SURVIVAL

The garden of a home in the suburbs. A man is walking up and down alone at dusk, occasionally stopping to water a plant, but more often falling into deep thought, unconscious of his surroundings. About the place there is an air of newness and prosperity.

A young woman enters the garden from the lawn next door.

Margaret

Look here, Roger, you can't keep this up!

Roger

No, I can't keep this up. Besides, it's going to rain to-morrow.

Margaret

What do you mean?

Roger

Watering the plants. Isn't that what you meant?

Margaret

You aren't watering the plants. I've been watching you for half an hour. If you only would! But you keep forgetting what you are at.

Roger

I wish it were only forgetting—it's remembering.

Margaret

Oh Roger, don't I know? But you mustn't!

Roger

I suppose not. I suppose not.

Margaret

I knew all along, and I kept away. How you felt, I mean. I ought to have come over a week ago. You haven't anybody to talk to—that's the trouble, Roger, really. I know. Now let's have the whole thing out. Come. And don't be afraid of me. Why, I could tie you all up in bandages if you needed it. And not flinch.

Roger

Yes, I guess you could.... It's, it's absurd how well I keep!

Margaret

Hm. Isn't it? You ought to be wilting away like a rose. But no, you keep your splendid strength and go on with two or three men's work! What would your mother think if she heard you talking like that? Don't you know that you couldn't please her better than by going on as you are?

Roger

That's so. Of course. But that really isn't what I was thinking of. I was thinking how queer this whole business is. Take our family. As far back as I know we were always struggling along with many children and few means. I am the first one who could really make money. And just when I could make mother comfortable and easy ... besides, I'm all alone.

Margaret

Ah, Roger, of course you feel that way! But you don't really appreciate that wonderful mother of yours. Do you think her happiness depended on having a new house, and a car?

Roger

No....

Margaret

Didn't she round out her life beautifully? Wasn't she repaid for her struggles by seeing you succeed? Didn't she pass away as quietly as going to sleep? And wasn't her marriage happy? You don't know how much a woman will meet with, if she's happy!

Roger

That part of it I can face all right, though I suppose it's hard for the ordinary selfish man to realize that love like mother's is its own reward. But toward the end she suffered—she worried....

Margaret

I know she did. She told me.

Roger

She told you? I didn't know that.

Margaret

We were good friends, your mother and I—and women. That's why she told me. And I think I reassured her.

Roger

Oh! She did seem to get mightily comforted, just at the last. I never understood why.

Margaret

I thank heaven I really did that!—And when I looked out the window and saw you standing here, I had to come over. I knew it wasn't your mother's death that was hurting you, but—but your brother's.

Roger

Arthur ... I'm glad the accident happened after she died.

Margaret

Yes. But there's something else. Something that hurts. You've got to tell me. Everything. Don't be afraid. Face it.

Roger

I have faced it. I—I've made up my mind.

Margaret

There's still pain somewhere. Is it in the way you have made up your mind?

Roger

How could that be?

Margaret

It depends. But tell me what you thought—I mean during this last year or so. It didn't come to you all at once.

Roger

Well.... Of course, I always took it for granted about his music. He seemed to be wonderful at that. And mother believed so in him. It really began when he left college, I found he had debts.

Margaret

Debts?

Roger

Yes. Not just clothes and living—other things. I paid up, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the things. But I thought it was just a boy's foolishness. I thought he would be all right after that, but—he wasn't.

Margaret

He wasn't....

Roger

No. After a couple of years I had to straighten it out again. I came down on him flat. He promised to cut it.

Margaret

But he was doing such wonderful work!

Roger

Yes, everybody began to say so. If he had only been that alone, the musician! But—

Margaret

But afterward?

Roger

Well, a year ago I began to hear things said again. And then I found letters and bills. It was the same thing all over. He hadn't kept his word.

Margaret

But what did he say?

Roger

I let it go for weeks, hoping he would say something. But never a word.

Margaret

He loved you so. How he must have suffered!

Roger

Yes, I suppose he did suffer. But if he cared so for me why did he try to keep it hidden, the one thing I would hate most?

Margaret

That was his way. It made him ashamed.

Roger

Well, he couldn't keep it dark forever. Mother almost found out.

Margaret

Almost found out?

Roger

Yes. So of course I stepped in. We had a frightful row.

Margaret

When was that?

Roger

Six months ago. I got him clear. It was hard—this time the woman almost got him.

Margaret

Oh!

Roger

I helped him. But I did it on one condition—that he go to work.

Margaret

Work? What about his music?

Roger

That's what he said. But I asked him if he had thought about his music when he got into these scrapes. He couldn't say a word. So it was all arranged for him to go into my office, right under my eye, when mother was taken sick. Then she wanted him to stay near her, so.... And then she died. And the accident. Well I don't see what more I could have done.

Margaret

No.... Of course, it wasn't as if you turned against him. And the office—he was to pay you back that way?

Roger

Pay me back? Why, if he could, naturally; but that wasn't my idea, that was only incidental. My idea was to get him into the habit of hard work.

Margaret

But he always did work!

Roger

Oh, he worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic—night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got into trouble: loafing in between.

Margaret

Don't you remember how splendid he was the day he had just finished something? He seemed to have passed out of himself into a shining humility. It was said of Shelley: "Sun-treader!"... Don't you remember?

Roger

Yes.... Oh hang it! Why couldn't he have been only that! Yes, I remember. I hoped that six months or so at the office—but no. Anyhow, it's all over now.

Margaret

What were you going to say?

Roger

I suppose I might as well say it: I don't believe the office would have changed him, after all. That is, permanently. He'd have done his best for a while, and then—. No, nothing could help him.

Margaret

Is that what you have made up your mind about?

Roger

Oh, that. Yes, that's what started me thinking. Everybody has difficulties, troubles, and I believe in helping a fellow every time. Life piles up too high against one sometimes, but a little shove from the other side will move it away. I never believed in the devil take the hindmost, at all. But this was different.

Margaret

Different, how? What do you mean?

Roger

I mean that as long as a fellow's difficulties are outside him you can help him, because as soon as they are removed he's himself again; but when they are inside, part of the man himself, there's nothing you can do. Nothing. You can save a person from the world, but not from himself. That's where the devil comes in. I see it now. I believe in the devil.

Margaret

Oh! But Arthur....

Roger

I know you think I'm a brute for speaking of Arthur in connection with the devil, but it wasn't the old-fashioned devil I meant. I meant the devil of unfitness. Arthur wasn't fit. He had every chance. We can't get away from what life is. Life shoves people to the wall every day. I've had to fight hard myself. I admit things aren't fair all round, but Arthur had his chance, two or three chances, and he just—dropped out. He couldn't survive. And it seems to me that for those who loved him it may be a good thing after all that he didn't have to go on.

Margaret

Roger! You shan't say that! You shan't!

Roger

I don't want to, Margaret, but that's what life itself says. We can't get behind life. We can't beat evolution and the law of survival.

Margaret

But his talent, his fine talent—and his exquisite nature!

Roger

I know. But there it is. It's kinder in the long run to be cruel, if the truth is cruel. We've got to be true to things as they are.

Margaret

But take things as they are! He wasn't vicious about—about women, he was like a child. Of course they got his money, but even so, they weren't all mere schemers. Some of them were very decent. Why, one of them—

Roger

What the deuce do you know about them? What about one of them?

Margaret

She cried. She said she knew it wasn't right, that he couldn't marry her, but she did like him, and she had children of her own.... I'm sure she was very tender to him.

Roger

Who told you? Where did you see her?

Margaret

There.

Roger

There! In my own house?

Margaret

Yes.

Roger

How did she get there?

Margaret

Your mother sent for her.

Roger

My mother sent for her? Then she knew?

Margaret

Yes. She knew everything.

Roger

How?

Margaret

He told her—Arthur did.

Roger

Good Lord! I never heard a word of it.

Margaret

No. They were afraid—afraid you wouldn't understand.

Roger

Afraid I wouldn't understand? Why, I understood only too well. It was mother that wouldn't have understood. I'd have cut my hand off rather than tell her.

Margaret

Well, she did understand. She understood better than you did. She understood that part of him hadn't grown up. He was like a boy. He just walked into things....

Roger

How did he ever come to tell her?

Margaret

Once when he was sick. Your mother was taking care of him. He blurted it all out, like a homesick boy.

Roger

And she understood? Didn't break her heart, and all that?

Margaret

Oh, it was a shock, naturally. But they talked it all over, and your mother sent for this woman. I knew. Arthur knew I knew....

Roger

And mother packed her away without telling me?

Margaret

Oh, she didn't pack her away. That is, right off.

Roger

He kept on seeing her? With mother's knowledge?

Margaret

Yes. Your mother liked her.

Roger

Well, if women aren't the strangest things!

Margaret

Yes, they are. Some of them. Fortunately. But you see how wrong you were, Roger?

Roger

How was I wrong?

Margaret

About this unfitness—this survival.

Roger

On the contrary. It only proves it.

Margaret

No, it doesn't. I've been thinking, too ... about saving people from themselves, and all that. You say it's the law of life, and we can't go beyond life.

Roger

No, we can't. I still say it.

Margaret

Then what about your mother? What about all women who—

Roger

About mother?

Margaret

Yes. Wasn't her love a part of life? And didn't she keep on loving him in spite of everything? Is that love blind and foolish—something for your old evolution to get rid of?

Roger

I never thought of it. No, of course we don't want to get rid of that—but even so, she didn't save him.

Margaret

She didn't know about it until lately—thanks to you. If she had known sooner—and anyhow, you don't know—Of course, she couldn't have saved him directly. But indirectly ... through another woman—

Roger

Through another woman?

Margaret

I mean, supposing there was another woman who loved him—one who could be to him all he needed, who would understand, and who was all right. One he could marry.

Roger

Yes, but—

Margaret

And supposing this other woman had heard things about Arthur, and was terribly hurt, and Arthur knew she was, and that's why he kept away; but your mother talked with her for a long while, and made her understand. Even sent for that woman—you know. And then this woman, the right one, did understand, and was ready to marry Arthur....

Roger

Margaret, are you crying? Are you crying, Margaret? Margaret, was it you?