MASKS[A]
The doorway from the public stairs opens immediately upon the living-room without the intervening privacy of a small hallway. The room was, no doubt, more formally pretentious in the early days of the WILLIAMS’ marriage; but the relics of that time—some rigid mahogany chairs and stray pieces of staid furniture—have been ruthlessly pushed against the walls, so that one perceives a “parlor” transformed into a miscellaneous room upon which the flat’s overflow has gradually crept. And with this has come GRANT WILLIAMS’ plain wooden work-table, bearing now a writer’s accessories, a desk lamp, and a mass of manuscripts; one of which is his unproduced drama, THE LONELY WAY, bound in the conventional blue linen cover. His well-worn typewriter is perched on the end of the table, in easy reach of his work-chair with its sofa cushions crushed and shaped to his form. Another chair is near by, so that it also may catch the flood of light which comes from the conventional electric bunch-light above. There is a small black kerosene heater to be used in those emergencies of temperature which landlords create. Not far from it, a child’s collapsible go-cart is propped. On the walls, above some over-flowing bookshelves, are several tastefully selected etchings. A window in back, which hides an airshaft, is partly concealed by heavy curtains that hang tired and limp. There is another doorway, directly opposite the entrance, which leads to the other rooms of a characteristically compressed city flat.
Yet the room is not forbidding: it merely suggests forced economies that have not quite fringed poverty: continual adaptation, as it were, to the financial contingencies of a marriage that has just managed to make both ends meet.
When the curtain rises JERRY WILLIAMS is seated in the cozy chair reading a number of newspaper clippings.
JERRY is an attractive woman in her thirties. Externally, there is nothing particularly striking about her: if there be such a thing as an average wife JERRY personifies it. She has loved her husband and kept house for him without a spoken protest; for she has had no advanced ideas or theories. Yet she has had her fears and little concealments and dreams—like any married woman. She has been sustained through the ten years of hard sledding by the belief in her husband’s ultimate financial success. And as she reads the criticisms of his play, THE SAND BAR, produced the night before, she realizes it has come at last. She is now completely happy and calm in the thought of her rewards.
She looks at the cheap watch lying on the desk and indicates it is late. She closes the window, walks over to the doorway and looks in, apparently to see if the child is still asleep. Then she closes the door and stands there, with just a suspicion of impatience.
Several minutes pass. Then she gives a little cry of joy as she hears the key turn in the lock and she sees the hall door open slowly—admitting her husband.
GRANT WILLIAMS is a more striking personality than his wife; about forty, with a tinge of iron gray on his temples, he has a strong virile face not without traces of idealism. His whole appearance is normal and devoid of any conscious affectation of dress. But a very close inspection might reveal that his suit, though carefully pressed, is well worn—as is the overcoat which covers it. GRANT happens to be a man of cultivation and breeding, with a spark of genius, who has strayed into strange pastures. At present there lurks an unexpected depression back of his mood; perhaps it is only the normal reaction which comes to every artist when success is won and the critical sense within mocks the achievement so beneath the dream. Perhaps with GRANT WILLIAMS it is something else.
JERRY
Oh, Grant, I thought you’d never come home.
GRANT
Best, the house manager, detained me.
JERRY
(Detecting his mood)
There’s nothing the matter with the play?
GRANT
Nothing; except it’s an enormous success. (She smiles again, and he wants to keep her smiling.) We were sold out to-night. The second night! Think of that! I had to stand myself.
JERRY
Well, I don’t see why you should be blue about it. There were always plenty of empty seats at your other plays. I knew THE SAND BAR couldn’t fail.
GRANT
(Throwing coat carelessly over chair)
You felt the same about the others.
JERRY
(Trying to cheer him)
They didn’t fail—artistically.
GRANT
You mean nobody came to see them—except on passes. But THE SAND BAR! That’s different! (With a tinge of sarcasm throughout.) You ought to have seen the way the mob at the National ate it up.
JERRY
I wanted to go but I couldn’t ask Mrs. Hale to take care of the baby again. Besides, I was anxious to read all the notices over quietly by myself and....
GRANT
(Picking them up and glancing through them)
Great, aren’t they? Not a “roast” among them.
JERRY
Not one. I couldn’t find Arthur Black’s review: he was always so kind to your other plays, too.
GRANT
(Evasively)
I forgot to bring in the Gazette. Best says he never saw such “money” notices. (Glances at one.) Doran outdid himself. (Reading the critic’s notice with a touch of theatrical exaggeration.) “The perception of human nature evinced by Grant Williams in his profoundly moving drama THE SAND BAR places him in the front rank of American dramatists!”
JERRY
Just where you belong.
GRANT
(Skipping)
“His hero, Tom Robinson, the artist, who deliberately deserts his highest ideals because his wife’s happiness is of more value than his own egoistic self-expression, is a new angle on the much abused artistic temperament.” (With a wise smile.) That “twist” seems to have got them. (Reading) “Marie, his wife, who is willing to risk her honor to test his love and thus awaken him to a sense of his human responsibility, is a character which will appeal to every married woman.”
JERRY
(She nods in approval, without his seeing her)
But read the last paragraph, dear.
GRANT
“In fact, all the characters are true to themselves, never once being bent by the playwright for dramatic effect out of the inevitable and resistless momentum of their individual psychologies.” And Doran used to report prizefights!
JERRY
I hope he doesn’t go back to it. He writes beautifully.
GRANT
By the way, I haven’t told you the crowning achievement of my ten years of writing. Trebaro—the great Trebaro who would never even read my plays before—asked me in the lobby to-night to write him a curtain raiser!
JERRY
(Happily)
That’s splendid!
GRANT
I’ve promised to get it done in ten days. His new play is going to run short. He’s got to have something to lengthen the evening.
JERRY
Have you an idea?
GRANT
No; not yet. But he doesn’t like anything with ideas in it.
JERRY
(As she sees him go to his typewriter to remove cover)
But, dear, you’re not going to begin it to-night! (Significantly stopping him.) To-night belongs to me—not to your work. (Nestling close beside him.) Dearest....
GRANT
All right, Jerry. I’ve only got a few paragraphs of personal stuff to bang off. Then I’ll be with you. The Times wants it for a Sunday story—with my photo. (As her face brightens again.) You see, Mrs. Grant Williams, your husband is now in the limelight.
JERRY
I’m so glad success has come to you at last.
GRANT
Better at last than at first. I’m told it’s bad for your character to be too successful when you’re young. So providence nearly starved us a bit, eh?
JERRY
You thought it was going to be so easy when we were first married. It’s been hard for you, dear. I know. Writing and writing and seeing other fellows make money. But now you’ve won out. You ought to be very happy, as I am.
GRANT
You are happy, aren’t you? (He takes her hands affectionately, then looks at them, turning them over.) The only hard thing, Jerry, was to see these hands of yours grow red and rough with the work here.
JERRY
Maybe that’s the only way they could help you.
GRANT
(Enigmatically)
It’s because of them and only because of them that I’ve done it.
JERRY
Done what?
GRANT
Oh, nothing. (He puts paper in the machine.) How about a glass of milk?
JERRY
I’ll get it while the great man reveals himself to an anxious public.
GRANT
And some crackers. (Sitting at machine.) They want something on: “How I Make My Characters Live.” (She laughs suddenly: he starts.) Oh; it’s you?
JERRY
Yes. I was thinking how funny it was to celebrate a success in milk.
GRANT
Yes. But the greatest joke of all is that THE SAND BAR is a success—a real financial success.
JERRY
It’s a very good joke.
(She goes out happily. Then a cynical look creeps into his face. He reads as he types.)
GRANT
“How I Made My Characters in THE SAND BAR Live.”
(He pauses a second, smiling cynically. Then, as he apparently hears something, he rises and goes over to the hall door which he opens quickly. He looks out and apparently sees a neighbor entering the apartment opposite. A bibulous “good night” is heard. He closes the door, turns the key, tests the door and sees it is locked. As he stands there puzzled, JERRY enters, with a bottle of milk, some crackers, and an apple on a small tray.)
You’ll have to get over this habit of waiting on me now.
JERRY
Don’t ask the impossible.
GRANT
But we shall have servants now; plenty of them.
JERRY
Plenty of them? Why how much money are you going to make out of THE SAND BAR?
GRANT
Nearly a thousand dollars a week.
JERRY
(Almost inaudibly as she nearly drops the tray)
My God!
GRANT
(As he puts tray on table)
It will run forty weeks at the National. Then three road companies next year: “stock” and the “movies” after that. I’m going to make as much money in two weeks now as I ever made before in one year—turning out hack stuff and book reviews. And all I’ve got to do is to sit back and let it work for me!
JERRY
It doesn’t seem honest.
GRANT
Maybe it isn’t, Jerry. (As he eats.) But when the public is pleased it pays to be pleased.
JERRY
(Venturing)
The first thing I want is some new clothes.
GRANT
(Grandiloquently)
My first week’s royalty is yours.
JERRY
Really?
GRANT
Throw away everything that’s darned and patched. I’m sick of seeing them.
JERRY
I was always so ashamed, too. Just think what people would have said if I’d been run over or killed in an accident.
GRANT
Now you’ll do the running over—in our new car.
JERRY
(Hardly believing her ears)
A car!
GRANT
Every successful playwright has a car.
JERRY
(Joyfully)
Then we’ll have to move from here to live up to the car?
GRANT
We’ve got to move. It’s more important to look like a success than to be one. (Glancing about flat.) And the Lord knows this doesn’t look like success.
JERRY
I’m so glad. I’ve grown to hate these five stuffy rooms without sunlight.
GRANT
Nothing to light them up these ten years but the glow of my genius, eh? Now I’ll have a big house to shine in.
JERRY
I’ve always dreamed of you having a room off by yourself.
GRANT
Where you could really dream without the sound of my typewriter waking you and the baby?
JERRY
But it will be splendid for you, too. I don’t see how you ever wrote here with me always fussing in and out.
GRANT
Washing the eternal dish and cooking the eternal chop.
JERRY
I don’t ever want to look another gas stove in the face.
GRANT
You’ve cooked your last chop.
JERRY
Oh, Grant; my dreams have come true.
GRANT
(Enigmatically again)
Yes. Success or failure: it’s all a matter of how you dream. (She looks up puzzled: he is silent a moment and then goes to machine again.) But I’ll never get this done.
JERRY
I’ll put on my old wrapper, for the last time, and wait up for you. I’m going to get a real négligée to-morrow. Your favorite color.
GRANT
I won’t be long. This is an awful bore and I’m tired.
(He begins to pound out something on his machine. JERRY goes over to hang up his coat, and as she does so, a newspaper clipping falls out of his pocket, on the floor. She picks it up unnoticed by GRANT. She glances at it; starts angrily to speak to GRANT about it; but seeing he is absorbed, hesitates and then conceals it. She hangs up the coat, comes around back of him as though to speak—but changes her mind. She kisses him. As she passes the table, she knocks off the manuscript of a play. She picks it up.)
GRANT
What’s that?
JERRY
The manuscript of THE LONELY WAY. (He looks over at it, with a cynical smile.) You’ve learned a lot about playwrighting since you wrote that, haven’t you, dear?
GRANT
Yes—a lot.
JERRY
(Tentatively)
You used to say it was the best thing you ever did.
GRANT
How did you happen to come across it?
JERRY
I found it behind the chest when I was cleaning.
GRANT
Oh, yes; I remember. I threw it there the day of my great decision: The day I made up my mind to rewrite it and call it THE SAND BAR.
JERRY
(As she glances over the pages)
Grant. I’m not going to lose you now that you’re a success?
GRANT
What ever put such a foolish idea in your head?
JERRY
You remember the Tom Robinson you drew in this play? All you made him think of was his art; he even threw away his wife to make a success of it.
GRANT
That was because his wife didn’t understand. Besides, dear, you know how much I altered my original conception of their characters and completely changed the plot. Look how different it all is in THE SAND BAR.
JERRY
And you think your changes made the play truer to life? In real life a Tom Robinson wouldn’t have got rid of her?
GRANT
I don’t think anything’s ever going to come between us, if that’s what you mean.
JERRY
Of course not. (Putting the manuscript on table, relieved, as she sees him resume his typing.) But I felt so sure of you when we were poor. Perhaps it was because you couldn’t afford to be wild.
(She turns off the switch and goes out. The room is lighted only by the desk lamp, casting its shadows into the corners of the room. He takes a cigarette from the box on the table, and as he smokes he reads half to himself what he has written.)
GRANT
“An author’s characters grow into life out of his observation and experience. Once they are conceived by these two parents their first heart beats are the taps of the author’s typewriter.” Good. “Gradually they grow into living men and women. They live with him, yet with a life of their own. In writing THE SAND BAR I ... I....”
(This makes him hesitate to continue. He glances toward the manuscript of THE LONELY WAY. He rises slowly and picks it up cynically. Then, as though fascinated, he gradually settles in the cozy chair by his table. He begins to become absorbed as he reads his earlier play. He puts his hand over his eyes, he lowers the manuscript, gives a sigh as though lost in the thoughts it calls up. The door, which he has locked, opens noiselessly, and closes as GRANT looks up in surprise and sees a man enter.
GRANT immediately discovers there is something extraordinary about his unexpected visitor. As he directs the light upon him, GRANT perceives the man’s power which lies both in his frame and impressive personality. His eyes have a relentless coldness when they narrow. His mouth is firm but cruel, with a sarcastic droop pulling down the corners. In spite of an occasional uncouth manner of spasmodically blurting out his words, GRANT soon realizes how keen is the intruder’s penetration when it is sharpened to the one point which vitally concerns him—his art. For this man of fifty-five winters, is a great artist. GRANT is too amazed and puzzled to recognize it is one of his own creations: TOM ROBINSON.
The latter comes over to the dramatist and places a hand on his shoulder.)
TOM
You and I have some scores to settle.
GRANT
(Moving away)
Who are you?
TOM
So you don’t recognize me?
GRANT
Your manners are familiar.
TOM
So Whistler once said. Look at me closely.
GRANT
Is this a dare?
TOM
(Shaking his head slowly)
An author’s brain is indeed a store-house of mixed impressions: a strange asylum for me to have escaped from.
GRANT
(Starting toward door)
Possibly the police may be able to lead you safely home.
TOM
I am at home with you.
GRANT
Don’t get excited. Keep perfectly cool.
TOM
I am cool because my intention is. (GRANT gives him a look as TOM goes over to the machine and glances at the heading of the article.) “How I Make My Characters Live!” You certainly do—some of us.
(GRANT suddenly crosses to the door, tries it and realizes it is still locked. He turns, bewildered, to TOM.)
GRANT
How did you get in here?
TOM
Why shouldn’t I? As your fellow-craftsman once remarked: “I am a trifle light as air.”
GRANT
I can’t say you look it.
TOM
(Eyeing him as he lights one of GRANT’S cigarettes)
Since you don’t recognize me perhaps you didn’t do what you did to me—deliberately.
GRANT
But I’ve never done a thing to you.
TOM
Are we so soon forgot? (Puffing) Yet how reminiscent the odor of this cigarette. I notice you still smoke the same cheap brand.
GRANT
I must say I admire your nerve.
TOM
You ought to admire it. You gave it to me.
GRANT
I never gave you anything.
TOM
(Bluntly)
Liar! You gave me life!
GRANT
Gave you life?
TOM
Yes; I am your child.
GRANT
My child? (He laughs.)
TOM
Many a man before you has tried to deny paternity with a laugh.
GRANT
But you’re old enough to be my father. Are you accusing me of improving on Nature?
TOM
All artists do. (Picking up manuscript of THE LONELY WAY.) Here’s how you described me. (Reading) “... his eyes have a relentless coldness when they narrow ... mouth firm but cruel.... Not attractive but impressive.” There I am. Read it for yourself.
GRANT
Then you are—?
TOM
(Sarcastically)
Your child. Your once dearly beloved brain baby.
GRANT
(Awed)
Tom Robinson!
TOM
As you originally conceived him here in THE LONELY WAY.
GRANT
Well, I’m damned.
TOM
I suspect you are. That’s what I’m here to see. (Ominously) And then if.... (Suddenly casual) But sit down and we’ll talk it over calmly first. (GRANT sits down astonished. TOM sits also.) Thanks.
GRANT
Go on.
TOM
Look at me. Here I am, as you drew me. Tom Robinson. Your greatest creation!
GRANT
I recognize the egotism.
TOM
(Blurting)
I am what my egotism made me. Your egotism also made you dare to conceive me, here at this very desk, out of your brain, in the puffs of your cheap cigarettes. The taps on your typewriter were my first heart beats. Your birth pains were my own cries of life.
GRANT
You certainly gave me a lot of trouble.
TOM
But you never suffered in having me as I did last night when I went with you to THE SAND BAR and saw what you’d done to Tom Robinson!
GRANT
(More and more amused at what seems to be the childish petulance of an admittedly great man)
You must have had quite a shock.
TOM
Shock? I was disgusted! Why, the actor who’s interpreting me isn’t even bad looking.
GRANT
No. He couldn’t be. He’s a star.
TOM
But I was your original conception. Why did you alter me into a good-looking fashion plate with charm? There never was anything charming about me; never.
GRANT
(Glancing towards his wife’s door)
Please not so loud. I made you unpleasant, I know; but don’t pile it on, Tom.
TOM
(With dignity)
Robinson to you.
GRANT
(Smiling)
I beg your pardon.
TOM
Why you authors feel you can take liberties with your characters is beyond me. I, for one, shall be treated with respect. (His eyes narrow.) Unless you have lost your capacity to respect a work of art like me.
GRANT
Come, come. I’m afraid it’s you who have lost your sense of humor.
TOM
(Sarcastically)
Perhaps you didn’t give me as much humor as you thought.
GRANT
But can’t we talk over the object of your visit in a friendly spirit? (With a smile.) Say, as father to son?
TOM
You’ll take me seriously before I’m through. I’ll remind you that I was a force in THE LONELY WAY though in THE SAND BAR Tom Robinson is merely a figure. One suit a year was good enough for me. You make him change his every act.
GRANT
(More at ease)
I’m afraid you don’t understand the demands of the modern theater.
TOM
What have I—a great character—to do with the modern theater?
GRANT
Nothing. That’s why I revised you.
TOM
(Bitterly)
Then why did you give me life at all?
GRANT
Because then I was fool enough to think the modern theater was a place for great creations. I recognize the conditions better now.
TOM
But in THE LONELY WAY you didn’t consider me a fool when I continued to paint great pictures—in spite of conditions.
GRANT
You were a great artist in that play.
TOM
And when you drew me you were a great dramatist. (Sadly) Now I see you are only a playwright.
GRANT
And at the National Tom Robinson has become only a painter of pot-boilers. (Mockingly) You’ve certainly come down in the world.
TOM
I don’t need your pity; but I want you to realize that what you did to me you also did to yourself. When you made me fall, I brought you down with me. (He shakes the manuscript before him.) Look! I had life there in a powerful play.
GRANT
I won’t dispute that. It was fine: beautifully articulated in its subtlety.
TOM
That just describes it. It was nearly as fine as my Sumatra Sunlight or even my Russian Nocturne.
GRANT
Which you never sold.
TOM
But what is painted lives for the future.
GRANT
Don’t be sensitive: my LONELY WAY is still here. Nobody would produce it.
TOM
Yet you cared for nobody when you made me live in it—perfect as the frame that held me. The strength you gave me in my own relentlessness was also yours. You glowed when you wrote it; as you made me glow when I painted. You felt the joy which only a creator knows when beauty and perfection slowly struggle out of his inner vision.
GRANT
But, my dear fellow....
TOM
Wait. Contrast this play with THE SAND BAR! With your skill as a builder you turned what was a lonely palace on a peak—aflame with my art—into a scrambly suburban residence where miserable ordinary people function. You produced a miserable makeshift of a play and made Tom Robinson a miserable makeshift of a man. (Accusing him.) But when you played tricks on me you played tricks on yourself. That’s what you did when you took from Tom Robinson his genius and made him paint pot-boilers at the National. Pot-boilers! Pot-boilers! Me!! Good God, man, did you know what you were doing when you rewrote this play?
GRANT
(Slowly)
I knew exactly what I was doing. I was turning it into a popular success.
TOM
(Outraged)
You had not even the excuse of self-deception?
GRANT
No.
TOM
(Eyeing him strangely)
Then you are worse off than we thought!
GRANT
We?
TOM
I wonder how far you have fallen! I shall be patient till we see the depths of your artistic degradation.
GRANT
You said “we”?
A WOMAN’S VOICE
(Outside)
Yes. We.
(GRANT gives a start towards the door, thinking the voice has come from his wife’s room.)
TOM
Oh, that isn’t your wife.
GRANT
Then if you’ve some friend concealed about your person, hadn’t you better produce her?
TOM
That isn’t my friend; that’s my wife.
GRANT
Your humor isn’t inspiring. I’ve heard that brilliant retort before.
TOM
Certainly. You wrote it yourself; but you stole it from Molière. If I had your memory I’d be witty, too.
GRANT
(Looking about)
I don’t seem to see Mrs. Robinson very clearly.
TOM
She says you never did. Come to think of it, she’s no longer Mrs. Robinson.
GRANT
Oh, I forgot. In THE LONELY WAY you divorced her.
TOM
Marie and I haven’t been on speaking terms since; but after she saw THE SAND BAR she simply insisted on coming here.
GRANT
Well, I’ll be happy to hear her grievance, too.
TOM
(Ominously)
You won’t think us so amusing when we are through with you.
GRANT
As a dramatist, I admire your talent for suspense. (Calling) Come in, Mrs. Robinson.
TOM
(Correcting him)
Case. Mrs. Pendleton Case. You’ve also forgotten that in THE LONELY WAY you made her marry him.
GRANT
To be sure. But in THE SAND BAR I made her stay with you.
TOM
Yes. That’s one of her grievances.
GRANT
Come in, Mrs. Case.
(GRANT watches MARIE come slowly from behind the curtains, into the light. Then he sees a handsome woman of thirty-five, bien soignée to the last degree. Yet somehow to GRANT her manner is an assumption she has acquired and not inherited. Beneath her vivid personality, her unrestrained moods glitter with force if not heat. But now she eyes him steadily with the greatest contempt. She wears a magnificent opera cloak, clutched close to her. She carries a small hand bag.
Though MARIE and TOM are aware of each other’s presence, they never address each other; they speak to each other through GRANT as though they existed only in him.)
GRANT
Do sit down.
TOM
Oh, Marie will sit down. Don’t worry.
(Before she sits she carelessly throws her cloak over the same chair that GRANT had previously thrown his coat. She stands revealed in a beautiful evening gown. It seems to proclaim to GRANT her daring and contempt for conventions.)
MARIE
After what I’ve just heard I don’t know whether it’s worth while to waste words on a creature like you.
GRANT
(Very politely throughout)
Your husband seems to have succeeded in doing it.
TOM
Her husband? Don’t try to saddle her off on me. Once was enough.
MARIE
It’s only our contempt for you, Mr. Williams, that finds us two together.
GRANT
To be sure. I keep forgetting.
(MARIE takes a cigarette out of the hand bag; GRANT offers her a light.)
Permit me.
(She glares at him and refuses it. As she searches her hand bag for a match, a small pistol accidentally falls to the floor. GRANT quickly picks it up and hands it to her. She replaces it. He offers her another light, which she sullenly accepts.)
MARIE
I wouldn’t accept anything from you, only, in my haste, I forgot my matches. (She crosses one knee over the other and puffs.) Brr—it’s cold here.
TOM
(Bluntly)
She wants a drink.
GRANT
Will she accept it from me?
TOM
She’ll take it from anybody.
GRANT
Oh, yes, I remember. I beg your pardon.
MARIE
(Seeing him lift up the milk bottle)
Milk!
GRANT
(Apologetically)
When I gave you your fondness for alcohol in THE LONELY WAY, we didn’t have prohibition.
MARIE
Was that the reason you took it away from Marie when you changed her in THE SAND BAR?
GRANT
Not exactly. You see no leading lady can ever have a real thirst. I’m sorry if you’re cold.
TOM
Oh, Mrs. Case will warm up when she remembers what you’ve done to her. She had a wonderful temper when she lived with me.
MARIE
I had to have. And you also took that away from me.
GRANT
I’m very sorry, Mrs. Case; the leading lady didn’t like your temper either.
MARIE
But I liked it. It was part of my character, as you originally conceived me.
GRANT
Yes; a character touch. It was the only comedy relief in my play.
TOM
It may have been comedy to you but it was no relief to me.
MARIE
(Emotionally)
My temper was my defense and my attack. It aroused fear and respect. Through it I got what I wanted out of life. It was mine! Mine! And you took it away from me! Oh!
(She rushes angrily towards the milk bottle and lifts it above her as though to smash it; but GRANT stops her.)
TOM
(As he lights another cigarette)
There you see. Every time she thinks of what a temper she has she loses it.
GRANT
(Still holding the bottle with her)
I concede your temper. I always had a hard time to control it. (Taking it from her courteously.) It was one of your most unpleasant traits.
MARIE
(Sullenly)
Then why did you change me?
GRANT
It’s a professional secret, Mrs. Case. The leading lady hasn’t the capacity to reach the heights your wonderful temper demanded. Besides, her specialty is cute ingénue stuff. She’s a great popular favorite, you know, and is consequently afraid to lose her following by playing any part which lacks charm.
TOM
(Bitterly)
Charm! Charm! There it is again, Williams. You hadn’t a bit of respect for Mrs. Case’s true character so you made her charming.
MARIE
But you gave me a charm all my own before I married Tom.
TOM
She kept it to herself; I never suspected it after we were married.
MARIE
But, Mr. Williams, you knew no one could live with Tom Robinson and not lose her charm. All he really wanted of me was to cook his chops and wash his dishes.
TOM
She seems to forget she was my wife and that I was a genius. She wanted me to get my precious fingers red and rough in a dish pan.
MARIE
(Flaring)
No. I wanted him to be a human being, not an artist.
GRANT
(Who has been trying to speak throughout)
Please. Please. Remember you two are no longer married.
TOM
You see: she’s warming up.
MARIE
(Bitterly)
How like old times.
GRANT
By Jove. I remember now. (Opening manuscript.) I remember everything about you.
MARIE
Don’t be humorous. There’s lots about your own characters you authors never know.
TOM
That’s what critics are for.
MARIE
So don’t try to make my temper seem trivial, Mr. Williams. I valued it. It gave me a chance to assert myself. It kept me alive as an individual. In THE LONELY WAY, while I was his wife, you made my whole fight to keep from being swamped by his personality.
TOM
As a married man yourself, Williams, you know damn well that women have got to capitulate in marriage. We husbands have got to close the door on them when they don’t understand us.
MARIE
(Contemptuously)
And in THE SAND BAR, Marie didn’t have the courage to take the things of life that lay outside the door! She didn’t dare, like me, because you’d changed her into a sweet simpering woman who loved her husband.
TOM
But the Tom Robinson she loved there isn’t the Tom Robinson you see here.
MARIE
No. The other is a hero! He’s a halo on legs.
GRANT
Your ignorance of theatrical conditions is appalling. THE SAND BAR had to have a happy ending. If I hadn’t made you both charming the public wouldn’t have believed in your ultimate happiness together.
TOM
(Bringing his hand down on the table)
Now we’re getting at it. Why the devil did you bring us together?
GRANT
(Trying to explain elementally)
Because I’d turned you into the hero and you into the heroine. They must always come together for the final curtain.
MARIE
But I wasn’t a heroine.
TOM
No. She’s right there.
MARIE
(Emotionally)
I was a bitter, disillusionized woman. I saw how Tom Robinson succeeded in getting out of life what he wanted by being relentless. I, too, became relentless and married Pendleton Case because he could give me what I most wanted.
GRANT
(Beginning from now on to lose his patience)
Yes; but that was too unsympathetic a motive to use in a popular play. So I had to make Pendleton Case a villain who took advantage of your trust in him.
MARIE
But Penny was only a poor gullible fool consumed by my egotism. Why were you so unfair to him? Why did you make him a villain?
TOM
Yes. I want to know why you gave him all my vices?
GRANT
If Case hadn’t had all your vices, Marie wouldn’t have had all the sympathy.
MARIE
I didn’t want sympathy; I wanted clothes!
GRANT
(Confused)
But the leading lady has to, have sympathy even without clothes. I mean——
TOM
(Quickly)
Do you mean that the reason you made me sacrifice my art in THE SAND BAR and rescue her from Case was because she had to have sympathy?
GRANT
Exactly. And, besides, how was an audience going to know you were a hero unless you sacrificed something?
TOM
But I’m not a hero: I’m an artist. You know the real reason I got rid of her was because she stood in the way of my art; because I wouldn’t let a single human responsibility weaken the vision within me.
MARIE
Wasn’t that reason enough why I should leave him?
GRANT
But that was too abstract an idea for the audience to get.
MARIE
So you turned an abstraction into a villain!
GRANT
Can’t you see your husband couldn’t rescue you from an abstraction?
MARIE
But I didn’t want to be rescued. I wanted to marry Penny!
TOM
And I was tickled to death to get rid of her.
MARIE
Yes. It meant release for us both to be ourselves.
GRANT
But, Robinson, you had to rescue her. She was the leading lady. The manager pays her five hundred dollars a week to marry the star.
MARIE
Well, she earns it.
GRANT
She earns it because she draws.
TOM
(Surprised)
Does she paint, too?
GRANT
She draws that much money into the box office.
TOM
Money, money! How that runs through your talk.
MARIE
(Referring to TOM)
I wish to heaven it had run through his.
TOM
(Lifting his voice angrily)
I was above such things. I am an artist. Money! Money! I see red when I hear that word. Money! Money! The curse of true art.
GRANT
(Pointing to his wife’s door)
Please, please; not so loud. You’ll wake the baby.
MARIE
(With a poignant cry)
Oh!
GRANT
What’s the matter with you?
MARIE
I forgot all about that. You also took my baby away from me in THE SAND BAR.
TOM
So far as I was concerned that was the only decent thing you did. I had to make money for the child.
MARIE
Have you forgotten that was the other reason I left him? He didn’t love our child: it was in his way.
TOM
Love a mewling, puking child? Not much.
GRANT
(Trying to calm her as she walks up and down)
Sh! Control yourself.
MARIE
My love for the child was the only decent thing about me.
GRANT
But I gave you other virtues. I made you love your husband.
MARIE
If I had to love my husband in your revised version couldn’t I at least have kept my child?
GRANT
Don’t be unreasonable. No leading lady wants a child.
MARIE
So you took it away to please the leading lady!
GRANT
Can’t you understand if I’d given her a child it would have complicated matters?
TOM
You’re right. It certainly complicated matters for me.
GRANT
(Trying to explain)
I wanted the struggle to be a simple one between two men and a woman. A child would have been a side-issue.
MARIE
You call my child a side-issue! (Looking at TOM.) Hasn’t his father anything to say to that?
TOM
(TO GRANT)
She can’t get me excited about that brat. It stood in my way. I’d have killed it myself if necessary.
MARIE
(TO GRANT)
But you killed it instead.
GRANT
(Losing patience)
Yes. I killed it for the same reason he would have: because it would have stood in the way of the play’s success. Are you a couple of fools? Can’t you both get into your heads I was writing a play to make money?
TOM
Money! Money again!
MARIE
(Astonished as she comes to GRANT)
So you killed it for money?
GRANT
Yes. Just as I changed you both for money.
TOM
If you’d killed it for art I would have understood. But to kill a creature for money! You are a murderer!
MARIE
(Sneering)
And how much blood money will you get for what you have done?
GRANT
A thousand dollars a week!
MARIE
(Overcome)
My God!
TOM
(Awed)
How much did you say?
GRANT
A thousand a week.
MARIE
You’re going to get that much for putting me into a popular success?
GRANT
Yes.
TOM
She isn’t worth it.
GRANT
(Determined to have it out with them)
It was worth it to me. Think of the exquisite joy I had in revising my problem drama. Think of how I turned two hectic, distorted, twisted, selfish, miserable, little-souled characters into two self-sacrificing, sugar-coated, lovable beings!
TOM
You are not only a murderer but a hypocrite: you distorted life to win sympathy for us.
GRANT
The theater no longer has anything to do with life. It’s a palace of personality.
TOM
Well, what’s the matter with my personality?
MARIE
Leaving him aside, what about me?
GRANT
You wouldn’t draw a cent. There wasn’t a dollar in either of you.
MARIE
Is that my fault? You made us what we are.
GRANT
Yes; before I learned that the public pays to be pleased. Do you think there’s anything pleasing about either of you? Why, you couldn’t even be happy together.
TOM
This is getting damned personal.
MARIE
What right has the public got to be so proud of itself? There’s many a woman in the audience worse than I am.
GRANT
But they want to be flattered into believing they are as much like heroes and heroines as you are not. The successful playwright, like the fashionable portrait painter, flatters and never reveals.
TOM
While true artists like me starve?
GRANT
And dramatists who write “Lonely Ways” also starve. What are you two kicking so about? Because I’ve made you respectable, wealthy and happy? Do you think the general public cares a whoop in Hades what I think of life, of my peculiar slant on the motives that mess up the characters that happen to interest me? No: all they want is what they want life to be.
TOM
How little you know of human nature. If we’d had a chance to be our true selves we would have been appreciated.
GRANT
By whom, pray? A few professional soul lovers. And they’d get into the theater on passes. No. You are caviar; most of the world lives on mush. So I mixed you in mush, sentimental glue, anything you want to call it.
TOM
You disgust me.
MARIE
But I see hope for you. At heart you despise the crowd, as I did its smug conventions.
GRANT
(Bitterly)
I hate what it has made me suffer.
TOM
Every great artist has despised them. I despise them.
GRANT
(More seriously)
Only I think the public has its rights. They have the right to laugh, to watch virtue triumph, to behold success, to feel love win out, to see what they think is happiness. They have that right because their own lives are so full of the other things. And maybe they like to dream a little, too.
MARIE
Who’s mushy now?
GRANT
Don’t sneer at a popular success. It’s sometimes more difficult to perform a trick than climb a mountain peak.
TOM
Have we artists no rights?
GRANT
(Wearily)
Only the right to dream and starve.
MARIE
But I’m not an artist: I’m one of your creations. Have I no rights? Must I be turned into a trained poodle and do tricks for money?
GRANT
You are only a phantom, a projection, a figment.
MARIE
(With great indignation)
You call me a figment?
TOM
(Rising ominously)
I’m tired of hearing you insult your own flesh and blood.
GRANT
I disowned you both when I rewrote you. I was thinking then of only one thing: the public.
TOM
Liar! You did deceive yourself! You were thinking of your wife and child.
MARIE
(Seeing GRANT is startled)
That gets you. You did this to us for them.
GRANT
(Himself serious now throughout)
Yes. I was thinking of them most of all.
MARIE
Yet when you created Tom Robinson in THE LONELY WAY you did not let him think of his wife and child.
TOM
That’s where I was bigger than you, Grant Williams!
GRANT
You mean more brutal.
TOM
Mush. Mush. You can’t hide behind that. (Impressively.) I am you! I could never have lived had I not been a wish hidden in yourself. I am what you would have been if you had dared!
GRANT
How dare you say a thing like that? I made you. I knew you inside and out.
TOM
But you didn’t know yourself. I knew when you wrote me that you wanted to be as relentless as you made me.
GRANT
I hated you. I hated every bone beneath your miserable hide!
TOM
(With a triumphant smile)
That only proves it! You were afraid to be yourself; so you created me!
GRANT
(Shrinking back)
No.... No....
TOM
You forget people have made gods and devils out of their own dreams to worship and hate. Look at me, through the mask you gave me, and see yourself! I was the worst of what was human in you—the devil side of you: I was the best of what was the artist in you—the God within you!
GRANT
(As though stunned by the thought)
God and devil. No.... No....
MARIE
(Seriously)
Now I see how I came into being. I was your wife, as part of you saw her! (He protests.) She was in your way, as I was in his way. You made Tom close the door on me because, deep in your soul, you wished to close it on her. She never understood.
GRANT
Stop. You shan’t go any further. She stood by me through all these years of poverty. She loves me and understands.
MARIE
(Relentlessly)
But you thought her a fool for loving you. You really thought she ought to go. You wanted her to go, I tell you. You wanted her to see that your art meant more to you than her love. But you didn’t have the courage to do to her what you made him do to me!
GRANT
(To TOM)
Take her away! I won’t let her say these things. I did what I did to you for Jerry’s sake. I wanted to make money so she would be happy. I couldn’t stand it to see her hands grow rough....
TOM
(Contemptuously)
Bosh! Art denies all human responsibility. You made me face that truth with my wife, and when I threw her out I was your own inner answer to that eternal question!
GRANT
I tell you my love for her is greater than for my art.
MARIE
Mush. Mush. It’s time to think of punishment.
GRANT
Punishment? (Triumphantly) I have a thousand a week. She will have clothes and comfort. And you talk of punishment!
MARIE
(Drawing a pistol and pointing it at him)
What you did to us means your death.
TOM
(Stopping her)
No. You cannot be killed, Grant Williams. You are dead already.
MARIE
(About to shoot)
I think I’ll make sure.
TOM
(As GRANT stares at him spellbound)
When you turned your soul into money you died. There is a greater punishment. We’ll let what remains of you live, as we shall live to haunt you in your dreams.
GRANT
(Laughing hysterically)
But you can’t live. I killed you. You’re dead, too. And the dead cannot dream.
TOM
We are your dreams. We will outlast you.
MARIE
We live. We shall go on living. Yes. That is a greater revenge. We’ll haunt you every time you are alone....
GRANT
You can’t. You can’t....
TOM
Whenever you smoke and think in your new house....
MARIE
Or walk by the sands, you will see only our hands beckon you from the living waters of the sea....
GRANT
(Frantically)
I’ll drown you like rats. I’ll keep you under till you are dead. You shan’t come back ... ever ... ever ... (They both laugh.) Get out. You phantoms.... I’ll kill you again....
TOM
Mush.... Mush....
GRANT
I’ll kill you forever now. (He picks up the manuscript of THE LONELY WAY and savagely tears it up.) Die. Die forever.... Die.…
(They laugh loudly and mockingly at him.)
TOM
You see we still live!
GRANT
Ah. I’ll kill you yet. I’ll kill you!
(He rushes towards them and overturns the lamp. They laugh mockingly farther off in the complete darkness.)
I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!
JERRY
(As she enters)
Grant!! What is the matter?
(She turns on the switch by the door. The other lights flare up. She is dressed in a kimono, with her hair in braids. He rushes towards her.)
GRANT
I’ll kill you!
JERRY
Grant!
(He holds her arms, suddenly realizing who she is and that they are alone.)
GRANT
You are real, aren’t you? You are flesh and blood?
JERRY
Silly boy. What on earth is the matter with you? I go out of the room for a moment and I come back to find you yelling and wanting to kill me.
GRANT
(Still dazed)
No. It wasn’t true: I don’t want to get rid of you. I....
JERRY
(In a matter-of-fact tone)
I do wish you’d get over the habit of acting all your plays out. The neighbors will think you and I aren’t happy. You’d better come to bed and get some rest.
GRANT
I—I couldn’t sleep just now.
(He goes over to the table and sees the manuscript of THE LONELY WAY untouched. He stands trying to collect himself.)
JERRY
It’s upset you, reading over THE LONELY WAY?
GRANT
(Half to himself)
That’s strange.
JERRY
Then what is the matter?
GRANT
(Evasively as he sits down wearily)
I—I was reading over the notices.
JERRY
I should have thought they’d soothe you, not get you so excited. Though there is one that put me in a terrible temper. (He looks at her quickly.) Why did you conceal the Gazette notice from me? (Smiling, she shows it to him: he takes it.) Did you think this would worry me because Arthur Black said THE SAND BAR didn’t live up to the promise of your other plays?
GRANT
(Half to himself)
And he was the only one who liked the others that failed.
JERRY
But it is outrageous of him to say you’d deserted your ideals. I have half a mind to write to the Editor.
GRANT
(With a thought)
Would it mean so very much to you if it were true?
JERRY
Of course it would.
GRANT
(Defensively)
But, after all, Jerry, does it make any difference to anybody but the artist whether he sells out or not?
JERRY
But, dear, I think you’ve just begun to reach your ideals.
GRANT
Just begun?
JERRY
Yes. I never told you before because I didn’t want to discourage you when we were so hard up. But, Grant dear, I never liked all those other plays—especially THE LONELY WAY. They seemed unworthy of you. THE SAND BAR is the first play that really seems true to life.
GRANT
(Staring at her)
Really true to life?
JERRY
Yes. And I hope from now on you’ll go on writing the plays that will make people feel happier and....
GRANT
(Suddenly bursting out in an ironic laugh)
I’ve got it. I’ve got it.
JERRY
What?
GRANT
The curtain raiser Trebaro wants. I’ll call it THE MASK. No. MASKS! That’s the title. I’ll show them whether I’m dead or not.
JERRY
What are you talking of?
GRANT
The theme of my play: that so long as an artist knows what he is doing with his art he is alive: that the only thing which can kill him is self-deception.
JERRY
Dear me, you’re going to write another play nobody will understand?
GRANT
(Contemptuously)
Why should I care whether anybody will understand it?
JERRY
But Trebaro won’t produce it, dear.
GRANT
Oh yes, he will: he said he’d produce anything I wrote no matter how good it was.
JERRY
(Seeing him eagerly go to his typewriter)
You’re going to begin it now?
GRANT
Yes. Now. I can write it off at a sitting.
JERRY
To-night—of all nights?
GRANT
Yes. As Tom said: while the “glow” is here. Now that I’m free. I’ll show them whether I’m dead or not. I’ll use their very words. I’ll make it bite.
JERRY
(Completely lost)
I don’t understand you or what you are talking about.
GRANT
(Gives her a look)
You don’t need to understand now, Jerry; THE SAND BAR has released you.
JERRY
(Hurt)
I never heard you talk like this before. You’re unkind.
GRANT
(Putting paper in machine)
I don’t mean to be, dear; only my nerves are on edge.
JERRY
(Begins to cry)
I can see that. You’ve no regard for my feelings.
GRANT
I have my work....
JERRY
You seem so far off all of a sudden. To-night of all nights! Just when you’ve made your first real success!
GRANT
(More testily)
Please. Please, Jerry. I won’t be able to write this if I have to think of anything else.
(He begins to write. He looks about the room showing he is describing it.)
“The scene is the living-room in a flat. The doorway from the public stairs opens immediately upon it without the intervening privacy of a small hallway....”
(He murmurs as he goes on, striking the keys very rapidly. She stands looking at him—hurt and wondering what it means: but he is absorbed. Then she slowly goes to the kerosene heater and lights it. She looks at him a moment.)
JERRY
I guess I won’t wait up for you to-night. I’m cold.
(She goes out, hardly controlling herself. He continues for a moment. Then he gets up, still absorbed, and closes the door after her. He resumes his work with the glow of intense creation on his face.)
[CURTAIN]