The Idealists

Mary: That’s all, Howard.

Howard: All! You knock over the world, and say that’s all!

Mary: Must I begin all over again?

Howard: You can’t break our engagement like this—for no reason—Mary! Is it something I’ve done—said? I’ll do anything you say——

Mary: Oh, no. No! It’s just that I don’t love you. I won’t marry you.

Howard: But you must love me. You—you couldn’t have—why, I’ve seen you—betraying more than you would ever say——

Mary: I suppose you mean kissing you. Is that it?

Howard: Yes.

Mary: (Leaving the window and coming forward to a chair near the table) You know, Howard—I’m going to shock you terribly—but kissing’s no sign at all. (She seats herself, her hands clasped loosely about one knee)

Howard: Mary! You—would let any man kiss you?

Mary: No. Not any man.

Howard: Well!

Mary: But within limits, you know——

Howard: You can’t understand what you are saying. I won’t believe that you could have allowed me to love—as you have unless you really loved me.

Mary: Don’t you see! There you go again, knowing more about me than I do myself.

Howard: Of course I do. You are trying to make me think you a horrible creature, a woman without self-respect, who would let any man kiss her——

Mary: That’s not quite what I said.

Howard: When I’ve seen your eyes, all luminous—don’t you think I’ve known—and knelt to you for the love you gave me!

Mary: Howard, I wish you’d try to believe what I say—just for a few minutes.

Howard: (Rising and moving about with short, irritated steps) I won’t believe you when you say such things. They aren’t true. You have promised to marry me.

Mary: Do you remember, several times—when I have tried to tell you—that if you didn’t—take all the love I had to give—you couldn’t keep me?

Howard: You wouldn’t marry yet!

Mary: And so you would take what you wanted—up to your limit——

Howard: Are you accusing me—for decency?

Mary: Never seeing——

Howard: A man has to protect a woman.

Mary: Well—I might have gone on—if he hadn’t written.

Howard: Why should that drive you mad! There’s more between you than you’ve said.

Mary: Am I mad? (She throws out her arms) I’ve been stifling and suddenly I see why. (Leaning forward, she brushes papers and ties off the little alarm clock on the table) If you don’t go, he’ll be here.

Howard: (Seats himself on a straight chair near the window) I am not going. I will stay and tell him I’m your affianced husband.

Mary: But you aren’t! That’s all over.

Howard: I won’t have it over! (Beseechingly) I can’t!

Mary: I’m sorry, Howard.

Howard: (Eagerly) Then see him, send him away, and we’ll——

Mary: Oh, he won’t stay. It’s curiosity he’s coming for. To see what he made of me! I was just a child. He played with me—(Howard winces)—with my soul. I was an ordinary, homely girl, expecting to marry and settle down, as every other girl I knew expected to. He discovered my wings. Then he went away—and left me with a lot of unused love. He hadn’t wanted it—on the level where he moved. You caught me on the rebound.

Howard: Mary! Don’t desecrate what you have been!

Mary: Is truth desecration?

Howard: It has the same sound.

Mary: You had a chance to tether that love. You haven’t.

Howard: Is he coming back to amuse himself with you again?

Mary: (Rises with a restless shake of her shoulders) Oh, you can’t see!

Howard: I see the whole structure of my life being knocked over. Mary! I’ve planned all the rest of my life about you. You can’t step out without even a reason.

Mary: (Slowly) I know those plans you have made. You’ve draped them all about me. They stifle me.

Howard: Plans any woman should desire draped—as you sneer.

Mary: Any woman? How do you know? Do you remember once—I said I never could stay in the nursery to tend children—if I wanted to paint. You told me, oh, most severely! that you would expect me to be on hand when the children had need of their mother. And I kept silence.

Howard: But if the children needed you——

Mary: I’ve tried to break through your plans with some of my own, and yours were iron fetters snapping shut about my hands.

Howard: It’s just that I know things will seem different to you, once you are married, in my home. I haven’t meant to fetter you.

Mary: You can’t help it.

Howard: I’ll leave you free——

Mary: (Stopping near him in her restless moving about the room) You think you could? You—who’ve grown content with——(She laughs, breaking off at the sound of a knock. She turns her head toward the door, her lips parted, a subdued radiance drifting into her face. After a moment she crosses to the door, flings it open and steps back)

Tom Chase (stands in the doorway an instant, looking at Mary before he speaks. He is tall, with a narrow face, gray eyes well spaced, and satiric lips. His laugh is as satiric as his lips; his smile, which is rare, gives his entire face an unexpected gentleness and sympathy)

Tom: Hello, Aspasia! (He extends his hand. Mary lays her hand in his, with a casualness which suggests the revival of an old habit) You’ve picked an out of the way place for your tower. (Draws his fingers across her wrist) You are more beautiful than ever, Aspasia.

(Howard rises, kicking his chair aside. Mary turns; the present telescopes suddenly into a vivid past, so that she is held above herself in a brooding intensity)

Mary: This is Howard Wincherly, Tom.

Howard: (Stiffly) How-de-do.

Mary: I told him you were coming, but he wouldn’t go.

Howard: (Seating himself again) I’m not going. It’s too important.

Tom: Am I interrupting anything?

Mary: You aren’t. It’s all over.

Howard: It’s not over, Mr. Chase. We are engaged. Suddenly, upon hearing that you are coming, Mary attempts to break the engagement.

Tom: (With a laugh) Aspasia! You aren’t engaged—to Mr. Wincherly!

Howard: Why not!

Tom: To that respectable man?

Mary: He called it that. I just said I’d marry him, and now I can’t.

Tom: Is he very rich? Aspasia, what have you been playing with him for?

Mary: Howard, won’t you please go?

Howard: (With dignity) No! Mr. Chase, are you in love with her?

Tom: (Laughing again) In love? Mary, did you think I was in love with you?

Mary: (Steadily, although the question wipes the color from her face) You know very well I never did.

Howard: You break our engagement because of him!

Tom: Come, come. She may give me as a reason. I don’t mind being given as a reason. But it will be more interesting to know the real cause. (He drops comfortably into the armchair near the table, Mary watching him as she answers)

Mary: You are the reason. And you are the reason I ever—was engaged.

Tom: I? Ah, Aspasia, can you find no better excuse——

Howard: That’s what she says. That she’s given me leftover affection—love you didn’t want!

Mary: (She moves slowly behind a chair, where she rests her arms on the back. She speaks hesitatingly, like a person trying a new language. It is, after all, a new language she is using, for it is the expression of long silences) I didn’t intend that remark for you, Pericles. But it is true.

Tom: Aspasia! Did I ever make love to you? We understood that love is only a delusion of the bourgeois—you and I—a mask for an ancient, disreputable instinct. Surely I never lured you into that morass!

Mary: You were subtle. I believed you—with my ears!

Tom: I found you unawake. I liberated your spirit. There was nothing else between us.

Mary: Nothing. And yet when your fingers touched mine, a flame went through my heart. (She watches Tom with grave, heavy eyes)

Howard: Mary!

Mary: Hush! I am finding out something. Pericles—you knew it! You saw I loved you!

Tom: I was afraid you did, at first. (He smiles at her, his slow, strangely sympathetic smile. Mary’s fingers strain together) But that wasn’t what we wanted. Women had loved me. To be quite frank, they were always falling in love with me. Falling in love—curious phrase, that. I thought of a companionship with a beautiful woman which should leave the flesh behind—and yet have all the nuances of emotion. And you—you were so deliciously young and eager to be taught. You grew out of that first reaction to me into this other.

Mary: Grew out of it? I grew around it. I hid it. I struggled to build walls thick enough to endure the terrible fire that blazed within—that I might give you what you wanted. All because I thought you didn’t know. And you were training me into your mould. Just as he has done! Have you come back to see whether I kept the shape you would give me?

Tom: Ah, Aspasia, don’t you realize that all your ferment made you heady wine, and I’ve come back (Under her intensity of gaze he puts off his mockery) I’ve come back because I missed you, Mary.

Howard: (Violently) What have you come back for? More of your nuances of emotion?

Mary: Howard, you’d better go, now.

Howard: I can’t go and leave you. You aren’t yourself.

Mary: (Seats herself, looking slowly from one man to the other. Howard rises and grasps the corner of the table, somewhat ridiculous in the stress of his feeling. Tom leans back in his chair, one leg thrown high over the other knee. His satiric delight in the situation is gradually slipping away) Not myself? Who, then? Your idea—or his?

Tom: Don’t be bitter, Mary. It doesn’t become you.

Mary: You didn’t wish any of the uncomfortable qualities in me, did you? Do you, Howard? I’m bitter now because I’m raw where I’ve wrenched myself out of chains. But I am out.

Howard: (With a beseeching humility) Mary! Do you mean our engagement?

Tom: Aspasia! Let me forge another set of chains. I’ll marry you. I’m tired of missing you.

Mary: (Leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in one hand) Funny, how you can go on, without ever knowing why. Here was I, always waiting for you to come back and discover that I loved you. And you had drawn me to the very edge—and left me. Oh, I remember that night you went! You quoted Shaw to me—“Cleopatra the Queen must have fortitude—courage—pride!” Were you afraid I’d make a scene? Then, because I was helpless with love, I threw myself into the first kind hands that offered. (Into her voice comes a note of compassion) Poor Howard! You had to shape me up, too. If you had just taken my whole life with your kisses I might have lived forever on my illusions.

Howard: Mary, I can’t hear you insulting yourself——

Mary: I insult only your ideal, Howard. I’ve lived up to it as long as I can—a nice woman—liking to be kissed, but not knowing why—eager, not too eager, to be the mistress of your proper household. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. I didn’t know I was seeking relief for the ravishing of—something more than just my body.

Tom: (Rising and towering over Howard) Can’t you see, Mr.—Mr.—what is your name—that she wants you to go?

Mary: Yes. Both of you.

Tom: (With a swift step to the table, where he pulls Mary’s hands from beneath her chin and holds them firmly) I’m not going. I’ve been a fool—but I’ve come back.

Mary: Yes?

Tom: (Bends over and kisses her. Howard makes a desperate step toward them, and stops, his hands clutched) There! Aspasia, I love you!

Mary: (As he releases her) That bourgeois morass!

Tom: You’ve said you love me!

Mary: (Rises, pushes back her chair, shaking herself with a splendid gesture) I was young—to lose my head! Now I’m cleared of it. (She drops her arms with a sigh) But—I’m tired. Won’t you go, both of you!

Tom: You don’t mean you don’t want me!

Mary: (Laughs quietly)

Howard: But what are you going to do?

Mary: (With a vague gesture about the studio) Oh—work. And I’ll hunt for a man who’ll meet me halfway. Body and soul and children and work—who won’t have a notion for me to live up to——

Howard: I’ll do anything you say!

Tom: There isn’t a man on earth——

Mary: Perhaps I can make one over—to my idea!

Tom: Practice on me, Aspasia! That would be interesting!

Mary: (Somewhat regretfully) I couldn’t. I bear too many of your finger-prints.

Howard: Anything you wish, Mary! That the real woman I know is you, desires——(He breaks off, disconcerted at Mary’s laugh)

Mary: Good-bye! (She retreats toward the corner of the room. Her laugh is not hysterical; in its devastating ring of amusement it has the promise of healing) Your plaything’s broken. The strings won’t make it dance. Good-bye!

(After a moment of staring at her, the two men look at each other. Either of them, alone, might linger insistently. The two can’t. Tom, with a gesture of resignation which attempts to be satiric, stalks out of the door. Howard, with several backward glances, follows. As the door closes behind them, Mary drops on to the stool before the easel, her hands relaxing in her lap)