Part 3

ALLIE MAYO: I know where you're going! (MRS PATRICK _turns but not as if she wants to_) What you'll try to do. Over there. (_pointing to the line of woods_) Bury it. The life in you. Bury it--watching the sand bury the woods. But I'll tell you something! _They_ fight too. The woods! They fight for life the way that Captain fought for life in there!

(_Pointing to the closed door_.)

MRS PATRICK: (_with a strange exultation_) And lose the way he lost in there!

ALLIE MAYO: (_sure, sombre_) They don't lose.

MRS PATRICK: Don't _lose_? (_triumphant_) I have walked on the tops of buried trees!

ALLIE MAYO: (_slow, sombre, yet large_) And vines will grow over the sand that covers the trees, and hold it. And other trees will grow over the buried trees.

MRS PATRICK: I've watched the sand slip down on the vines that reach out farthest.

ALLIE MAYO: Another vine will reach that spot. (_under her breath, tenderly_) Strange little things that reach out farthest!

MRS PATRICK: And will be buried soonest!

ALLIE MAYO: And hold the sand for things behind them. They save a wood that guards a town.

MRS PATRICK: I care nothing about a wood to guard a town. This is the outside--these dunes where only beach grass grows, this outer shore where men can't live. The Outside. You who were born here and who die here have named it that.

ALLIE MAYO: Yes, we named it that, and we had reason. He died here (_reaches her hand toward the closed door_) and many a one before him. But many another reached the harbor! (_slowly raises her arm, bends it to make the form of the Cape. Touches the outside of her bent arm_) The Outside. But an arm that bends to make a harbor--where men are safe.

MRS PATRICK: I'm outside the harbor--on the dunes, land not life.

ALLIE MAYO: Dunes meet woods and woods hold dunes from a town that's shore to a harbor.

MRS PATRICK: This is the Outside. Sand (_picking some of it up in her hand and letting it fall on the beach grass_) Sand that _covers_--hills of sand that move and cover.

ALLIE MAYO: Woods. Woods to hold the moving hills from Provincetown. Provincetown--where they turn when boats can't live at sea. Did you ever see the sails come round here when the sky is dark? A line of them--swift to the harbor--where their children live. Go back! (_pointing_) Back to your edge of the woods that's the _edge of the dunes_.

MRS PATRICK: The edge of life. Where life trails off to dwarfed things not worth a name.

(_Suddenly sits down in the doorway_.)

ALLIE MAYO: Not worth a name. And--meeting the Outside!

(_Big with the sense of the wonder of life_.)

MRS PATRICK: (_lifting sand and letting it drift through her hand_.) They're what the sand will let them be. They take strange shapes like shapes of blown sand.

ALLIE MAYO: Meeting the Outside. (_moving nearer; speaking more personally_) I know why you came here. To this house that had been given up; on this shore where only savers of life try to live. I know what holds you on these dunes, and draws you over there. But other things are true beside the things you want to see.

MRS PATRICK: How do you know they are? Where have you been for twenty years?

ALLIE MAYO: Outside. Twenty years. That's why I know how brave _they_ are (_indicating the edge of the woods. Suddenly different_) You'll not find peace there again! Go back and watch them _fight_!

MRS PATRICK: (_swiftly rising_) You're a cruel woman--a hard, insolent woman! I knew what I was doing! What do you know about it? About me? I didn't go to the Outside. I was left there. I'm only--trying to get along. Everything that can hurt me I want buried--buried deep. Spring is here. This morning I _knew_ it. Spring--coming through the storm--to take me--take me to hurt me. That's why I couldn't bear--(_she looks at the closed door_) things that made me know I feel. You haven't felt for so long you don't know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here! And now you'd take _that_ from me--(_looking now toward the edge of the woods_) the thing that made me know they would be buried in my heart--those things I can't _live_ and know I feel. You're more cruel than the sea! 'But other things are true beside the things you want to see!' Outside. Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring. (_as if resentful of not more deeply believing what she says_) What would there be for me but the Outside? What was there for you? What did you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted?

ALLIE MAYO: I found--what I find now I know. The edge of life--to hold life behind me--

(_A slight gesture toward_ MRS PATRICK.)

MRS PATRICK: (_stepping back_) You call what you are life? (_laughs_) Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand!

ALLIE MAYO: (_under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty_) Ugly!

MRS PATRICK: (_passionately_) I have _known_ life. I have known _life_. You're like this Cape. A line of land way out to sea--land not life.

ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (_raises her arm, curves it in as if around something she loves_) Land that encloses and gives shelter from storm.

MRS PATRICK: (_facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else out_) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes--land not life.

ALLIE MAYO: Outside sea--outer shore, dark with the wood that once was ships--dunes, strange land not life--woods, town and harbor. The line! Stunted straggly line that meets the Outside face to face--and fights for what itself can never be. Lonely line. Brave growing.

MRS PATRICK: It loses.

ALLIE MAYO: It wins.

MRS PATRICK: The farthest life is buried.

ALLIE MAYO: And life grows over buried life! (_lifted into that; then, as one who states a simple truth with feeling_) It will. And Springs will come when you will want to know that it is Spring.

(_The_ CAPTAIN _and_ BRADFORD _appear behind the drift of sand. They have a stretcher. To get away from them_ MRS PATRICK _steps farther into the room_; ALLIE MAYO _shrinks into her corner. The men come in, open the closed door and go in the room where they left the dead man. A moment later they are seen outside the big open door, bearing the man away_. MRS PATRICK _watches them from sight_.)

MRS PATRICK: (_bitter, exultant_) Savers of life! (_to_ ALLIE MAYO) You savers of life! 'Meeting the Outside!' Meeting--(_but she cannot say it mockingly again; in saying it, something of what it means has broken through, rises. Herself lost, feeling her way into the wonder of life_) Meeting the Outside!

(_It grows in her as_ CURTAIN _lowers slowly_.)

THE VERGE

First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14, 1921.

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

ANTHONY

HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband

HATTIE, The maid

CLAIRE

DICK, Richard Demming

TOM EDGEWORTHY

ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter

ADELAIDE, Claire's sister

DR EMMONS

## ACT I

_The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light from below which comes up through an open trap-door in the floor. This slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY, _a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._

ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine!

(_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself, and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.

The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps lead down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room. One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing wall save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of plants leads off.

This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with plants, a laboratory.

At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful. It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a little way up the glass. You might see the form of a cross in it, if you happened to think it that way. The leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have been. They are at once repellent and significant_.

ANTHONY _is at work preparing soil--mixing, sifting. As the wind tries the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured and returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not buzz once long and three short. Then he returns to his work. The buzzer goes on and on in impatient jerks which mount in anger. Several times_ ANTHONY _is almost compelled by this insistence, but the thing that holds him back is stronger. At last, after a particularly mad splutter, to which_ ANTHONY _longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it up_. ANTHONY _goes on preparing soil.

A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in, and also_ MR HARRY ARCHER, _wrapped in a rug._)

ANTHONY: Oh, please close the door, sir.

HARRY: Do you think I'm not trying to? (_he holds it open to say this_)

ANTHONY: But please _do_. This stormy air is not good for the plants.

HARRY: I suppose it's just the thing for me! Now, what do you mean, Anthony, by not answering the phone when I buzz for you?

ANTHONY: Miss Claire--Mrs Archer told me not to.

HARRY: Told you not to answer me?

ANTHONY: Not you especially--nobody but her.

HARRY: Well, I like her nerve--and yours.

ANTHONY: You see, she thought it took my mind from my work to be interrupted when I'm out here. And so it does. So she buzzes once long and--Well, she buzzes her way, and all other buzzing--

HARRY: May buzz.

ANTHONY: (_nodding gravely_) She thought it would be better for the flowers.

HARRY: I am not a flower--true, but I too need a little attention--and a little heat. Will you please tell me why the house is frigid?

ANTHONY: Miss Claire ordered all the heat turned out here, (_patiently explaining it to_ MISS CLAIRE's _speechless husband_) You see the roses need a great deal of heat.

HARRY: (_reading the thermometer_) The roses have seventy-three I have forty-five.

ANTHONY: Yes, the roses need seventy-three.

HARRY: Anthony, this is an outrage!

ANTHONY: I think it is myself; when you consider what we paid for the heating plant--but as long as it is defective--Why, Miss Claire would never have done what she has if she hadn't looked out for her plants in just such ways as this. Have you forgotten that Breath of Life is about to flower?

HARRY: And where's my breakfast about to flower?--that's what I want to know.

ANTHONY: Why, Miss Claire got up at five o'clock to order the heat turned off from the house.

HARRY: I see you admire her vigilance.

ANTHONY: Oh, I do. (_fervently_) I do. Harm was near, and that woke her up.

HARRY: And what about the harm to--(_tapping his chest_) Do roses get pneumonia?

ANTHONY: Oh, yes--yes, indeed they do. Why, Mr Archer, look at Miss Claire herself. Hasn't she given her heat to the roses?

HARRY: (_pulling the rug around him, preparing for the blizzard_) She has the fire within.

ANTHONY: (_delighted_) Now isn't that true! How well you said it. (_with a glare for this appreciation_, HARRY _opens the door. It blows away from him_) Please do close the door!

HARRY: (_furiously_) You think it is the aim of my life to hold it open?

ANTHONY: (_getting hold of it_) Growing things need an even temperature, (_while saying this he gets the man out into the snow_)

(ANTHONY _consults the thermometer, not as pleased this time as he was before. He then looks minutely at two of the plants--one is a rose, the other a flower without a name because it has not long enough been a flower. Peers into the hearts of them. Then from a drawer under a shelf, takes two paper bags, puts one over each of these flowers, closing them down at the bottom. Again the door blows wildly in, also_ HATTIE, _a maid with a basket_.)

ANTHONY: What do you mean--blowing in here like this? Mrs Archer has ordered--

HATTIE: Mr Archer has ordered breakfast served here, (_she uncovers the basket and takes out an electric toaster_)

ANTHONY: _Breakfast_--here? _Eat_--here? Where plants grow?

HATTIE: The plants won't poison him, will they? (_at a loss to know what to do with things, she puts the toaster under the strange vine at the back, whose leaves lift up against the glass which has frost leaves on the outer side_)

ANTHONY: (_snatching it away_) You--you think you can cook eggs under the Edge Vine?

HATTIE: I guess Mr Archer's eggs are as important as a vine. I guess my work's as important as yours.

ANTHONY: There's a million people like you--and like Mr Archer. In all the world there is only one Edge Vine.

HATTIE: Well, maybe one's enough. It don't look like nothin', anyhow.

ANTHONY: And you've not got the wit to know that that's why it's the Edge Vine.

HATTIE: You want to look out, Anthony. You talk nutty. Everybody says so.

ANTHONY: Miss Claire don't say so.

HATTIE: No, because she's--

ANTHONY: You talk too much!

(_Door opens, admitting_ HARRY; _after looking around for the best place to eat breakfast, moves a box of earth from the table_.)

HARRY: Just give me a hand, will you, Hattie?

(_They bring it to the open space and he and_ HATTIE _arrange breakfast things_, HATTIE _with triumphant glances at the distressed_ ANTHONY)

ANTHONY: (_deciding he must act_) Mr Archer, this is not the place to eat breakfast!

HARRY: Dead wrong, old boy. The place that has heat is the place to eat breakfast. (_to_ HATTIE) Tell the other gentlemen--I heard Mr Demming up, and Mr Edgeworthy, if he appears, that as long as it is such a pleasant morning, we're having breakfast outside. To the conservatory for coffee.

(HATTIE _giggles, is leaving_.)

And let's see, have we got everything? (_takes the one shaker, shakes a little pepper on his hand. Looks in vain for the other shaker_) And tell Mr Demming to bring the salt.

ANTHONY: But Miss Claire will be very angry.

HARRY: I am very angry. Did I choose to eat my breakfast at the other end of a blizzard?

ANTHONY: (_an exclamation of horror at the thermometer_) The temperature is falling. I must report. (_he punches the buzzer, takes up the phone_) Miss Claire? It is Anthony. A terrible thing has happened. Mr Archer--what? Yes, a terrible thing.--Yes, it is about Mr Archer.--No--no, not dead. But here. He is here. Yes, he is well, he seems well, but he is eating his breakfast. Yes, he is having breakfast served out here--for himself, and the other gentlemen are to come too.--Well, he seemed to be annoyed because the heat had been turned off from the house. But the door keeps opening--this stormy wind blowing right over the plants. The temperature has already fallen.--Yes, yes. I thought you would want to come.

(ANTHONY _opens the trap-door and goes below_. HARRY _looks disapprovingly down into this openness at his feet, returns to his breakfast_. ANTHONY _comes up, bearing a box_.)

HARRY: (_turning his face away_) Phew! What a smell.

ANTHONY: Yes. Fertilizer has to smell.

HARRY: Well, it doesn't have to smell up my breakfast!

ANTHONY: (_with a patient sense of order_) The smell belongs here. (_he and the smell go to the inner room_)

(_The outer door opens just enough to admit_ CLAIRE--_is quickly closed. With_ CLAIRE _in a room another kind of aliveness is there_.)

CLAIRE: What are you doing here?

HARRY: Getting breakfast. (_all the while doing so_)

CLAIRE: I'll not have you in my place!

HARRY: If you take all the heat then you have to take me.

CLAIRE: I'll show you how I have to take you. (_with her hands begins scooping upon him the soil_ ANTHONY _has prepared_)

HARRY: (_jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms, putting his arms around her_) Claire--be decent. What harm do I do here?

CLAIRE: You pull down the temperature.

HARRY: Not after I'm in.

CLAIRE: And you told Tom and Dick to come and make it uneven.

HARRY: Tom and Dick are our guests. We can't eat where it's warm and leave them to eat where it's cold.

CLAIRE: I don't see why not.

HARRY: You only see what you want to see.

CLAIRE: That's not true. I wish it were. No; no, I don't either. (_she is disturbed--that troubled thing which rises from within, from deep, and takes_ CLAIRE. _She turns to the Edge Vine, examines. Regretfully to_ ANTHONY, _who has come in with a plant_) It's turning back, isn't it?

ANTHONY: Can you be sure yet, Miss Claire?

CLAIRE: Oh yes--it's had its chance. It doesn't want to be--what hasn't been.

HARRY: (_who has turned at this note in her voice. Speaks kindly_) Don't take it so seriously, Claire. (CLAIRE _laughs_)

CLAIRE: No, I suppose not. But it _does_ matter--and why should I pretend it doesn't, just because I've failed with it?

HARRY: Well, I don't want to see it get you--it's not important enough for that.

CLAIRE: (_in her brooding way_) Anything is important enough for that--if it's important at all. (_to the vine_) I thought you were out, but you're--going back home.

ANTHONY: But you're doing it this time, Miss Claire. When Breath of Life opens--and we see its heart--

(CLAIRE _looks toward the inner room. Because of intervening plants they do not see what is seen from the front--a plant like caught motion, and of a greater transparency than plants have had. Its leaves, like waves that curl, close around a heart that is not seen. This plant stands by itself in what, because of the arrangement of things about it, is a hidden place. But nothing is between it and the light_.)

CLAIRE: Yes, if the heart has (_a little laugh_) held its own, then Breath of Life is alive in its otherness. But Edge Vine is running back to what it broke out of.

HARRY: Come, have some coffee, Claire.

(ANTHONY _returns to the inner room, the outer door opens_. DICK _is hurled in_.)

CLAIRE: (_going to the door, as he gasps for breath before closing it_) How dare you make my temperature uneven! (_she shuts the door and leans against it_)

DICK: Is that what I do?

(_A laugh, a look between them, which is held into significance_.)

HARRY: (_who is not facing them_) Where's the salt?

DICK: Oh, I fell down in the snow. I must have left the salt where I fell. I'll go back and look for it.

CLAIRE: And change the temperature? We don't need salt.

HARRY: You don't need salt, Claire. But we eat eggs.

CLAIRE: I must tell you I don't like the idea of any food being eaten here, where things have their own way to go. Please eat as little as possible, and as quickly.

HARRY: A hostess calculated to put one at one's ease.

CLAIRE: (_with no ill-nature_) I care nothing about your ease. Or about Dick's ease.

DICK: And no doubt that's what makes you so fascinating a hostess.

CLAIRE: Was I a fascinating hostess last night, Dick? (_softly sings_) 'Oh, night of love--' (_from the Barcorole of 'Tales of Hoffman'_)

HARRY: We've got to have salt.

(_He starts for the door._ CLAIRE _slips in ahead of him, locks it, takes the key. He marches off, right_.)

CLAIRE: (_calling after him_) That end's always locked.

DICK: Claire darling, I wish you wouldn't say those startling things. You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a shock--and really, it's unwise.

CLAIRE: Haven't you learned that the best place to hide is in the truth? (_as_ HARRY _returns_) Why won't you believe me, Harry, when I tell you the truth--about doors being locked?

HARRY: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just because you don't eat salt.

CLAIRE: (_with one of her swift changes_) Oh, Harry! Try your egg without salt. Please--please try it without salt! (_an intensity which seems all out of proportion to the subject_)

HARRY: An egg demands salt.

CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'

HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.

CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.

HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (_going back to his breakfast_)

CLAIRE: And pleased--so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure, it is just the right kind of spirit--because it gets no lift. (_more brightly_) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.

DICK: I'll try it now. (_he goes to the breakfast table_)

CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?

HARRY: Claire.

DICK: (_pushing back his egg_) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.

HARRY: Claire, there is a _limit_.

CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a limit. So--the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get out, I suppose it is--quite unexpectedly, and perhaps--a bit terribly.

HARRY: Get out where?

CLAIRE: (_with a bright smile_) Where you, darling, will never go.

HARRY: And from which you, darling, had better beat it.

CLAIRE: I wish I could. (_to herself_) No--no I don't either

(_Again this troubled thing turns her to the plant. She puts by themselves the two which_ ANTHONY _covered with paper bags. Is about to remove these papers_. HARRY _strikes a match_.)

CLAIRE: (_turning sharply_) You can't smoke here. The plants are not used to it.

HARRY: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for them.

CLAIRE: There is design.

HARRY: (_to_ DICK) Am I supposed to be answered? I never can be quite sure at what moment I am answered.

(_They both watch_ CLAIRE, _who has uncovered the plants and is looking intently into the flowers. From a drawer she takes some tools. Very carefully gives the rose pollen to an unfamiliar flower--rather wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on a small shelf near the door of the inner room_.)

DICK: What is this you're doing, Claire?

CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.