Plays Part 32

SILAS: But think what it is you've said! If it's true that we made ourselves-made ourselves out of the wanting to be more-created ourselves you might say, by our own courage-our-what is it?-aspiration. Why, I can't take it in. I haven't got the mind to take it in. And what mind I have got says no. It's too-

FEJEVARY: It fights with what's there.

SILAS: (nodding) But it's like I got this (very slowly) other way around. From underneath. As if I'd known it all along-but have just found out I know it! Yes. The earth told me. The beasts told me.

GRANDMOTHER: Fine place to learn things from.

SILAS: Anyhow, haven't I seen it? (to FEJEVARY) In your face haven't I seen thinking make a finer face? How long has this taken, Felix, to-well, you might say, bring us where we are now?

FELIX: Oh, we don't know how many millions of years since earth first stirred.

SILAS: Then we are what we are because through all that time there've been them that wanted to be more than life had been.

FELIX: That's it, Uncle Silas.

SILAS: But-why, then we aren't finished yet!

FEJEVARY: No. We take it on from here.

SILAS: (slowly) Then if we don't be-the most we can be, if we don't be more than life has been, we go back on all that life behind us; go back on-the-

(Unable to formulate it, he looks to FEJEVARY.)

FEJEVARY: Go back on the dreaming and the daring of a million years.

(After a moment's pause SILAS gets up, opens the closet door.)

GRANDMOTHER: Silas, what you doing?

SILAS: (who has taken out a box) I'm lookin' for the deed to the hill.

GRANDMOTHER: What you going to do with it?

SILAS: I'm going to get it out of my hands.

GRANDMOTHER: Get it out of your hands? (he has it now) Deed your father got from the government the very year the government got it from the Indians?

(rising) Give me that! (she turns to FEJEVARY) Tell him he's crazy. We got the best land 'cause we was first here. We got a right to keep it.

FEJEVARY: (going soothingly to her) It's true, Silas, it is a serious thing to give away one's land.

SILAS: You ought to know. You did it. Are you sorry you did it?

FEJEVARY: No. But wasn't that different?

SILAS: How was it different? Yours was a fight to make life more, wasn't it? Well, let this be our way.

GRANDMOTHER: What's all that got to do with giving up the land that should provide for our own children?

SILAS: Isn't it providing for them to give them a better world to live in? Felix-you're young, I ask you, ain't it providing for them to give them a chance to be more than we are?

FELIX: I think you're entirely right, Uncle Silas. But it's the practical question that-

SILAS: If you're right, the practical question is just a thing to fix up.

FEJEVARY: I fear you don't realize the immense amount of money required to finance a college. The land would be a start. You would have to interest rich men; you'd have to have a community in sympathy with the thing you wanted to do.

GRANDMOTHER: Can't you see, Silas, that we're all against you?

SILAS: All against me? (to FEJEVARY) But how can you be? Look at the land we walked in and took! Was there ever such a chance to make life more? Why, the buffalo here before us was more than we if we do nothing but prosper! G.o.d d.a.m.n us if we sit here rich and fat and forget man's in the makin'. (affirming against this) There will one day be a college in these cornfields by the Mississippi because long ago a great dream was fought for in Hungary. And I say to that old dream, Wake up, old dream! Wake up and fight! You say rich men. (holding it out, but it is not taken) I give you this deed to take to rich men to show them one man believes enough in this to give the best land he's got. That ought to make rich men stop and think.

GRANDMOTHER: Stop and think he's a fool.

SILAS: (to FEJEVARY) It's you can make them know he's not a fool. When you tell this way you can tell it, they'll feel in you what's more than them. They'll listen.

GRANDMOTHER: I tell you, Silas, folks are too busy.

SILAS: Too busy!' Too busy bein' nothin'? If it's true that we created ourselves out of the thoughts that came, then thought is not something outside the business of life. Thought-(with his gift for wonder) why, thought's our chance. I know now. Why I can't forget the Indians. We killed their joy before we killed them. We made them less, (to FEJEVARY, and as if sure he is now making it clear) I got to give it back-their hill. I give it back to joy-a better joy-joy o'aspiration.

FEJEVARY: (moved but unconvinced) But, my friend, there are men who have no aspiration. That's why, to me, this is as a light s.h.i.+ning from too far.

GRANDMOTHER: (old things waked in her) Light s.h.i.+ning from far. We used to do that. We never pulled the curtain. I used to want to-you like to be to yourself when night conies-but we always left a lighted window for the traveller who'd lost his way.

FELIX: I should think that would have exposed you to the Indians.

GRANDMOTHER: Yes. (impatiently) Well, you can't put out a light just because it may light the wrong person.

FEJEVARY: No. (and this is as a light to him. He turns to the hill) No.

SILAS: (with gentleness, and profoundly) That's it. Look again. Maybe your eyes are stronger now. Don't you see it? I see that college rising as from the soil itself, as if it was what come at the last of that thinking that breathes from the earth. I see it-but I want to know it's real before I stop knowing. Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be ashamed. We're not old! Let's fight! Wake in other men what you woke in me!

FEJEVARY: And so could I pay my debt to America. (His hand goes out.)

SILAS: (giving him the deed) And to the dreams of a million years! (Standing near the open door, their hands are gripped in compact.)

(CURTAIN)

ACT II

SCENE: A corridor in the library of Morton College, October of the year 1920, upon the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its founding. This is an open place in the stacks of books, which are seen at both sides. There is a reading-table before the big rear window. This window opens out, but does not extend to the floor; only a part of its height is seen, indicating a very high window. Outside is seen the top of a tree. This outer wall of the building is on a slant, so that the entrance right is near, and the left is front. Right front is a section of a huge square column. On the rear of this, facing the window, is hung a picture of SILAS MORTON. Two men are standing before this portrait.

SENATOR LEWIS is the Midwestern state senator. He is not of the city from which Morton College rises, but of a more country community farther in-state. FELIX FEJEVARY, now nearing the age of his father in the first act, is an American of the more sophisticated type-prosperous, having the poise of success in affairs and place in society.

SENATOR: And this was the boy who founded the place, eh? It was his idea?

FEJEVARY: Yes, and his hill. I was there the afternoon he told my father there must be a college here. I wasn't any older then than my boy is now.

(As if himself surprised by this.)