I

Act One

*****

Scene: Living room of James Tyrone's summer home on a morning in August, 1912.

At rear are two double doorways with portieres. Through the one at right one has a glimpse of a front parlour with the formally arranged, set appearance of a room rarely occupied. The other doorway opens on a dark, windowless back parlour, never used except as a passage from living-room to dining room. Against the wall between the doorways is a small bookcase, with a picture of Shakespeare hanging above it, containing novels by Balzac, Zola, Stendal, philosophical and sociological works by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, Max Sterner, plays by Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, poetry by Swinburne, Rossetti, Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Kipling, etc.

In the right wall, rear, is a screen door leading out on the porch that extends halfway around the house. Farther forward, in a series of three windows looking over the front lawn to the harbor and the avenue which runs along the waterfront. A small wicker table and an ordinary oak desk are against the wall, at rear and at front of the windows.

In the left wall, an identical series of windows looks out on the grounds in back of the house. Beneath them is a wicker couch with cushions, its head toward rear. Farther back is a large, glassed-in bookcase with imposingly bound sets of Dumas, Victor Hugo, Charles Le Ver, two sets of Shakespeare, The World's Best Literature in fifty large volumes, Hume's History of England, Thier's History of the Consulate and the Empire, Smollett's History of England, Gibbon's Roman Empire and miscellaneous single volumes of plays, poetry, and several histories of Ireland. The astonishing thing about the sets is that all the volumes have the look of having been read and reread.

The polished hard wood floor is nearly covered by a rug, inoffensive in design and color. scheme, neither expensive nor cheap. At center is a round table with a green-shaded reading lamp, its cord plugged in one of the four sockets in the chandelier above. Around the table within reading light range are four chairs, three of them wicker, arm chairs, the fourth, (at right-front of table) a varnished oak rocker with leather bottom.

It is around 8.30. Sunshine comes through the windows at right.

As the curtain rises, the family have just finished breakfast. Mary Tyrone and her husband enter together from the back parlour, coming from the dining room.

Mary is fifty-four, about medium height. She still has a well-proportioned, graceful figure. a trifle plump, but showing little evidence of middle-aged thick waist and fat hips, although she is not tightly corseted.

Her face is distinctly Irish in type. It must once have been extremely pretty, and is now uncannily striking. It does not match her plump, healthy figure but is thin, with the bone structure prominent, and the checks a bit sunken and drawn. The complexion is the peculiar pallor of wax. The nose is long and straight, the mouth wide with

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Tyrone's arm is around his wife's waist as they appear from the back parlour. Entering the livingroom he gives her a playful hug.

Tyrone: You're a fine armful now, Mary, with those twenty pounds you've gained.

Mary: (smiles affectionately) I've gotten too fat, you mean, Dear. I really ought to reduce.

Tyrone: None of that, my lady! You're just right. We'll have no talk of reducing. Is that why you ate so little breakfast?

Mary: So little? I thought I ate a lot.

Tyrone: You didn't. Not as much as I'd like to see, anyway.

Mary: (teasingly) Oh you! You expect everyone to eat the enormous breakfast you do. No one else in the world could without dying of indigestion. (She laughs and comes forward to stand by the right of table)

Tyrone: (following her) I hope I'm not as big a glutton as that sounds. (With hearty satisfaction) But thank God I've kept my appetite and I've the digestion of a young man of twenty, if I am sixty five.

Mary: You surely have, Dear. No one could deny that. (She laughs and sits in the wicker arm chair at right-rear of table. He comes around in back of her and selects a cigar from a box on the table and cuts off the end with a little clipper that is also on the table. From the dining-room comes the sound of Jamie's and Edmund's voices. Mary turns her head that way) Why are the boys staying in the dining-room, I wonder? Cathleen must be waiting to clear off the table.

Tyrone: (jokingly but with an undercurrent of resentment) It's a secret confab they don't want me to hear, I suppose. I'll bet they're cooking up some new scheme to touch the Old Man. (She is silent on this, keeping her head turned toward their voices, Her hands appear on the table top, moving restlessly. He lights his cigar and sits down in the rocker at right of table, which is his chair, and puffs contentedly) There's nothing like the first after-breakfast cigar, if it's a good one, and this new lot I bought have the right mellow flavor. They're a great bargain, too. I got them dead cheap. It was McGivern put me on to them.

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Mary: (has begun to escape into dream again - reacts mechanically)
What medicine? I don't know what you mean. (In dismissal) You
better take this drink to Dridget.

Cathleen: Yes, Ma'am. (She disappears through the back parlour.)
Mary Mary waits until she hears the pantry door close behind Cathleen.
Then she settles back with a contented sigh in completely relaxed
dreaminess, staring fixedly at nothing. Her arms rest limply along
the arms of the chair, her hands with long warped, swollen-knuckled
sensitive fingers drooping in complete calm. It is growing dark in
the room. There is a pause of dead quiet. Then from the world
outside comes the long, melancholy moan of the distant foghorn, followed
by a chorus of singing chip's bells, muffled by the fog, from the anchor-
ed craft in the harbour. Mary's face gives no sign she has heard, but
her hands jerk and the fingers automatically play for a moment on the
air. Then She frowns and shakes her head mechanically as if a fly
had walked across her mind. She suddenly losses all the girlish
quality and is an aging, cynically embittered woman)

Mary: (with a sneering irritaition) You're a sentimental fool.
What is so wonderful about that first meeting between a silly romantic
school girl and a matinee idol? You were much happier before you
knew he existed, in the Convent where you used to pray to the Blessed
Virgin. (Longingly) If I could only find that faith I lost, so I
could pray again! (She pauses - then begins to recite the Hail Mary
in a flat, empty tone) "Hail, Mary, full of Grace. Blessed art thou
among women". (Sneeringly) You expect the Blessed Virgin to be
fooled by a lying dope fiend reciting words! You can't hide your
quilt from Her! She knows! (She springs to her feet. Her hands
fly up to pat her hair distractedly.) I must go upstairs. I haven't
taken enough. When you start again you have to be careful. You
never know exactly how much you need to kill all the pain. (She
starts to go out through the front parlour - then stops in the doorway
as she hears the sound of voices from the front path. She starts
guiltily and frightenedly) Why, that must be them - (She hurries back
to sit down. Her face sets in stubborn defensiveness - resentfully
as footfalls are heard ascending the steps leading to the front porch)
Why are they coming back? They don't want to. And I'd much rather
be alone. (Suddenly her whole manner changes. She becomes pathetic
ally relieved and eager) Oh, I'm so glad they've come! I've been so
horribly lonely! (The front door is heard closing and Tyrone
calls uneasily from the front hall)

Tyrone: Are you here, Mary? (The light in the hall is turned on
and comes through the front parlour to fall on Mary)

Mary: (rises from her chair, her face lighting up lovingly - with excited eagerness) I'm here, Dear. In the living-room. I've been

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morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death.

Edmund: (sardonically) The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's only got the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stuttered. That's the best I'll ever do. I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism at least. Stuttering is the native eloquence of us fog people. (He grins wryly. A pause. Then they both jump startledly as there is a noise from outside the house, sounding as if someone had stumbled and fallen on the front steps. Edmund grins) Well, that sounds like the absent brother, having an argument with the front steps. He must be a peach of a bun on.

Tyrone: (sneaking) The loafer! He caught the last car, bad luck to it. (He gets to his feet) Get him to bed, Edmund. I'll go out on the porch. He has a tongue like an poisonous adder when he's drunk. I'd only loose my temper. (He goes out the door to the side porch as the front door in the hall bangs shut behind Jamie. Edmund sits watching Jamie's wavering progress through the front door, frowning irritably and yet amused. Jamie comes in. He is very drunk and wozy. on his legs. His eyes are glassy, his face bloated, his speech blurred, his mouth slack like his father's, a sneering, but humourous, leer on his lips)

Jamie: (swaying and blinking in the doorway - in a loud voice) What ho! What ho!

Edmund: (sharply) Nix on the loud noise, for Pete's sake!

Jamie: (blinks at him) Oh, hello, Kid. (With great seriousness) I'm drunk as a fiddler's bitch.

Edmund: (grins) Thanks for telling me your great secret.

Jamie: (grins foolishly) Yes. Unneshesary information Number One, eh? (He bends and slaps at the knees of his trowsers) Had serious accident. The front steps tried to trample on me. Took advantage of fog to waylay me. Ought to be a lighthouse out there. Dark in here, too. (Scowling) What the hell is this, the Morgue? Lesh have some light on subject. (He sways forward to the table, reciting maudlinly from Kipling)

"Ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
Keep the crossing stakes beside you, an' they will surely guide you
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark."

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Edmund: (blinking back tears himself) God, don't I know how you feel! Stop it, Jamie!

Jamie: (trying to control his sobs) I've known about Mama so much longer than you. Never forget the first time I got wise, what was the matter with her. Caught her in the act with a hypo. Christ, I'd never dreamed any women but whores ever took dope! (He pauses) And then this stuff of you getting consumption. It's too much, all coming together. It's got me licked. We've been more than brothers. Friends, pals. You're the only real pal I've ever had, I love your guts. I'd do anything for you.

Edmund: (reaches out and pats his arm) I know, that, Jamie.

Jamie: (his crying over - drops his hands from his face to stare at his brother with a strange bitterace) Yet I'll bet you've heard Mama and old Gaspar spill so much of that bunk about my always hoping for the worst, you suspect me right now I'm thinking to myself that Papa is old and can't last much longer, and if you were to die, Mama and I would get all he's got, and so I'm probably hoping you'll cash in!

Edmund: (indignantly) Shut up, you damned son! I never thought anything of the kind! What the hell put that in your nut? (Suddenly He stares at his brother accusingly) Yes, that's what I'd like to know! What put that in your mind?

Jamie: (confusedly - appearing drunk again) What put it in my mind? Don't be a dumbbell. What I said. Always being suspected of hoping for the worst. What's what? I've got so I can't help - (Then drunkenly miscalculation) What are you trying to do, accuse me? Don't play the wise guy with me! You're still wet behind the ears! I've learned more of life than you'll ever know! Just because you've read a lot of highbrow junk you don't understand, don't think you can fool me! You're a grown an overgrown kid! Mama's boy and Papa's pet! As per always! The family White Hope! You've been getting a swell-ed head lately. About nothing! About a few poems in a hick town newspaper! Hell, I used to write better stuff for the Lit magazine in college! You better wake up to yourself. You're setting no fires on fire! You let a few hick town books flatter you with bunk about your future - (Abruptly his tone changes to disgusted contrition.) Edmund has looked away from him, trying to ignore this tirade! Hell, Kid, forget it. That goes for Sweney. You know I don't mean it. except when I'm sore, drunk, or jealous. Know one could hope more than I do, that you'll knock 'em all dead. No one is prouder than you've started to make good. (More drunkenly assertive) Why shouldn't I be proud? Hell, it's purely selfish. You reflect credit on me.

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favorite place, the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, on the island in the lake. I said I knew, as surely as I knew I was kneeling there, that the Blessed Virgin had smiled and blessed me. With Her consent. But Mother Elizabeth told me I must be more sure than that, even, that I must prove it wasn't simply my imagination. She said, if I was so sure, then I wouldn't mind putting myself to a test by going home after I graduated, and living as other girls lived, going out to parties and dances and enjoying myself; and then, if after a year or two I still felt sure of my decision, I could come back to see her and we would talk it over again. (She tosses her head - indignantly) I never dreamed Holy Mother would give me such advice! I was really shocked. I said, of course, I would do anything she suggested, but I knew it was simply a waste of time. After I left her, I felt all mixed-up and afraid, so I went to the shrine, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin and found peace again because I knew She heard my prayer and would always love me and see no harm ever came to me so long as I never lost my faith in Her. (She pauses and a look of growing uneasiness comes over her face. She passes a hand mechanically over her forehead as if brushing away cobwebs from her brain - vaguely) That was in the winter of senior year. Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time. (She stares before her in a sad dream. Tyrone stirs in his chair. Edmund and Jamie remain motionless)

********* CURTAIN *******

Tao House
Sept. 20th 1940.