George Middleton

“ He glances toward the manuscript of The Lonely Way. He rises slowly and picks it up cynically. Then, as though fascinated, he gradually settles in the cozy chair by his table. He begins to become absorbed as he reads his earlier play. He puts his hand over his eyes, he lowers the manuscript, gives a sigh as though lost in the thoughts it calls up. The door, which he has locked, opens noiselessly, and closes as Grant looks up in surprise and sees a man enter. ”

“ Externally, there is nothing particularly striking about her: if there be such a thing as an average wife Jerry personifies it. She has loved her husband and kept house for him without a spoken protest; for she has had no advanced ideas or theories. Yet she has had her fears and little concealments and dreams—like any married woman. She has been sustained through the ten years of hard sledding by the belief in her husband’s ultimate financial success. And as she reads the criticisms of his play, The Sand Bar, produced the night before, she realizes it has come at last. ”

“ As he continues to watch Patricia with a cynical smile, she leaves the group unobserved by the others and moves towards the low, deep chair near the fireplace.
Patricia has the large features of a stage-beauty, which enhance her appearance before the footlights. Her hair is parted and coiled low on her neck. She is elegantly gowned, and carries a long, elaborate scarf which is hung across her back and held by each arm. She uses this continually to increase her instinctive plasticity. As she turns there is a serious expression upon her face, as though, for once she had been her true self. ”

“ But the more so are the sins one does for love. Love is the most creative of all impulses. If you forgive me because I’m an artist, as you say; if you can ask me to sit beside your lily-faced daughters and stubby-chinned sons; if you can kiss my lips—I, who have openly violated all your standards—why do you turn against this woman, who has done what she has for the noblest of motives—love—the love of a man? ”

“ Marie
Have you forgotten that was the other reason I left him? He didn’t love our child: it was in his way.
Tom
Love a mewling, puking child? Not much.
Grant
(Trying to calm her as she walks up and down)
Sh! Control yourself.
[44]
Marie
My love for the child was the only decent thing about me.
Grant
But I gave you other virtues. I made you love your husband.
Marie
If I had to love my husband in your revised version couldn’t I at least have kept my child?
Grant
Don’t be unreasonable. No leading lady wants a child. ”

“ On the sofa opposite, with a letter in her hand, Hilda White, his wife, is seated. She is somewhat younger in fact, though in appearance she is as one who has been worn a bit by the struggle of many years. Her manner contrasts with her husband’s: her inheritance of delicate refinement is ever present in her soft voice and gentle gesture. Yet she, too, suggests strength—the sort which will endure all for a fixed intention. ”

“ You know the world: women can’t do what you have done. You must have been mad—and with a married man at that!
(Patricia eyes her keenly. Miss Stannard tosses her head defiantly; but as Mrs. Frowde eyes her piercingly she seems to lose all her control, begins to tremble, totters, clutching the back of a chair and finally sinks with an hysterical sob upon the sofa, burying her face in her hands. Her vanity-case rattles to the floor. Patricia rises instinctively to go to her but sits again as Mrs. Frowde motions her back and approaches Miss Stannard less harshly.) ”

“ Grant
(Bitterly)
I hate what it has made me suffer.
Tom
Every great artist has despised them. I despise them.
Grant
(More seriously)
Only I think the public has its rights. They have the right to laugh, to watch virtue triumph, to behold [50] success, to feel love win out, to see what they think is happiness. They have that right because their own lives are so full of the other things. And maybe they like to dream a little, too.
Marie
Who’s mushy now?
Grant
Don’t sneer at a popular success. It’s sometimes more difficult to perform a trick than climb a mountain peak. ”

“ Contrast this play with The Sand Bar! With your skill as a builder you turned what was a lonely palace on a peak—aflame with my art—into a scrambly suburban residence where miserable ordinary people function. You produced a miserable makeshift of a play and made Tom Robinson a miserable makeshift of a man. (Accusing him.) But when you played tricks on me you played tricks on yourself. That’s what you did when you took from Tom Robinson his genius and made him paint pot-boilers at the National. Pot-boilers! Pot-boilers! ”

“ Frowde, the hostess is about fifty, looking forty; rather large and as self-contained as possible in her loose black tea-gown. She is a nervous woman with an apparent seriousness in her social undertakings. Her eyes are continually criticizing and her hands correcting. She has a gracious voice, and towards Patricia, at least, a possessive protectiveness.
The Brown One has a good profile from her chin up, but otherwise, in spite of lacing, is stout. Her tan gown makes up in elegance what it lacks in outline.
The clinging gown of The Blue One accentuates the languid manner she affects. ”

“ Miss Stannard
(She has risen tensely and speaks with a biting bitterness)
I suppose you meant very well, Miss Tenner; you said it just as though it were a scene in some play—with the proper emphasis and pause and nice phrases. [175] But believe me, Mrs. Frowde is right: we can’t judge people by the same standards. (Contemptuously) There is a difference between you and me. I feel it myself. When I need forgiveness I shall only want it of my own class. (Scornfully) The tolerance of yours means nothing to me. (Very quietly) I am sorry, Mrs. Frowde. I’ll not call again till he and I are married. ”

“ In spite of an occasional uncouth manner of spasmodically blurting out his words, Grant soon realizes how keen is the intruder’s penetration when it is sharpened to the one point which vitally concerns him—his art. For this man of fifty-five winters, is a great artist. Grant is too amazed and puzzled to recognize it is one of his own creations: Tom Robinson. ”

“ Imagine a reckless and wealthy youth who writes ardent love letters to a designing chorus girl, an attorney brother-in-law who steals the letters and then gets his hand-bag mixed up with the grip of a burglar who has just stolen a valuable necklace from the mother of the indiscreet youth, and the efforts of the crook to recover his plunder, as incidents in the story of a play in which the swiftness of the action never halts for an instant. ”

“ Only the dull-colored flat skull and a portion of the neck of this venerable fossil are to be seen, projecting about a yard or two. It stands seven feet above its low platform, which is surrounded by a railing. On this is a slanted sign which describes it. Its size, its grimness and the light which rests upon it make it dominate everything. The remainder of the huge dinosaur is masked by a high screen at its left, upon which hangs a map indicating by its varied horizontal shades of color, the various geological strata and periods. ”

“ But when you asked me to let Wallace go, I thought you would understand my going, too.—Oh, perhaps our motives are different; he is young: war has caught his imagination; but, I, too, see a duty, a way to accomplish my ideals.
Hilda
Let’s leave ideals out of this now. It’s like bitter enemies praying to the same God as they kill each other.
White
Yes. War is full of ironies. I see that: Wallace can’t. It’s so full of mixed motives, good and bad. Yes. I’ll grant all that. Only America has gone in. ”

“ Frowde, if you’re going to draw the line somewhere at your teas, why don’t you begin with me?
Mrs. Frowde
(Floundering)
But—but you forget, dear, you—you are a great creative artist.
Patricia
No, I don’t. Everybody’s tolerance of my whims, my moods, my morals would never let me forget it. But what has that to do with the right and wrong of it? That’s what you are wondering, Miss Stannard. [174] (Miss Stannard gazes at her.) I don’t ask any less charity for myself because my “temperament” has made me live my life my own way; though I don’t need charity now I’m on top. ”

“ Not only are the situations screamingly funny but the lines themselves hold a fund of humor at all times. This newest and cleverest of all farces was written by Fred Jackson, the well-known short-story writer, and if backed up by the prestige of an impressive New York success and the promise of unlimited fun presented in the most attractive form. A cleaner, cleverer farce has not been seen for many a long day. “A Full House” is a house full of laughs. (Royalty, twenty-five dollars.) ”

“ Grant immediately discovers there is something extraordinary about his unexpected visitor. As he directs the light upon him, Grant perceives the man’s power which lies both in his frame and impressive personality. His eyes have a relentless coldness when they narrow. ”

“ You can’t hush the mind that for twenty years has thought no war ever could henceforth be justified. You can’t give yourself to this war without tricking yourself with phrases. You see power in it and profit for yourself. (He protests.) That’s your own confession. You are only doing what is expedient—not what is right. Oh, Will, don’t compare your motives with those of our son. I sent him forth, without a word of protest, because he wishes to die for his own ideals: you are killing your own ideals for the ideals of others! ”

“ A window in back, which hides an airshaft, is partly concealed by heavy curtains that hang tired and limp. There is another doorway, directly opposite the entrance, which leads to the other rooms of a characteristically compressed city flat.
Yet the room is not forbidding: it merely suggests forced economies that have not quite fringed poverty: continual adaptation, as it were, to the financial contingencies of a marriage that has just managed to make both ends meet.
When the curtain rises Jerry Williams is seated in the cozy chair reading a number of newspaper clippings. ”

“ But, after all, Jerry, does it make any difference to anybody but the artist whether he sells out or not?
Jerry
But, dear, I think you’ve just begun to reach your ideals.
Grant
Just begun?
Jerry
Yes. I never told you before because I didn’t want to discourage you when we were so hard up. But, [60] Grant dear, I never liked all those other plays—especially The Lonely Way. They seemed unworthy of you. The Sand Bar is the first play that really seems true to life. ”

“ He begins to pound out something on his machine. Jerry goes over to hang up his coat, and as she does so, a newspaper clipping falls out of his pocket, on the floor. She picks it up unnoticed by Grant. She glances at it; starts angrily to speak to Grant about it; but seeing he is absorbed, hesitates and then conceals it. She hangs up the coat, comes around back of him as though to speak—but changes her mind. She kisses him. As she passes the table, she knocks off the manuscript of a play. ”

“ Hilda
Have your ideals only been old clothes you change to suit the weather?
White
It’s the end we must keep in mind. I haven’t changed or compromised one bit in that. I’m working in changed conditions, that’s all; working with all my heart to do away with all war.
Hilda
By fighting one?
White
(With eloquence)
Yes. Because it is necessary. I’ve come to see we can’t argue war out of the world with words. We’ve got to beat it out of the world. It can’t be done with our hands lifted up in prayer; it can only be done with iron hands crushing it down. War is the mood of the world. ”

“ Hilda
(Not heeding him)
This part gave me new strength when I thought of Wallace. (Reading with eloquence.) “War will [121] stop when young men put Internationalism above Nationality, the law of God above the dictates of statesmen, the law of love above the law of hate, the law of self-sacrifice above the law of profit. There must be no boundaries in man’s thought. Let the young men of the world once throw down their arms, let them once refuse to point their guns at human hearts, and all the boundaries of the world will melt away and peace will find a resting-place in the hearts of men!” ”

“ We need a Chopin in this country. Do you compose, Mr. Silverton?
The Blue One
(Who has come down to Patricia)
It must be splendid to be a real artist, Miss Tenner, instead of just having money. We have to be so careful.
(Patricia smiles and nods understandingly throughout. Silverton, apparently ill at ease, comes beside Patricia as Mavosky is speaking to Mrs. Frowde and the others at the table.)
Oh, Mr. Silverton, your playing made me so—so— (at a loss for words) don’t you know?
Silverton
(Stiffly)
Music is the only mental adventure in good and evil which some of us ever have. ”

“ Marie
What right has the public got to be so proud of itself? There’s many a woman in the audience worse than I am.
Grant
But they want to be flattered into believing they are as much like heroes and heroines as you are not. The successful playwright, like the fashionable portrait painter, flatters and never reveals. ”

“ Frowde moves uncomfortably again.) That’s the truth. People suspected I had a brain and I had; but I wasn’t wasting it on books—I was studying the hearts and souls of the sort of people I needed to get along. (With increasing relish at the effect of her revelations.) And I saw to succeed in my life I had to grow hard inside and soft out. So I affected my husky voice and my sad smile; sadness gave me a touch of mystery and encouraged curiosity. I knew I’d have to keep my face smooth, too; so I stopped feeling for others and thought only of myself. Suffering isn’t good for the complexion. ”

“ Then afterwards I confess I yawned with the comfort of it all; good, deep-reaching yawns, as Nature intended. I went out to see my friends the stars. Best friends a man ever had: a bit cold and distant, perhaps; but always there behind the clouds. (She has risen and gone to the candles. There is a pause. Then she snuffs them out.) And I suppose at the same time you were trying in vain to find them out your city window? (Sees she is sobbing very quietly: the candles are out.) ”

“ It is obvious throughout that she and her husband have been happy comrades in their life together and that a deep fundamental bond has united them in spite of the different social spheres from which each has sprung. ”