Inheritors (Act I)

Prologue and Act I of the new Adaptation

Hi Lucas’ Lil Library library-card holders!

Thank you for being here. Please let me know what you think or suggest things for me to write on and publish. I’m also game for collaboration, always.

In this Inheritors series, I’m going to publish in episodes the full transcript of this piece. In this second section, you’ll find the prologue and first full act of the adaptation. To read section one, click here.

This piece means the world to me. <3

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Inheritors

An adaptation of Susan Glaspell’s 1921 Play

By Lucas H. Reilly

U.S. COPYRIGHT, ©

PROLOGUE:

Outside the library of MORTON COLLEGE, October of 1920.  This is the fortieth anniversary of its founding.  A group of student protestors are gathered, with signs and musical instruments.   Their signs read “FREE FRED JORDAN”, “FREE GURKUL SINGH”, “FREE GENE DEBS”, “SEDITION ACT: UNCONSTITUTIONAL”, “HINDU AMERICANS ARE AMERICANS” “LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL”  “MORTON COLLEGE FOR ALL”.  Drums thump, horns blare out of tune, and the protestors chant.  Some other students stand watching from the steps of the library.

ENTER the counter protestors, with a few police, led by HORACE FEJEVARY.  HORACE points to the protestors and runs behind the police.  They are strapped with billy clubs, handcuffs, a gun or two, blowing whistles and shouting.

POLICE

GO! THIS IS AN UNLAWFUL DEMONSTRATION!  IF YOU DON’T DISBAND--

They approach the protestors menacingly as they continue their chant.

ATMA makes his way to the front of the demonstration and steps away from the horde.  They kneel in front of the front line of protestors.  There is a pause as the Police push to the front.  The largest policeman begins to brandish his billy club when MADELINE FEJEVARY MORTON and several other students run forward, and throw themselves between Atma and the police.  It’s messy but they manage to drive back the police slightly.  Madeline begins the chant once more.

PROTESTORS

FREE FRED JORDAN!  FREE FRED JORDAN!  FREE FRED JORDAN! MORTON COLLEGE IS FOR ALL!

ENTER SENATOR LEWIS, escorted by more police officers.  He surveys the scene, shakes his head, and is escorted into the Library, swarmed by the protestors.  Horace stands looking smugly on at the action.

HORACE

GET EM!!!  There’s a reason they give you those clubs!!

Madeline and Atma chase him and a few of his cohorts off in the other direction.

PROTESTORS

Over here!  They’ll be able to see us from the windows in the library!  Come on!

The protestors run off.  END SCENE]

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ACT ONE

A corridor in the library of Morton College.  This is an open place in the stacks of books, which are seen at both sides.  There is a reading-table and a big rear window.  This window opens out, but does not extend to the floor; only a part of its height is seen, indicating a very high window.  The voices of the protestors are heard faintly.  There is hung a picture of SILAS MORTON.  SENATOR LEWIS and FELIX FEJEVARY II are standing before this portrait.

Senator Lewis is the middle-western state senator.  He is not of the city from which Morton College rises, but of a more country community farther in-state.  Felix is an American of the more sophisticated type--prosperous, having the poise of success in affairs and place in society.

SENATOR LEWIS

And this was the boy who founded the place, eh?  It was his idea?

FEJEVARY II

Yes, and his hill.  I was there the afternoon he told my father there must be a college here.  I wasn’t any older than my boy is now. (As if himself surprised by this)

SENATOR LEWIS

Well, he enlisted a good man when he let you in on it.  I’ve been told the college wouldn’t be what it is today but for you, Mr. Fejevary.

FEJEVARY II

I have a sentiment about it, and where our sentiment is, there our work goes also.

SENATOR LEWIS

Yes.  Well, it was those mainsprings of sentiment that won the Great War. (He is pleased with this)

FEJEVARY II

(nodding) Morton College did her part in winning the war.

SENATOR LEWIS

I know.  A fine showing.

FEJEVARY II

And we’re holding up our end right along.  You’ll see the boys drill this afternoon.  It’s a great place for them, here on the hill--shows up from so far around.  They’re a fine lot of fellows.  You know, I presume, that they went in as strike-breakers during the trouble down here at the steel works.  The plant would have had to close but for Morton College.  That’s one reason I venture to propose this thing of a state appropriation for enlargement.  Why don’t we sit down a moment?  There’s no conflict with the state university--they have their territory, we have ours.  Ours is an important one--industrially speaking.  The state will lose nothing in having a good strong college here--a one-hundred-percent American college.

SENATOR LEWIS

I admit I am very favorably impressed.

FEJEVARY II

I hope you’ll tell your committee so--and let me have a chance to talk to them.

SENATOR LEWIS

Let’s see, haven’t you a pretty radical man here?

FEJEVARY II

I wonder if you mean Holden?

SENATOR LEWIS

Holden’s the man.  I’ve read things that make me question his Americanism.

FEJEVARY II

Oh--(Gesture of depreciation.) I don’t think he is so much a radical as a particularly human human-being.

SENATOR LEWIS

But we don’t want radical human beings.

FEJEVARY II

He has a genuine sympathy with youth.  That’s invaluable in a teacher, you know.  And then--he’s a scholar. (He betrays here his feeling of superiority to his companion, but too subtly for his companion to get it)

SENATOR LEWIS

Oh--scholar.  We can get scholars enough.  What we want is Americans.

FEJEVARY II

Americans who are scholars.

SENATOR LEWIS

You can pick ‘em off every bush--pay them a little more than they’re paid in some other cheap John College.  Excuse me--I don’t mean this is a cheap John College.

FEJEVARY II

Of course not.  One couldn’t think that of Morton College.  But that--pay them a little more, interests me.  That’s another reason I want to talk to your committee on appropriations.  We claim to value education and then we let highly trained, gifted men fall behind the plumber.

SENATOR LEWIS

Well, that’s the plumbers fault.  Let the teachers talk to the plumber.

FEJEVARY II

(With a smile) No.  Better not let them talk to the plumber.  He might tell them what to do about it.  In fact, is telling them.

SENATOR LEWIS

That’s ridiculous.  They can’t serve both God and mammon.

FEJEVARY II

Then let God give them mammon.  I mean, let the state appropriate.

SENATOR LEWIS

Of course this state, Mr. Fejevary, appropriates no money for radicals.  Excuse me, but why do you keep this man Holden?

FEJEVARY II

Really, Holden’s not a radical--in the worst sense.  What he doesn’t see is--expediency.  Not enough the man of affairs to realize that we can’t always have literally what we have theoretically.  He’s an idealist.  Something of the--man of vision.

SENATOR LEWIS

If he had the right vision he’d see that we don’t every minute have literally what we have theoretically because we’re fighting to keep the thing we have.  Oh, I sometimes think the man of affairs has the only vision.  Take you, Mr. Fejevary--a banker.  These teachers--books--books! (Pushing all books back.) Why, if they had to take for one day the responsibility that falls on your shoulders--big decisions to make--man among men--and all the time worries, irritations, particularly now with labor riding the high horse like a fool!  I know something about these things.  I went to the State House because my community persuaded me it was my duty.  But I’m the man of affairs, myself.

FEJEVARY II

Oh yes, I know.  Your company did much to develop that whole northern part of the state.

SENATOR LEWIS

I think I may say we did.  Well, that’s why after three sessions, I’m chairman of the appropriations committee.  I know how to use money to promote the state.  So--teacher?  That would be a perpetual vacation to me.  Now, if you want my advice, Mr. Fejevary,--I think your case before the state would be stronger if you let this fellow Holden go.

FEJEVARY II

I’m going to have to talk with Professor Holden.

SENATOR LEWIS

Tell him it’s for his own good.  The idea of a college professor standing up for conscientious objectors!

FEJEVARY II

That doesn’t quite state the case.  Fred Jordan was one of Holden’s students--a student he valued.  He felt Jordan was perfectly sincere in his objection.

SENATOR LEWIS

Sincere in his objections!  The nerve of him thinking it was his business to be sincere!

FEJEVARY II

He was expelled from college--you may remember; that was how we felt about it.

SENATOR LEWIS

I should hope so.

FEJEVARY II

Holden fought that, but within the college.  What brought him into the papers was his protest against the way the boy has been treated in prison.

SENATOR LEWIS

What’s the difference how he’s treated?  You know how I’d treat him? (A movement as though pulling a trigger.)  If I didn’t know you for the American you are, I wouldn’t understand you speaking so calmly.

FEJEVARY II

I’m simply trying to see it all sides around.

SENATOR LEWIS

Makes me see red.

FEJEVARY II

(With a smile.) But we mustn’t meet red with red.

He looks at the portrait of Silas.  Time and space are interrupted and the stage begins to change.  The development of 40 years is undone and we are transported to the sitting room of the Mortons’ farmhouse on the rolling prairie just back from the Mississippi.  This is a room that has been long and comfortably lived in, and showing that first-hand contact with materials which was pioneer life.  The hospitable table was made on the place--well and strongly made; there are braided rugs, and the wooden chairs have patchwork cushions.  There is a corner closet; a picture of Abraham Lincon.  On the floor a home-made toy boat. There are on the stage an old woman and a young man.  

GRANDMOTHER MORTON is in her rocking-chair near the open door.  On both sides of the door are windows, looking out on a generous land.  The hill rises like sculpture in the background.  Grandmother Morton has a sewing basket and is patching a boy’s pants.  She is very old.  Her hands tremble.  Her spirit remembers the days of her strength.  Felix from 1920 sees her.  For us this is really happening.  For him, he is seeing it again.  He fades from view.

SMITH has not been here long and, hat in hand, is standing by the table.  This was lived in the year 1879, afternoon of Fourth of July.

SMITH

Oh, I don’t know that we’re set on buying anything.  If we could have the hill (indicates it) at a fair price--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

The hill above the town?  Silas’d rather sell me and the cat.

SMITH

But what’s he going to do with it?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Maybe he’s going to climb it once a week.

SMITH

But if the development of the town demands its use--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

(smiling)  You the development of the town?

SMITH

I represent it.  This town has been growing so fast--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

This town began to grow the day I got here.

SMITH

You--you began it?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

My husband and I began it--and our baby Silas.

SMITH

When was that?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

1820, that was.  60 years ago.

SMITH

And--you mean you were here all alone?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

No, we weren’t alone.  There were them here before us.

SMITH

But how did you get here?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Got here in a wagon, how do you s’pose? (Gayly) Think we flew?

SMITH

But wasn’t it unsafe?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Them set on safety stayed back in Ohio.

SMITH

But one family!  I should think the Indians would have wiped you out.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

The way they wiped us out was to bring fish and corn.  We’d have starved to death that first winter hadn’t been for the Sauk.  It was us wiped them out--when white folks had roiled them up--white folks that didn’t know how to treat ‘em.  This very land--land you want to buy--was the land they loved--the Sauk and Mesquakie.  They came here for their games.  This was where their fathers--as they called ‘em--we’re buried.  I’ve seen my husband and Blackhawk climb that hill together. (a point to the hill) He used to love that hill--Blackhawk.  He talked how the red man and the white man could live together.  But poor old Blackhawk--what he didn’t know was how many white man there was.  After the war--when he was beaten but not conquered in his heart--they took him east--Washington, Philadelphia, New York--and when he saw the white man’s cities--it was a different man came back.  He just let his heart break without ever turning a hand.

SMITH

But we paid them for their lands. (she looks at him)  Paid them something.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Something.  For fifteen million acres of this Mississippi Valley land--best on this globe, we paid two thousand two hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty cents, and promised to deliver annually goods to the value of one thousand dollars.  Not a fancy price--even for them days.  Well, why don’t you pull up a chair, I don’t expect Silas back for a while.

SMITH

But the celebration was over two hours ago.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Oh, celebration, that’s just the beginning of it.  Might as well set down.  When them boys that fought together all get in one square--they have to swap stories all over again.  That’s the worst of a war--you have to go on hearing about it so long.  Here it is--1879--and we haven’t taken Gettysburg yet.  Well, it was the same way with the war of 1832.

SMITH

The war of 1832?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

News to you that we had a war with the Sauk?  Mesquakie too. There were Indians on the other side of that war too.  Not that the US were really allies to any of ‘em.

SMITH

That’s right--the Blackhawk war.  Of course… We’re your men in that war?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I was in that war.  I threw a Mesquakie warrior in the cellar and stood on the door.  I was heavier then.

SMITH

But you said they saved you your first winter here.  Why did you throw him in your cellar?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I dunno.  We roiled them up considerable.  They was mostly friendly when let be.  Didn’t want to give up their land--but I’ve noticed something of the same nature in white folks.

SMITH

Your son has--something of that nature, hasn’t he?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

He’s not keen to sell.  Why should he be?  It’ll never be worth less.

SMITH

But since he has more land than any man can use, and if he gets his price--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, you’re not the first.  Many a man older than you has come to argue it.

SMITH

(smiling) They thought they’d try a young one.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Someone that knew him thought that up.  Silas’d help a young one if he could.

Children’s voices are heard outside.  She leans forward and looks through the door

GRANDMOTHER MORTON (cont.)

Ira!  Let that cat be!

SMITH

These, I suppose, are your grandchildren?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

The boy’s my grandson.  The little girl is Madeline Fejevary--Mr. Fejevary’s youngest child.

SMITH

The Fejevary place adjoins on this side? (points)

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Yes.  We’ve been neighbors ever since the Fejevarys came here from Hungary after 1848.  He was a count at home--and he’s a man of learning.  But he was a refugee because he fought for freedom in his country.  Nothing Silas could do for him was too good.  Silas sets great store by learning--and freedom.

SMITH

(Thinking of his own project, looking off toward the hill) I suppose then Mr. Fejevary has great influence with your son?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

More ‘an anybody.  Silas thinks ‘twas a great thing for our family to have a family like theirs next place to.  Well--so ‘twas, for we’ve had no time for the things their family was brought up on.  Silas thinks. Oh, my son has all kinds of notions--though a harder worker never found his bed at night.

SMITH

And Mr. Fejevary--is he a veteran too?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

(dryly)  You don’t seem to know these parts well--for one that’s all stirred up about the development of the town.  Yes--Felix Fejevary and Silas Morton went off together, down that road (motioning)--when them of their age was wanted.  Fejevary came back with one arm less than he went with.  Silas brought home everything he took--and something he didn’t.  Rheumatiz.  So now they set more store by each other ‘an ever.  Seems nothing draws men together like killing other men. (a boy’s voice teasingly imitating a cat) Madeline, make Ira let that cat be. 

A whoop from the girl--a boy’s whoop.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

There they go, off for the creek.  If they set in it--(seems about to call after them, gives this up)  Well, they’re not the first. (rather dreams over this)

SMITH

You must feel as if you pretty near owned this country.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

We worked.  A country don’t make itself.  When the sun was up we were up, and when the sun went down we didn’t. (as if this renews the self of those days) Here--let me set out something for you to eat. (get up with difficulty)

SMITH

Oh, no, please--never mind.  I had something in town before I came out.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Dunno as that’s any reason you shouldn’t have something here.

She goes off; he stands at the door, looking toward the hill until she returns with a glass of milk, a plate of cookies.

SMITH

Well, this looks good.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I’ve fed a lot of folks--take it by and large.  I didn't care how many I had to feed in the daytime--what’s ten or fifteen more when you’re up and around.  But to get up--after sixteen hours on your feet--I was willin’, but my bones complained some.

SMITH

But did you--keep a tavern?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Keep a tavern?  I guess we did.  Every house is a tavern when houses are sparse.  You think the way to settle a country is to go on ahead and build hotels?  That’s all you folks know.  Why, I never went to bed without leaving something on the stove for the new ones that might be coming.  And we never went away from home without seein’ there was a-plenty for them that might stop.

SMITH

They’d come right in and take your food?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

What else could they do?  There was a Sauk woman I always wanted to know.  She made a kind of bread I never had before--and left a-plenty for our supper when we got back with the ducks and berries.  And she left the kitchen handier than it had ever been.  I often wondered about her--where she came from, and where she went. (as she dreams over this there is laughing and talking at the side of the house)  There come the boys.

FELIX FEJEVARY I comes in, followed by SILAS MORTON.  They are men not far from sixty, wearing their army uniforms, carrying the muskets they used in the parade.  Felix has a lean, distinguished face, his dark eyes are penetrating and rather wistful.  The left sleeve of his old uniform is empty.  Silas is a strong man who has borne the burden of the land, and not for himself alone--the pioneer.  Seeing the stranger, he sets his musket against the wall and holds out his hand to him, as Felix goes up to Grandmother Morton.

SILAS MORTON

How do, stranger?

FEJEVARY II

And how are you today, Mrs. Morton?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I’m not abed--and don’t expect to be.

SILAS MORTON

(letting go of the balloons he has bought) Where’s Ira?  And Madeline?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Mrs. Fejevary brought them home with her.  They’ve gone down to dam the creek, I guess.  This young man’s been waiting to see you, Silas.

SMITH

Yes, I wanted to have a little talk with you.

SILAS

Well, why not?  (he is tying the gay baloons to his gun, then as he talks, hangs his hat in the corner closet) We’ve been having a little talk ourselves.  

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Where’d you leave the folks?

SILAS MORTON

Oh--scattered around.  Everybody visitin’ with anybody that’ll visit with them.  Wish you could have gone.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I’ve heard it all.  (to Felix) Your folks well?

FEJEVARY I

All well, Mrs. Morton.  And my boy Felix is home.  He’ll stop in here to see you by and by.

SILAS MORTON

Oh, he’s a fine-looking boy, mother.  And think of what he knows! (cordially including the young man) Mr. Fejevary’s son has been to Harvard College.

SMITH

Well, well--quite a trip.  Well, Mr. Morton, I hope this is not a bad time for me to--present a little matter to you?

SILAS MORTON

(genially)  That depends, of course, on what you’re going to present.  (attracted by a sound outside)  Mind if I present a little matter to your horse?  Like to uncheck him so’s he can get a bit o’ grass.

SMITH

Why--yes.  I suppose he would like that.

SILAS MORTON

(going out) You bet he’d like it.  Wouldn’t you, old boy?

SMITH

Your son is fond of animals.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON
Lots of people’s fond of ‘em--and good to ‘em.  Silas--I dunno, it’s as if he was that animal.

FEJEVARY I

He has imagination.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

(with surprise) Think so?

SILAS MORTON

(returning and sitting down at the table by the young man) Now, what’s in your mind, my boy?

SMITH

This town is growing very fast, Mr. Morton.

SILAS MORTON

Yes. (slyly--with humor) I know that.

SMITH

I presume you, as one of the early settlers--as in fact a son of the earliest settler, feel a certain responsibility about the welfare of--

SILAS MORTON

I haven’t got in mind to do the town a bit of harm.  So--what’s your point?

SMITH

More people--more homes.  And homes must be in the healthiest places--the--the most beautiful places.  Isn’t it true, Mr. Fejevary, that it means a great deal to people to have a beautiful outlook from their homes?  A--well, an expanse.

SILAS MORTON

What is they want to buy--these fellows that are figuring on making something out of--expanse? (a gesture for expanse, then a reassuring gesture) It’s all right, but--just what is it?

SMITH

I am prepared to make you an offer--a gilt-edged offer for that (pointing toward it) hill above the town.

SILAS MORTON

(shaking his head--with the smile of the strong man who is a dreamer) The hill is not for sale.

SMITH

But wouldn’t you consider a--particularly good offer, Mr. Morton?

Silas has turned so he can look out at the hill and slowly shakes his head.

SMITH

Do you feel you have the right--the moral right to hold it?

SILAS MORTON

It’s not for myself I’m holding it.

SMITH

Oh,--for the children?

SILAS MORTON

Yes, the children.

SMITH

But--if you’ll excuse me--there are other investments might do the children even more good.

SILAS MORTON

This seems to me--the best investment.

SMITH

But after all there are other people’s children to consider.

SILAS MORTON

Yes, I know.  That’s it.

SMITH

I wonder if I understand you, Mr. Morton?

SILAS MORTON

(kindly)  I don’t believe you do.  I don’t see how you could.  And I can’t explain myself just now.  So--the hill is not for sale.  I’m not making anybody homeless.  There’s land enough for all--all sides round.  But the hill--

SMITH

(rising) Is yours.

SILAS MORTON

You’ll see.

SMITH

I am prepared to offer you--

SILAS MORTON

You’re not prepared to offer me anything I’d consider alongside what I am considering.  So--I wish you good luck in your business undertakings.

SMITH

Sorry--you won’t let us try to help the town.

SILAS MORTON

Don’t sit up nights worrying about my chokin’ the town.

SMITH

We could make you a rich man, Mr. Morton.  Do you think what you have in mind will make you so much richer?

SILAS MORTON

Much richer.

SMITH

Well, good-bye.  Good day, sir.  Good day, ma’am.

SILAS

(following him to the door)  Nice horse you’ve got.

SMITH

Yes, seems all right.

Silas stands in the doorway and looks off at the hill.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

What are you going to do with the hill, Silas?

SILAS MORTON

After I get a little glass of wine--to celebrate Felix and me being here instead of farther south--I’d like to tell you what I want for the hill.  (to Felix rather bashfully) I’ve been wanting to tell you.

FEJEVARY I

I want to know.

SILAS MORTON

(getting wine from the closet)  Just a little something to show our gratitude with.

He goes off to get glasses.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I dunno.  Maybe it’d be better to sell the hill--while they’re anxious.

FEJEVARY I

He seems to have another plan for it.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Yes.  Well, I hope the other plan does bring him something.  Silas has worked--all the days of his life. I’ll get more cookies.

SILAS MORTON

I’ll get them, mother.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Get ‘em myself.  Pity if a woman can’t get out her own cookies.

SILAS MORTON

(seeing how hard it is for her as she goes) I wish mother would let us do things for her.

FEJEVARY I

That strength is flame frailness can’t put out.  It’s a great thing for us to have her,--this touch with the life behind us.

SILAS MORTON

Yes. And it’s a great thing for us to have you--who can see those things and say them.  What a lot I’d’a missed if I hadn’t had what you’ve seen.

FEJEVARY I

Oh, you only think that because you’ve got to be generous.

SILAS MORTON

I’m not generous.  I’m seeing something now.  Something about you.  I’ve been thinking of it a good deal lately--it’s got something to do with--with the hill.  I’ve been thinkin’ what it’s meant all these years to have a family like yours next place to.  They did something pretty nice for the corn belt when they drove you out of Hungary.  Funny how things don’t end the way they begin.  I mean, what begins don’t end.  It’s another thing ends.  Set out to do something for your own country--and maybe you don’t quite do the thing you set out to do--

FEJEVARY I

No.

SILAS MORTON

But do something for a country a long way off.

FEJEVARY I

I’m afraid I’ve not done much for any country.

SILAS MORTON

(brusquely) Where’s your left arm--may I be so bold as to inquire?  Though your left arm’s nothing alongside--what can’t be measured.

FEJEVARY I

When I think of what I dreamed as a young man--it seems to me my life has failed.

SILAS MORTON

(raising his glass)  Well, if your life’s failed--I like failure.

As before, time and spaces are altered as Silas considerers Felix I.  We are transported back to the library of Morton College, 1920.  SENATOR LEWIS considers FELIX II, who looks to the portrait, deep in thought, we hear the laughter of the children by the creek.

SENATOR LEWIS

I knew there was a family connection between you and the Mortons.

FEJEVARY II

My sister Madeline married Ira Morton, son of Silas Morton. (speaking with reserve) They played together as children and married as soon as they were grown up.

SENATOR LEWIS

(a beat) So what’s this Holden fussing about--that they don’t give some conscientious objector caviar on toast?  It’s prison.

FEJEVARY II

That they didn’t give him books.  Holden felt it was his business to fuss about that.

SENATOR LEWIS

Well, when your own boy ‘stead of whining around about his conscience, stood up and offered his life!

FEJEVARY II

Yes.  And my nephew gave his life.

SENATOR LEWIS

That so?

FEJEVARY II

Silas Morton’s grandson died in France.

SENATOR LEWIS

So this was your sister’s boy?  One of the mothers to give her son!

FEJEVARY II

(speaking of her with effort) My sister died--long ago. (pulled to an old feeling; with an effort releasing himself)  But Ira is still out at the old place--place the Mortons took up when they reached the end of their trail--as Uncle Silas used to put it.  Why, it’s a hundred years ago that Grandmother Morton began--making cookies here.  She was the first white woman in this country.

SENATOR LEWIS

Proud woman!  To have begun the life of this state!  Oh, our pioneers!  If they could only see us now, and know what they did! (Felix is silent; he does not look quite happy)  I suppose Silas Morton’s son is active in the college management.

FEJEVARY II

No, Ira is not a social being.  Fred--his son--’s death about finished him.  He had been--strange for years, ever since my sister died--when the children were little.  It was--(again pulled back to that old feeling) under pretty terrible circumstances.

SENATOR LEWIS

Seems to me I’ve heard something about Silas Morton’s son--Isn’t there something about corn?

FEJEVARY II

Yes.  His corn has several years taken the prize--best in the state.  He’s experimented with it--created a new kind.  They’ve given it his name--Morton corn.  It seems corn is rather fascinating to work with--very mutable stuff.  It’s a good thing Ira has it, for it’s about the only thing he does care for now.  Oh, Madeline, of course.  He has a daughter here in the college--Madeline Morton, senior this year--one of our best students.  I’d like to have you meet Madeline--she’s a great girl, though--peculiar.

SENATOR LEWIS

Well, that’s what makes a girl interesting, if she isn’t peculiar the wrong way.  Sounds as if her home life might well make her a little peculiar.

FEJEVARY II

Madeline stays here in town with us a good part of the time.  Mrs. Fejevary is devoted to her--we all are.  (a boy starts to come through from right) Hello, see who’s here.  This is my boy.  Horace, this is Senator Lewis, who is interested in the college.

HORACE

(shaking hands) How do you do, Senator Lewis?

SENATOR LEWIS

Pleased to see you, my boy.

HORACE

Am I butting in?

FEJEVARY II

Not seriously; but what are you doing in the library?  I thought this was a day off.

HORACE

I’m looking for a book.

FEJEVARY II

(affectionately bantering) You are, Horace?  Now how does that happen?

HORACE

I want the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.

SENATOR LEWIS

You couldn’t do better.

HORACE

I’ll show those dirty dagoes where they get off!

FEJEVARY II

You couldn’t show them a little more elegantly?

HORACE

I’m going to sick the Legion on ‘em.

FEJEVARY II

Are you talking about the Hindus?

HORACE

Yes, the dirty dagoes.

FEJEVARY II

Hindus aren’t dagoes you know, Horace.

HORACE

Well, what’s the difference?  This foreign element gets my goat.

SENATOR LEWIS

My boy, you talk like an American.  But what do you mean--Hindus?

FEJEVARY II

There are two young Hindus here as students.  And they’re good students.

HORACE

Sissies.

FEJEVARY II

But they must preach the gospel of free India--non-British India.

SENATOR LEWIS

Was that the commotion downstairs?  Oh, that won’t do.

HORACE

They’re nothing but Reds, I’ll say.  Well, one of ‘em’s going back to get his. (grins)

FEJEVARY II

There were three of them last year.  One of them is wanted back home.  Gurkul Singh.

SENATOR LEWIS

I remember now.   He’s to be deported.

HORACE

And when they get him--(movement as of pulling a rope) They hang there.

FEJEVARY II

The other two protest against our not fighting the deportation of their comrade.  They insist it means death to him.  (brushing off a thing that is inclined to worry him)  But we can’t handle India’s affairs.

SENATOR LEWIS

I should think not!

HORACE

Why, England’s our ally!  That’s what I told them.  But you can’t argue with people like that.  Just wait till I find the speeches of Abraham Lincoln!

Horace passes through.

SENATOR LEWIS

Fine boy you have, Mr. Fejevary.

FEJEVARY II

He’s a live one.  You should see him in a football game.  Wouldn’t hurt my feelings in the least to have him a little more of a student, but--

SENATOR LEWIS

Oh, well, you want him to be a regular fellow, don’t you, and grow into a man among men?

FEJEVARY II

He’ll do that, I think.  It was he who organized our boys for the steel strike--went right in himself and took a striker’s job.  He came home with a black eye one night, presented to him by a picket who started something by calling him a--well, I’ll spare you--but Horace’s muscle is one-hundred-percent-American.  (going to the window) Let me show you something.  You can see the old Morton place off on that first little hill (pointing).  The first rise beyond the valley.

SENATOR LEWIS

The long low house?

FEJEVARY II

That’s it.  You see, the town for the most part swung around the other side of the hill, so the Morton place is still a farm.

SENATOR LEWIS

But you’re growing all the while.  The town’ll take the cornfield yet.

FEJEVARY II

Yes, our steel works is making us a city.

SENATOR LEWIS

And this old boy (turning to the portrait of Silas) can look out on his old home--and watch the valley grow.

FEJEVARY II

Yes--that was my idea.  His picture really should be in Memorial Hall, but I thought Uncle Silas would like to be up here among the books, and facing the old place. (with a laugh) I confess to being a little sentimental.

SENATOR LEWIS

We Americans have lots of sentiment, Mr. Fejevary.  It’s what makes us--what we are. (Felix does not speak; there are times when the senator seems to trouble him)  Well, this is a great site for a college.  You can see it from the whole country round.

FEJEVARY II

Yes.

Horace comes back, carrying an open book.

HORACE

Say, this must be a misprint.

FEJEVARY II

(glancing at the back of the book)  Oh, I think not.

HORACE

From his first inaugural address to Congress, March 4, 1861. (reads) “This country with its institutions belong to the people who inhabit it.” Well, that’s all right. “Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it” -(after a brief consideration) I suppose that that’s all right--but listen!  “Or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

FEJEVARY II

He was speaking in another age. An age of different values.

SENATOR LEWIS

Terms change their significance from generation to generation.

HORACE

I suppose they do--but that puts me in bad with these lice.  They quoted this and I said they were liars.

SENATOR LEWIS

And what's the idea?  They’re weary of our existing government and are about to dismember or overthrow it?

HORACE

I guess that’s the dope.

FEJEVARY II

Look here, Horace--speak accurately.  Was it in relation to America they quoted this?

HORACE

Well, maybe they were talking about India then.  But they were standing up for being revolutionists.  We were giving them an earful about it, and then they spring Lincoln on us.  Got their nerve--I’ll say--quoting Lincoln to us.

SENATOR LEWIS

The fact that they are quoting it shows it’s being misapplied.

HORACE

(approvingly) I’ll tell them that.  But gee--Lincoln oughta been more careful what he said.  Ignorant people don’t know how to take such things.

Goes back with book.

FEJEVARY II

Want to take a look through the rest of the library?  We haven’t been up this way yet--(motioning) We need a better scientific library.  (they are leaving now)  Oh, we simply must have more money.  The whole thing is fairly bursting its shell. (with a look to Senator Lewis)  Now here’s a book you should want to know better.  Read this.

Felix and the Senator have gone to view the rest of the library.

HORACE

(Looking at the book, to himself)  Matthew Arnold. (flipping it open to a random page)  “The best that has been thought and said in the world!”

MADELINE MORTON comes in; she carries a tennis racket.

MADELINE

(both critical and good-humored)  You haven’t made a large contribution to that, have you, Horace?

HORACE

Madeline, you don’t want to let this sarcastic habit grow on you.

MADELINE

Thanks for the tip.

HORACE

Oh--Want me to play with you, Madeline? (he starts toward her)

MADELINE

(genially, dodging him) I’d rather play with you than talk to you.

HORACE
Same here.

MADELINE

(moving through to the other part of the library)  But first I’m looking for a book.

HORACE

Well, I can tell you without your looking it up, he did say it.  But that was an age of different values.  Anyway, the fact that they’re quoting it shows it’s being misapplied.

MADELINE

(smiling) Father said so.

HORACE

(on his dignity) Oh, of course--if you don’t want to be serious.

MADELINE

I’m being perfectly serious, Horace.  Atma has every right to freedom that we do.  And Fred Jordan for that matter.

HORACE

America is a long way from India.  What’s their freedom?

MADELINE MORTON

What’s yours?

HORACE FEJEVARY

If I didn’t know better sometimes I’d think you were a high brow in disguise.

MADELINE MORTON

Say, you don’t want to start anything like that. I’m all right.  Sometimes you don’t treat me like I am.

HORACE FEJEVARY

We treat each other rough--but that’s being in the family.

MADELINE MORTON

Now, listen, I didn’t come to fight with you about Lincoln.  Call your boys off.  (hushed, as she hears Senator Lewis) I’m going back out there to make sure nothing happens to Atma.

HORACE

Not without me!

They flee from the adults.

SENATOR LEWIS

(at first speaking off) Yes, it could be done.  There is that surplus, and as long as Morton College is socially valuable--right here above the steel works, and making this feature of military training--(he has picked up his hat)  But your Americanism must be unimpeachable, Mr. Fejevary.  This man Holden stands in the way.

FEJEVARY II

I’m going to have a talk with Professor Holden this afternoon.  If he remains he will--(it is not easy for him to say) give no trouble.  (Madeline returns, almost out of breath)  Oh, here’s Madeline--Silas Morton’s granddaughter, Madeline Fejevary Morton.  This is Senator Lewis, Madeline.

SENATOR LEWIS

(holding out his hand)  How do you do, Miss Morton.  I suppose this is a great day for you.

MADELINE
Why--I don’t know.

SENATOR LEWIS

The fortieth anniversary of the founding of your grandfather’s college?  You must be very proud of your illustrious ancestor.

MADELINE

I get a bit bored with him.

SENATOR LEWIS

Bored with him?  My dear young lady!

MADELINE

I suppose because I’ve heard so many speeches about him--”The sainted pioneer”-- “The grand old man of the prairies”--I’m sure I haven’t any idea what he really was like.

FEJEVARY II

I’ve tried to tell you, Madeline.

MADELINE

Yes.

SENATOR LEWIS

I should think you would be proud to be the granddaughter of this man of vision.

MADELINE

(her smile flashing) Wouldn’t you hate to be the granddaughter of a phrase?

FEJEVARY II
(trying to laugh it off)  Madeline!  How absurd.

MADELINE

Well, I’m off for tennis.

Nods goodbye and passes on quickly.

FEJEVARY II

(calling to her) Oh, Madeline, if your Aunt Isabel is out there--will you tell her where we are?

MADELINE

(calling back)  All right.

FEJEVARY II
(after a look at his companion)  Queer girl, Madeline.  Rather--moody.

SENATOR LEWIS

(disapprovingly) Well--yes.

FEJEVARY II

(again trying to laugh it off)  She’s been hearing a great many speeches about her grandfather.

SENATOR LEWIS

She should be proud to hear them.

FEJEVARY II

Of course she should.  (looking in the direction Madeline has gone)  I want you to meet my wife, Senator Lewis.

SENATOR LEWIS

I should be pleased to meet Mrs. Fejevary.  I have heard what she means to the college--socially.

FEJEVARY II

I think she has given it something it wouldn’t have had without her.  Certainly a place in the town that is--good for it.  And you haven’t met our president yet.

SENATOR LEWIS

Guess I’ve met the real president.

FEJEVARY II

Oh--no. I’m merely president of the board of trustees.

SENATOR LEWIS

Merely!

FEJEVARY II

I want you to know President Welling.  He’s very much the cultivated gentleman.

SENATOR LEWIS
Cultivated gentlemen are all right.  I’d hate to see a world they ran.

AUNT ISABEL, Felix’ wife enters.  She is a woman of social distinction and charm.

AUNT ISABEL

How do you do, Senator Lewis? (They shake hands)

FEJEVARY II

Ah, my wife, Senator.

SENATOR LEWIS
It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fejevary.

AUNT ISABEL

Why don’t we carry Senator Lewis home for lunch?

SENATOR LEWIS

Why, you’re very kind.

AUNT ISABEL

I’m sure there’s a great deal to talk about, so why not talk comfortably, and really get acquainted?  And we want to tell you the whole story of Morton College--the good old American spirit behind it.

SENATOR LEWIS

I’m glad to find you an American, Mrs. Fejevary.

AUNT ISABEL

Oh, we are that.  Morton College is one-hundred-percent American.  Our boys--

Horace rushes in.

HORACE

(wildly)  Father!  Will you go after Madeline?  The police have got her!

FEJEVARY II

What!

AUNT ISABEL

(as he is getting his breath)  What absurd thing are you saying, Horace?

HORACE

Awful row down on the campus.  The Hindus. I told them to keep their mouths shut about Abraham Lincoln.  I told them the fact they were quoting him--

FEJEVARY II

Never mind what you told them!  What happened?

HORACE

We started--to rustle them along a bit.  Why, they had handbills (holding one up as if presenting incriminating evidence-the Senator takes it from him) telling America what to do about deportation!  Not on this campus, I say.  So we were--we were putting a stop to it.  They resisted--particularly the fat one.  The cop at the corner saw the row--came up.  He took hold of Atma and when the dirty anarchist didn’t move along fast enough, he took hold of him--well, a bit rough, you might say, when up rushed Madeline and calls to the cop, “ Let that boy alone!” Gee--I don’t know just what did happen--awful mix-up. Next thing I knew Madeline hauled off and pasted the policeman a fierce one with her tennis racket!

SENATOR LEWIS

She struck the officer?

HORACE

I should say she did.  Twice.  The second time--

AUNT ISABEL

Horace. (Looking at her husband) I--I can’t believe it.

HORACE
I could have squared it, even then, but for Madeline herself.  I told the policeman that she didn’t understand--that I was her cousin, and apologized for her.  And she called over at me, “Better apologize for yourself!” As if there was any sense to that--that she--she looked like a tiger.  Honest, everybody was afraid of her.  I kept right on trying to square it, told the cop she was the granddaughter of the man that founded the college--that you were her uncle--he would have gone off with just the Hindu, fixed this up later, but Madeline balled it up again--didn’t care who was her uncle--Gee!  (he throws open the window)  There!  You can see them, at the foot of the hill.  A nice thing--member of our family led off to the police station!

FEJEVARY II

(to the Senator) Will you excuse me?

AUNT ISABEL

(trying to return to the manner of pleasant social things) Senator lewis will go on home with me, and you--(he is hurrying out) come when you can. (to the Senator)  Madeline is such a high-spirited girl.

SENATOR LEWIS

If she had no regard for the living, she might--on this day of all others--have considered her grandfather’s memory.

Raises his eyes to the picture of Silas Morton.

HORACE

Gee!  Wouldn’t you say so?

As they look to the portrait, we are again taken to the time of Silas Morton, immediately where we last left off.  GRANDMOTHER MORTON returns with her cookies.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

There’s two kinds--Mr. Fejevary.  These have seeds in ‘em.

FEJEVARY I

Thank you.  I’ll try a seed cookie first.

SILAS

Mother, you’ll have a glass of wine?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I don’t need wine.

SILAS

Well, I don’t know as we need it.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

No, I don’t know as you do. I didn’t go to war.

FEJEVARY I

Then have a little wine to celebrate that.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, just a mite to warm me up.  Not that it’s cold. (Felix brings it to her, and the cookies)  I was talking to that young whippersnapper about the Blackhawk War.  One time, there was a Sauk boy watching me from a bush, (points)  Right out there.  I was never afraid of Indians when you could see the whole of ‘em--but when you could see nothin’ but their bright eyes--movin’ through leaves--I declare they made me nervous.  After he’d been there an hour I couldn’t seem to put my mind on my work.  So I thought, a man’s a man--I’ll take him some cookies.

FEJEVARY I

It succeeded?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

So well that those leaves had eyes next day.  But he brought me a fish to trade.  He was a nice boy.

SILAS MORTON

Probably we killed him.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON.

I dunno.  Maybe he killed us.  There were tribes on both sides of the war.  Something kind of uncertain about the Indians.

SILAS MORTON

I guess they found something kind of uncertain about us. (to Felix) I wonder if I’m wrong.  You see, I never went to school--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON
I don’t know why you say that, Silas.  There was two winters you went to school.

SILAS MORTON

Yes, mother, and I’m glad I did, for I learned to read there, and I liked the geography globe.  It made the earth so nice to think about.  And one day the teacher told us all about the stars, and I had that to think of when I was driving at night.  But I mean school--the way Mr. Fejevary went to school.  He went to universities.  In his own country--in other countries.  All the things people have found out, the wisest and finest things people have thought since first they began to think--all that was put before them.

FEJEVARY I

(with a gentle smile)  I fear I left a good deal of it untouched.

SILAS MORTON

You took a-plenty.  Tell in your eyes you’ve thought lots about what’s been thought.  And that’s what I was setting out to say.  It makes something of men--learning.  A house that’s full of books makes a different kind of people. (trying hard to see it) It’s not the learning itself--it’s the life that grows up from learning.  Learning’s like soil.  Like--like fertilizer.  Get richer.  See more. Feel more. 

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, Silas Morton, when you’ve your wood to chop an’ your water to carry, when you kill your own cattle and hogs, tend your own horses and hens, make your butter, soap, and cook for whoever the Lord sends--there’s none too many hours of the day left to be polite in.

SILAS MORTON

You’re right, mother.  It had to be that way.  But now that we buy our soap--we don’t want to say what soap-making made us.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

We’re honest.

SILAS MORTON

Yes.  In a way.  Our honesty with the Indians was little to brag on.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

You fret more about the Indians than anybody else does.

SILAS MORTON

To look out at that hill sometimes makes me ashamed.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Land sakes, you didn’t do it.  It was the government.  And what a government does is nothing for a person to be ashamed of.

SILAS MORTON

I don’t know about that.  Why is he here?  Why is Felix Fejevary not rich and grand in Hungary today?  ‘Cause he was ashamed of what his government was.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON
Well, that was a foreign government.

SILAS MORTON

A-seeing how ‘tis for the other person--a-bein’ that other person, kind of honesty.  Joke of it, ‘twould do something for you.  ‘Twould ‘a’ done something for us to have been Sauks a little more.  My father used to talk about Blackhak--they was friends.  I saw Blackhawk once--when I was a boy.

Blackhawk appears.  Over the rest of Silas’ speech, they commune.  A gesture of passing.

SILAS MORTON (cont.)

Guess I told you.  You know what he looked like?  He looked like the great of the earth.  Noble.  Noble like the forests--and the Mississippi--and the stars.  His face was long and thin and you could see the bones, and the bones were beautiful.  Looked like something that’s never been caught.  He was something many nights in his canoe had made him.  Sometimes I feel that the land itself has got a mind and that the land would rather have had the Indians.

Blackhawk is gone.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, don’t let folks hear you say it.  They’d think you was plum crazy.

SILAS MORTON

I s’pose they would. (turning to Felix) But after you’ve walked a long time over the earth--and you all alone, didn’t you ever feel something coming up from it that’s like thought?

FEJEVARY I

I’m afraid I never did.  But--I wish I had.

SILAS MORTON

I love land--this land.  I suppose that’s why I never have the feeling that I own it.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

If you don’t own it--I want to know who does!  What do you think we come here for--your father and me?  What do you think we left our folks for--left the world of white folks--schools and stores and doctors, and set out in a covered wagon for we didn’t know what?  We lost a horse.  Lost our way--weeks longer than we thought ‘twould be.  You were born in that covered wagon.  You know that.  But what you don’t know is what that’s like--without your own roof--or fire--without--

She turns her face away.

SILAS MORTON

No.  No, mother, of course not.  Now--now isn’t this too bad?  I don’t say things right.  It’s because I never went to school.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

(her face shielded) You went to school two winters.

SILAS MORTON

Yes.  Yes, mother.  So I did.  And I’m glad I did.

GRANDMOTHER
(with the determination of one who will not have her own pain looked at) Suppose it was pretty fine-sounding speeches they had in town?

FEJEVARY I

Too fine-sounding to seem much like the war.

SILAS MORTON

I’d like to go to a war celebration where they never mentioned war.  There’d be a way to celebrate victory. (hearing a step, looking out)  Mother, here’s Felix!

Enter FELIX FEJEVARY II a well dressed young man of 18.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

How do, Felix?

FEJEVARY II

And how do you do, Grandmother Morton?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, I’m still here.

FEJEVARY II

Of course you are.  It wouldn’t be coming home if you weren’t.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON
I’ve got some cookies for you, Felix.  I set ‘em out, so you wouldn’t have to steal them.  Felix was hard on the cookie jar.

SILAS MORTON
(who is pouring a glass of wine for Felix the younger) Your father and I come on home ‘cause I wanted to have a talk with him.

FEJEVARY II

Getting into the old uniforms makes you want to talk it all over again?

SILAS MORTON

The war?  Well, we did do that.  But all that makes me want to talk about what’s to come, about--what ‘twas all for.  Great things are to come, Felix.  And before you are through.

FEJEVARY II

I’ve been thinking about them myself--walking around the town today.  It’s grown so much this year, and in a way that means more growing--that big glucose plant going up down the river, the new lumber mill--all that means many more people.

FEJEVARY I

And they’ve even bought ground for a steel works.

SILAS MORTON
Yes, a city will rise from these cornfields--a big rich place--that’s bound to be.  It’s written in the lay o’ the land and the way the river flows.  But first tell us about Harvard College, Felix.  Ain’t it a fine thing for us all to have Felix coming home from that wonderful place!

FEJEVARY II

You make it seem wonderful.

SILAS MORTON

Ah, you know it’s wonderful--know it so well you don’t have to say it.  It’s something you’ve got.  But to me it’s wonderful the way the stars are wonderful--this place where all that the world has learned is to be drawn from like--like a spring.

FEJEVARY II

You almost say what Matthew Arnold says--a distinguished new English writer who speaks of: “The best that has been thought and said in the world.”

SILAS MORTON

“The best that has been thought and said in the world!” (slowly rising, and as if the dream of years is bringing him to his feet)  That’s what that hill is for! (pointing)  Don’t you see it?  End of our train, we climb a hill and plant a college.  Plant a college, so’s after we are gone that college says for us, says in people learning has made more: “That is why we took this land.”

Time and space do their thing.  In this transition, we get a moment where 1920 Felix II considers carefully 1879 Felix II.  He is stuck in the memory of this as the action of 1920 resumes and he goes off.  We are in the Library, three hours later than our last moment here.  PROFESSOR HOLDEN is seated at the table, books before him.  He is a man in his fifties.  

At the moment his care-worn face is lighted by that lift of the spirit which sometimes rewards the scholar who has imaginative feeling.  HARRY, a librarian, comes hurrying in.  Looks back.

HARRY

Here’s Professor Holden, Mr. Fejevary.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Mr. Fejevary is looking for me?

HARRY

Yes.

He goes back, a moment later, FEJEVARY II enters.  He has his hat, gloves, stick; seems tired and disturbed.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Was I mistaken?  I thought our appointment was for five.

FEJEVARY II

Quite right.  But things have changed, so I wondered if I might have a little talk with you now.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

To be sure.  (rising)  Shall we go downstairs?

FEJEVARY II

(with mind to the protest still going on outside) I don’t know.  Nice and quiet up here.  (to Harry who is now passing through)  Harry, the library is closed now is it?

HARRY

Yes, it’s locked.

FEJEVARY II

And there’s no one in here?

HARRY

No, I’ve been all through.

FEJEVARY II

The appropriations committee is downstairs.  Oh, this is a terrible day. (putting his things on the table)  We’d better stay up here. Harry, keep an eye out. When my niece--when Miss Morton arrives--I want you to come and let me know.  Ask her not to leave the building without seeing me.

HARRY

Yes, sir. (he goes to the back, looks out the window)

FEJEVARY II

Well, (wearily) it’s been a day.  Not the day I was looking for.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

No.

FEJEVARY II

You’re very serene up here.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Yes, I wanted to be--serene for a little while.

FEJEVARY II

(looking at the books)  Emerson.  Whitman.  Blackhawk! (with a smile) Have they anything new to say on economics?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Perhaps not; but I wanted to forget economics for a time.  I came up here by myself to try and celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Morton College.  (answering the other man’s look)  Yes, I confess I’ve been disappointed in the anniversary.  As I left Memorial Hall after the exercises this morning, Emerson’s words came into my mind--

“Give me truth,

For I am tired of surfaces

And die of inanition.”

Well, then I went home--(stops, troubled)

FEJEVARY II

How is Mrs. Holden?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Better, thank you, but--not strong.

FEJEVARY II

She needs the very best of care for a time, doesn’t she?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Yes. (silent a moment) Then, this is something more than the fortieth anniversary you know.  It’s the first of the month.

FEJEVARY II

And illness hasn’t reduced the bills?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(shaking his head) I didn’t want this day to go like that; so I came up here to try and touch what used to be here.

FEJEVARY II

But you speak despondently of us.  And there’s been such a fine note of optimism in the exercises.  (speaks with the heartiness of one who would keep himself assured)

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I didn’t seem to want a fine note of optimism.  (with roughness)  I wanted--a gleam from reality.

FEJEVARY II

To me this is reality--the robust spirit created by all these young people.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Do you think it is robust? (hand affectionately on the book before him) I’ve been reading Blackhawk. (he reads)

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong and wrong like right.”

Perhaps it’s myself I’m discouraged with.  Do you remember the tenth anniversary of the founding of Morton College?

FEJEVARY II

The tenth?  Oh yes, that was when this library was opened.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I shall never forget your father, Mr. Fejevary, as he stood out there and said the few words which gave these books to the students.  Not many books, but he seemed to baptize them in the very spirit from which books are born.

FEJEVARY II

He died the following year.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

One felt death near.  But that didn’t seem the important thing.  A student who had fought for liberty of mind. You must be very proud of your heritage.

FEJEVARY II

Yes. (a little testily)  Well, I have certainly worked for the college.  I’m doing my best now to keep it a part of the times.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(as if this has not reached him) It was later that same afternoon I talked with Silas Morton.  We stood at this window and looked out over the valley.  I never felt America as that old farmer made me feel it.

FEJEVARY II

(drawn by this, then shifting in irritation because he is drawn) I’m sorry to break in with practical things, but alas, I am a practical man--forced to be.  I too have made a fight--though the fight to finance never appears an idealistic one.  But I’m deep in that now, and I must have a little help; at least, I must not have--stumbling-blocks.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Am I a stumbling-block?

FEJEVARY II

Candidly (with a smile) You are a little hard to finance. Here's the situation. The time for being a little college has passed. We must take our place as one of the most important colleges--I make bold to say one of the important universities--of the Middle West. But we have to enlarge before we can grow. (answering Holden's smile) Yes, it is ironic, but that's the way of it. As you know, there's this chance for an appropriation from the state. I find that the legislature, the members who count, are very friendly to Morton College. They like the spirit we have here. Well, now I come to you, and you are one of the big reasons for my wanting to put this over. Your salary makes me blush. It's all wrong that a man like you should have these petty worries, particularly with Mrs. Holden so in need of things a little money can do. Now this man Lewis is a reactionary. So, naturally, he doesn't approve of you. 

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

So naturally I am to go.

FEJEVARY II

Go?  Not at all.  What have I just been saying?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Be silent, then.

FEJEVARY II

Not that either--not--not really.  But--be a little more discreet. (seeing him harden) This is what I want to put up to you.  Candidly, I don’t feel you know just what you do think; is it so awfully important to express--confusion?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

The only man who knows just what he thinks at the present moment is the man who hasn’t done any new thinking in the past ten years.

FEJEVARY II

(with a soothing gesture) You and I needn’t quarrel about it.  I understand you, but I find it a little hard to interpret you to a man like Lewis.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Then why not let a man like Lewis go to thunder?

FEJEVARY II

And let the college go to thunder?  I’m not willing to do that.  I’ve made a good many sacrifices for this college.  Given more money than I could afford to give; given time and thought that I could have used for personal gain.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

That’s true, I know.

FEJEVARY II

I had a very strong feeling about my father, Professor Holden.  And his friend Silas Morton.  Those are noble 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.”

PROFESSOR 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 II

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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

Well I’m trying to make it easier.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Make it easier by destroying the dream?

FEJEVARY II

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

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

Now let’s not get rhetorical with one another.

PROFESSOR 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 II

Certainly.  That’s why I wanted this talk with you.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

How well I know that.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

You don’t know all of it.  I’m not sure you understand any of it.

FEJEVARY II

(charmingly) Oh, I think you’re hard on me.

PROFESSOR 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.  The Greeks--

FEJEVARY II

(as Holden has paused before what he sees)  I remember you told me the Greeks were the passion of your student days.

PROFESSOR 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. Oh, what wouldn’t I give to have again that feeling of life’s infinite possibilities!

FEJEVARY II

(nodding) A youthful feeling.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(softly)  I like youth.  At the time of the tenth anniversary I had a chance then to go to Harvard as an 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. No one had ever felt it as he felt it.  It seemed to become of the very bone of him.

FEJEVARY II

(affectionately)  I know how he used to do.

PROFESSOR 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 II

(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?  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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

That’s one of your sweeping statements, Holden.  Nobody’s all wrong.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

He’s not my Senator Lewis, he’s the state’s. Why, he objects of course, to your radical activities.  He spoke of your defense of conscientious objectors.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN
(slowly)  I think a person who is willing to go to prison for what they believe has stuff in them no college needs turn its back on.

FEJEVARY II

Well, he doesn’t agree with you--nor do I.

PROFESSOR 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 II

(easily)  I presume the prisons do need a cleaning up.  As to Gurkul Singh and  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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I’m not trying to belittle it.  But he had the whole spirit of the age with him--fortunate boy.  The person who stands outside the idealism of their time--

FEJEVARY II

Takes a good deal upon himself I should say.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

You know in your heart it’s a noble courage.

FEJEVARY II

It lacks--humility. (Holden laughs scoffingly) And I think you lack it.  I’m asking you to cooperate with me for the good of Morton College.

PROFESSOR 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 fervor 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 II

I think we’ll have to let the Hindus go.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(astonished) Go? Our best students?

FEJEVARY II

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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I don’t seem to know what you mean at all.

FEJEVARY II

Why, that disgraceful performance going on (indicating the campus).  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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Well, I seem to have missed something--disgraceful performance--?

FEJEVARY II

You mean to say you don’t know about the disturbance going on out here?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

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

FEJEVARY II

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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

What happened?

FEJEVARY II

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.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Madeline Morton did that!

FEJEVARY II

(sharply) You seem pleased.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I am--interested.

FEJEVARY II

Well, I’m not interested.  I’m disgusted.  My niece mixing up in a free-for-all fight and getting taken to the police station!  It’s the first disgrace we’ve ever had in our family.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(as one who has been given courage) Wasn’t there another disgrace?

FEJEVARY II

What do you mean?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

When your father fought his government and was banished from his country.

FEJEVARY II

That was not a disgrace!

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(as if in surprise) Wasn’t it?

FEJEVARY II

See here, Holden, you can’t talk to me like that.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I don’t admit you can talk to me as you please and that I can’t talk to you.  I’m a professor--not a servant.

FEJEVARY II

Yes, and you’re a damned difficult professor.  I certainly have tried to--

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(smiling) Handle me?

FEJEVARY II

I ask you this.  Do you know any other institutions where you could sit and talk with the executive head as you have here with me?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I don’t know.  Perhaps not.

FEJEVARY II

Then be reasonable.  No one is entirely free. That’s naive.  It’s rather egotistical to want to be.  We’re held by our relations to others--by our obligations to the (vaguely)--the ultimate thing.  Come now--you admit certain dissatisfactions with yourself, so--why not go with intensity into just the things you teach--and not touch quite so many other things?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I couldn’t teach anything if I didn’t feel free to go wherever that thing took me.  Thirty years ago I was asked to come to this college precisely because my science was not in isolation, because of my vivid feeling of us as a moment in a long sweep, because of my faith in the greater beauty our further living may unfold.

HARRY enters.

HARRY

Excuse me.  Miss Morton is here now, Mr. Fejevary.

FEJEVARY II

(frowns, hesitates)  Ask her to come up here in five minutes. (After Harry has gone) I think we’ve thrown a scare into Madeline.  Thought as long as she’d been taken to jail it would be no worse for us to have her stay there awhile.  She’s been held since one o’clock. That ought to teach her reason.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Is there a case against her?

FEJEVARY II

No, I got it fixed up.  Explained that it was just college girl foolishness--wouldn’t happen again.  One reason I wanted this talk with you first, if I do have any trouble with Madeline I want you to help me.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Oh, I can’t do that.

FEJEVARY II

You aren’t running out and clubbing the police.  Tell her she’ll have to think things over and express herself with a little more dignity.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

I ask to be excused from being present while you talk with her.

FEJEVARY II

But why not stay in the library--in case I should need you.  Just take your books over to the east alcove and go on with what you were doing when I came in.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(with a faint smile) I fear I can hardly do that.  As to Madeline--

FEJEVARY II

You don’t want to see the girl destroy herself, do you?  I confess I’ve always worried about Madeline.  If my sister had lived--But Madeline’s mother died, you know.   Fred never worried me a bit--just the fine normal boy. But Madeline--(with an effort throwing it off) Oh, it’ll be all right, I haven’t a doubt.  And it’ll be all right between you and me, won’t it?  Caution over a hard strip of the road, then--bigger things ahead.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(slowly, knowing what it may mean)  I shall continue to do all I can toward getting Fred Jordan out of prison.  It is a disgrace to America that two years after the war closes he should be kept there--much of the time in solitary confinement--because he couldn’t believe in war.  It’s small--vengeful--it’s the Russia of the Czars.  I shall do what is in my power to fight the deportation of Gurkul Singh.  And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college.  For what--I ask you?  Dismissed--for what?  Because they love liberty enough to give their lives to it!  The day you dismiss them, burn our high-sounding manifesto, Mr. Fejevary, and admit that Morton College now sells her soul to the--committee on appropriations.

FEJEVARY II

Well, you force me to be as specific as you are.  If you do these things, I can no longer fight for you.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Very well then, I go.

FEJEVARY II

Go where? What of your family?

PROFESSOR HOLDEN
We will have to manage some way.

FEJEVARY II

It is not easy for a woman whose health--in fact, whose life--is a matter of the best care to “manage some way”. (with real feeling) What is an intellectual position alongside that reality?  You’d like of course, to be just what you want to be--but isn’t there something selfish in that satisfaction?  I’m talking as a friend now--you must know that.  You and I have a good many ties, Holden.  I don’t believe you know how much Mrs. Fejevary thinks of Mrs. Holden.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

She has been very, very good to her.

FEJEVARY II

And will be.  She cares for her.  And our children have been growing up together--I love to watch it.  Isn’t that the reality?  Doing for them as best we can, making sacrifices of--of every kind.  Don’t let some tenuous, remote thing destroy this flesh and blood thing.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

(as if one fighting to keep his head above water)  Honesty is not a tenuous, remote thing.

FEJEVARY II

There’s a kind of honesty in selfishness. Oh, I used to--go through things.  But I’ve struck a pace--one does--and goes ahead.

PROFESSOR HOLDEN

Forgive me, but I think you’ve had certain temptations to--selfishness.

FEJEVARY II

How do you know what I’ve had?  You have no way of knowing what’s in me--what other thing I might have been?  You know my heritage; you think that’s left nothing?  But I find myself here in America.  I love those dependent on me.  My wife--who’s used to a certain manner of living; my children--who are to become part of the America of their time.  It’s pretty arrogant to think you’re the only man who has made a sacrifice to fit himself into the age in which he lives.  I hear Madeline.  This hasn’t left me in very good form for talking with her.  Please don’t go away.  Just--

MADELINE comes in.  She has her tennis racket.  Nods to the two men.  Holden goes out the other way.

MADELINE MORTON

You wanted to speak to me, Uncle Felix?

FEJEVARY II

Of course I want to speak with you.

MADELINE MORTON

I feel just awfully sorry about--banging up my racket like this.  The second time it came down on his club.  Why do they carry those things?  Perfectly fantastic, I’ll say, going around with a club.  But as long as you were asking me what I wanted for my birthday--

FEJEVARY II

Madeline, I am not here to discuss your birthday.

MADELINE MORTON

I’m sorry--(smiles) to hear that.

FEJEVARY II

You don’t seem much chastened.

MADELINE MORTON

Chastened?  Was that the idea?  Well, if you think that keeping a person where she doesn’t want to be chastens her!  I never felt less “chastened” than when I walked out of that slimy spot and looked across the street at your nice bank. (with friendly concern) Why, Uncle Felix, you look tired out.

FEJEVARY II

I am tired out, Madeline.  I’ve had a nerve-racking day.

MADELINE MORTON

Isn’t that too bad?  Those speeches were so worrisome, and that old senator person--wasn’t he a stuff?  But can’t you go home now and let auntie give you tea and--

FEJEVARY II

(sharply)  Madeline, have you no intelligence?  Hasn’t it occurred to you that your performance would worry me a little?

MADELINE MORTON

I suppose it was a nuisance.  And on such a busy day. (changing)  But if you’re going to worry, Horace is the one you should worry about. (answering his look) Why, he got it all up.  He made me ashamed!

FEJEVARY II

And you’re not at all ashamed of what you have done?

MADELINE MORTON

Ashamed?  Why--no.

FEJEVARY II

Then you’d better be!  A girl who rushes in and assaults an officer!

MADELINE MORTON
(earnestly explaining it) But, Uncle Felix, I had to stop him.  No one else did.

FEJEVARY II
Madeline, I don’t know whether you’re trying to be naive--

MADELINE MORTON

(angrily) Well, I’m not.  I like that!  I think I’ll go home.

FEJEVARY II

I think you will not!  It’s stupid of you to not know this is serious.  You could be dismissed from school for what you did.

MADELINE MORTON
Well, I’m good and ready to be dismissed from any school that would dismiss for that.

FEJEVARY II

(in a new manner--quietly, from feeling)  Madeline, have you no love for this place?

MADELINE MORTON

(doggedly, after thinking)  Yes, I have. (she sits down) And I don’t know why I have.

FEJEVARY II

Certainly it’s not strange.  If ever a girl had a background, Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton’s background. (he too now seated by the table) Do you remember your Grandfather Morton?

MADELINE MORTON

Not very well. (a quality which seems sullenness)  I couldn’t bear to look at him.  He shook so.

FEJEVARY II

(turning away, real pain) Oh--how cruel!

MADELINE MORTON

(surprised, gently) Cruel?  Me--cruel?

FEJEVARY II

Not just you.  The way it passes--(to himself) so fast it passes.

MADELINE MORTON

I’m sorry.  (troubled)  You see, he was too old then--

He holds his hand up to stop her.  As he speaks this, we see Silas Morton, first as an old man and then in his glory.  This “from feeling” place, becomes a real place and in it is Silas.  Madeline does not see him or any of the following.

FEJEVARY II
I wish I could bring him back for a moment, so you could see what he was before he (bitterly) shook so.  He was strangely of the earth, as if something went from it to him. (looking at her intently) Queer you should be the one to have no sentiment about him, for you and he--sometimes when I’m with you it’s as if--he were near. (Silas looks on Felix over Madeline’s shoulders.) He had no personal ambition, Madeline.  He was ambitious for the earth and its people.

Felix turns.  His father appears opposite Madeline and Silas.

FEJEVARY II (cont.)

I wonder if you can realize what it meant to my father--in a strange land, where he might so easily have been misunderstood, pushed down, to find a friend like that?  It wasn’t so much the material things--though Uncle Silas was always making them right--and as if--oh, hardly conscious of what he was doing--so little it mattered.  It was the way he got father, and by that very valuing kept alive what was there to value.

The same gesture of passing as from Blackhawk to Silas.  Maybe Blackhawk is here now too.

FEJEVARY II (cont.)

Why, he literally laid this country at my father’s feet--as if that was what this country was for, as if it made up for the hard early things--for the wrong things.

As silently as they appeared, they are gone.

MADELINE MORTON

That’s nice about him being--of the earth.  Sometimes when I’m out for a tramp--way off by myself--yes, I know.  And I wonder if that doesn’t explain his feeling about the Indians.  Father told me how grandfather always took it to heart about the Indians.

FEJEVARY II

He felt it as you’d feel it if it were your brother.  So he must give his choicest land to the thing we might become. He said “Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be ashamed.”

Madeline nods, appreciatively.

MADELINE MORTON

Yes, that’s really--all right.

FEJEVARY II

(irritated by what seems charily stated approval) “All right!”  Well, I am not willing to let this man’s name pass from our time.  And it seems rather bitter that Silas Morton’s granddaughter should be the one to stand in my way.

MADELINE MORTON

Why, Uncle Felix, I’m not standing in your way.  Of course I wouldn’t do that.  I--(rather bashfully) I love the Hill.  I was thinking about it in jail.  I got fuddled on direction in there, so I asked the woman who hung around which way was College Hill.  “Right through there,” she said.  A blank wall.  I sat and looked through that wall--long time. (she looks front, again looking through that blank wall) It was all--kind of funny.  Then later she came and told me you were out there, and I thought it was corking of you to come and tell them they couldn’t put that over on College Hill.  And I know Atma will appreciate it too.  I wonder where he went?

FEJEVARY II

Went?  I fancy he won’t go much of anywhere tonight.

MADELINE MORTON
What do you mean?

FEJEVARY II

Why, he’s held for his hearing, of course.

MADELINE MORTON

You mean--you came and got just me--and left him in there?

FEJEVARY II

Certainly.

MADELINE MORTON

(rising)  Then I’ll have to go and get him.

FEJEVARY II

Madeline, don’t be so absurd.  You don’t get people out of jail by stopping in and calling for them.

MADELINE MORTON

But you got me.

FEJEVARY II

Because of years of influence.  At that, it wasn’t simple.  Things of this nature are pretty serious nowadays.  It was only your ignorance got you out.

MADELINE MORTON
I do seem ignorant.  While you were fixing it up for me, why didn’t you arrange for him too?

FEJEVARY II
Because I’m not in the business of getting foreign revolutionists out of jail.

MADELINE MORTON
But he didn’t do as much as I did.

FEJEVARY II

It wasn’t what he did.  It’s what he is.  We don’t want him here.

MADELINE MORTON
Well, I guess I’m not for that!

FEJEVARY II

May I ask why you have appointed yourself guardian of these strangers?

MADELINE MORTON

Perhaps because they are strangers.

FEJEVARY II

Well, they’re the wrong kind of strangers.

MADELINE MORTON

Is is true that Gurkul Singh is to be deported?  Is America going to turn him over to the government he fought?

FEJEVARY II

I have an idea they will all be deported.  I’m not so sorry this thing has happened.  It will get them into the courts--and I don’t think they have money to fight.

MADELINE MORTON

(giving it clean and straight) Gee, I think that’s rotten!

FEJEVARY II
Quite likely your inelegance will not affect it one way or the other.

MADELINE MORTON

(she has taken her seat again, is thinking it out)  I’m twenty-one next Tuesday.  Isn’t it on my twenty-first birthday I get that money Grandfather Morton left me?

FEJEVARY II

What are you driving at?

MADELINE MORTON
(simply) They can have my money.

FEJEVARY II

Are you crazy?  What are these people to you?

MADELINE MORTON
They’re people from the other side of the world who came here believing in us, drawn from the far side of the world by things we say about ourselves.  Well, I’m going to pretend--just for fun--that the things we say about ourselves are true.  So if you’ll--arrange so I can get it, Uncle Felix, as soon as it’s mine.

FEJEVARY II
And this is what you say to me at the close of my years of trusteeship!  If you could know how I’ve nursed that little legacy along--until now it is--(breaking off in anger) I shall not permit you to destroy yourself!

MADELINE MORTON

(quietly)  I don’t see how you can keep me from “destroying myself”.

FEJEVARY II

(looking at her, seeing that this may be true.  In genuine amazement, and hurt)  Why--but it’s incredible.  Have I--has my house--been nothing to you all these years?

MADELINE MORTON

I’ve had my best times at your house.  Things wouldn’t have been--very gay for me--without you all--though Horace gets my goat!

FEJEVARY II

And does your Aunt Isabel--”get your goat”?

MADELINE MORTON

I love auntie. (rather resentfully) You know that.  What has that got to do with it?

FEJEVARY II

So you are going to use Silas Morton’s money to knife his college.

MADELINE MORTON

Oh, Uncle Felix, that’s silly.

FEJEVARY II
It’s a long way from silly.  You know a little about what I’m trying to do--this appropriation that would assure our future.  If Silas Morton’s granddaughter casts in her lot with revolutionists, Morton College will get no help from the state.  Do you know enough about what you are doing to assume this responsibility?

MADELINE MORTON

I am not casting “in my lot with revolutionists”.  If it’s true, as you say, that you have to have money in order to get justice--

FEJEVARY II

I didn’t say it!

MADELINE MORTON

Why, you did, Uncle Felix.  You said so.  And if it’s true that these strangers in our country are going to be abused because they’re poor--what else could I do with my money and not feel like a skunk?

FEJEVARY II

(trying a different track, laughing) Oh, you’re a romantic girl, Madeline--skunk and all.  But the thing is perfectly fantastic, from every standpoint.  You speak as if you had millions.  And if you did, it wouldn’t matter, not really.  You are going against the spirit of this country; with or without money, that can’t be done.  Take a man like Professor Holden.  He’s radical in his sympathies--but does he run out and club the police?

MADELINE MORTON

(in a smoldering way)  I thought America was a democracy.

FEJEVARY II

We have just fought a great war for democracy.

MADELINE MORTON

Well, is that any reason for not having it?

FEJEVARY II

I should think you would have a little emotion about the war--about America--when you consider where your brother is.

MADELINE MORTON

Fred had--all kinds of reasons for going to France. He wanted a trip.  (Felix exclaims) Why, he said so.  Heavens, Fred didn’t make speeches about himself.  Wanted to see Paris--poor kid, he never did see Paris.  Wanted to be with a lot of fellows--knock the Kaiser’s block off--end war, get a French girl.  It was all mixed up--the way things are.  But Fred was a pretty decent sort.  I’ll say so.  He had such kind, honest eyes.  (this has somehow said itself, her own eyes close and what her shut eyes see makes feeling hot) One thing I do know!  Fred never went over the top and out to back up the argument you’re making now!

FEJEVARY II

(stiffly) Very well, I will discontinue the argument I’m making now.  I’ve been trying to save you from--pretty serious things.  The regret of having stood in the way of Morton College--(his voice falling) the horror of having driven your father insane.

MADELINE MORTON
What?

FEJEVARY II

One more thing would do it.  Your great-grandmother Morton--the first white woman in this region--she dared too much, was too lonely, feared and bore too much.  They did it, for the task gave them a courage for the task.  But it--left a scar.

MADELINE MORTON

And father is that--(can hardly say it)--scar.  (fighting the idea) But Grandfather Morton was not like that.

FEJEVARY II

No; he had the vision of the future; he was robust with feeling for others. (gently) But Professor Holden feels your father is the--dwarfed pioneer child.  The way he concentrates on corn--excludes all else--as if unable to free himself from their old battle with the earth.

MADELINE MORTON

(almost crying) I think it’s pretty terrible to--wish all that on poor father.

FEJEVARY II
Well, my dear child, it’s life has “wished it on him”.  It’s just one other way of paying the price for his country.  I feel that all our chivalry should go to your father in his--heritage of loneliness.

MADELINE MORTON

Father couldn’t have always been--dwarfed.

FEJEVARY II

No, but too much had been endured just before life got to him.

MADELINE MORTON

Do you know, Uncle Felix--I’m afraid that’s true? (he nods) Sometimes when I’m with father I feel those things near--the--the too much--the too hard--feel them as you’d feel the cold.  And now that it’s different--easier--he can’t come into the world that’s been earned.  Oh, I wish I could help him!

As they sit there together, now for the first time really together.  This time Madeline sees Silas Morton, this time he is with Ira as a young boy, tousling his hair and lifting him high in the air.  The joy of fatherhood.  She tries to hold onto the touch with the life behind but she’s swept away as 1879 returns properly to the stage.  Ira runs off.  Madeline and Felix II fade away.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

(incredulous to Silas) You mean, Silas, you’re going to give the hill away?

SILAS MORTON

The hill at the end of our trail--how could we keep that?

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Well, I want to know why not!  Hill or level--land’s land and not a thing you give away.

SILAS MORTON

Well, don’t scold me.  I’m not giving it away.  It’s giving itself away, get down to it.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Don’t talk to me as if I was feeble-minded.

SILAS MORTON

I’m talking with all the mind I’ve got.  If there’s not mind in what I say, it’s because I’ve got no mind.  (to Felix, humorously) Haven’t I?   You ought to know.  Seeing as you gave it to me.

FEJEVARY I

Ah no -- I didn’t give it to you.

SILAS MORTON

Well, you made me know ‘twas there.  You said things that woke things in me and I thought about them as I ploughed.  And that made me know there had to be a college there--wake things in minds--so ploughin’s more than ploughing.  What do you say, Felix?

FEJEVARY II

It’s--it’s a big idea, Uncle Silas.  I love the way you put it.  It’s only that I’m wondering--

SILAS MORTON

Wondering how it can ever be a Harvard College?  Well it can’t.  And it needn’t be. (stubbornly) It’s a college in the cornfields--where the maize once grew.  And it’s for the boys of the cornfields--and the girls.  There’s few can go to Harvard College--but more can climb that hill. (turn of the head from the hill to Felix II) Harvard on a hill? (As Felix II smiles no, Silas turns back to the hill) A college should be on a hill.  They can see it then from far around.  See it as they go out to the barn in the morning; see it when they’re shutting up at night.  ‘Twill make a difference--even to them that never go.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Now, Silas--don’t be hasty.

SILAS MORTON

Hasty?  It’s been company to me for years.  Came to me one night--musta been ten years ago--middle of a starry night as I was comin’ home from your place (to Felix I).  I’d gone over to lend a hand with a sick horse an’--

FEJEVARY I

(with a grateful smile) That was nothing new.

SILAS MORTON

Well, say, I’d sit up with a sick horse that belonged to the meanest man unhung.  But--there were stars that night had never been there before.  Leastways I’d not seen ‘em.  And the hill--Felix, in all your travels east, did you ever see anything more beautiful than that hill?

FEJEVARY I

It’s like sculpture.

SILAS MORTON

Hm.  (the wistfulness with which he speaks of that outside his knowledge)  I s’pose ‘tis.  It’s the way it rises--somehow--as if it knew it rose from wide and fertile lands.  I climbed the hill that night, (to Felix I) You’d been a talkin’.  As we waited between medicines you told me about your life as a young man.  All you’d lived through seemed to--open up to you that night--way things do at times.  Guess it was ‘cause you thought you was goin’ to lose your horse.  See, that was Colonel, the sorrel, wasn’t it.

FEJEVARY I
Yes.  Good old Colonel.

SILAS MORTON

You’d had a long run o’ off luck.  Hadn’t got things back in shape since the war.  But say, you didn’t lose him, did you?

FEJEVARY I 

Thanks to you.

SILAS MORTON

Thanks to the medicine I keep in the back kitchen.

FEJEVARY I

You encouraged him.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Silas has a way with all the beasts.

SILAS MORTON

We’ve got the same kind of minds--the beasts and me.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Silas, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that--and with Felix just home from Harvard College.

SILAS MORTON

Well, there we sat--you an’ me--middle of a starry night, out beside your barn.  And I guess it came over you kind of funny you should be there with me--way off the Mississippi tryin’ to save a sick horse.  Seemed to--bring your life to life again.  You told me what you studied in that fine old university you lived--in Vienna--and why you became a revolutionist.  The old dreams took hold o’ you and you talked--way you used to, I suppose. Your face as you went on about the vision--you called it, vision of what life could be.  I knew that night there was things I never got wind of.  When I went away--knew I ought to go home to bed--hayin’ at daybreak.  “Go to bed?” I said to myself.  “Strike this dead when you’ve never had it before, may never have it again?”  I climbed the hill.  Blackhawk was there.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Why, he was dead.

SILAS MORTON

He was there--on his own old hill, with me and the stars.  And I said to him--

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

Silas!

SILAS MORTON
Says I to him, “Yes--that’s true; it’s more yours than mine, you had it first and loved it best.  But it’s neither yours nor mine,--though both yours and mine.  Not my hill, not your hill, but--hill of vision,” said I to him.  “Here shall come visions of a better world that was ever seen by you or me, old chief.”  Oh, I was drunk, plum drunk.

GRANDMOTHER MORTON

I should think you was.  And what about the next day’s hay?

SILAS MORTON

A day in the hayfields is a day’s hayin’--but a night on the hill--

FEJEVARY II

We don’t have them often, do we, Uncle Silas?

All from 1879 fades away off the stage except Silas and Felix II.  Felix II from 1920 enters and takes the place of Felix II from 1879.

SILAS MORTON

I wouldn’t ‘a’ had that one but for your father, Felix.  Thank God they drove him out o’ Hungary.  That hill belongs to no one.  Belongs to everyone.

Madeline enters.  Silas considers her as he says the following.

SILAS MORTON (cont.)

And it’s all so dog-gone queer.  Ain’t it queer how things blow from mind to mind--like seeds.  Lord A’mighty--you don’t know where they’ll take hold.

There is a shrill shout of derision from outside the library in 1920.  Silas is gone and we are properly back at Morton College.

MADELINE MORTON

What’s that? (a whistled call)  Horace!  That’s Horace’s call.  That’s for his gang.  Are they going to start something now that will get Bakhshish in jail too?

FEJEVARY II

More likely he’s trying to start something.  (they are both listening intently)  I don’t think our boys will stand much more.

A scoffing whoop.  Madeline springs to the window; he reaches it ahead and holds it.

FEJEVARY II (cont.)

This window stays closed.

She starts to go away, he takes hold of her.

MADELINE MORTON

You think you can keep me here?

FEJEVARY II

Listen, Madeline--plain, straight truth.  If you go out there and get in trouble a second time, I can’t make it right for you.

MADELINE MORTON

You needn’t!

FEJEVARY II

You don’t know what it means.  These things are not child’s play--not today.  You could get twenty years in prison for things you’ll say if you rush out there now. (she laughs)  You laugh because you’re ignorant.  Do you know that in America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more than you’ve said here to me!

MADELINE MORTON

Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!

FEJEVARY II

I?  Ashamed of myself?

MADELINE MORTON

Yes!  Aren’t you an American?  (a whistle) Isn’t that a policeman’s whistle?  Are they coming back?  Are they hanging around here to--(pulling away from her uncle as he turns to look, she jumps in the deep sill and throws open the window.  Calling down) Here--Officer--YOU--Let that boy alone!

FEJEVARY II

(going to the side, calling sharply)  Holden.  Professor Holden--here--quick!

POLICEMAN VOICE

Who says so?

MADELINE MORTON

I say so!

POLICEMAN VOICE
And who are you talking for?

MADELINE MORTON

I am talking for Morton College!

FEJEVARY II

(returning--followed, reluctantly, by Professor Holden) Indeed you are not.  Close that window or you’ll be expelled from Morton College.

The sound outside increases as the two sides come together.

POLICEMAN VOICE

Didn’t I see you at the station?

MADELINE MORTON

Sure you saw me at the station.  And you’ll see me there again, if you come bullying around here.  You’re not what this place is for!  (her uncle comes up behind and tries to close the window, she holds it out) My grandfather gave this hill to Morton College--a place where anybody--from any land--can come and say what he believes to be true!  Why, you poor simp--this is America!  Beat it from here!  Don’t let him take hold of you like that!  He has no right to--Oh, let me down there!

She springs down, would go off but her uncle spreads his arms out to block her passage.  She turns to go the other way.

FEJEVARY II

Holden!  Bring her to her senses.  Stand there. (Holden has not moved from the place he entered, and so blocks the doorway)  Don’t let her pass.

Violent sound outside.

MADELINE MORTON

You think you can keep me in here--with that going on out there?

She moves nearer Holden, stands before him, taut, looking him straight in the eye.  After a moment, slowly, as one compelled, he steps aside for her to pass.  Sound of her running footsteps.  The two men’s eyes meet.  A door slams. 

END ACT I