More Portmanteau Plays

Aunt Letitia

Susan Sample

Uncle Nathaniel

Uncle John

Jonathan

Mlle. Perrault

Hank

Albert Peet

Mary

John III

ACT I

Jonathan Makes a Friend

[The scene represents the lumber room in the carriage house on John Clay's suburban estate. The room is crowded with old trunks, paintings, barrels, boxes, chests, furniture showing long residence during slow epochs of changing taste. Everything is in good order and carefully labelled. At the right of the room is a door opening onto the stairs which lead to the ground floor. A small window is set high in the peak of the gabled end up centre. At the left a chimney comes through the floor and cuts into the roof as though it had been added by Victorian standards of taste for exterior beautification. An open stove intrudes its pipe into the chimney. The single indication of the life of today having touched the place is the studied arrangement of an old rosewood square grand piano. The keyboard is uncovered. On the top is a tiny theatre—a model masked and touched with mystery, according to early adolescent standards. Two benches stand in front of the piano, and the piano stool is meticulously set in place. A flamboyant placard leaning against the music rack announces:

TODAY

ZENOBIA

A tragedy in ten acts

by

Alexander Jefferson, Sr.

The light in the room is dim, although it is quite bright out of doors. There are two low windows which are heavily barred. The little theatre is so arranged that when the manipulator stands on the box to work it, his head can be seen over the masking.

The curtain rises disclosing an empty room. Presently laborious steps are heard on the stairs and a key is turned in the lock. Then Aunt Letitia enters followed by Susan Sample. Aunt Letitia is a motherly old woman who has been in the Clay home for many years. She may have preferences, but like the buildings on the estate, she stays where she is. Susan Sample is a tall, slender girl of fourteen with a very gentle manner and a way of looking at people that indicates a receptivity rarely met in one so old. Letitia goes to one of the trunks marked E R in large white letters and unlocks it.

Here they are, my dear. Help me with the hasps.

What does E. R. really stand for, Mis' Letitia?

E. R.... That's a secret, Susan, that little girls aren't supposed to know.

I won't tell.

But what good would that do, my sweet? Please open the windows.

No one would know you told me.

I would know. Yes, I would know that I had told somebody else's secret.

Whose secret is it? Please.

I've been living in this house for thirty-five years, Susan, and I've known the secrets of all the boys and girls from time to time.

You know mine, too.

And I've never told one of them, either.

Does old Mr. John ever have secrets?

Old Mr. John! For shame!… Of course he has secrets.

I wish I knew some of his, Mis' Letitia.

My dear, you never will know them. John is very quiet.

Who in the family didn't have any secrets at all?

Oh, they all had secrets when they were young. Nathaniel had fewer than any of them and…

[Her words are lost tenderly in a memory.

Why hasn't he ever come back home?

That is his secret, Susan, and we mustn't ask too many questions. Nathaniel is coming today. I won't ask any questions.... He was a fine young man. Yes, he's coming back today, my dear. He was the baby of the family.

How old is he now?

You little chatterbox! Between you and Jonathan I have to fight to keep anybody's secrets.

Does Jonathan ask many questions?

When we're alone he does. He's just like his Uncle Nathaniel. God bless him!

Oh, isn't that just wonderful!

That is what you can wear in the pageant, my dear Susan.

Oh! Oh! Oh!… I wish I knew whose it was.

Would that make it any prettier?

No, but I'd like to know just the same.... Was it E. R.'s?

[A cry is heard outside, "Aunt Letty! Aunt Letty!"

Oh, Susan, it's Nathaniel! It's my boy. Here I am, dear.

[She has an armful of costumes which she drops nervously.

Mis' Letitia, I believe you love him best of all!

No, I don't, but I always understood him, I think.

[The voice below calls again, "Where are you?"

Come up here, my boy. Come up to the lumber room.

[Steps are heard on the stairs, young eager steps, and Nathaniel Clay bursts into the room. He is an eternally young man of thirty-five, who has touched the dregs and the heights of the world and remained himself.

Aunt Letty! Not a day older.... But oh, so wise.

Nathaniel, my boy, my darling, darling boy.

Now, now. Don't cry.

My boy, my boy. My splendid boy.

[Susan has forgotten her costume in her admiration for Nathaniel. She puts it down on the bench in front of the piano.

And this is—

This is Susan Sample.

Not—

Yes, time has been flying, Nathaniel. This young lady is Mary Sample's daughter.

How do you do? I can't believe it. You were only a little pink cherub up there in the sky when I ran—

Yes, Susan was born three years after you went away.

Oh!… And, Aunt Letitia, you've opened Emily's trunk!

Yes, Susan is going to be in a pageant.

Who was Emily?

She was—

Nathaniel dear, you must not satisfy her curiosity.

(To Susan)

You go find Jonathan, dear, and tell him that his uncle is here.

(To Nathaniel)

I'll put these things away, and we'll go into the house.

Good-bye, Mr. Clay.

Good-bye, Susan. You'll come back, won't you?

Oh, yes. Good-bye.

Good-bye.

[Susan goes out.

She hates to go. She's never seen anyone just like you: and I have only seen one.

Who's Jonathan?

He's the one.... He's Emily's boy.

You mean Emily—

No, no, my dear. Emily was married, left the stage. She wasn't happy. The boy was her only comfort.

He's my nephew. Why, I'm Uncle Nathaniel. Oh, Aunt Letty, I'm getting to be an old man!

Nathaniel, Jonathan doesn't know about his mother. I sent Susan away because I didn't want her to associate these things with Jonathan's mother.

My God, Emily didn't do anything wrong.

Well, she was an actress.

And a good one, too.

Yes, yes, dear. All that has been talked over many times, but John is the head of the family and he doesn't approve of the stage.

So! John is still himself.

John is austere, Nathaniel. He is a Clay through and through and he holds to the traditions of the family.

I remember the traditions, Aunt Letitia.

I never oppose John. He feels that he is right. But it is very hard sometimes to live up to his rules.

Has he rules?

Well, he has ideas, dear—much like your father's. We might call them rules.

Where is Emily?

Two years ago, Nathaniel.

[There is a moment's silence.

Did she ever go back to the stage?

No. John forbade it.

And John is still forbidding.

John is the head of the family.

So.... The Clay family is still an absolute monarchy.

Nathaniel, dear, will you promise me—

I'll try.

Will you promise not to antagonize John?

Will John antagonize me? I came back to see my home—to see you, my dear aunt. But I am a grown man now.

Won't you try to be patient? It will be pleasanter for me. And I have waited so long to see you, Nathaniel. There are seventeen very, very long years for us to talk about. Let John have his way.

Well, I'll try for a few days. But I give you warning, my ideas have been settling during the past few years, too.

Remember, he is used to being obeyed just as your father was.

Yes, I remember that, dear Aunt; but John isn't my father. He is just a brother to whom fate gave a fifteen years' start by birth.

[As a voice calls, "Nathaniel, are you up there?" Nathaniel looks at Letitia.

His voice is just the same. (Calling) Yes, John, I am up here.

[The antagonism between the two brothers is apparent immediately.

John Clay enters. He is an austere, pompous man of fifty who has the softness of the tithe-collector and the hardness of the tax-collector. He speaks with an adamantine finality which is destined to rude shattering.

How do you do, Nathaniel?

I am very well, I thank you, John. How are you?

[They shake hands perfunctorily.

You arrived ahead of time.

Yes.

We haven't met for seventeen years.

No. I've been away, John.

Where have you been?

I shall be here for two weeks, John, and if I should tell you all about myself today, I should have nothing to talk about tomorrow.

You haven't changed, Nathaniel. You are still frivolous.

I shall be serious when I am your age, brother.

I came out here to ask you to be very careful of your conversation before the children.

The children?

Yes, my two grandchildren.—

Grandchildren! My, that makes me a great uncle. I am getting old, Aunt Letitia!

I do not care to have them or Jonathan hear about any revolutionary or other unusual ideas.

I shall try not to contaminate the children and Jonathan. How old are the children?

Mary is four and John 3rd is two.

I shall try to spare their sensibilities.

They may not understand you but they will hear.

How old is Jonathan?

Fourteen.

The impressionable age.

The silly age.

Brother John, no age is the silly age. Fourteen is the age of visions and enchantments and fears. What a boy of fourteen sees and hears takes on a value that we cannot underestimate. Most men are defeated in life between fourteen and twenty. At fourteen a boy begins to make a lens through which he sees life. He thinks about everything. Ambition is beginning to stir in him and he begins to know why he likes things, why he wants to do certain things. He formulates lasting plans for the future and he takes in impressions that are indelible. Things that seem nothing to old people become memories to him that affect his whole life. The memory of a smile may encourage him to surmount all obstacles and the memory of a bitterness may act as an eternal barrier.

Nathaniel, are you a father?

No, John, I am only a bachelor who is very much in love with life in general and one lady in particular.

You can know nothing of children, then.

I remember myself. Most men forget their younger selves and that is fatal.

One would think to hear you talk that the most important things in life were a boy of fourteen and his moorings.

One might know it.

You are still the same impractical theorist.

I am the same theorist—a little older, a little more travelled. The trouble with you, John, is that you think no age is important except your own. You always thought that, even when you were fourteen. Oh, I know I wasn't born then, but I know you.

Did you come back to your home in order to lecture me?

No, no, I beg your pardon. I came back to see my home and Aunt Letitia and the children—and you, and I—I think—Jonathan.

Nathaniel, when your letter came telling me that you had decided to come back to see us, I was going to ask you not to come—