Plays Part 31

SILAS: We've got the same kind of minds-the beasts and me.

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, I wish you wouldn't talk like that-and with Felix just home from Harvard College.

SILAS: Same kind of minds-except that mine goes on a little farther.

GRANDMOTHER: Well I'm glad to hear you say that.

SILAS: Well, there we sat-you an' me-middle of a starry night, out beside your barn. And I guess it came over you kind of funny you should be there with me-way off the Mississippi, tryin' to save a sick horse. Seemed to-bring your life to life again. You told me what you studied in that fine old university you loved-the Vienna,-and why you became a revolutionist. The old dreams took hold o' you and you talked-way you used to, I suppose. The years, o' course, had rubbed some of it off. Your face as you went on about the vision-you called it, vision of what life could be. I knew that night there was things I never got wind of. When I went away-knew I ought to go home to bed-hayin' at daybreak. 'Go to bed?' I said to myself. 'Strike this dead when you've never had it before, may never have it again?' I climbed the hill. Blackhawk was there.

GRANDMOTHER: Why, he was dead.

SILAS: He was there-on his own old hill, with me and the stars. And I said to him-

GRANDMOTHER: Silas!

SILAS: Says I to him, 'Yes-that's true; it's more yours than mine, you had it first and loved it best. But it's neither yours nor mine,-though both yours and mine. Not my hill, not your hill, but-hill of vision', said I to him. 'Here shall come visions of a better world than was ever seen by you or me, old Indian chief.' Oh, I was drunk, plum drunk.

GRANDMOTHER: I should think you was. And what about the next day's hay?

SILAS: A day in the hayfield is a day's hayin'-but a night on the hill-

FELIX: We don't have them often, do we, Uncle Silas?

SILAS: I wouldn't 'a' had that one but for your father, Felix. Thank G.o.d they drove you out o' Hungary! And it's all so dog-gone queer. Ain't it queer how things blow from mind to mind-like seeds. Lord A'mighty-you don't know where they'll take hold.

(Children's voices off.)

GRANDMOTHER: There come those children up from the creek-soppin' wet, I warrant. Well, I don't know how children ever get raised. But we raise more of 'em than we used to. I buried three-first ten years I was here. Needn't 'a' happened-if we'd known what we know now, and if we hadn't been alone. (With all her strength.) I don't know what you mean-the hill's not yours!

SILAS: It's the future's, mother-so's we can know more than we know now.

GRANDMOTHER: We know it now. 'Twas then we didn't know it. I worked for that hill! And I tell you to leave it to your own children.

SILAS: There's other land for my own children. This is for all the children.

GRANDMOTHER: What's all the children to you?

SILAS: (derisively) Oh, mother-what a thing for you to say! You who were never too tired to give up your own bed so the stranger could have a better bed.

GRANDMOTHER: That was different. They was folks on their way.

FEJEVARY: So are we.

(SILAS turns to him with quick appreciation.)

GRANDMOTHER: That's just talk. We're settled now. Children of other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you'd want yours to.

SILAS: I want other things more. I want to pay my debts 'fore I'm too old to know they're debts.

GRANDMOTHER: (momentarily startled) Debts? Huh! More talk. You don't owe any man.

SILAS: I owe him (nodding to FEJEVARY). And the red boys here before me.

GRANDMOTHER: Fiddlesticks.

FELIX: You haven't read Darwin, have you, Uncle Silas?

SILAS: Who?

FELIX: Darwin, the great new man-and his theory of the survival of the fittest?

SILAS: No. No, I don't know things like that, Felix.

FELIX: I think he might make you feel better about the Indians. In the struggle for existence many must go down. The fittest survive. This-had to be.

SILAS: Us and the Indians? Guess I don't know what you mean-fittest.

FELIX: He calls it that. Best fitted to the place in which one finds one's self, having the qualities that can best cope with conditions-do things. From the beginning of life it's been like that. He shows the growth of life from forms that were hardly alive, the lowest animal forms-jellyfish-up to man.

SILAS: Oh, yes, that's the thing the churches are so upset about-that we come from monkeys.

FELIX: Yes. One family of ape is the direct ancestor of man.

GRANDMOTHER: You'd better read your Bible, Felix.

SILAS: Do people believe this?

FELIX: The whole intellectual world is at war about it. The best scientists accept it. Teachers are losing their positions for believing it. Of course, ministers can't believe it.

GRANDMOTHER: I should think not. Anyway, what's the use believing a thing that's so discouraging?

FEJEVARY: (gently) But is it that? It almost seems to me we have to accept it because it is so encouraging. (holding out his hand) Why have we hands?

GRANDMOTHER: Cause G.o.d gave them to us, I s'pose.

FEJEVARY: But that's rather general, and there isn't much in it to give us self-confidence. But when you think we have hands because ages back-before life had taken form as man, there was an impulse to do what had never been done-when you think that we have hands today because from the first of life there have been adventurers-those of best brain and courage who wanted to be more than life had been, and that from aspiration has come doing, and doing has shaped the thing with which to do-it gives our hand a history which should make us want to use it well.

SILAS: (breathed from deep) Well, by G.o.d! And you've known this all this while! Dog-gone you-why didn't you tell me?

FEJEVARY: I've been thinking about it. I haven't known what to believe. This hurts-beliefs of earlier years.

FELIX: The things it hurts will have to go.

FEJEVARY: I don't know about that, Felix. Perhaps in time we'll find truth in them.

FELIX: Oh, if you feel that way, father.

FEJEVARY: Don't be kind to me, my boy, I'm not that old.