Part 12

HOLDEN: Am I a stumbling-block?

FEJEVARY: Candidly (_with a smile_) you are a little hard to finance. Here's the situation. The time for being a little college has passed. We must take our place as one of the important colleges--I make bold to say one of the important universities--of the Middle West. But we have to enlarge before we can grow. (_answering_ HOLDEN's _smile_) Yes, it is ironic, but that's the way of it. It was a nice thing to open the anniversary with fifty thousand from the steel works--but fifty thousand dollars--nowadays--to an institution? (_waves the fifty thousand aside_) They'll do more later, I think, when they see us coming into our own. Meanwhile, as you know, there's this chance for an appropriation from the state. I find that the legislature, the members who count, are very friendly to Morton College. They like the spirit we have here. Well, now I come to you, and you are one of the big reasons for my wanting to put this over. Your salary makes me blush. It's all wrong that a man like you should have these petty worries, particularly with Mrs Holden so in need of the things a little money can do. Now this man Lewis is a reactionary. So, naturally, he doesn't approve of you.

HOLDEN: So naturally I am to go.

FEJEVARY: Go? Not at all. What have I just been saying?

HOLDEN: Be silent, then.

FEJEVARY: Not that either--not--not really. But--be a little more discreet. (_seeing him harden_) This is what I want to put up to you. Why not give things a chance to mature in your own mind? Candidly, I don't feel you know just what you do think; is it so awfully important to express--confusion?

HOLDEN: The only man who knows just what he thinks at the present moment is the man who hasn't done any new thinking in the past ten years.

FEJEVARY: (_with a soothing gesture_) You and I needn't quarrel about it. I understand you, but I find it a little hard to interpret you to a man like Lewis.

HOLDEN: Then why not let a man like Lewis go to thunder?

FEJEVARY: And let the college go to thunder? I'm not willing to do that. I've made a good many sacrifices for this college. Given more money than I could afford to give; given time and thought that I could have used for personal gain.

HOLDEN: That's true, I know.

FEJEVARY: I don't know just why I've done it. Sentiment, I suppose. I had a very strong feeling about my father, Professor Holden. And this friend Silas Morton. This college is the child of that friendship. Those are noble words in our manifesto: 'Morton College was born because there came to this valley a man who held his vision for mankind above his own advantage; and because that man found in this valley a man who wanted beauty for his fellow-men as he wanted no other thing.'

HOLDEN: (_taking it up_) 'Born of the fight for freedom and the aspiration to richer living, we believe that Morton College--rising as from the soil itself--may strengthen all those here and everywhere who fight for the life there is in freedom, and may, to the measure it can, loosen for America the beauty that breathes from knowledge.' (_moved by the words he has spoken_) Do you know, I would rather do that--really do that--than--grow big.

FEJEVARY: Yes. But you see, or rather, what you don't see is, you have to look at the world in which you find yourself. The only way to stay alive is to grow big. It's been hard, but I have tried to--carry on.

HOLDEN: And so have I tried to carry on. But it is very hard--carrying on a dream.

FEJEVARY: Well, I'm trying to make it easier.

HOLDEN: Make it easier by destroying the dream?

FEJEVARY: Not at all. What I want is scope for dreams.

HOLDEN: Are you sure we'd have the dreams after we've paid this price for the scope?

FEJEVARY: Now let's not get rhetorical with one another.

HOLDEN: Mr Fejevary, you have got to let me be as honest with you as you say you are being with me. You have got to let me say what I feel.

FEJEVARY: Certainly. That's why I wanted this talk with you.

HOLDEN: You say you have made sacrifices for Morton College. So have I.

FEJEVARY: How well I know that.

HOLDEN: You don't know all of it. I'm not sure you understand any of it.

FEJEVARY: (_charmingly_) Oh, I think you're hard on me.

HOLDEN: I spoke of the tenth anniversary. I was a young man then, just home from Athens, (_pulled back into an old feeling_) I don't know why I felt I had to go to Greece. I knew then that I was going to teach something within sociology, and I didn't want anything I felt about beauty to be left out of what I formulated about society. The Greeks--

FEJEVARY: (_as_ HOLDEN _has paused before what he sees_) I remember you told me the Greeks were the passion of your student days.

HOLDEN: Not so much because they created beauty, but because they were able to let beauty flow into their lives--to create themselves in beauty. So as a romantic young man (_smiles_), it seemed if I could go where they had been--what I had felt might take form. Anyway, I had a wonderful time there. Oh, what wouldn't I give to have again that feeling of life's infinite possibilities!

FEJEVARY: (_nodding_) A youthful feeling.

HOLDEN: (_softly_) I like youth. Well, I was just back, visiting my sister here, at the time of the tenth anniversary. I had a chance then to go to Harvard as instructor. A good chance, for I would have been under a man who liked me. But that afternoon I heard your father speak about books. I talked with Silas Morton. I found myself telling him about Greece. No one had ever felt it as he felt it. It seemed to become of the very bone of him.

FEJEVARY: (_affectionately_) I know how he used to do.

HOLDEN: He put his hands on my shoulders. He said, 'Young man, don't go away. We need you here. Give us this great thing you've got!' And so I stayed, for I felt that here was soil in which I could grow, and that one's whole life was not too much to give to a place with roots like that. (_a little bitterly_) Forgive me if this seems rhetoric.

FEJEVARY: (_a gesture of protest. Silent a moment_) You make it--hard for me. (_with exasperation_) Don't you think I'd like to indulge myself in an exalted mood? And why don't I? I can't afford it--not now. Won't you have a little patience? And faith--faith that the thing we want will be there for us after we've worked our way through the woods. We are in the woods now. It's going to take our combined brains to get us out. I don't mean just Morton College.

HOLDEN: No--America. As to getting out, I think you are all wrong.

FEJEVARY: That's one of your sweeping statements, Holden. Nobody's all wrong. Even you aren't.

HOLDEN: And in what ways am I wrong--from the standpoint of your Senator Lewis?

FEJEVARY: He's not my Senator Lewis, he's the state's, and we have to take him as he is. Why, he objects, of course, to your radical

## activities. He spoke of your defence of conscientious objectors.

HOLDEN: (_slowly_) I think a man who is willing to go to prison for what he believes has stuff in him no college needs turn its back on.

FEJEVARY: Well, he doesn't agree with you--nor do I.

HOLDEN: (_still quietly_) And I think a society which permits things to go on which I can prove go on in our federal prisons had better stop and take a fresh look at itself. To stand for that and then talk of democracy and idealism--oh, it shows no mentality, for one thing.

FEJEVARY: (_easily_) I presume the prisons do need a cleaning up. As to Fred Jordan, you can't expect me to share your admiration. Our own Fred--my nephew Fred Morton, went to France and gave his life. There's some little courage, Holden, in doing that.

HOLDEN: I'm not trying to belittle it. But he had the whole spirit of his age with him--fortunate boy. The man who stands outside the idealism of this time--

FEJEVARY: Takes a good deal upon himself, I should say.

HOLDEN: There isn't any other such loneliness. You know in your heart it's a noble courage.

FEJEVARY: It lacks--humility. (HOLDEN _laughs scoffingly_) And I think you lack it. I'm asking you to co-operate with me for the good of Morton College.

HOLDEN: Why not do it the other way? You say enlarge that we may grow. That's false. It isn't of the nature of growth. Why not do it the way of Silas Morton and Walt Whitman--each man being his purest and intensest self. I was full of this fervour when you came in. I'm more and more disappointed in our students. They're empty--flippant. No sensitive moment opens them to beauty. No exaltation makes them--what they hadn't known they were. I concluded some of the fault must be mine. The only students I reach are the Hindus. Perhaps Madeline Morton--I don't quite make her out. I too must have gone into a dead stratum. But I can get back. Here alone this afternoon--(_softly_) I was back.

FEJEVARY: I think we'll have to let the Hindus go.

HOLDEN: (_astonished_) Go? Our best students?

FEJEVARY: This college is for Americans. I'm not going to have foreign revolutionists come here and block the things I've spent my life working for.

HOLDEN: I don't seem to know what you mean at all.

FEJEVARY: Why, that disgraceful performance this morning. I can settle Madeline all right, (_looking at his watch_) She should be here by now. But I'm convinced our case before the legislature will be stronger with the Hindus out of here.

HOLDEN: Well, I seem to have missed something--disgraceful performance--the Hindus, Madeline--(_stops, bewildered_)

FEJEVARY: You mean to say you don't know about the disturbance out here?

HOLDEN: I went right home after the address. Then came up here alone.

FEJEVARY: Upon my word, you do lead a serene life. While you've been sitting here in contemplation I've been to the police court--trying to get my niece out of jail. That's what comes of having radicals around.

HOLDEN: What happened?

FEJEVARY: One of our beloved Hindus made himself obnoxious on the campus. Giving out handbills about freedom for India--howling over deportation. Our American boys wouldn't stand for it. A policeman saw the fuss--came up and started to put the Hindu in his place. Then Madeline rushes in, and it ended in her pounding the policeman with her tennis racket.

HOLDEN: Madeline Morton did that!

FEJEVARY: (_sharply_) You seem pleased.

HOLDEN: I am--interested.

FEJEVARY: Well, I'm not interested. I'm disgusted. My niece mixing up in a free-for-all fight and getting taken to the police station! It's the first disgrace we've ever had in our family.

HOLDEN: (_as one who has been given courage_) Wasn't there another disgrace?

FEJEVARY: What do you mean?

HOLDEN: When your father fought his government and was banished from his country.

FEJEVARY: That was not a disgrace!

HOLDEN: (_as if in surprise_) Wasn't it?

FEJEVARY: See here, Holden, you can't talk to me like that.

HOLDEN: I don't admit you can talk to me as you please and that I can't talk to you. I'm a professor--not a servant.

FEJEVARY: Yes, and you're a damned difficult professor. I certainly have tried to--

HOLDEN: (_smiling_) Handle me?

FEJEVARY: I ask you this. Do you know any other institution where you could sit and talk with the executive head as you have here with me?

HOLDEN: I don't know. Perhaps not.

FEJEVARY: Then be reasonable. No one is entirely free. That's naïve. It's rather egotistical to want to be. We're held by our relations to others--by our obligations to the (_vaguely_)--the ultimate thing. Come now--you admit certain dissatisfactions with yourself, so--why not go with intensity into just the things you teach--and not touch quite so many other things?

HOLDEN: I couldn't teach anything if I didn't feel free to go wherever that thing took me. Thirty years ago I was asked to come to this college precisely because my science was not in isolation, because of my vivid feeling of us as a moment in a long sweep, because of my faith in the greater beauty our further living may unfold.

(HARRY _enters_.)

HARRY: Excuse me. Miss Morton is here now, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: (_frowns, hesitates_) Ask her to come up here in five minutes (_After_ HARRY _has gone_) I think we've thrown a scare into Madeline. I thought as long as she'd been taken to jail it would be no worse for us to have her stay there awhile. She's been held since one o'clock. That ought to teach her reason.

HOLDEN: Is there a case against her?

FEJEVARY: No, I got it fixed up. Explained that it was just college girl foolishness--wouldn't happen again. One reason I wanted this talk with you first, if I do have any trouble with Madeline I want you to help me.

HOLDEN: Oh, I can't do that.

FEJEVARY: You aren't running out and clubbing the police. Tell her she'll have to think things over and express herself with a little more dignity.

HOLDEN: I ask to be excused from being present while you talk with her.

FEJEVARY: But why not stay in the library--in case I should need you. Just take your books over to the east alcove and go on with what you were doing when I came in.

HOLDEN: (_with a faint smile_) I fear I can hardly do that. As to Madeline--

FEJEVARY: You don't want to see the girl destroy herself, do you? I confess I've always worried about Madeline. If my sister had lived--But Madeline's mother died, you know, when she was a baby. Her father--well, you and I talked that over just the other day--there's no getting to him. Fred never worried me a bit--just the fine normal boy. But Madeline--(_with an effort throwing it off_) Oh, it'll be all right, I haven't a doubt. And it'll be all right between you and me, won't it? Caution over a hard strip of the road, then--bigger things ahead.

HOLDEN: (_slowly, knowing what it may mean_) I shall continue to do all I can toward getting Fred Jordan out of prison. It's a disgrace to America that two years after the war closes he should be kept there--much of the time in solitary confinement--because he couldn't believe in war. It's small--vengeful--it's the Russia of the Czars. I shall do what is in my power to fight the deportation of Gurkul Singh. And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college. For what--I ask you? Dismissed--for _what_? Because they love liberty enough to give their lives to it! The day you dismiss them, burn our high-sounding manifesto, Mr Fejevary, and admit that Morton College now sells her soul to the--committee on appropriations!

FEJEVARY: Well, you force me to be as specific as you are. If you do these things, I can no longer fight for you.

HOLDEN: Very well then, I go.

FEJEVARY: Go where?

HOLDEN: I don't know--at the moment.

FEJEVARY: I fear you'll find it harder than you know. Meanwhile, what of your family?

HOLDEN: We will have to manage some way.

FEJEVARY: It is not easy for a woman whose health--in fact, whose life--is a matter of the best of care to 'manage some way'. (_with real feeling_) What is an intellectual position alongside that reality? You'd like, of course, to be just what you want to be--but isn't there something selfish in that satisfaction? I'm talking as a friend now--you must know that. You and I have a good many ties, Holden. I don't believe you know how much Mrs Fejevary thinks of Mrs Holden.

HOLDEN: She has been very, very good to her.

FEJEVARY: And will be. She cares for her. And our children have been growing up together--I love to watch it. Isn't that the reality? Doing for them as best we can, making sacrifices of--of _every_ kind. Don't let some tenuous, remote thing destroy this flesh and blood thing.

HOLDEN: (_as one fighting to keep his head above water_) Honesty is not a tenuous, remote thing.

FEJEVARY: There's a kind of honesty in selfishness. We can't always have it. Oh, I used to--go through things. But I've struck a pace--one does--and goes ahead.

HOLDEN: Forgive me, but I don't think you've had certain temptations to--selfishness.

FEJEVARY: How do you know what I've had? You have no way of knowing what's in me--what other thing I might have been? You know my heritage; you think that's left nothing? But I find myself here in America. I love those dependent on me. My wife--who's used to a certain manner of living; my children--who are to become part of the America of their time. I've never said this to another human being--I've never looked at myself--but it's pretty arrogant to think you're the only man who has made a sacrifice to fit himself into the age in which he lives. I hear Madeline. This hasn't left me in very good form for talking with her. Please don't go away. Just--

(MADELINE _comes in, right. She has her tennis racket. Nods to the two men_. HOLDEN _goes out, left_.)

MADELINE: (_looking after_ HOLDEN--_feeling something going on. Then turning to her uncle, who is still looking after_ HOLDEN) You wanted to speak to me, Uncle Felix?

FEJEVARY: Of course I want to speak to you.

MADELINE: I feel just awfully sorry about--banging up my racket like this. The second time it came down on this club. Why do they carry those things? Perfectly fantastic, I'll say, going around with a club. But as long as you were asking me what I wanted for my birthday--

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I am not here to discuss your birthday.

MADELINE: I'm sorry--(_smiles_) to hear that.

FEJEVARY: You don't seem much chastened.

MADELINE: Chastened? Was that the idea? Well, if you think that keeping a person where she doesn't want to be chastens her! I never felt less 'chastened' than when I walked out of that slimy spot and looked across the street at your nice bank. I should think you'd hate to--(_with friendly concern_) Why, Uncle Felix, you look tired out.

FEJEVARY: I am tired out, Madeline. I've had a nerve-racking day.

MADELINE: Isn't that too bad? Those speeches were so boresome, and that old senator person--wasn't he a stuff? But can't you go home now and let auntie give you tea and--

FEJEVARY: (_sharply_) Madeline, have you no intelligence? Hasn't it occurred to you that your performance would worry me a little?

MADELINE: I suppose it was a nuisance. And on such a busy day. (_changing_) But if you're going to worry, Horace is the one you should worry about. (_answering his look_) Why, he got it all up. He made me ashamed!

FEJEVARY: And you're not at all ashamed of what you have done?

MADELINE: Ashamed? Why--no.

FEJEVARY: Then you'd better be! A girl who rushes in and assaults an officer!

MADELINE: (_earnestly explaining it_) But, Uncle Felix, I had to stop him. No one else did.

FEJEVARY: Madeline, I don't know whether you're trying to be naïve--

MADELINE: (_angrily_) Well, I'm _not_. I like that! I think I'll go home.

FEJEVARY: I think you will not! It's stupid of you not to know this is serious. You could be dismissed from school for what you did.

MADELINE: Well, I'm good and ready to be dismissed from any school that would dismiss for that!

FEJEVARY: (_in a new manner--quietly, from feeling_) Madeline, have you no love for this place?

MADELINE: (_doggedly, after thinking_) Yes, I have. (_she sits down_) And I don't know why I have.

FEJEVARY: Certainly it's not strange. If ever a girl had a background, Morton College is Madeline Fejevary Morton's background. (_he too now seated by the table_) Do you remember your Grandfather Morton?

MADELINE: Not very well. (_a quality which seems sullenness_) I couldn't bear to look at him. He shook so.

FEJEVARY: (_turning away, real pain_) Oh--how cruel!

MADELINE: (_surprised, gently_) Cruel? Me--cruel?

FEJEVARY: Not just you. The way it passes--(_to himself_) so _fast_ it passes.

MADELINE: I'm sorry. (_troubled_) You see, he was too old then--

FEJEVARY: (_his hand up to stop her_) I wish I could bring him back for a moment, so you could see what he was before he (_bitterly_) shook so. He was a powerful man, who was as real as the earth. He was strangely of the earth, as if something went from it to him. (_looking at her intently_) Queer you should be the one to have no sentiment about him, for you and he--sometimes when I'm with you it's as if--he were near. He had no personal ambition, Madeline. He was ambitious for the earth and its people. I wonder if you can realize what it meant to my father--in a strange land, where he might so easily have been misunderstood, pushed down, to find a friend like that? It wasn't so much the material things--though Uncle Silas was always making them right--and as if--oh, hardly conscious what he was doing--so little it mattered. It was the way he _got_ father, and by that very valuing kept alive what was there to value. Why, he literally laid this country at my father's feet--as if that was what this country was for, as if it made up for the hard early things--for the wrong things.

MADELINE: He must really have been a pretty nice old party. No doubt I would have hit it off with him all right. I don't seem to hit it off with the--speeches about him. Somehow I want to say, 'Oh, give us a rest.'

FEJEVARY: (_offended_) And that, I presume, is what you want to say to me.

MADELINE: No, no, I didn't mean you, Uncle. Though (_hesitatingly_) I was wondering how you could think you were talking on your side.

FEJEVARY: What do you mean--my side?

MADELINE: Oh, I don't--exactly. That's nice about him being--of the earth. Sometimes when I'm out for a tramp--way off by myself--yes, I know. And I wonder if that doesn't explain his feeling about the Indians. Father told me how grandfather took it to heart about the Indians.

FEJEVARY: He felt it as you'd feel it if it were your brother. So he must give his choicest land to the thing we might become. 'Then maybe I can lie under the same sod with the red boys and not be ashamed.'

(MADELINE _nods, appreciatively_.)

MADELINE: Yes, that's really--all right.

FEJEVARY: (_irritated by what seems charily stated approval_) 'All right!' Well, I am not willing to let this man's name pass from our time. And it seems rather bitter that Silas Morton's granddaughter should be the one to stand in my way.