Part 46 (2/2)

HOLDEN: How good she is.

MADELINE: Yes. That's just the trouble.

HOLDEN: (with difficulty getting past this) How about a little tramp? There'll never be another such day.

MADELINE: I used to tramp with Fred Jordan. This is where he is now. (stepping inside the cell) He doesn't even see out.

HOLDEN: It's all wrong that he should be where he is. But for you to stay indoors won't help him, Madeline.

MADELINE: It won't help him, but-today-I can't go out.

HOLDEN: I'm sorry, my child. When this sense of wrongs done first comes down upon one, it does crush.

MADELINE: And later you get used to it and don't care.

HOLDEN: You care. You try not to destroy yourself needlessly. (he turns from her look)

MADELINE: Play safe.

HOLDEN: If it's playing safe it's that one you love more than yourself be safe. It would be a luxury to-destroy one's self.

MADELINE: That sounds like Uncle Felix. (seeing she has hurt him, she goes over and sits across from him at the table) I'm sorry. I say the wrong things today.

HOLDEN: I don't know that you do.

MADELINE: But isn't uncle funny? His left mind doesn't know what his right mind is doing. He has to think of himself as a person of sentiment-idealism, and-quite a job, at times. Clever-how he gets away with it. The war must have been a G.o.dsend to people who were in danger of getting on to themselves. But I should think you could fool all of yourself all the time.

HOLDEN: You don't. (he is rubbing his hand on the table)

MADELINE: Grandfather Morton made this table. I suppose he and Grandfather Fejevary used to sit here and talk-they were great old pals. (slowly HOLDEN turns and looks out at the hill) Yes. How beautiful the hill must have been-before there was a college there. (he looks away from the hill) Did you know Grandfather Morton?

HOLDEN: Yes, I knew him. (speaking of it against his will) I had a wonderful talk with him once; about Greece-and the cornfields, and life.

MADELINE: I'd like to have been a pioneer! Some ways they had it fierce, but think of the fun they had! A whole big land to open up! A big new life to begin! (her hands closing in from wideness to a smaller thing) Why did so much get shut out? Just a little way back-anything might have been. What happened?

HOLDEN: (speaking with difficulty) It got-set too soon.

MADELINE: (all of her mind open, trying to know) And why did it? Prosperous, I suppose. That seems to set things-set them in fear. Silas Morton wasn't afraid of Felix Fejevary, the Hungarian revolutionist. He laid this country at that refugee's feet! That's what Uncle Felix says himself-with the left half of his mind. Now-the Hindu revolutionists-! (pause) I took a walk late yesterday afternoon. Night came, and for some reason I thought of how many nights have come-nights the earth has known long before we knew the earth. The moon came up and I thought of how moonlight made this country beautiful before any man knew that moonlight was beautiful. It gave me a feeling of coming from something a long way back. Moving toward-what will be here when I'm not here. Moving. We seem here, now, in America, to have forgotten we're moving. Think it's just us-just now. Of course, that would make us afraid, and-ridiculous.

(Her father comes in.)

IRA: Your Aunt Isabel-did she go away-and leave you?

MADELINE: She's coming back.

IRA: For you?

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