27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays

  SPINSTER: (rising) It’s probably someone coming to look at the letter.

  OLD WOMAN: (rising on her cane) Give me time to get out. (She withdraws gradually behind the curtains. One of her claw-like hands remains visible, holding a curtain slightly open so that she can watch the visitors. The Spinster opens the door and the Matron, a middle-aged woman, walks into the room.)

  SPINSTER: Won’t you come in?

  MATRON: Thank you.

  SPINSTER: You’re from out of town?

  MATRON: Oh, yes, we’re all the way from Milwaukee. We’ve come for Mardi Gras, my husband and I. (She suddenly notices a stuffed canary in its tiny pink and ivory cage.) Oh, this poor little bird in such a tiny cage! It’s much too small to keep a canary in!

  SPINSTER: It isn’t a live canary.

  OLD WOMAN: (from behind the curtains) No. It’s stuffed.

  MATRON: Oh. (She self-consciously touches a stuffed bird on her hat.) Winston is out there dilly-dallying on the street, afraid he’ll miss the parade. The parade comes by here, don’t it?

  SPINSTER: Yes, unfortunately it does.

  MATRON: I noticed your sign at the door. Is it true that you have one of Lord Byron’s love letters?

  SPINSTER: Yes.

  MATRON: How very interesting! How did you get it?

  SPINSTER: It was written to my grandmother, Irénée Marguerite de Poitevent.

  MATRON: How very interesting! Where did she meet Lord Byron?

  SPINSTER: On the steps of the Acropolis in Athens.

  MATRON: How very, very interesting! I didn’t know that Lord Byron was ever in Greece.

  SPINSTER: Lord Byron spent the final years of his turbulent life in Greece.

  OLD WOMAN: (still behind the curtains) He was exiled from England!

  SPINSTER: Yes, he went into voluntary exile from England.

  OLD WOMAN: Because of scandalous gossip in the Regent’s court.

  SPINSTER: Yes, involving his half-sister!

  OLD WOMAN: It was false—completely.

  SPINSTER: It was never confirmed.

  OLD WOMAN: He was a passionate man but not an evil man.

  SPINSTER: Morals are such ambiguous matters, I think.

  MATRON: Won’t the lady behind the curtains come in?

  SPINSTER: You’ll have to excuse her. She prefers to stay out.

  MATRON: (stiffly) Oh. I see. What was Lord Byron doing in Greece, may I ask?

  OLD WOMAN: (proudly) Fighting for freedom!

  SPINSTER: Yes, Lord Byron went to Greece to join the forces that fought against the infidels.

  OLD WOMAN: He gave his life in defense of the universal cause of freedom!

  MATRON: What was that, did she say?

  SPINSTER: (repeating automatically) He gave his life in defense of the universal cause of freedom.

  MATRON: Oh, how very interesting!

  OLD WOMAN: Also he swam the Hellespont.

  SPINSTER: Yes.

  OLD WOMAN : And burned the body of the poet Shelley who was drowned in a storm on the Mediterranean with a volume of Keats in his pocket!

  MATRON: (incredulously) Pardon?

  SPINSTER: (repeating) And burned the body of the poet Shelley who was drowned in a storm on the Mediterranean with a volume of Keats in his pocket.

  MATRON: Oh. How very, very interesting! Indeed. I’d like so much to have my husband hear it. Do you mind if I just step out for a moment to call him in?

  SPINSTER: Please do. (The Matron steps out quickly, calling, “Winston! Winston!")

  OLD WOMAN: (poking her head out for a moment) Watch them carefully! Keep a sharp eye on them!

  SPINSTER: Yes. Be still. (The Matron returns with her husband who has been drinking and wears a paper cap sprinkled with confetti.)

  MATRON: Winston, remove that cap. Sit down on the sofa. These ladies are going to show us Lord Byron’s love letter.

  SPINSTER: Shall I proceed?

  MATRON: Oh, yes. This—uh—is my husband—Mr. Tutwiler.

  SPINSTER: (coldly) How do you do.

  MATRON: I am Mrs. Tutwiler.

  SPINSTER: Of course. Please keep your seat.

  MATRON: (nervously) He’s been—celebrating a little.

  OLD WOMAN: (shaking the curtain that conceals her) Ask him please to be careful with his cigar.

  SPINSTER: Oh, that’s all right, you may use this bowl for your ashes.

  OLD WOMAN: Smoking is such an unnecessary habit!

  HUSBAND: Uh?

  MATRON: This lady was telling us how her Grandmother happened to meet Lord Byron. In Italy, wasn’t it?

  SPINSTER: No.

  OLD WOMAN: (firmly) In Greece, in Athens, on the steps of the Acropolis! We’ve mentioned that twice, I believe. Ariadne, you may read them a passage from the journal first.

  SPINSTER: Yes.

  OLD WOMAN: But please be careful what you choose to read! (The Spinster has removed from the secretary a volume wrapped in tissue and tied with a ribbon.)

  SPINSTER: Like many other young American girls of that day and this, my Grandmother went to Europe.

  OLD WOMAN: The year before she was going to be presented to society!

  MATRON: How old was she?

  OLD WOMAN: Sixteen! Barely sixteen! She was very beautiful, too! Please show her the picture, show these people the picture! It’s in the front of the journal. (The Spinster removes the picture from the book and hands it to the Matron.)

  MATRON: (taking a look) What a lovely young girl, (passing it to the Husband) Don’t you think it resembles Agnes a little?

  HUSBAND: Uh.

  OLD WOMAN: Watch out! Ariadne, you’ll have to watch that man. I believe he’s been drinking. I do believe that he’s been—

  HUSBAND: (truculently) Yeah? What is she saying back there?

  MATRON: (touching his arm warningly) Winston! Be quiet.

  HUSBAND: Uh!

  SPINSTER: (quickly) Near the end of her tour, my Grandmother and her Aunt went to Greece, to study the classic remains of the oldest civilization.

  OLD WOMAN: (correcting) The oldest European civilization.

  SPINSTER: It was an early morning in April of the year eighteen hundred and—

  OLD WOMAN: Twenty-seven!

  SPINSTER: Yes. In my Grandmother’s journal she mentions—

  OLD WOMAN: Read it, read it, read it.

  MATRON: Yes, please read it to us.

  SPINSTER: I’m trying to find the place, if you’ll just be patient.

  MATRON: Certainly, excuse me. (She punches her Husband who is nodding.) Winston!

  SPINSTER: Ah, here it is.

  OLD WOMAN: Be careful! Remember where to stop at, Ariadne!

  SPINSTER: Shhh! (She adjusts her glasses and seats herself by the lamp.) “We set out early that morning to inspect the ruins of the Acropolis. I know I shall never forget how extraordinarily pure the atmosphere was that morning. It seemed as though the world were not very old but very, very young, almost as though the world had been newly created. There was a taste of earliness in the air, a feeling of freshness, exhilarating my senses, exalting my spirit. How shall I tell you, dear Diary, the way the sky looked? It was almost as though I had moistened the tip of my pen in a shallow bowl full of milk, so delicate was the blue in the dome of the heavens. The sun was barely up yet, a tentative breeze disturbed the ends of my scarf, the plumes of the marvelous hat which I had bought in Paris and thrilled me with pride whenever I saw them reflected! The papers that morning, we read them over our coffee before we left the hotel, had spoken of possible war, but it seemed unlikely, unreal: nothing was real, indeed, but the spell of golden antiquity and rose-colored romance that breathed from this fabulous city.”

  OLD WOMAN: Skip that part! Get on to where she meets him!

  SPINSTER: Yes. . . . (She turns several pages and continues.) “Out of the tongues of ancients, the lyrical voices of many long-ago poets who dreamed of the world of ideals, who had in their hearts the pure and absolute image—”

  OL
D WOMAN: Skip that part! Slip down to where—

  SPINSTER: Yes! Here! Do let us manage without any more interruptions! “The carriage came to a halt at the foot of the hill and my Aunt, not being too well—”

  OLD WOMAN: She had a sore throat that morning.

  SPINSTER: “—preferred to remain with the driver while I undertook the rather steep climb on foot. As I ascended the long and crumbling flight of old stone steps—”

  OLD WOMAN: Yes, yes, that’s the place! (The Spinster looks up in annoyance. The Old Woman’s cane taps impatiently behind the curtains.’) Go on, Ariadne!

  SPINSTER: “I could not help observing continually above me a man who walked with a barely perceptible limp—”

  OLD WOMAN: (in hushed wonder) Yes—Lord Byron!

  SPINSTER: “—and as he turned now and then to observe beneath him the lovely panorama—”

  OLD WOMAN: Actually he was watching the girl behind him!

  SPINSTER: (sharply) Will you please let me finish? (There is no answer from behind the curtains, and she continues to read.) “I was irresistibly impressed by the unusual nobility and refinement of his features!” (She turns a page.)

  OLD WOMAN: The handsomest man that ever walked the earth! (She emphasizes the speech with three slow but loud taps of her cane.)

  SPINSTER: (flurriedly) “The strength and grace of his throat, like that of a statue, the classic outlines of his profile, the sensitive lips and the slightly dilated nostrils, the dark lock of hair that fell down over his forehead in such a way that—”

  OLD WOMAN: (tapping her cane rapidly) Skip that, it goes on for pages!

  SPINSTER: “. . . When he had reached the very summit of the Acropolis he spread out his arms in a great, magnificent gesture like a young god. Now, thought I to myself, Apollo has come to earth in modern dress.”

  OLD WOMAN: Go on, skip that, get on to where she meets him!

  SPINSTER: “Fearing to interrupt his poetic trance, I slackened my pace and pretended to watch the view. I kept my look thus carefully averted until the narrowness of the steps compelled me to move close by him.”

  OLD WOMAN: Of course he pretended not to see she was coming!

  SPINSTER: “Then finally I faced him.”

  OLD WOMAN: Yes!

  SPINSTER: “Our eyes came together!”

  OLD WOMAN: Yes! Yes! That’s the part!

  SPINSTER: “A thing which I don’t understand had occurred between us, a flush as of recognition swept through my whole being! Suffused my—”

  OLD WOMAN: Yes . . . Yes, that’s the part!

  SPINSTER: “‘Pardon me,’ he exclaimed, ‘you have dropped your glove!’ And indeed to my surprise I found that I had, and as he returned it to me, his fingers ever so slightly pressed the cups of my palm.”

  OLD WOMAN: (hoarsely) Yes! (Her bony fingers clutch higher up on the curtain, the other hand also appears, slightly widening the aperture.)

  SPINSTER: “Believe me, dear Diary, I became quite faint and breathless, I almost wondered if I could continue my lonely walk through the ruins. Perhaps I stumbled, perhaps I swayed a little. I leaned for a moment against the side of a column.

  The sun seemed terribly brilliant, it hurt my eyes. Close behind me I heard that voice again, almost it seemed I could feel his breath on my—”

  OLD WOMAN: Stop there! That will be quite enough! (The Spinster closes the journal.)

  MATRON: Oh, is that all?

  OLD WOMAN: There’s a great deal more that’s not to be read to people.

  MATRON: Oh.

  SPINSTER: I’m sorry. I’ll show you the letter.

  MATRON: How nice! I’m dying to see it! Winston? Do sit up! (He has nearly fallen asleep. The Spinster produces from the cabinet another small packet which she unfolds. It contains the letter. She hands it to the Matron, who starts to open it.)

  OLD WOMAN: Watch out, watch out, that woman can’t open the letter!

  SPINSTER: No, no, please, you mustn’t. The contents of the letter are strictly private. I’ll hold it over here at a little distance so you can see the writing.

  OLD WOMAN: Not too close, she’s holding up her glasses! (The Matron quickly lowers her lorgnette.)

  SPINSTER: Only a short while later Byron was killed.

  MATRON: How did he die?

  OLD WOMAN: He was killed in action, defending the cause of freedom! (This is uttered so strongly the husband starts.)

  SPINSTER: When my Grandmother received the news of Lord Byron’s death in battle, she retired from the world and remained in complete seclusion for the rest of her life.

  MATRON: Tch-tch-tch! How dreadful! I think that was foolish of her. (The cane taps furiously behind the curtains.)

  SPINSTER: You don’t understand. When a life is completed, it ought to be put away. It’s like a sonnet. When you’ve written the final couplet, why go on any further? You only destroy the part that’s already written!

  OLD WOMAN: Read them the poem, the sonnet your Grandmother wrote to the memory of Lord Byron.

  SPINSTER: Would you be interested?

  MATRON: We’d adore it—truly!

  SPINSTER: It’s called Enchantment.

  MATRON: (She assumes a rapt expression.) Aahhh!

  SPINSTER: (reciting)

  “Un saison enchanté! I mused. Beguiled

  Seemed Time herself, her erstwhile errant ways

  Briefly forgotten, she stayed here and smiled,

  Caught in a net of blue and golden days.”

  OLD WOMAN: Not blue and golden—gold and azure days!

  SPINSTER:

  “Caught in a net—of gold and azure days!

  But I lacked wit to see how lightly shoon

  Were Time and you, to vagrancy so used—”

  (The Old Woman begins to accompany in a hoarse undertone. Faint band music can be heard.)

  “That by the touch of one October moon

  From summer’s tranquil spell you might be loosed!”

  OLD WOMAN: (rising stridently with intense feeling above the Spinster’s voice)

  “Think you love is writ on my soul with chalk,

  To be washed off by a few parting tears?

  Then you know not with what slow step I walk

  The barren way of those hibernal years—

  My life a vanished interlude, a shell

  Whose walls are your first kiss—and last farewell!”

  (The band, leading the parade, has started down the street, growing rapidly louder. It passes by like the heedless, turbulent years. The Husband, roused from his stupor, lunges to the door.)

  MATRON: What’s that, what’s that? The parade? (The Husband slaps the paper cap on his head and rushes for the door.)

  HUSBAND: (at the door) Come on, Mama, you’ll miss it!

  SPINSTER: (quickly) We usually accept—you understand?—a small sum of money, just anything that you happen to think you can spare.

  OLD WOMAN: Stop him! He’s gone outside! (The Husband has escaped to the street. The band blares through the door.)

  SPINSTER: (extending her hand) Please—a dollar . . .

  OLD WOMAN: Fifty cents!

  SPINSTER: Or a quarter!

  MATRON: (paying no attention to them) Oh, my goodness—Winston! He’s disappeared in the crowd! Winston—Winston! Excuse me! (She rushes out onto the door sill.) Winston! Oh, my goodness gracious, he’s off again!

  SPINSTER: (quickly) We usually accept a little money for the display of the letter. Whatever you feel that you are able to give. As a matter of fact it’s all that we have to live on!

  OLD WOMAN: (loudly) One dollar!

  SPINSTER: Fifty cents—or a quarter!

  MATRON: (oblivious, at the door) Winston! Winston! Heavenly days. Goodbye! (She rushes out on the street. The Spinster follows to the door, and shields her eyes from the light as she looks after the Matron. A stream of confetti is tossed through the doorway into her face. Trumpets blare. She slams the door shut and bolts it.)

  SPINSTER: Canaille
! . . . Canaille!

  OLD WOMAN: Gone? Without paying? Cheated us? (She parts the curtains.)

  SPINSTER: Yes—the canaille! (She fastidiously plucks the thread of confetti from her shoulder. The Old Woman steps from behind the curtains, rigid with anger.)

  OLD WOMAN: Ariadne, my letter! You’ve dropped my letter! Your Grandfather’s letter is lying on the floor!

  CURTAIN

  The Strangest Kind of Romance

  A Lyric Play in Four Scenes

  The game enforces smirks; but we have seen the moon in lonely alleys make a grail of laughter of an empty ash can, and through all sound of gaiety and quest have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

  HART CRANE (Chaplinesque)

  CHARACTERS

  THE LITTLE MAN.

  THE LANDLADY.

  THE OLD MAN, her father-in-law.

  THE BOXER.

  NITCHEVO, the cat.

  The Strangest Kind of Romance

  SCENE: A furnished room in a small industrial city of the middle-western states. It resembles any such room except that the walls are covered with inscriptions, the signatures of former occupants of it, men who have stayed and passed along to other such places, the itinerant, unmarried working-men of a nation. There are two windows. One shows the delicate branches of a tree that is surrendering its leaves to late autumn. The other window admits a view of the bristling stacks of the great manufacturing plant which is the heart of the city.

  SCENE I

  The Landlady, a heavy woman of forty who moves and speaks with a powerful sort of indolence, is showing the room to a prospective roomer, the Little Man, dark and more delicate and nervous in appearance than laborers usually are. As soon as he enters the door behind the Landlady, his remarkably dilapidated suitcase comes apart, spilling its contents over the floor—unlaundered shirts, old shoes, shoe-polish, a rosary.

  LANDLADY: (laughing) Well! The suitcase has decided!

  LITTLE MAN: (stooping to replace the scattered articles) It’s been working loose all day.