One-Act Play

CHARACTERS

MR. X., an archeologist MR. Y., a traveller from America

Both middle-aged

[SCENE--Simple room in a country house; door and window at back, through which one sees a country landscape. In the middle of the room a large dining table; on one side of it books and writing materials and on the other side some antiques, a microscope, insect boxes, alcohol jars. To the left of scene a book-shelf, and all the other furnishings are those of a country gentleman. Mr. Y. enters in his shirt-sleeves, carrying an insect net and a botanical tin box. He goes directly to the book-shelf, takes down a book and reads stealthily from it. The after-service bell of a country church rings. The landscape and room are flooded with sunshine. Now and then one hears the clucking of hens outside. Mr. X.

comes in also in shirt-sleeves. Mr. Y. starts nervously, returns the book to its place, and pretends to look for another book on the shelf.]

MR. X. What oppressive heat! We'll surely have a thunder-shower.

MR. Y. Yes? What makes you think so?

MR. X. The bells sound like it, the flies bite so, and the hens are cackling. I wanted to go fishing, but I couldn't find a single worm.

Don't you feel rather nervous?

MR. Y. [Reflectively]. I? Well, yes.

MR. X. But you always look as if you expected a thunder-shower.

MR. Y. Do I?

MR. X. Well, as you are to start off on your travels again tomorrow, it's not to be wondered at if you have the knapsack fever. What's the news? Here's the post. [Takes up letters from the table.] Oh, I have palpitation of the heart every time I open a letter. Nothing but debts, debts! Did you ever have any debts?

MR. Y. [Reflecting]. No-o-o.

MR. X. Well, then, of course you can't understand how it feels to have unpaid bills come in. [He reads a letter.] The rent owing--the landlord clamoring--and my wife in despair. And I, I sitting up to my elbows in gold. [Opens an iron-mounted case, which stands on the table. They both sit down, one on each side of the case.] Here is six thousand crowns'

worth of gold that I've dug up in two weeks. This bracelet alone would bring the three hundred and fifty crowns I need. And with all of it I should be able to make a brilliant career for myself. The first thing I should do would be to have drawings made and cuts of the figures for my treatises. After that I would print--and then clear out. Why do you suppose I don't do this?

MR. Y. It must be because you are afraid of being found out.

MR. X. Perhaps that, too. But don't you think that a man of my intelligence should be able to manage it so that it wouldn't be found out? I always go alone to dig out there on the hills--without witnesses.

Would it be remarkable to put a little something in one's pockets?

MR. Y. Yes, but disposing of it, they say, is the dangerous part.

MR. X. Humph, I should of course have the whole thing smelted, and then I should have it cast into ducats--full weight, of course--

MR. Y. Of course!

MR. X. That goes without saying. If I wanted to make counterfeit money--well, it wouldn't be necessary to dig the gold first. [Pause.]

It's remarkable, nevertheless, that if some one were to do what I can't bring myself to do, I should acquit him. But I should not be able to acquit myself. I should be able to put up a brilliant defense for the thief; prove that this gold was _res nullius_, or no one's, and that it got into the earth before there were any land rights; that even now it belongs to no one but the first comer, as the owner had never accounted it part of his property, and so on.

MR. Y. And you would not be able to do this if--h'm!--the thief had stolen through need, but rather as an instance of a collector's mania, of scientific interest, of the ambition to make a discovery,--isn't that so?

MR. X. You mean that I wouldn't be able to acquit him if he had stolen through need? No, that is the only instance the law does not pardon.

That is simple theft, that is!

MR. Y. And that you would not pardon?

MR. X. H'm! Pardon! No, I could hardly pardon what the law does not, and I must confess that it would be hard for me to accuse a collector for taking an antique that he did not have in his collection, which he had dug up on some one else's property.

MR. Y. That is to say, vanity, ambition, could gain pardon where need could not?

MR. X. Yes, that's the way it is. And nevertheless need should be the strongest motive, the only one to be pardoned. But I can change that as little as I can change my will not to steal under any condition.

MR. Y. And you count it a great virtue that you cannot--h'm--steal?

MR. X. With me not to steal is just as irresistible as stealing is to some, and, therefore, no virtue. I cannot do it and they cannot help doing it. You understand, of course, that the idea of wanting to possess this gold is not lacking in me. Why don't I take it then? I cannot; it's an inability, and a lack is not a virtue. And there you are!

[Closes the case with a bang. At times stray clouds have dimmed the light in the room and now it darkens with the approaching storm.]

MR. X. How close it is! I think we'll have some thunder.

[Mr. Y. rises and shuts the door and window.]

MR. X. Are you afraid of thunder?

MR. Y. One should be careful.

[They sit again at table.]

MR. X. You are a queer fellow. You struck here like a bomb two weeks ago, and you introduced yourself as a Swedish-American who travels, collecting insects for a little museum.

MR. Y. Oh, don't bother about me.

MR. X. That's what you always say when I get tired of talking about myself and want to devote a little attention to you. Perhaps it was because you let me talk so much about myself that you won my sympathy.

We were soon old acquaintances; there were no corners about you for me to knock against, no needles or pins to p.r.i.c.k. There was something so mellow about your whole personality; you were so considerate, a characteristic which only the most cultivated can display; you were never noisy when you came home late, never made any disturbance when you got up in the morning; you overlooked trifles, drew aside when ideas became conflicting; in a word, you were the perfect companion; but you were altogether too submissive, too negative, too quiet, not to have me reflect about it in the course of time. And you are fearful and timid; you look as if you led a double life. Do you know, as you sit there before the mirror and I see your back, it's as if I were looking at another person. [Mr. Y. turns and looks in the mirror.] Oh, you can't see your back in the mirror. Front view, you look like a frank, fearless man who goes to meet his fate with open heart, but back view,--well, I don't wish to be discourteous, but you look as if you carried a burden, as if you were shrinking from a lash; and when I see your red suspenders across your white shirt--it looks like--like a big brand, a trade mark on a packing box.

MR. Y. [Rising]. I believe I will suffocate--if the shower doesn't break and come soon.

MR. X. It will come soon. Just be quiet. And the back of your neck, too, it looks as if there were another head on it, with the face of another type than you. You are so terribly narrow between the ears that I sometimes wonder if you don't belong to another race. [There is flash of lightning.] That one looked as if it struck at the sheriff's.

MR. Y. [Worried]. At the--sh-sheriff's!

MR. X. Yes, but it only looked so. But this thunder won't amount to anything. Sit down now and let's have a talk, as you are off again tomorrow.--It's queer that, although I became intimate with you so soon, you are one of those people whose likeness I cannot recall when they are out of my sight. When you are out in the fields and I try to recall your face, another acquaintance always comes to mind--some one who doesn't really look like you, but whom you resemble nevertheless.

MR. Y. Who is that?

MR. X. I won't mention the name. However, I used to have dinner at the same place for many years, and there at the lunch counter I met a little blond man with pale, worried eyes. He had an extraordinary faculty of getting about in a crowded room without shoving or being shoved.

Standing at the door, he could reach a slice of bread two yards away; he always looked as if he was happy to be among people, and whenever he ran into an acquaintance he would fall into rapturous laughter, embrace him, and do the figure eight around him, and carry on as if he hadn't met a human being for years; if any one stepped on his toes he would smile as if he were asking pardon for being in the way. For two years I used to see him, and I used to amuse myself trying to figure out his business and character, but I never asked any one who he was,--I didn't want to know, as that would have put an end to my amus.e.m.e.nt. That man had the same indefinable characteristics as you; sometimes I would make him out an undergraduate teacher, an under officer, a druggist, a government clerk, or a detective, and like you, he seemed to be made up of two different pieces and the front didn't fit the back. One day I happened to read in the paper about a big forgery by a well-known civil official.

After that I found out that my indefinable acquaintance had been the companion of the forger's brother, and that his name was Strman; and then I was informed that the afore-mentioned Strman had been connected with a free library, but that he was then a police reporter on a big newspaper. How could I then get any connection between the forgery, the police, and the indefinable man's appearance? I don't know, but when I asked a man if Strman had ever been convicted, he answered neither yes nor no--he didn't know. [Pause.]

MR. Y. Well, was he ever--convicted?

MR. X. No, he had not been convicted.