GOVERNOR
Do you want to ask me that first?
TEMPLE
I can’t. I don’t dare. You might say no.
GOVERNOR
Then you wouldn’t have to tell me about Temple Drake.
TEMPLE
I’ve got to do that. I’ve got to say it all, or I wouldn’t be here. But unless I can still believe that you might say yes, I don’t see how I can. Which is another touché for somebody: God, maybe — if there is one. You see? That’s what’s so terrible. We don’t even need Him. Simple evil is enough. Even after eight years, it’s still enough. It was eight years ago that Uncle Gavin said — oh yes, he was there too; didn’t you just hear him? He could have told you all of this or anyway most of it over the telephone and you could be in bed asleep right this minute — said how there is a corruption even in just looking at evil, even by accident; that you can’t haggle, traffic, with putrefaction — you can’t, you don’t dare —
(she stops, tense, motionless)
GOVERNOR
Take the cigarette now.
(to Stevens)
Gavin ——
(Stevens takes up the pack and prepares to offer the cigarette)
TEMPLE
No, thanks. It’s too late now. Because here we go. If we can’t jump the fence, we can at least break through it ——
STEVENS
(interrupts)
Which means that anyway one of us will get over standing up.
(as Temple reacts)
Oh yes, I’m still playing; I’m going to ride this one too. Go ahead.
(prompting)
Temple Drake ——
TEMPLE
— Temple Drake, the foolish virgin; that is, a virgin as far as anybody went on record to disprove, but a fool certainly by anybody’s standards and computation; seventeen, and more of a fool than simply being a virgin or even being seventeen could excuse or account for; indeed, showing herself capable of a height of folly which even seven or three, let alone mere virginity, could scarcely have matched ——
STEVENS
Give the brute a chance. Try at least to ride him at the fence and not just through it.
TEMPLE
You mean the Virginia gentlemen.
(to Governor)
That’s my husband. He went to the University of Virginia, trained, Uncle Gavin would say, at Virginia not only in drinking but in gentility too ——
STEVENS
— and ran out of both at the same instant that day eight years ago when he took her off the train and wrecked the car at the moonshiner’s house.
TEMPLE
But relapsed into one of them at least because at least he married me as soon as he could.
(to Stevens)
You don’t mind my telling his excellency that, do you?
STEVENS
A relapse into both of them. He hasn’t had a drink since that day either. His excellency might bear that in mind too.
GOVERNOR
I will. I have.
(he makes just enough of a pause to cause them both to stop and look at him)
I almost wish ——
(they are both watching him; this is the first intimation we have that something is going on here, an undercurrent: that the Governor and Stevens know something which Temple doesn’t: to Temple)
He didn’t come with you.
STEVENS
(mildly yet quickly)
Won’t there be time for that later, Henry?
TEMPLE
(quick, defiant, suspicious, hard)
Who didn’t?
GOVERNOR
Your husband.
TEMPLE
(quick and hard)
Why?
GOVERNOR
You have come here to plead for the life of the murderess of your child. Your husband was its parent too.
TEMPLE
You’re wrong. We didn’t come here at two o’clock in the morning to save Nancy Mannigoe. Nancy Mannigoe is not even concerned in this because Nancy Mannigoe’s lawyer told me before we ever left Jefferson that you were not going to save Nancy Mannigoe. What we came here and waked you up at two o’clock in the morning for is just to give Temple Drake a good fair honest chance to suffer — you know: just anguish for the sake of anguish, like that Russian or somebody who wrote a whole book about suffering, not suffering for or about anything, just suffering, like somebody unconscious not really breathing for anything but just breathing. Or maybe that’s wrong too and nobody really cares, suffers, any more about suffering than they do about truth or justice or Temple Drake’s shame or Nancy Mannigoe’s worthless nigger life ——
She stops speaking, sitting quite still, erect in the chair, her face raised slightly, not looking at either of them while they watch her.
GOVERNOR
Give her the handkerchief now.
Stevens takes a fresh handkerchief from his pocket, shakes it out and extends it toward Temple. She does not move, her hands still clasped in her lap. Stevens rises, crosses, drops the handkerchief into her lap, returns to his chair.
TEMPLE
Thanks really. But it doesn’t matter now; we’re too near the end; you could almost go on down to the car and start it and have the engine warming up while I finish.
(to Governor)
You see? All you’ll have to do now is just be still and listen. Or not even listen if you don’t want to: but just be still, just wait. And not long either now, and then we can all go to bed and turn off the light. And then, night: dark, sleep even maybe, when with the same arm you turn off the light and pull the covers up with, you can put away forever Temple Drake and whatever it is you have done about her, and Nancy Mannigoe and whatever it is you have done about her, if you’re going to do anything, if it even matters anyhow whether you do anything or not, and none of it will ever have to bother us any more. Because Uncle Gavin was only partly right. It’s not that you must never even look on evil and corruption; sometimes you can’t help that, you are not always warned. It’s not even that you must resist it always. Because you’ve got to start much sooner than that. You’ve got to be already prepared to resist it, say no to it, long before you see it; you must have already said no to it long before you even know what it is. I’ll have the cigarette now, please.
Stevens takes up the pack, rising and working the end of a cigarette free, and extends the pack. She takes the cigarette, already speaking again while Stevens puts the pack on the desk and takes up the lighter which the Governor, watching Temple, shoves across the desk where Stevens can reach it. Stevens snaps the lighter on and holds it out. Temple makes no effort to light the cigarette, holding the cigarette in her hand and talking. Then she lays the cigarette unlighted on the ashtray and Stevens closes the lighter and sits down again, putting the lighter down beside the pack of cigarettes.
Because Temple Drake liked evil. She only went to the ball game because she would have to get on a train to do it, so that she could slip off the train the first time it stopped, and get into the car to drive a hundred miles with a man ——
STEVENS
— who couldn’t hold his drink.
TEMPLE
(to Stevens)
All right. Aren’t I just saying that?
(to Governor)
An optimist. Not the young man; he was just doing the best he knew, could. It wasn’t him that suggested the trip: it was Temple ——
STEVENS
It was his car though. Or his mother’s.
TEMPLE
(to Stevens)
All right. All right.
(to Governor)
No, Temple was the optimist: not that she had foreseen, planned ahead either: she just had unbounded faith that her father and brothers would know evil when they saw it, so all she had to do was, do the one thing which she knew they would forbid her to do if they had the chance. And they were right about the evil, and so of course she was right too, though even then it was not easy: she even had to drive the car for a while after we began to realise that the young man was wrong, had graduated too soon in the drinking part of his Virginia training ——
STEVENS
It was Gowan who knew the moonshiner and insisted on going there.
TEMPLE
— and even then ——
STEVENS
He was driving when you wrecked.
TEMPLE
(to Stevens: quick and harsh)
And married me for it. Does he have to pay for it twice? It wasn’t really worth paying for once, was it?
(to Governor)
And even then ——
GOVERNOR
How much was it worth?
TEMPLE
Was what worth?
GOVERNOR
His marrying you.
TEMPLE
You mean to him, of course. Less than he paid for it.
GOVERNOR
Is that what he thinks too?
(they stare at one another, Temple alert, quite watchful, though rather impatient than anything else)
You’re going to tell me something that he doesn’t know, else you would have brought him with you. Is that right?
TEMPLE
Yes.
GOVERNOR
Would you tell it if he were here?
(Temple is staring at the Governor. Unnoticed by her, Stevens makes a faint movement. The Governor stops him with a slight motion of one hand which also Temple does not notice)
Now that you have come this far, now that, as you said, you have got to tell it, say it aloud, not to save Nan — this woman, but because you decided before you left home tonight that there is nothing else to do but tell it.
TEMPLE
How do I know whether I would or not?
GOVERNOR
Suppose he was here — sitting in that chair where Gav — your uncle is ——
TEMPLE
— or behind the door or in
