Theft Part 10

We do have much in common, you and I.

{Margaret}

The future.

{Knox}

(_Gravely, looking at her with s.h.i.+ning eyes._) I sometimes fear for more immediate reasons than that.

(_Margaret looks at him in alarm, and at the same time betrays pleasure in what he has said._) For you.

{Margaret}

(_Hastily._) Don't look at me that way. Your eyes are flas.h.i.+ng.

Some one might see and misunderstand.

{Knox}

(_In confusion, awkwardly._) I was unaware that I--that I was looking at you----in any way that----

{Margaret}

I'll tell you why you are here. Because I sent for you.

{Knox}

(_With signs of ardor._) I would come whenever you sent for me, and go wherever you might send me.

{Margaret}

(_Reprovingly._)

Please, please---- It was about that speech. I have been hearing about it from everybody--rumblings and mutterings and dire prophecies. I know how busy you are, and I ought not to have asked you to come. But there was no other way, and I was so anxious.

{Knox}

(_Pleased._) It seems so strange that you, being what you are, affiliated as you are, should be interested in the welfare of the common people.

{Margaret}

(_Judicially._) I do seem like a traitor in my own camp. But as father said a while ago, I, too, have dreamed my dream. I did it as a girl--Plato's _Republic_, Moore's _Utopia_--I was steeped in all the dreams of the social dreamers.

(_During all that follows of her speech, Knox is keenly interested, his eyes glisten and he hangs on her words._)

And I dreamed that I, too, might do something to bring on the era of universal justice and fair play. In my heart I dedicated myself to the cause of humanity. I made Lincoln my hero-he still is. But I was only a girl, and where was I to find this cause?--how to work for it? I was shut in by a thousand restrictions, hedged in by a thousand conventions. Everybody laughed at me when I expressed the thoughts that burned in me.

What could I do? I was only a woman. I had neither vote nor right of utterance. I must remain silent. I must do nothing. Men, in their lordly wisdom, did all. They voted, orated, governed. The place for women was in the home, taking care of some lordly man who did all these lordly things.

{Knox}

You understand, then, why I am for equal suffrage.

{Margaret}

But I learned--or thought I learned. Power, I discovered early.

My father had power. He was a magnate--I believe that is the correct phrase. Power was what I needed. But how? I was a woman.

Again I dreamed my dream--a modified dream. Only by marriage could I win to power. And there you have the clew to me and what I am and have become. I met the man who was to become my husband.

He was clean and strong and an athlete, an outdoor man, a wealthy man and a rising politician. Father told me that if I married him he would make him the power of his state, make him governor, send him to the United States Senate. And there you have it all.

{Knox}

Yes?---- Yes?

{Margaret}

I married. I found that there were greater forces at work than I had ever dreamed of. They took my husband away from me and molded him into the political lieutenant of my father. And I was without power. I could do nothing for the cause. I was beaten. Then it was that I got a new vision. The future belonged to the children.

There I could play my woman's part. I was a mother. Very well. I could do no better than to bring into the world a healthy son and bring him up to manhood healthy and wholesome, clean, n.o.ble, and alive. Did I do my part well, through him the results would be achieved. Through him would the work of the world be done in making the world healthier and happier for all the human creatures in it. I played the mother's part. That is why I left the pitiful little charities of the church and devoted myself to settlement work and tenement house reform, established my kindergartens, and worked for the little men and women who come so blindly and to whom the future belongs to make or mar.

{Knox}

You are magnificent. I know, now, why I come when you bid me come.

{Margaret}

And then you came. You were magnificent. You were my knight of the windmills, tilting against all power and privilege, striving to wrest the future from the future and realize it here in the present, now. I was sure you would be destroyed. Yet you are still here and fighting valiantly. And that speech of yours to-morrow--

{Chalmers}

(_Who has approached, bearing Dolores Ortega's cup._) Yes, that speech. How do you do, Mr. Knox.

(_They shake hands._) A cup of tea, Madge. For Mrs. Ortega. Two lumps, please.

(_Margaret prepares the cup of tea._) Everybody is excited over that speech. You are going to give us particular fits, to-morrow, I understand.

{Knox}

(_Smiling._) Really, no more than is deserved.

{Chalmers}

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

{Knox}

Precisely.

(_Receiving back cup of tea from Margaret._)

{Chalmers}