Such an attitude must make your noble efforts quite difficult.
BAGBY
Ah, but it’s not that I don’t see their point, you know, now the word is out that it’s no more than a war to free the naygers. Why, they’ve had high wages here in the mines. Do they want to go off and get killed fighting to free a lot of naygers that will come in and work for a penny a day? Why, the President himself said when it started that he had no power or intention of freeing the naygers, and now? Well, I’ve learned from a friend, he’s a highly placed man down in Washington, that he’s already written a proclamation freeing the naygers! Yes, he wrote it this summer, the President did, and he’s read it off to his Cabinet there. Yes, preserve the Union! with four million naygers running around free? Why, the woods is full of them right now, and do you expect a nayger to go back into slavery once he’s been as free to come and go as yourself?
KANE
(WITH SUDDEN ILL-CONCEALED INTEREST)
Reading such a thing to his Cabinet hasn’t freed anyone.
BAGBY
And who should he read it to, you? He’d be a laughing stock if he read it out in public now, the way things are going. No, he must wait for a victory. Then people will listen and it will make sense. With a real victory behind it, he can give the slave states a choice of coming back into the Union or having their slaves freed right under their noses.
THOMAS
A victory? Winning a battle, what difference will that make. No, you’d better say winning the war!
KANE
(THOUGHTFULLY)
But even a battle . . . and a battleline advancing as a crusade . . . While the South is waiting for France and England to intervene, if only to free the cotton. And they might still in a rebellion, yes, in a civil war, but . . . a crusade against slavery?
BAGBY
Yes, and the victory is all the President lacks to make it so! There’s nobody seen what war can be, that hasn’t seen the next battle!
BAGBY exits importantly upstage right.
THOMAS
(LEVELLY)
You dislike me, don’t you Kane. You showed it at Quantness when we met. What is it you want, then.
KANE
(TURNING, AGREEABLY)
Or perhaps it’s just my unfortunate manner? Yes, my manner may be like your scar there, the expression it gives you? When I walked in, you looked outraged to see me, but . . . surely you were not?
THOMAS
And that cotton, what’s happened to it? Was it ever shipped from Wilmington?
KANE
It was shipped. That’s what I’ve come to tell you about . . .
THOMAS
And what’s happened to it? There are obligations attached to it, and I’ve heard nothing. I had a special interest in that cotton, you know, an arrangement I made with the Major, and I’ve heard nothing. No remittance, nothing . . .
KANE
The shipment was impounded by the French government.
THOMAS
Im-pounded? but . . . I owe nothing, I left no debts . . .
KANE
A firm of French shipbuilders got out a lien against it. The ones who are building the battle ram Stonewall. The cotton was shipped from a Southern port, and they hadn’t been paid . . .
THOMAS
A ram! But . . . by heaven! I’m being pressed for those profits now, the shareowners here . . . a ram! What the devil are they building a ram for!
KANE
To break the blockade . . .
THOMAS
The blockade! Why, damn the blockade, what does it matter now? With the army that’s sweeping up here? Lee has probably invaded Pennsylvania itself while we sit here, he’s right on our doorstep, and they’re worried about a blockade? The whole thing will be over in a matter of days.
KANE
I seem to recall your saying that the last time we met.
THOMAS
(WITH DEFIANT ANNOYANCE)
Well, and . . . isn’t it?
KANE
But not as it would have ended then, with a hundred thousand Union troops massed on Richmond.
THOMAS
Yes but . . . damn it, that’s not the point now! Don’t you see the shape things are in here? These militia drafts and the rest of this nonsense? They’re terrified. The Southern armies will sweep through like hail in a cornfield.
KANE
(QUIETLY, EYEING THOMAS’ BOOTS)
In boots like that, they might.
(AS THOMAS CLAPS HIS BOOT AND STANDS IN EXASPERATION)
You talk as if Lee’s army were . . . a machine. You’ve seen it. Have you forgotten? Men and boys without shoes? Ragged, forced marches on one dry biscuit? Why . . . is there ever a . . . body left on the battlefield, to be buried in a whole pair of pants?
THOMAS
Do you think I don’t still live it at night! . . . When the battle is over, it’s not the men. Do men look dead that you stumble over? No, they’ve seen nothing, the death that happened had nothing to do with them, or life. But the horses . . . !
(HE SHUDDERS)
The horses had seen it, it was still in their eyes, their heads flung up and their nostrils wide and their eyes . . . wide opened on it still . . . It’s still there, on a field that just that morning was nothing more. Why, you might have lived there half your life or you might never have seen it before. Fields, fences, trees, a creek . . . has it ever made any difference before if the fence were here? or there were a ditch? if the corn was cut, or the trees had leaves? Until the morning the sun comes up and finds it a battlefield? Why? Here? Not a mile, or twenty miles away but here! And now everything takes on meaning, now none of it could have been any different. Not a tree or a stone to crouch behind, none of it could have been any different, if men are dying? hidden in the corn? lying in the ditch? If these were trees? and that were barren? Then who would have lived and who would have died? Who would have suffered and who . . . gone free . . . Because if each tree, because if each stone and rail of fence had no reason to be right where it was that day, that instant, then our pain and death had no more meaning than the stones . . .
KANE
But when you said that you’d . . . you’d fought death, and won . . .
THOMAS
And I did! When that whole sky wheeled and burst, the woods swept clean up the wagon road and the cornstalks glittering stalks unsheathed behind the rail fence, where the stupid face of that chapel stared down across that creek at the house with its windows blazing with the sun as though it were afire. That bay mare had dragged me over the stones with one rein twisted around my wrist, and I pulled myself up on the strength of her terror. And when I brought down her head and fired, her legs came up like a folding toy. She didn’t stagger or fall, she went down square . . . doubled up running from what was happening . . . But if all of it . . . had no more meaning than this?
(PACING AWAY, AND BACK)
I don’t even . . . know myself anymore. On that battlefield, when I suddenly knew that the man I saw coming up against me, my opposite in every way . . . that he was not my enemy, but death, that we were fighting together . . . And since then, now . . . it’s like meeting myself down some dark street, waylaid round a corner and thrown to the pavement, and left to fight myself off! Is that why you mistrust me then! Just for being a hero, was it? Yes as my mother said, ‘being a hero in war . . . ’
KANE
I? But I mistrust it no more than you do yourself, as a boy’s idea, seeing the threat come head-on, and you run or you meet it, that’s cowardice or . . . ‘soldierly fortitude.’ But courage itself, it takes the courage of wisdom to stand trial when we never suspect it.
—Oscar, is . . .
—I said please, Christina! Please don’t interrupt, what is it.
—Never mind then. It’s just someone down on the lawn with a camera.
—With a, who! Who is it what are they doing!
—Oscar be careful, you’ll tip over the whole . . .
; —Well find out who it is! Taking pictures of, somebody spying out there they . . .
—Just calm down, my God. Who on earth would want to spy on us.
—That’s exactly what I’d like to know. The way Kiester and these people sneak around there’s such a thing as invasion of privacy isn’t there? Can’t that go in the complaint?
—If you haven’t filed your complaint yet Oscar they don’t even know who you are, so why should Kiester’s people want to spy on you.
—I’m not talking to you Christina, will you just go and find out who that is out there? I’m talking to Mister Basie about this complaint.
—Thing is Oscar this is an action for infringement. You get privacy and things like that in there you just confuse things, run a good chance they throw the whole thing out, just stay right with your play there.
—All right then, what about the horses.
—What about the horses.
—The way he just described the horses on the battlefield, how death was still in their eyes, the horror, that was all in the movie wasn’t it? the way that review described them in the movie?
—Describing them’s one thing, show them right up there on the screen you can’t prove they . . .
—You don’t expect me to have horses crashing around dying on the stage do you? Because we have the battle, you’ll see, it’s at the end of the act but it’s all effects, light and sound and the . . .
—You ever see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade Oscar? Don’t know how many horses got killed making that movie, actually injured and killed so bad they got the laws changed, these Kiester people didn’t need to steal from you. Just claim they went to see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade.
—Listen. I did not see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade, no. That’s the point, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, people connecting my name with this mindless nonsense if they think I took my play from Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade there goes my whole reputation and loss of income as a scholar and a, a playwright, now what about that. What about that.
—Why you’ll ask compensatory and triple damages for mental and professional distress.
—Oh. Good. That’s what I meant yes, good that’s what I, what’s she doing out there look, they’re coming right up on the veranda who’s that woman, Christina? One of you open the window there so I can, Christina! Will you stop him taking pictures? Who are they!
—Maybe we better just clear out Mister Crease.
—Sit down! All of you, just sit down we’re not finished, these constant interruptions you lose the whole thread of . . .
—Just go ahead Oscar, it’s only this real estate woman getting pictures of the place for their brochure.
—Well stop them! It’s just an invitation, people who rob houses that’s where they get their ideas get them out of here!
—They’re not going to rob the house, they . . .
—Just get rid of them will you? They’ve already broken the dramatic tension this whole scene depends on the, where are we now . . .
As KANE stares up at THOMAS, whose expression turns to one of perplexity, BAGBY appears upstage right disheveled and hurries down to them.
BAGBY
Here, the guard took me out for a look at them, getting their heads punched up at shaft seven, and what do you think we found? They’d come to set it afire, if you can believe it, shouting about having their rights, yes, and who do you think we found! Sprung out of the ground, out of the pit itself, blind on destroying, fighting anything just to fight . . . And who do you think we caught up with? The boy that assaulted you that night, in Norwegian Street where your house was burned. The same night that soldier got himself murdered there, and they know this boy done it. They’re bringing him here, as I instructed, the guards are bringing him here for you to identify.
THOMAS
For me? I saw no murder.
BAGBY
No, not for that, for the murder they cannot prove though we know that he done it. To identify him for assault, and you’ll see! If he will go trying to make a fool of justice, not owning up to the murder, he may wish that he had!
The YOUNG MAN, haggard, unshorn and dirty, is flung onstage with a final effort by the GUARD and BAGBY.
(CIRCLING THE YOUNG MAN WARILY)
Here’s your savage, sir. A fine specimen, an’t he? One of nature’s noblemen, you might say. Do you know him? There, you might not recognize him at a glance. He an’t got any prettier, hiding away until he was hunted down to earth . . . here, guard! Stand by here!
BAGBY gets the GUARD between himself and the YOUNG MAN, who stands looking askance at THOMAS; and THOMAS in turn appears to avoid looking too closely at him.
(TO THOMAS)
An’t he the one that done it, sir? That laid for you that night?
(TO KANE)
He was lucky I happened along, you know, or the boy here might have killed him, for that’s what he meant to do . . .
(TO THE YOUNG MAN)
Wasn’t it! Like you went on to kill that soldier boy? Speak up, you young ninny! Like you tried to kill your master here?
KANE
(UPSET)
What do you want him to say! That he tried to change what he was himself by trying to destroy his master?
BAGBY
(DISDAINING KANE, TO THOMAS)
Why don’t you have a word with him, sir. You might know from his voice . . .
KANE
(IN EXASPERATION)
And what do you want them to say! You expect them to sit down and have a chat, do you? when all they share is the . . . terrible silence of slavery?
BAGBY
(TURNING LOFTILY ON KANE)
There, that’s going too far now. Why, who brought the boy to the mines here but the boy himself? Yes . . .
(TO THOMAS)
Isn’t that true enough, sir?
(TO KANE, MOTIONING TO THOMAS)
Yes, he’s said it himself more than once, that they’re here by their own consent . . .
THOMAS
(IMPATIENTLY)
Let’s get all this straightened out quickly, do you hear? I’m leaving, I’m going abroad, to the Continent . . .
BAGBY
(TAKEN ABACK)
But when, sir?
THOMAS
I don’t know, as soon as I can.
KANE
(STILL APPEARING RELUCTANT)
There’s a ship from Philadelphia tomorrow night.
BAGBY
And you in the militia draft, with U.S. marshals watching every port . . . ?
BAGBY, KANE and then even the GUARD fall back as THOMAS slowly approaches and confronts the YOUNG MAN, staring him full in the face.
THOMAS
(TO THE YOUNG MAN, AFTER PAUSE, AS THE YOUNG MAN STARES HIM BACK)
You . . . know me? Yes . . . your face that night in a flash of flame, in the street, that night of the fire. I know you . . . too well!
YOUNG MAN
(HALTINGLY, AS THOMAS SLOWLY PUTS A HAND TO HIS SHOULDER, LOOKING AT SCAR)
And I gave you that, did I? Well . . . good enough!
BAGBY
(HURRYING UP TO THEM)
Here now, be careful . . .
THOMAS
(GRIPPING THE YOUNG MAN’S SHOULDER, PUTTING FACE IN HIS)
Yes . . . you know me!
(AFTER AN INSTANT’S BINDING PAUSE, STEPS BACK ABRUPTLY ALMOST UPSETTING BAGBY, ON WHOM HE TURNS, CALMLY)
He’s going up in my place.
BAGBY
(BEWILDERED, AS KANE STANDS APPALLED)
But . . . him? In your place in the draft, sir? Why . . . why . . .
THOMAS
If he’s willing.
BAGBY
If he’s willing! Why, why what has he got to be willing about?
(TURNING ON THE YOUNG MAN WITH THOROUGH CONTEMPT)
There! Are you willing?
YOUNG MAN
(STEADILY, TO THO
MAS, WITH HINT OF SMILE, DRAWS HIMSELF UP)
I am willing.
BAGBY
(HURRYING TO TRY TO GET COMMAND OF THE SITUATION)
Yes, and why should you not be? If it’s that or prison . . .
THOMAS
I said no such thing!
KANE
(APPROACHING THOMAS UNSTEADILY, LAYS A HAND ON HIS ARM)
What . . . you’re doing . . .
BAGBY
(HAVING CALCULATED SHREWDLY AND SWIFTLY, TO THOMAS)
Yes of course sir, you’ll want to do the right thing by him . . .
(HASTILY TAKING OUT A THICK WALLET, EXTRACTING A PACKET OF MONEY WHICH HE COUNTS QUICKLY AS HE SPEAKS AND HANDS IT TO THE YOUNG MAN)
And I happen to have the fee right on me, is six hundred dollars . . .
THOMAS
In gold! Get it from the safe now, do you hear?
BAGBY
(AGAIN SWIFTLY, SHREWDLY CALCULATING, WITHDRAWING UPSTAGE RIGHT)
As you say sir . . . in gold.
KANE
(STILL APPALLED)
Do you know . . . what you’re doing?
THOMAS
(IMPATIENTLY, SHAKING HIM OFF)
I’ve told you! And . . . by heaven, what do you want! Now? for me to retreat? With the war, all of it, almost over? And still the chance to straighten things out . . . ?
KANE
(IN DISTRACTED HORROR AND CONSTERNATION)
And you still think a battle will end it! Battles, battles, can’t you see? They can be fought until not a soldier’s left standing, and still no one will win? No, that’s what soldiers are for, fighting battles and winning or losing them but . . . no, they are no longer war. War is attrition . . . not of armies, but of people, people, people . . . ! Not wiping out soldiers in battle but . . . wiping out hope in the heart!
BAGBY
There!
(TURNING ON THE YOUNG MAN)
He an’t much to look at, but you’re not doing badly, you know, and times what they are . . . No family, no home, no history to him at all you might say, but he’s good with mechanical things . . .
(OFFICIOUSLY APPROACHES THE YOUNG MAN)
Straighten up! You’re not in the pits now!
THOMAS
(TO NEITHER OF THEM)
Nothing to fight for at all . . . ?
BAGBY
And what would he want with something to fight for? with all he’s got to fight against? Here now . . .
Frolic of His Own Page 17