Long Day's Journey into Night (Yale Nota Bene) (23 page)

Stung, turns on him in a rage.

You loafer!

Papa! Do you want to start a row that will bring Mama down? Jamie, go back to sleep! You’ve shot off your mouth too much already.

Tyrone turns away.

Thickly.

All right, Kid. Not looking for argument. Too damned sleepy.

He closes his eyes, his head nodding. Tyrone comes to the table and sits down, turning his chair so he won’t look at Jamie. At once he becomes sleepy, too.

Heavily.

I wish to God she’d go to bed so that I could, too.

Drowsily.

I’m dog tired. I can’t stay up all night like I used to. Getting old—old and finished.

With a bone-cracking yawn.

Can’t keep my eyes open. I think I’ll catch a few winks. Why don’t you do the same, Edmund? It’ll pass the time until she—

His voice trails off. His eyes close, his chin sags, and he begins to breathe heavily through his mouth. Edmund sits tensely. He hears something and jerks nervously forward in his chair, staring through the front parlor into the hall. He jumps up with a hunted, distracted expression. It seems for a second he is going to hide in the back parlor. Then he sits down again and waits, his eyes averted, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. Suddenly all five bulbs of the chandelier in the front parlor are turned on from a wall switch, and a moment later someone starts playing the piano in there—the opening of one of Chopin’s simpler waltzes, done with a forgetful, stiff-fingered groping, as if an awkward schoolgirl were practicing it for the first time. Tyrone starts to wide-awakeness and sober dread, Jamie’s head jerks back and his eyes open. For a moment they listen frozenly. The playing stops as abruptly as it began, and Mary appears in the doorway. She wears a sky-blue dressing gown over her nightdress, dainty slippers with pompons on her bare feet. Her face is paler than ever. Her eyes look enormous. They glisten like polished black jewels. The uncanny thing is that her face now appears so youthful. Experience seems ironed out of it. It is a marble mask of girlish innocence, the mouth caught in a shy smile. Her white hair is braided in two pigtails which hang over her breast. Over one arm, carried neglectfully, trailing on the floor, as if she had forgotten she held it, is an old-fashioned white satin wedding gown, trimmed with duchesse lace. She hesitates in the doorway, glancing round the room, her forehead puckered puzzledly, like someone who has come to a room to get something but has become absent-minded on the way and forgotten what it was. They stare at her. She seems aware of them merely as she is aware of other objects in the room, the furniture, the windows, familiar things she accepts automatically as naturally belonging there but which she is too preoccupied to notice.

Breaks the cracking silence—bitterly, self-defensively sardonic.

The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia!

His father and brother both turn on him fiercely. Edmund is quicker. He slaps Jamie across the mouth with the back of his hand.

His voice trembling with suppressed fury.

Good boy, Edmund. The dirty blackguard! His own mother!

Mumbles guiltily, without resentment.

All right, Kid. Had it coming. But I told you how much I’d hoped—

He puts his hands over his face and begins to sob.

I’ll kick you out in the gutter tomorrow, so help me God.

But Jamie’s sobbing breaks his anger, and he turns and shakes his shoulder, pleading.

Jamie, for the love of God, stop it!

Then Mary speaks, and they freeze into silence again, staring at her. She has paid no attention whatever to the incident. It is simply a part of the familiar atmosphere of the room, a background which does not touch her preoccupation; and she speaks aloud to herself, not to them.

I play so badly now. I’m all out of practice. Sister Theresa will give me a dreadful scolding. She’ll tell me it isn’t fair to my father when he spends so much money for extra lessons. She’s quite right, it isn’t fair, when he’s so good and generous, and so proud of me. I’ll practice every day from now on. But something horrible has happened to my hands. The fingers have gotten so stiff—

She lifts her hands to examine them with a frightened puzzlement.

The knuckles are all swollen. They’re so ugly. I’ll have to go to the Infirmary and show Sister Martha.

With a sweet smile of affectionate trust.

She’s old and a little cranky, but I love her just the same, and she has things in her medicine chest that’ll cure anything. She’ll give me something to rub on my hands, and tell me to pray to the Blessed Virgin, and they’ll be well again in no time.

She forgets her hands and comes into the room, the wedding gown trailing on the floor. She glances around vaguely, her forehead puckered again.

Let me see. What did I come here to find? It’s terrible, how absent-minded I’ve become. I’m always dreaming and forgetting.

In a stifled voice.

What’s that she’s carrying, Edmund?

Dully.

Her wedding gown, I suppose.

Christ!

He gets to his feet and stands directly in her path—in anguish.

Mary! Isn’t it bad enough—?

Controlling himself—gently persuasive.

Here, let me take it, dear. You’ll only step on it and tear it and get it dirty dragging it on the floor. Then you’d be sorry afterwards.

She lets him take it, regarding him from somewhere far away within herself without recognition, without either affection or animosity.

With the shy politeness of a well-bred young girl toward an elderly gentleman who relieves her of a bundle.

Thank you. You are very kind.

She regards the wedding gown with a puzzled interest.

It’s a wedding gown. It’s very lovely, isn’t it?

A shadow crosses her face and she looks vaguely uneasy.

I remember now. I found it in the attic hidden in a trunk. But I don’t know what I wanted it for. I’m going to be a nun—that is, if I can only find—

She looks around the room, her forehead puckered again.

What is it I’m looking for? I know it’s something I lost.

She moves back from Tyrone, aware of him now only as some obstacle in her path.

In hopeless appeal.

Mary!

But it cannot penetrate her preoccupation. She doesn’t seem to hear him. He gives up helplessly, shrinking into himself, even his defensive drunkenness taken from him, leaving him sick and sober. He sinks back on his chair, holding the wedding gown in his arms with an unconscious clumsy, protective gentleness.

Drops his hand from his face, his eyes on the table top. He has suddenly sobered up, too—dully.

It’s no good, Papa.

He recites from Swinburne’s “A Leave-taking’ and does it well, simply but with a bitter sadness.

“Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.”

Looking around her.

Something I miss terribly. It can’t be altogether lost.

She starts to move around in back of Jamie’s chair.

Turns to look up into her face—and cannot help appealing pleadingly in his turn.

Mama!

She does not seem to hear. He looks away hopelessly.

Hell! What’s the use? It’s no good.

He recites from “A Leave-taking” again with increased bitterness.

“Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.”

Looking around her.

Something I need terribly. I remember when I had it I was never lonely nor afraid. I can’t have lost it forever, I would die if I thought that. Because then there would be no hope.

She moves like a sleepwalker, around the back of Jamie’s chair, then forward toward left front, passing behind Edmund.

Turns impulsively and grabs her arm. As he pleads he has the quality of a bewilderedly hurt little boy.

Mama! It isn’t a summer cold! I’ve got consumption!

For a second he seems to have broken through to her. She trembles and her expression becomes terrified. She calls distractedly, as if giving a command to herself.

No!

And instantly she is far away again. She murmurs gently but impersonally.

You must not try to touch me. You must not try to hold me. It isn’t right, when I am hoping to be a nun.

He lets his hand drop from her arm. She moves left to the front end of the sofa beneath the windows and sits down, facing front, her hands folded in her lap, in a demure schoolgirlish pose.

Gives Edmund a strange look of mingled pity and jealous gloating.

You damned fool. It’s no good.

He recites again from the Swinburne poem.

“Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.”

Trying to shake off his hopeless stupor.

Oh, we’re fools to pay any attention. It’s the damned poison. But I’ve never known her to drown herself in it as deep as this.

Gruffly.

Pass me that bottle, Jamie. And stop reciting that damned morbid poetry. I won’t have it in my house!

Jamie pushes the bottle toward him. He pours a drink without disarranging the wedding gown he holds carefully over his other arm and on his lap, and shoves the bottle back. Jamie pours his and passes the bottle to Edmund, who, in turn, pours one. Tyrone lifts his glass and his sons follow suit mechanically, but before they can drink Mary speaks and they slowly lower their drinks to the table, forgetting them.

Staring dreamily before her. Her face looks extraordinarily youthful and innocent. The shyly eager, trusting smile is on her lips as she talks aloud to herself.

I had a talk with Mother Elizabeth. She is so sweet and good. A saint on earth. I love her dearly. It may be sinful of me but I love her better than my own mother. Because she always understands, even before you say a word. Her kind blue eyes look right into your heart. You can’t keep any secrets from her. You couldn’t deceive her, even if you were mean enough to want to.

She gives a little rebellious toss of her head—with girlish pique.

All the same, I don’t think she was so understanding this time. I told her I wanted to be a nun. I explained how sure I was of my vocation, that I had prayed to the Blessed Virgin to make me sure, and to find me worthy. I told Mother I had had a true vision when I was praying in the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, on the little island in the lake. I said I knew, as surely as I knew I was kneeling there, that the Blessed Virgin had smiled and blessed me with her consent. But Mother Elizabeth told me I must be more sure than that, even, that I must prove it wasn’t simply my imagination. She said, if I was so sure, then I wouldn’t mind putting myself to a test by going home after I graduated, and living as other girls lived, going out to parties and dances and enjoying myself; and then if after a year or two I still felt sure, I could come back to see her and we would talk it over again.

She tosses her head—indignantly.

I never dreamed Holy Mother would give me such advice! I was really shocked. I said, of course, I would do anything she suggested, but I knew it was simply a waste of time. After I left her, I felt all mixed up, so I went to the shrine and prayed to the Blessed Virgin and found peace again because I knew she heard my prayer and would always love me and see no harm ever came to me so long as I never lost my faith in her.

She pauses and a look of growing uneasiness comes over her face. She passes a hand over her forehead as if brushing cobwebs from her brain— vaguely.

That was in the winter of senior year. Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.