Plays Part 9

HARRY: (to d.i.c.k) 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.)

d.i.c.k: What is this you're doing, Claire?

CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.

d.i.c.k: 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 d.i.c.k?

d.i.c.k: 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 gla.s.s)-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.

d.i.c.k: 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, d.i.c.k?

d.i.c.k: Not quite all of her-I should say.

CLAIRE: (gaily) Careful, d.i.c.k. 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, d.i.c.k?

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.

d.i.c.k: 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-

d.i.c.k: 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 d.i.c.k)-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 untouched-from life-that waits, (she turns toward the inner room) Breath of Life. (she goes in there)

HARRY: Oh, I wish Claire wouldn't be strange like that, (helplessly) What is it? What's the matter?

d.i.c.k: It's merely the excess of a particularly rich temperament.

HARRY: But it's growing on her. I sometimes wonder if all this (indicating the place around him) is a good thing. It would be all right if she'd just do what she did in the beginning-make the flowers as good as possible of their kind. That's an awfully nice thing for a woman to do-raise flowers. But there's something about this-changing things into other things-putting things together and making queer new things-this-

d.i.c.k: Creating?

HARRY: Give it any name you want it to have-it's unsettling for a woman. They say Claire's a shark at it, but what's the good of it, if it gets her? What is the good of it, anyway? Suppose we can produce new things. Lord-look at the one ones we've got. (looks outside; turns back) Heavens, what a noise the wind does make around this place, (but now it is not all the wind, but TOM EDGEWORTHY, who is trying to let himself in at the locked door, their backs are to him) I want my egg. You can't eat an egg without salt. I must say I don't get Claire lately. I'd like to have Charlie Emmons see her-he's fixed up a lot of people shot to pieces in the war. Claire needs something to tone her nerves up. You think it would irritate her?

d.i.c.k: She'd probably get no little entertainment out of it.

HARRY: Yes, dog-gone her, she would. (TOM now takes more heroic measures to make himself heard at the door) Funny-how the wind can fool you. Now by not looking around I could imagine-why, I could imagine anything. Funny, isn't it, about imagination? And Claire says I haven't got any!

d.i.c.k: It would make an amusing drawing-what the wind makes you think is there. (first makes forms with his hands, then levelling the soil prepared by ANTHONY, traces lines with his finger) Yes, really-quite jolly.

(TOM, after a moment of peering in at them, smiles, goes away.)

HARRY: You're another one of the queer ducks, aren't you? Come now-give me the dirt. Have you queer ones really got anything-or do you just put it over on us that you have?

d.i.c.k: (smiles, draws on) Not saying anything, eh? Well, I guess you're wise there. If you keep mum-how are we going to prove there's nothing there?

d.i.c.k: I don't keep mum. I draw.

HARRY: Lines that don't make anything-how can they tell you anything? Well, all I ask is, don't make Claire queer. Claire's a first water good sport-really, so don't encourage her to be queer.