Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 186

LIFE. Kneel.

SECOND GIRL. You would be always kind, you said--

LIFE. Will you obey?

SECOND GIRL. I shall never--

[_Life curls his whip around her shoulders._]

SECOND GIRL [_screams_]. Do not flog me. I will kneel. [_Kneels_.]

LIFE. So? In that way I can win obedience.

SECOND GIRL. Master!

LIFE. It has a good sound.

SECOND GIRL. Pity! Have pity!

LIFE. Do not whine. [_Kicks her._]

SECOND GIRL [_rises staggering_]. Spare me!

LIFE. I shall beat you, for the cries of those who fear me are sweet in my ears. [_Beats her._]

SECOND GIRL. Master!

LIFE [_flinging aside whip_]. But sweeter yet are stilled cries--[_He seizes her, they struggle._]

SECOND GIRL. He is too strong--I can struggle no longer!

[_They struggle. Life chokes her to death and flings her body from him. Then laughing horribly he goes off the stage._]

FIRST GIRL [_enters skipping merrily. Singing_].

Heigho, in April, Heigho, heigho, All the town in April Is gay, is gay!

[_She plucks rose from bush._]

Heigho, in April, In merry, merry April, Love came a-riding And of a sunny day I met him on the way!

Heigho, in April, Heigho, heigho--

[_Suddenly seeing the body, she breaks the song, and stares without moving. Then she goes very slowly toward it, smooths down the dead girl's dress, and kneels beside the body. Whispers._]

She was young ... he was cruel.... [_Touches the body._] She also was a queen. She s.n.a.t.c.hed his trinkets. See, there on her dead neck is his chain with the red fire caught in gold. And on her finger his ring. But he was too strong ... too strong.... [_She stands, trembles, cowering in terror._] Life has broken her.... Life has broken them all.... Some day.... I am afraid....

[_Life enters, still the ugly tyrant. She remains cowering. His eyes rove slowly over the stage, but she sees him a second before he discovers her. She straightens up just in time to be her scornful self before his eyes light upon her. As she speaks Life becomes the slave again._]

FIRST GIRL [_carelessly flings rose down without seeing that it has fallen upon the body_]. Life! Bring me a fresh rose!

[_The slave bows abjectly and goes to do her bidding._]

[_Curtain._]

THE SLUMP

A PLAY

BY FREDERIC L. DAY

Copyright, 1920, by Frederic L. Day.

All rights reserved.

The Slump was first produced February 5, 1920, by "The 47 Workshop"

with the following cast:

FLORENCE MADDEN _Miss Ruth Chorpenning_.

JAMES MADDEN _Mr. Walton b.u.t.terfield_.

EDWARD MIX _Mr. W. B. Leach, Jr_.

Permission to reprint, or for amateur or professional performances of any kind must first be obtained from "The 47 Workshop," Harvard College, Cambridge, Ma.s.s. Moving picture rights reserved.

TIME: _The Present. About four o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon in December._

THE SLUMP

A PLAY BY FREDERIC L. DAY

[SCENE: _A dingy room showing the very worst of contemporary lower middle-cla.s.s American taste. The dining table in the center is of "golden oak"; and a sideboard at the left, a morris chair at the right and front, and three dining-room chairs (one of which is in the left rear corner, the others at the table) are all of this same finish. The paper on the walls is at once tawdry and faded. A tarnished imitation bra.s.s gas jet is suspended from the right wall, just over the morris chair. In the back wall and to the left is a door leading outside. Another door, in the left wall, leads to the rest of the house. A low, rather dirty window in the back wall, to the right of the center, looks out on a muddy river with the dispiriting houses of a small, grimy manufacturing city beyond. On the back wall are one or two old-fas.h.i.+oned engravings with sentimental subjects, and several highly-colored photographs of moving picture stars, each of them somewhat askew. A few pictures on the other walls are mostly cheap prints cut out of the rotogravure section of the Sunday paper. In the right-hand rear corner is an air-tight stove. The whole room has an appearance of hopeless untidiness and slovenliness. Close by the morris chair, at its right, is a phonograph on a stand. Outside it is a dull gray day. The afternoon light is already beginning to wane._

_As the curtain rises, James Madden is sitting behind the table in the center of the room. He is a rather small man of thirty-five, his hair just beginning to turn gray at the temples. Spectacles, a peering manner, and the sallow pallor of his face all suggest the man of a sedentary mode of life. His clothes are faded and of a poor cut, but brushed and neat. There is something ineffectual but distinctly appealing about the little man. Madden is working on a pile of bills which are strewn over the top of the table. He picks up a bill, looks at it, and draws in his under lip with an expression of dismay. He writes down the amount of the bill on a piece of paper, below six or seven other rows of figures. He looks at another bill, and his expression becomes even more distracted._]

MADDEN [_with exasperation_]. Oh!

[_He brings his fist down on the table with a limp whack, then turns and looks helplessly toward the door at the left. After a moment this door starts to open. Madden turns quickly to the front, trying to compose his face and busying himself with the bills. The door continues to open, and Mrs. Madden now issues from it lazily. She is thirty-two years old, and a good half head taller than her husband. Where he is thin and bony, she has already begun to lose her figure. Her yellow hair, the color of mola.s.ses kisses, is at once greasy and untidy, and seems ready to come to pieces. Her face is beginning to lose its contour--the uninspired face of a lower middle-cla.s.s woman who has once been pretty in a rather cheap way. She is sloppily dressed in showy purple silk. Her skirt is short, and she wears brand new, high, s.h.i.+ny, mahogany-colored boots. She has powdered her nose._]

MRS. MADDEN [_uninterestedly, in a slow, flat, nasal voice_]. How long y' been home? Yer pretty late f'r Sat'rdy.