Latest / Life and Times of Joseph Warren / Verge-Susan Glaspell

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Verge-Susan Glaspell · Life and Times of Joseph Warren

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Act one of The Verge by Susan Glassbell. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Narrator read by Tricia g.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Anthony read by Algpug.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Harry Archer read Harry read by Victoria.
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: Clare read by Michelle Eaton Beck, Richard Bemings read by Lambda.
• 0:32
  Speaker 5: Tom Edgeworthy read by Chuck Williamson.
• 0:37
  Speaker 6: Elizabeth read by Elizabeth.
• 0:39
  Speaker 7: Klett, Adelaide read by Amanda Friday.
• 0:44
  Speaker 8: Doctor Emmans read by Sarah and Grisha Parshall.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Act one. The curtain lifts on a place that is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: dark save for a shaft of light from below, which
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: comes up through an open trapdoor in the floor. This
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: lags up and strikes the long leaves and the huge,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: brilliant blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: from right front. Nothing is seen except this plant and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: its shadow. A violent wind is heard A moment later
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short silence again.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: The buzzer then from below, his shadow blocking the light,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: comes Anthony, a rugged man past middle life. He emerges
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: from the stairway into the darkness of the room is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: dimly seen taking up a phone.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, miss clare O, y'll see.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: He brings a thermometer to the stairway for light, looks sharply,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: then returns to the phone.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: It's down to thirty nine. The plants are in danger.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: With great relief and approval. Oh, that's fine, hangs up
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the receiver.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Fine.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap door
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: upon himself, and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It opens a moment later on the green house, in
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the sunshine of a snowy morning, the snow piled outside
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: is at times blown through the air. The frost has
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: made patterns on the glass, as if, as Plato would
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: have it, the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: all life had to come out not only in the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of sound around the glass house. The back wall is low,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an outside
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: door a little toward the right. From outside, two steps
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: lead down to it. At left, a glass partition and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a door into the inner room. One sees a little
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: way into this room. At right. There is no dividing
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: wall save large plants and vines. A narrow aisle between
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: shelves of plants leads off. This is not a greenhouse
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: where plants are being displayed, nor the usual workshop for
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the growing of them, but a place for experiment with plants,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: a laboratory. At the back grows a strange vine. It
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: is a resting rather than beautiful. It creeps along the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: low wall, and one branch gets a little way up
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the glass. You might see the form of a cross
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in it, if you happened to think it that way.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: The leaves of this vine are not the form that
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: leaves have been. They are at once repellent and significant.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Anthony is at work preparing soil mixing sifting. As the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: wind tries the door, he goes anxiously to the thermometer,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: nods as if reassured, and returns to his work. The
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the telephone, remembers something,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: halts and listens sharply. It does not buzz once long
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and three short. Then he returns to his work. The
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: buzzer goes on and on in impatient jerks, which mount
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: in anger. Several times Anthony is almost compelled by this insistence,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: but the thing that holds him back is stronger. At last,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: after a particularly mad splutter, to which Anthony longs to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: make retort, the buzzer gives it up. Anthony goes on
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: preparing soil. A moment later, the glass door swings violently
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: in snow blowing in, and also mister Harry Archer wrapped
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in a rug.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Ooh, please close the door, sir.
• 4:35
  Speaker 9: Do you think I'm not trying to?
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: He holds it open to say.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: This, but please do. The stormy air is not good
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: for the blondes.
• 4:45
  Speaker 9: I suppose it's just the thing for me. Now, what
• 4:49
  Speaker 9: do you mean, Anthony, by not answering the phone when
• 4:51
  Speaker 9: I buzz for.
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  Speaker 2: You, Miss Claire, missus Archer?
• 4:54
  Speaker 9: Do will be not to tell you not to answer me?
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Not you special nobody but her?
• 5:03
  Speaker 9: Well, I like her nerve and yours.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: You'll see. She thought it took my mind away from
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: my work. We interrupted when I'm out here, and so
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: it does. So she pushes once along, and well she
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: pushes her way and all other bushing ney.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Buzz Anthony nodding gravely.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: She thought it would be better for the flowers.
• 5:27
  Speaker 9: I am not a flower trip, but I too need
• 5:30
  Speaker 9: a little attention and a little heat. Will you please
• 5:34
  Speaker 9: tell me why the house is frigid.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Miss Claire? Or did all the heat turned out? Here?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Patiently explaining it to miss Claire's speechless husband, You.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: See, the roses need a great deal of heat.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Harry's reading the thermometer.
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  Speaker 9: The roses have seventy three. I have forty five.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, the roses need seventy.
• 5:56
  Speaker 9: Three, Anthony, this is an outrage.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Do you think it is, meself? When you consider what
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: we paid for the heating plant? But as long as
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: it is defective, why miss Claire would never have done
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: much she has if she hadn't looked out for her
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: plants in just such way as this? Have you forgotten
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: that breath of life is about to flower?
• 6:18
  Speaker 9: And where is my breakfast? About a flower? That's what
• 6:21
  Speaker 9: I want to know.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Why miss Claire got up at five o'clock to order
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the heat turned off from the house?
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  Speaker 9: I see you admire her vigilance.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Oh I do I do? Harm was near and that
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: woke her up?
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  Speaker 9: And what about the harm to tapping his chest do
• 6:41
  Speaker 9: roses get pneumonia?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes, indeed they do. Why, mister Archer, look
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: at miss Claire herself. Hasn't she given her heat to
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the roses?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Harry pulling the rug around him, preparing for the blizzard.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: She has the fire within Anthony, delight.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: No, isn't that true? How well use it it?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: With a glare for his appreciation, Harry opens the door.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: It blows away from him. Please do close the door, Harry, furiously, you.
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  Speaker 9: Think it is the aim of my life to hold
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  Speaker 9: it open.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Anthony getting hold of it.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Ruing things needed, even temperature.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: While saying this, he gets the man out into the snow.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Anthony consults the thermometer, not as pleased this time as
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: he was before, and then looks minutely at two of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the plants. One is a rose, the other a flower
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: without a name because it has not long enough been
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: a flower. Peers into the hearts of them. Then, from
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a drawer under a shelf, takes two paper bags, puts
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  Speaker 1: one over each of these flowers, closing them down at
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  Speaker 1: the bottom. Again, the door blows wildly in Also, Hattie,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a maid with a basket.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Would you mean blown in here like this? Missus Archer
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  Speaker 2: has ordered.
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  Speaker 3: Mister Archer has ordered breakfast served here.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: She uncovers the basket and takes out an electric toaster.
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  Speaker 2: Breakfast here, eat here, where blondes grow.
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  Speaker 3: The plants won't poison him?
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: Will they?
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: At a loss to know what to do with things,
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  Speaker 1: she puts the toaster under the strange vine at the back,
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  Speaker 1: whose leaves lift up against the glass, which has frost
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: leaves on the outer side. Anthony snatching it away.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: You you think you can go eggs under the edge vein.
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  Speaker 3: I guess mister Archer's eggs are as important as a vine.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: I guess my work's as important as yours.
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  Speaker 2: There's a million people like you, and like mister Archer
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  Speaker 2: in all the world. There's only one edge vein.
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  Speaker 3: Well maybe one's enough. Don't look like nothing anyhow, And you've.
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  Speaker 2: Not goot the wit to know that. That's why it's
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: the edge vein.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: You want to look out, Anthony, you talk nutty. Everybody
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  Speaker 3: says so, Miss Flair.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Don't say so no, because she's you talk too much.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Door opens, admitting Harry with a thermos bottle.
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  Speaker 2: Please close.
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  Speaker 1: Harry halts his attempt at closing the door to give
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  Speaker 1: Anthony a look. Anthony gets the door shut. Harry, after
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  Speaker 1: looking around for the best place to eat breakfast, moves
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  Speaker 1: a box of earth from the table.
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  Speaker 9: Just give me a hand, will you, Hattie.
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  Speaker 1: They bring it to the open space and he and
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  Speaker 1: Hattie arrange breakfast things. Hattie with triumphant glances at the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: distressed Anthony. Anthony deciding he must act.
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  Speaker 2: Mister Archer, this is not the place to eat breakfast.
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  Speaker 9: Dead wrong, old boy. The place that has heat is
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  Speaker 9: the place to eat breakfast. To Hattie, tell the other gentlemen.
• 9:43
  Speaker 9: I heard mister Deming up and mister edgeworthy if he
• 9:46
  Speaker 9: appears that, as long as it is such a pleasant morning,
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  Speaker 9: we're having breakfast outside to the conservatory for coffee.
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  Speaker 1: Hattie Giggles is leaving.
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  Speaker 9: And let's see have we got everything?
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  Speaker 1: Takes the one shake, shakes a little pepper on his hand,
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  Speaker 1: looks in vain for the other shaker.
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  Speaker 9: And tell mister Deming to bring the salts.
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  Speaker 2: Mister Archer, I'm sorry.
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  Speaker 1: To say anything, Harry, who is taking off a bulb
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  Speaker 1: and attaching the toaster.
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  Speaker 9: Then why do you but miss Claire will be very angry.
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  Speaker 9: I am very angry. Did I choose to eat my breakfast.
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  Speaker 9: At the other end of.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: A blizzard, Anthony an exclamation of horror at the thermometer.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, the temperature is falling. He must report.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: He punches the buzzer, takes up the phone.
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  Speaker 2: Miss Clair. It is odd today. A terrible thing has happened,
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  Speaker 2: mister Archer. What, Yes, a terrible thing. Yes, it is
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  Speaker 2: about mister Archer. No, no, no, deed. But here he
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: is here. Yes, he is well, he seems well. But
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: he is eating at breakfast. He is having breakfast served
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: out here for himself. Another gentleman at a goom too. Well,
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  Speaker 2: he seen't be annoyed because the heat to be turned
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  Speaker 2: off from the house. But the door keeps opening, this
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  Speaker 2: stormy wind blowing right over the plants. The temperature has
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: already fallen. Yes, yes, he thought you would want to come.
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  Speaker 1: Anthony opens the trap door and goes below. Harry looks
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  Speaker 1: disapprovingly down into this openness at his feet, returns to
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  Speaker 1: his breakfast. Anthony comes up bearing a box. Harry turning
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  Speaker 1: his face away.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Whew, what a smell, Yes, Fred Elijah has to smell.
• 11:39
  Speaker 9: Well, it doesn't have to smell out my breakfast.
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  Speaker 1: Anthony, with a patient sense, of order.
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  Speaker 2: The smell belongs here.
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  Speaker 1: He and the smell go to the inner room. The
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: outer door opens just enough to admit Claire, is quickly closed.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: With Claire in a room, another kind of a liveness
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  Speaker 1: is there?
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  Speaker 4: What are you doing?
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: He getting breakfast all the while doing so.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: I'll not have you in my place.
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  Speaker 9: If you take all the heat, then you have to
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  Speaker 9: take me.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: I'll show you how I have to take you.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: With her hands begin scooping upon him the soil Anthony
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  Speaker 1: has prepared, Harry jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: putting his arms around her.
• 12:21
  Speaker 9: Claire, be decent. What harm do I do here?
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: You pull down the temperature? Not after I'm in, and
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: you told Tom and Dick to come and make it uneven.
• 12:32
  Speaker 9: Tom and Dick are our guests. We can't eat where
• 12:35
  Speaker 9: it's warm and leave them to eat where it's cold.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: I don't see why not?
• 12:40
  Speaker 9: You only see what you want to see.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: That's not true. I wish it were. No, No, I
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: don't either.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: She is disturbed that troubled thing which rises from within,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: from deep and takes Claire. She turns to the edge
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: vine examines regretfully to Anthony, who has come in with
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: a plant.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: It's turning back, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: Can you be sure you, miss Claire?
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, it's had its chance. It doesn't want to
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: be what hasn't been?
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Harry, who has turned at this note in her voice,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: speaks kindly.
• 13:15
  Speaker 9: Don't take it so seriously, Claire.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Claire laughs.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: No, I suppose not. But it does matter, And why
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: should I pretend it doesn't just because I've failed with it?
• 13:26
  Speaker 9: Well, I don't want to see it gets you. It's
• 13:29
  Speaker 9: not important enough for.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: That, Claire, in her brooding way.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: Anything is important enough for that, if it's important.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: At all to the vine.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: I thought you were out, but you're going back home.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Would you do your this day, Miss Claire? When Berth
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: of Life opens and we see it.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Hurt, Claire looks toward the inner room. Because of intervening plants,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: they do not see what is seen from the front.
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  Speaker 1: A plant like caut motion and of a greater transparency
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: than plants have had, Its leaves like waves that curl
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: close around a heart that is not seen. This plant
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: stands by itself in what because of the arrangement of
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: things about it is a hidden place, but nothing is
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: between it and the light.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Yes, if the heart has held its own Then breath
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: of life is alive in its otherness. But edgevine is
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: running back to what it broke out of.
• 14:25
  Speaker 9: Come have some coffee, Claire.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Anthony returns to the inner room. The outer door opens.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Dick is hurled in, Claire going to the door as
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: he gasps for breath before closing it.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: How dare you make my temperature uneven?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: She shuts the door and leans against it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 10: Is that what I do?
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: A laugh? A look between them which is held into significance, Harry,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: who is not facing them?
• 14:50
  Speaker 9: Where's the salt?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Hoh?
• 14:52
  Speaker 10: I fell on in the snow. I must have left
• 14:55
  Speaker 10: the salt where I fell. I'll go back and look
• 14:58
  Speaker 10: for it.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: And change the temperature. Yeah, we don't need salt.
• 15:02
  Speaker 9: You don't need salt, Claire. But we eat eggs.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: I must tell you I don't like the idea of
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: any food being eaten here, where things have their own
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: way to go. Please eat as little as possible, and
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: as quickly.
• 15:15
  Speaker 9: The host is calculated to put one at one's ease.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Claire, with no ill nature.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: I care nothing about your ease or about Dick's ease.
• 15:25
  Speaker 10: And no doubt that's what makes you so fascinating a hostess?
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Was I a fascinating hostess? Last night?
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Dick softly sings, Oh night of love from the barkarol
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of Tales of Halfman.
• 15:38
  Speaker 9: We've got to have salt.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: He starts for the door, Claire slips in ahead of him,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: locks it, takes the key. He marches off right, Claire
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: calling after him.
• 15:49
  Speaker 10: That ends always locked, clad, Darling, I wish you wouldn't
• 15:53
  Speaker 10: see those startling things. You do get away with it,
• 15:57
  Speaker 10: but I confess it gives me a shock. Andrea, it's
• 16:00
  Speaker 10: hand wise.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: Haven't you learned that the best place to hide is
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: in the truth.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: As Harry returns, why won't.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: You believe me, Harry when I tell you the truth
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: about doors being locked?
• 16:12
  Speaker 9: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating
• 16:15
  Speaker 9: salt as because you don't eat salt.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Claire with one of her swift changes.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, Harry, try your egg without salt. Please please try
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: it without salt.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: An intensity which seems all out of proportion to the subject.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: An egg demand's salt, An egg demand's salt. Do you know, Harry,
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: why you are such an unseasoned person? An egg demands salt?
• 16:41
  Speaker 9: Well, it doesn't always get it.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld,
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: not an into.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Lift, going back to his breakfast.
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: And pleased, so pleased with itself for getting no lift. Sure,
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: it's just the right kind of spirit, because it gets
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: no lift. More brightly, but Dick, you must have tried
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: your egg without salt.
• 17:01
  Speaker 10: I'll try it now.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: He goes to the breakfast table.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: of perversion.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Claire, Dick pushing back his egg.
• 17:14
  Speaker 10: It's so I prefer to wait for the salt, Claire.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: There is a limit, precisely what I had in mind
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: to perversion too. There is a limit, so the fortifications
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: are unassailable. If one ever does get out, I suppose
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: it is quite unexpectedly, and perhaps a bit terribly get.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Out where Claire, with a bright smile.
• 17:36
  Speaker 9: Where you, darling, will never go, and from which you, darling,
• 17:41
  Speaker 9: had better beat it.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I wish I could to herself.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: No, no, I don't either.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Again, this troubled thing turns her to the plant she
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: puts by themselves, the two which Anthony covered with paper bags,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: is about to remove these papers Harry strikes a match,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Claire turning sharply.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: You can't smoke here. The plants are not used to it.
• 18:04
  Speaker 9: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing
• 18:07
  Speaker 9: for them.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: There is design, Harry to Dick, am I supposed to
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: be answered?
• 18:13
  Speaker 9: I never can be quite sure at what moment I
• 18:15
  Speaker 9: am answered?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: They both watch Claire, who has uncovered the plants and
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: is looking intently into the flowers from a drawer. She
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: takes some tools very carefully gives the rose pollen to
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: an unfamiliar flower, rather wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a small shelf near the door of the inner room.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: What as does your doing, Claire polonizing, crossing for fragrance.
• 18:40
  Speaker 10: It's all rather mysterious, isn't it?
• 18:43
  Speaker 9: And Claire doesn't make it any less?
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: So can I make life any less mysterious?
• 18:49
  Speaker 9: If you know what you're doing? Why can't you tell? Dick?
• 18:53
  Speaker 10: Never mind? After all, why should I be told?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: He turns away. At that She wants to tell him,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: helpless as one who cannot get across a stream, starts uncertainly.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: I want to give fragrance to breath of life.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Faces the room beyond the wall of glass.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: The flower I've created that is outside what flowers have been,
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: what has gone out, should bring fragrance from what it
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: has left. But no definite fragrance, no limiting and closing thing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I call the fragrance that I am trying to create reminiscence.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Her hand on the pot of the wistful little flower.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: She has just given.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: Pollen, reminiscent of the rose, the violet arbutus but a
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: new thing itself, breath of life may be lonely out
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: in what hasn't been. Perhaps some day I can give
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: it reminiscence.
• 19:44
  Speaker 10: I see, Claire.
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: I wonder if you do.
• 19:48
  Speaker 9: Now, Claire, you're going to be gay today, aren't you?
• 19:52
  Speaker 9: These are Tom's last couple of days with us.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: That doesn't make me especially gay.
• 19:58
  Speaker 9: Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don't you?
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: I would like him too. Oh, I would like him too.
• 20:05
  Speaker 9: Then be amusing. That's really you, isn't it, Dick?
• 20:09
  Speaker 10: Not quite all of her?
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: I should say, Claire, Gaily, careful, Dick, aren't you indiscreet?
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: Harry will be suspecting that I am your latest strumpet?
• 20:20
  Speaker 9: Claire? What language you use a person knowing you only
• 20:23
  Speaker 9: by certain moments? Could never be made to believe you
• 20:26
  Speaker 9: are a refined woman?
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: True, isn't it, Dick?
• 20:30
  Speaker 9: It would be a good deal of live to let
• 20:31
  Speaker 9: them listen in at times, then tell them that here
• 20:35
  Speaker 9: is the flower of New England.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: Well, if this is the flower of New England, then
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: the half has never.
• 20:41
  Speaker 10: Been told about New England.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant about.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Me Harry going on with his own entertainment.
• 20:52
  Speaker 9: Explain that this is what came of the man who
• 20:55
  Speaker 9: made the laws that made New England. That here is
• 20:58
  Speaker 9: the flower of those gentlemen of culture.
• 21:00
  Speaker 10: Who moulded the American mine.
• 21:03
  Speaker 9: Oh it is pain, now, what's the matter?
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: I want to get away from them?
• 21:09
  Speaker 9: Raised easy, little one? You do?
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: I'm not so sure that I do, But it can
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: be done. We need not be held in forms molded
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: for us. There is outness and otherness.
• 21:22
  Speaker 9: Now, Clare, I didn't mean to start anything serious.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: No, you never mean to do that. I want to
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: break it up, I tell you, I want to break
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: it up. If it were all in pieces, we'd be
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: shocked to a liveness to Dick, wouldn't we? There would
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: be strange new comings together, mad new cummings together, and
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: we would know what it is to be borne, and
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: then we might know that we are smash it.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Her hand is near an egg.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: As you'd smash an egg.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: She pushes the egg over the edge of the table
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and leans over in looks as over a precipice. Harry
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: with a sigh.
• 22:02
  Speaker 9: Well, all you've smashed is the egg, and all that
• 22:06
  Speaker 9: amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So
• 22:09
  Speaker 9: that's that.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Claire, with difficulty drawing herself back from the fascination of
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the precipice.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: You think I can't smash anything. You think life can't
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: break up and go outside what it was, because you've
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: gone dead in the form in which you found yourself.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: You think that's all there is to the whole adventure,
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: And that is called sanity, and made a virtue to
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: lock one in. You never worked with things that grow,
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: things that take a sporting chance go mad that sanity
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: mean't lock them in from life, untouched from life that waits.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: She turns toward the inner room, breath of life. She
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: goes in there.
• 22:47
  Speaker 9: Oh, I wish Claire wouldn't be strange like that, helplessly.
• 22:52
  Speaker 9: What is it? What's the matter?
• 22:54
  Speaker 10: It's merely the excess of a particular rich temperament.
• 22:57
  Speaker 9: But it's growing on her. I sometimes wonder, for.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: All this indicating the place around him.
• 23:04
  Speaker 9: He's a good thing. It would be all right if
• 23:07
  Speaker 9: she'd just do what she did in the beginning, make
• 23:10
  Speaker 9: the flowers as good as possible of their kind. That
• 23:13
  Speaker 9: is an awfully nice thing for a woman to do,
• 23:15
  Speaker 9: raise flowers. But there is something about this changing things
• 23:20
  Speaker 9: into other things, putting things together and making queer new things.
• 23:25
  Speaker 10: This creating.
• 23:28
  Speaker 9: Give it an your name you wanted to have. It's
• 23:31
  Speaker 9: unsettling for a woman. They say, Claire's a shock at it.
• 23:35
  Speaker 9: But what's the good of it? If it gets her?
• 23:38
  Speaker 9: What is the good of it? Anyway? Suppose we can
• 23:41
  Speaker 9: produce new things. Lord, look at the old ones we've got.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Looks outside, turns back.
• 23:49
  Speaker 9: Heavens, what a noise the wind does make around this place.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: But now it is not all the wind but Tom Edgeworthy,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: who is trying to let himself in at the locked
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: door him.
• 24:01
  Speaker 9: I want my egg. You can't eat an egg without salt,
• 24:05
  Speaker 9: I must say. I don't get Claire lately. I'd like
• 24:09
  Speaker 9: to have Charlie em and see her. He's fixed up
• 24:12
  Speaker 9: a lot of people shot to pieces in the war.
• 24:15
  Speaker 9: Claire needs something to tone her nerves up. You think
• 24:19
  Speaker 9: it would irritate her?
• 24:22
  Speaker 10: She would probably get no little entertainment out of.
• 24:24
  Speaker 9: It, Yes, Doug Gunner, she would.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Tom now takes more heroic measures to make himself hurt
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: at the door.
• 24:33
  Speaker 9: Funny how the wind can fool you? Now by not
• 24:37
  Speaker 9: looking around? I could imagine why I could imagine anything? Funny?
• 24:42
  Speaker 9: Isn't it about imagination? And Claire says, I haven't got any.
• 24:47
  Speaker 10: It would make an amusing drawing what the wind makes
• 24:51
  Speaker 10: you think is there?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: First makes forms with his hands, Then, leveling the soil
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: prepared by Anthony, traces lines with his finger.
• 25:00
  Speaker 10: Yes, really quiet, jolly.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Tom, after a moment of peering in at them, smiles,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: goes away.
• 25:08
  Speaker 9: You're another one of the queer ducks. Aren't you come
• 25:12
  Speaker 9: now give me the dirt? Have you queer ones really
• 25:16
  Speaker 9: got anything? Or do you just put it over on
• 25:19
  Speaker 9: us that you have?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Dick smiles draws on.
• 25:24
  Speaker 9: Not saying anything. Eh, well, I guess you're wise there.
• 25:30
  Speaker 9: If you keep mom, how are we going to prove
• 25:33
  Speaker 9: there is nothing there?
• 25:35
  Speaker 10: I don't keep mum.
• 25:36
  Speaker 9: I draw lines that don't make anything. How can they
• 25:41
  Speaker 9: tell you anything. Well, all I ask is, don't make
• 25:45
  Speaker 9: Claire queer. Claire's a first water good sport, really, so
• 25:50
  Speaker 9: don't encourage her to be queer troubless.
• 25:54
  Speaker 10: If you're care enough to be amusing, it might open
• 25:58
  Speaker 10: the door to careless.
• 25:59
  Speaker 9: Now, don't say things like that to Claire.
• 26:03
  Speaker 10: I don't have to.
• 26:05
  Speaker 9: Then you think she's queer? Do you queer as you are?
• 26:08
  Speaker 9: You think she's queer? I would like to have doctor
• 26:10
  Speaker 9: Emmons come out.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: After a moment of silently watching Dick, who is having
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a good time with his drawing.
• 26:17
  Speaker 9: You know, frankly, I doubt if you're a good influence
• 26:20
  Speaker 9: for Claire.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Dick lifts his head ever so slightly.
• 26:23
  Speaker 9: Oh, I don't worry a bit about things a husband
• 26:27
  Speaker 9: might worry about. I suppose an intellectual woman. And for
• 26:31
  Speaker 9: all Claire's hate of her ancestors, she's got the bug herself.
• 26:37
  Speaker 9: Why she has times of worrying into things until she
• 26:40
  Speaker 9: doesn't know you're there. What do you think I caught
• 26:43
  Speaker 9: her doing the other day reading Latin? Well, a woman
• 26:49
  Speaker 9: that reads Latin didn't worry a husband much.
• 26:53
  Speaker 10: They said a good deal in that then.
• 26:55
  Speaker 9: But I was saying I suppose a woman who leaves
• 26:57
  Speaker 9: a good deal in her mind never does much. Well,
• 27:02
  Speaker 9: what you might call passion.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Uses the word as if it shouldn't be used. Browse
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: knitted is looking ahead, does not see Dick's face turning
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to him with a laugh.
• 27:12
  Speaker 9: I suppose you know pretty much all there is to
• 27:15
  Speaker 9: know about women.
• 27:16
  Speaker 10: Perhaps one or two details have escaped me.
• 27:20
  Speaker 9: Well, for that matter, you might know all there is
• 27:22
  Speaker 9: to know about women and not know much about Claire.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: But now about does not want to say passion again?
• 27:29
  Speaker 9: Oh, feeling Claire has a certain well as certain.
• 27:36
  Speaker 10: Irony, which is really more more, more fetching, perhaps.
• 27:44
  Speaker 9: Yes, than the thing itself. But of course you wouldn't
• 27:48
  Speaker 9: have much of a thing that you have irony about.
• 27:51
  Speaker 10: Oh wouldn't you? I mean a man might.
• 27:55
  Speaker 9: I'd like to talk to Edgeworthy about Claire, But it's
• 27:58
  Speaker 9: not easy to talk to Tom about Claire Au to
• 28:01
  Speaker 9: clear about Tom Dick alert.
• 28:04
  Speaker 10: They are old friends, aren't they.
• 28:06
  Speaker 9: Why? Yes, they are, though they've not been together much
• 28:11
  Speaker 9: of late years. As you were, they always going to
• 28:14
  Speaker 9: the ends of the earth to meditate about something. I
• 28:18
  Speaker 9: must say, I don't get it. If you have a place,
• 28:22
  Speaker 9: that's the place for you to be. And he did
• 28:25
  Speaker 9: have a place, the kind of family connections, and it
• 28:29
  Speaker 9: was a very good business. His father let him publishing
• 28:33
  Speaker 9: business in good shape too when old Edgeworthy died. I
• 28:37
  Speaker 9: wouldn't call Tom a great success in life. But Claire
• 28:41
  Speaker 9: does listen to what he says.
• 28:44
  Speaker 10: Yes, I've noticed that, So I'd.
• 28:47
  Speaker 9: Like to get him to tell her to quit this
• 28:49
  Speaker 9: queer business of making things grow that never grew before.
• 28:53
  Speaker 10: But are you sure that's what he would tell her?
• 28:56
  Speaker 10: Isn't he in the same business himself?
• 28:58
  Speaker 9: Why he doesn't?
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Tom is again at the door anyway.
• 29:04
  Speaker 10: I think he might have some idea that we can't
• 29:06
  Speaker 10: very well reach each other.
• 29:08
  Speaker 9: Damn nonsense. What have I got intelligence for to.
• 29:12
  Speaker 10: Let each other alone? I suppose only we haven't enough
• 29:16
  Speaker 10: to do it.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Tom is now knocking on the door with a revolver.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Harry half turns decides to be too intelligent to turn.
• 29:24
  Speaker 9: Don't tell me, I'm getting nerves. But the way some
• 29:28
  Speaker 9: of you people talk is enough to make even an
• 29:30
  Speaker 9: aviator jumpy. Can't reach each other, then we're fools. If
• 29:34
  Speaker 9: I'm hearing you're there, Why can't we reach each other?
• 29:38
  Speaker 10: Because I am I and you are you.
• 29:41
  Speaker 9: No wonder you're drawing square? A man who can't reach
• 29:45
  Speaker 9: another man.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Tom here reaches them by pointing the revolver in the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: air and firing it. Dick digs his hand into the dirt.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Harry jumps to one side fearfully, looks around Tom with
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a pleased smile to see he at le has their attention.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Moves the handle to indicate he would be glad to
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: come in.
• 30:05
  Speaker 9: Why it's Tom?
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: What there?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Going to the door?
• 30:10
  Speaker 9: He's locked out and Claire's got the key.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Goes to the inner door, tries it and she's locked in,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: trying to see her in there Claire Claire, returning to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the outer door.
• 30:24
  Speaker 9: Claire's got the key and I can't get the Claire.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Makes a feudal attempt at getting the door open without
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: a key, goes back to inner door, peers pounds Claire.
• 30:35
  Speaker 9: Are you there? Didn't you hear the revolver? Has she
• 30:39
  Speaker 9: gone down the cellar?
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Tries the trap door bolted?
• 30:43
  Speaker 9: Well, I love the way she keeps people locked out
• 30:46
  Speaker 9: and in.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Harry getting angry, shouting at the trap door.
• 30:51
  Speaker 9: Didn't you hear the revolver?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Going to Tom.
• 30:55
  Speaker 9: Awfully sorry old man?
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: But in astonishment to Dick, he can't hear me. Tom,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: knocking with the revolver to get their attention, makes a
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: gesture of inquiry with it.
• 31:07
  Speaker 9: No, no, no, is he asking if he shall shoot.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Himself, shaking his head violently.
• 31:15
  Speaker 9: Oh no, no, um um.
• 31:19
  Speaker 10: Hardly seems a man would shoot himself because he can't
• 31:22
  Speaker 10: get to his breakfast.
• 31:24
  Speaker 9: I'm coming to believe people would do anything.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Tom is making another inquiry with the revolver.
• 31:30
  Speaker 9: No, not here, don't shoot.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Yourself, trying hard to get the word through.
• 31:36
  Speaker 9: Shoot yourself, I mean.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Don't petulantly to Dick.
• 31:42
  Speaker 9: It's ridiculous that you can't make a man understand you
• 31:45
  Speaker 9: when he looks right at you like that.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Turning back to Tom.
• 31:49
  Speaker 9: Read my lips, lips I am saying, oh damn, where
• 31:56
  Speaker 9: is Claire? All right, I'll explain with motions. We wanted
• 32:02
  Speaker 9: this salt.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Going over it to himself, and.
• 32:07
  Speaker 9: Claire wouldn't let us go out for it on account
• 32:10
  Speaker 9: of the temperature. Salt temperature.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Takes his egg cup to the door, violent motion of
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: shaking in salt, but no, shakes his head, no salt.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: He then takes the thermometer a flower pot, holds them
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: up to Tom.
• 32:28
  Speaker 9: On account of the temperature per.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Tom is not getting it.
• 32:34
  Speaker 9: Oh well, what can you do when a man don't
• 32:37
  Speaker 9: get a thing?
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Tom seems to be preparing the revolver for action. Harry
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: pounds on the inner.
• 32:42
  Speaker 9: Door, Claire, do you want Tom to shoot himself?
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: As he looks in there? The trap door lifts and
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Claire comes halfway up.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: Why what is Tom doing out there with a revolver.
• 32:54
  Speaker 9: He's about to shoot himself because you've locked him out
• 32:57
  Speaker 9: from his breakfast.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: He most know more interesting ways of destroying himself.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Bowing to Tom, good morning from his side of the glass,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Tom bows and smiles back.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: Isn't it strange our being in here and he being
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: out there?
• 33:13
  Speaker 9: Claire? Have you no ideas of hospitality? Let him in in?
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: Perhaps that isn't hospitality.
• 33:21
  Speaker 9: Well, whatever hospitality is. What is out there is snow
• 33:26
  Speaker 9: and when and our guest who was asked to come
• 33:30
  Speaker 9: here for his breakfast to think and man has to
• 33:34
  Speaker 9: say such things.
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: I'm going to let him in, though I like his
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: looks out there.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: She takes the key from her pocket.
• 33:43
  Speaker 9: Thank Heaven, the door is coming open. Somebody can go
• 33:46
  Speaker 9: for salt, and we can have our eggs.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: And open the door again to let the sult in. No,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: if you insist on salt, tell Tom now to go
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: back and get it. It's a stormy morning, and there'll
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: be just one opening of the door.
• 33:59
  Speaker 9: How can we tell him what we can't make him hear?
• 34:03
  Speaker 9: And why does he think we're holding this conversation instead
• 34:07
  Speaker 9: of letting him in?
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: It would be interesting to know. I wonder if he'll tell.
• 34:12
  Speaker 9: Us Claire, is this any time to wonder anything?
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: Give up the idea of salt, fiorak and a'll let
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: him in.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Holds up the key to Tom to indicate that for
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: her part, she is quite ready to let him in.
• 34:26
  Speaker 9: I want my.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Egg, then ask him to bring the salt. It's quite simple.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Harry goes through another pantomime with the egg cup and
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the missing shaker. Claire, still standing halfway down cellar sneezes. Harry,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: growing all the while less amiable, explains with thermometer and
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: flower pot that there can be only one opening of
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the door. Tom looks interested but unenlightened, but suddenly he smiles, nods, vanishes.
• 34:56
  Speaker 9: Well, thank heaven, that's over.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Sitting on the top step.
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: It was all so queer. He locked out on his
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: side of the door, you locked in on yours, looking
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: right at each other.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: And Harry in mockery, and.
• 35:13
  Speaker 9: Me trying to tell him to kindly fetch the salt. Yes,
• 35:17
  Speaker 9: Harry to Dick, Well, I didn't do so bad a job,
• 35:20
  Speaker 9: did I quite an idea explaining our situation with the
• 35:24
  Speaker 9: themorenta and the flower pot. That was really an apology
• 35:28
  Speaker 9: for keeping him out there. Heaven knows some explanation was
• 35:32
  Speaker 9: in order.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: He is watching and sees Tom coming.
• 35:36
  Speaker 9: Now there he is Claire and probably pray fit up
• 35:40
  Speaker 9: with the weather.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Claire goes to the door, stops before it. She and
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Tom look at each other through the glass. Then she
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: lets him in, and.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: Now I am in. For a time it seemed I
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: was not to be, But after I got the idea
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: that you were keeping me out there to see if
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: I could get the idea. It would be too humiliating
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: for a wall of glass to keep one from understanding.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Taking it from his pocket, so there's.
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: The other thermometer. Where do you want it?
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Claire takes it, and why's the pepper? Tom putting it
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: on the table.
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: And here's the pepper. Pepper When Claire sneezed I knew.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Yes, I knew if I sneezed, you would bring the pepper.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: Funny how one always remembers the salt, but the pepper
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: gets overlooked in preparations. And what is an egg without pepper?
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Harry nastily.
• 36:41
  Speaker 9: There's your egg, edge Worthy.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Pointing to it on the floor.
• 36:45
  Speaker 9: Claire decided it would be a good idea to smash everything,
• 36:49
  Speaker 9: so she began with your.
• 36:50
  Speaker 11: Egg, Tom looking at his egg, The idea of smashing
• 36:54
  Speaker 11: everything is really more intriguing than an egg.
• 36:59
  Speaker 9: Nice that you feel that way about.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It, Claire, giving Tom his coffee.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: You want to hear something amusing. I married Harry because
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: I thought he would smash something.
• 37:10
  Speaker 9: Well, that wasn't error in judgment.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: I'm such a naive, trusting person.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Harry laughs. Claire gives him a surprised look.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: Continues, simply, such a guileless soul that I thought flying
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: would do something to a man. But it didn't take
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: us out. We just took it in.
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: It's only our own spirit can take us out.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Whatever you mean by out, Claire, after looking intently at
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Tom and considering it.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: But our own spirit is not something on the loose mine,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: isn't it? Has something to do with what I do.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: To fly, to be free in air, to look from
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: above on the world of all my days, be where
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: man has never been. Yes, wouldn't you think the spirit
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: could get the idea? The earth grows smaller, I am leaving.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: What are they running around?
• 37:59
  Speaker 10: Down?
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: There? Do they run around?
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Down?
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: Their houses? Houses are funny lines and down gooing slants?
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Houses are vanishing slants. I am alone? Can I breathe
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: this rarer air? Shall I go higher? Shall I go
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: too high? I am loose? I am out. But no
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: man flew and returned to Earth. The man who left it.
• 38:19
  Speaker 9: And jolly well likely not to have returned at all
• 38:22
  Speaker 9: if he'd had those flighty notions while operating a machine.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, Harry, not lightly asked, can't you see it would
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: be better not to have returned than to return the
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: man who left it?
• 38:35
  Speaker 9: I have some regard for human life.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Why no?
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: I am the one who has the regard for human life?
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: More lightly, that was.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: Why I swiftly divorced my stick in the mud artist
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: and married the Man of flight. But I merely passed
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: from a stick in the mud artist to a stick.
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: In the.
• 38:55
  Speaker 9: Speaking of your sticking the mud, artist, as your romantic
• 38:59
  Speaker 9: ly call your first blunder, isn't his daughter and yours?
• 39:04
  Speaker 9: Do you hear? Today?
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: I knew something was disturbing me, Elizabeth. Her daughter is
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: being delivered unto me this morning. I have a feeling
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: it will be more painful than the original delivery. She
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: has been, as they quaintly say, educated, prepared for her
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: place in life.
• 39:21
  Speaker 9: Unfortunately, Claire has a sister who is willing to give
• 39:24
  Speaker 9: her young niece that place.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: The idea of giving anyone a place in.
• 39:28
  Speaker 9: Life, yes, the very idea.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, As often the mocking thing gives true expression to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: what lies somberly in her.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: The war there was another gorgeous chance.
• 39:42
  Speaker 9: Chance for what I call you, Claire. I ask you
• 39:46
  Speaker 9: to say what you mean.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know precisely. If I did, there'd be no
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: use saying it.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: At Harry's impatient exclamation, she turns to Tom, Tom nodding.
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: The only thing left worth saying is the thing we
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: can't say.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Help.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: Yes, but the war didn't help.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: It was a stunning chance. But fast as we could
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: scuttled right back to the trim little thing we'd been
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: shocked out of.
• 40:14
  Speaker 9: You bet we did, showing our good.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: Sense, showing our incapacity for madness.
• 40:21
  Speaker 9: Oh, come now, Claire, snap out of it. You're not
• 40:24
  Speaker 9: really trying to say that capacity for madness is a
• 40:27
  Speaker 9: good thing to.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Have, Claire in simple surprise.
• 40:31
  Speaker 10: Why yes, of course, But I should say the war
• 40:35
  Speaker 10: that leave enough madness to give you a gleam of hope.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Not the madness that breaks through. And it was a
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: stunning chance mankind mass to kill. We have failed. We
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: are through. We will destroy, break this up. It can't
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: go farther in the air above, in the sea below.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: It is to kill. Or we had thought we were,
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: We aren't. We were shut in with what wasn't So
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: is there one ounce of energy has not gone to
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: this killing? Is there one love not torn in two?
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: Throw it in now? Ready, break up, push harder, break up?
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: And then and then, but we didn't say, and then
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: the spirit didn't take the tip clear Come.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Now, looking to the others for help, Let's.
• 41:23
  Speaker 9: Talk of something else.
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: Plants do it the big leap. It's called explode their
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: species because something in them knows they've gone as far
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: as they can go. Something in them knows they're shut
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: in to just that. So go mad. That life may
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: not be prisoned, break themselves up into crazy things, into
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: lesser things, and from the pieces may come one sliver
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: of life with vitality to find the future. How beautiful, how.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Brave tom As if he would call her from too far,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: or would let her know he has gone with her
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: clear clear, her eyes turning.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: To why should we mind lying under the earth? Well,
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: you have no such initiative, no proud madness. Why I
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: think it death to lie under life? So flexible, so ruthless,
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: and ever.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Renewing Anthony from the door of the inner room, Miss
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Claire Claire after an instant yes, she goes with him.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: As they disappear, his voice heard, show me now, want
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: these violets bedded?
• 42:26
  Speaker 9: Oh this has got to stop. I've got to put
• 42:31
  Speaker 9: a stop to it some way. Why Claire used to
• 42:34
  Speaker 9: be the best sporting man ever played around with I
• 42:38
  Speaker 9: can't stand it to see her getting hysterical.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: That was not hysterical.
• 42:43
  Speaker 9: What was it then? I want to know?
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: It was a look?
• 42:48
  Speaker 9: Oh I might have known. Not get no help from
• 42:50
  Speaker 9: either of you, even you age worthy, much as she
• 42:54
  Speaker 9: thinks of you, and find sword as I've no doubt
• 42:58
  Speaker 9: you are. You're doing Claire, no good encouraging her in
• 43:02
  Speaker 9: these queer ways.
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: I couldn't change Claire.
• 43:05
  Speaker 9: If I would, and wouldn't if you could.
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: No, But you don't have to worry about me. I'm
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: going away in a day or two, and I shall
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: not be back.
• 43:18
  Speaker 9: Trouble with you is it makes little difference whether you're
• 43:22
  Speaker 9: here or away. Just the fact of your existence doesn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 9: courage Claire in this this way, she is.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Going Tom with a smile.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: But you wouldn't ask me to go so far as
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: to stop my existence, though I would do that for
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: Claire if it were the way to help her.
• 43:44
  Speaker 9: By jove, you say that as if you meant it.
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: Do you think I would say anything about Claire? I
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: didn't mean.
• 43:53
  Speaker 9: You think a lot of her, don't you?
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Tom nods? You don't mean a laugh letting him say
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: it that.
• 44:01
  Speaker 9: You're in love with Claire?
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: In love?
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: Oh that's much too easy, certainly, I do love Claire.
• 44:13
  Speaker 9: Well, you're a cool one.
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: Let her be herself, can't you see she's troubled?
• 44:20
  Speaker 9: Well what is that to trouble Claire? Now? I ask you?
• 44:24
  Speaker 9: It seems to me she has everything.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: She's left so open, too exposed.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: As Harry moves impatiently.
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: Please don't be annoyed with me. I'm doing my best
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: at saying it. You see, Claire isn't hardened into one
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: of those forms she talks about. She's too aware. Always
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: pull George, what could be tormented by the lost adventure?
• 44:59
  Speaker 9: Well there's and all that. Of course there's danger, Tom,
• 45:03
  Speaker 9: But you can't help that. Claire was the best funner. Woman,
• 45:07
  Speaker 9: could be easyet at times.
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: Let her be at times as much as she can
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: and will. She does need that. Don't keep her from
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: it by making her feel you're holding her in it.
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: Above all, don't try to stop what she's doing here.
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: If she can do it with plants, perhaps she won't
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: have to do it with herself.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Do what, Tom lo After a pause.
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: Break up what exists? Open the door to destruction in
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: the hope of a door on the far side of destruction.
• 45:55
  Speaker 9: Well, you give me the willies.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Moves around in irritation, trouble to Anthony, who is passing
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: through with a sprayer.
• 46:04
  Speaker 9: Anthony, have any arrangements been made about miss Claire's daughter.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: We haven't heard the video arrangements.
• 46:11
  Speaker 9: Well, she'll have to have some heat in her room.
• 46:14
  Speaker 9: We can't all live out here.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Indeed you cannot. It is not good for the blanche.
• 46:21
  Speaker 9: I'm going where I can smoke.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Goes out Dick, lightly, but fascinated by the idea.
• 46:28
  Speaker 10: You think there is a door on the hinter side
• 46:31
  Speaker 10: of destruction?
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: How can one tell where a door may be? One
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: thing I want to say to you, for it is about.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: You, regards Dick, and not with his usual impersonal contemplation.
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: I don't think Claire should have any door closed to her.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Pause.
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: You know I think what I mean, and perhaps you
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: can guess how it hurts to say it, whether it's
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: mere escape within rather shameful escape within, or the wild
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: hope of that door through.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: It's suddenly all human.
• 47:18
  Speaker 9: Be good to her.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: After a difficult moment, smiles.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: Going away forever is like dying, so one can say things.
• 47:32
  Speaker 10: Why do you do it? Go away forever?
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: I haven't succeeded here, but.
• 47:38
  Speaker 10: You've tried the going away before.
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: Never knowing I would not come back, so that wasn't
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: going away. My hope is that this will be like
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: looking at life from outside.
• 47:51
  Speaker 10: Life, but then you will not be in it.
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: I haven't been able to look at it while in it.
• 47:58
  Speaker 10: Isn't it more important? To be in it than to
• 48:01
  Speaker 10: look at it.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: Not what I mean by look.
• 48:05
  Speaker 10: It's hard for me to conceive of loving Claire and
• 48:08
  Speaker 10: going away from her forever.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Perhaps it's harder to do than to conceive of.
• 48:15
  Speaker 10: Then why do it?
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: It's my only way of keeping her.
• 48:20
  Speaker 10: I'm afraid I'm like Harry.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 48:22
  Speaker 10: I don't get you.
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: I suppose not. Your way is different.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: With calm, with sadness, not with malice.
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: But I shall have her longer, and from deeper. I
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: know that, so I miss her much.
• 48:42
  Speaker 9: Much.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: The buzzer. Tom looks around to see if anyone is
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: coming to answer it, then goes to the phone.
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: Yes, I'll see if I can get her to Dick.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: Claire's daughter has arrived.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Looking in the inner room, returns to phone. I don't
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: see her, catching a glimpse of Anthony.
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: Off right, Oh, Anthony, where's missus?
• 49:11
  Speaker 11: Claire?
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: Her daughter has arrived.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: She's working at something very important in her experiments.
• 49:19
  Speaker 10: But I sent her daughter one of her experiments.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Anthony. After a baffled moment.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Her daughter is finished.
• 49:28
  Speaker 11: Tom at the phone, Sorry, but I can't get to Claire.
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: She appears to have gone below.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Anthony closes the trap door.
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: I did speak to Anthony, but he says that Claire
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: is working at one of her experiments and that her
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: daughter is finished. I don't know how to make her hear.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: I took the revolver back to the house. Anyway, You
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: will remember that Claire doesn't answer the revolver. I hate
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: to reach Claire when she doesn't want to be reached. Why,
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: of course, a daughter is very important. Oh but uh,
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: that's too bad.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Putting down the receiver, he says.
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: The girl's feelings are hurt. Isn't that annoying?
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Gingerly pounds on the trap door, then with the other
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: hand waits. Anthony has a gentle smile for the gentle tapping,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: nods approval. As Tom returns to the phone.
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: She doesn't come up. Indeed I did with both fists.
• 50:40
  Speaker 9: Sorry, preeze.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: You won't tray again to dissurb miss Claire, will you?
• 50:46
  Speaker 10: Her daughter is here, Anthony, She hasn't seen a daughter
• 50:50
  Speaker 10: for a year.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Will if you go alone without a mother for a year?
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Goes back to his work, Dick smiling after Anthony.
• 51:00
  Speaker 10: Plants are here. Perhaps it's safer to do it.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: With pencil regards Tom.
• 51:07
  Speaker 10: Or with pure thought. Things that grow in the.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Earth, Tom Nodding, I.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: Suppose because we grew in the earth.
• 51:15
  Speaker 10: I'm always shocked to find myself in agreement with Harry,
• 51:19
  Speaker 10: But I'm too worried about Claire and.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: This looking at the plants.
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: It's your best chance.
• 51:27
  Speaker 10: Don't you hate to go away to India forever, leaving
• 51:31
  Speaker 10: class future uncertain?
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: You're cruel now, and you knew that you were being cruel.
• 51:40
  Speaker 10: Yes, I like the lines of your face when you
• 51:43
  Speaker 10: suffer the.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: Minds of yours, when you're causing suffering. I don't like them.
• 51:50
  Speaker 10: Perhaps that's your limitation.
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: I grant you it.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe they are silent.
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: I had an odd feeling that you and I sat
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: here once before, four long ago, that we were plants,
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: and you were a beautiful plant to die. I was
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: a very ugly plant. I confess it surprised me finding
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: myself so ugly a plant.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: A young girl is seen outside. Harry gets the door
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: open for her and brings Elizabeth in.
• 52:24
  Speaker 9: There's heat here, and two of your mother's friends, mister Deming,
• 52:29
  Speaker 9: Rachel Deming, the artists, and I think you and mister
• 52:32
  Speaker 9: Edgeworth they are old friends.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth comes forward. She is the creditable young American, well built, poised, cultivated,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: so sound, an expression of the usual as to be
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: able to meet the world with assurance, assurance which training
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: has made rather graceful. She is about seventeen and mature.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: You feel solid things behind her.
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: I knew you when you were a baby. You used
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: to kick a great deal, then.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth, laughing with ease.
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: And scream I haven't a doubt, but I've stopped that.
• 53:10
  Speaker 6: One does doesn't one? And it was you who gave
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: me the.
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: Idol, proselytizing I'm afraid.
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: I beg Oh, yes, I see, she doesn't. I dressed
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: the idol up in my doll's clothes. They fitted perfectly.
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: The idol was just the size of my doll, Aileen.
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: But mother didn't like the idol that way, and toward
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: the clothes, getting them off to Harry.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: After looking around, Is mother here, Harry crossly.
• 53:44
  Speaker 9: Yes, she's here. Of course she is here, and she
• 53:48
  Speaker 9: must now you're here.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: After looking in the inner room, he goes to the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: trap door and makes a great noise.
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: Oh please, really, it doesn't make the least difference.
• 54:00
  Speaker 9: Well, all I can say is your manners are better
• 54:03
  Speaker 9: than your mother's.
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: But you see I don't do anything interesting, so I
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: have to have good manners.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Lightly but leaving the impression there is a certain superiority
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: in not doing anything interesting. Turning cordially to Dick.
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: My father was an artist.
• 54:21
  Speaker 10: Yes, I know.
• 54:23
  Speaker 6: He was a portrait painter. Do you do portraits?
• 54:27
  Speaker 10: Well? Not the kind people.
• 54:29
  Speaker 6: By they bought fathers?
• 54:31
  Speaker 10: Yes, I know he did that kind.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Harry, still irritated.
• 54:37
  Speaker 9: Why you don't do portraits?
• 54:40
  Speaker 10: I did one of you the other day. You thought
• 54:42
  Speaker 10: it was a Milican?
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth, laughing delightedly.
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: No, not really did you think? How could you think?
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: As Harry does not join the laugh.
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: Oh, I beg your pardon. I does mother grow beautiful roses? Now?
• 55:02
  Speaker 9: No, she does not.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: The trap door begins to move. Claire's head appears.
• 55:09
  Speaker 6: Mother, it's been so long.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: She tries to overcome the difficulties and embrace her mother.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Claire protecting a box she has.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: Careful Elizabeth, we mustn't upset the lice.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth, retreating lice, but quickly equal even to lice.
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: Oh, yes, you take it them off plants, don't you.
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: I'm putting them on certain.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Plants, Elizabeth weakly, Oh, I thought you took them off
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Claire calling Antony. He comes the lice, He takes them
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: from her. Claire, who has not fully ascended, looks at Elizabeth, hesitates,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: then suddenly starts back down the stairs. Harry, outraged Claire
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: slowly she reascends, sits on the top step after a
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: long pause in which he has waited for Claire to
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: open a conversation with her daughter.
• 56:11
  Speaker 9: Well, and what have you been doing at school all
• 56:13
  Speaker 9: this time?
• 56:15
  Speaker 12: Oh?
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: Studying?
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: Studying? What?
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: Why the things one studies?
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: Mother, Oh, the things one's studies.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Looks down cellar again, Dick after another.
• 56:28
  Speaker 10: Wait, and what have you been doing besides studying?
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: The things one does? Tennis and skating and dancing.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: And the things one does.
• 56:41
  Speaker 6: Yes, all the things, the the things one does. Though
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: I haven't been in school these last few months. You know,
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: miss Lane took us to Europe.
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: How did you like Europe?
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: Elizabeth capably, Oh, I thought it was awfully amusing. All
• 56:57
  Speaker 6: the girls were quite mad about Europe. Of course, I'm
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: glad I'm an American.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Why, Elizabeth laughing, Why? Mother?
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: Of course one is glad one is an American.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: All the girls Claire turning away, Oh, a moan under
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: her breath, why mother, aren't you Well.
• 57:21
  Speaker 9: Your mother has been working pretty hard at all this.
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: Oh, I do so want to know all about it.
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: Perhaps I can help you. I think it's just awfully
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: amusing that you're doing something one does nowadays, doesn't one,
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: If you know what I mean. It was the war,
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: wasn't it made it the thing to do something dick slyly?
• 57:41
  Speaker 10: And you thought, Claire that the war was lost.
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: The war lost her capable laugh ha ha, fancy our
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: losing a war. Miss Lane says we should give thanks.
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: She says we should each do some expressive thing, you
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: know what I mean, And that this is the keynote
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: of the age. Of course, one's own kind of thing,
• 58:04
  Speaker 6: like mother growing flowers.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: You think that is one's own kind of thing.
• 58:11
  Speaker 6: Why, of course I do, mother, and so does miss
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: Lane all the girls.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Claire shaking her head as if to get something out.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: Shoo, what is it?
• 58:22
  Speaker 6: Mother?
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: A fly? Shut up in my ear? All the girls.
• 58:28
  Speaker 6: Mother was always so amusing, so different, if you know
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: what I mean. Vacations. I've lived mostly with Aunt Adelaide,
• 58:36
  Speaker 6: you know.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: My sister, who is fitted to rear children.
• 58:41
  Speaker 9: Well, somebody has to.
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: Do it, and I do love aunt Adelaide. But I
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: think it's going to be awfully amusing to be around
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: with mother now and help her with her work, help
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: do some useful beautiful thing.
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: I am not doing any useful beautiful thing.
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: Oh but you are, mother, of course you are, miss
• 59:01
  Speaker 6: Lane says.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: So.
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: She says, it is your splendid heritage gives you this
• 59:05
  Speaker 6: impulse to do a beautiful thing for the race. She says,
• 59:09
  Speaker 6: you are doing in your way what the great teachers
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: and preachers behind you did in theirs.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Claire, who is good for a little more.
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: Well, all I can say is miss Lane is stung.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Mother. What a thing to say of miss Lane from
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: this slipping into more of a little girl manner.
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: Oh, she gave me a spiel one day about living
• 59:30
  Speaker 6: up to the men I come from.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Claire turns and regards her daughter.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: You'll do it, Elizabeth.
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: Well, I don't know quite a job, I'll say, of course,
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: I'd have to do it in my way. I'm not
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: going to teach or preach or be a stuffy person.
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: But now that.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Here she becomes the product of a superior school.
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: Values have shifted, and such sensitive new things have been
• 59:55
  Speaker 6: liberated in the world.
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: Don't use those words. Why why not because you don't
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: know what they mean?
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Of course I know what they mean, Claire, turning away,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: You're stepping on the plants, Harry hastily.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 9: Your mother has been working awfully hard all.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 6: This Well, now that I'm here, you'll let me help you,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: won't you?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Mother, Claire trying for control.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: You needn't bother.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: But I want to help add to the wealth of
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: the world.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: Will you please get it out of your head that
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: I am adding to the wealth of the world.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: But mother, of course, you are to produce a new
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 6: and better kind of plant.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: They may be new, I don't give a damn weather
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: they're better.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: But but what are they then, Claire as if choked
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: out of her They're different? Elizabeth thinks a minute, then
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: laughs triumphantly.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 6: But what's the use of making them different if they
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: aren't better?
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 9: Eh? Good square question, Claire. Why don't you answer it?
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: I don't have to answer it.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 9: Why not give the girl a fair show? You know how?
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 9: Since she's interested, why not tell her what it is
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 9: you're doing.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: She is not interested, But I am, mother, indeed, I
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: am I do awfully want to understand what you're doing,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: and help you. You can't help me, Elizabeth.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 9: Why not let her try?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: Why do you ask me to do that? This is
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: my own thing? Why do you make me feel I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: should goes to Elizabeth. I will be good to you, Elizabeth.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: We'll go around together. I haven't done it, but you'll see.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: We'll do gay things. I'll have a lot of bows
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: around for you. Anything else not this is not this.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: As you like mother. Of course, I just would have
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: been so glad to to share the thing and interests
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: you hurt.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Born with good breeding and a small Claire, which says,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: how can you Claire, who is looking at Elizabeth.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: Yes, I will try.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: I don't think so as Claire says anything else?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: Why of course? I don't at all want to intrude.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 9: It'll do Claire good to take someone in, to get
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 9: down to brass tacks and actually say what she's driving at.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: Oh, Harry, But yes, I will try.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Does try, but no words come laughs.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: When you come to say it's it's not one would
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: rather not nail it to a cross of words.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Laughs again, hmm, with brass tacks, Harry affectionately.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 9: But I want to see you put things into words,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 9: Claire and realize just where you.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Are, Claire, oddly, you think that's a good idea, Elizabeth
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: in her manner of holding the world capably in her hands.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: Now, let's talk of something else. I hadn't the least
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: idea of making mother feel badly, Claire desperately.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: No, we'll go on, though I don't know where we'll end.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: I can't answer for that.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: These plants beginning flounderingly.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: Perhaps they are less beautiful, less sound than the plants
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: from which they diverged. But they have found otherness, if
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Claire, stop this.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: To Harry, this is wrong, Claire excitedly, No.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: I'm going on. They have been shocked out of what
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: they were into something they were not. They've broken from
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: the forms in which they found themselves. They are alien
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: outside that sit outside, if you know what.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, Elizabeth not shocked from what she is.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: But of course the odd object of at all is
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: to make them better plans. Otherwise what would be the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: sense of doing it?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Clear not reached by Elizabeth out there giving it with
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: her hands.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Lies all that has not been touched, lies a life
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: that waits pack here the old pattern, done again and
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: again and again, so long done it doesn't even know
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: itself for a pattern in immensity. But this has invaded,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: crept a little way into what wasn't strange lines in
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: life on news. And when you make a pattern new,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: you know a pattern's made with life. And then you
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: know that anything may be if only you know how
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: to reach it.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: This has taken form, not easily, but with great struggle
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: between feeling and words. Harry Hordily, Now I begin.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 9: To get you, Claire. I never knew before why you
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 9: called it the edge vine.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: I should destroy the edge vine. It isn't over the edge.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: It's running back to all the girls. It's a little
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: afraid of miss.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Lane looking somberly at it.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: You are out, but you are not alive.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 6: Why it looks all right?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: Mother didn't carry life with it from the life it left, Dick,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean? At least you ought to.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Her ruthless way of not letting any one's feelings stand
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: in the way of truth.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: Then destroy it for me. It's hard to do it
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: with the hands that made it.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 10: But what's the bond in destroying it? Claire?
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Claire?
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: Impatiently, I've told you it cannot create, but you say
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: you can go on producing it, and it's interesting in form.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: And you think I'll stop with that, be shut in
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: with different life that can't creep.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: On after trying to put destroying hands upon it.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: It's hard to get past what we've done. Our own
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: dead things block the way.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: But you're doing it this next time, Claire.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Nodding to the inner room. In there, Claire turning to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: that room.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure, but.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: You told me breath of life has already produced itself.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: Doesn't that show it has brought life the life it left.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: But timidly, rather wistfully, a little homesick. If it is
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: less sure this time, then it is going back to
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: miss Lane. But if the pattern's clearer now than it
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: has made friends life that waits, I'll know tomorrow.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 6: You know, something tells me this is wrong.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: The hymn singing ancestors are tuning up.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: I don't know what you mean by that, mother, but.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: But we will now sing Nearer my God to thee Nearer.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: To Elizabeth laughingly breaking in.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 6: Well, I don't care. Of course, you can make fun
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: at me, but something does tell me this is wrong.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 6: To do what.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 10: What what God did?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: Well, yes, unless you do it to make them better
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 6: to do it, just to do it. That doesn't seem
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 6: right to.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: Me, right to you. And that's all you know of
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: adventure and of anguish. Do you know it is you
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: world of which you're so true. A flower makes me
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: have to leave. You're there to hold the door shut
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: because you're young and of a gayer world. You think
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: I can't see them, these old men. Do you know
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: why you're so sure of yourself? Because you can't feel,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: can't feel the limitless out there a sea just over
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: the hill. I will not stay with.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: You, buries her hands in the earth around the edge vine,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: but suddenly steps back from it as she head from Elizabeth.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: And I will not stay with you.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Grasps it as we grasp what we would kill, is
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: trying to pull it up. They all step forward in horror.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: Anthony is drawn in by this harm to the plant.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: Miss Claire, Miss Claire, the work of yours may only
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: make a prison.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Struggling with Harry, who is trying to stop her.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: You think I too will die on the edge.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: She has thrown him away, is now struggling with the vine.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: Why did I make you to get past you?
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: As she twists it.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: Oh yes, I know you have thorns. The edge vine
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: should have thorns.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: With a long, tremendous pull for deep roots. She has
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: it up as she holds the torn roots.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, I have loved you, so you took me where
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: I hadn't been.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth, who has been looking on with certain practical horror.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 6: Well, I'd say it would be better not to go there.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: Now I know what you are for.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Flings her arm back to strike Elizabeth with the edge vine,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Harry wresting it from her.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 9: Claire, are you mad?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: No, I am not mad.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: I'm too sane, pointing to Elizabeth, and the words come
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: from mighty roots.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: To think that object ever moved my belly and sucks
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: my breast.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth hides her face as if struck. Harry going to Elizabeth,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: turning to Claire.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 9: This is atrocious. You're cruel.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: He leads Elizabeth to the door and out, after an
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: irresolute moment in which he looks from Claire to Tom,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Dick follows. Anthony cannot bear to go, He stoops to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: take the edge vine from the floor. Claire's gesture stops him.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: He goes into the inner room, Claire kicking the edge
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: vine out of her way. Drying deep breaths, smiling.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, how good I feel.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Light a movement as if she could fly, read.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: Me something tom day, or say something pleasant about God.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: But be very careful what you say about him. I
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: have a feeling he's not far off.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Curtain and of Act one, Act two of the Verge
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: by Susan glass Bell. This is a LibriVox recording. All
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Act too,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: late afternoon of the following day, Claire is alone in
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the tower, a tower which is thought to be round,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: but does not complete the circle. The back is curved,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: then jagged lines break from that, and the front is
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: a queer bulging window in a curve that leans. The
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: whole structure is as if given a twist by some
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: terrific force, like something wrong. It is lighted by an
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: old fashioned watchman's lantern hanging from the ceiling. The innumerable
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: pricks and slits in the metal throw a marvelous pattern
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: on the curved wall, like some masonry that hasn't been
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: There are no windows at back, and there is no
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: door save an opening in the floor. The delicately distorted
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: rail of a spiral staircase winds up from below. Claire
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: is seen through the huge, ominous window, as if shut
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: into the tower. She is lying on a seat at
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the back, looking at a book of drawings. To do this,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: she has left the door of her lantern a little open,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: and her own face is clearly seen. A door is
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: heard opening below, laughing voices. Claire listens, not pleased. Adelaide
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: voice coming up.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 7: Dear, dear, why do they make such twisting steps?
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 9: Take your time most up now.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Harry's head appears. He looks back, making it all right?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I can't tell yet, laughingly, No, I don't think so, Harry,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: reaching back a hand for her.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 9: The last lap is the bad lap.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: Adelaide is up and occupied with getting her breath.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 9: Since you wouldn't come down, Claire, we thought we'd come.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Up, Adelaide, as Claire does not greet her.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 7: I'm sorry to intrude, but I have to see you, Claire.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: There are things to be arranged.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Claire volunteering nothing about arrangements. Adelaide surveys the tower. An
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: unsympathetic eye goes from the curves to the lines which diverge.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: Then she looks from the window.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 7: Well, at least you have a view.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 9: This is the first time you've been up here.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 7: Yes, in the five years you've had the house.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: I was never asked up here before, Claire, amiably enough.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: You weren't asked up here now.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: Harry asked me.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: It isn't Harry's tower. But never mind, since you don't
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: like it, it's all.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Right, Adelaide, her eyes again, rebuking the irregularities of the tower.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 7: No, I confess I do not care for it. A
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 7: round tower should go on being round.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 9: Claire calls this the thwarted tower. She bought the house
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 9: because of it.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Going over and sitting by her, his hand on her ankle.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 9: Didn't you, old girl? She says, she'd like to have known.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: The architect, probably a tiresome person, incompetent to make a
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 7: perfect tower.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: Well, now he's disposed of.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: What next, Adelaide, sitting down in a manner of capably
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: opening a conference.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 7: Next, Elizabeth and you, Claire, Just what is the matter
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: with Elizabeth?
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Claire, whose voice is cool, even as if herself is
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: not really engaged by this.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: Nothing is the matter with her? She is a tower,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: that is a tower?
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 7: Well, is that anything against her?
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: She's just like one of her father's portraits. They never
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: interested me, nor does she.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: Looks at the drawings which do interest her.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 7: A mother cannot cast off her own child simply because
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 7: she does not interest her.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Claire an instant raising cool eyes to Adelaide.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: Why can't she because it would be monstrous? And why
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: can't she be monstrous? If she has to.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 7: Be, you don't have to be. That's where I'm out
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 7: of patience with you. Claire. You are really a particularly intelligent,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 7: competent person, and it's time ian for you to call
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 7: a halt to this nonsense and be the woman you
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 7: were meant to be.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Claire, holding the book up to see another way.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: What inside dope have you on what I was meant
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: to be?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 7: I know what you came from.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: Well, isn't it about time somebody got loose from that?
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: What I came from made you.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: So Adelaide stiffly?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: I see, so you being such a tower of strength,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: Why need I too be imprisoned in what I came from?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 7: It isn't being imprisoned?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 7: There is where you make your mistake clear. Who's in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 7: a tower, in an unsuccessful tower? Not I? I go
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 7: about in the world free, busy, happy among people. I
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 7: have no time to think of myself. No, no, my
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 7: family the things that interest them from morning till night.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: It's yes, I know you have a large family. Adelaide
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: five and Elizabeth makes six.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 7: We'll speak of Elizabeth later. But if you would just
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 7: get out of yourself and enter into other people lives, then.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: I would become just like you, and we should all
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: be just alike in order to assure one another that
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: we're all just right. But since you and Harry and
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth and ten million other people bolster each other up,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: why do you especially.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Need me, Adelaide, not unkindly, we.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 7: Don't need you as much as you need us.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Claire a wry face.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: I never liked what I needed.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 9: I am convinced I'm the worst thing in the world.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: For you, Claire Claire with a smile for his tactics,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: but shaking her head.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: I'm afraid you're not. I don't know. Perhaps you are.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 7: Well, what is it you want? Claire?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: Claire simply you wouldn't know if I told you.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 7: That's rather arrogant.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 9: Yes, take a chance, Claire, I haven't known to get
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 9: an Idea and Adelaide quite frequently gets one.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: Claire, the first resentment she has shown.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: You too feel very superior, don't you.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 7: I don't think we are the ones who are feeling superior.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, you are very superior to what you think
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: is my feeling of superiority, comparing my isolation with your
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: heart of humanity. Soon we will speak of the beauty
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: of common experiences of the Oh, I could say it
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: all before we come to it.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 9: Adelaide came up here to help you, Claire.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: Adelaide came up here to lock me in.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: Well, she can't do it, Adelaide gently, But can't.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 7: You see that one may do that to oneself?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: Claire thinks of this, look suddenly tired, then smiles.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: Well, at least I've changed the keys.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 9: Locked in, bunk them. Get it out of your head, Claire,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 9: who was locked in? Nobody there enough of We're all
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 9: free Americans, free as air.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 7: I wish you'd come in here. One of mister Morley's sermons. Clear,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 7: you're very old fashioned if you think sermons are what
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 7: they used to be, clear with interest.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: And do they still sing Nearer My God to thee
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: they do?
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 7: And a noble old hymn it is? It would do
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 7: you no harm at all.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: To sing it, Claire eagerly.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: Sing it to me, Adelaide, I'd like to hear you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: sing it.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: It would be sacrilege to sing it to you in
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: this mood, Claire falling back.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know. I'm not so sure God would
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: agree with you. That would be one on you, wouldn't it.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 7: It's easy to feel one's self set apart.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: No, it isn't, Adelaide beginning anew.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 7: It's a new age clear spiritual values.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: Spiritual values in her brooding way. So you have pulled
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: that up with Canning. Don't think I don't know what
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: it is you do?
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 7: Well, what do I do? I'm sure I have no
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: idea what you're talking about.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: Harry affectionately, as Claire is looking with intentness at what
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: he does not see.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 9: What does she look? Clear?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: It's rather clever what she does, snatching the phrase.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Movement as if pulling something up.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: Standing it up between her and the life that's there,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: and by saying it enough, we have life, we have life,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: we have life. Very good come back at one who
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: really would be just?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: So?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: We are that right this way? Please? That, I suppose
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: is what we mean by needing each other or join
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: in the chorus. This is it, This is it, this
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: is it, and anyone who won't join in is to
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: be visited by relatives.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Regarding Adelaide with curiosity.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: Do you really think that anything is going on in you?
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Adelaide?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 7: Stiffly, I am not one to hold myself up as
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 7: a perfect example of what the human race may be.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Claire brightly, Well.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 9: That's good, Claire.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: Humility is a real thing, not just a fine name
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: for laziness.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 9: Well, Lauren almighty, you can't call Adelaide lazy.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: She stays in one place because she hasn't the energy
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: to go anywhere else.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Adelaide, as if the last word in absurdity has been said,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: I haven't energy, Claire mildly.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: You haven't any energy at all, Adelaide. That's why you
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: keep so busy.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 7: Well, Claire's nerves are in a worse state than I
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 7: had realized.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: So perhaps we'd better look at Blake's drawings.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: Takes up the book.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 7: It would be all right for me to look at
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 7: Blake's drawings. You'd better look at the Sistine.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Madonna affectionately, after she has watched Claire's face a moment,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: what is it Claire.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 7: Why do you shut yourself out from us?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: I told you because I do not want to be
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: shut in with you.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 7: All of this is not very pleasant for Harry.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 9: I want Claire to be GhIE funny.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: You should want That speaks unwillingly, a curious, wistful, unwillingness.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: Did you ever say a preposterous thing? Then go trailing
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: after the thing you've said and find it wasn't so preposterous.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: Here's the circle we.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: Are in describes a big circle being gay.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: It shoots little darts through the circle, and a minute
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: later gaiety all gone, and you looking through that little
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: hole the gaiety.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Laft Adelaide going to her as she is still looking
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: through that little hall.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 7: Claire, Dear, I wish I could make you feel how
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 7: much I.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: Care for you, simply with real feeling.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 7: You can call me all the names you like, dull, commonplace, lazy.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 7: That is a new idea, I confess. But the rest
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 7: of our family's gone now, and the love that used
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 7: to be there between us all the only place for
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 7: it now is between.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 8: You and me.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 7: You were so much loved, Claire, you oughtn't to try
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 7: and get away from a world in which you are
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 7: so much loved to Harry, mother, father, all of us
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 7: always loved Claire best. We always loved Claire's queer gaiety.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 7: Now you've got to hand it to us for that.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: As the children.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Say, Claire moved, but eyes shining with a queer, bright loneliness.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: But never one of you once looked with me through
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: the little pricks the gaiety maid. Never one of you
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: wants looked with me at the queer light that came
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: in through the pricks.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 7: And can't you see, dear, that it's better for us
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 7: we didn't, and that it would be better for you
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 7: now if you would just resolutely look somewhere else, you
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 7: must see yourself that you haven't the poison people who
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 7: are held well within the circle, if you choose to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 7: put it that way. There's something about being in that
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 7: main body, having one's roots in the big common experiences
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 7: gives a calm which you have missed. That's why I
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 7: want you to take Elizabeth forget yourself.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: And I do want calm, but mine would have to
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: be a carm I worked my way to a calm.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: All prepared for me would.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: Stink adelaide less sympathetically, I know.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: You have to be yourself clear, but I don't admit
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 7: you have a right to hurt other people.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 9: I think Claire and I had better take a nice
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 9: long trip.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: Now, why don't you?
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: I am taking a trip.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 7: Well, Harry isn't, and he like to go and wants
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 7: you to go with him. Go to Paris and get
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 7: yourself some awfully good looking clothes and have one grand
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 7: fling at the gay world. You really love that, Claire,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 7: And you've been awfully dull lately. I think that's the
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 7: whole trouble.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 9: I think so too.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 7: The sober business of growing plants not sober. It's mad,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 7: all the more reason for quitting it.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: But madness that is the only chance for sanity.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 7: Come, come, now, let's not juggle words.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: Claire springing up.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: How dare you say that to me? Adelaide, you who
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: are such a liar and thief and all with words?
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Adelaide facing her furious.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 7: How dare you?
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 9: Of course not? Claire, you have the most preposterous way
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 9: of using words.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: I respect words.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 7: Well, you'll please respect me enough not to dare use
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 7: certain words to me?
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: Yes, I do. I'm tired of what you do, you
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: and all of you life experience, values, calm, sensitive words
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: which raise their heads as indications, and you pull them
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: up to decorate your stagnant little minds and think that
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: makes you. And because you have pulled that word from
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: the life that grew it, you won't let one who's
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: honest and aware and troubled try to reach through to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: to what she doesn't know is there.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: She has moved excited as if a cruel thing has
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: been done.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: Why did you come.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 7: Up here to try and help you? But I begin
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 7: to fear I can't do it. It's pretty egotistical to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 7: claim that what so many people are is wrong.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Claire, after looking intently at Adelaide, slowly smiling a little,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: describes a circle with deftly used hands, makes a quick,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: vicious break in the circle which is there in the air.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: Harry's going to her, taking her hands.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 9: It's getting close to dinner time. You were thinking of
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 9: something else there when I told you Charlie Emmons was
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 9: coming to.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: Dinner tonight, answering her.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 9: Look, sure, he's a neurologist, and I want him to
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 9: see you. I'm perfectly honest with you. Cards all on
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 9: the table, you know that I'm hoping if you'll like
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 9: him and he's the best scout in the world that
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 9: he can help.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: You, talking hurriedly against the stillness which follows her look
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: from him to Adelaide, where she sees between them, and
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: understanding about her.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 9: Sure you need help, Claire, your nerves are a little
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 9: on the blink from all you've been doing. No use
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 9: making a mystery of it or a tragedy. Emmons is
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 9: a cracker jack, And I naturally want you to get
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 9: a move on yourself and be happy again.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: Claire, who has gone over to the window.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: And this neurologist can make me happy.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 9: Can make you well, and then you'll be happy.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: Adelaide in the voice of now fixing it all up.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 7: And I had just an idea, Elizabeth, instead of working
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 7: with mere plants, why not think of Elizabeth as a plant.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: And Claire, who has been looking out of the window,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: now throws open one of the panes that swings out,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: or seems to, and calls down in great excitement.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: Tom, Tom, quick up here. I'm in trouble.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: Harry's going to the window.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 9: That's a rotten thing to do, Claire.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: You've frightened him, Yes, how fast he can run? He
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: was deep in thought, and I stopped right through.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 9: Well, he'll be non too pleased when he gets up
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 9: here and finds there was no reason for the stabbing.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: They wait for his footsteps. Harry, annoyed, Adelaide, offended but
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: stealing worried, looks at Claire, who is looking fixedly at
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: the place in the floor where Tom will appear. Running footsteps, Tom,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: his voice getting there before.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 5: He does, Yes, Claire, yes, yes.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: As his head appears, What is it? Claire, at once,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: presenting him and answering his question, My sister, Tom gasping.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: Oh, oh, why is that all? I mean? How do
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 5: you do? Pardon me?
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 11: I panting came up rather hurriedly.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 9: If you want to slap Claire, Tom, I for one
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 9: have no objection.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: Adelaide has the most interesting idea Tom. She proposes that
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: I take Elizabeth and roll her in the gutter, just
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: let her lie there until she breaks up into Claire.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 7: I don't see how, even in fun, pretty vulgar fun,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 7: you can speak in those terms of a pure young girl.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 7: I'm beginning to think I had better take Elizabeth.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: Oh, I've thought that all along.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 7: And I'm also beginning to suspect that oddity maybe just
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 7: a way of shifting responsibility.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Claire cordially interested in this possibility.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 7: Now you know that might be a mother who does
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 7: not love her own child. You are an unnatural woman, Claire.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: Well, at least it saves me from being a natural one.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 7: Oh, I know you think you have a great deal,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 7: But let me tell you you've missed a great deal.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 7: You've never known the faintest stirring of a mother's love.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 4: That's not true.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 9: No, Claire loved out boy.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: I'm glad he didn't live.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: Harry's low, Claire.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: I loved him. Why should I want him to live?
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 9: Come, dear, I'm sorry I spoke of him when you're
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 9: not feeling well.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: I'm feeling all right. Just because I'm seeing something, it
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean I'm sick.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 9: Well, let's go down now, about dinner time. I shouldn't
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 9: wonder if Femlin's were here.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: As Adelaide is starting downstairs.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 9: Coming, Claire, No, but it's time to go down for dinner.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 9: I'm not hungry, but we have a guest, two guests.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 9: Adelaide's staying too.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: Then you're not alone.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 9: But invited doctor Emmons to meet.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: You, Claire, her smile flashing, tell him I.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 9: Am violent to night dearest. How can you joke about
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 9: such things?
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: So you do think that's serious?
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: Harry irritated.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 9: No, I do not, But I want you to come
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 9: down for dinner.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 7: Come come, Claire. You know quite well this is not
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 7: the sort of thing one does.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: Why go on saying one doesn't when you are seeing
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: one does? To Tom, will you stay with me? Awhile
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 4: I want to purify.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: The tower, Adelaide begins to disappear.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 9: Fine, time to choose for a tete a.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Tete as he is leaving.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 9: I'd think more of you, edgeworthy if you refuse to
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 9: humor Claire.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: In her ill breeding Adelaide, her severe voice coming from below.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 7: It is not what she was taught.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: No, it's not what I was taught.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Laughing rather timidly, and.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: Perhaps you'd rather have your dinner. No, we'll get something later.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: I want to talk to you, but she does not.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: Laughs.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: Absurd that I should feel bashful with you? Why am
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: I so awkward with words? When I go to talk
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: to you?
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 5: The words? No, they're not needed, No, they're not needed.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: There's something underneath, an open way down below the way that.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Words can go rather desperately.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: It is there isn't it?
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 9: Oh?
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 5: Yes, it is there?
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: Then why do we never go it?
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 5: If we went it, it would not be there?
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: Is that true? How terrible? If that is true?
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 5: Not terrible, wonderful that it should of itself be.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: There, Claire, with the simpler city that can say anything.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: I want to go with Tom. I'm lonely up on
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: top here. Is it that I have more faith in you?
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: Or is it only that I'm greedier? You see, you
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: don't know her, reckless laugh what you're missing? You don't
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 4: know how I could love.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: You, don't Claire? That isn't how it is between you
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 5: and me?
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: But why can't it be every way between you and me?
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 5: Because we'd lose the open way.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: The quality of his denial shows how strong is his feeling.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 5: For her with anyone else, not with you.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: But you are the only one I want, the only
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: one all of me wants.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 9: I know.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 5: But that's the way it is.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 9: You're cruel, Oh Claire.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 5: I'm trying so hard to save it for us. Isn't
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 5: it our beauty and our safeguard that underneath our separate lives,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 5: no matter where we may be, with what other, there
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 5: is this open way between us that's so much more
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 5: than anything we can bring to being.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 4: Perhaps it is different with me. I'm not all spirit.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Tom his hand on her.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: Oh, dear, no, don't touch me since moving. You're going
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: away tomorrow. He nods for always.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: His head just moves ascent.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: India is just another country. But there are undiscovered countries.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 5: Oh, yes, but we are so feeble. We have to
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 5: reach our country through the actual tree lying nearest. Don't
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 5: you do that yourself? Clear, reach your country through the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 5: plant's country?
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 4: My country you mean outside?
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 5: No, I don't mean it that way, Oh, yes, you do.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 5: Your country is the inside, Claire, the innermost. You are
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: disturbed because you lie too close upon the heart of.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Life, Claire restlessly.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 4: I don't know. You can think it one way or another.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 4: No one says it, and that's good. At least it's
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: not shut up. In saying, she.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: Is looking at her enclosing hand as if something is
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: shut up there.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 5: But also, you know, things may be freed by expression,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 5: come from the unrealized into the fabric of life.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, but why does the fabric of life have to
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: freeze into its pattern?
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: It should doing it with her hands flow, then turning
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: like an unsatisfied child to him, But.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: I wanted to talk to you.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 5: You are talking to me now. Tell me about your
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 5: flower that never was before your breath of life.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 4: I'll know to morrow. You'll not go until I know.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 5: I'll try to stay.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: It seems to me if it has, then I have
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: integrity in smiles.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: It is as if the smile lets her say it otherness.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 4: I don't want to die on the edge.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 5: Oh not you.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: Many do. It's what makes them too smug in allness,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 4: Those dead things on the edge died distorted trying to
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: get through. Oh, don't think I don't see the edge.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: Fine, a pause, then swiftly, do you know.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: What I mean? Or do you think I'm just a
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 4: fool or crazy?
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 5: I think I know what you mean, and you know
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 5: I don't think you are a fool. We're crazy.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: Stab to awareness, no matter where it takes you, isn't
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: that more than a safe place to stay?
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Telling him very simply, despite the pattern of pain in her.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 4: Voice, anguish may be a thread making patterns that haven't
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: been a thread, blue and burning.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: Tom to take her from what even he fears for her.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 5: But you were telling me about the flower you breathed
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 5: to life. What is your breath of.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: Life, Claire, an instant playing.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: It's a secret, a secret. It's a trick distilled from
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: the most fragile flowers there are. It's only air, pausing
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 4: playing except far in one stab of red. It's quivering
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: heart that asks the question. But here's the trick. I
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 4: bred the air, formed to strength, the strength shut up
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: behind us. I've sent far out troubled. I'll know tomorrow,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: and I have another gift, the breath of life. Some day,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: the days of work lying between. Some day I'll give
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: it reminiscence, fragrance that is no one thing in here
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 4: but reminiscent silence.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: She raises wet eyes.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: We need the haunting beauty from the life we've left.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: I need that.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: He takes her hands and breathes her name.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: Let me reach my country with you. I'm not a plant,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 4: after all. They don't accept me. Who does accept me?
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 9: Will you, my dear, dear dear Claire.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 5: You move me so you stand alone in a clearness
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 5: that breaks my heart.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Her hands move up his arms. He takes them to
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: hold them from where they would go, though he can
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: hardly do it.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 5: But you've asked what you, yourself could answer best? We'd
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 5: only stop in the country where everyone stops.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 4: We might come through to radiance.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 5: Radiance is an enclosing place.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: Perhaps radiance lighting forms.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Undreamed her reckless laugh.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 4: I'd be willing to take a chance. I'd rather lose
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 4: than never.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 5: Know No Claire. Knowing you from underneath, I know you
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: couldn't bear to lose.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't men say you were a fool?
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: They would, and.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Perhaps you are, he smiles a little.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 4: I feel so desperate. If only I could show you
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 4: what I am, you might see I could have without losing.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: But I'm a stammering thing with you.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 5: You do show me what you are.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: I've known a few moments that were life. Why don't
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 4: they help me? Now? One was in the air. I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 4: was up with Harry, flying high. It was about four
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 4: months before David was born. The doctor was furious. Pregnant
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: women are supposed to keep to earth. We were going fast.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: I was flying, had left the earth, and then with
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 4: me movement for the first time, stirred to life, far
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 4: in air, movement within the man unborn. He too would fly,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: and so I always loved him. He was movement and wonder.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: In his short life were many flights I never told
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: anyone about the last one. His little bed was by
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: the window. He wasn't four years old. It was night,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 4: but to him, not asleep, he saw the morning star,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 4: you know, the morning star, brighter, stranger, reminiscent, and a promise.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 4: He pointed. Mother, He asked me, what is there beyond
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: the stars? A baby, a sick baby, the morning star?
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: Next night? The finger that pointed.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: Was suddenly bites her own finger.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: But yes, I am glad. He would always have tried
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 4: to move, and too much would hold him. Wonder would die,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: and he'd laugh at soaring.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Looking down sidewise though.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: I liked his voice, So I wish you'd stay near me,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 4: for I like your too.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 9: Claire.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 13: That's choked, almost too much, Claire, one of her swift glances, canny,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 13: almost practical.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad if it is, how can I make
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 4: it more?
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: For what she sees brings its own change.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 4: I know what it is you're afraid of. It's because
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 4: I have so much. Yes, why shouldn't I say it? Passion?
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: You feel that in me, don't you? You think it
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: would swamp everything? But that isn't all there is to me?
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 5: Oh, I know it.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 4: My dearest.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 5: Why it's because I know it. You think I am
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 5: a fool.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: It's a thing that sometimes more than I am, And
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 4: yet I am more than it is.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 5: I know I know about you.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know that you do. Perhaps if you really
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: knew about me, you wouldn't go away.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 5: You're making me suffer? Clear, I know I am.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: I want to Why shouldn't you suffer?
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: Now seeing it more clearly than she has ever seen it,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: you know what I.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 4: Think about you. You're afraid of suffering, and so you
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: stop this side in what you persuade yourself is suffering.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: Wait then sends it straight.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: You know how it is with me and Dick.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: As she sees him suffer.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 4: Oh no, I don't want to hurt you. Let it
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 4: be you. I'll teach you. You needn't scorn it. It's
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 4: rather wonderful.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 5: Stop that clear? That isn't you?
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: Why are you so afraid of letting me be low?
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: If that is low? You see cannily, I believe in beauty.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 4: I have the faith that can be bad as well
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: as good. And do you know why I have the faith,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 4: Because sometimes from my lowest moment, beauty is opened as
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: the sea from a cave. I saw immensity, my love.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: You're going away. Let me te tell you how it
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: is with me. I want to touch you somehow, touch
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: you once before I die. Let me tell you how
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: it is with me. I do not want to work.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 4: I want to be. Do not want to make a
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: rose or make a poem. Want to lie upon the
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 4: earth and know.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: Closes her eyes.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: Stop doing that. Words going into patterns. They do it
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: sometimes when I let come what's there? Thoughts take pattern?
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: Then the pattern is the thing. But let me tell
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 4: you how it is with me. It flows again, or
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: that I do, or say it is to what it
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: comes from, a drop lifted from the sea. I want
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: to lie upon the earth and know. But scratch a
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 4: little dirt and make a flower, scratch a bit of brain,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: something like a poem.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: Covering her face.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: Stop doing that, help me stop doing that.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: Tom And from the place where she had carried him.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 5: Don't talk at all. I still and know and know
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 5: that I am knowing.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, But we are so weak. We have to talk,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 4: to talk, to touch. Why can't I rest in knowing?
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: I would give my life to reach you. That has
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: all there is. But I must put my timid hands
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: upon you do something about infinity. Oh, let what will
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: flow into us and fill us full and leave us still,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: wring me dry, and let me fill again with life
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 4: more pure, to know, to feel, and do nothing with
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: what I feel and know that's being good, that's near a.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: God drenched in the feeling that has flowed through her,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: but surprised, helpless.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: Why I said your thing didn't I opened my life
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 4: to bring you to me. And what came is what
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 4: sends you away.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 5: No, what came is what holds us together. What came
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 5: is what saves us from ever going apart.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 14: Brokenly, My beautiful one, you, you brave flower of all,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 14: are knowing I.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 4: Am not a flower. I am too torn. If you
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: have anything, help me breathe, breathe the healing oneness, and
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 4: let me knowing calm with.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: A sob, his head rests upon her Claire, her hands
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: on his head, but looking.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 4: Far, beauty, you pure one thing, breathe let me knowing calm,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 4: then trouble me, trouble me for other moments in father calm.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Slow motionless, barely articulate. Tom As she does not move,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: he lifts his head, and even as he looks at her,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: she does not move nor look at him. Claire his
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: hand out to her, A little afraid.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 5: You went away from me, Then you are away from
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 5: me now.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: Yes, and I could go on, but I will come back.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: It is hard to do. She brings much with her
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: that too.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 4: I will give you my by my selfness. That's the
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 4: uttermost I can give. I never thought to try to
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 4: give it. But let us do it, the great sacrilege.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, excited, she rises, She has his hands and brings
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: him up beside her.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 4: Let us take the mad chance. Perhaps it's the only
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 4: way to save what's there. How do we know? How
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 4: can we know? Risk? Risk everything from all that flows
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 4: into us. Let it rise, all that we never thought
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: to use to make a moment, Let it flow into
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 4: what could be. Bring all in to life between us,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 4: or send all down to death? Oh do you know
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 4: what I am doing? Risk? Risk everything? Why you so
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 4: afraid to lose what holds you from me? Test all?
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: Let it live or let it die. It is our chance,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 4: our chance to bear what's there, My dear one, I
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 4: will love you so with all of me. I'm not
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 4: afraid now, of all of me. Be generous, be unafraid.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 4: Life is for life, though it cuts us from the
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: farthest life. How can I make you know that's true?
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: All that we're open.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: To hesitates shudders.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 4: But yes I will, I will risk the life that waits.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 4: Perhaps only he who gives his loneliness shall find you
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: never keep by holding gesture of giving to the uttermost.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 4: And it is gone, or it is there, you do
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 4: not know, And that makes the moment.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: Music has begun a phonograph downstairs. They do not heed it,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: just as I would cut my wrists holding them out.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: Yes, perhaps this lesser thing will tell It would cut
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 4: my wrists and let the blood flow out till all
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: was gone. If my last drop would make would.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: Make looking at them fascinated.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 4: I want to see it doing that. Let me give
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 4: my last chance for life too.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: He snatches her. They are on the brink of their moment.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: Now that there are no words. The phonograph from downstairs
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: is louder. It is playing languorously the barquarol. They become
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: conscious of this. They do not want to be touched
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: by the love song.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 4: Don't listen, that's nothing. This isn't that fearing, I tell you,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 4: it isn't that. Yes, I know that's amorous and closing.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: I know a little place. This isn't that, her.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: Arms going around him, all the lure of that, while
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: she pleads against it. As it comes up to them,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: we will.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 4: Come out to radiance in far places.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: Admitting using, Oh, then let.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 4: It be that, go with it, give up the otherness,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 4: I will, and in the giving up perhaps a door
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 4: we'd never find by searching. And if it's no more
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 4: than all have known, I only say it's worth the illness.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: Her arms wrapped round him, My love.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 4: My love, let go your pride in loneliness, and let
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 4: me give you joy.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: Tom drenched in her passion, but fighting. It's you in anguish, you.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 5: Rare thing, untouched, not not into this, not back into
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 5: this by me, lover of your apartners.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: She steps back, she sees he cannot. She stands there
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: before what she wanted more than life, and almost had,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: and lost a long moment. Then she runs down the stairs. Claire,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: her voice coming.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 4: Up, Harry, choke that phonograph. If you want to be lude,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 4: do it yourselves, you tawdry things, you cheap, little lewd cowards.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: A door heard opening below, Harry.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 4: If you don't stop that music, I'll kill myself.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: Far down steps on stairs.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 9: Claire, what is this?
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 4: Stop that phonograph?
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 9: Or I'll why of course, I'll stop it. What is
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 9: there to get so excited about? No, No, just a minute,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 9: dere It'll take him minute.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: Claire comes back upstairs, dragging steps, face ghastly. The amorous
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: song still comes up and louder now that the doors
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: are open. She and Tom do not look at one another. Then,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: on a languorous swell, the music comes to a grating stop.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: They do not speak or move quick footsteps. Harry comes up.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 9: What in the world were you saying, Claire? Certainly you
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 9: could have asked me more quietly to turn off the
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 9: victrolla though? What harm it was doing you? Way up here?
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: A sharp little sound from Claire. She checks it, her
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: hand over her mouth. Harry looks from her to Tom.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 9: Well, I think you two would better have had your dinner.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 9: Won't you come down now and have some?
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: Claire only now taking her hand from from her mouth.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 4: Harry tell him to come up here. That insanity, man,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 4: I want to ask him.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 9: Something insanity man? How absurd? He's a nerve specialist. There
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 9: is a vast difference.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 4: Is there anyway? Ask him to come up here? Want
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 4: to ask him something.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: Tom speaking with difficulty.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 5: Wouldn't it be better for us to go down there?
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 4: So nice up here? Everybody up here?
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: Harry's worried.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 9: You'll be yourself? Will you, Claire?
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: She checks a laugh, nods.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 9: I think he can help you.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 4: Want to ask him to.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: Help me, Harry as he is starting down.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 9: He's here as a gift tonight, you know, Claire.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: I suppose a guest can help one.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: Tom. When the silence rejects it.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 5: Claire, you must know it's because it is so much.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 4: So be still. There isn't anything to say.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Tom torn tortured.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: If that only won't you? Yes, so you said, if
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 4: it weren't, I I suppose I wouldn't be so interested.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: Here's them starting up below, keeps looking at the place
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: where they will appear. Harry is heard to call coming Dick,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: and Dick's voice replies. In a moment or two, Adelaide
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: comes first. Adelaide as her head appears.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 7: Well, these stairs should keep down. Wait, you missed an
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 7: awfully good dinner, Claire, and kept mister edgeworthy from a
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 7: good dinner.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 4: Yes, we missed our dinner.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: Her eyes do not leave the place where doctor Emmons
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: will come up Harry as he and doctor Emmons appear, Claire.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 4: This is yes, I know who he is. I want
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: to ask you.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 7: Let the poor man get his breath before you ask
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 7: him anything.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: He nods, smiles, looks at Claire with interest, careful not
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: to look too long at her. Surveys the tower curious place.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 7: Yes, it lacks form, doesn't it?
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 4: What do you mean? How dare you?
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: It is impossible to ignore her agitation. She is backed
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: against the curved wall as far as possible from them.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: Harry looks at her in alarm, then in resentment at Tom,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: who takes a step nearer Claire. Harry's trying to be light.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 9: Don't take it so hard, Claire.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: Claire to Emmons, it.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 4: Must be very interesting helping people go insane.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: Claire, how preposterous, doctor Emmons. Easily, I hope that's not precisely.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 8: What we do.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: Adelaide with the smile of one who is going to
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: cover it.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 7: Trust Claire to put it in the unique and amusing way.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 4: Amusing you are amused, but it doesn't matter to the doctor.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 4: I think it's very kind of you helping people go insane.
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 4: I suppose they have all sorts of reasons for having
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 4: to do it, reasons why they can't stay sane any longer.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 4: But tell me how do they do it? It's not so
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 4: easy to get out. How do so many manage it?
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 8: I'd like immensely to have a talk with you about
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 8: all this someday.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 7: Certainly this is not the time, Claire.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 4: The time when you can't go any farther.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: Isn't that Adelaide capably taking the whole thing into matter
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: of factness.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 7: What I think is Claire has worked too long with plants.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 7: There's something not quite sound about making one thing into
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 7: another thing.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: What we need is unity from Claire, something like a mon.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 7: Yes, dear, we do need it.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: To the doctor, I can't say that.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 7: I believe in making life over like this. I don't
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 7: think the new species are worth it. At least I
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 7: don't believe in it for Claire. If one is an intense,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 7: sensitive person.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 4: Isn't there any way to stop her? Always always smothering
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 4: it with the word for.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: It, doctor Emmons soothingly.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 8: But she can't smother it anything that's really there. She
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 8: can't hurt with words.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: Claire looking at him with eyes too bright, Then you.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 4: Don't see to either angry. Yes, she can hurt it,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 4: piling it up, always piling it up between us and
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 4: what they're plogging the way, always two emmons. I want
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 4: to cease to know, That's all I ask. Darken it,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 4: darken it if you came to help me, strike me blind.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 8: You are really all tired out, aren't you. Oh, we've
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 8: got to get you rested.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 4: They deny it, saying they have it, and he.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: Half looks at Tom quickly looks away.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 4: Others deny it, afraid of losing it. We're in the way.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 4: Can't you see the dead stuff piled in the.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: Path, pointing Dick voice coming up? Me do Claire, staring
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: at the path, hearing his voice a moment after it has.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 4: Come Yes, Dick, you too? Why not you too?
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: After he has come up?
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 4: What is there any more than you are?
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: Dick, embarrassed by the intensity but laughing.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 10: A question not at all is pleasing to me? Who
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 10: can answer it?
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: Claire, more and more excited, Yes, who can answer it?
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: Going to him in terror.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 4: Let me go with you and be with you and
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 4: know nothing else.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Adelaide, gasping, why there. This is going a little too far,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: But you have to go far too, clinging to Dick.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 4: Only a place to hide your head? What else is
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 4: there to hope for? I can't stay with them piling
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 4: it up, always piling it up. I can't get through
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 4: to he won't let me through to. But I don't
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 4: know is.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: There Dick would help her regain herself.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 4: Don't push me away, don't don't stand me up. I
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 4: will go back to the worst we ever were go by.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 4: I can remember what we've tried to forget.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 7: It's time to stop this by force, if there's no
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 7: other way.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: The doctor shakes his head.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 4: All I ask is to die in the gutter with
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 4: everyone spitting on me.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: Changes to a curious, weary, smiling quiet.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 4: Still, why should they bother to do that?
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: Harry's Brokenly, You're sick, Claire, there's no denying it. Looks
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: at Emmons, who nods.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 7: Something to quiet her, to stop it.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: Claire, drawing her arms around Dick.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 4: You, Dick, not then, not any of them.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 10: Claire, you're over rob you must.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: Harry's to Dick, as if only now realizing that phase
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 9: I'll tell you one thing. You'll answer to me for this.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: He starts for Dick is restrained by Emmons. Chiefly by
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: his grave shake of the head. With Harry's move to them,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: Dick has shielded Claire.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 4: Yes, hold me, keep me, you have none. You will
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 4: have mercy, anything everything that will let me be nothing.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: Curtain. End of Act two, Act three of The Verge
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: by Susan Glaspell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Act three in
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: the Greenhouse, the same as Act one, Anthony is betting
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: small plants where the edgevine grew. In the inner room.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: The plant like caut motion glows as from a light
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: within Hattie. The maid rushes in from outside, Anthony, turning angrily.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: You were not what this is?
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 3: Anthony, come the house. I'm afraid mister Archer. I never
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 3: saw him like this. He's talking to mister deming something
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 3: about missus.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: Archer Anthony, who in spite of himself, is disturbed by
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: her agitation.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: Under if it is, it's no business of yours.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: You don't know how he is. I went in the.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: Room and well, he won't hurt you, will he How
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: do I know.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 3: Who he'll hurt? A person who's.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: Seeing how to get him.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 3: Maybe he'll hurt missus Archer.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: Anthony startled, then smiles.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: No, he won't hurt miss Claire.
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 3: What do you know about it out here in the
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: plant house?
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to know about it. This is
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: a very important day for me. It's breath of life
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: and thinking of today, not you and mister Archer.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 3: Well, suppose he does something to mister Deming.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: Mister Deming will have to look out for himself.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: Aim at work, resuming work.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 3: Don't you think I ought to tell missus art you
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: let her alone.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 2: This is no day for her to be bothered by
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: you and her liven o'klock looks at watch she comes
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: out here the breath of.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: Life, hattie with greed for gossip?
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: Did you see any of them when they came downstairs
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 3: last night?
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: He was attending to my own affairs.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 3: They was all excited, mister edgeworthy. He went away. He
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 3: was gone all night. I guess I saw him coming
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: back just as the milkman woke me up. Now he's
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 3: packing his things. He wanted to get to missus Archer
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 3: too just a little while ago, but she won't open
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 3: her door for none of them. I can't even get
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: in to do her room.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: Then there's some other room, and leave me alone in
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: this room.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Hattie a little afraid of what she is asking, Is
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: she sick, Anthony or what? Vindicating herself as he gives
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: her a look.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: The doctor, he stayed here. Wait, but she locked herself in.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: I heard, mister Archer.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: You heard too much.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: He starts for the door to make her leave, but
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: Dick rushes in, looks around wildly, goes to the trap door,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: finds it locked.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: What are you doing here.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 10: Trying not to be shot? If you must know, this
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 10: is the only base I can think of. Tilly comes
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 10: to his senses and I can get away open that
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 10: will you? Rather ignominious? But better be absurd than be dead?
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: Has he got the revolver.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 10: Gone for it? Thought I wouldn't said that. Tilly got
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 10: back to Anthony. Look here, don't you get the idea?
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 10: Get me someplace where he can't come. It is not
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 10: what this place is for, any places for saving a
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 10: man's life.
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 3: Sure, Anthony, missus Archer, wouldn't want mister Deming shot.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 10: That's right, Anthony, missus Clare will be an at you
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 10: if you get me shot.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: He makes for the door of the inner room.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: You can't go in there, it's locked.
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: Harry rushes in from outside. I thought so he has
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: the revolver. Hattie screams, h.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: No, mister Archer, if you'll just stop and think, you
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: know Miss Claire wouldn't want mister dimming shut.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 9: You think that can stop me, You think you can.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: Stop me raising the revolver a dog that Anthony keeping
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: squarely between Harry and Dick.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you can't shoot him in here. It is not
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: good for the blunt.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: Harry is arrested by this reason.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: And especially not today. Why, mister Archer, birth of Lace
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: may Flower to day. It's years. Miss Clare has been
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: working for this.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 9: D I never thought to see this day, No, did you?
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: Well it will be a wonderful day. And oh she
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: has worked for it. She has an eye that she
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: what isn't right in what looks right? Miny's the time,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: irve thirt here the farm is said, and then she'd say,
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: we'll try this one. And it had what I hadn't
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: known was there. She's liked that.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 9: I've always been pleased, Anthony at the way you've worked
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 9: with Miss Claire. This is hardly the time to stand
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 9: there eulogizing her, and she is.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: Can hardly say it things you don't know she is,
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: Anthony proudly, Oh, I know that.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: You think I could work with her and not know
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: she's more than I know she is.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 9: Well, if you love her, you've got to let me
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 9: shoot the dirty dog that drags her down.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: Not in here, not today, more than like you'd break
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: the glass and breadth of life's in there.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 9: Anthony. This is pretty clever of you.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: But I'm not clever. But I know how easy it
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: is to turn life back. Oh, I'm not deliver at all.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: Claire has appeared and is looking in from outside.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: Would I know there are things you mustn't heard?
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: He sees her.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, here's miss Claire.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: She comes in. She is looking immaculate from the gutter.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 4: I rise again, refreshed one. Does she know the thing
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 4: is fixed? Not even the gutter?
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: Smilingly to Harry and refusing to notice revolver or agitation.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 4: How did you like the way I entertained the nerve specialist, Claire?
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 9: You can joke about it.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: Claire taking the revolver from the hand, she has shocked
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: to limpness.
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 4: Whom are you trying to make here.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 9: I am trying to make the world hear that, pointing
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 9: there stands a dirty dog.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 4: Who listen, Harry.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: Turning to Hattie, who is over by the tall plants
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: at right, not wanting to be shot, but not wanting
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: to miss the conversation.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 4: You can do my room now, Hattie.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: Hattie goes, If.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 4: You're thinking of shooting Dick, you can't shoot him while
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 4: he's backed up against that door.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: Just what he told them, Miss Claire, Just what I
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: told them.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 4: And for that matter, it's quite dull of you to
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 4: have any idea of shooting him.
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 9: I may be dull, I know you think I am,
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 9: But I'll show you that I've enough of the man
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 9: in me too to.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 4: Make yourself ridiculous. If I run out and hid my
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 4: head in the mud, would you think you had to
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 4: shoot the mud?
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: Dick stung out of fear?
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 10: That's pretty cool?
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 4: Well, would you rather be shot?
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 9: So you just said it? To protect him?
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 4: I change it to grass, nodding to Dick. Grass. If
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 4: I hid my face in the grass, would you have
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 4: to burn the grass?
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 9: Oh? Claire? How can you when you know how I
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 9: love you and how I'm suffering?
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: Claire with interest.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 4: Are you suffering?
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: How?
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 9: And you eyes?
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 4: I should think it would do something to you?
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 9: God? Hell, you no heart?
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: The door opens, Tom comes in clear, scarcely seeing it.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 4: Yes, I have a heart.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: Tom.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 5: After a pause, I came to say goodbye.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 4: God, have you no heart? Can't you at least wait
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 4: till Dick is shot.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Claire now sees the revolver in her hand that has
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: turned from him going to her.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 4: Clare and even you think this is so important.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: Carelessly raises the revolver and with her left hand out flat,
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: tells Tom not to touch her.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 4: Harry thinks it's important he shoot Dick. And Dick thinks
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 4: it's important not to be shot. And do you think
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 4: I mustn't shoot anybody, even myself? And can't any of
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 4: you see that? None of that is as important as
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 4: where revolvers can't.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Reach, putting revolver, where there is no edge vine.
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 4: I shall never shoot myself. I'm too interested in destruction
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 4: to cut it short by shooting.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: After looking from one to the other, laughs pointing.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 4: One, two three. You love me, But why do you
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 4: bring it out here?
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: Anthony, who has resumed work.
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: It is not but this place is far.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 4: No, this place is for the destruction that can get through.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: Miss Claire. It is eleven. At eleven, we are to
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: go in and.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 4: See whether it has gone through. But how can we
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 4: go with Dick against that door.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: You'll have to move and be.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: Shot, Harry irritably.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 9: Oh, he'll not be shot, Claire against spoiled anything.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Dick steps away from the door. Claire takes a step
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: nearer it. Claire halting, have.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 4: I spoiled everything? I don't want to go in there.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: We're going together, miss Claire, don't you remember.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, looking resentfully at the others.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: Don't let anything spoil it for you. The work of
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: all those days, the hoop of zor many days.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's it.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: You're afraid you haven't done it?
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 4: Yes, but afraid I.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: Have Harry's cross.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 9: But kindly, that's just noticedness, Claire. I had the same
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 9: feeling myself about making a record and flying.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: Claire, curiously grateful you half hurry. Harry's glad enough to
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: be back in a more usual world.
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 9: Sure, I've been afraid now, and almost as afraid of
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 9: having done it as of not having done it.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: Claire nots steps nearer, then again pulls back.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 4: I can't go in there, She almost looks at tom
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 4: not today.
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: But miss Claire, there'll be things to see today. We
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: can't see tomorrow. You bring it in here in oh
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: from its own place.
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: She nods, And will they are again? She nods reluctantly.
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: He goes to the door.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: I will not look into the heart. No one must
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: know before you know.
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: In the inner room, his head a little turned away,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: he is seen very carefully to lift the plant, which
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: glows from within. As he brings it in, no one
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: looks at it. Harry takes a box of seedlings from
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: a stand and puts them on the floor that the
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: newcomer may have a place.
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: Breath of life is here, miss Claire.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: Claire half turns, then stops.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 4: Look and see what you see.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: No one should see what you not seen.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 4: I can't see until I know.
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: Anthony looks into the flower. Anthony agitated, Miss Claire.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 4: It has come through.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: It has gone on stronger, stronger, surer, a more fragile,
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 2: and more fragile.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 4: Look deep.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Now, turning back Anthony, after a searching.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: Look, the form is set.
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: He steps back from it. Then it is out from
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: where she stands. She turns slowly to the plant.
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: You won't you are what come and see mish Claire.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 4: It's so much more than i'd see.
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 9: Well, I'm going.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: To see looking into it, I.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 9: Never saw anything like that before. There seems something alive
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 9: inside this outer shell.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Dick he too looking in, and he has an artist's
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: manner of a hand up to make the light right.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 10: It's quite new in faum it says something about faun.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: Harry cordially to Claire, who stands apart.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 9: So you've really put it over? Well, well, congratulations. It's
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 9: a good deal of novelty, I should say, and I
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 9: have no doubt you'll have a considerable success with it.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 9: People always like something new. I'm mighty glad after all
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 9: your work, and I hope it will set you up.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: Claar low and like a machine?
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 4: Will you all go away?
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: Anthony goes into the other room.
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 9: Why why, yes? But oh Claire, can you take some
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 9: pleasure in your work?
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: As she stands there very still.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 9: Emmon says you need a good long rest, and I
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 9: think he's right.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 5: Can't this help you?
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 9: Claire?
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 5: Let this be released, this breath of the uncaptured Claire.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: And though speaking, she remains just as still.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 4: Breath of the uncaptured. You are a novelty out you
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 4: have been brought in a thousand years from now, when
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 4: you are but to form too long repeated, perhaps the
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 4: madness that gave you birth will burst again, and from
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 4: the prison that is you will leap pent queernesses to
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 4: make a form that hasn't been, to make a prison new,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 4: and this we call creation.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: Very low, her head not coming up, go away. Tom goes.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: Harry hesitates, looking in anxiety at Claire. He starts to go, stops,
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: looks at Dick, from him to Claire, but goes. A
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: moment later, Dick moves near Claire, stands uncertainly, then puts
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: a hand upon her. She starts, only then knowing he
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: is there. Claire a slight shrinking away but not really reached.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 4: Mum hm.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: He goes. Claire steps nearer her creation. She looks into
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: what hasn't been with her breath, and by a gentle
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: moving of her hands, she fans it into fuller openness.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: As she does this, Tom returns and from outside is
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: looking in at her softly. He opens the door and
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: comes in. She does not know that he is there.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: In the way she looks at the flower, he looks
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: at her. Claire she lifts her head.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 5: As you stood there looking into the womb, you breathe
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 5: to life. You were beautiful to me, beyond any other beauty.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 5: You were life and its reach and its anguish. I
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 5: can't go away from you. I will never go away
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 5: from you. It shall all be as you wish.
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 12: I can go with you where I could not go alone.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 12: If this is delusion, I want that delusion. It's more
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 12: than any reality I could attain.
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: As she does not move.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 5: Speak to me, Claire, you.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: Are glad, Claire from far speak to you. Pause?
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 4: Do I know who you are?
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 5: I think you do.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 4: Oh yes, I love you. That's who you are.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: Waits again, but.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 4: Why you something very far away?
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: Come nearer, nearer, feeling it with her voice nearer.
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 4: But I think I am going the other way.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 5: No, Claire, come to me. Did you understand, Dear, I
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 5: am not going away.
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 4: You're not going away, not without you.
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 5: Claire and you and I will be together. Is that
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 5: what you wanted?
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: Want it as if wanting is something that harks far back,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: But the word calls to her. Passion want it a
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: sob hands out. She goes to him, but before his
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: arms can take her, she steps back.
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 4: Are you trying to put me down into what I wanted?
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 4: Are you here to make me stop?
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 5: How can you ask that I love you because it
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 5: is not in you to stop.
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 4: And loving me for that would stop me? Oh, help
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 4: me see it. It is so important that I see it.
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 5: It is important. It is our lives.
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 4: And more than that. I cannot see it because it
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 4: is so much more than that.
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 5: Don't try to see all that it is from peace.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 5: You'll see a little more peace.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: Troubled as we are when looking at what we cannot
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: see clearly?
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 4: What is peace? Piece is what the struggle knows in
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 4: moments very far apart. Peace. That is not a place
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 4: to rest. Are you resting? What are you? You who
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 4: take me from what I am to something else?
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 5: I thought you knew, Claire.
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 4: I know what you pass for. But are you beauty? Beauty?
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 4: Is that only living pattern? The trying to take pattern?
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 5: Are you trying within myself? Claire? I never thought you doubted.
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 4: That beauty is.
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: She turns to breath of life as if to learn
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: it there, but turns away with a son.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 4: If I cannot go to you now, I will always
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 4: be alone.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: Tom takes her in his arms. She is shaken then
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: comes to rest.
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 5: Yes, rest, and then come into joy. You have so
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 5: much life for joy.
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: Claire, raising her head, called by promised gladness.
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 4: We'll run around together.
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: Lovingly, He nods up hills, all night on hills, Tom tenderly, all.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 5: Night on hills.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 4: We'll go on the sea in a little boat.
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 5: On the sea, and a little boat.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 4: But there are other boats on other seas.
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: Drawing back from him, troubled.
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 4: There are other boats on other seas.
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: Tom, drawing her back to him.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 5: My dearest, not now, not now, Claire.
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: Her arm's going round him.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 4: Oh, I would love those hours with you. I want them,
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 4: I want you.
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: They kiss, but deep in her is sobbing reminiscence, her
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: hand feeling his arm as we touch what we would remember,
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: reminiscence with one of her swift changes steps back from him.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 4: How dare you pass for what you're not? We are tired,
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 4: and so we think it's you stop with you don't
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 4: get through to what you're in the way of beauty
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 4: is not something you say about beauty.
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 5: I say little about beauty, Claire.
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 4: Your life says it. By standing far off you pass
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 4: for it, smother it with life that passes for it.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: But beauty getting it from the flower.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 4: Beauty is the humility breathed from the shame of succeeding.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 5: But it may all be within oneself.
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: Dear Claire, drawn by this, but held and desperate because
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: she is held.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 4: When I have wanted you with all my wanting? Why
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 4: must I distrust you now when I love you with
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 4: all of me? Why do I I know that only
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 4: you are worth my hate?
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 5: It's the fear of easy satisfactions. I love you for.
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: It, Claire, over the flower, breath of life?
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 4: You here are you, lonely breath of life?
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 5: Claire, hear me. Don't go where we can't go. As
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 5: there you made a shell for life within, make for
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 5: yourself a life in which to live. It must be so.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 4: As you made for yourself. Michelle called beauty.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 5: What is there for you? If you'll have no touch
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 5: with what we have?
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 4: What is there? There are the dreams we haven't dreamed.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 4: There is that long and flowing pattern.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: She follows that, but suddenly, and as if blindly, goes
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: to him.
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 4: I am tired, I am lonely, I'm afraid.
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: He holds her soothing, but she steps back from him.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 4: And because we are tired, lonely and afraid we stop
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 4: with you don't get through to what you're in the
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 4: way of, then.
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 5: You don't love me.
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 4: I'm fighting for my chance. I don't know which chance.
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: He is drawn to the other chance, to breath of life,
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: looks into it as if to look through to the uncaptured,
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: and through this life just cut comes the truth. She chants.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 4: I've wallowed at a coarse man's feet. I'm sprayed with
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 4: dreams we've not yet come to. I've gone so low
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 4: that words can't get there. I've never pulled the mantle
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 4: of my fears around me and called it loneliness and
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 4: called it God. Only with life that waits have I
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 4: kept faith.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: With effort raising her eyes to the man.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 4: And only you have ever threatened me.
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: Tom coming to her and with strength now, and I.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 5: Will threaten you. I'm here to hold you from where
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 5: I know you cannot go. You're trying what we can't do.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 4: What else is there worth trying?
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 5: I love you, and I will keep you from furtherness,
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 5: from harm. You are mine, and you will stay with me.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 5: Roughly you hear me, you will stay with me.
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: Claire her head on his breast in ecstasy of rest drowsily.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 5: You can keep me, darling, I can keep you. I
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 5: will keep you safe.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: Claire, troubled by the word, but barely able to raise
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: her head. Safe, Tom bringing her to rest again. Trust me, Claire,
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: Claire not lifting her head, but turning it so she
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: sees breath of life.
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 4: Now Can I trust what.
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: Is suddenly pushing him roughly away?
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 2: No?
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 4: I will beat my life to pieces in the struggle
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 4: to do what Claire not to stop it by seeming
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 4: to have it with fury. I will keep my life low,
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 4: low as I may never stop myself or anyone with
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 4: the thought it's what I have. I'd rather be the
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 4: steam rising from the manure than be a thing called beautiful.
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: With sight too clear.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 4: Now I know who you are. It is you puts
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 4: out the breath of life, image of beauty. You fill.
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 4: The place should be a.
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: Gait in agony.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 4: Oh that it is you fill. The place should be
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 4: a gate, my darling, that it should.
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: Be you who her hand's moving on him.
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 4: Let me tell you something. Never was loving strong as
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 4: my loving of you. Do you know that? Oh? No,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 4: that know it? Now?
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: Her arms go round his neck.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 4: I was with you. I'd give my life to have
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 4: that it should be you.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: He would loosen her hands, for he cannot breathe. But
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: when she knows she is choking him, that knowledge is
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: fire burning its weight into the last passion. It is you,
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: It is you, Tom words coming from a throat.
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 14: Not free, Claire, what are you doing?
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: Then she knows what she is doing. Claire, to his resistance.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 4: No, you are too much, you are not enough.
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: Still wanting not to hurt her, he is slow in
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: getting free. He keeps stepping backward, trying, in growing earnest,
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: to loosen her hands. But he does not loosen them
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: before she has found the place in his throat that
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: cuts off breath. As he gasps.
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 4: Breath of life, my gift to you.
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: She has pushed him against one of the plants at
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: right as he sways. Strength she never had before pushes
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: him over backward, just as they have struggled from sight.
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: Violent crash of glasses heard, Tom faint, smothered voice. No Claire,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: in the frenzy and agony of killing O Gift, Ho Gift,
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: there is no sound. Claire rises, steps back, is seen
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: now is looking down Gift, like one who does not
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: know where she is. She moves into the room, looks around,
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: takes a step toward breath of life, turns and goes
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: quickly to the door, stops as if stopped. Sees the
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: revolver where the edge vine was, slowly goes to it,
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: holds it as if she cannot think what it is for,
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: then raises it high and fires above through the place
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: in the glass left open for ventilation. Anthony comes from
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: the inner room. His eyes go from her to the
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: body beyond. Harry rushes in from outside.
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 9: Who fire that?
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 4: I did?
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: Lonely seeing Anthony's look, Harry's eyes follow it.
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 9: Oh what what?
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: Dick comes running in?
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 9: Who Claire?
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: Dick sees, goes to Tom, Yes, I did it?
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 10: My gift?
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 4: Is he?
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 9: He isn't? He isn't.
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: Tries to go in there cannot. There is the sound
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: of broken glass of a position being changed. Then Dick reappears. Dick,
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: his voice in jerks.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 10: It's it's no use, but I'll go for a doctor.
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: No, no, oh, I suppose falling down beside Claire, his
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: face against her.
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 9: My darling, Oh, can I save you?
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: Claire, speaking each word very carefully, saved myself.
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 2: We did it, didn't you see? I didn't want so
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: many rown not what this please?
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: She's for Harry, snatching at this, but lets it go.
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: She wouldn't let looking up at Claire, then quickly hiding
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: his face.
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 4: And don't you see out.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: A little like a child's pleased surprise out Dick stands
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: there as if unable to get to the door, his
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: face distorted, biting his hand.
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 2: Miss Claire, you can do anything, won't you?
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: Ray reminiscence, speaking the word as if she has left
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: even that, but smiles a little. Anthony takes reminiscence. The
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: flower she was breeding for, fragrance, for breath of life,
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: holds it out to her, but she has taken a
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: step forward past them, all out, as if feeling her
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: way nearra her voice now feeling the way to it,
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: nearra voice almost upon it, my god, falling upon it
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: with surprise to.
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 4: They it nearer to thee e'en.
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: Though it be a slight turn of the head toward
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: the dead man, she loves a mechanical turn just as
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: far the other way across that. Her head going down
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: raises me, her head slowly coming up, singing.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 4: It still all my song shall be nearer.
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: I Slowly the curtain begins to shut her out. The
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: last word heard is the final nearer, a faint breath
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: from far curtain. End of Act three and of the
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: Verge by Susan Glasspell