27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays Read online

  CORNELIA: No. You misunderstand me. I don’t “want” to be Regent.

  GRACE: Oh?

  CORNELIA: I don’t “want” to be anything whatsoever. I simply want to break up this movement against me and for that purpose I have rallied my forces.

  GRACE: Your—forces? (Her lips twitch slightly as if she had an hysterical impulse to smile.)

  CORNELIA: Yes. I still have some friends in the chapter who have resisted the movement.

  GRACE: Oh?

  CORNELIA: I have the solid support of all the older Board members.

  GRACE: Why, then, I should think you’d have nothing to worry about!

  CORNELIA: The Chapter has expanded too rapidly lately. Women have been admitted that couldn’t get into a front pew at the Second Baptist Church! And that’s the disgraceful truth . . .

  GRACE: But since it’s really a patriotic society . . .

  CORNELIA: My dear Grace, there are two chapters of the Confederate Daughters in the city of Meridian. There is the Forrest chapter, which is for social riff-raff, and there is this chapter which was supposed to have a little bit of distinction! I’m not a snob. I’m nothing if not democratic. You know that! But—(The phone rings. Cornelia reaches for it, then pushes it to Grace.)

  GRACE: Miss Scott’s residence! Oh, yes, yes, just a moment!

  (She passes phone to Cornelia.) It’s Esmeralda Hawkins.

  CORNELIA: (into phone) Are you upstairs now, dear? Well, I wondered, it took you so long to call back. Oh, but I thought you said the luncheon was over. Well, I’m glad that you fortified yourself with a bite to eat. What did the buffet consist of? Chicken à la king! Wouldn’t you know it! That is so characteristic of poor Amelia! With bits of pimiento and tiny mushrooms in it? What did the ladies counting their calories do! Nibbled around the edges? Oh, poor dears!—and afterwards I suppose there was lemon sherbet with lady-fingers? What, lime sherbet! And no lady-fingers? What a departure! What a shocking apostasy! I’m quite stunned! Ho ho ho . . . (She reaches shakily for her cup.) Now what’s going on? Discussing the Civil Rights Program? Then they won’t take the vote for at least half an hour!—Now Esmeralda, I do hope that you understand my position clearly. I don’t wish to hold any office in the chapter unless it’s by acclamation. You know what that means, don’t you? It’s a parliamentary term. It means when someone is desired for an office so unanimously that no vote has to be taken. In other words, elected automatically, simply by nomination, unopposed. Yes, my dear, it’s just as simple as that. I have served as Treasurer for three terms, twice as Secretary, once as Chaplain—and what a dreary office that was with those long-drawn prayers for the Confederate dead!—Altogether I’ve served on the Board for, let’s see, fourteen years!—Well, now, my dear, the point is simply this. If Daughters feel that I have demonstrated my capabilities and loyalty strongly enough that I should simply be named as Regent without a vote being taken—by unanimous acclamation!—why, then, of course I would feel obliged to accept. . . (Her voice trembles with emotion.)—But if, on the other hand, the—uh—clique!—and you know the ones I mean!—is bold enough to propose someone else for the office—Do you understand my position? In that eventuality, hard as it is to imagine,—I prefer to bow out of the picture entirely! —The moment another nomination is made and seconded, my own must be withdrawn, at once, unconditionally! Is that quite understood, Esmeralda? Then good! Go back downstairs to the meeting. Digest your chicken à la king, my dear, and call me again on the upstairs phone as soon as there’s something to tell me. (She hangs up and stares grimly into space. Grace lifts a section of grapefruit on a tiny silver fork.)

  GRACE: They haven’t had it yet?

  CORNELIA: Had what, dear?

  GRACE: The election!

  CORNELIA: No, not yet. It seems to be—imminent, though . . .

  GRACE: Cornelia, why don’t you think about something else until it’s over!

  CORNELIA: What makes you think that I am nervous about it?

  GRACE: You’re—you’re breathing so fast!

  CORNELIA: I didn’t sleep well last night. You were prowling about the house with that stitch in your side.

  GRACE: I am so sorry. You know it’s nothing. A muscular contraction that comes from strain.

  CORNELIA: What strain does it come from, Grace?

  GRACE: What strain? (She utters a faint, perplexed laugh.) Why!—I don’t know . . .

  CORNELIA: The strain of what? Would you like me to tell you?

  GRACE: —Excuse me, I—(rising)

  CORNELIA: (sharply) Where are you going?

  GRACE: Upstairs for a moment! I just remembered I should have taken my drops of belladonna!

  CORNELIA: It does no good after eating.

  GRACE: I suppose that’s right. It doesn’t.

  CORNELIA: But you want to escape?

  GRACE: Of course not . . .

  CORNELIA: Several times lately you’ve rushed away from me as if I’d suddenly threatened you with a knife.

  GRACE: Cornelia!—I’ve been—jumpy!

  CORNELIA: It’s always when something is almost—spoken—between us!

  GRACE: I hate to see you so agitated over the outcome of a silly club-woman’s election!

  CORNELIA: I’m not talking about the Daughters. I’m not even thinking about them, I’m—

  GRACE: I wish you’d dismiss it completely from your mind. Now would be a good time to play some records. Let me put a symphony on the machine!

  CORNELIA: No.

  GRACE: How about the Bach For Piano and Strings! The one we received for Christmas from Jessie and Gay?

  CORNELIA: No, I said, No, I said, No!

  GRACE: Something very light and quiet, then, the old French madrigals, maybe?

  CORNELIA: Anything to avoid a talk between us? Anything to evade a conversation, especially when the servant is not in the house?

  GRACE: Oh, here it is! This is just the thing! (She has started the phonograph. Landowska is playing a harpsichord selection. The phonograph is at the edge of the lighted area or just outside it.)

  (Cornelia stares grimly as Grace resumes her seat with an affectation of enchantment, clasping her hands and closing her eyes.)

  (in an enchanted voice:) Oh, how it smooths things over, how sweet, and gentle, and—pure . . .

  CORNELIA: Yes! And completely dishonest!

  GRACE: Music? Dishonest?

  CORNELIA: Completely! It “smooths things over” instead of —speaking them out . . .

  GRACE: “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.”

  CORNELIA: Yes, oh, yes, if the savage breast permits it.

  GRACE: Oh, sublime—sublime . . .

  CORNELIA: (grudgingly) Landowska is an artist of rare precision.

  GRACE: (ecstatically) And such a noble face, a profile as fine and strong as Edith Sitwell’s. After this we’ll play Edith Sitwell’s Façade. “Jane, Jane, tall as a crane, the morning light creaks down again . . .”

  CORNELIA: Dearest, isn’t there something you’ve failed to notice?

  GRACE: Where?

  CORNELIA: Right under your nose.

  GRACE: Oh! You mean my flower?

  CORNELIA: Yes! I mean your rose!

  GRACE: Of course I noticed my rose, the moment I came in the room I saw it here!

  CORNELIA: You made no allusion to it.

  GRACE: I would have, but you were so concerned over the meeting.

  CORNELIA: I’m not concerned over the meeting.

  GRACE: Whom do I have to thank for this lovely rose? My gracious employer?

  CORNELIA: You will find fourteen others on your desk in the library when you go in to take care of the correspondence.

  GRACE: Fourteen other roses?

  CORNELIA: A total of fifteen!

  GRACE: How wonderful!—Why fifteen?

  CORNELIA: How long have you been here, dearest? How long have you made this house a house of roses?

  GRACE: What a nice way to put it! Why, of course! I’ve
been your secretary for fifteen years!

  CORNELIA: Fifteen years my companion! A rose for every year, a year for every rose!

  GRACE: What a charming sort of a way to—observe the—occasion . . .

  CORNELIA: First I thought “pearls” and then I thought, No, roses, but perhaps I should have given you something golden, ha ha!—Silence is golden they say!

  GRACE: Oh, dear, that stupid machine is playing the same record over!

  CORNELIA: Let it, let it, I like it!

  GRACE: Just let me—

  CORNELIA: Sit down!!—It was fifteen years ago this very morning, on the sixth day of November, that someone very sweet and gentle and silent!—a shy, little, quiet little widow!—arrived for the first time at Seven Edgewater Drive. The season was Autumn. I had been raking dead leaves over the rose-bushes to protect them from frost when I heard footsteps on the gravel, light, quick, delicate footsteps like Spring coming in the middle of Autumn, and looked up, and sure enough, there Spring was! A little person so thin that light shone through her as if she were made of the silk of a white parasol! (Grace utters a short, startled laugh. Wounded, Cornelia says harshly:) Why did you laugh? Why did you laugh like that?

  GRACE: It sounded—ha ha!—it sounded like the first paragraph of a woman’s magazine story.

  CORNELIA: What a cutting remark!

  GRACE: I didn’t mean it that way, I—

  CORNELIA: What other way could you mean it!

  GRACE: Cornelia, you know how I am! I’m always a little embarrassed by sentiment, aren’t I ?

  CORNELIA: Yes, frightened of anything that betrays some feeling!

  GRACE: People who don’t know you well, nearly all people we know, would be astounded to hear you, Cornelia Scott, that grave and dignified lady, expressing herself in such a lyrical manner!

  CORNELIA: People who don’t know me well are everybody! Yes, I think even you!

  GRACE: Cornelia, you must admit that sentiment isn’t like you!

  CORNELIA: Is nothing like me but silence? (The clock ticks loudly.) Am I sentenced to silence for a life-time?

  GRACE: It’s just not like you to—

  CORNELIA: Not like me, not like me, what do you know what’s like me or not like me!

  GRACE: You may deny it, Cornelia, as much as you please, but it’s evident to me that you are completely unstrung by your anxieties over the Confederate Daughters’ election!

  CORNELIA: Another thinly veiled insult?

  GRACE: Oh, Cornelia, please!

  CORNELIA: (imitating her gesture) “Oh, Cornelia, please!!”

  GRACE: If I’ve said anything wrong,! beg your pardon, I offer my very humble apologies for it.

  CORNELIA: I don’t want apologies from you. (There is a strained silence. The clock ticks. Suddenly Grace reaches across to touch the veined jewelled hand of Miss Scott. Cornelia snatches her own hand away as though the touch had burned her.)

  GRACE: Thank you for the roses.

  CORNELIA: I don’t want thanks from you either. All that I want is a little return of affection, not much, but sometimes a little!

  GRACE: You have that always, Cornelia.

  CORNELIA: And one thing more: a little outspokenness, too.

  GRACE: Outspokenness?

  CORNELIA: Yes, outspokenness, if that’s not too much to ask from such a proud young lady!

  GRACE: (rising from table) I am not proud and I am not young, Cornelia.

  CORNELIA: Sit down. Don’t leave the table.

  GRACE: Is that an order?

  CORNELIA: I don’t give orders to you, I make requests!

  GRACE: Sometimes the requests of an employer are hard to distinguish from orders. (She sits down.)

  CORNELIA: Please turn off the victrola. (Grace rises and stops the machine.) Grace!—Don’t you feel there’s—something unspoken between us?

  GRACE: No. No, I don’t.

  CORNELIA: I do. I’ve felt for a long time something unspoken between us.

  GRACE: Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

  CORNELIA: I see no reason for it.

  GRACE: But don’t a great many things exist without reason?

  CORNELIA: Let’s not turn this into a metaphysical discussion.

  GRACE: All right. But you mystify me.

  CORNELIA: It’s very simple. It’s just that I feel that there’s something unspoken between us that ought to be spoken. . . . Why are you looking at me like that?

  GRACE: How am I looking at you?

  CORNELIA: With positive terror!

  GRACE: Cornelia!

  CORNELIA: You are, you are, but I’m not going to be shut up!

  GRACE: Go on, continue, please, do!

  CORNELIA: I’m going to, I will, I will, I —(The phone rings and Grace reaches for it.) No, no, no, let it ring! (It goes on ringing.) Take it off the hook!

  GRACE: Do just let me—

  CORNELIA: Off the hook, I told you! (Grace takes the phone of the hook. A voice says: “Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?")

  GRACE: (Suddenly she is sobbing.) I can’t stand it!

  CORNELIA: Be STILL! Someone can hear you!

  VOICE: Hello? Hello? Cornelia? Cornelia Scott? (Cornelia seizes phone and slams it back into its cradle.)

  CORNELIA: Now stop that! Stop that silly little female trick!

  GRACE: You say there’s something unspoken. Maybe there is. I don’t know. But I do know some things are better left unspoken. Also I know that when a silence between two people has gone on for a long time it’s like a wall that’s impenetrable between them! Maybe between us there is such a wall. One that’s impenetrable. Or maybe you can break it. I know I can’t. I can’t even attempt to. You’re the strong one of us two and surely you know it.—Both of us have turned grey!—But not the same kind of grey. In that velvet dressing-gown you look like the Emperor Tiberius! —In his imperial toga!—Your hair and your eyes are both the color of iron! Iron grey. Invincible looking! People nearby are all somewhat—frightened of you. They feel your force and they admire you for it. They come to you here for opinions on this or that. What plays are good on Broadway this season, what books are worth reading and what books are trash and what—what records are valuable and—what is the proper attitude toward—bills in Congress!—Oh, you’re a fountain of wisdom!—And in addition to that, you have your—wealth! Yes, you have your—fortune!—All of your real-estate holdings, your blue-chip stocks, your—bonds, your—mansion on Edgewater Drive, your—shy little—secretary, your—fabulous gardens that Pilgrims cannot go into . . .

  CORNELIA: Oh, yes, now you are speaking, now you are speaking at last! Go on, please go on speaking.

  GRACE: I am—very—different!—Also turning grey but my grey is different. Not iron, like yours, not imperial, Cornelia, but grey, yes, grey, the—color of a . . . cobweb . . . (She starts the record again, very softly.)—Something white getting soiled, the grey of something forgotten. (The phone rings again. Neither of them seems to notice it.)—And that being the case, that being the difference between our two kinds of grey, yours and mine—You mustn’t expect me to give bold answers to questions that make the house shake with silence! To speak out things that are fifteen years unspoken!—That long a time can make a silence a wall that nothing less than dynamite could break through and— (She picks up the phone.) I’m not strong enough, bold enough, I'm not—

  CORNELIA (fiercely): You’re speaking into the phone!

  GRACE (into phone): Hello? Oh, yes, she’s here. It’s Esmeralda Hawkins. (Cornelia snatches the phone.)

  CORNELIA: What is it, Esmeralda? What are you saying, is the room full of women? Such a babble of voices! What are you trying to tell me? Have they held the election already? What, what, what? Oh, this is maddening! I can’t hear a word that you’re saying, it sounds like the Fourth of July, a great celebration! Ha, ha, now try once more with your mouth closer to the phone! What, what? Would I be willing to what? You can’t be serious! Are you out of your mind?
(She speaks to Grace in a panicky voice.) She wants to know if I would be willing to serve as vice-Regent! (into phone) Esmeralda! Will you listen to me? What’s going on? Are there some fresh defections? How does it look? Why did you call me again before the vote? Louder, please speak lounder, and cup your mouth to the phone in case they’re eavesdropping! Who asked if I would accept the vice-regency, dear? Oh, Mrs. Colby, of course!—that treacherous witch!— Esmeralda!! Listen! I—WILL ACCEPT—NO OFFICE—EXCEPT—THE HIGHEST! Did you understand that? I—WILL ACCEPT NO OFFICE EXCEPT—ESMERALDA! (She drops phone into its cradle.)

  GRACE: Have they held the election?

  CORNELIA (dazed): What?—No, there’s a five-minute recess before the election begins . . .

  GRACE: Things are not going well?

  CORNELIA: “Would you accept the vice-Regency,” she asked me, “if for some reason they don’t elect you Regent?"— Then she hung up as if somebody had snatched the phone away from her, or the house had—caught fire!

  GRACE: You shouted so I think she must have been frightened.

  CORNELIA: Whom can you trust in this world, whom can you ever rely on?

  GRACE: I think perhaps you should have gone to the meeting.

  CORNELIA: I think my not being there is much more pointed.

  GRACE: (rising again) May I be excused, now?

  CORNELIA: No! Stay here!

  GRACE: If that is just a request, I—

  CORNELIA: That’s an order! (Grace sits down and closes her eyes.) When you first came to this house—do you know I didn’t expect you?

  GRACE: Oh, but, Cornelia, you’d invited me here.

  CORNELIA: We hardly knew each other.

  GRACE: We’d met the summer before when Ralph was—

  CORNELIA: Living! Yes, we met at Sewanee where he was a summer instructor.

  GRACE: He was already ill.

  CORNELIA: I thought what a pity that lovely, delicate girl hasn’t found someone she could lean on, who could protect her! And two months later I heard through Clarabelle Drake that he was dead . . .

  GRACE: You wrote me such a sweet letter, saying how lonely you were since the loss of your mother and urging me to rest here till the shock was over. You seemed to understand how badly I needed to withdraw for a while from—old associations. I hesitated to come. I didn’t until you wrote me a second letter . . .