. I had a very strong feeling about my father, Professor Holden. And this friend Silas Morton. This college is the child of that friends.h.i.+p. Those are n.o.ble words in our manifesto: 'Morton College was born because there came to this valley a man who held his vision for mankind above his own advantage; and because that man found in this valley a man who wanted beauty for his fellow-men as he wanted no other thing.'

HOLDEN: (_taking it up_) 'Born of the fight for freedom and the aspiration to richer living, we believe that Morton College--rising as from the soil itself--may strengthen all those here and everywhere who fight for the life there is in freedom, and may, to the measure it can, loosen for America the beauty that breathes from knowledge.' (_moved by the words he has spoken_) Do you know, I would rather do that--really do that--than--grow big.

FEJEVARY: Yes. But you see, or rather, what you don't see is, you have to look at the world in which you find yourself. The only way to stay alive is to grow big. It's been hard, but I have tried to--carry on.

HOLDEN: And so have I tried to carry on. But it is very hard--carrying on a dream.

FEJEVARY: Well, I'm trying to make it easier.

HOLDEN: Make it easier by destroying the dream?

FEJEVARY: Not at all. What I want is scope for dreams.

HOLDEN: Are you sure we'd have the dreams after we've paid this price for the scope?

FEJEVARY: Now let's not get rhetorical with one another.

HOLDEN: Mr Fejevary, you have got to let me be as honest with you as you say you are being with me. You have got to let me say what I feel.

FEJEVARY: Certainly. That's why I wanted this talk with you.

HOLDEN: You say you have made sacrifices for Morton College. So have I.

FEJEVARY: How well I know that.

HOLDEN: You don't know all of it. I'm not sure you understand any of it.

FEJEVARY: (_charmingly_) Oh, I think you're hard on me.

HOLDEN: I spoke of the tenth anniversary. I was a young man then, just home from Athens, (_pulled back into an old feeling_) I don't know why I felt I had to go to Greece. I knew then that I was going to teach something within sociology, and I didn't want anything I felt about beauty to be left out of what I formulated about society. The Greeks--

FEJEVARY: (_as_ HOLDEN _has paused before what he sees_) I remember you told me the Greeks were the pa.s.sion of your student days.

HOLDEN: Not so much because they created beauty, but because they were able to let beauty flow into their lives--to create themselves in beauty. So as a romantic young man (_smiles_), it seemed if I could go where they had been--what I had felt might take form. Anyway, I had a wonderful time there. Oh, what wouldn't I give to have again that feeling of life's infinite possibilities!

FEJEVARY: (_nodding_) A youthful feeling.

HOLDEN: (_softly_) I like youth. Well, I was just back, visiting my sister here, at the time of the tenth anniversary. I had a chance then to go to Harvard as instructor. A good chance, for I would have been under a man who liked me. But that afternoon I heard your father speak about books. I talked with Silas Morton. I found myself telling him about Greece. No one had ever felt it as he felt it. It seemed to become of the very bone of him.

FEJEVARY: (_affectionately_) I know how he used to do.

HOLDEN: He put his hands on my shoulders. He said, 'Young man, don't go away. We need you here. Give us this great thing you've got!' And so I stayed, for I felt that here was soil in which I could grow, and that one's whole life was not too much to give to a place with roots like that. (_a little bitterly_) Forgive me if this seems rhetoric.

FEJEVARY: (_a gesture of protest. Silent a moment_) You make it--hard for me. (_with exasperation_) Don't you think I'd like to indulge myself in an exalted mood? And why don't I? I can't afford it--not now. Won't you have a little patience? And faith--faith that the thing we want will be there for us after we've worked our way through the woods. We are in the woods now. It's going to take our combined brains to get us out. I don't mean just Morton College.

HOLDEN: No--America. As to getting out, I think you are all wrong.

FEJEVARY: That's one of your sweeping statements, Holden. n.o.body's all wrong. Even you aren't.

HOLDEN: And in what ways am I wrong--from the standpoint of your Senator Lewis?

FEJEVARY: He's not my Senator Lewis, he's the state's, and we have to take him as he is. Why, he objects, of course, to your radical activities. He spoke of your defence of conscientious objectors.

HOLDEN: (_slowly_) I think a man who is willing to go to prison for what he believes has stuff in him no college needs turn its back on.

FEJEVARY: Well, he doesn't agree with you--nor do I.

HOLDEN: (_still quietly_) And I think a society which permits things to go on which I can prove go on in our federal prisons had better stop and take a fresh look at itself. To stand for that and then talk of democracy and idealism--oh, it shows no mentality, for one thing.

FEJEVARY: (_easily_) I presume the prisons do need a cleaning up. As to Fred Jordan, you can't expect me to share your admiration. Our own Fred--my nephew Fred Morton, went to France and gave his life. There's some little courage, Holden, in doing that.

HOLDEN: I'm not trying to belittle it. But he had the whole spirit of his age with him--fortunate boy. The man who stands outside the idealism of this time--

FEJEVARY: Takes a good deal upon himself, I should say.

HOLDEN: There isn't any other such loneliness. You know in your heart it's a n.o.ble courage.

FEJEVARY: It lacks--humility. (HOLDEN _laughs scoffingly_) And I think you lack it. I'm asking you to co-operate with me for the good of Morton College.

HOLDEN: Why not do it the other way? You say enlarge that we may grow.

That's false. It isn't of the nature of growth. Why not do it the way of Silas Morton and Walt Whitman--each man being his purest and intensest self. I was full of this fervour when you came in. I'm more and more disappointed in our students. They're empty--flippant. No sensitive moment opens them to beauty. No exaltation makes them--what they hadn't known they were. I concluded some of the fault must be mine. The only students I reach are the Hindus. Perhaps Madeline Morton--I don't quite make her out. I too must have gone into a dead stratum. But I can get back. Here alone this afternoon--(_softly_) I was back.

FEJEVARY: I think we'll have to let the Hindus go.

HOLDEN: (_astonished_) Go? Our best students?

FEJEVARY: This college is for Americans. I'm not going to have foreign revolutionists come here and block the things I've spent my life working for.

HOLDEN: I don't seem to know what you mean at all.

FEJEVARY: Why, that disgraceful performance this morning. I can settle Madeline all right, (_looking at his watch_) She should be here by now.

But I'm convinced our case before the legislature will be stronger with the Hindus out of here.

HOLDEN: Well, I seem to have missed something--disgraceful performance--the Hindus, Madeline--(_stops, bewildered_)

FEJEVARY: You mean to say you don't know about the disturbance out here?

HOLDEN: I went right home after the address. Then came up here alone.

FEJEVARY: Upon my word, you do lead a serene life. While you've been sitting here in contemplation I've been to the police court--trying to 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!