GOVERNOR
Oh yes, Manigault. The old Charleston name.
STEVENS
Older than that. Maingault. Nancy’s heritage — or anyway her patronym — runs Norman blood.
GOVERNOR
Why not start by telling me about her?
TEMPLE
You are so wise. She was a dope-fiend whore that my husband and I took out of the gutter to nurse our children. She murdered one of them and is to be hung tomorrow morning. We — her lawyer and I — have come to ask you to save her.
GOVERNOR
Yes. I know all that. Why?
TEMPLE
Why am I, the mother whose child she murdered, asking you to save her? Because I have forgiven her.
(the Governor watches her, he and Stevens both do, waiting. She stares back at the Governor steadily, not defiant: just alert)
Because she was crazy.
(the Governor watches her: she stares back, puffing rapidly at the cigarette)
All right. You don’t mean why I am asking you to save her, but why I — we hired a whore and a tramp and a dope-fiend to nurse our children.
(she puffs rapidly, talking through the smoke)
To give her another chance — a human being too, even a nigger dope-fiend whore ——
STEVENS
Nor that, either.
TEMPLE
(rapidly, with a sort of despair)
Oh yes, not even stalling now. Why can’t you stop lying? You know: just stop for a while or a time like you can stop playing tennis or running or dancing or drinking or eating sweets during Lent. You know: not to reform: just to quit for a while, clear your system, rest up for a new tune or set or lie? All right. It was to have someone to talk to. And now you see? I’ll have to tell the rest of it in order to tell you why I had to have a dope-fiend whore to talk to, why Temple Drake, the white woman, the all-Mississippi debutante, descendant of long lines of statesmen and soldiers high and proud in the high proud annals of our sovereign state, couldn’t find anybody except a nigger dope-fiend whore that could speak her language ——
GOVERNOR
Yes. This far, this late at night. Tell it.
TEMPLE
(she puffs rapidly at the cigarette, leans and crushes it out in the ashtray and sits erect again. She speaks in a hard rapid brittle emotionless voice)
Whore, dope-fiend; hopeless, already damned before she was ever born, whose only reason for living was to get the chance to die a murderess on the gallows. — Who not only entered the home of the socialite Gowan Stevenses out of the gutter, but made her debut into the public life of her native city while lying in the gutter with a white man trying to kick her teeth or at least her voice back down her throat. — You remember, Gavin: what was his name? it was before my time in Jefferson, but you remember: the cashier in the bank, the pillar of the church or anyway in the name of his childless wife; and this Monday morning and still drunk, Nancy comes up while he is unlocking the front door of the bank and fifty people standing at his back to get in, and Nancy comes into the crowd and right up to him and says, ‘Where’s my two dollars, white man?’ and he turned and struck her, knocked her across the pavement into the gutter and then ran after her, stomping and kicking at her face or anyway her voice which was still saying ‘Where’s my two dollars, white man?’ until the crowd caught and held him still kicking at the face lying in the gutter, spitting blood and teeth and still saying, ‘It was two dollars more than two weeks ago and you done been back twice since’ ——
She stops speaking, presses both hands to her face for an instant, then removes them.
No, no handkerchief; Lawyer Stevens and I made a dry run on handkerchiefs before we left home tonight. Where was I?
GOVERNOR
(quotes her)
‘It was already two dollars’ ——
TEMPLE
So now I’ve got to tell all of it. Because that was just Nancy Mannigoe. Temple Drake was in more than just a two-dollar Saturday-night house. But then, I said touché, didn’t I?
She leans forward and starts to take up the crushed cigarette from the ashtray. Stevens picks up the pack from the desk and prepares to offer it to her. She withdraws her hand from the crushed cigarette and sits back.
(to the proffered cigarette in Stevens’ hand)
No, thanks; I won’t need it, after all. From here out, it’s merely anticlimax. Coup de grâce. The victim never feels that, does he? — Where was I?
(quickly)
Never mind. I said that before too, didn’t I?
(she sits for a moment, her hands gripped in her lap, motionless)
There seems to be some of this, quite a lot of this, which even our first paid servant is not up on; maybe because he has been our first paid servant for less than two years yet. Though that’s wrong too; he could read eight years ago, couldn’t he? In fact, he couldn’t have been elected Governor of even Mississippi if he hadn’t been able to read at least three years in advance, could he?
STEVENS
Temple.
TEMPLE
(to Stevens)
Why not? It’s just stalling, isn’t it?
GOVERNOR
(watching Temple)
Hush, Gavin.
(to Temple)
Coup de grâce not only means mercy, but is. Deliver it. Give her the cigarette, Gavin.
TEMPLE
(sits forward again)
No, thanks. Really.
(after a second)
Sorry.
(quickly)
You’ll notice, I always remember to say that, always remember my manners,— ‘raising’ as we put it. Showing that I really sprang from gentlefolks, not Norman knights like Nancy did, but at least people who don’t insult the host in his own house, especially at two o’clock in the morning. Only, I just sprang too far, where Nancy merely stumbled modestly: a lady again, you see.
(after a moment)
There again. I’m not even stalling now: I’m faulting — what do they call it? burking. You know: here we are at the fence again; we’ve got to jump it this time, or crash. You know: slack the snaffle, let her mouth it a little, take hold, a light hold, just enough to have something to jump against; then touch her. So here we are, right back where we started, and so we can start over. So how much will I have to tell, say, speak out loud so that anybody with ears can hear it, about Temple Drake that I never thought that anything on earth, least of all the murder of my child and the execution of a nigger dope-fiend whore, would ever make me tell? That I came here at two o’clock in the morning to wake you up to listen to, after eight years of being safe, or at least quiet? You know: how much will I have to tell, to make it good and painful of course, but quick too, so that you can revoke or commute the sentence or whatever you do to it, and we can all go back home to sleep or at least to bed? Painful of course, but just painful enough — I think you said ‘euphoniously’ was right, didn’t you?
GOVERNOR
Death is painful. A shameful one, even more so — which is not too euphonious, even at best.
TEMPLE
Oh, death. We’re not talking about death now. We’re talking about shame. Nancy Mannigoe has no shame; all she has is, to die. But touché for me too; haven’t I brought Temple Drake all the way here at two o’clock in the morning for the reason that all Nancy Mannigoe has, is to die?
STEVENS
Tell him, then.
TEMPLE
He hasn’t answered my question yet.
(to Governor)
Try to answer it. How much will I have to tell? Don’t just say ‘everything’. I’ve already heard that.
GOVERNOR
I know who Temple Drake was: the young woman student at the University eight years ago who left the school one morning on a special train of students to attend a baseball game at another college, and disappeared from the train somewhere during its run, and vanished, nobody knew where, until she reappeared six weeks later as a witness in a murder trial in Jefferson, produced by the lawyer of the man who, it was then learned, had abducted her and held her prisoner ——
TEMPLE
— in the Memphis sporting house: don’t forget that.
GOVERNOR
— in order to produce her to prove his alibi in the murder ——
TEMPLE
— that Temple Drake knew had done the murder for the very good reason that ——
STEVENS
Wait. Let me play too. She got off the train at the instigation of a young man who met the train at an intermediate stop with an automobile, the plan being to drive on to the ball game in the car, except that the young man was drunk at the time and got drunker, and wrecked the car and stranded both of them at the moonshiner’s house where the murder happened, and from which the murderer kidnapped her and carried her to Memphis, to hold her until he would need his alibi. Afterward he — the young man with the automobile, her escort and protector at the moment of the abduction — married her. He is her husband now. He is my nephew.
TEMPLE
(to Stevens, bitterly)
You too. So wise too. Why can’t you believe in truth? At least that I’m trying to tell it. At least trying now to tell it.
(to Governor)
Where was I?
GOVERNOR
(quotes)
That Temple Drake knew had done the murder for the very good reason that ——
TEMPLE
Oh yes — for the very good reason that she saw him do it, or at least his shadow: and so produced by his lawyer in the Jefferson courtroom so that she could swear away the life of the man who was accused of
