Olive Tilford Dargan

“ Why do you speak of death, Wong Fe?
Wong Fe
Because I am so happy. The sages say that we can have no fairer fortune than to die in our happiest moment.
Shun
Do not speak of death. The word blisters the air, though your lips be as two drops of June rain.
Wong Fe
But how sweet to die when I am fairest in your eyes! Every year, at this time, you would walk down the peach-flower lanes and recall the glow of my cheek. Oh, Heaven, let me not be a faded wife in the blooming time of the year! ”

“ Bellows (in disgust)
And I counted on your common sense!
Seymour
Common sense is itself too frail and uncertain a thing to be a criterion of sanity. The common sense of yesterday is to-day's folly, and our present common sense will be the madness of to-morrow.
Bellows
Well, I'll be—I'll wait for you down-stairs, doctor. (Exit.)
Seymour
The lad ought not to be in there alone. (Goes to door.) Philo, my boy!
(Philo comes out. He is extremely pale, his black hair pushed from his forehead, and his eyes burning, but his manner is calm.)
Philo
Well, am I a free man? ”

“ Makuro
Power has no brothers! It was you who taught me that, Yu Tai Shun.
Shun
Do you forget that we built our republic with the aid of these same princes of power?
Ching
We forget nothing. They let us beat down the throne because they could not use it—a rigid tradition—but the republic—they are the republic!
Shun
Can we not trust a little? In our greatest need, alien hands have reached out to help us. And we have true hearts among our Chinese lords. Not all have joined with the invader to herd the people into slave-yards. Pei Chen-Ping and Sa Yi are most liberal. ”

“ The growing light reveals an orchard of old apple-trees near at hand in full bloom, with petals falling, and hills and mountains lifting and towering upward higher and higher into the blue distance. A path leads from the orchard up the near hills and toward the heights. The music has grown louder, and is sweet and tender, interspersed with bird notes. A number of children, girls and boys, come out and sing and dance under the blossoms of the apple-trees. ”

“ Makuro
It is the menace of America that Japan holds before her people till their hearts roll with fear, their brains grow sick with rage. America, who has insulted us with exclusion—who has snatched [64] an island chain from our Eastern waters, and shot, starved, imprisoned thousands ignorant enough and brave enough to resist her. That is the America my people are taught to believe in. But you know a different America, where people love honor and hate war—whose religion is love thy neighbor as thyself. Come, teach them of that America! You are known in a million homes of Japan. ”

“ Wong Fe (resigned)
I believe you, my lord. We shall not part. [73] But what joy it would be to die now in your presence, while the love-cup is full! Oh, I could not meet death alone! You know the poor ghost in the song who died in the absence of her lover? She is always pleading to be allowed to die again when his arms may be around her. So would my ghost go wailing if I lost your kiss in death. (Touches his cheek.) Is that a tear, Yu Tai Shun? I torture you because I am so happy! ”

“ The face has the natural ease of slumber, and not the rigid artificiality of death. 'Tis true there is no pulse, no beat of heart nor stir of breath, yet neither is there the sombre grotesqueness of the last pose. But the difference between life and death is here so small that it is incommensurable, the point of the mathematicians only. I shall hold this little hand in mine, and, with a hand upon her forehead, call her by name; for, you know, Akron, one's name has a power beyond every other word to reach the closed ears of the imprisoned soul. ”

“ In half an hour the boat will stop at the orchard pier for Makuro. He starts for Japan. It is there you are needed.
Makuro
I come from our friends with their summons. Japan's oligarchy of traders, with every means known to power—school, religion, racial pride and hate—is fostering the spirit of war. All the seeds of the jungle are being deliberately sown once more in men's hearts. They are preparing Japan to hold the largest share of an industrially broken China and weld her millions into one instrument of hate against the West. ”

“ But don't worry about me, doctor. I know this is the end. If I can't convince you, then all the world must think it hallucination.
Seymour
I'm not unconvinced. I simply don't know. And I'm deeply interested. But you can't stand it, Philo. Get out of this. Be young. This is for older heads. You'll have plenty of time. Get out—do anything. Fall in love—fall in love—that will give you mysteries enough for a while. Yes, I mean it—and don't forget, my dear boy, that you've interested me.
(Shakes hands with Philo and goes down. [30] Philo listens until he has reached the foot of the stairs.) ”

“ I will take Wong Fe to her brothers.
Shun
I shall hold her forever!
Ching
You think joy can last so long? (To Makuro, shrugging.) A boy yet!
[65]
Shun
In Japan you have my young scholar, Onoto. All my knowledge I have given him. In his heart is my purpose, his eyes hold my vision.
Makuro
Onoto!
Shun
His years are younger, his flame will leap higher. I am only one who fails you. In every nation our numbers are growing. Do not fear for humanity. Our brothers are everywhere. ”

“ All is still save for the far, faint step of Akron on the stair, and the still fainter murmur from the streets. The very goldfish in the fountain do not stir, and the long line of slaves against the marble wall, save for their branded foreheads, might be gaunt caryatides hewn in Egyptian wood or carved in ebony and amber. That gaudy tropic bird scarce ruffles a feather. What is the difference between life and death? ”

“ Every evening I have them come to me on the roof after the evening meal, and there under the quiet of the stars we discuss life and death, the soul and immortality, and all the burning problems of order, harmony, and number in the universe. ”

“ Seymour
But you must have rest from this work. These subjects are too overwhelming for a sane brain to carry without harm. This attic is gloomy and the atmosphere unhealthy. You must have a complete change.
Philo
I see. That is your answer to my discovery. (Turns suddenly to Warner.) And what do you think of it, father?
Warner
I don't seem to get hold of it, somehow, Philo. (Crosses to machine and stares at it.) What's the good, anyhow? They're too far away. 'Twouldn't help business.
(Philo gives a queer laugh. Warner opens door.)
Warner
I'll see you down-stairs, doctor. ”

“ The streets are full to-day and dazzling with color. So many carpets hang from the windows, and so many banners are flying! So many white-horsed chariots, and such concourses of dark slaves from every land in the long African crescent of the midland sea, from the pillars of Hercules to ferocious Carthage and beyond to the confines of Egypt and Phœnicia! ”

“ The power of a thought, that is the real wonder! [112] We just begin to have glimpses of the effects of the mind upon the body. To me, Akron, the faculty has set too great store upon herbs and bitter drafts, and cutting with the knife. I would fain have the soul acknowledged more, our therapy built on the dual mechanism of mind and substance. For if an idea can lead to the apparent death of the whole body, so might other ideas bring about the apparent death of a part of the body, like, for example, a paralysis of the members, or of the senses of sight, feeling, hearing ”

“ If that magic is owned by a few, there will be no freedom, but a slavery whose agony no man can tell. Every owner will be a monarch greater than the Son of Heaven to whom we bowed. We cannot shut them out by war. We can do it solely by making China a true democracy where the people themselves own the magic tools and the great ways to the markets. To do this is the work of all who love Freedom, and I know no other goddess." Were these your words, Yu Tai Shun?
Shun
Yes ... my words.
Makuro
That was five years ago. From all parts of the earth come powers fulfilling your fear. ”

“ Two beats—then three—then two—then four—now it is over!
(Seymour continues to stare at the instrument. Bellows subsides into a chair, looking foolish.)
Seymour (to himself)
Impossible!... (To Philo.) What was it you were saying? What did you see?
Philo
I saw what you saw—signals from a distance [21] farther than the distance of the nearest planet to our earth.
Seymour (shaken)
But I saw nothing. At least a slight movement in anything so sensitive might be due to many causes....
Philo
Yes! It is always the old story. Truths must be hammered into humanity! ”

“ I have been a reader of general science for many years. The fact that on the earth we have had a slow evolution from a monad to a man contains a promise of further development of man into—let us say an angel.
Bellows
Not very soon, I guess.
Philo (sharply)
Hardly in your day, doctor. You needn't worry about the fashion in wing-feathers.
Seymour
Go on, Mr. Warner.
Philo
In others of the many millions of globes about us in space, a similar evolution is going on, and in some the evolution is less advanced than in ours, in others incomparably more advanced. ”

“ From this sea-centre we send our freighted galleys to Gades in the West, Carthage in the South, Tyre in the East, and to the red-bearded foresters of the Far North. I would still send on these same routes this food, but also better food than this, stuff that should kindle and feed intellectual fires in all the remote places of the earth. ”

“ Children undress and scramble into one bed.)
(Street noises all discontinue, back of room opens out on to the orchard and the music of first scene is heard with dancing children. Everychild comes into the room with her rosy lamp. The three children sit up in bed and rub their eyes. Everychild glides all about the room and looks at the squalid place in dismay, then goes up and smiles at the children.) ”

“ I dremp I's in an orchard, an' they's blooms floatin' round. I could smell 'em!
Second Boy
You's nutty. You can't smell in a dream.
(They listen, and finally yield to the music, swaying their bodies, moving their arms, and beginning to dance as the music goes on.)
Jack
I've been here fourteen years, since I was a boy. It ain't a place for a man. It's too black. You get black outside and inside. Why, they say your lungs get black from breathing this dust. And your soul gets black. ”

“ As the light grows gradually stronger the dark object begins to move, to slowly take off one after another of black coverings, revealing a little girl of nine or ten years, dressed in white. She rubs her eyes, looks about wonderingly, and slowly rises to a standing position. Meanwhile the earth grows more luminous and roseate. ”

“ If we could in the schools implant in our youth ideas which were strong enough, we should be able to make of them all, each in proportion to his belief [113] in himself and his ambition, great men, great generals, thinkers, poets, a new race of heroes in all lines of human endeavor, who should be able by their united strength of idea and ideal finally to people the world with gods. ”

“ In America, where there is still much land and few people, there are places where children go down into the mines and never see the sun except on the day they call "holy." How will it be with China's four hundred millions, when there are not even waste places where those who would flee may gather? ”

“ Seymour
We may admit that.
(Bellows looks to Warner for sympathy, and shakes his head.)
Philo
We have reached a stage when we have begun to peer out into the stellar depths and question them. We are beginning to master the light and [19] the lightning, to measure the vastness of space, to weigh the suns, to determine the elements that comprise them, to talk and send messages thousands of miles without wires. Each year uncovers new wonders, infinitely minute, infinitely great. ”

“ Bellows
Philo, I've brought Dr. Seymour around to have a talk with you. He's down from New York for a day or two. Been sleeping any better?
[16]
Philo
Too much. I need all my time. I'm very glad to see you, Dr. Seymour.
(All take seats.)
Mrs. W.
I hope you'll excuse the looks of the room, doctor.
Seymour
It looks very interesting indeed to me, Mrs. Warner. The workshop of a student, and a busy one. (To Philo.) You've been working too hard, I see.
Philo
I'm tired, perhaps, but I am well. When a man makes a momentous discovery he is apt to be overwrought. ”

“ Warner
But Reba's father—you going to have old fiddler Sloan in the family?
Mrs. W.
He's come into some money now, and any gentleman can take an interest in music.
Warner
And the mother was that foreign woman.
Mrs. W.
But she's dead. It's just as well Philo won't have a mother-in-law.
Warner
Reba'll have one, all right. If Philo stays queer it'll be hard on the girl, won't it?
Mrs. W.
He'll not stay queer. If he gets that girl in his head there won't be room for anything else—for a while anyway. He'll be worse'n you ever was. You let me manage it, Hiram. ”

“ The place for an honest man to work is out in the white light, on your ocean or in your woods, or on the roads and railways, and in the big buildings. This kind of work is work with punishment added to it. A little of it would be all right for men who go wrong, or for some as needs discipline. ”

“ It is still.
(Steps are heard on the stairs, then a knock at the door. He crosses softly to door and shoots the bolt.)
Voice (without)
It's Reba, Philo! Won't you let me in?
(He is silent, and steps retreat.)
Philo (crossing to centre)
Reba! That folly's done with, thank God!... (Begins walking.) Seymour.... I didn't know how much I was hoping from him.... It is hard, hard to go on alone. But I must! I can't turn back from that call. When a child cries we turn, and listen, and help. And this—this is the voice of a world!
(A knock is heard at door.)
Voice of Warner
Philo! ”

“ It's only Alice going to her room.
Warner
Perhaps we'd better see what the specialist says first.
Mrs. W.
I know Dr. Bellows wants us to send Philo away. But I'm against that, first and last.
Warner
You wouldn't be if you'd listen to Bellows awhile. You know what he told me when I met him this morning? "Why, Warner," he says, "I never go to see the boy without taking a pair of handcuffs in my pocket. It's the quiet ones that go the wildest when they do break out."
Mrs. W.
Oh, Hiram, it's not going to be so bad as that. Don't let him set you against your own flesh and blood. ”