The Americans Part 85

Forty-nine Grand View, please. Yes.

(_A pause_)

Mother? I knew your voice.

You called me up, one of the men said. No?

(_A pause_)

Or some one else.

(_A pause_)

Yes, mother, very well.

You're going to the city?

(_A pause_)

That was it.

I thought perhaps you had called me up to ask.

(_A pause_)

Four or five hundred pounds.

(_A pause_)

Mixed, I should say.

And such toys as you think children would like.

(_A pause_)

O you know more about such things than I.

(_A pause_)

Yes.

(_A pause_)

Mother, while I think of it, has father Had any trouble with Jergens?

(_A pause_)

Ah, I'm glad.

I overheard him talking with some men The other night, and thought from what he said It might be father they were talking of.

(_A pause. The door, forward left, opens slowly and Rome Masters comes stealthily in with a bar of iron in his hand, and moves toward Harry Egerton, whose back is to him_)

HARRY EGERTON.

I'm very glad. You might ask father though.

(_Cheering outside_)

I'll have some news for you when you return.

(_A pause_)

Here in the mill. And I'll be Santa Claus.

(_A pause_)

That will be beautiful.

(_A pause_)

And, mother----

(_Masters strikes him_)

HARRY EGERTON.

Ah!

(_He sinks to the floor. Masters, iron in hand, flees down the stairs. The cheering outside continues. Then, as the noise subsides, there is heard a steady buzzing of the telephone as though some one were trying to get connection_)

ACT V

CHRISTMAS EVE

_Scene: Inside the large room of a newly built board cabin up at the mine. Centre, rear, the open mouth of the tunnel, with the wall resting upon the rocks above. Left, in this same wall, near the corner, a door opening outside. Right, near the other corner, about four feet up from the floor, a small oblong window through which one sees the snow lying thick upon the mountains, and beyond the snow the dark of the sky with the winter stars s.h.i.+ning brightly. In the right wall, well back, a door opens into a bedroom. Centre, in the opposite wall, a second door opens into a sort of woodshed. Left, a little way to the rear from the centre of the room, a heavy iron stove with chairs standing about. A woodbox is over near the wall, left. Forward right, a table with a bugle lying upon two or three sheets of loose paper, and, farther over, a heap of ore samples in which, with the light of the near-by lamp falling upon them, the gold is plainly visible._

_Harvey Anderson, his hat pulled low over his eyes, sits with his back to the bedroom, staring at the stove. The only motion discernible is an occasional pressing of the lip when he bites his moustache. Later, Mrs.

Egerton, careworn and evidently in deep distress, enters from the bedroom and starts to say something to Harvey Anderson, but decides not to. Instead she goes to the window and stands looking out as though she were anxiously waiting for some one._

_Time: Christmas Eve._

MRS. EGERTON.

(_In a low voice_)

It's after midnight, for the lights are out Down in the town. It must be after one.

(_Speaks back as though into the bedroom_)