ATROPOS: You ask us to murder?
CLOTHO: Apollo thinks that we are criminals?
APOLLO (Beginning to be fearful): Then, great sisters, how is this to be done?
LACHESIS: Me—an assassin? (She spreads her arms wide and says solemnly) Over my left hand is Chance; over my right hand is Necessity.
APOLLO: Then, gracious sisters, how will this be done?
LACHESIS: Someone must give his life for Admetus—of free choice and will. Over such deaths we have no control. Neither Chance nor Necessity rules the free offering of the will. Someone must choose to die in the place of Admetus, King of Thessaly.
APOLLO (Covering his face with his hands): No! No! I see it all! (With a loud cry) Alcestis! Alcestis! (And he runs stumbling from the scene)
END OF PLAY
TWO
Bernice
(Pride)
CHARACTERS
MR. MALLISON, Mr. Walbeck’s lawyer, fifty-nine
BERNICE MAYHEW, Mr. Walbeck’s maid, fifty
THE DRIVER
MR. WALBECK, forty-seven
SETTING
Drawing room of a house in Chicago, 1911.
Door into the hall at the back. All we need see are an elaborate, but not weighty, table in the center and two chairs. At the front of the stage are some andirons and a poker, indicating a fireplace.
Mallison, fifty-nine, all a lawyer, now very nervous, is standing before the table holding an open watch in his hand. By the door is Bernice, colored, fifty, in a maid’s uniform.
MALLISON: Remind me . . . remind me, please . . . your name?
BERNICE (Unimpressed): Bernice.
MALLISON: Thank you. —Now Mr. Burgess, your employer, may be a little bit . . . moody. You do whatever he wants. Have you enough help to run the house?
BERNICE: I did what you told me. There’s Jason for the heavy work and the furnace. This Mr. Burgess—will he be alone in this house?
MALLISON: Alone? Oh! Most probably. At all events, you are in charge. Get whatever help you need. I am Mr. Burgess’s lawyer, but he will be getting another lawyer soon. All your bills will be paid, I’m sure . . . You have some dinner waiting for him now?
BERNICE (Slowly): Why do you talk so funny about this Mr. Burgess? Is he coming from the crazy house or something?
MALLISON (Outraged): No, indeed!! I don’t know where you got such an idea. All that’s expected of you is . . . uh . . . good meals and a well-run house.
BERNICE: You talk very funny, Mr. Mallison.
MALLISON (After swallowing with dignity and glaring at her): Mrs. Willard recommended you as an experienced cook and housekeeper, Bernice. My duty ends there.
BERNICE: I don’t have to take any jobs unless I likes them, Mr. Mallison. I never agrees to work any place more than three days. Mrs. Willard don’t like it, but that’s my terms—if I likes it, I stays.
MALLISON: Well, I hope you like it here. You’re getting very well paid and you can ask for any further help you need—within reason. There’s an automobile stopping before the door now. I think you’d better go to the door.
(Bernice doesn’t move. Arms akimbo she looks musingly at Mallison.)
BERNICE: I seen people like you before . . . You’re up to something.
(The front door bell rings.)
MALLISON: I don’t like your tone. You’ve been engaged to work here—for three days, anyway. You can begin by answering that door bell.
(Bernice goes out. Mallison straightens his clothes, goes to the table and picks up his briefcase, then stands waiting with pursed lips. Sounds of altercation from the hall.)
DRIVER’S VOICE: All right! The price is twenty dollars. But if I’d know’d it was a night like this—
(Enter the Driver, a livery stable chauffeur, Irish, slightly drunk. He is carrying a small rattan suitcase, which he puts down by the door. He is followed by Walbeck, forty-seven, prematurely gray; he speaks softly, but gives an impression of controlled power. Bernice enters behind them.)
WALBECK (To Mallison, in a low voice): I understood that the fare was paid in advance?
MALLISON: The twenty dollars was paid in advance.
DRIVER: Anybody’d charge twice to drive on a night like this. First it was rain and snow—
MALLISON: The livery stable was given twenty dollars—(To Bernice) You can prepare the dinner!
(Exit Bernice.)
DRIVER: Then it turned to ice. The worst night I’ve ever seen, to go to Joliet and pick up a I-don’t-know-what. The car falling off the road every minute. To go to Joliet and pick up a criminal of some sort—
WALBECK (Gesture of empty pockets): I have no money.
MALLISON (To the driver): I will give you five dollars, but I shall report you to the livery stable.
DRIVER (Taking the bill): What do I care? Thirty-five miles each way and half the time you couldn’t see the road five yards in front of you; and the other half sliding into the ditch. All right, tell ’em and see what I tell ’em.
MALLISON: You have your five dollars. If you go now, I’ll say nothing to your superiors—But go!
DRIVER (Starting for the door, then turning on Walbeck): And who do you think you are, Mr. Bur-gessss! Keeping your mouth so shut! You a murderer or I-don’t-know-what; and too big and mighty to talk to anybody. —Oh, you had to think, did you? So you had to think? Well, you’ve got enough to think about for the rest of your goddamned life.
(He goes out.)
MALLISON (Stiffly): Good evening, Mr. Walbeck.
(The front door is heard closing with a slam.)
WALBECK (Always softly, but impersonally): What is this name of . . . Burgess?
MALLISON: We assumed, Mr. Walbeck, that you would prefer us to engage the household staff and . . . make certain other arrangements under . . . another name. Since you did not reply to our letters on this matter, we selected the name of Burgess.
WALBECK: I see. —Is . . . my wife here?
MALLISON (Astonished): You did not get Mrs. Walbeck’s letters?
WALBECK: I did not open any letters.
MALLISON: And our letters, Mr. Walbeck?
WALBECK: I haven’t opened any letters for six months.
MALLISON (Controlling his outrage, primly): Mrs. Walbeck left a week ago—with the children—for California. She has filed a petition for divorce. In her letters she probably explained it to you at length. She did not wish to make this move earlier . . . She wished it to be known that she stood by you through . . . your ordeal. When she heard that your sentence had been reduced and that you would be returning this week, she—
WALBECK (Coolly): There’s no need to say anything more, Mr. Mallison.
MALLISON: A woman has been engaged to attend to your needs. Her name is Bernice. A wardrobe—that is, a wardrobe of clothes—you will find upstairs. Your measurements were obtained by your former tailor from the authorities at the . . . institution from which you have come. —Here are the keys of the house. Here are the statements from your bank. A checkbook. Here (He places a long envelope on the table) are five hundred dollars which I have drawn for your immediate needs.
WALBECK: Thank you. Good night.
MALLISON: Mr. Walbeck, hitherto the firm of Bremerton, Bremerton, Mallison and Mallison has been happy to serve as your legal representatives. From now on we trust that you will find other counsel. We relinquish—here (He lays down another document) our power of attorney. And in this envelope you will find all the documents and information that our successors will require. I wish you good night.
WALBECK (Stonily): Good night.
(Mallison turns at the door.)
MALLISON: You read no letters?
WALBECK (His eyes on the ground): No.
MALLISON: That reminds me. Your daughter Lavinia wished to leave a letter for you. Her mother forbade her to do so. However, I . . . I was prepared to take the responsibility. Your daughter gave me this letter to give to you.
(He gives an envelope to Walbeck, who puts it in h
is breast pocket. His silence and level glance complete Mallison’s discomfiture.)
Good night, sir.
(Exit Mallison. Walbeck stands motionless gazing fixedly before him. Suddenly, in a rage, he overturns the table before him; but immediately recovers his self-control. Enter Bernice.)
BERNICE: Dinner’s served, sir.
WALBECK: I won’t have any dinner.
BERNICE: Yes, Mr. Burgess.
WALBECK: What?
BERNICE: I said, “Yes, Mr. Burgess.” I’ll just set that table to rights.
WALBECK (Quickly): I’ll do it.
(He does.)
BERNICE (Watchfully but unsentimentally): I’ve got a real good steak in there. I’m the best cook in Chicago, Mr. Burgess. There’s lots of people that knows that.
WALBECK: Is there any liquor in the house?
BERNICE: Oh, yes. There’s everything.
WALBECK: Rye. Rye straight. —You eat the steak.
BERNICE: Thank you, Mr. Burgess.
(She starts out, then turns.)
Now, you don’t want to eat that steak, Mr. Burgess, but I’ve got some tomato soup there that’s the best tomato soup you ever ate. You aren’t going to waste my time by refusing to eat that soup.
WALBECK (Looking at her; impersonally): What is your name?
BERNICE: My name’s Bernice Mayhew. People calls me Bernice.
WALBECK: Bernice, I don’t want to eat in that dining room. You can bring me the rye and some of that soup in here.
BERNICE: Yes, Mr. Burgess.
WALBECK: My name is Walbeck.
BERNICE: What’s that?
WALBECK: My name: Wal-beck, Walbeck.
BERNICE: Yes, Mr. Walbeck.
WALBECK: And pour yourself some rye.
BERNICE: I don’t touch it, Mr. Walbeck. Ten years ago I made my life over. I changed my name and I changed everything about myself. I thank you, but I don’t touch liquor.
(She goes out. Walbeck, standing straight, his eyes on the ground, puts his hand in his pocket and draws out his daughter’s letter. After a moment’s hesitation, he opens it. He holds it suspended in his hand a moment. Then he tears the letter and envelope, each two ways, and throws the fragments into the fire (invisible to us), between the andirons.
Bernice returns, pushing a small service table. She gives him the rye, then unfurls a tablecloth and starts laying the table. Walbeck drinks half the rye in one swallow.)
WALBECK: Were you here when my wife was here?
BERNICE: No, sir. Nobody’s been here today but that lawyer-man. I came here this morning and all day Jason and I have been cleaning the house.
WALBECK: Do you know where I come from?
BERNICE (Quietly, lowered eyes): Yes, I do.
WALBECK: Did that lawyer tell you?
BERNICE: No . . . I knew . . . I been there myself . . . So I knew. I’ll get your soup.
(She goes out. Suddenly Walbeck goes to the fireplace. Falling on his knees, he tries without burning his fingers to rake out the fragments of the letter. Apparently it is too late.
Bernice enters with a covered soup tureen. Watchfully, but with no show of surprise, she tries to take in what he is doing. Walbeck rises, dusting off his knees.)
You want me to build up that fire, Mr. Walbeck?
WALBECK: No, it’s all right as it is.
(He seats himself at the table.)
BERNICE (Eyeing the fireplace speculatively): There’s some toast there, too.
WALBECK: You say you changed your name?
BERNICE: Yes. My born name was Sarah Temple. When I came out of prison I was Bernice Mayhew. Of course, I had some other names too. I was married twice. But Bernice Mayhew was the name I gave myself. (Without emphasis; her eyes on the distance) I was in because I killed somebody.
WALBECK (The soup spoon at his mouth, speaks in her tone): I was in because I cheated two or three hundred people out of money.
BERNICE (Musingly): Well, everybody’s done something.
(Pause. Walbeck eats.)
WALBECK: You say you changed everything about yourself?
BERNICE: Yes. Everything was changed, anyway. I was in a disgrace—nobody can be in a bigger disgrace than I was. And some people were avoiding me and some people were laughing at me and some people were being kind to me, like I was a dog that came to the back door. And some people were saying: cheer up, Sarah, you’ve paid your price. There’s lots of things to live for. You’re young yet. —You’re sure you wouldn’t like a piece of that steak, Mr. Walbeck, rare or any way you’d like it?
WALBECK: No. I’m going downtown soon. If I get hungry, later, I’ll pick up something to eat down there.
BERNICE (After a short pause, while she continues to gaze into the distance): Did anybody come to meet you when you came out of the door of the place you was at?
WALBECK: No.
BERNICE: That’s what I mean. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to go ’round with a person who’s very much in a disgrace—like with a person who’s killed somebody. I wouldn’t choose ’em.
WALBECK: Or with a person who’s stolen a lot of people’s life savings.
BERNICE: I only mentioned that to show a big part of the change: you’re alone.
WALBECK: Did that lawyer who was here, or the agency, know that you’d been in prison?
BERNICE: Oh, no. It was Sarah Temple who did that. She’s dead. When I changed my name she became dead. You see the first part of my life I lived in Kansas City. Then I came to Chicago. Bernice Mayhew has never been to Kansas City. She don’t even know what it looks like.
WALBECK (Impersonally, without looking at her): If you’ve been on your feet all day cleaning the house, I think you’d better sit down, Bernice.
BERNICE: Well, thank you, I will sit down.
WALBECK: Would you advise me to kill off George Walbeck?
BERNICE (Seeming more and more remote, in her musings): Not so much for your sake as for other people’s sake. It’s not good for other people to have to do with persons who are in a disgrace; it brings out the worst in them. I don’t like to see that.
WALBECK (Slowly, his eyes on the distance): I guess you’re right. I’d better do that.
BERNICE: It’s like what happens about poor people. You’re a thousand times richer than I am, but I’m richer than millions of people. What good does it do to think about them? I only need one real meal a day; the rest is just stuffing. But I don’t notice as how I give up my other two meals. I’m always right there at mealtimes. When I went hungry, most times I didn’t let people know about it; and when I’m in a disgrace, why should I make them uncomfortable?
WALBECK: Before you became Bernice Mayhew, did you have any children?
BERNICE: Yes, I did . . . Their mother’s dead, of course. But I guess somebody’s reminding them every day that their mother was a murderer.—That’s bad enough, but it’s not as bad as knowing their mother’s alive. —Have you noticed that we gradually forgive them that’s dead? If I was alive they’d be thinking about me, in one way or another: hating me or maybe trying to stand up for me. There are a lot of ideas young people could go through about a thing like that.
WALBECK (As though to himself): Yes.
(The telephone rings in the hall. Walbeck rises uneasily.)
Who could that be? Answer it, will you, Bernice? Don’t say that I’m here.
(Bernice goes into the hall. Her voice can be heard shouting as though she were unaccustomed to the telephone.)
BERNICE: It’s me talking—Bernice.
Yes. Who are you, talking?
Who? Oh.
I can’t understand much.
A letter? I hear you, a letter.
Yes, miss. What? I can’t hear good. The machine don’t work good.
All right, you come. I’m here.
Bernice. Yes, you come. I’m here.
(Bernice returns to the stage.)
She says she’s your daughter.
WALBECK: So-o-o! She didn’
t go to California with her mother.
BERNICE: She says she sent you a letter. In the letter she asked you to telephone her . . . that she could come and see you. She was asking over and over again if you was here, but I made out that the machine didn’t work good. She says she’ll be here soon.
(Bernice has been clearing the table, putting the objects on the wheeled service table, which she starts pushing to the door.)
WALBECK: I can’t see her tonight. —What do you suppose she wants?
BERNICE (At the door with lowered eyes): I think I can figger that out: about what half the daughters in the world would want. She wants to make a home for you. And to give up her life for you.
(She goes out with the service table.)
WALBECK (Softly): Good God—
(Bernice returns and stands at the door.)
She’s seventeen! How could she get such an idea! Her mother must have told her what she thought of me—told her every day for eight years what she thought of me—
BERNICE (Always without looking at him, broodingly): Yes.
(Slight pause.)
Mr. Walbeck, you ought to know that women don’t believe what women say. Least of all their mothers. They’ll believe any old fool thing a man says.
WALBECK: She’s seventeen! How did she do it? How did she get away from her mother? She must have run away at the railway station. She probably has very little money.
BERNICE (“Seeing” it; staring before her): She’s got some rings, hasn’t she? She’ll be selling them. She’ll be going to the stores hunting for a job.
WALBECK (Staring at her): Yes. —But her mother will have come back to look for her. Or will have telephoned the police to look for her.
BERNICE: Maybe not. Maybe not at all . . . It’s terrible when young girls are brave.
WALBECK (In a sort of terror. For the first time loudly): Bernice! —What shall I do?
BERNICE (A quick glance of somber anger): It ain’t right to ask advices. It ain’t right, Mr. Walbeck.
WALBECK: See here, Bernice! Do this for me.
BERNICE: Do what, for you?
WALBECK: Do what you’d do, if it were your own daughter.
BERNICE (Sudden flood of tormented emotion): How do I know if I did right?—What I did about my own daughter? Maybe my daughter’d be having a good big life living with me. Maybe she’s just having one of them silly lives, living with silly people and saying jabber-jabber silly things all day. (Gazing before her) I hate people who don’t know that lots of people is hungry and that lots of people has done bad things. If my daughter was with me, we’d talk . . . I got so many things I’ve learned that I could tell to a girl like that . . . And we’d go downtown and we’d shop for her clothes together . . . and talk . . . I’ve got a weak heart; I shouldn’t get excited. (She looks at the floor a minute) No, Mr. Walbeck, don’t ask me to throw your daughter back into the trashy lives that most people live.