Long Day's Journey into Night (Yale Nota Bene) (5 page)

A summer cold makes anyone irritable.

Genuinely concerned.

It’s not just a cold he’s got. The Kid is damned sick.

His father gives him a sharp warning look but he doesn’t see it.

Turns on him resentfully.

Why do you say that? It
is
just a cold! Anyone can tell that! You always imagine things!

With another warning glance at Jamie—easily.

All Jamie meant was Edmund might have a touch of something else, too, which makes his cold worse.

Sure, Mama. That’s all I meant.

Doctor Hardy thinks it might be a bit of malarial fever he caught when he was in the tropics. If it is, quinine will soon cure it.

A look of contemptuous hostility flashes across her face.

Doctor Hardy! I wouldn’t believe a thing he said, if he swore on a stack of Bibles! I know what doctors are. They’re all alike. Anything, they don’t care what, to keep you coming to them.

She stops short, overcome by a fit of acute self-consciousness as she catches their eyes fixed on her. Her hands jerk nervously to her hair. She forces a smile.

What is it? What are you looking at? Is my hair—?

Puts his arm around her
—
with guilty heartiness, giving her a playful hug.

There’s nothing wrong with your hair. The healthier and fatter you get, the vainer you become. You’ll soon spend half the day primping before the mirror.

Half reassured.

I really should have new glasses. My eyes are so bad now.

With Irish blarney.

Your eyes are beautiful, and well you know it.

He gives her a kiss. Her face lights up with a charming, shy embarrassment. Suddenly and startlingly one sees in her face the girl she had once been, not a ghost of the dead, but still a living part of her.

You musn’t be so silly, James. Right in front of Jamie!

Oh, he’s on to you, too. He knows this fuss about eyes and hair is only fishing for compliments. Eh, Jamie?

His face has cleared, too, and there is an old boyish charm in his loving smile at his mother.

Yes. You can’t kid us, Mama.

Laughs and an Irish lilt comes into her voice.

Go along with both of you!

Then she speaks with a girlish gravity.

But I did truly have beautiful hair once, didn’t I, James?

The most beautiful in the world!

It was a rare shade of reddish brown and so long it came down below my knees. You ought to remember it, too, Jamie. It wasn’t until after Edmund was born that I had a single grey hair. Then it began to turn white.

The girlishness fades from her face.

Quickly.

And that made it prettier than ever.

Again embarrassed and pleased.

Will you listen to your father, Jamie—after thirty-five years of marriage! He isn’t a great actor for nothing, is he? What’s come over you, James? Are you pouring coals of fire on my head for teasing you about snoring? Well then, I take it all back. It must have been only the foghorn I heard.

She laughs, and they laugh with her. Then she changes to a brisk businesslike air.

But I can’t stay with you any longer, even to hear compliments. I must see the cook about dinner and the day’s marketing.

She gets up and sighs with humorous exaggeration.

Bridget is so lazy. And so sly. She begins telling me about her relatives so I can’t get a word in edgeways and scold her. Well, I might as well get it over.

She goes to the back-parlor doorway, then turns, her face worried again.

You musn’t make Edmund work on the grounds with you, James, remember.

Again with the strange obstinate set to her face.

Not that he isn’t strong enough, but he’d perspire and he might catch more cold.

She disappears through the back parlor. Tyrone turns on Jamie condemningly.

You’re a fine lunkhead! Haven’t you any sense? The one thing to avoid is saying anything that would get her more upset over Edmund.

Shrugging his shoulders.

All right. Have it your way. I think it’s the wrong idea to let Mama go on kidding herself. It will only make the shock worse when she has to face it. Anyway, you can see she’s deliberately fooling herself with that summer cold talk. She knows better.

Knows? Nobody knows yet.

Well, I do. I was with Edmund when he went to Doc Hardy on Monday. I heard him pull that touch of malaria stuff. He was stalling. That isn’t what he thinks any more. You know it as well as I do. You talked to him when you went uptown yesterday, didn’t you?

He couldn’t say anything for sure yet. He’s to phone me today before Edmund goes to him.

Slowly.

He thinks it’s consumption, doesn’t he, Papa?

Reluctantly.

He said it might be.

Moved, his love for his brother coming out.

Poor kid! God damn it!

He turns on his father accusingly.

It might never have happened if you’d sent him to a real doctor when he first got sick.

What’s the matter with Hardy? He’s always been our doctor up here.

Everything’s the matter with him! Even in this hick burg he’s rated third class! He’s a cheap old quack!

That’s right! Run him down! Run down everybody! Everyone is a fake to you!

Contemptuously.

Hardy only charges a dollar. That’s what makes you think he’s a fine doctor!

Stung.

That’s enough! You’re not drunk now! There’s no excuse—

He controls himself—a bit defensively.

If you mean I can’t afford one of the fine society doctors who prey on the rich summer people—

Can’t afford? You’re one of the biggest property owners around here.

That doesn’t mean I’m rich. It’s all mortgaged—

Because you always buy more instead of paying off mortgages. If Edmund was a lousy acre of land you wanted, the sky would be the limit!

That’s a lie! And your sneers against Doctor Hardy are lies! He doesn’t put on frills, or have an office in a fashionable location, or drive around in an expensive automobile. That’s what you pay for with those other five-dollars-to-look-at-your-tongue fellows, not their skill.

With a scornful shrug of his shoulders.

Oh, all right. I’m a fool to argue. You can’t change the leopard’s spots.

With rising anger.

No, you can’t. You’ve taught me that lesson only too well. I’ve lost all hope you will ever change yours. You dare tell me what I can afford? You’ve never known the value of a dollar and never will! You’ve never saved a dollar in your life! At the end of each season you’re penniless! You’ve thrown your salary away every week on whores and whiskey!

My salary! Christ!

It’s more than you’re worth, and you couldn’t get that if it wasn’t for me. If you weren’t my son, there isn’t a manager in the business who would give you a part, your reputation stinks so. As it is, I have to humble my pride and beg for you, saying you’ve turned over a new leaf, although I know it’s a lie!

I never wanted to be an actor. You forced me on the stage.

That’s a lie! You made no effort to find anything else to do. You left it to me to get you a job and I have no influence except in the theater. Forced you! You never wanted to do anything except loaf in barrooms! You’d have been content to sit back like a lazy lunk and sponge on me for the rest of your life! After all the money I’d wasted on your education, and all you did was get fired in disgrace from every college you went to!

Oh, for God’s sake, don’t drag up that ancient history!

It’s not ancient history that you have to come home every summer to live on me.

I earn my board and lodging working on the grounds. It saves you hiring a man.

Bah! You have to be driven to do even that much!

His anger ebbs into a weary complaint.

I wouldn’t give a damn if you ever displayed the slightest sign of gratitude. The only thanks is to have you sneer at me for a dirty miser, sneer at my profession, sneer at every damned thing in the world—except yourself.

Wryly.

That’s not true, Papa. You can’t hear me talking to myself, that’s all.

Stares at him puzzledly, then quotes mechanically.

“Ingratitude, the vilest weed that grows”!

I could see that line coming! God, how many thousand times—!

He stops, bored with their quarrel, and shrugs his shoulders.

All right, Papa. I’m a bum. Anything you like, so long as it stops the argument.

With indignant appeal now.

If you’d get ambition in your head instead of folly! You’re young yet. You could still make your mark. You had the talent to become a fine actor! You have it still. You’re my son—!

Boredly.

Let’s forget me. I’m not interested in the subject. Neither are you.

Tyrone gives up. Jamie goes on casually.

What started us on this? Oh, Doc Hardy. When is he going to call you up about Edmund?

Around lunch time.

He pauses—then defensively.

I couldn’t have sent Edmund to a better doctor. Hardy’s treated him whenever he was sick up here, since he was knee high. He knows his constitution as no other doctor could. It’s not a question of my being miserly, as you’d like to make out.

Bitterly.

And what could the finest specialist in America do for Edmund, after he’s deliberately ruined his health by the mad life he’s led ever since he was fired from college? Even before that when he was in prep school, he began dissipating and playing the Broadway sport to imitate you, when he’s never had your constitution to stand it. You’re a healthy hulk like me—or you were at his age—but he’s always been a bundle of nerves like his mother. I’ve warned him for years his body couldn’t stand it, but he wouldn’t heed me, and now it’s too late.

Sharply.

What do you mean, too late? You talk as if you thought—

Guiltily explosive.

Don’t be a damned fool! I meant nothing but what’s plain to anyone! His health has broken down and he may be an invalid for a long time.

Stares at his father, ignoring his explanation.

I know it’s an Irish peasant idea consumption is fatal. It probably is when you live in a hovel on a bog, but over here, with modern treatment—

Don’t I know that! What are you gabbing about, anyway? And keep your dirty tongue off Ireland, with your sneers about peasants and bogs and hovels!

Accusingly.

The less you say about Edmund’s sickness, the better for your conscience! You’re more responsible than anyone!

Stung.

That’s a lie! I won’t stand for that, Papa!

It’s the truth! You’ve been the worst influence for him. He grew up admiring you as a hero! A fine example you set him! If you ever gave him advice except in the ways of rottenness, I’ve never heard of it! You made him old before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom, when he was too young to see that your mind was so poisoned by your own failure in life, you wanted to believe every man was a knave with his soul for sale, and every woman who wasn’t a whore was a fool!