GOWAN
(holding the glass untasted)
Eight years. Eight years on the wagon — and this is what I got for it: my child murdered by a dope-fiend nigger whore that wouldn’t even run so that a cop or somebody could have shot her down like the mad-dog — You see? Eight years without the drink, and so I got whatever it was I was buying by not drinking, and now I’ve got whatever it was I was paying for and it’s paid for and so I can drink again. And now I don’t want the drink. You see? Like whatever it was I was buying I not only didn’t want, but what I was paying for it wasn’t worth anything, wasn’t even any loss. So I have a laugh coming. That’s triumph. Because I got a bargain even in what I didn’t want. I got a cut rate. I had two children. I had to pay only one of them to find out it wasn’t really costing me anything —— Half price: a child, and a dope-fiend nigger whore on a public gallows: that’s all I had to pay for immunity.
STEVENS
There’s no such thing.
GOWAN
From the past. From my folly. My drunkenness. My cowardice, if you like ——
STEVENS
There’s no such thing as past either.
GOWAN
That is a laugh, that one. Only, not so loud, huh? to disturb the ladies — disturb Miss Drake — Miss Temple Drake. — Sure, why not cowardice. Only, for euphony, call it simple over-training. You know? Gowan Stevens, trained at Virginia to drink like a gentleman, gets drunk as ten gentlemen, takes a country college girl, a maiden: who knows? maybe even a virgin, cross country by car to another country college ball game, gets drunker than twenty gentlemen, gets lost, gets still drunker than forty gentlemen, wrecks the car, passes eighty gentlemen now, passes completely out while the maiden the virgin is being kidnapped into a Memphis whorehouse ——
(he mumbles an indistinguishable word)
STEVENS
What?
GOWAN
Sure; cowardice. Call it cowardice; what’s a little euphony between old married people?
STEVENS
Not the marrying her afterward, at least. What ——
GOWAN
Sure. Marrying her was purest Old Virginia. That was indeed the hundred and sixty gentlemen.
STEVENS
The intent was, by any other standards too. The prisoner in the whorehouse; I didn’t quite hear ——
GOWAN
(quickly: reaching for it)
Where’s your glass? Dump that slop — here ——
STEVENS
(holds glass)
This will do. What was that you said about held prisoner in the whorehouse?
GOWAN
(harshly)
That’s all. You heard it.
STEVENS
You said ‘and loved it.’
(they stare at each other)
Is that what you can never forgive her for? — not for having been the instrument creating that moment in your life which you can never recall nor forget nor explain nor condone nor even stop thinking about, but because she herself didn’t even suffer, but on the contrary, even liked it — that month or whatever it was like the episode in the old movie of the white girl held prisoner in the cave by the Bedouin prince? — That you had to lose not only your bachelor freedom, but your man’s self-respect in the chastity of his wife and your child too, to pay for something your wife hadn’t even lost, didn’t even regret, didn’t even miss? Is that why this poor lost doomed crazy Negro woman must die?
GOWAN
(tensely)
Get out of here. Go on.
STEVENS
In a minute. — Or else, blow your own brains out: stop having to remember, stop having to be forever unable to forget: nothing; to plunge into nothing and sink and drown forever and forever, never again to have to remember, never again to wake in the night writhing and sweating because you cannot, can never, stop remembering? What else happened during that month, that time while that madman held her prisoner there in that Memphis house, that nobody but you and she know about, maybe not even you know about?
Still staring at Stevens, slowly and deliberately Gowan sets the glass of whiskey back on the tray and takes up the bottle and swings it bottom up back over his head. The stopper is out, and at once the whiskey begins to pour out of it, down his arm and sleeve and onto the floor. He does not seem to be aware of it even. His voice is tense, barely articulate.
GOWAN
So help me, Christ . . . So help me, Christ.
A moment, then Stevens moves, without haste, sets his own glass back on the tray and turns, taking his hat as he passes the sofa, and goes on to the door and exits. Gowan stands a moment longer with the poised bottle, now empty. Then he draws a long shuddering breath, seems to rouse, wake, sets the empty bottle back on the tray, notices his untasted whiskey glass, takes it up, a moment: then turns and throws the glass crashing into the fireplace, against the burning gas logs, and stands, his back to the audience, and draws another long shuddering breath and then draws both hands hard down his face, then turns, looking at his wet sleeve, takes out his handkerchief and dabs at his sleeve as he comes back to the table, puts the handkerchief back in his pocket and takes the folded napkin from the small tray beside the salt-cellar and wipes his sleeve with it, sees he is doing no good, tosses the crumpled napkin back onto the whiskey tray; and now, outwardly quite calm again, as though nothing had happened, he gathers the glasses back onto the big tray, puts the small tray and the napkin onto it too and takes up the tray and walks quietly toward the dining-room door as the lights begin to go down.
The lights go completely down. The stage is dark.
The lights go up.
Scene III
STEVENSES’ LIVING-ROOM. 10.00 p.m. March eleventh.
The room is exactly as it was four months ago, except that the only light burning is the lamp on the table, and the sofa has been moved so that it partly faces the audience, with a small motionless blanket-wrapped object lying on it, and one of the chairs placed between the lamp and the sofa so that the shadow of its back falls across the object on the sofa, making it more or less indistinguishable, and the dining-room doors are now closed. The telephone sits on the small stand in the corner right as in Scene II.
The hall door opens. Temple enters, followed by Stevens. She now wears a long housecoat; her hair is tied back with a ribbon as though prepared for bed. This time Stevens carries the topcoat and the hat too; his suit is different. Apparently she has already warned Stevens to be quiet; his air anyway shows it. She enters, stops, lets him pass her. He pauses, looks about the room, sees the sofa, stands looking at it.
STEVENS
This is what they call a plant.
He crosses to the sofa, Temple watching him, and stops, looking down at the shadowed object. He quietly draws aside the shadowing chair and reveals a little boy, about four, wrapped in the blanket, asleep.
TEMPLE
Why not? Don’t the philosophers and other gynæcologists tell us that women will strike back with any weapon, even their children?
STEVENS
(watching the child)
Including the sleeping pill you told me you gave Gowan?
TEMPLE
All right.
(approaches table)
If I would just stop struggling: how much time we could save. I came all the way back from California, but I still can’t seem to quit. Do you believe in coincidence?
STEVENS
(turns)
Not unless I have to.
TEMPLE
(at table, takes up a folded yellow telegraph form, opens it, reads)
Dated Jefferson, March sixth. ‘You have a week yet until the thirteenth. But where will you go then?’ signed Gavin.
She folds the paper back into its old creases, folds it still again. Stevens watches her.
STEVENS
Well? This is the eleventh. Is that the coincidence?
TEMPLE
No. This is.
(she drops, tosses the folded paper onto the table, turns)
It was that afternoon — the sixth. We were on the beach, Bucky and I. I was reading, and he was — oh, talking mostly, you know— ‘Is California far from Jefferson, mamma?’ and I say ‘Yes, darling’ — you know: still reading or trying to, and he says, ‘How long will we stay in California, mamma?’ and I say, ‘Until we get tired of it’ and he says, ‘Will we stay here until they hang Nancy, mamma?’ and it’s already too late then; I should have seen it coming but it’s too late now; I say, ‘Yes, darling’ and then he drops it right in my lap, right out of the mouths of — how is it? — babes and sucklings. ‘Where will we go then, mamma?’ And then we come back to the hotel, and there you are too. Well?
STEVENS
Well what?
TEMPLE
All right. Let’s for God’s sake stop.
(goes to a chair)
Now that I’m here, no matter whose fault it was, what do you want? A drink? Will you drink? At least, put your coat and hat down.
STEVENS
I don’t even know yet. That’s why you came back —
TEMPLE
(interrupts)
I came back? It wasn’t I who ——
STEVENS
(interrupts)
— who said, let’s for God’s sake stop.
They stare at each other: a moment.
TEMPLE
All right. Put down your coat and hat.
Stevens lays his hat and coat on a chair. Temple sits down. Stevens takes a chair opposite, so that the sleeping child on the sofa is between them in background.
So Nancy must be saved. So you send for me, or you and Bucky between you, or anyway here you are and here I am. Because apparently I know something I haven’t told yet, or maybe you know something I haven’t told yet. What do
