The Machine Part 19

LAURA. It is of my duty to the public that I am thinking, Mr. Grimes.

GRIMES. You owe no duty to this world higher than your duty to your father.

LAURA. You think that?

GRIMES. I think it.

LAURA. [Hesitates a moment, then turns.] Father! What do you say? Is that true?

HEGAN. [Crushed.] I don't know, my dear.

GRIMES. G.o.d Almighty! And this is Jim Hegan! [To LAURA.] Where'd you get onto these ideas, ma'am?

LAURA. [In a low voice.] I think, Mr. Grimes, it might be best if you did not ask me to discuss this question. Our points of view are too different.

GRIMES. [Shrugs his shoulders.] As you please, ma'am. But you needn't mind me... I ain't easy to offend. And I'm only trying to understand you.

LAURA. [After a silence.] Mr. Grimes, I had the good fortune to be brought up in a beautiful and luxurious home; but not long ago I began to go down into the slums and see the homes of the people. I saw sights that made me sick with horror.

GRIMES. No doubt, ma'am.

LAURA. I found the people in the grip of a predatory organization that had bound them hand and foot, and was devouring them alive.

GRIMES. You've been listening to tales, ma'am. We do a lot for the people.

LAURA. You treat them to free coal and free picnics and free beer, and so you get their votes; and then you sell them out to capitalists like my father.

GRIMES. Humph!

LAURA. You sell them out to any one, high or low, who will pay for the privilege of exploiting them. You sell them to the rum-dealer and the dive-keeper and the gambler. You sell them to the white-slave trader.

GRIMES. There's no such person, Miss Hegan.

LAURA. You offer an insult to my intelligence, Mr. Grimes. I have met with him and his work. There was a girl of the slums... her name was Annie Rogers. She was a decent girl; and she was lured into a dive and drugged and shut up in a brothel, a prisoner. She escaped to the street, pursued, and a friend of mine saved her. And, high and low, among the authorities of this city, we sought for justice for that girl, and there was no justice to be had. Yesterday afternoon I learned that she cut her own throat.

GRIMES. I see.

LAURA. And that happened, Mr. Grimes! It happened in the City of New York! I saw it with my own eyes!

GRIMES. Such things have been, ma'am.

LAURA. And you permit them.

GRIMES. I?

LAURA. You permit them

GRIMES. I can't attempt to discuss prost.i.tution with a lady. Such things existed long before I was born.

LAURA. You could use your power to drive the traffic from the city.

GRIMES. Yes, ma'am; I suppose I could. But if I'd been that sort of a man, do you think I'd ever had the power?

LAURA. How neatly parried! What sort of a man are you, anyway?

GRIMES. [Looks at hey fixedly.] I'll tell you the sort of man I am, ma'am. [A pause.] I wasn't brought up in a beautiful, luxurious home.

I was brought up with five brothers, in two rooms on the top floor of a rear tenement on Avenue B; I was a little street "mick," and then I was a prize "sc.r.a.pper," and the leader of a gang. When a policeman chased me upstairs, my mother stood at the head and fought him off with a rolling-pin. That was the way we stood by our children, ma'am; and we looked to them to stand by us. Once, when I was older, my enemies tried to do me... they charged me with a murder that I never done, ma'am. But d'ye think my old father ever stopped to ask if I done it or not, ma'am?

Not much. "Don't mention that, Bob, my boy," says he... "it's all part of the fight, an' we're wid yer." [A pause.] I looked about me at the world, ma'am, and I found it was full of all sorts of pleasant things, that I'd never had, and never stood a chance of havin'. They were for the rich... the people on top. And they looked on with scorn... I was poor and I was low, and I wasn't fit for anything. And so I set to climb, ma'am. I shouldered my way up. I met men that fought me; I fought them back, and I won out. That's the sort of man I am.

LAURA. I see. A selfish man, bent upon power at any price! A brutal man, profiting by the weakness of others! An unscrupulous man, trading upon fear and greed! A man who has stopped at no evil to gain his purpose!

GRIMES. I am what the game has made me.

LAURA. Not so! Not so! Many another man has been born to a fate like yours, and has fought his way up from the pit... to be a tower of strength for goodness and service, an honor to his people and himself.

GRIMES. I've not met any such, ma'am.

LAURA. No; you've not sought for them. You did not need them in your business. The men you needed were the thugs and the criminals, who could stuff ballot-boxes for you... the dive-keepers and the vice-sellers, who would contribute to your campaign funds! And you have dealt with them...

you have built up the power they gave you into a mighty engine of corruption and wrong! And you are master of it... you use it to wring tribute from high and low! Selling immunity to dive-keepers and betraying helpless young girls! Naming legislators and judges, and receiving bribes to corrupt the highest Court in the State.

HEGAN. Laura...

LAURA. Father, I did not seek this discussion! He challenged me... and he shall hear the truth! For all these months the thing that has been driving me to desperation has been the knowledge that my father was the business a.s.sociate and ally of a master of infamy like Robert Grimes!

GRIMES. Thanks, ma'am! And so now he's to break with me!

[A knock at the door.]

ANDREWS. [Enters, centre.] Mr. Hegan, these orders for your brokers must be signed.

HEGAN. I won't sign them!

ANDREWS. Sir?

HEGAN. Never mind them.

GRIMES. [Springing to his feet.] Jim Hegan, you're mad! [TO ANDREWS.] Go out, will you? [ANDREWS exit.] Hegan, man... surely you don't mean this?

HEGAN. Yes... I'm sick of it!

GRIMES. But, man, think of the rest of us!... What are we to do?

HEGAN. You can buy just the same.

GRIMES. But without you? Why, we won't be able to corner Murdock! And if he gets out of this hole, it'll be worse than ever! There'll be h.e.l.l to pay!

HEGAN. I don't care.