Thank heaven the fog is gone.
I...
I do feel...
out of sorts this morning.
I wasn't able to get much sleep with that awful forghorn going all night long.
Yes, like having a sick whale in the backyard. Kept me awake too.
Did it? You have a strange way of showing your restlessness.
You were snoring so hard I couldn't tell which was the foghorn.
- Ten foghorns couldn't disturb you. You haven't a nerve in you. You never had. - Nonsense. You always exagerate about my snoring.
- I couldn't. If you could only hear yourself once.
- What's the Joke, I wonder. - It's on me I'll bet that much. It's always on the old man.
Yes. It's terrible the way we all pick on you isn't it? You're so abused!
Never mind.
No matter what the joke is, it's a relief to hear Edmund laugh.
He's been so down in the mouth lately.
Some joke of Jamie's I'll wager.
- He's forever making snearing fun of somebody, that one. - Now!
Don't start in on poor Jamie dear, he'll turn out alright in the end. You wait and see.
He better start soon then, he's nearly 34.
Good heavens.
Are they gonna stay in the dinning room all day? Jamie! Edmund!
Come out on the porch, give Cathleen a chance to clear the table.
You'd make excuses for him no matter what he did.
I've been teasing your father about his snoring.
I'll...I'll leave it to the boys James, they must've heard you.
Though not you Jamie I could hear you down the hall almost as bad as your father you're like him.
As soon as your head touches the pillow you're off. And ten foghorns couldn't wake you.
Why are you staring Jamie? Is my hair coming down? Or... something?
It's hard for me to do it out properly now. My eyes are getting so bad and I can never find my glasses
No. Your hair's alright Mama I was just thinking how well you look.
Just as I was telling her Jamie. She's so fat and sassy there will soon be no holding her.
Yes you certainly look grand Mama.
And I'll back you up about Papa's snoring. Gosh! What a racket.
I heard him too "The Moor, I know his trumpet."
If it takes my snoring to make you remember Shakespeare instead of the dope sheet on the ponies, I hope I’ll keep on with it.
Jaaaames! You mustn’t be so touchy.
Yes, for Pete’s sake, Papa! The first thing after breakfast! Give it a rest, can’t you’?
Your father wasn’t finding fault with you.
- You don’t have to always take Jamie’s part. - Let's forget it.
- You’d think you were the one ten years older - That's right forget everything and face nothing
that's a convenient philosophy in life if you've no other ambitions... than... - James! Be quiet.
What were you two grinning about like Cheshire cats when you came out? What was the joke?
Yes, let us in on it, lad.
You remember, Papa, the ice pond on Harker’s estate is right next to the farm,
and you remember Shaughnessy keeps pigs.
Well, it seems there’s a break in the fence and the pigs have been bathing in the millionaire’s ice pond,
Good heavens!
The poor pigs, Shaughnessy yelled, had caught their death of cold.
Many of them were dying of pneumonia, and several others had been taken down with cholera from drinking the poisoned water.
He told Harker he was hiring a lawyer to sue him for damages.
And then he wound up by saying that he had to put up with potato bugs and ticks and poison ivy and snakes and skunks on his farm
but he was an honest man who had to draw the line somewhere, and he’d be damned if he’d stand for a Standard Oil thief trespassing.
So would Harker kindly remove his dirty feet from the premises before he sicked the dog on him. And Harker did!
Heavens! What a terrible tongue that man has.
The damned old scoundrel. By God you can't beat him.
The dirty blagard he'll get me into serious trouble yet.
- I hope you told him I'd be mad as hell - I told him you'd be tickled to death over the great irish victory
and so you are, stop faking Papa. - Well I'm not tickled to death.
- You are too James, you're simply denying it.
Well what are you laughing at? There's nothing funny! A fine son you are to help that blagard(?) get me into a lawsuit.
- Now James! Don't lose your temper. - Yes I suppose your regretting you weren't there to prompt Shaughnessy
with a few nastier insults. You've a fine talent for that if for nothing else.
James! There's no reason to scold Jamie!
For God's sake Papa, if you're gonna start that stuff I'll beat it.
God Papa. I should think you'd get sick of hearing yourself.
You mustn't mind Edmund, James.
Remember he isn't well. A summer cold makes anyone irritable.
It's not just a cold he's got.
The kid is damn sick.
Why do you say that? It IS just a cold anyone can tell that. You always imagine things
All Jamie meant is he may have a touch of something else which makes his cold worse.
Sure Mama that's all I meant.
Dr. Hardy thinks it might be a bit of malarial fever he caught when he was in the tropics.
Dr. Hardy! I wouldn't believe a thing he said if he swore it on a stack of bibles.
I know what doctors are, they're all alike, anything, they don't care what to keep you coming to them.
What is it?
What...? What are you looking at? Is my hair coming down? or... something?
There's nothing wrong with your hair.
The fatter and healthier you are, the vainer you became. You'll soon spend half the day primping before the mirror.
My eyes are so bad now, I really should have new glasses.
Your eyes are beautiful
- And well you know it. - James you mustn't be so silly.
- And right in front of Jamie. - He's onto you now too.
He knows all this talk about eyes and hair is only fishing for compliments. ey Jamie?
- Yes you can't kid us Mama. - Get along with, both of you.
But I... I did truly have... have beautiful hair once. Didn't I James?
Most beautifull in the world
It.. it was a rare shade of... of redish brown and so long it came down below my knees
You ought to remember it too, Jamie.
- It wasn't until after Edmund was born that I had a single grey hair. - And that made it prettier than ever.
Will you listen to your father Jamie. After 35 years of marriage... He isn't a great actor for nothing, is he?.
What's come over you James? Are you pouring coals of fire on my head for teasing you about your snoring?
Well then I take it all back. It must've been ONLY the foghorn I heard.
Well...
I can't stay here any longer, even to hear compliments.
I have to see the cook about diner and the day's marketing.
That bridgette is so lazy and so sly she begins telling me about her relatives so I can't get a word in edgeways to scold her.
Well... I may as well get it over with.
Don't make Edmund work on the grounds with you James, remember?
Not that he isn't strong enough but he'd perspire and he might catch more cold.
You're a fine lunkhead! Haven't you any sense?
Don't you know the one thing to avoid is saying anything that would get her more upset over Edmund?
All right. Have it your way. I still think it’s the wrong idea to let Mama go on kidding herself.
It will only make the shock worse when she has to face it.
Anyway, you can see she’s deliberately fooling herself with that summer cold talk.
She knows better. - Knows? Nobody knows yet. - Well, I do.
I was with Edmund when he went to Doc Hardy on Monday. I heard him pull that touch of malaria stuff. He was stalling.
That isn’t what he thinks any more.
You know it as well as I do. You talked to him when you went uptown yesterday, didn’t you?
He can't say anything for sure yet. He’s to phone me today before Edmund goes to him.
He thinks it’s consumption, doesn’t he, Papa?
He said it might be.
That poor kid!
God damn it!
It might never have happened if you’d sent him to a real doctor when he first got sick.
What’s the matter with Hardy’? He’s always been our doctor up here.
Hardy only charges a dollar. That’s what makes you think he’s a fine doctor!
-If you mean I can’t afford one of the fine society doctors who prey on the rich summer people - Can’t afford’? You’re one of the biggest property owners around here.
That doesn’t mean I’m rich.
- If Edmund was a lousy acre of land you wanted, the sky would be the limit. - That's a lie
- And your snears against Dr. Hardy are lies too. - I recon I'm a fool to argue. You can't change the leopard's spots.
No you CAN'T. You've taught me that lesson only too well, I've lost all hope you'll ever change yours.
You dare tell me what I can afford! You've never known the value of a dollar in your life and you never will.
At the end of each season you're penniless. You've thrown your sallary away every week on whores and whiskey.
My salary!? God!
More than you're worth. You couldn't get that if it wasn't for me. If you weren't my son, there's not a manager in the business that would give you a part.
Your reputation stinks you. As it is I have to humble my pride and beg for you, say you've turned over a new leaf although I know it's a lie.
I never wanted to be an actor.
- You forced me on the stage. - That's a lie! You left it to me to get you a job and I've no influence except in the theater.
Forced you?! You never wanted to do anything except loaf in bar rooms.
After all the money I wasted on your education... and all you did was get fired and disgraced from every college you went.
- Well for God's sake don't drag up that ancient history! - It's not ancient history that you have to come back every summer to live on me.
Well I earn my board and lodging working on the grounds.
It saves you hiring a man.
You have to be driven even to do that much.
I wouldn’t give a damn if you ever displayed the slightest sign of gratitude.
The only thanks is to have you sneer at me for a dirty miser, sneer at my profession, sneer at every damned thing in the world—except yourself.
That’s not true, Papa. You can’t hear me talking to myself, that’s all.
“Ingratitude, the vilest weed that grows”!
God! I could see that line coming!
God, how many thousand times—!
All right, Papa. I’m a bum.
You’re young yet. You could still make your mark.
- You had the talent to become a fine actor! You have it still. You’re my son...! - Let’s forget me. I’m not interested in the subject and neither are you.
What started us on this? Oh, Doc Hardy!
- When is he going to call you up about Edmund? - Around lunch time.
The less you say about Edmund’s sickness, the better for your conscience! You’re more responsible than anyone!
- That’s a lie! I won’t stand for that, Papa! - It’s the truth!
He grew up admiring you as a hero!
If you ever gave him advice except in the ways of rottenness, I’ve never heard of it!
You made him old before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom, when he was too young to see that your mind was so poisoned by your own failure in life,
you wanted to believe every man was a knave with his soul for sale, and every woman who wasn’t a whore was a fool!
All right. All right. I did put him wise to a few things,
but not until after I'd seen he’d started to raise hell, and would only laugh at me if I pulled that good advice, older brother stuff.
All I did was make a pal of him and be absolutely frank so he’d learn from my mistakes that
Well, that if you can’t be good you can at least be careful.
That’s a rotten accusation, Papa.
You know how much that kid means to me, and how close we’ve always been
not like the usual brothers! I’d do anything for him.
I know you may have thought it was for the best. I didn’t say you did it deliberately to harm him.
Besides it’s damned rot! I’d like to see anyone influence Edmund any more than he wants to be.
What had I to do with all the crazy stunts he’s pulled in the last few years working his way all over the map as a sailor and all that stuff.
No, thanks! I’ll stick to Broadway, and a room with a bath, and bars that served bonded Bourbon.
You and Broadway! It’s made you what you are!
Whatever Edmund’s done, he’s had the guts to go off on his own, where he couldn’t come whining to me the minute he was broke.
He’s always come home broke finally, hasn’t he? And what's his going away get him? Look at him now!
God! That’s a lousy thing to say. I didn’t mean that.
He’s been doing well on the paper. You used to talk about becoming a newspaper man but you were never willing to start at the bottom, you expected...
Oh for God's sake Papa! Can't you lay off me?
Damnable luck Edmund should be sick right now, it couldn't have come at a worse time for him.
Or for your mother.
It's damnable she should have this to upset her just when she needs peace and freedom from worry.
She's been so well in the two months since she came home.
It's been heaven to me.
This home's been a real home again.
- But I needn't tell you Jamie. - No. I felt the same way Papa.
Yes. She's been a different woman intirely from the other times.
She's control of her nerves, or she had until Edmund got sick. Now you can feel her growing tense and frightened underneath.
I wish to God we could keep the truth from her but we can't if he's to be sent to a sanatorium.
What makes it worse is her father died of consumption. She worshipped him. She's never forgotten it.
Yes it'll be hard for her.
But she can do it! She's the willpower now.
We must help her Jamie. In every way we can.
Of course Papa.
- Outside of nerves she seems perfectly alright this morning. - Yes, never better, she's full of fun and mischief.
Why do you say 'seems'?
Why shouldn't she be alright? What the hell do you mean?
Don't start jumping down my throat.
God! Papa.
This ought to be one thing we can talk over, frankly, without a battle. I'm sorry Jamie.
- But go on and tell me. - There's nothing to tell. I was all wrong.
It's just that... last night...
Well you know how it is Papa.
I can't forget the past.
I can't help being suspicious anymore than you can.
That's the hell of it. And it makes it hell for Mama.
- She watches us watching her. - I know.
Well what was it?
Can't you speak up?
Around 3 o'clock this morning, I woke up and I heard Mama moving around in the spare room.
Then she went to the bathroom. Now, I pretended to be asleep and she stopped outside in the hall to listen as if she wanted to make sure I was.
For God's sake! Is that all?
She told me herself the foghorn kept her awake all last night. And every night since Edmund's been sick she's been up and down going to his room to see how he was.
Yes, that's right. She did stop to listen outside his room.
But it was her being in the spare room that scared me.
Papa, I can't help remembering that when she starts sleeping alone in there it's always been a sign.
But it isn't this time. It's easily explained. Where else could she go last night to get away from my snoring?
How you can live with a mind that sees nothing but the worse motives behind everything is beyond me.
Don't pull that! I just said I was all wrong.
- I suppose I'm as glad of that as you are. - Yes. Yes. I'm sure you are Jamie.
It's been like a curse she can't escape if worry over Edmund.
- It was her long sickness after bringing him into the world that she first .. - She didn't have anything to do with it.
- I'm not blaming her. - Well who are you blaming? Edmund? For being born?
- You damn fool, no one was to blame. - That bastard of a doctor was. From what Mama said he was another cheap quack like Hardy.
- You wouldn't pay for a first class doctor. - You liar!
So I'm to blame, am I? That's what you're driving at. You evil minded loafer.
- What were you two arguing about? - Same old stuff.
I heard you saying something about a doctor and your father acusing you of being evil minded.
Oh That? Well I was just saying again that Doc. Hardy isn't my idea of the world's greatest physician.
No. No. I wouldn't say he was either.
That Bridgette! I...I thought I'd never get away. She told me all about her second cousin on the police force in St. Louis.
Well if you're going to work on the hedge, why don't you go?
I... I mean... take advantage of the sunshine before the fog comes back.
Because I... I know it will.
That is... The reumathism in my hands knows it.
It's a better weather profet than you are James.
How ugly they are. Who would ever believe they were once beautiful.
Now now Mary... None of that foolishness. They're the sweetest hands in the world.
Come on Jamie!
The way to start work is to start work. The hot sun will sweat some of that booze fat off your middle.
We're all so proud of you Mama, so darn happy! But you've still got to be careful.
I mean you mustn't worry so much about Edmund. He'll be all right.
Of couse he'll be all right
And I.. I don't know what you mean. Warning me to be careful...
All right Mama. I'm sorry I spoke.
Here you are! I was just going upstairs to look for you.
I didn't want to mix up in any arguments, I feel too rotten.
I'm sure you don't feel half as bad as you make out, you're such a baby.
You like to get us worried so we'll make a fuss over you... No, no. I'm only teasing you dear, I know how miserably unconfortable you must be.
But you feel better today, don't you? All the same you... you've grown much too thin. Come on, sit down.
All you need is your mother to nurse you. Because you are, you're still the baby of the family to me you know?
- Never mind me, you take care of yourself. That's all that counts. - But I am.
Heavens... don't you see how fat I've grown?
I'll have to have all my dresses let out.
They started clipping the hedge.
Poor Jamie. How he hates working in front where everyone passing can see him.
Not that I want anything to do with them. I've always hated this place and everyone in it.
But your father liked it
and insisted on building this house and I've had to come here every summer.
It was wrong from the start. Everything was done in the cheapest possible way.
Your father would never spend the money to make it right.
It's just as well we haven't any friends. I'd be ashamed to have them step in the door.
But... yo...your father has never wanted family friends.
All he likes is to hobnob with men, in bar-rooms or at the club.
You and Jamie are the same way. But you're not to blame.
I know it's useless to talk but...
sometimes I... I feel so lonely.
You've got to be fair Mama.
It may have been all his fault in the beggining but you know that latter on, even if he'd wanted to, we couldn't have had people here.
- Don't I... I can't bear having you remind... - Don't take it that way please Mama, I'm trying to help.
Because it's bad for you to forget, the right way is to remember then you'll always be on your guard.
I... I don't understand why you should suddenly say such things. What put it in your mind this morning?
- Nothing, it just... well I... b... because I feel rotten and blue I suppose. - Tell me the truth.
- Why you so... suspicious all of a sudden? - I'm not.
Yes you are, I feel it.
- Your father and Jamie too, particularly... - Now don't start imagining things Mama.
It makes it so much harder living in this atmosphere of constant suspicion, knowing that everyone is spying on me, that none of you believe in me or trust me.
- That's crazy Mama. - If there was only... - We do trust you.
- ...some place I could go to get away for a day or even an afternoon, some woman friend I could talk to not about anything serious, simply laugh and gossip and forget for a while.
- Someone besides the serveants, that stupid Cathleen. - Stop it Mama, you're getting yourself worked up over nothing.
Your father goes out, he meets his friends in bar-rooms or at the club. You and Jamie have the boys, you know, you go out but I'm alone I've always been alone.
- Now you know that's a fib, one of us always stays around to keep you company. - Because you're afraid to trust me alone.
I insist you tell me why you... act so differently this morning. Why you felt you had to remind me.
It's stupid, it's just because I wasn't asleep when you came into my room last night.
You didn't go back to your and Papa's room you went into the spare room for the rest of the night.
Because your father's snoring was driving me crazy. For heavens sake!
Haven't I often used the spare room as my bedroom?
But I... I...
I see what you thought, that was.. - I didn't think... - Well I...
So... you were... you were pretending to be asleep, in order to spy on me.
No, I did it because I knew if you found out I was feverish and couldn't sleep you'd be upset.
- Jamie was pretending to be asleep too, I'm sure and I suppose your father... - Stop it Mama
Oh Edmund! I can't bear it when even you... It would serve all of you right if it was true.
- Mama don't say that! That's the way you... - Stop suspecting me!
Please dear. You hurt me. I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about you.
Th-that's the real reason. I've been so worried ever since you got sick.
- That's foolishness, you know it's just a bad cold. - Yes. Yes, of course, I know that.
But listen, Mama. I want you to promise me that e-even if it should turn out to be something worse.
- You know I'll soon be all right again anyway. - No! No!
- And you won't worry yourself sick about it and you'll keep on taking care of yourself. - No! No! I won't listen when you're so silly.
There's absolutly no reason to talk as if you expected something dreadful. Of course I promise you. I give you my sacred word of honor.
But I suppose you're remembering... I've promised before. I've no word of honor
- No. - I'm not blaming you dear. How can you help it? How can any of us forget?
- That's what makes it so... hard for all of us we can't... forget. . Stop it Mama!
Alright dear. I didn't mean to be so gloomy. Don't mind me. Here, let me feel your head.
- Well! It's nice and cool, you certainly haven't any fever now. - Forget me, it's you.
But I... I'm quite alright dear except I... I naturally feel... tired and nervous this morning after such a bad night
I... I really... ought to go upstairs... and lie down until lunch time and take a nap
What are you gonna do? Read? Here?
It's be much better for you if you... went out in the... fresh air, sunshine. Don't get overheated remember, be sure and wear a hat.
Or are you afraid to trust me alone?
Can't you stop talking like that? I think you ought to take a nap.
I'll go out and help Jamie bear up. I love to lie in the shade and watch him work.
- It'll be lunch time soon, will I call your father and Mr. Jamie or will you? - You do it.
- Oh and you'd better call my mother too. - What for? She's always on time without any calling.
- God bless her she has some consideration for the help. - She's taking a nap.
She wasn't asleep when I finished my work upstairs a while back. She was lying down in the spare room with her eyes wide open.
She had a terrible headache, she said.
Oh well then... just call my father.
No wonder my feets kill me each night. Mr Tyrone! Mr. Jamie! It's time!
Sneaking one? Cut out the bluff kid, you're a rottener actor than I am.
Grabbing while the going was good.
- Why don't you sneak one while you got a chance? - Yeah I was thinking of that little thing.
Hey! The old man was out there talking to old Captain Turner.
Yup, he's still at it.
- You don't think taht'll fool him do ya? - Well... maybe not... but he can't prove it.
God! I hope he doesn't forget lunch listening to himself talk. I'm hungry.
That's what I hate working out down at the front. He puts on an act for every damn fool that comes along.
You're in luck to be hungry. The way I feel I don't care if I ever eat again.
Look kid... you know I never lectured you but Doc. Hardy was right when he told you to cut out the red eye.
Well I'm going to after the--after he hands me the bad news this afternoon, a few before then won't make any difference.
Jamie... what do you think it is?
How the hell would I know? I'm no doc.
Where's Mama?
Upstairs.
- When did she go up?
Oh about the time you started working on the hedge I guess. She said she was going to take a nap.
- You didn't tell me. - Why should I? What about it?
- She was tired out, she didn't get much sleep last night. - Yeah I know she didn't.
Damn foghorn kept me awake too.
She's... been upstairs alone all morning... you haven't seen her?
No, I was reading. I wanted to give her a chance to sleep.
' she coming down to lunch? - Of course.
- No! No "Of course" about it.
She might not want any lunch or she might start having her meals alone upstairs.
- Cut out the... - Well it's happened hasn't it? - Can't you think of...
You're all wrong to suspect anything.
Cathleen saw her not long ago, Mama didn't tell her she wouldn't be down for lunch.
- Then she wasn't taking a nap. - No, not right then but she was lying down, Cathleen said.
- In the spare room? - Yes! For pete's sake what of it?
- You damn fool! Why did you leave her alone so long? Why didn't you stick around? - Because she accused me and you and Papa of spying on her all the time and not trusting her.
She made me feel ashamed. I know how rotten it must be for her.
- And she promised on her sacred word of honor. - Well you ought to know that doesn't mean...
- It does this time. - That's what we though the other times.
Aww look kid I know you think I'm a cynical bastard but remember I've seen more of this game than you have.
You never knew what was really wrong until you were in prep school. Papa and I kept it from you.
I was wise ten years or more before we had to tell you.
I know this game backward and I've been thinking all morning of the way she acted last night when she thought we were asleep.
I haven't been able to think of anything else and now you tell me she got you to leave her alone upstairs all morning.
Alright kid. Don't start a battle with me.
I hope as much as you do I'm crazy.
You know I've been happy as hell because I'd really begun to believe that this time...
She's coming downstairs you win on that one I guess I was a damn suspicious louse.
Damn it I wish I'd grabbed another drink
You mustn't cough like that it's bad for your throat. You don't want to get a sore throat on top of your cold do you?
But I seem always to be picking on you telling you "don't do this", "don't do that" forgive me dear it's just that I want to take care of you.
Oh I know that. What about you, do you feel rested?
Ever so much better. I've been lying down ever since you went out it's what I needed after such a restless night, I don't feel nervous now.
- That's fine. - Good heavens how down in the mouth you look you look Jamie. What's the matter now?
- Nothing.
I'd forgotten, you've been working on the front hedge that always account for your sinking into the dumps, doesn't it?
If you wanna think so Mama.
Well that's the effect it always has isn't it?
What a big baby you are. Isn't he Edmund?
He's certainly a fool to care what anyone thinks. Yes.
The only way is to make yourself not care.
Where's your father?
- I heard Cathleen call him. - She's down there now, interrupting the famous beautiful voice.
She should have more respect.
It's you who should have more respect.
You, who thanks to him have never had to work hard in your life.
Remember, your... father is geting old Jamie.
You really... ought to show more consideration.
I'm hungry, I wish that old man would get a move on.
It's a rotten trick the way he keeps meals waiting and then beefs because they're spoiled.
Very trying Jamie. You don't know how trying, you don’t have to keep up the house with summer servants
who don't care because... because they know it isn't a permanent position. Your father won't even pay the wages the best summer help ask
so every year I have stupid lazy greenhorns to deal with.
- But you've heard me say this a thousand times. - What makes you ramble on like that Mama?
I don't know, nothing in particular dear. It's foolish of me.
Lunch is ready ma'am. I went down to Mr. Tyrone like you ordered and he said he'd come right away but...
Alright Cathleen. Tell Bridget I'm sorry but she'll have to wait a few minutes until Mr. Tyrone is here.
- Yes ma'am. - Look damn it why don't we go in without him, he told us to.
He doesn't mean it.
Don't you know your father yet? He'd be so terribly hurt.
I'll... I'll go make him get a move on.
Why do you stare like that?
- You know. - I don't know.
For God's sake Mama, you think you can fool me? I'm not blind.
- I don't know what you're talking about. - No?
Take a look at your eyes Mama.
I got Papa moving, he'll... he'll be here any minute.
What's the matter.
- Your brother... - What happened Mama?
Your brother ought to be ashamed of himself he's been insinuating... I don't know what.
- God damn you! - Stop it at once! Do it!
He's a liar!
- It's a lie isn't it Mama? - What's a lie?
Edmund... don't.
Here comes your father up the steps, I must... warn Bridget.
Well?
Well... what?
You're a liar.
- Sorry I'm late. Captain Turner stopped to talk, once he starts gabbing you can't get away from him. - You mean once he starts listening.
- It's all right, the level of the bottle hasn't changed. - I wasn't noticing that.
As if it proved anything with you about. I'm on to your tricks.
Did I hear you say "let's all have a drink"?
- Jamie's welcome after his hard morning's work but I won't invite you, Doctor Harding... - To hell with Doc. Hardy.
One isn't going to kill me.
- I feel all in Papa. - Well come along then, it's before a meal.
I've always found that good whiskey, taken in moderation, as an appetizer, is the best of tonics. I said "in moderation".
It'd be a waste of breath mentioning moderation to you.
Well... here's to health and happiness.
That's a joke!
What is?
Nothing. Here's to health.
Well what's the matter here? There's gloom in the air you could cut with a knife.
You got the drink you were after didn't you? Why are you wearing that gloomy look on your mug?
- You won't be singing a song yourself soon. - Shut up Jamie!
I thought lunch was ready. I'm hungry as a hunter. Where's your mother?
Here I am. I've had to calm down Bridget.
She's in a tantrum over you being late again and I don't blame her.
If your lunch is dried up from waiting in the oven she said you could like it or leave it for all she cared
I'm so sick and tired of pretending this is a home! You won't help me. You won't put yourself out the least bit
You don't know how to act in a home, you don't even want one. You've never have wanted one since we were married.
You should have remained a bachelor and lived in second rate hotels.
- Entertained your friends in bar-rooms and nothing ever would've happened... - Mama!
Stop talking.
Why don't we go in to lunch?
Yes. Yes. It is inconsiderate of me to dig up the past when I know your father and Jamie must be hungry.
I do hope you have an appetite dear. You really must eat more...
Why is that glass there? Did you have a drink? How can you be such a fool?
You're to blame James! How could you let him? Do you want to kill him?!
Don't you remember my father?
He wouldn't stop after he was striken, he said doctors were fools, he thought like you that whiskey is a good tonic...
But of course... there... there... there's no comparison...
...at all, is there?
I... I don't know why I... I...
Forgive me for... scolding you James.
One... one small drink won't hurt Edmund.
Might be good for him. If it gives him an appetite.
For God's sake let's eat. - Come on kid, let's put on the feed bag. - Yes
You go in with your mother lads, I'll join you in a second.
Why... why do you... look at me like that?
Please stop staring James, one would think you're accusing me.
James...
- ...you don't understand... - I understand that I've been a god damned fool to believe in you.
I don't know what you mean by "believing" in me, all I felt was distrust and spying and suspicion.
Why are you having another drink? You never have more than one drink before lunch.
Well... I know what to expect, you'll be drunk tonight
and it won't be the first time, will it? Or the thousandth.
James... please... please...
...you don't understand... I've been so worried... so worried about Edmund. I'm so afraid.
- I don't want to listen to your excuses Mary. - Excuses?
You... you mean... you couldn't believe that of me, you mustn't believe that James. No.
Shall... shall we not go in to lunch dear? I don't want anything but I know you must be hungry.
James...
I tried... so hard.
I tried so hard!
- Please believe me. - Yes I suppose you did Mary.
But for the love of God why couldn't you have the strenght to keep on?
I... I don't know what you're talking about.
Have the strenght to keep on what?
Nevermind.
It's no use now.
It's unreasonable to expect Bridget and Cathleen to act as if this were home, they know it isn't as well as we know it.
Never has been and never will be.
- No it never can be now but it was once before you... - Before I what?
No... no dear, whatever you say, it isn't true.
It was never a home. You've always prefered a club or a bar-room.
And for me it's... always been as lonely a dirty room in a one night stand hotel.
I'm... I'm worried about you. Edmund.
Edmund. You... you hardly touched anything.
It's alright for me not to have an appetite, I've... I've been growing too fat but...
...you must eat.
Pro...promise me you will dear, for my sake. - Yes Mama. - That's a good boy.
I'll answer. Maguire said he'd call.
Hello.
How are you doctor?
Well the... you'll explain all about it when you see him this afternoon.
Yes he...he'll be with you without fail at 4 o'clock.
Yes.
Goodbye. Goodbye doctor.
- Well that didn't sound like glad tidings. - It was doctor hardy
- He wants to...you to be sure and see him at 4 this afternoon. - What did he say?
- Not that I give a damn. - I wouldn't believe him if he swore on a stack of bibles.
- Don't pay attention to a word he says Edmund. - Mary!
We all know why you like him James, because he's cheap. Please don't try to tell me, I know all about Doctor Hardy.
Heaven knows I ought to after all these years.
He's an ignorant fool. Should be a law to keep man like him from practicing.
He hasn't the slightest idea... when you're in agony and half insane. Sits and holds your hand and delivers sermons on willpower.
He deliberately humiliates you. He makes you beg and plead. He treats you like a criminal.
He understands nothing!
And yet it was exactly the same type of cheap quack who first gave you the medicine and you never knew what it was until it was too late.
- I hate doctors! - For christ sake Mama! Stop talking.
- Yes Mary, it's no time to... - You're... you're... quite right dear, forgive me.
I... It's useless to be angry now.
I'm going upstairs... for a moment.
If you'll excuse me.
I have to fix my hair.
That is, if I can find my glasses.
- I'll be right down. - Mary.
Yes dear, what is it?
- Nothing. - You're welcome to come up and watch me if you're so suspicious.
As if that could do any good, you'd only postpone it.
- I'm not your jailor, this isn't a prison. - No, I know you can't help thinking it's a home.
I'm sorry dear.
I don't mean to be bitter.
It... It's not your fault.
- Another shot in the arm. - Cut out that kind of talk.
Yes, hold your foul tongue and your rotten broadway loafers lingo! Have you no pity or decency? You ought to be thrown out into the gutter
If I did it you know damn well who would weep you and plead for you and excuse you and complain until I let you come back.
God! Don't I know that?
No pity?
I have all the pity in the world for her because I understand what a hard game to beat she is up against. Which is more than you ever had
No, the cures are no damn good except for a while. The truth is there is no cure and we've been saps to hope.
- They never come back. - "They never come back"
Everything's in the bag, it's all a frame up we're all fall guys and suckers and we can't beat the game.
- God, if I felt the way you do... - I thought you did! Your poetry isn't very cheery nor the stuff you read and claim to admire.
Shut up both of you! There's little choice between the philosophy you learn from broadway loafers and the one Edmund got from his books.
They're both rotten to the core. You both flauted the faith you were born and brought up in, the one true faith of the catholic church
- and your denial has brought nothing but self-destruction. - That's the bunk Papa.
We don't pretend at any rate. I don't notice you've worn any holes in the knees of your pants going to mass.
It's true, I'm a bad catholic in the observance. God forgive me. But I believe.
And you're a liar, I may not go to church but every night and morning of my life I get down on my knees and pray.
Did you pray for Mama?
I did, I've prayed to God these many years for her.
But what's the good of talk?
Only, I wish she hadn't led me into hope this time.
By God! I never will again.
That's a rotten thing to say Papa.
Well I'll hope, she's only just started, it can't have got a hold on her yet, she can still stop.
You can't talk to her now, she'll listen but she won't listen.
Yes, every day from now on will be the same drifting away from us until at the end of each night...
Cut it out Papa!
I'll go up and get dressed.
I'll make so much noise she can't suspect I've come up to spy on her.
- What did Doc. Hardy say about the kid? - It's what you thought... he's got consumption.
- Damn it! - There's no possible doubt, he says.
- Aw hell, he'll have to go to a sanitorium. - Yes. The sooner the better, Hardy says, for him and everyone around him.
He claims: in six monts to a year, Edmund will be cured, if he obeys orders.
Who would have thought a child of mine? Doesn't come from my side of the family.
- Wasn't one of us who didn't have lungs as strong as an ox! - Who gives a damn about that part of it?
Where does Hardy want to send him?
That's what I've to see him about.
- Well for God's sake pick out a good place and not some cheap dump. - I'll send him wherever Hardy thinks best.
Well don't give Hardy your old over the hills to the poor house song about taxes and mortgages
- I'm no millionaire that can throw money away. Why shouldn't I tell Hardy the truth? - Because he'll think you want him to pick a cheap dump.
And because he'll know it isn't the truth, especially if he hears afterwards you've seen McGuire and let that flannel-mouth, gold-brick merchant sting you with another piece of bum property!
- Keep your nose out of my business! - This is Edmund's business!
What I'm afraid of is, with your irish bogtrotter idea that consumption is fatal you'll figure it's a waste of money to spend any more than you can help
- You liar! - All right, prove I'm a liar! That's what I want, that's why I brought it up.
I have every hope Edmund will be cured and keep your dirty tongue off Ireland. You're a fine one to sneer with a map of it on your face.
Not after I wash my face.
Well... I've said all I have to say, it's up to you.
What do you want me to do this afternoon now that you're going uptown?
I've done all I can do on the hedge until you cut more of it and you don't want me to go ahead with your clipping I know that.
No, you'd get it crooked. Like you get everything else.
Well I'd better go uptown with Edmund then.
Bad news coming on top of what's happened with Mama may hit him hard.
Yes go with him Jamie, Keep up his spirits if you can. If you can without making it an excuse to get drunk.
What would I use for money? The last I heard they were still selling booze not giving it away.
I'll get dressed.
You haven't... seen my... glasses anywhere have you Jamie?
- You haven't seen them have you James? - No my dear.
What's the matter with Jamie? Have you been nagging at him again?
You really sh...shouldn't treat him with such contempt all the time.
He's not to blame, if he'd been brought up in a real home I'm sure it would have been dif...
You're not much of a weather profet James.
See how hazy it's getting.
- I can hardly see the other shore. - Yes I spoke too soon we're in for another night of fog I'm afraid.
- Well... I won't mind it tonight. - No. I don't imagine you will... Mary.
I... I don't... see Jamie
- going down to the hedge. Where...where did he go? - He's going with Edmund to the doctor's, he went upstairs to change his clothes.
- I have to do the same or I'll be late for my appointment. - Please wait a little while.
At least until one of the boys... comes down.
- You... you'll all be... leaving me so soon. - It's you who are leaving us Mary.
Well that... that's a silly thing... to say James. How could I leave?
There's nowhere I could go. Who would I go to see?
- I have no friends. - That's your own fault.
Surely there's something that you could do this afternoon that would be good for you Mary.
Take a drive in the automobile, get away from the house get a little sun and fresh air.
I bought the automobile for you. You know I don't care for the damn things, I'd rather walk any day or take the trolly.
I had it here waiting for you when you came back from the sanitorium.
I thought it would give you pleasure and distract your mind.
You used to ride in it every day, you hardly use it at all lately.
Payed more money than I could afford.
There's the chauffeur, I have to feed and board and pay high wages wether he drives you or not.
Waste!
Same old waste that will land me in the poor house at my old age.
What good has it done you? I might as well have thrown the money out the window.
It was a waste of money James.
You shouldn't have bought a second hand automobile.
You were swindled again. As you always are because you insist on second hand bargains in everything.
It's one of the best makes. You're as bad as Jamie. Suspecting everyone.
No. You... you mustn't be offended James. I... I wasn't offended when you gave me the automobile.
I knew that was the way you had to do everything. I was grateful and touched. I knew that buying the car was a... was a hard thing for you to do.
But it showed how much you love me... in your way.
- Especially... as you couldn't really believe it would do me any good. - Mary, dear Mary.
For the love of God, for the boys sake, for my sake and for your own, won't you stop? Now.
Stop what? What are you talking about?
James...
James we've loved each other, we always will. Let's remember only that and not try to understand what we cannot understand or help things that cannot be helped.
The things... life has done to us, we cannot excuse or explain.
You won't even try?
Try... try to go for a drive? This afternoon dear?
Yes...Yes I...I will if you wish it. Although... it... it makes me feel lonelier... than if I staued here.
There... there's no one I can invite to drive with me. I never know where to tell Smythe to go
If there was only some friend's house where I could... drop in laugh and gossip over a while. But of course there isn't.
Never has been.
At the convent, I had so many friends.
Naturally, after I married an actor,
well... you... you know how actors were considered in those days and then of course... right after we were married there was the scandal of...
of that... woman who... had been your mistress suing you. From then on all my old friends either pitied me or... cut me dead.
- I hated the ones that cut me dead much less than the pitiers. - Mary for God's sake don't dig up what's long forgotten.
If you're that far gone in the past already when it's only the beggining of the afternoon what will you be tonight.
Come to think of it... I do have to drive uptown.
There's something I must get at the drugstore.
Yes. Leave it to you to have some of the stuff hidden and prescriptions for more.
Well I hope you'll lay in a good stock ahead so we'll never have another night like the one when you screamed for it, and ran out of the house in your nightdress
half crazy to try and throw yourself off the dock.
I have to get... tooth powder... and toilet soap... and cold cream.
- You mustn't remember, you mustn't humiliate me so! - Forgive me.
I'm sorry Mary.
It doesn't matter, nothign like that ever happened. You must've dreamed it.
I... I was so... so healthy
before Edmund was born.
Do you remember James?
There wasn't a nerve in my body.
Even travelling with you, season after season and bearing children in hotel rooms, I still kept healthy.
But bearing Edmund was... the last straw.
I was so sick afterwards.
And that ignorant quack of a cheap hotel doctor
all he knew was I was in pain, it was easy for him to stop the pain.
Mary, for God's sake forget the past.
Why how can I, the past is the present, it's the future too, isn't it?
I blame only myself. I swore after Eugene died I would never have another baby.
I was to blame for his death.
If... If I hadn't left him with my mother to join you on the road because you wrote telling me you missed me and were so lonely
Jamie would never have been allowed, when he still had measels to go into the baby's room.
I always believed Jamie did it on purpose, he was jelous of the baby he hated him.
I... I... know Jamie was only seven but he was never stupid. He'd been warned it might kill the baby.
- He knew. I've never been able to forgive him for that. - Are you back to Eugene now? Can't you let our dead baby rest in peace?
Above all... above all I should never have let you insist that I have another baby to take Eugene's place.
I was afraid, all the time I carried Edmund. I knew something terrible would happen. I knew I'd proved by the way I left Eugene that I wasn't worthy to have another baby.
And that God would punish me if I did.
- I should never have born Edmund. - Mary be careful with your talk, if he heard you he migh think you never wanted him.
For God's sake try and be yourself, you can do that much for him.
There you are, you look spick-and-span. I'm on my way up to change too.
Wait a minute Papa. I hate to bring up disagreable topic but there's the matter of car fare.
- I'm broke. - You'll always be broke until you learn the value of...
...but you've been learning lad. You worked hard before you took ill.
You've done splendidly, I... I'm proud of you.
- "Thank you". How sharper than a snake's tooth it is to... - "...have a thankless child", I know. Give me a chance Papa. I'm knocked speechless.
This isn't a dollar, it's a ten spot. But why all of a sudden? Did doc. Hardy say I was going to die?
That was a rotten crack, I was just kidding Papa.
- I'm very grateful, honest Papa. - You're welcome lad.
I won't have it! Do you hear? Such morbid nonsense.
Saying you're going to die. You'd think you didn't want to live. A boy of your have with everything before him.
- It's just a pose you get out of books, you're not sick at all.
- Mary hold your tongue! - But James it's absurd of him to be so gloomy and to make such a big to-do about nothing.
But never mind dear, I'm on to you. You want to be petted and spoiled and made a fuss over, isn't that it?
You're still such a baby. But please, don't carry it too far dear.
Don't say horrible things.
I know it's foolish to take them seriously but I can't help it. You've got me so frightened!
I believe you ought to ask your mother now what you said you were... going to.
My God! Look at the time. I have to shake a leg.
How do you feel?
Your head is a little hot... but that's just from going out in the sun.
You look ever so much better than you did this morning. Come and sit down.
- Listen Mama... - No no now don't talk. Sit down. Lean back.
And rest.
It's such a tiring trip uptown in the dirty old trolley on a hot day like this.
You'll be ever so much better off here with me.
- Listen Mama... - You could telephone Hardy Tell him you don't feel well enough.
- The old idiot, all he knows about medicine is to look solemn and preach willpower. - Listen Mama...
I want to ask you something...
You can still stop. You've only just started, you've got the willpower
we'll all help you, I'll do anything. Won't you Mama?
Please don't talk about things you don't understand.
- All right I give up. I knew it was no use. - Anyway I don't know what you're refering to but I do know you should be the last one...
Right after I returned from the sanitorium you began to be ill.
But after they had warned me I must have peace at home with nothing to upset me all I've done is worry about you.
But... that's no excuse.
I'm only trying to explain, it's not an excuse.
Promise me dear you won't believe I made you an excuse.
What else can I believe?
Nothing. I don't blame you.
How can you believe me when I can't believe myself?
I've become such a liar.
I never lied about anything once upon a time. Now I have to lie, especially to myself.
But how can you understand when I can't understand myself?
I've never understood anything about it, except. That one day long ago I found I could no longer call my soul my own.
But someday dear... I'll find it again.
Someday when you're all well.
And I see you healthy and happy and sucessful.
And I don't have to feel guilty anymore.
Someday... when the blessed virgin Mary forgives me.
And gives me back the faith in her love and pity I used to have in my convent days.
And I can pray to her again.
When she sees... no one can believe in me, even for a moment, anymore...
then she will believe in me... and with her help it will be so easy.
I will hear myself scream with agony and yet at the same time I will laugh because I will be so sure of myself.
Well... but of course you can't... believe that either can...
Now I... now I think of it
you might as well... go uptown.
I forgot. I'm taking a drive.
I have to go to the drugstore and you'd hardly want to go there with me would you? You'd be so ashamed.
- Mama don't... - I suppose you'll divide that $10 your father gave you with Jamie.
You always divide with each other don't you? Like good sports.
Well... I know what he'll do with his share. He'll get drunk somewhere where he can be with the only kind of woman he understands or likes.
Edmund... promise me you won't drink.
- It's so dangerous. You know doctor Hardy... - I thought he was an old idiot...
Edmund...
Come on kid, let's beat it!
Go on Edmund. Jamie's calling.
- There comes your father down the stairs too. - Come on! Edmund.
- Goodbye Mary. - Goodbye Edmund, if you're coming home to dinner try not to be late.
Tell your father. You know how Bridget is.
- Goodbye. - Goodbye Mama.
So lonely here.
You're lying to yourself again.
You wanted to get rid of them.
Their contempt and disgust aren't pleasant company. You're glad they've gone.
Then mother of God...
why do I feel so lonely?
That foghorn...
isn't it awful?
Yes indeed ma'am.
Wasn't the fog I minded, I really love fog.
- They say it's good for the complexion. - It hides you from the world and the world from you.
You feel everything has changed, nothing is what it seemed to be.
No one can find or touch you anymore.
I was scared out of my wits riding back from town. You couldn't see your hand in front of you.
It's the foghorn I hate.
It won't let you alone.
It keeps reminding you... calling you back.
But it can't tonight, it's just an ugly sound.
It's...
It doesn't remind me of anything, except perhaps Mr. Tyrone's snores.
I've had such fun teasing him about it.
He's always snored... ever since I can remember, especially when he's had too much to drink. And then he's like a child, he doesn't like to admit it.
Well... I suppose I snore at times too and I don't like to admit it.
- So I've no right to make fun of him, have I? - Sure everybody healthy snores, it's a sign of sanity they say.
What time is it ma'am? I ought to be getting back into the kitchen.
No, don't go Cathleen. I don't want to be alone...
- ...yet. - It won't be for long.
The master and the boys will be home soon.
I doubt if they'll come home for dinner.
They have too good an excuse... to remain in the barrooms... where they feel at home.
- Have a drink yourself, Cathleen, if you wish. - Well... I don't know if I'd better ma'am.
Well... maybe one won't harm.
Here's to your good health ma'am.
I really did have good health once Cathleen but that was long ago.
For God's sake ma'am... it'll be half water. He'll know by the taste.
By the time he gets home he'll be too drunk to tell the difference, he has such a good an excuse, he believes, to drown his sorrows.
- Well... it's a good man's failing... never mind his weakeness. - I don't mind, I've loved him dearly for thirty-six years.
That's right ma'am, love him dearly for any fool can tell he worships the ground you walk on.
Speaking of acting ma'am... how is it you never went on the stage?
What... I?
What put that absurd idea in your head?
I was brought up in a respectable home
and educated in the best convent in the middle-west before I met Mr. Tyrone.
I hardly knew there was such a thing as the theater. I was a very pious girl.
I even dreamed of becoming a nun. I never had the slighest desire to be an actress.
I'd never think of you being a holy nun ma'am.
- Sure to God you'd never darken the door of a church God forgive me. - Well... I never felt at home in the theater.
Even though Mr. Tyrone has made me go with him on all his tours.
I've had... little to do with the people in his company.
Not that I had anything against them, they were always very kind to to me and I to them but... their life was not my life.
It's always stood between me and...
and...
But let's not talk about old things that could not be helped.
How thick the fog is.
I... I can't see the road.
All the people in the world could pass by...
and I would never know.
I wish it was always that way.
It's getting dark already. It'll soon be night.
Thank goodness. It was kind of you to keep me company this afternoon Cathleen.
I should have been lonely driving up... driving uptown alone.
Sure. Why wouldn't I rather ride in a fine automobile than stay here?
It's like a vacation ma'am.
- There's only one thing I didn't like. - What was that Cathleen.
The way the man in the drugstore acted when I took in the prescription for you.
The appearance of him.
I d... I don't know what you're talking about. What drugstore? What prescrip...
Oh yes...
Of course, I'd forgotten.
The medicine for the... rheumathism...
in my hands.
What did the man say?
- Not that it matter so long as he filled the prescription. - Oh it mattered to me ma'am. I'm not used to being treated like a thief.
He gave me a long look and said insultingly "where did you get hold of this?".
"Well" I says "it's none of your damn business" but if you must know it's for the lady I work for, Mrs. Tyrone who's siting out there in the automobile.
That shut him up quick. He gave a long look out and said "Ohh" and went to get the medicine.
Yes... he... knows me.
I... have to take it
because there... there is no other that can... stop the pain.
All the pain. I mean in my hands.
Poor hands.
You'll never believe it but they... they were once one of my good points
along with my hair... and eyes.
I had a fine figure too.
They were a musician's hands.
I used to love the piano.
I worked so hard at my music at the convent.
Mother Elizabeth and my music teacher both said I had more talent than any student they remembered.
My father payed for special lessons.
He spoiled me. He would've sent me to Europe to study after I'd graduated from the convent. I might have gone if I hadn't fallen in love with Mr. Tyrone or I might have become a nun.
I had two dreams.
To be a nun...
that was the more beautiful one.
To be a concert pianist.
That was the other.
I haven't touched the piano in so many years. I couldn't play now with such crippled fingers even if I wanted to.
For a time after my marriage... I tried to keep up my music but it was hopeless. One night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home.
See... Cathleen?
How ugly they are, so maimed and crippled.
You'd think they've been through some horrible accident.
So they have come to think of it. I won't look at them, they are worst than the foghorn at reminding me.
But even they can't hurt me now.
They're far away.
I see them...
but the pain is gone.
You've taken some of that medicine?
If I didn't know better I'd think you'd a drop taken.
It kills the pain.
You go back...
until at last your... beyond it's reach.
Only the past when you were happy is real. If you think Mr. Tyrone is handsome now, Cathleen, you should have seen him when I first met him.
He had a reputation of being one of the handsomest men in the country.
Those at the convent who'd seen him act or seen his photographs used to rave about him.
He was a big matinée idol then.
Women... used to wait at the stage door just to... see him come out.
You can imagine how... excited I was when my father wrote telling me he and James Tyrone had become friends and I was to meet him
when I went home for my easter vacation.
I showed the letter to all the girls.
How envious they were.
My father took me to see him act first. It was a play about the french revolution
and the... the leading character... was a nobleman.
I couldn't take my eyes off him. I wept
when he was thrown in prison and then was so mad because I was afraid my eyes would be red.
My... my father had said we would go backstage to his dressing room right after the play and so we did.
I guess my... eyes and nose... couldn't have been red after all.
I was really very pretty then actually and he was handsomer than my wildest dreams.
He was different... different from ordinary men like someone from another world.
I fell in love right then.
So did he.
He told me afterwards.
I forgot all about becoming a nun.
Or a concert pianist.
All I wanted was to be his wife.
Thirty-six years ago...
but I can see it as clearly as if it were tonight.
And...
we've loved each other ever since and in all those thirty-six years there... there's never been a breath of scandal about him. I mean with another woman.
He's made me very happy Cathleen.
He's a fine gentleman.
You're a lucky woman.
Sentimental fool.
What's so wonderful about the first... meeting between a silly romantic schoolgirl... and a matinéer?
You were much... happier before... you knew he existed.
In the convent... when you could pray... to the blessed vi... virgin.
If only I could find the faith I lost.
So I could pray to her again.
Hail Mary full of grace...
Hail Mary full...
Hail Mary full of...
Expect the blessed virgin to be fooled... by a lying dope fiend reciting words?
You can't fool her.
I haven't taken enough. I have to go upstairs.
When you start again you never know...
You never know exactly how much you need.
Why are they coming back?
Are you there... Mary?
Yes. Yes I'm... I'm here dear. In the sitting room.
I've been... I've been waiting for you.
I'm... I'm so happy you've come. I'd given up hope. I was afraid you wouldn't come home. It's such a dismal foggy evening it must be much more cheerful in the barrooms uptown
where there are people you can laugh and... Oh no don't deny it. I know how you feel. I don't blame you a bit.
I'm all the more grateful to you for coming home. I was... sitting here so... lonely and blue.
Come and sit down.
Dinner won't be ready for a few minutes.
Your...your... actually a little early. Will wonders never cease?
Here's the whiskey dear, shall I pour you a drink. And you, Edmund?
I don't want to encourage you.
But one small one be...be... before... dinner can't... do you any harm.
Where's Jamie?
But I... of course... he'll never come home so long as he has... the price of a date left.
- I'm afraid Jamie has been... lost to us for a... long time... dear. - For the love of God, I'm a fool for coming home.
Papa, shut up.
Who'd've... thought... who would've thought Jamie would... would grow up to disgrace us.
Everyone liked him, all his... teachers told us what a fine brain he had.
They... they predicted a wonderful future for him if only he'd... learned to take life seriously.
Poor Jamie, such a pity!
It's hard to understand.
No it isn't.
You brought him up to be a boozer.
Since he first opened his eyes he's seen you drinking. Always a bottle on the beaureu in the cheap hotel rooms.
If he had a nightmare when he was little or a stomach ache your remedy was to give him a tea spoon full of whiskey.
- To quiet him. - So I'm to blame because that lazy hulk has made a drunken loafer of himself?
Is that what I came back to listen to? I might have known. When you have the poison in you, you want to blame everyone but yourself!
Papa!
- Are we going to have this drink or arent' we? - You're right. I'm a fool to take notice.
Drink hearty lad.
I'm sorry if I... souded bitter James, I'm not.
It's all so far away I... I was a little hurt when you wished you hadn't come home. I was so relieved and happy when you came.
And grateful to you.
It's very dreary and sad to be here alone in the fog.
With night falling.
I'm glad I came Mary, when you act like your real self.
I was so lonesome. I kept Cathleen with me just to have someone to talk to.
Do you know what I was telling her James? About that night my father took me to your dressing room.
And I first fell in love with you, do you remeber?
Can you think I'll ever forget Mary?
No.
I know you still love me James.
In spite of everything.
Yes, as God is my judge. Always and forever Mary.
And I... love you dear.
In spite of everything.
But...
Although I couldn't help loving you I would never have married you if I'd known you drank so much.
I remember the... first time your barroom fellows had to help you... to the door of out hotel room and knocked and then ran away
before I opened the door. We... we were still in our honeymoon, remember?
I don't remember. It wasn't on our honeymoon. I've never in my life had to be helped to bed
or missed a performance.
I waited in that ugly hotel room... hour after hour.
I became terrified, I imagined all sorts of horrible accidents. I got down on my knees and prayed that nothing had happened to you.
Then they brought you up and left you outside the door.
God! No wonder.
I'm... I'm sorry I remembered out loud.
I don't want to be sad
or to make you sad.
I want to remember only the happy part of the past.
Do you remember our wedding?
The wedding dear?
I... I... haven't made such a bad wife, have I?
I'm not complaining Mary.
At least I've loved you dearly and I've done the best I could under th circumstances.
That wedding gown...
was nearly the death of me. And the dressmaker too.
I was so particular, it was never quite good enough.
At last she said she said she refused to touch it anymore "it might spoil it" so I made her leave so I could be alone to examine myself in the mirror.
I was so pleased and vain.
I thought to myself "you're just as pretty as any actress he's ever met
and you don't have to use paint".
Whe... where is my wedding gown now I wonder.
I...I... I kept it wrapped up in tissue paper in my trunk.
I hoped someday I'd have a daughter and when it came time for her to marry she couldn't afford a lovely gown
and I knew James, you'd never tell her "never mind the cost". You'd want her to pick up something at a bargain.
It was made of soft shimmering satin
trimmed with wonderful old duchess lace around the neck and sleaves
worked in with the folds that were drapped around in a bustle effect at the back.
The bust was bound and very tight and then I... I held my breath when it was fitted so my waist would be as small as possible.
My... my father...
...my father...
even let me have lace on my white satin slippers and lace with orange blossoms in my veil.
How I loved that gown!
It was so...
...beautiful.
Where is it now I wonder.
I... I... I...
I used to take it out from time to time when I was lonely.
But it always made me cry and so...
finnally a long while ago... I wonder where I hid it?
Probably in some old trunk in the attic, someday I must have a look.
Well isn't it dinner time dear?
You're ever scolding me for being late but now I'm on time for once, it's dinner that's late.
Well if I can't eat yet, I can drink. I forgot I had this.
Who's been tampering with my whiskey? The damn stuff is half water.
Any fool can tell.
Mary, answer me.
- I hope to God you haven't taken to drink on top of... - Shut up Papa!
You treated Cathleen and Bridget, isn't that it?
Yes. Yes I wanted to treat Cathleen because I had her drive uptown with me and sent her to get my prescription filled.
For God's sake Mama! You can't trust her.
- You want everyone on earth to know? - Know what?
That I suffer from rheumatism in my hands and have to take medicine to kill the pain?
Why should I be ashamed of that? I never knew what rheumatism was before you were bo...born.
Ask your father.
Don't mind her lad, it doesn't mean anything. When it gets to the stage where she gives the old crazy excuse about her hands she's gone far away from us.
I'm glad you realize that James.
Now perhaps you'll give up trying to remind me.
You and...
...Edmund.
Why don't you light the lights James?
It's getting dark.
I know you hate to but Edmund has proved to you that one bulb burning doesn't cost much.
It's too bad you let your fear of the poor house make you too stingy.
I never claimed one bulb costed much.
It's having them on one here one there makes the electric light company rich.
I'm a fool to talk sense to you.
I'll get a fresh bottle of whiskey lad. We'll have a real drink.
He'll sneak around....
...the outside cellar door so the...
...servants won't see him.
He's really ashamed of keeping his whiskey pad-locked in the cellar.
Your father is a strange man.
Took many years before I understood him. His father deserted his mother and their six children a year or so after they came to America.
He told them he had a premonition he would die soon. He was homesick for Ireland and wanted to go there to die so he went and he did die.
He must have been a peculiar man too.
- Your father had to go to work in a machine shop when he was only ten years... - For pete's sake Mama!
- Heard Papa tell that story ten thousand times. - Yes dear. You've had to listen. But I don't think you ever tried to understand.
Listen Mama.
You're not so far gone yet that you've forgotten everything
You haven't asked me what I found out this afternoon.
Don't you care a damn?
- Don't say that. You hurt me dear. - What I've got is serious Mama.
- Doc Hardy knows for sure. - That lying old quack! I warned you he'd invent...
- He called in a specialist to examine me... - Don't tell me about doctor Hardy.
- ... so he'd be absolutely sure. - If you'd heard what the doctor in the sanitorium who really know something
said about how he treated me. He said it was a wonder I hadn't gone mad!
I told him I had once, that time I ran down in my nightdress to throw myself off the dock. You remember that don't you?
- And you want me to pay attention to what doctor Hardy says? Oh no. - Listen Mama! I'm gonna tell you whether you want to hear it or not.
I've got to go away to a sanitorium.
No!
How dare your father allow him.
You're my baby.
I know why he wants to send you to a sanitarium. To take you away from me. He's been jealous of everyone of my babies and you most of all.
- He knows I love you most because your my... - Stop talking crazy, can't you Mama?
And stop trying to blame him.
And why are you so against my going away now? I've been away a lot and I've never noticed it broke your heart.
I'm afraid you're not... very sensitive dear.
You ought to have guessed that... after I knew you knew... about me...
I had to be glad whenever you were away you couldn't see me.
Don't Mama.
All this talk about...
loving me the more I try to tell you how sick I am.
You're so like your father dear. Love to be dramatic and tragic so you can make a scene out of nothing.
If I gave you the slightest encouragement you'd tell me next you're gonna die.
- People do die of it. Your own father... - Why...why do you mention him?
No comparison at all. With him he had consumption. I hate it when you become morbid and gloomy.
I forbid you to remind me of my father's death do you hear?
Yes I hear you. I wish to God I didn't.
It's... hard to take at times... having... a dope fiend for a mother.
Forgive me Mama.
I was angry... and you hurt me.
Just listen to that... foghorn.
And the bells.
Why is it... fog makes everything sound so sad,
...lost?
I wonder.
I can't say.
I don't want any dinner.
I haven't taken enough I have to go upstairs.
I hope sometime without...
...meaning to or...
...take an overdose.
Could never do it deliberately.
The blessed virgin would never forgive me.
The pad lock is all scratched. That drunken loafer has tried to pick the lock with a piece of wire
the way he's done before but I fooled him this time.
It's a special pad lock a professional burglar couldn't pick.
Where's Edmund?
He went out.
Perhaps he's gone uptown to find Jamie.
He still had some money left.
I suppose it's burning a hole in his pocket.
He said he didn't want any dinner.
Doesn't seem to have any appetite these days.
But it's just a summer cold.
James!
- I'm so frightened! I know he's gonna die. - Don't say that it's not true.
- They promised me in six months he'd be cured. - You don't believe that. I can tell when you're acting. It'll be all my fault.
I should never have born him.
It would've been better for his sake. I couldn't have hurt him then. He wouldn't have had to know his mother was a dope fiend.
Hush Mary. For the love of God. He loves you. He knows it was a curse put upon you without you knowing or willing it.
He's proud you're his mother. Hush now, here comes Cathleen, you don't want her to see you crying.
Dinner is served sir. Dinner is served ma'am.
Come along dear.
Let's have our dinner.
I'm as hungry as a hunter.
I couldn't... possibly eat anything James. I think you'll have to excuse me.
My...my hands... pain me dreadfully.
I think the best thing for me is to go to bed... and rest.
Goodnight dear.
Up to take more of that God damn poison is it?
You'll be like a mad ghost before the night is over.
I don't know what you're talking about. You say such mean bitter things when you've had too much to drink.
You're as bad as Jamie or Edmund.
Who's that?
- Is it you Edmund? - Yes.
Turn that light out before you come in. Well I'm glad you've come lad I've been damn lonely.
You're a fine one to run away and leave me to sit alone here all night when you know...
I've told you to turn out that light. We're not giving a ball.
There's no reason to have the house ablaze with electricity at this time of night burning up money.
"ablaze with electricity", one bulb! Hell everyone leaves a light on in the front porch until they go to bed.
Ended up busting my knee on the hatstand.
The light from here shows in the hall. You could see a way well enough if you were sober.
- If "I" were sober, I like that. - I don't give a damn what other people do. If they want to be wasteful fools
- for the sake of show let them be. - One bulb! God don't be such a cheapskate.
I've proved to you by figures you can leave the light bulb all night on all night it wouldn't be as much as one drink.
- To hell with your figures! The proof is in the bills I have to pay. - Yes, facts don't mean a thing do they?
What you want to believe, that's the only truth.
- Shakespeare was an irish catholic for example. - So he was. The proof was in his plays.
Well he wasn't and there is no proof of it in his plays except to you.
- The Duke of Wellington that was another good irish catholic. I never said he was a good one, he was a renegade but a catholic just the same.
Well he wasn't, you just want to believe that nobody but an irish catholic general could beat Napoleon.
Yes, now I'm not going to argue with you. I asked you to turn out that light in the hall.
- I heard you and as far as I'm concerned it stays on. - None of your damned insolence. Are you going to obey me or not?
Not!
- You want to be a crazy miser, put it out yourself. - Now you listen to me. I put up with a lot from you because from the mad things
you've done at times I thought you weren't quite right in your head.
I've excused you and never lifted my hand to you but there's a straw that breaks the camel's back.
You'll obey me and put out that light or big as you are I'll give you a trashing that will teach you...
I'm sorry lad, forgive me I forgot.
You shouldn't goat me into losing my temper.
Forget it Papa, I apologize too. I had no right being nasty about nothing.
I'm a bit souse I guess.
- I'll put out the damn light. - No. No. No. Stay where you are. Let it burn.
We'll have them all on. Let them burn.
To hell with them. The poor house is the end of the road it might as well be sooner as later.
- That's a grand curtain. You're a wonder Papa. - That's right, laugh at the poor old man. The poor old ham.
But the final curtain will be in the poor house just he same. And that's not comedy.
Well, well let's not argue. You'll live to learn the value of a dollar. You're not like that damned tramp of a brother.
I've given up hope he'll ever get sense. Where is he, by the way?
- How would I know? - I thought you went back uptown to meet him.
- No I walked down by the beach. I haven't seen him since this afternoon. - Well if you shared the money I gave you like a fool...
- Sure I did. He always staked me when he had anything. - Well it doesn't take a soothsayer to tell he's probably in the whorehouse.
- For God's sake Papa. If you're gonna start that stuff again I'll beat it. - All right. All right. I'll stop. God knows I don't like the subject either.
- Will you join me in a drink? - Now you're talking!
I'm wrong to treat you, you've had enough already but if you walked all the way to the beach you must be damp and chilled.
- I dropped in at the inn on the way out and back.
- Not the night I'd pick for a long walk. - I love the fog.
- It was what I needed. - You should have more sense than to risck... To hell with sense!
The fog was where I wanted to be.
Halfway down the path you can't see this house.
You'd never even know it was here. Everything looked and sounded unreal.
It was like... walking on the bottom of the sea.
As if I'd drowned long ago.
As if I was a ghost, belonging to the fog.
And the fog was the ghost of the sea.
It felt damn peaceful to nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.
Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. Who wants to se life as it is if they can help it?
You've a poet in you but it's a damn morbid one.
Devil take your pessimism!
I'm low spirited enough.
Why can't you remember your Shakespeare? You'll find what you were trying to say in him.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep"
Fine.
That's beautiful but I wasn't trying to say that.
We are such stuff as manure is made on so let's drink up and forget it, that's more my idea.
Keep such sentiments to yourself. I shouldn't have given you that drink.
It did pack a whallop all right.
On you too. Even if you never missed a performance.
What's wrong with being drunk? It's what were after isn't it?
"Be always drunken Nothing else matters That is the only question"
"If you would not feel the horrible burden of time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth"
"Be drunken continually"
"Be drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or virtue as you will"
"But be drunken And if sometimes on the stairs of a palace"
"Or on the green side of a ditch Or in the dreary solitude of your own room"
"You should awaken And the drunkenness be half of wholly slipped away from you"
"Ask of the wind or of the wave or of the star or of the bird or of the clock Of whatever flies or sighs or rocks or sings or speaks"
"Ask what hour it is And the wind, the wave, star, bird, clock will answer you"
"It is the hour to be drunken Be drunken continually"
"With wine, with poetry or with virtue As you will"
Well I wouldn't worry about the virtue part of it if I were you.
But you recited it well lad.
- Who wrote it? - Baudelaire.
Never heard of him.
Where do you get your taste in authors? This damned library of yours...
Voltaire and Rousseau and Schopenauer and Ibsen ! Atheists, fools and madmen! And your poet this Baudelaire.
And Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whore-mongers and degenerates.
- I have three good sets of Shakespeare you could read. - They say he was a souse too.
They lie. I don't doubt he liked his glass it's a good man's failling but he knew how to drink that it didn't poison his mind with morbidness and filth.
Don't compare him with the pack you've got here.
Your dirty Zola! And your Dante Gabriel Rosettie who was a dope fiend...
Perhaps it would be wise to change the subject.
You can't accuse me of not knowing Shakespeare.
Didn't I win five dollars from you once when you bet me I couldn't learn a leading part of his in a week as you used to do in stock in the old days.
I learned Macbeth and recited it letter perfect with you giving me the cues.
That's true, so you did.
And a terrible ordeal it was I remember hearing you murder the lines.
I kept wishing I'd paid over the bet without making you prove it.
Did you hear?
She's moving around.
I hope to God she doesn't come down.
Yes, she'd be nothing more than a ghost haunting the past by this time.
Back before I was born.
Doesn't she do the same with me?
You must take her memories with a grain of salt.
Her wonderful home was ordinary enough.
Her father wasn't the great noble irish gentleman she makes out. He was a nice enough man, good company a good talker. I liked him and he liked me.
He was prosperous enough too in his wholesale grocery business. An able man.
But he had his weakness.
She condems my drinking but she forgets his.
It's true he never touched a drop until he was forty but after that he made up for lost time.
He became a steady champagne drinker.
The worst kind. That was his grand pose. To drink only champagne.
Well it finished him quick. That and the consumption.
We don't seem to be able to avoid unpleasant topics, do we?
No.
Well what do you say to a game or two of casino lad? All right.
We can't lock up and go to bed until Jamie comes on the last trolley.
Which I hope he won't.
I don't want to go upstairs anyway.
Until she's gone to sleep. Neither do I.
As I told you before...
...you must take her tales of the past with a grain of salt.
The piano playing and her dream of becoming a concert pianist.
It was put in her head by the nuns flattering her. She was their pet.
They loved her for being so devout
And the idea she might have become a nun, that's the worst.
Your mother was one of the most beautiful girls you ever could see.
She knew it too.
She was a bit of a rogue and a coquette, God bless her, behind all her shyness and blushes.
She was never made to renounce the world.
She was bursting with health and high spirits and the love of loving.
For God's sake Papa, pick up your hand.
Yes. Yes.
Let's see what I have here.
Listen.
She's coming downstairs.
Let's play our game, pretend not to notice. She'll soon go up again.
- I don't see her, she must have started down... and turned back. - Thank God!
Yes.
- It's pretty horrible to see her the way she must be now. - She's been terribly frightened about your illness for all her pretending.
- Don't be too hard on her lad, remember she's not responsible. - I know damn well she's not to blame.
And I know who is. You are. Your damned stinginess.
If you'd spent money on a decent doctor when she was so sick after I was born she would never known morphine existed.
You must try to see my side of it too lad.
How was I to know he was that kind of doctor? He'd a good reputation.
- Among the souses in the hotel bar I suppose. - You lie! I asked the hotel proprietor to recomend the best...
And at the same time crying "poor house" and making it plain you wanted a cheap one.
I know your system.
- God I ought to after this afternoon. -What about this afternoon?
Never mind now. We're talking about Mama.
I'm saying no matter how you try and excuse yourself, you know damn well your stinginess was to blame.
- I say you're a liar, shut your mouth right now or... - After you'd found out she was a morphine addict why didn't you send her
- to a cure then, at the start, when she still had a chance? - What did I know about morphine?
It was years before I discovered what was wrong.
Why didn't I send her to a cure you say? I 've spent thousands on thousands in cures, a waste!
What have they done her? She's always started again.
Yes , it's because you've never given her anything that would help her want to stay off it.
No home except this summer dump in a place she hates and you've refused to spend money even to make this look decent.
While you keep buying more property and playing sucker for every con-man with a gold mine or a silver mine or any other get rich quick swindle.
You've dragged her around the road, season after season, on one night stands with no one she could talk to.
Waiting night after night in dirty hotel rooms for you to come home with a bun on after the bar has closed.
It isn't any wonder she didn't want to be cured.
God. God! When I think of it I hate your guts.
Edmund how dare you talk to your father like that? You insolent young cub!
After all I've done for you.
- We'll come to that, what you're doing for me. - Will you stop repeating your mother's crazy accusations?
I've never dragged her on the road against her will. Naturally I wanted her with me, I loved her.
And she came because she loved me and wanted to be with me that's the truth.
She needn't have been lonely, she had her children and I insisted dispite the expense on having a nurse to travel with her.
Yes, your one generosity.
And that because you were jealous of her spending too much time with us.
And wanted us out of your way. And that was another mistake too. If she had to take care of me all by herself and had that to occupy her mind
- maybe she'd been able to stop. - Or for that matter since you insist on judging things by what she says when
she's not in her right mind, if you'd never been born she'd never...
Sure.
I know that's how she feels Papa.
She doesn't.
She loves you as dearly as ever a mother loved a son.
I've only said that because you've put me in such a God damned rage. Making up the past, saying you hate me.
I didn't mean it Papa.
- I'm like Mama. I can't help liking you in spite of everything. - Well I might say the same of you.
You're no great shakes as a son.
It's a case of "A poor thing but mine own".
Well, what's happened to our game? Who's play is it? Yours, I guess.
You mustn't let yourself get too down hearted lad by the bad news you had today.
Both doctors promised me, if you obey orders, at this place you're going, you'll be cured in six months or a year at most.
Don't kid me... you think I'm gonna die.
- That's a lie! You're crazy! - So why waste money? That's why you're sending me to a state farm.
What state farm? It's the Hill Town Sanatorium, that's all I know. Both doctors told me it's the best place for you.
For the money. Or for nothing or practicly nothing.
Don't lie Papa. You know damn well Hill Town Sanatorium is a state institution.
- Jamie suspected you'd cry "poor house" to Hardy and wormed the truth out of him. - That drunken loafer! I'll kick him out in the gutter!
- He's poisoned your mind against me ever since you were old enough to listen. - You can't deny it's true about the state farm, can you?
It's not true the way you look at it. What if it is run by the state, that's nothing against it.
The state has money to make a better place than any private sanatorium. And why shouldn't I take advantage of it?
It's my right and yours, we're residents, I'm a property owner. I help to support it. I'm taxed to death...
- Yes, on property valued at a quarter of a million. - Lies. That's all mortgaged.
- Hardy and the specialist know what you're worth. - All I told them was I was no millionaire that could afford such a sanatorium
because I was land poor. That's the truth.
- Then you went to the club and you met McGuire and "you let him stick you with another bum piece of property".
- It's not true. - Don't worry about it.
We met McGuire in the hotel bar after you left.
Jamie kidded him about hooking you and he winked and laughed.
- You liar. - No lie about it!
God Papa!
Ever since I went to see him was on my own and found out what it felt like to be broke and starved.
And I tried to be fair to you because I knew what you'd
Well...
Who's play is it?
"A stinking ols miser"
Well maybe you're right.
Maybe I can't help being....
Although all my life, since I had anything, I've thrown money over the bar to buy drinks for everyone in the house
or loaned money to sponges that I knew would never pay back. But of course that was in bar-rooms when I was full of whiskey.
Can't feel that way about it when I'm sober in my home.
It was at home I first learned the value of a dollar and the fear of the poor house.
I've never been able to believe in my luck since.
You said you realize what I'd been up against as a boy. The hell you do. How could you?
You had everything. Nurses, schools... I know you've had a spell of hard work with your back and hands
and a bit of being homeless and penniless in a foreign land and I respect you for it. But it was a game of romance and adventure to you.
- It was play. - Yes, particularly the time I tried to commit suicide at Jimmy the Priest's
- and almost did. - You weren't in your right mind. No son of mine would ever...
- You were drunk. - I was stone cold sober. That was the trouble. I stopped to think too long.
Don't start your damned atheist morbidness again. I don't care to listen.
I was trying to make plain to you. What do you know of the value of a dollar?
When I was ten... my father deserted my mother and went back to Ireland to die.
Which he did, soon enough and deserved to and I hope he's roasting in hell.
He mistook rat poison for flour or sugar or something...
There was gossip it wasn't by mistake but that's a lie. No one in my family would ever...
My bet is it wasn't by mistake.
More morbidness. Your brother put that in your head. The worst he can suspect is the only truth for him.
But never mind.
My mother was left... a stranger in a strange land with four small children. There was no damned romance in our poverty.
Twice we were evicted from the miserable hovel we called home. My mother's few sticks of furniture thrown out on the gutter.
My mother and sisters crying.
I cried too, though I tried hard not to. But I was the man of the family
at ten years old.
There was no more school for me.
I went to work twelve hours a day in a machine shop. Learning to make files.
Dirty barn of a place where rain dripped through the roof.
You roasted in the summer, there was no stove in winter. Your hands were numb with cold. The only light came through two small filthy windows.
So on gray days I'd have to sit bent over, my eyes almost touching the files in order to see.
You talk of work. What do you think I got for it?
Fifty cents a week. It's the truth. Fifty cents a week.
My poor mother washed and scrubbed for the yanks. Well I remember one thanksgiving...
or maybe it was christmas
some yank in whose house mother had been scrubbing gave her a dollar extra for a present. On the way home she spent it all on food.
I remember her hugging and kissing us and saying,
tears of joy running down her tired face,
"glory be to God! For once in our lives there will be enough for each of us."
Fine brave sweet woman!
Never was a finer or a braver!
- Yes, she must have been. - It was in those days I learned to be a miser.
A dollar was worth so much then.
Once you've learned the lesson it's hard to unlearn it. You have to look for bargains.
If I took this state farm for a good bargain you'll have to forgive me. The doctors did tell me it was a good place, you must believe that Edmund.
But I swear I never meant for you to go there if you didn't want to.
You can go to any place you choose, never mind what it costs.
Any place... I can afford. Any place... within reason.
What about our game? Whose play is it? I don't know.
Mine I guess.
No it's yours.
Yes.
Maybe life overdid the lesson for me
and made a dollar worth too much.
And that mistake ruined my career as a fine actor.
I've never admited this to anyone before lad
but tonight I’m so heartsick I feel at the end of everything and what’s the use of fake pride and pretense?
That God damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in, a great money success, it ruined me with it's promise of an easy fortune.
I didn't want to do anything else.
By the time I woke up to the fact I'd become a slave to the damn thing and did try other plays it was too late.
They'd identified me with that one part and didn't want me in anything else. They were right too.
I'd lost the great talent I once had through years of easy repetition, never learning a new part never really working hard.
Thirty-five to forty thousand dollars net profit a season! Like snapping your fingers.
Yet before I bought the damn thing I was considered one of the three or four young actors with the greatest artistic promise in America.
I'd work like hell!
I left a good job as a machinist to take supers' parts because I loved the theater. I was wild with ambition.
I read all the plays ever written. I studied Shakespeare as you'd study the Bible.
I got rid of an irish brogue(accent) you could cut with a knife. I loved Shakespeare. I'd have acted in any of his plays for nothing
For the joy of being alive in his great poetry.
I could have been a great shakesperian actor if I'd kept on.
In 1874 when Edwin Booth came to the theater in Chicago where I was leading man.
I played Cassius to his Brutus one night, Brutus to his Cassius the next. Othello to his Iago and so on.
First night I played Othello he said to our manager: "That young man is playing Othello better than I ever did."
That from Booth!
The greatest actor of his day or any other.
As I look back on it now, that night was the highest spot of my career.
I had life where I wanted it.
But for a time after that I kept on with ambition high, married your mother. Ask her what I was like in those days.
Her love was an added incentive to ambition.
Then a few years later my good bad luck made me find the big money maker.
And then life had me where it wanted me.
At from thirty-five to forty thousand net profit a season.
A fortune in those days.
Even in these.
What the hell was it I wanted to buy, I wonder, that was worth...
Oh well, it's a late day for regrets.
My play isn't it?
I'm glad you told me this Papa. I know you a lot bette now.
Maybe I shouldn't have told you. Maybe you'll only feel more contempt for me.
It's a poor way to convince you of the value of a dollar.
The glare from those extra lights hurts my eyes.
You don't mind if I turn them out do you? We don't need them. There's no point in making the electric company light company rich.
No, sure not. Turn them out.
No, I don't know what the hell it was I wanted to buy.
On my solemn oath Edmund.
I'd gladly face not having an acre of land to call my own, nor a penny in the bank
I'd be willing to have no home but the poor house in my old age if I could look back now on having been the fine artist I might have been.
What the devil are you laughing at?
Not at you Papa.
At life, it's so damned crazy.
More of your morbidness. There's nothing wrong with life.
It's we who...
"The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings"
The praise Edwin Booth gave my Othello!
I made our manager write down his exact words in writting.
I kept it in my wallet for years. I used to read it every once in a while.
Until, finally, it made me feel so bad I couldn't face it anymore.
Where is it now, I wonder? Somewhere in this house. I remember I put it away carefully.
Might be in an old trunk in the attic along with Mama's wedding dress.
For pete's sake Papa, if we're gonna play cards, let's play.
She's still moving around.
- God know when she'll go to sleep! - For God's sake Papa, forget it!
You just told me some high spots in your memories, want to hear mine?
They're all connected with the sea.
Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires.
Full moon in the Trades the old hooker driving fourteen knots.
I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern
the water foaming into spume under me,
the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me.
I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it,
and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free!
I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became the ship and the moonlight and the high dim-starred sky!
I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy,
to something greater than my own life, or the life of Man,
to Life itself!
To God, if you want to put it that way.
And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience.
Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide.
Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand.
For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret.
For a second there is meaning!
Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again.
It's a great mistake me being born a man. I'd have been much more successful as a seagul or a fish.
As it is I'll always be a stranger who can never really feel at home.
Who does not really want, is not really wanted
who can never really belong and who must always be a little in love with death.
Yes, you've the makings of a poet in you all right.
The makings of a poet?
No I'm...I'm afraid I'm like the guy who's always panhandling for a smoke.
He hasn't even got the makings, he's only got the habit.
I couldn't touch what I was trying to tell you just now I only stammered.
It's the best I'll ever do, I mean if I live.
That's faithful realism at least. Stammering is the native elequence of us, fog people.
Well, that sounds like absent brother.
- He must have a peach of a bun on. - That loafer. He caught the last car back. Bad luck to it.
Get him to bed, Edmund. I'll go out on the porch. He has a tongue like an adder when he's drunk. I'd only lose my temper.
What ho! What...
Nix on the loud noise.
Hello kid.
I'm as drunk as a fiddler's bitch.
- Thanks for telling me your great secret. - Yeah. Unnecessary information number one.
I had a serious accident. Front steps tried to trample on me. Took advantage of the fog the way...
Ought to be another lighthouse out there.
It's dark in here too.
What the hell is this, the morgue?
"Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river in the dark!"
"Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an' they will surely guide you 'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark."
There. That's more like it.
To hell with old gasbard!
Where is that old tight wad?
He's out on the porch.
He expects us to live.... in a black hole in Calcutta!
Say...
Have I got the dts? (delirium tremens - tremors caused by lack of alcohol on people who are dependant)
My God! It's real.
Hey what's the matter with the old man? He must be assified to forget he left this out.
Grab opportunity by the forelock!
It's the key to my success.
- You're stinking now. That will knock you stiff. - Wisdom from the mouth of babes.
- Can the wise stuff kid, you're still wet behind the ears. - All right. Pass out if you want to.
I can't, that's the trouble. I've had enough to sink a ship but I can't sink.
- Well... here's hoping. - I'll have one too.
No. No you don't. Not while I'm around. Remember doctors orders.
Maybe no one else gives a damn if you die but I do.
You're my kid brother. I love your guts kid.
Everything else is gone and you're all I got left.
- So no booze for you if I can gelp it. - Lay off.
You don't believe I care. Just drunken bull. All right go ahead and kill yourself.
Sure I know you care Jamie.
And I'm going on the wagon but tonight doesn't count.
Too many damned things have happened today. Here's how.
I know kid, it's been a lousy day for you.
I bet old gasbard hasn't tried to keep you off the booze. He'll probably give you a case to take with you to the state farm for pauper patients.
The sooner you kick the bucket, the less expense.
What a bastard to have for a father! God if you put him in a book no one would believe it.
Papa's all right if you try to understand him and keep your sense of humor.
He's been putting on the old sob act for you? He could always fool you but not me.
Never again.
Though I do feel sorry for him in a way about one thing.
He even had that coming to him. He's to blame.
To hell with that.
The last drink is really getting to me, this one ought to put the lights out.
Hey did you tell old gasbard that I got it out of doc. Hardy that the sanatorium was a charity dump?
Yes. I told him I wouldn't go there. It's all settled noe, he said I can go anywhere I want...
within reason of course.
Yes, "of course my boy, a-ny-thing... within reason". That means another cheap dump!
Old gasbard, the miser in "The Bells". That's a part he can play without make-up.
I've heard that gasbard stuff a million times.
All right, if you're satisfied, let him get away with it. It's your funeral.
I mean... I hope it won't be.
- What did you do uptown tonight? Go to Mamie Burns? - Sure thing. Where else could I find suitable feminine companionship?
And love? Don't forget love.
What is man without a good woman to love?
- A God damn hollow hole. - You're a nut.
Hey... guess which one of Mamie's charmers I picked to bless me with her woman's love.
It'll hand you a laugh kid. I picked...
Fat Violet.
- No, honest? - Yeah.
Some pick!
God! Oh God she weighs a ton.
- What the hell for, a joke? - Oh no, no joke.
Very serious. By the time I hit Mamie's dump I was feeling very sorry for myself and all the other poor bums in the world.
Ready for a weep on any old womanly bosom.
You know how you get when the old John barley corn turns on the soft music inside of you.
And the as soon as I hit the door, Mamie began telling me her troubles. She beefed how rotten business was. She was going to give Fat Violet the gate.
The custumers didn't fall for Vi, the only reason she kept her was she could play the piano.
Well lately Violet has been going on drunks and been getting to boiled to play and was eating her out of house and home.
How old Vi was a good hearted dumbell and she felt sorry for her 'couse didn't know how in the hell she'd make a living.
Still... business was business.
She couldn't afford to run a home for fat tarts.
Well it made me... feel very sorry for Fat Violet.
So I squandered two bucks
of your dough
to escort her upstairs. Now, with no dishonorable intentions whatever.
I like them fat but not that fat.
All I wanted was a little heart to heart talk concerning the infinite sorrow of life.
Poor Vi!
She stood it for a while, then she got good and sore. Got the idead I'd taken her upstairs as a joke.
Gave me a grand bawling out.
Then she began to cry.
So I had to say I loved her, because she was fat.
And she wanted to believe that.
Then I stayed with her to prove it.
And that cheered her up.
She kissed me when I left. Said she'd fallen hard for me.
And we both cried a little more in the hallway
and everything was fine.
Except Mamie Burns thought I'd gone bughouse.
Harlots and hunted have pleasures of their own to give, the vulgar herd can never understand.
Exactly!
And a hell of a good time at that.
This night has opened mine eyes to a great career in store for me my boy.
I shall give the art of acting back to the performing seals, which are it's most perfect expression,
by applying my natural God given talents in their proper sphere. I shall attain the pinnacle of success!
I’ll be the lover of the fat woman in Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Imagine me sunk to the fat girl in a hick town hooker shop. Me! I've had some of the best lookers on broadway sit up and beg.
"Speakin' in general, I'ave tried 'em all The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world."
It's not so apt.
Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right.
They get you nowhere fast.
And that's where I got...
nowhere.
Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it.
Can it, you'll be crying in a minute.
Hey!
Don't get too damn fresh.
But you're right, the hell with repining. Fat Violet is a good kid. I'm glad I stayed with her. It was a christian act.
Cured her blues, a hell of a good time.
You should have stuck around with me kid.
Taken your mind off your troubles. What's the use of coming home?
You get the blues over what can't be helped.
It's all over. Finished, now.
Not a hope.
"If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still..."
Shut up!
Where's the hop head? Gone to sleep?
You dirty bastard!
Thanks kid.
I certainly had that coming.
I don't know what made me.
- Booze talking, you know me kid. - God! Jamie.
No matter how drunk you are, there's no excuse.
I'm sorry I...
- You and I never scrapped that bad. - Sorry kid. Glad you did.
My dirty tongue, I'd like to cut it out.
It was because I feel so damn sunk.
Because this time Mama had me fooled.
I suppose I can't forgive her yet.
It meant so much...
I'd began to hope that if she'd beaten the game...
maybe I could too.
God don't I know how you feel.
Oh God!
I've known about Mama so much longer than you.
I'll never forget the first time I got wise.
I caught her in the act with a hypo. (hypodermic syringe)
God!
I'd never believe before that anyone but whores took dope.
Stop it Jamie.
And then this stuff of your getting consumption.
It's...it's got me licked.
We've been more than brothers.
You're the only pal I ever had.
I love your guts kid, I'd do anything for you.
I know that Jamie.
Yeah.
I bet you heard Mama and old gasbard spilling so much bunk about my hoping for the worst you suspect right now I'm thinking to myself that
Papa is old, can't last much longer
and if you were to die, Mama and I would get all he's got.
- So I'm probably hoping... - Shut up you damn fool!
What the hell put that in your nut?
- That's what I'd like to know. What put that in your mind? - Don't be a dumbell! What I said.
I'm always suspected of hoping for the worst. I got so I can't help it.
Hey!
What are you trying to do? Accuse me? Now don't you play the wise guy with me!
I've learned more about life than you'll ever know. Just because you read a lot of high brow junk don't think you can fool me.
You're only an overgrown kid. Mama's baby, Papa's pet, the family white hope. The...
You've been getting a swelled head lately about nothing!
About a few poems in a hick town newspaper. Hell, I used to write better stuff for the lit. magazine in college.
You better wake up! You're setting no rivers on fire.
You let hick town boobs flatter you with bunk about your future...
Hell kid... forget that.
That goes for Sweeney. You know I didn't mean it.
No one is prouder that you started to make good.
Why shouldn't I be proud?
You reflect credit on me.
I had more to do with bringing you up than anybody.
I wised you up about women so you'd never be the fall guy and make any mistakes you didn't want to make.
And who steered you on to reading that poetry first? Swinburne, for example?
I did!
And because I once wanted to write, I put it in your head that someday you'd write.
Hell you're more than my brother. I made you! You are my Frankenstein!
All right.
I'm your Frankenstein.
So...
let's have another drink?
You crazy nut.
No.
I'll have a drink...
not you.
I got to take care of you.
Listen kid...
you'll be going away
I may not get another chance to talk or I may not be drunk enough to tell you the truth
so I got to tell you now something I ought to have told you a long time ago for your own good.
No drunken bull.
But in vino veritas.
You better take this seriously.
I wanna warn you... against me.
Mama and Papa are right I've been a rotten bad influence
but worst of all is...
I did it on purpose.
I don't want to hear anymore.
You listen...
I did it on purpose to make a bum out of you. Part of me did a big part.
The part that's been dead so long that hates life. My putting you wise so you'd learn from my mistakes
well I believed that myself at times but it's a fake. It made my mistakes look good. Made getting drunk romantic.
Made whores fascinating vampires instead of poor stupid diseased slobs they really are.
Made fun of work as a sucker's game. I never wanted you to suceed and make me look even worse by comparison.
Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of ya. Mama's baby! Papa's pet!
And it was your being born that started Mama on dope. I know that's not your fault but all the same God damn you!
I can't help hating your guts.
- Cut it out Jamie. - Don't get me wrong kid.
I love you more than I hate you. My telling what I'm telling you now proves it.
Because I run the risk you'll hate me and you're all I got left.
I didn't mean to tell you all that last stuff
to go that far back, I don't know what made me.
What I wanted to say is I'd like to see you become the greatest sucess in the world.
But you better be on your guard, because I'm gonna do my damnest to make you fail.
I can't help it.
I hate myself. I got to take revenge on everyone else, especially you.
The dead part of me hopes you won't get well.
Maybe he's even glad the game's got Mama again.
He wants company! He doesn't want to be the only corpse around the house.
God Jamie!
- You're crazy! - You think it over, you'll see I'm right. Think it over
while you're away from me in the sanatorium. Make up your mind you gotta tie a can to me, get me out of your life.
You got to think of me as dead. Tell people "I had a brother but he's dead".
And you come back you look out for me because I'll be waiting to welcome you here with that "My old pal" stuff
and give you the glad hand and the first good chance I get I'm gonna stab you in the back!
- Stop! I'll be god damned if I'm gonna listen to... - Don't you forget me. Remember I warned you for your sake.
Come on! Give me credit!
"Greater love hath no man than this: That he saveth his brother from himself."
That's all.
I'm finished now... I've gone to confession.
I know you absolve me, don't you kid?
You understand.
You're a damn fine kid.
You ought to be. I made you.
So go and get well.
Don't die on me, you're all I got left.
God bless, kid.
That last drink...
the old K.O.
Thank God he's asleep.
I thought he'd never stop talking.
You better let him sleep, what he needs is to sleep it off.
I heard the last part of his talk, it's what warned you. I hope you'll heed the warning now that it comes from his own mouth.
You mustn't take it too much to heart though lad.
He loves to exagerate the worst in himself when he's drunk.
He's devoted to you.
It's the one good thing left in him.
What a sweet spectacle for me my first born
who I'd hoped would bear my name in honor and dignity. Showed such brilliant promise.
- Be quiet can't you Papa? - A waste! A wreck! A drunken hulk!
Done with and finished.
"Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabb'd me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, Furies and take him in to torment."
What the hell are you staring at?
"Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been.
- I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell." - I'm well aware of that and God knows I don't want to look at it.
- Quit it! - You know I got a great idea for you Papa.
Pu on a revival of "The Bells" this season, there's a great part in there you can play without make-up.
- Old gasbard the miser! - Shut up Jamie!
I claim that Edwin Booth never saw the day when he could give as good a performance as a trained seal.
Seals are inteligent and honest, they don't put on any bluffs about "the art of acting", they admit they're just hams earning their daily fish.
- You loafer! - Papa! You wanna start a row that'll bring Mama down?
Jamie go to sleep.
You shot off your mouth too much already.
All right kid.
I'm not looking for an argument.
- Too damn sick. - I wish to God she'd go to bed so that I could too.
I'm dumb tired.
I can't stay up all night like I used to. I'm getting old. Old and finished.
I can't keep my eyes open.
I think I'll catch a few winks.
Why don't you do the same Edmund.
It'll pass the time until she...
"A mad scene."
"Enter Ophelia"
Good boy Edmund! The dirty blaggard! His own mother!
All right kid I had that coming
- but I told you how much I'd hoped. - I'll kick you out in the gutter tomorrow, so help me God!
Papa.
Jamie.
For the love of God! Stop it.
I play so badly now. I'm all out of practice. Sister Theresa would give me a dreadful scolding.
She'd tell me it isn't fair to my father who spent so much money for extra lessons.
She's quite right it isn't fair when he's so good and generous and so proud of me.
I'll practice everyday from now on.
Something... horrible has happened to my hands.
The fingers have gotten all stiff, the knuckles are all swollen, they're so ugly.
I'll go to the infirmary and show sister Martha. She's old and a little crancky but I love her just the same.
She has things in her medicine chest that'll cure anything. She'll give me something to rub on my hands and tell me to pray to the blessed virgin.
I'll be well again in no time.
Let... let me see...
What did I...
come here... to find?
It's terrible how absent minded I've become. Always dreaming and forgetting.
Here, let me take it dear. You'll only step on it and then you'll be sorry afterwards.
Thank you. You're very kind. It's a wedding gown, it's very lovely isn't it?
I remember now...
I found it... in the attic hidden in a trunk.
I... I don't know what I wanted it for. I'm going to be a nun.
That is...
if I can only... find...
What is it I'm looking for?
- I know it's something I lost. - Mary.
No good Papa.
Something I... I miss... terribly.
- It... it can't be all together lost. - Mama.
- Something... - What's the use...? ...I need terribly.
I remember, when I had it I was never lonely nor afraid.
I can't have lost it forever.
I'd die if I thought that. Because then th... there would be no hope.
Mama.
It's not just a summer cold.
I've got consumption.
No. No!
- You must not try to hold me. You must not try to touch me. - You damn fool, it's no good.
- It's not right when I'm hoping to be a nun. - We are fools to pay any attention.
It's the damn poison! I never knew her drown herself in it as deep as this before.
Pass me that bottle Jamie.
I had a talk with mother Elizabeth.
She's so sweet and good.
A saint on earth. I love her dearly. It may be sinful of me but I love her better than my own mother
because she understands even before you say a word. Her kind blue eyes look right into your heart.
Can't keep any secrets from her. You couldn't deceive even if you were mean enough to want to.
All the same...
I... I don't think she was so understanding this time.
I told her I wanted to be a nun.
I explained how sure I was of my vocation. That I'd prayed to the blessed virgin to make me sure and find me worthy.
I told mother I had had a true vision when I was praying in the shrine of our Lady of Lords
On the little island in the lake. I said I knew as surely as I was kneeling there
that the blessed virgin had smiled and given me her consent
but mother Elizabeth said I must be more sure than that even, that I must prove it wasn't simply my imagination.
She said if I was so sure then I wouldn't mind putting myself to a test
by going home after I'd graduated and living as other girls live, going out to parties and dances and enjoy myself
and then after a year or two if I was still sure I could come back to see her and we would talk it over again.
I never dreamed holy mother would give me such advice.
I was really shocked!
I said naturally I... I would do anything she suggested but I knew it was simply a waste of time.
After... I left her I felt... all mixed up
so I went to the shrine and I prayed to the blessed virgin
and found peace again
because I knew she heard my prayer and would always love me
and see no harm ever came to me
so long... so long as I never lost my faith in her.
That was in the winter of... senior year.
Then in the spring
something happened to me.
Yes I remember.
I fell in love with James Tyrone
and was so happy...
for a time.