CHARACTERS
JOHN, a young novelist
GABRIELLE, his wife
DOCTOR BUMPAS, the local doctor
MR. GRAHAM, John’s friend, around fifty
SETTING
An old house in a New Hampshire village.
This is John’s library and study and living room in one. It is a spring evening. John is playing solitaire on a card table before the hearth and Gabrielle is sewing.
Silence.
John finishes a game, takes up his fountain pen, makes a notation on a piece of paper beside him, and starts shuffling the cards.
JOHN: Five.
GABRIELLE: What, dear?
JOHN: Five.
GABRIELLE: Oh! . . . Even that’s more than the average.
JOHN: The average is two. Listen to the scores this evening: zero, two, five, three, zero, one, four, zero, three, one six, zero, zero, zero, three, zero, six, and now five. The full fifty-two come out every twenty-one times. So that from now on my chances for getting it out increase seven point three two every game.
GABRIELLE (Not understanding, but thinking that this is an unfortunate announcement): Tchk—Tchk!
(Pause.)
JOHN: The doctor’s still upstairs, isn’t he?
GABRIELLE: Yes.
JOHN: It does seem that he’s taking an awfully long time.
GABRIELLE: Yes, every other day he changes the dressing on the wounds, or burns, or whatever you call it. It takes about half an hour. I offered to help him but he didn’t seem to need me. He’ll call down the stairs if he needs us.
JOHN: Well, he certainly is taking a long time. Does it hurt Katie when the dressing is changed?
GABRIELLE: Not any more. (Pause) When’s this man coming?
JOHN: About half past eight, I imagine. He may not come at all. He had to work tonight on some sort of report. I just told him to drop around if he’d like and we’d have a game of chess.
GABRIELLE: On his first call like that, I really ought to have thought about getting together something special for him to eat.
JOHN: No, no. I told him you and I always had some cocoa about half past ten—cocoa and biscuits, I said.
GABRIELLE: Well, it’s too bad Katie’s laid up. I wonder he didn’t hear about Katie. The whole town seems to know about her pouring all that boiling water over her legs.
JOHN: Here’s another zero, I’m afraid—though it promised very well.
GABRIELLE: How’d you meet this man?
JOHN: Where I meet everybody. At the post office Sunday morning waiting for the mail. People stop in on the way home from church and everybody falls into conversation with everybody else.
GABRIELLE: That’s the way you met Miss Buckingham. The unexplained Miss Buckingham. The Miss Buckingham whom I soundly disliked. Why on earth she wanted to poke into this house is still a mystery to me.
JOHN: Anyway she’s left town for good now. She’s gone back to Australia. —On the whole, though, dear, you don’t mind my bringing home stray acquaintances from time to time, do you?
GABRIELLE: Oh, no indeed! Usually I like it.
JOHN: We authors should make it our business to multiply just such acquaintances.
GABRIELLE: By all means. I like it.
JOHN: Besides, this Mr. . . . Mr . . . .
GABRIELLE: Graham.
JOHN: Yes, this Mr. Graham asked to come. He said he’d often admired the house sitting up among its elms. I told him it was over two hundred years old and that it had a story. These westerners take a great fancy to our New Hampshire local color.—Really, Gabrielle, the doctor’s taking an awfully long time upstairs.
GABRIELLE: Did you tell Mr. Graham the story about the house?
JOHN: No. Anyway I don’t really know it. Two young people frightened their father to death—killed him or frightened him to death. I must ask one of the old citizens about it. Every old house in the state claims its murder. Thank God I have too much literary conscience to write another novel about an old New England house.
GABRIELLE: Just the same, let’s ask the doctor to tell us all about it. He’ll know.
JOHN (Examining his game): Well, I guess this is stuck. It really looked as though it were coming out. I can see that if I moved just one card it would open up a lot of combinations.
GABRIELLE (Without malice): But you have too much conscience.
JOHN: Yes. —You see it’s like fiction. You have to adjust the cards to make a plot. In life most people live along without plots. A plot breaks through about once in every twenty-one times.
GABRIELLE: Well, then, I think a plot is just about due.
JOHN: Not unless we push back the cards and look under. —At all events, this one’s no good. I’ll take my pipe out into the garden and walk about.
GABRIELLE: Well, keep one eye on the gate, will you? I don’t want to open the door to this Mr. Graham without being introduced.
JOHN: All right. I’ll walk up and down in front of the house so I won’t miss him. I’ll leave the front door open; you might whistle to me when the doctor comes downstairs. (He leans over the tobacco jar filling his pipe) Plots. Plots. If I had no conscience I could choose any one of these plots that are in everybody’s novels and in nobody’s lives. These poor battered old plots. Enoch Arden returns and looks through the window and sees his wife married to another.
GABRIELLE: I’ve always loved that one.
JOHN: The plot that murderers always steal back to the scene of their crime and gloat over the place.
GABRIELLE: Oh, John! How wonderful. They’ll come back to this house. Imagine!
JOHN: The plot that all married women of thirty-five have lovers.
GABRIELLE: Otherwise known as the Marseillaise.
JOHN: They’re as pathetic and futile as the type-jokes—you know: that mothers-in-law are unpleasant, that . . . that cooks feed chicken and turkey to policemen and other callers in the kitchen . . .
GABRIELLE: Katie! Katie! —Once every twenty-one times these plots really do happen in real life, you say?
JOHN: Once in a thousand. Books and plays are a quiet, harmless fraud about life . . .
GABRIELLE: Well, now, don’t get excited, dear, or you won’t be able to work.
JOHN: All right. One pipeful.
(He goes out into the garden. The debonair young Doctor comes in from the right. Hat and coat and satchel. He looks inquiringly at Gabrielle. She makes a sign to him that John is before the house. She looks out of the door, is reassured, and smiles. The Doctor takes her in his arms. They kiss with conjugal tranquillity.)
GABRIELLE: Ouch!
DR. BUMPAS: Ouch! Ouch!
GABRIELLE: How’s Katie?
DR. BUMPAS: Katie, ma’am, will get better. I’ve got to run along.
GABRIELLE: Oh, stay a minute!
DR. BUMPAS: Very busy. Patients dying like flies.
GABRIELLE: Tchk—Tchk!
DR. BUMPAS: You wouldn’t detain me, would you, on my errands of mercy? Hundreds, ma’am, are waiting for my step on the stair.
(He puts down his coat and hat and satchel and kisses her again.)
Twins are popping all over the place—every now and then an appendix goes ttttttt-bang. Where’d you get that dress? Very chic, very eye-filling. —Can I trust you with a secret, Gabrielle? Would you like to know a secret?
GABRIELLE: Yes, but hurry. —Don’t coquette about it. I told John I’d whistle to him when you came downstairs.
DR. BUMPAS: It’s about Katie.
GABRIELLE: Goodness. Katie has no secrets.
DR. BUMPAS: And promise me it won’t make any difference between you and Katie. Katie’s a fine girl. If you were a stuffy old woman you’d probably fetch up a lot of indignation. And promise not to tell your husband.
GABRIELLE: Oh, I never tell John anything! It would prevent his working.
DR. BUMPAS: Katie just confessed to me how the accident happened. (A short laugh) Weren’t you surprised that a strong careful girl like Katie could sp
ill a kettle of boiling water over her legs?
GABRIELLE: I certainly was. I thought it very funny indeed.
DR. BUMPAS: Well, it was her brother that did it.
GABRIELLE: I didn’t know she had a brother.
DR. BUMPAS: He’s been in prison for eight years with four to go. Forgeries and embezzlements and things. But not a bad fellow, you know. Used to be an orderly in my hospital in Boston. Well, three months ago he escaped from prison. Sirens at midnight (He whines the alarm), bloodhounds (He barks), but he escaped. Gabrielle, did you ever use to hear noises in your kitchen at night?
GABRIELLE: I certainly did. I certainly did. But, then, this house is full of noises. I’d just turn over in bed and say: Not until that ghost comes into this room will I do anything about it.
DR. BUMPAS: Well, it wasn’t a ghost. It was Katie’s brother. Katie’s brother has been hidden, living in your house for three months.
GABRIELLE: Without our knowing it! Why Katie’s a monster.
DR. BUMPAS: Oh, Katie’s in anguish about it. What Katie suffered from burns was nothing compared to what Katie suffered from conscience. Katie is as honest as the day. Every single time that Katie fed her brother a dinner out of your kitchen she went without a dinner herself. And the rest of his meals she paid for out of her own pocket money.
GABRIELLE: My, isn’t life complicated!
DR. BUMPAS: That night she had boiled some water to wash the brother’s shirts and socks. He lifted the kettle off the stove and, not being used to hot handles, he dropped it and the water fell all over Katie’s knees. I can tell you all this now because he has safely crossed over into Canada to get some work. And now I too must go.
GABRIELLE: You must see John a minute. (She whistles) It’s a lovely evening. The rain has stopped. John’s expecting a visitor tonight, to play chess. Do you know a westerner named Graham?
(Enter John.)
JOHN: Hello, doctor, you’ve been a long time about it. How’s Katie?
DR. BUMPAS: Katie’ll get well. She’ll be up and about in a few days.
(The Doctor takes up his things.)
JOHN: Can’t you stay a while? Gabrielle’ll make us some cocoa.
DR. BUMPAS: Cocoa! Are people still drinking cocoa? —No, I’ve got to hurry on. Patients dying like flies. Must look in at the hospital again.
GABRIELLE: Oh, I know! Every time he enters the door of the hospital, the building almost leaves the ground.
DR. BUMPAS: I galvanize’m. I galvanize ’m. —How’s your new book getting on?
JOHN: Nothing begun yet. Groping about for a plot.
DR. BUMPAS: Life’s full of plots.
JOHN: We like to think so. But when you come down to it, the rank and file—rich and poor—live much as we do. Not much plot. Work and a nice wife and a nice house and a nice Katie.
DR. BUMPAS: No, no, no—life’s full of plots. Swarming with ’em.
JOHN: Here’s Mr. Graham now.
(John goes to the door and shakes hands with a reticent bearded man of about fifty. Presentations.)
MR. GRAHAM: I just stopped by to meet your wife and to explain that I’ll have to come another time, if you’ll be so good as to ask me.
GABRIELLE: Oh, I’m sorry.
MR. GRAHAM: Tonight I must work. I’ve been ordered to send in a report and I shall probably work all night. (Looking about) It’s a very interesting, a very attractive house.
JOHN: And it has a story. I was just going to ask Dr. Bumpas to tell it to us.
DR. BUMPAS: Let’s see . . . what was their name?
GABRIELLE: They call it the Hamburton place.
DR. BUMPAS: That’s it. It must have been some thirty years ago. There was an old father, rich, hateful, miserly, beard and everything. And he buried a lot of money under the floor or between the bricks. (He points to the hearth) There was a son and daughter he kept in rags. Yes, sir, rags, and they lived on potato peelings. They wanted just enough money to get some education and something to wear. And one night they meant to frighten him—they tied him with rope or something to frighten him into releasing some money. Some say they meant to kill him; anyway he died in this very room.
GABRIELLE: What became of the children?
DR. BUMPAS: They disappeared. Tell the truth, no one tried very hard to find them.
GABRIELLE: Did they get any money?
DR. BUMPAS: We hope so. Let’s hope they found some. Most of it lies down there in the bank to this day.
JOHN: Well, there you have it.
MR. GRAHAM: Very interesting.
GABRIELLE: Come now, can’t you both stay and have a cup of cocoa? It won’t take a minute.
DR. BUMPAS: Patients dying like flies. Very glad to have met you, Mr. Graham. —Zzzzt. Off I go.
(He goes out.)
JOHN: All these houses collect folklore like moss. (To Gabrielle) You see there’s nothing one can make out of a story like that—it’s too naïf.
GABRIELLE: Excuse me, one minute. I hear Katie’s cowbell. We have a maid upstairs sick in bed, Mr. Graham. When she needs me she rings a cowbell.
(She goes out right.)
MR. GRAHAM: But I must go too. You’ll say good night for me. —One question before I go. Did you know a Miss Buckingham, by any chance?
JOHN: Yes, oh, yes. Miss Buckingham came and spent an evening with us here. Yes, she used to be a trained nurse in South Africa, or Australia. She went back there. Did you know her?
MR. GRAHAM: Yes, I used to know her.
JOHN: She liked this house too. She asked to come and see it.
MR. GRAHAM: And she went back to Australia? That’s what I wanted to know.
(Gabrielle’s voice calls, “John! John!”)
JOHN: There’s my wife calling me upstairs. —You probably can get Miss Buckingham’s address at Mrs. Thorpe’s boardinghouse. She stayed there. —I’m coming! You’ll excuse me. Just come any time, Mr. Graham, and we’ll have a game.
(John hurries out.
Mr. Graham, who has been at the front door, reenters, crosses the room with grave caution to the front right corner. He slowly picks up one corner of the carpet and stares at a mottled portion of the floor. He lowers the carpet and goes out into the street.
John and Gabrielle return.)
JOHN: I guess she’ll be comfortable now.
GABRIELLE: Here you see: here’s our evening free after all.
JOHN: Didn’t even have the excitement of a game of chess. Well, I like it best this way.
(He sits down to his cards again. Gabrielle takes up her sewing, then rises and stands behind him watching the game over his shoulder.)
GABRIELLE: There! That jack on the ten releases the ace.
JOHN: But even then we’re at a standstill.
GABRIELLE: I don’t see why that game shouldn’t come out oftener. (Pause) I don’t think you see all the moves.
JOHN: I certainly do see all the moves that are to be seen. —You don’t expect me to look under the cards, do you?
(He sweeps the cards toward him and starts to shuffle.)
One more game and then we’ll have some cocoa.
END OF PLAY
The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE FORM in which this play is cast is not an innovation but a revival. The healthiest ages of the theatre have been marked by the fact that there was the least literally representative scenery. The sympathetic participation of the audience was most engaged when their collaborative imagination was called upon to supply a large part of the background.
It is perhaps a sad commentary on the kind of people who go in for amateur stage production to say that in the many productions of the play I have seen, Ma Kirby has been permitted, or directed, to play her role sentimentally, and the closing moments have been drenched in tears, ostentatious piety and a kind of heroic self-pity. The play is a testimonial of homage to the average American mother who brings up her children as instinctively as a bird builds its nest and w
hose strength lies in the fact that whatever stress arrives from the circumstances of life, she strives to maintain an atmosphere of forward-looking industry and readiness.
Thornton Wilder
New Haven, Connecticut
April 13, 1942
CHARACTERS
THE STAGE MANAGER
MA, Mrs. Kate Kirby
ARTHUR, her son
CAROLINE, her daughter
PA, Ma’s husband Elmer
BEULAH, the Kirbys’ married daughter who lives in Camden, New Jersey
SETTING
The Kirby house; then the Kirby family car trip from Newark to Camden, New Jersey.
No scenery is required for this play. Perhaps a few dusty flats may be seen leaning against the brick wall at the back of the stage.
The Stage Manager not only moves forward and withdraws the few properties that are required, but he reads from a typescript the lines of all the minor characters. He reads them clearly, but with little attempt at characterization, scarcely troubling himself to alter his voice, even when he responds in the person of a child or a woman.
As the curtain rises The Stage Manager is leaning lazily against the proscenium pillar at the audience’s left. He is smoking.
Arthur is playing marbles in the center of the stage.
Caroline is at the remote back right talking to some girls who are invisible to us.
Ma Kirby is anxiously putting on her hat before an imaginary mirror.
MA: Where’s your pa? Why isn’t he here? I declare we’ll never get started.
ARTHUR: Ma, where’s my hat? I guess I don’t go if I can’t find my hat.
MA: Go out into the hall and see if it isn’t there. Where’s Caroline gone to now, the plagued child?
ARTHUR: She’s out waitin’ in the street talkin’ to the Jones girls. —I just looked in the hall a thousand times, Ma, and it isn’t there. (He spits for good luck before a difficult shot and mutters:) Come on, baby.
MA: Go and look again, I say. Look carefully.
(Arthur rises, runs to the right, turns around swiftly, returns to his game, flinging himself on the floor with a terrible impact and starts shooting an aggie.)
ARTHUR: No, Ma, it’s not there.
MA (Serenely): Well, you don’t leave Newark without that hat, make up your mind to that. I don’t go no journeys with a hoodlum.