Part 12
[_Sitting on the steps and putting up the other braid._] Do you know, Ian, that’s the one thing about them I don’t quite like. You can’t get very intimate with them, can you? They make you so humble. That’s one nice thing about a clock. A clock is sometimes wrong.
IAN
Don’t you want to live in a first-hand relation to truth?
ELOISE
Yes; yes, I do--generally.
IAN
I have a feeling as of having touched vast forces. To work directly with worlds--it lifts me out of that little routine of our lives which is itself a clock.
ELOISE
[_Catching his exultation._] Let us _be_ like this! Let us have done with clocks!
IAN
Eloise, how wonderful! Can the clocks and live by the sun-dial? Live by the non-automatic sun-dial--as a pledge that we ourselves refuse to be automatons!
ELOISE
Like Alice Knight. [_She takes clock from dial and puts it face downward on the ground._] I shall never again have anything to do with a clock!
IAN
Eloise! How corking of you! I didn’t think you had it in you. [_Raising his right hand._] Do you solemnly swear to live by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
ELOISE
[_Her hand upon the sun-dial._] I swear.
IAN
Bring them!
ELOISE
Bring--?
IAN
The clocks! Bring them! [_Seizes the spade over by the house; begins to dig a grave behind the sun-dial._] Bring every one! We will bury the clocks before the sun-dial--an offering, a living sacrifice. I tell you this is _great_, Eloise. What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives. Clocks! Why, it is clockiness that makes America mechanical and mean! Clock-minded! A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time. [_A large gesture with the shovel._] Who thinks of spinning worlds when looking at a clock? How _dare_ clocks do this to us? But the sun-dial--because there was creation, because there are worlds outside our world, because space is rhythm and time is flow that shadow falls precisely there and not elsewhere! Bring them, Eloise! I am digging the graves of the clocks!
[_ELOISE swept up by this ecstasy, yet frightened at what it is bringing her to, hesitates, then runs to house. IAN digs with rhythmic vigor. A moment later ELOISE is seen peering down at him from window, in her arms a cuckoo clock. It begins to cuckoo, startling ELOISE._
IAN
That damned cuckoo!
[_A moment later ELOISE comes out, bearing cuckoo clock and an old-fashioned clock. IAN’S back is to her; she has to pass the alarm clock, lying where she left it, prone on the ground. She hesitates, then carefully holding the other two clocks in one arm, she stealthily goes rear and puts the alarm clock behind the sunflowers. Then advances with the other two._
IAN
[_While digging._] Into these graves go all that is clock-like in our own minds. All that a clock world has made of us lies buried here!
[_ELOISE stands rather appalled at the idea of so much of herself going into a grave. Puts the old-fashioned clock carefully on the ground. Gingerly fits the cuckoo clock into the completed grave. With an exclamation of horror lifts it out of the grave. Listens to its tick. Puts her ear to the sun-dial; listens vainly._
ELOISE
The sun-dial doesn’t tick, does it, Ian?
IAN
Why should it tick?
ELOISE
Do you know, Ian, I [_Timidly_] I like to hear the ticking of a clock. [_No reply. ELOISE holds up the cuckoo clock._] This was a wedding present.
IAN
No wonder marriage fails.
[_He moves to take it from her._
ELOISE
I wonder if we hadn’t better leave the cuckoo until tomorrow.
IAN
Flaming worlds! A cuckoo!
ELOISE
Eddy and Alice gave us the cuckoo. You know they’re coming back. I asked them for dinner. They might not understand our burying their clock.
IAN
Their failure to understand need not limit our lives.
[_Puts the cuckoo clock in its grave and begins to cover it._
ELOISE
[_As the earth goes on._] I liked the cuckoo! I liked to see him popping out!
IAN
[_Kindly._] You will grow, Eloise. You will go out to large things now that you have done with small ones.
ELOISE
I hope so. It will be hard on me if I don’t.
[_IAN reaches for the other clock._
ELOISE
[_Snatching it._] Oh, Ian, I don’t think I ought to bury this one. It’s the clock my grandmother started housekeeping with!
IAN
[_Firmly taking clock._] And see what it did to her. Meticulous old woman!
[_Puts it in its grave._
ELOISE
You were glad enough to get her pies and buckwheat cakes.
IAN
She had all the small virtues. But a standardized mind. [_Trampling down the grave._] She lacked scope. And now--a little grave for little clocks. [_Takes out his watch, puts it in the grave._] Your watch, Eloise.
ELOISE
[_Holding to her wrist watch._] I thought I’d keep my watch, Ian. [_Hastily._] For an ornament, you know.
IAN
We are going to let truth be your ornament, Eloise.
ELOISE
Nobody sees truth. [_With a fresh outburst._] This watch was my graduation present!
IAN
Symbolizing all the standardized arbitrary things you were taught! Commemorating the clock-like way your mind was made to run. Free yourself of that watch, Eloise. [_ELOISE reluctantly frees herself. IAN briskly covers the watches. Moves to the unfilled grave._] Is there nothing for this grave? [_ELOISE shakes her head._] Sure--the alarm clock!
ELOISE
[_Running to the sunflowers and spreading out her skirts before them._] Oh, Ian, _not_ the alarm clock! How would we ever go to Boston? The train doesn’t run by the sun.
IAN
Then the train is wrong.
ELOISE
But, Ian, if the train is wrong we have to be wrong to catch the train.
IAN
_That’s_ civilization. [_Stands resolutely by the grave._] The alarm clock, Eloise. The grave awaits it.
ELOISE
[_Taking it up, her arms folded around it._] I wanted to go to Boston and buy a hat!
IAN
The sun will fall upon your dear head and give you life.
ELOISE
[_About to cry._] But no style! It ticks so loud and sure!
IAN
All false things are loud and sure.
ELOISE
I need a tick! I am afraid of tickless time!
[_Holding the clock in both hands she places it against her left ear._
IAN
[_Spade still in his right hand, he places his left arm around her reassuringly._] You will grow, Eloise. You are growing.
[_He takes the clock as he is saying this. She turns her head backward following the departing clock with surprised and helpless eyes. Disconsolately watches him bury it._
ELOISE
[_An inspiration._] Ian! Couldn’t you fix the sun-dial to be set and go off?
IAN
[_Pained._] “Set and go off?” [_Pause; regards the sun._] _Sine sole sileo._
ELOISE
What did you say, Ian?
IAN
I said: _Sine sole sileo_.
ELOISE
Well, I don’t know what you say when you say that.
IAN
It’s a Latin motto I’ve just thought of for the sun-dial. It means, “Without sun, I am silent.” Silence is a great virtue. [_Having finished the grave, he looks around, making sure there are no more clocks. Joyously._] Now we are freed! Eloise, think what life is going to be! Done with approximations. Done with machine thinking. In a world content with false time, we are true.
ELOISE
[_Sitting on the steps._] Yes, it’s beautiful. I want to be true. It’s just that it’s a little hard to be true in a false world. For instance, tomorrow I have an appointment with the dentist. If I come on sun-time I suppose I’ll be twenty minutes--
IAN
[_Eagerly. Going to the sun-dial and pointing._] If you will just let me explain this table--[_ELOISE shrinks back. IAN gives it up._] Oh, well, tell him you are living by the truth.
ELOISE
I’m afraid he’ll charge me for it. And when we ask people for dinner at seven, they’ll get here at twenty minutes of seven. Or will it be twenty minutes _after_ seven?
IAN
[_Smoothing down graves._] It will be a part of eternal time.
ELOISE
Yes,--_that’s_ true. Only the roast isn’t so eternal. Why do they have clocks wrong?
IAN
Oh, Eloise, I’ve explained it so many times. You--living in Provincetown, three hundred miles to the eastward, are living by the mean solar time of Philadelphia. [_Venomously._] Do you _want_ to live by the mean solar time of Philadelphia?
ELOISE
Certainly _not_. [_An idea._] Then has Philadelphia got the right time?
IAN
It’s right six miles this side of Philadelphia.
ELOISE
We might move to Philadelphia.
[_Enter through gate, MRS. STUBBS, a Provincetown “native.”_
MRS. STUBBS
Now, Mr. Joyce, this sun clock,--is it running?
IAN
It doesn’t “run,” Mrs. Stubbs. It is acted upon.
MRS. STUBBS
Oh. Well, is it being acted upon?
IAN
As surely as the sun shines.
MRS. STUBBS
[_Looking at the sun._] And it is shining today, isn’t it? Well, will you tell me the time? My clock has stopped and I want to set it.
IAN
[_Happily._] You hear, Eloise? Her clock has stopped.
MRS. STUBBS
Yes, I forgot to wind it.
ELOISE
[_Grieved to think of any one living in such a world._] _Wind_ it!
IAN
Do you not see, Mrs. Stubbs, where the shadow falls? [_She comes up the steps._] From its millions of spinn--You’re in the way of the sun, Mrs. Stubbs. [_She steps aside._] Its millions of spinning miles the sun casts that shadow and here we know that it is eight minutes past six.
MRS. STUBBS
Now, ain’t that wonderful? Dear, dear, I wish Mr. Stubbs could make a sun clock. But he’s not handy around the house. Past six. Well, I must hurry back. They work tonight at the cold storage but Mr. Stubbs gets home for his supper at half past six.
[_Starts away, reaching the gate._
ELOISE
[_Running to her._] Oh, Mrs. Stubbs! Don’t get his supper by sun time. It wouldn’t be ready. It--[_With a hesitant look at IAN_] might get cold. [_MRS. STUBBS stares._] You see, Mr. Stubbs is coming home by the mean solar time of Philadelphia.
MRS. STUBBS
[_Loyal to MR. STUBBS._] Who said he was?
ELOISE
[_In distress._] Oh, it’s all so false! And arbitrary!
[_To IAN._] But I think Mrs. Stubbs had better be false and arbitrary too. Mr. Stubbs might rather have his supper than the truth.
MRS. STUBBS
[_Advancing a little._] What is this about my being false? And--arbitrary?
ELOISE
You see, you have to be, Mrs. Stubbs. We don’t blame you. How can you live by the truth if Mr. Stubbs doesn’t work by it?
MRS. STUBBS
This is the first word I ever heard said against Johnnie Stubbs’ way of freezin’ fish.
ELOISE
Oh, Mrs. Stubbs, if it were _merely_ his way of freezing fish!
IAN
Since you are not trying to establish a direct relation with truth, set your clock at five minutes of six. The clocks, as would be clear to you if you would establish a first-hand relation with this diagram, Eloise, are slow.
MRS. STUBBS
You mean your sun clock’s wrong.
IAN
All other clocks are wrong.
ELOISE
You live by the mean solar time of Philadelphia.
MRS. STUBBS
I do no such thing!
ELOISE
Yes, you do, Mrs. Stubbs. You see the sun can’t be both here and in Philadelphia at the same time. Now could it? So we have to pretend to be where it is in Philadelphia.
MRS. STUBBS
Who said we did?
ELOISE
Well, [_After a look at IAN_] the Government.
MRS. STUBBS
_Them_ congressmen!
ELOISE
But Mr. Joyce and I--You’re standing on a grave, Mrs. Stubbs. [_MRS. STUBBS jumps._] The grave of my grandmother’s clock. [_In reply to MRS. STUBBS look of amazement._] Oh, yes! That clock has done harm enough. Mrs. Stubbs, think what time is--and then consider my grandmother’s clock! Tick, tick! Tick, tick! Messing up eternity like that!
MRS. STUBBS
[_After failing to think of anything adequate._] I must get Mr. Stubbs his supper!
[_Frightened exit._
IAN
[_Standing near house door._] Eloise, how I love you when feeling lifts you out of routine! Do you know, dearest, you are very sensitive in the way you feel feeling? Sometimes I think that to feel feeling is greater than to feel. You’re like the dial. Your sensitiveness is the style--the gnomon--to cast the shadow of the feeling all around you and mark what has been felt.
[_They embrace. EDDY and ALICE open the gate._
EDDY
Ahem! [_He comes down._] Ahem! We seem to have come ahead of time.
ELOISE
Oh, Eddy! Alice! [_Moving toward EDDY but not passing the dial._] We are living by sun time now. You haven’t arrived for twenty minutes.
EDDY
We haven’t arrived for twenty minutes? [_Feeling of himself._] Why do I seem to be here?
ALICE
[_Approaching dial._] So this is the famous sun-dial? How very interesting it is!
ELOISE
It’s more than that.
ALICE
Yes, it’s really beautiful, isn’t it?
ELOISE
It’s more than that.
EDDY
Is it?
ELOISE
It’s a symbol. It means that Ian and I are done with approximations arbitrarily and falsely imposed upon us.
EDDY
Well, I should think you would be. Who’s been doing that to you?
ELOISE
Don’t step on the graves, please, Alice.
ALICE
[_Starting back in horror._] Graves?
ELOISE
[_Pointing down._] The lies we inherited lie buried there.
EDDY
Well, I should think that might make quite a graveyard. So the sun-dial is built on lies.
ELOISE
Indeed it is not!
ALICE
Does it keep time?
IAN
It doesn’t “keep” time. It gives it.
EDDY
[_Comparing with his watch._] Well, it gives it wrong. It’s twenty minutes fast.
[_IAN and ELOISE smile at one another in a superior way._
ALICE
You couldn’t expect a home-made clock to be perfectly accurate. I think it’s doing very well to come within twenty minutes of the true time.
IAN
It _is_ true time.
ELOISE
You think it’s twenty minutes fast because your puny, meticulous little watch is twenty minutes slow.
ALICE
Why is it, Eddy? [_Comparing watches across the sun-dial._] No, Eddy’s watch is right by mine.
IAN
And neither of you is right by the truth.
ELOISE
[_Pityingly._] Don’t you know that you are running by the mean solar time of Philadelphia?
EDDY
Well, isn’t everybody else running that way?
ELOISE
Does that make it right?
EDDY
I get you. You are going to cast off standard time and live by solar time.
ELOISE
Lies for truth.
EDDY
But how are you going to connect up with other people?
IAN
We can allow for their mistakes.
ELOISE
We will connect with other people in so far as other people are capable of connecting with the truth!
EDDY
I’m afraid you’ll be awful lonesome sometimes.
ALICE
But, Eloise, do you mean to say that you are going to insist on being right when other people are wrong?
ELOISE
I insist upon it.
ALICE
What a life!
EDDY
Come now, what difference does it make if we’re wrong if we’re all wrong together?
IAN
That idea has made a clock of the human mind.
[_Enter ANNIE._
ANNIE
Mrs. Joyce, can’t I have my clock back now? I don’t know when to start dinner.
IAN
[_Consulting dial._] By true time, Annie, it is twenty minutes past six.
ELOISE
[_Confidentially._] By false time, it is six.
ANNIE
I have to have my kitchen clock back.
[_She looks around for it._
IAN
We are done with clocks, Annie.
ANNIE
You mean I’m _not_ to have it back?
ELOISE
It lies buried there.
ANNIE
_Buried?_ My clock buried? It’s not _dead_!
IAN
It’s dead to us, Annie.
ANNIE
[_After looking at the grave._] Do I get a new clock?
ELOISE
We are going to establish a first-hand relation with truth.
ANNIE
You can’t cook without a clock.
IAN
A superstition. And anyway--have you not the sun?
ANNIE
[_After regarding the sun._] I’d rather have a clock than the sun.
[_Returns to her clockless kitchen._
IAN
That’s what clocks have made of the human mind.
EDDY
[_Coming to IAN._] Of course, this is all a joke.
IAN
The attempt to reach truth has always been thought a joke.
EDDY
But this isn’t any new truth! Why re-reach it?
IAN
I’m reaching it myself. I’m getting the impact--as of a fresh truth.
ALICE
But hasn’t it all been worked out for us?
IAN
And we take it never knowing--never _feeling_--what it is we take.
ELOISE
And that has made us the mechanical things we are!
ANNIE
[_Frantically rushes in, peeling an onion._] Starting the sauce for the spaghetti. Fry onions in butter three minutes.
[_Wildly regards sun-dial--traces curved line of diagram with knife. Looks despairingly at the sun. Tears back into house._
IAN
You get no sense of wonder in looking at a clock.
ALICE
Yes, do you know, I do. I’ve always thought that clocks were perfectly wonderful. I never could understand how they could run like that.
ELOISE
I suppose you know they run wrong?
EDDY
What do you mean “run wrong?”
ELOISE
Why, you are running by the mean solar time of Philadelphia! And yet here you are in Provincetown where the sun is a very different matter. You have no direct relation with the sun.
EDDY
That doesn’t seem to worry me much.
IAN
No, it wouldn’t worry you, Eddy. You’re too perfect a product of a standardized world.
[_EDDY bows acknowledgment._
ANNIE
[_Rushing out to look at dial._] Add meat, brown seven minutes.
[_Measures seven minutes between thumb and finger, holds up this fragment of time made visible and carries it carefully into the house._
EDDY
That girl’ll get heart disease.
IAN
Let her establish a first-hand relation to heat. If she’d take a look at the food instead of the clock--!
EDDY
Trouble is we have to establish a first-hand relation with the spaghetti. [_EDDY now comes down and regards the sun-dial. Moralizes._] If other people have got the wrong dope, you’ve got to have the wrong dope or be an off ox.
IAN
Perfect product of a standardized nation!
EDDY
[_Pointing with his stick._] What’s this standardized snake?
IAN
That’s my diagram correcting the sun.
EDDY
Does one correct the sun?
ELOISE
[_From behind the dial._] Ian! Correcting the _sun_!
IAN
You see there are only four days in the year when the apparent time is the same as the average time.
ELOISE
[_In growing alarm._] Do you mean to tell me the sun is not right with _itself_?
IAN
I’ve tried to explain it to you, Eloise, but you said you could get the feeling of it without understanding it. This curve [_Pointing_] marks the variation. Here today, you see, the shadow is “right” as you call it--that is, average. It will be right again here in September and again on December twenty-first.
ALICE
My birthday!
ELOISE
Ian, you mean to say the sun only tells the right _sun_-time four days in the year?
IAN
It always tells the “right” sun-time, but here the said right sun-time is fifteen minutes behind its own average, and here it is sixteen minutes ahead. This scale here across the bottom shows you the number of minutes to add or subtract.
ELOISE
[_With bitterness._] Add! Subtract! Then you and your sun are false!
IAN
No, Eloise, not false. Merely intricate. Merely not regular. Machines are regular.
ELOISE
You got me to bury the clocks and live by the sun--and now you tell me you have to _fix up_ the sun.
IAN
It was you who said bury the clocks.
ELOISE
I suppose you have to do something to the North star too!
IAN
Yes, the North star is not true north.
[_He starts to point out its error, sighting over the style of the dial._
ELOISE
What _is_ true? What _is_ true?
IAN
[_With vision._] The mind of man.
ELOISE
I think I’d better have a clock. [_A new gust._] You told me I was to live by the sun and now--after the clocks are in their graves--what I am to live by is _that snake_.
[_She points at diagram._
IAN
You are a victim of misplaced confidence, Eloise. Sometimes when one feels things without understanding them, one feels the wrong thing. But there’s nothing to worry about. The sun and I can take care of the sun’s irregularities.
EDDY
Take heart, Eloise. It’s a standardized sun.
IAN
It’s not a blindly accepted sun!
ANNIE
[_Who comes as one not to be put aside._] What’ll I do when it rains?
IAN
You’ll use your mind.
ANNIE
To tell time by? [_Looking to ELOISE._] I think I’d better find another place.
ALICE
[_Coming forward, regarding this as a really serious matter._] No, don’t do that, Annie.
ELOISE
[_Tearfully._] You don’t _know_ the _wonders_ of your own mind!
ANNIE
No, ma’m. [_After a look at the sun, becomes terrified._] It’s going down!
EDDY
Yes, it goes down.
ANNIE
How’ll we tell time when it’s dark?
IAN
_Sine sole sileo._
ANNIE
Is that saying how we’ll know when it’s time to go to bed?
IAN
The doves know when to go to bed.
ANNIE
The doves don’t go to the pictures.
ELOISE
[_Hysterically._] You’ll grow, Annie!
ANNIE
I’d rather have a clock!
[_Exit._
IAN
She’d rather have a clock than grow.
ALICE
Now why can’t one do both?
IAN
One doesn’t--that’s the answer. One merely has the clock. I’d rather be a fool than a machine.
EDDY
I never definitely elected to be either.
IAN
One can be both without electing either.
ELOISE
I want to hear the ticking of a clock!
EDDY
It’s a nice thing to hear. The ticking of a clock means the minds of many men. As long as the mind of man has to--fix up the facts of nature in order to create ideal time I feel it’s a little more substantial to have the minds of many men.
ALICE
As I’ve told you before, Eloise, you can’t do better than accept the things that have been all worked out for you.
IAN
You hear them, Eloise? You see where this defense of clocks is leading?
ELOISE
Ian, I’m terribly worried--and a little hurt--about the sun. [_As one beginning a dirge._] The sun has failed me. The North star is false.
IAN
[_Going to her._] I am here, dearest.
ELOISE
Sometimes you seem so much like space. I am running by the sun--that wobbly sun [_Looking at it_] and everyone else is running by Philadelphia. I want a little clock to tick to me!
IAN
You will grow, dearest.
ELOISE
There’s no use growing. The things you grow to are wrong. [_Pressing her hands to her head._] I need a tick in time!
IAN
[_Striding savagely from her._] Very well, then; dig up the clocks.
EDDY
Now you’re? talking!
[_ELOISE springs up._
IAN
Dig up the clocks! And we spend our lives nineteen minutes and twenty seconds apart!
[_ELOISE is arrested, appalled. Dreadful pause._
ELOISE
You mean we’d never get together?
IAN
Time would lie between us. I refuse to be re-caught into a clock world. It was you, Eloise, who proposed we give up the clocks and live in this first-hand relation to truth.
ELOISE
I didn’t know I was proposing a first-hand relation with that snake!
IAN
It’s not a snake! It’s a little piece of the long winding road to truth. It’s the discarding of error, the adjustment of fact. And I did it myself. And it puts me _on_ that road. Oh, I know [_To EDDY and ALICE_] how you can laugh if you yourself feel no need to _feel_ truth. And you, Eloise, if you don’t want to feel time--return to your mean little clock. What is a clock? A clock is the soulless--