LUCIA: I hate to think of you over there all alone in those strange pensions.
GENEVIEVE: But, darling, the time will pass so fast that you’ll hardly know I’m gone. I’ll be back in the twinkling of an eye.
(Enter left, the nurse and perambulator. Green ribbons.)
LEONORA: Oh, what an angel! The darlingest baby in the world. Do let me hold it, nurse.
(But the nurse resolutely wheels the perambulator across the stage and out the dark door.)
Oh, I did love it so!
(Charles rises, puts his arm around his wife, and slowly leads her back to the table.)
GENEVIEVE (Softly to her mother as the other two cross): Isn’t there anything I can do?
LUCIA (Raises her eyebrows, ruefully): No, dear. Only time, only the passing of time can help in these things.
(Charles returns to the table.)
Don’t you think we could ask Cousin Ermengarde to come and live with us here? There’s plenty for everyone and there’s no reason why she should go on teaching the first grade for ever and ever. She wouldn’t be in the way, would she, Charles?
CHARLES: No, I think it would be fine. —A little more potato and gravy, anybody? A little more turkey, Mother?
(Brandon rises and starts slowly toward the dark portal.
Lucia rises and stands for a moment with her face in her hands.)
COUSIN BRANDON (Muttering): It was great to be in Alaska in those days . . .
GENEVIEVE (Half rising, and gazing at her mother in fear): Mother, what is . . .?
LUCIA (Hurriedly): Hush, my dear. It will pass. —Hold fast to your music, you know. (As Genevieve starts toward her) No, no. I want to be alone for a few minutes.
(She turns and starts after Cousin Brandon toward the right.)
CHARLES: If the Republicans collected all their votes instead of going off into cliques among themselves, they might prevent his getting a second term.
GENEVIEVE: Charles, Mother doesn’t tell us, but she hasn’t been very well these days.
CHARLES: Come, Mother, we’ll go to Florida for a few weeks.
(Exit Brandon.)
LUCIA (Smiling at Genevieve and waving her hand): Don’t be foolish. Don’t grieve.
(Lucia clasps her hands under her chin. Her lips move, whispering. She walks serenely into the portal.
Genevieve stares after her, frozen.)
GENEVIEVE (Sinks down at the table, her face buried in her arms): But what will I do? What’s left for me to do?
(At the same moment the nurse and perambulator enter from the left. Pale yellow ribbons. Leonora rushes to it.)
LEONORA: O my darlings . . . twins . . . Charles, aren’t they glorious! Look at them. Look at them.
CHARLES (Bending over the basket): Which is which?
LEONORA: I feel as though I were the first mother who ever had twins. —Look at them now! But why wasn’t Mother Bayard allowed to stay and see them!
GENEVIEVE (Rising suddenly distraught, loudly): I don’t want to go on. I can’t bear it.
CHARLES (Goes to her quickly. They sit down. He whispers to her earnestly, taking both her hands): But Genevieve, Genevieve! How frightfully Mother would feel to think that . . . Genevieve!
GENEVIEVE (Shaking her head wildly): I never told her how wonderful she was. We all treated her as though she were just a friend in the house. I thought she’d be here forever.
LEONORA (Timidly): Genevieve darling, do come one minute and hold my babies’ hands. We shall call the girl Lucia after her grandmother—will that please you? Do just see what adorable little hands they have.
(Genevieve collects herself and goes over to the perambulator. She smiles brokenly into the basket.)
GENEVIEVE: They are wonderful, Leonora.
LEONORA: Give him your finger, darling. Just let him hold it.
CHARLES: And we’ll call the boy Samuel. —Well, now everybody come and finish your dinners. Don’t drop them, nurse; at least don’t drop the boy. We need him in the firm.
LEONORA (Stands looking after them as the nurse wheels them into the hall): Someday they’ll be big. Imagine! They’ll come in and say “Hello, Mother!” (She makes clucking noises of rapturous consternation.)
CHARLES: Come, a little wine, Leonora, Genevieve? Full of iron. Eduardo, fill the ladies’ glasses. It certainly is a keen, cold morning. I used to go skating with Father on mornings like this and Mother would come back from church saying—
GENEVIEVE (Dreamily): I know: saying, “Such a splendid sermon. I cried and cried.”
LEONORA: Why did she cry, dear?
GENEVIEVE: That generation all cried at sermons. It was their way.
LEONORA: Really, Genevieve?
GENEVIEVE: They had had to go since they were children and I suppose sermons reminded them of their fathers and mothers, just as Christmas dinners do us. Especially in an old house like this.
LEONORA: It really is pretty old, Charles. And so ugly, with all that ironwork filigree and that dreadful cupola.
GENEVIEVE: Charles! You aren’t going to change the house!
CHARLES: No, no. I won’t give up the house, but great heavens! It’s fifty years old. This spring we’ll remove the cupola and build a new wing toward the tennis courts.
(From now on Genevieve is seen to change. She sits up more straightly. The corners of her mouth become fixed. She becomes a forthright and slightly disillusioned spinster. Charles becomes the plain businessman and a little pompous.)
LEONORA: And then couldn’t we ask your dear old Cousin Ermengarde to come and live with us? She’s really the self-effacing kind.
CHARLES: Ask her now. Take her out of the first grade.
GENEVIEVE: We only seem to think of it on Christmas Day with her Christmas card staring us in the face.
(Enter left, nurse and perambulator. Blue ribbons.)
LEONORA: Another boy! Another boy! Here’s a Roderick for you at last.
CHARLES: Roderick Brandon Bayard. A regular little fighter.
LEONORA: Goodbye, darling. Don’t grow up too fast. Yes, yes. Aië, aië, aië—stay just as you are. Thank you, nurse.
GENEVIEVE (Who has not left the table, repeats dryly): Stay just as you are.
(Exit nurse and perambulator. The others return to their places.)
LEONORA: Now I have three children. One, two, three. Two boys and a girl. I’m collecting them. It’s very exciting. (Over her shoulder) What, Hilda? Oh, Cousin Ermengarde’s come! Come in, Cousin.
(Leonora goes to the hall and welcomes Cousin Ermengarde, who already wears her white hair.)
ERMENGARDE (Shyly): It’s such a pleasure to be with you all.
CHARLES (Pulling out her chair for her): The twins have taken a great fancy to you already, Cousin.
LEONORA: The baby went to her at once.
CHARLES: Exactly how are we related, Cousin Ermengarde?—There, Genevieve, that’s your specialty. —First a little more turkey and stuffing, Mother? Cranberry sauce, anybody?
GENEVIEVE: I can work it out: Grandmother Bayard was your . . .
ERMENGARDE: Your Grandmother Bayard was a second cousin of my Grandmother Haskins through the Wainrights.
CHARLES: Well, it’s all in a book somewhere upstairs. All that kind of thing is awfully interesting.
GENEVIEVE: Nonsense. There are no such books. I collect my notes off gravestones, and you have to scrape a good deal of moss—let me tell you—to find one great-grandparent.
CHARLES: There’s a story that my Grandmother Bayard crossed the Mississippi on a raft before there were any bridges or ferryboats. She died before Genevieve and I were born. Time certainly goes very fast in a great new country like this. Have some more cranberry sauce, Cousin Ermengarde.
ERMENGARDE (Timidly): Well, time must be passing very slowly in Europe with this dreadful, dreadful war going on.
CHARLES: Perhaps an occasional war isn’t so bad after all. It clears up a lot of poisons that collect in nations. It’s like a boil.
&
nbsp; ERMENGARDE: Oh, dear, oh, dear!
CHARLES (With relish): Yes, it’s like a boil. —Ho! ho! Here are your twins.
(The twins appear at the door into the hall. Sam is wearing the uniform of an ensign. Lucia is fussing over some detail on it.)
LUCIA: Isn’t he wonderful in it, Mother?
CHARLES: Let’s get a look at you.
SAM: Mother, don’t let Roderick fool with my stamp album while I’m gone.
LEONORA: Now, Sam, do write a letter once in a while. Do be a good boy about that, mind.
SAM: You might send some of those cakes of yours once in a while, Cousin Ermengarde.
ERMENGARDE (In a flutter): I certainly will, my dear boy.
CHARLES: If you need any money, we have agents in Paris and London, remember.
LEONORA: Do be a good boy, Sam.
SAM: Well, good-bye . . .
(Sam goes briskly out through the dark portal, tossing his unneeded white hair through the door before him.
Lucia sits down at the table with lowered eyes.)
ERMENGARDE (After a slight pause, in a low, constrained voice, making conversation): I spoke to Mrs. Fairchild for a moment coming out of church. Her rheumatism’s a little better, she says. She sends you her warmest thanks for the Christmas present. The workbasket, wasn’t it?—It was an admirable sermon. And our stained-glass window looked so beautiful, Leonora, so beautiful. Everybody spoke of it and so affectionately of Sammy. (Leonora’s hand goes to her mouth) Forgive me, Leonora, but it’s better to speak of him than not to speak of him when we’re all thinking of him so hard.
LEONORA (Rising, in anguish): He was a mere boy. He was a mere boy, Charles.
CHARLES: My dear, my dear.
LEONORA: I want to tell him how wonderful he was. We let him go so casually. I want to tell him how we all feel about him. —Forgive me, let me walk about a minute. —Yes, of course, Ermengarde—it’s best to speak of him.
LUCIA (In a low voice to Genevieve): Isn’t there anything I can do?
GENEVIEVE: No, no. Only time, only the passing of time can help in these things.
(Leonora, straying about the room, finds herself near the door to the hall at the moment that her son Roderick enters. He links his arm with hers and leads her back to the table.)
RODERICK: What’s the matter, anyway? What are you so glum about? The skating was fine today.
CHARLES: Sit down, young man. I have something to say to you.
RODERICK: Everybody was there. Lucia skated in the corners with Dan Creighton the whole time. When’ll it be, Lucia, when’ll it be?
LUCIA: I don’t know what you mean.
RODERICK: Lucia’s leaving us soon, Mother. Dan Creighton, of all people.
CHARLES (Ominously): Roderick, I have something to say to you.
RODERICK: Yes, Father.
CHARLES: Is it true, Roderick, that you made yourself conspicuous last night at the country club—at a Christmas Eve dance, too?
LEONORA: Not now, Charles, I beg of you. This is Christmas dinner.
RODERICK (Loudly): No, I didn’t.
LUCIA: Really, Father, he didn’t. It was that dreadful Johnny Lewis.
CHARLES: I don’t want to hear about Johnny Lewis. I want to know whether a son of mine . . .
LEONORA: Charles, I beg of you . . .
CHARLES: The first family of this city!
RODERICK (Rising): I hate this town and everything about it. I always did.
CHARLES: You behaved like a spoiled puppy, sir, an ill-bred spoiled puppy.
RODERICK: What did I do? What did I do that was wrong?
CHARLES: You were drunk and you were rude to the daughters of my best friends.
GENEVIEVE (Striking the table): Nothing in the world deserves an ugly scene like this. Charles, I’m ashamed of you.
RODERICK: Great God, you gotta get drunk in this town to forget how dull it is. Time passes so slowly here that it stands still, that’s what’s the trouble.
CHARLES: Well, young man, we can employ your time. You will leave the university and you will come into the Bayard factory on January second.
RODERICK (At the door into the hall): I have better things to do than to go into your old factory. I’m going somewhere where time passes, my God!
(He goes out into the hall.)
LEONORA: (Rising): Roderick, Roderick, come here just a moment. —Charles where can he go?
LUCIA (Rising): Shh, Mother. He’ll come back. Now I have to go upstairs and pack my trunk.
LEONORA: I won’t have any children left!
LUCIA: Shh, Mother. He’ll come back. He’s only gone to California or somewhere. Cousin Ermengarde has done most of my packing—thanks a thousand times, Cousin Ermengarde. (She kisses her mother) I won’t be long. (She runs out into the hall)
(Genevieve and Leonora put on their white hair.)
ERMENGARDE: It’s a very beautiful day. On the way home from church I stopped and saw Mrs. Foster a moment. Her arthritis comes and goes.
LEONORA: Is she actually in pain, dear?
ERMENGARDE: Oh, she says it’ll all be the same in a hundred years!
LEONORA: Yes, she’s a brave little stoic.
CHARLES: Come now, a little white meat, Mother?—Mary, pass my cousin’s plate.
LEONORA: What is it, Mary? —Oh, here’s a telegram from them in Paris! “Love and Christmas greetings to all.” I told them we’d be eating some of their wedding cake and thinking about them today. It seems to be all decided that they will settle down in the east, Ermengarde. I can’t even have my daughter for a neighbor. They hope to build before long somewhere on the shore north of New York.
GENEVIEVE: There is no shore north of New York.
LEONORA: Well, east or west or whatever it is.
(Pause.)
CHARLES: My, what a dark day.
(He puts on his white hair. Pause.)
How slowly time passes without any young people in the house.
LEONORA: I have three children somewhere.
CHARLES (Blunderingly offering comfort): Well, one of them gave his life for his country.
LEONORA (Sadly): And one of them is selling aluminum in China.
GENEVIEVE (Slowly working herself up to a hysterical crisis): I can stand everything but this terrible soot everywhere. We should have moved long ago. We’re surrounded by factories. We have to change the window curtains every week.
LEONORA: Why, Genevieve!
GENEVIEVE: I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it any more. I’m going abroad. It’s not only the soot that comes through the very walls of this house; it’s the thoughts, it’s the thought of what has been and what might have been here. And the feeling about this house of the years grinding away. My mother died yesterday—not twenty-five years ago. Oh, I’m going to live and die abroad! Yes, I’m going to be the American old maid living and dying in a pension in Munich or Florence.
ERMENGARDE: Genevieve, you’re tired.
CHARLES: Come, Genevieve, take a good drink of cold water. Mary, open the window a minute.
GENEVIEVE: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
(Genevieve hurries tearfully out into the hall.)
ERMENGARDE: Dear Genevieve will come back to us, I think.
(She rises and starts toward the dark portal.)
You should have been out today, Leonora. It was one of those days when everything was encircled with ice. Very pretty, indeed.
(Charles rises and starts after her.)
CHARLES: Leonora, I used to go skating with Father on mornings like this. I wish I felt a little better.
LEONORA: What! Have I got two invalids on my hands at once? Now, Cousin Ermengarde, you must get better and help me nurse Charles.
ERMENGARDE: I’ll do my best.
(She turns at the very portal and comes back to the table.)
CHARLES: Well, Leonora, I’ll do what you ask. I’ll write the puppy a letter of forgiveness and apology. It’s Christmas Day. I’ll cable it. That’s what I’ll do
.
(He goes out the dark door.)
LEONORA (Drying her eyes): Ermengarde, it’s such a comfort having you here with me. Mary, I really can’t eat anything. Well, perhaps, a sliver of white meat.
ERMENGARDE (Very old): I spoke to Mrs. Keene for a moment coming out of church. She asked after the young people. —At church I felt very proud sitting under our windows, Leonora, and our brass tablets. The Bayard aisle—it’s a regular Bayard aisle and I love it.
LEONORA: Ermengarde, would you be very angry with me if I went and stayed with the young people a little this spring?
ERMENGARDE: Why, no. I know how badly they want you and need you. Especially now that they’re about to build a new house.
LEONORA: You wouldn’t be angry? This house is yours as long as you want it, remember.
ERMENGARDE: I don’t see why the rest of you dislike it. I like it more than I can say.
LEONORA: I won’t be long. I’ll be back in no time and we can have some more of our readings aloud in the evening. (She kisses her and goes into the hall)
(Ermengarde left alone, eats slowly and talks to Mary.)
ERMENGARDE: Really, Mary, I’ll change my mind. If you’ll ask Bertha to be good enough to make me a little eggnog. A dear little eggnog. —Such a nice letter this morning from Mrs. Bayard, Mary. Such a nice letter. They’re having their first Christmas dinner in the new house. They must be very happy. They call her Mother Bayard, she says, as though she were an old lady. And she says she finds it more comfortable to come and go in a wheelchair. —Such a dear letter . . . And Mary, I can tell you a secret. It’s still a great secret, mind! They’re expecting a grandchild. Isn’t that good news! Now I’ll read a little.
(She props a book up before her, still dipping a spoon into a custard from time to time. She grows from very old to immensely old. She sighs. The book falls down. She finds a cane beside her, and soon totters into the dark portal, murmuring:)
“Dear little Roderick and little Lucia.”
END OF PLAY
Queens of France
CHARACTERS
MARIE-SIDONIE CRESSAUX
M’SU CAHUSAC
MADAME PUGEOT
MAMSELLE POINTEVIN
SETTING
A lawyer’s office in New Orleans, 1869.