The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays by Gordon Bottomley et al. (best books to read .TXT) 📕

bridge! Hold it! Whatever they do!

DRISCOLL. Captain! Captain Talbot! God of Heaven! If you go back—'tis killed you'll be among them!

HUGH TALBOT. A little sooner than you lads? Aye, true!

FENTON. They cannot! Even Cromwell—

HUGH TALBOT. Tut, tut, Dick! It's little ye know of Cromwell.

JOHN TALBOT. Then—you mean—

HUGH TALBOT. An you surrender Cashala, we may all six pass free.
An you hold Cashala, they will hang me, here before your eyes.

(DRISCOLL gives a rattling cry.)

BUTLER. God forgive me!

HUGH TALBOT. You have your orders. Hold the bridge!

(Turns to door.)

JOHN TALBOT (barring his way). No, no! You shan't go forth!

FENTON. God's mercy, no!

HUGH TALBOT. Are you stark crazed?

FENTON. You shall stay with us.

JOHN TALBOT. What's your pledged word to men that know not honor?

HUGH TALBOT. My word. Unbar the door, Jack. Why, lad, we're traveling the same road.

FENTON. God! But we'll give them a good fight at the last. (Goes to the shot-window.) Take up your musket, Kit.

NEWCOMBB. But I—Captain! When you are gone, I—I—

HUGH TALBOT. I'll not be far. You'll hold the bridge?

JOHN TALBOT. Aye, sir.

BUTLER. We've powder enough—you said it, sir,—laid there at the stairhead, to blow the bridge to hell.

HUGH TALBOT. Aye, Myles, you've hit it!

(Holds out his hand.)

BUTLER. Not yet, sir!

HUGH TALBOT. Hereafter, then. God speed you, lads!

JOHN TALBOT. Speed you, sir! (All five stand at salute as HUGH
TALBOT goes out. In the moment's silence upon his exit, JOHN
TALBOT bars the door and turns to his comrades.) You have—Hugh
Talbot's orders. Take your pieces! Driscoll! Newcombe!

(Obediently the two join FENTON at windows.) Butler!

BUTLER. Aye! We have Hugh Talbot's orders.

(Points to powder-keg.)

JOHN TALBOT. Are you meaning—

BUTLER. It's not I will be failing him now!

FENTON (at window). God! They waste no time.

JOHN TALBOT. Already—they have dared—

FENTON. Here—this moment—under our very eyes!

DRISCOLL. Christ Jesus!

(Goes back from the window, with his arm across his eyes, and falls on his knees in headlong prayer.)

JOHN TALBOT. Kit! Kit Newcombe!

(Motions him to window.)

NEWCOMBE. I cannot! I—

JOHN TALBOT. Look forth! Look! And remember—when you meet them—remember! (NEWCOMBE stands swaying, clutching at the grating of the window, as he looks forth.) Lads! (Motions to BUTLER and FENTON to carry the powder to the stairhead.) The time is short. His orders!

(DRISCOLL raises his head and gazes fixedly toward the centre of the room.)

FENTON. Yonder, at the stairhead.

BUTLER. Aye.

(FENTON and BUTLER carry the keg to the door.)

NEWCOMBE. Not that! Not that death! No! No!

JOHN TALBOT. Be silent! And look yonder! Driscoll! Fetch the light! Newcombe! Come! You have your places, all.

DRISCOLL. But, Captain! The sixth man—where will the sixth man be standing?

(There is a blank silence, in which the men look questioningly at DRISCOLL'S rapt face and at one another.)

JOHN TALBOT. Sixth?

FENTON. What sixth?

DRISCOLL. The blind eyes of ye! Yonder!

(Comes to the salute, even as, a few moments before, he has saluted HUGH TALBOT, living.

NEWCOMBE gives a smothered cry, as one who half sees, and takes courage. FENTON dazedly starts to salute. Outside a bugle sounds, and a voice, almost at the door, is heard to speak.)

VOICE OUTSIDE. For the last time: will you surrender you?

JOHN TALBOT (in a loud and confident voice). No! Not while our commander stands with us!

VOICE OUTSIDE. And who might your commander be?

JOHN TALBOT. Hugh Talbot, the Captain of the Gate! The light here, Phelimy.

(JOHN TALBOT bends to set the candle to the powder that shall destroy Cashala Gatehouse, and all within it. His mates are gathered round him, with steady, bright faces, for in the little space left vacant in their midst they know in that minute that HUGH TALBOT stands.)

[CURTAIN] GETTYSBURG[1]

Percy MacKaye

SCENE: A woodshed, in the ell of a farm-house.

The shed is open on both sides, front and back, the apertures being slightly arched at the top. (In bad weather, these presumably may be closed by big double doors, which stand open now—swung back outward beyond sight.) Thus the nearer opening is the proscenium arch of the scene, under which the spectator looks through the shed to the background—a grassy yard, a road with great trunks of soaring elms, and the glimpse of a green hillside. The ceiling runs up into a gable with large beams.

On the right, at back, a door opens into the shed from the house kitchen. Opposite it, a door leads from the shed into the barn. In the foreground, against the right wall, is a work-bench. On this are tools, a long, narrow, wooden box, and a small oil-stove, with steaming kettle upon it.

Against the left wall, what remains of the year's wood supply is stacked, the uneven ridges sloping to a jumble of stovewood and kindlings mixed with small chips of the floor, which is piled deep with mounds of crumbling bark, chips and wood-dust.

Not far from this mounded pile, at right centre of the scene, stands a wooden armchair, in which LINK TADBOURNE, in his shirt-sleeves, sits drowsing. Silhouetted by the sunlight beyond, his sharp-drawn profile is that of an old man, with white hair cropped close, and gray moustache of a faded black hue at the outer edges. Between his knees is a stout thong of wood, whittled round by the drawshave which his sleeping hand still holds in his lap. Against the side of his chair rests a thick wooden yoke and collar. Near him is a chopping-block.

In the woodshed there is no sound or motion except the hum and floating steam from the tea-kettle. Presently the old man murmurs in his sleep, clenching his hand. Slowly the hand relaxes again.

From the door, right, comes POLLY—a sweet-faced girl of seventeen, quietly mature for her age. She is dressed simply. In one hand she carries a man's wide-brimmed felt hat, over the other arm a blue coat. These she brings toward LINK. Seeing him asleep, she begins to tiptoe, lays the coat and hat on the chopping-block, goes to the bench, and trims the wick of the oil-stove, under the kettle. Then she returns and stands near LINK, surveying the shed.

On closer scrutiny, the jumbled woodpile has evidently a certain order in its chaos; some of the splittings have been piled in irregular ridges; in places, the deep layer of wood-dust and chips has been scooped, and the little mounds slope and rise like miniature valleys and hills. [2]

Taking up a hoe, POLLY—with careful steps—moves among the hollows, placing and arranging sticks of kindling, scraping and smoothing the little mounds with the hoe. As she does so, from far away, a bugle sounds.

[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1912, by Percy Mackaye. All rights reserved.]

[Footnote 2: A suggestion for the appropriate arrangement of these mounds may be found in the map of the battle-field annexed to the volume by Captain R.K. Beecham, entitled Gettysburg (A.C. McClurg, 1911).]

LINK (snapping his eyes wide open, sits up)

Hello! Cat-nappin' was I, Polly?

                        POLLY
                                Just
  A kitten-nap, I guess.

(Laying the hoe down, she approaches)

The yoke done?

                        LINK
      (giving a final whittle to the yoke-collar thong)

                                          Thar!
  When he's ben steamed a spell, and bended snug,
  I guess this feller'll sarve t' say "Gee" to—
      (Lifting the other yoke-collar from beside his chair, he
        holds the whittled thong next to it, comparing the two
        with expert eye)
  and "Haw" to him. Beech every time, Sir; beech
  or walnut. Hang me if I'd shake a whip
  at birch, for ox-yokes.—Polly, are ye thar?

                        POLLY
  Yes, Uncle Link.

                        LINK
                  What's that I used to sing ye?

                "Polly, put the kittle on,
                Polly, put the kittle on,
                Polly, put the kittle on—"

(Chuckling')

We'll give this feller a dose of ox-yoke tea!

                        POLLY
  The kettle's boilin'.

                        LINK
                 Wall, then, steep him good.

  (POLLY takes from LINK the collar-thong, carries it to the
    work-bench, shoves it into the narrow end of the box, which she
    then closes tight and connects—by a piece of hose—to the spout
    of the kettle. At the farther end of the box, steam then emerges
    through a small hole.)

                        POLLY
  You're feelin' smart to-day.

LINK Smart!—Wall, if I could git a hull man to swap legs with me, mebbe I'd arn my keep. But this here settin' dead an' alive, without no legs, day in, day out, don't make an old hoss wuth his oats.

POLLY (cheerfully)

I guess you'll soon be walkin' round.

                        LINK
                                      Not if
  that doctor feller has his say: He says
  I can't never go agin this side o' Jordan;
  and looks like he's 'bout right.—Nine months to-morrer,
  Polly, gal, sence I had that stroke.

                        POLLY
            (pointing to the ox-yoke)

                                  You're fitter
  sittin' than most folks standin'.

                        LINK
                    (briskly)

                                  Oh, they can't
  keep my two hands from makin' ox-yokes. That's
  my second natur' sence I was a boy.

(Again in the distance a bugle sounds. LINK starts.)

What's that?

                        POLLY
                  Why, that's the army veterans
  down to the graveyard. This is Decoration
  mornin': you ain't forgot?

                        LINK
                          So't is, so't is.
  Roger, your young man—ha! (chuckling) he come and axed me
  was I a-goin' to the cemetery.
  "Me? Don't I look it?" says I. Ha! "Don't I look it?"

                        POLLY
  He meant—to decorate the graves.

                        LINK
                                          O' course;
  but I must take my little laugh. I told him
  I guessed I wa'n't persent'ble anyhow,
  my mustache and my boots wa'n't blacked this mornin'.
  I don't jest like t' talk about my legs.—
  Be you a-goin' to take your young school folks,
  Polly?

                        POLLY
          Dear no! I told my boys and girls
  to march up this way with the band. I said
  I'd be a-stayin' home and learnin' how
  to keep school in the woodpile here with you.

                        LINK
            (looking up at her proudly)

Schoolma'am at seventeen! Some smart, I tell ye!

                        POLLY
                  (caressing him)

  Schoolmaster, you, past seventy; that's smarter!
  I tell 'em I learn from you, so's I can teach
  my young folks what the study-books leave out.

                        LINK
  Sure ye don't want to jine the celebratin'?

                        POLLY
  No, sir! We're goin' to celebrate right here,
  and you're to teach me to keep school some more.

(She holds ready for him the blue coat and hat.)

LINK (looking up)

What's thar?

                        POLLY
              Your teachin' rig.

(She helps him on with it.)

                        LINK
                                    The old blue coat!—
  My, but I'd like to see the boys—(gazing at the hat) the Grand
  Old Army Boys! (dreamily) Yes, we was boys: jest boys!
  Polly, you tell your young folks, when they study
  the books,