Chapter VII: Part 7

Unheard of, is it not, that a Fanny should refuse to be made a "good woman," and that she should dare demand the right to live in her own way? It has always been considered the most wonderful event in the life of a girl if a young man of wealth, of position, of station came into her life and said, "I will take you as my wife until death do us part."

But a new type of girlhood is in the making. We are developing the Fannies who learn in the school of life, the hardest, the crudest and at the same time the most vital and instructive school. Why should _Fanny_ marry a young man in order to become "good," any more than that he should marry her in order to become good? Is it not because we have gone on for centuries believing that woman's value, her integrity and position in society center about her sex and consist only in her virtue, and that all other usefulness weighs naught in the balance against her "purity"? If she dare express her sex as the Fannies do, we deny her individual and social worth, and stamp her fallen.

The past of a man is never questioned: no one inquires how many Fannies have been in his life. Yet man has the impudence to expect the Fannies to abstain till he is ready to bestow on them his name.

"Hindle Wakes" is a much needed and important social lesson,--not because it necessarily involves the idea that every girl must have sex experience before she meets the man she loves, but rather that she has the right to satisfy, if she so chooses, her emotional and sex demands like any other need of her mind and body. When the Fannies become conscious of that right, the relation of the sexes will lose the shallow romanticism and artificial exaggeration that mystery has surrounded it with, and assume a wholesome, natural, and therefore healthy and normal expression.

GITHA SOWERBY

RUTHERFORD AND SON

The women's rights women who claim for their sex the most wonderful things in the way of creative achievement, will find it difficult to explain the fact that until the author of "Rutherford and Son" made her appearance, no country had produced a single woman dramatist of note.

That is the more remarkable because woman has since time immemorial been a leading figure in histrionic art. Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleanore Duse, and scores of others have had few male peers.

It can hardly be that woman is merely a reproducer and not a creator. We have but to recall such creative artists as Charlotte and Emily Bronté, George Sand, George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marie Bashkirtshev, Rosa Bonheur, Sophia Kovalevskaya and a host of others, to appreciate that woman has been a creative factor in literature, art and science. Not so in the drama, so far the stronghold exclusively of men.

It is therefore an event for a woman to come to the fore who possesses such dramatic power, realistic grasp and artistic penetration as evidenced by Githa Sowerby.

The circumstance is the more remarkable because Githa Sowerby is, according to her publishers, barely out of her teens; and though she be a genius, her exceptional maturity is a phenomenon rarely observed. Generally maturity comes only with experience and suffering. No one who has not felt the crushing weight of the Rutherford atmosphere could have painted such a vivid and life-like picture.

The basic theme in "Rutherford and Son" is not novel. Turgenev, Ibsen and such lesser artists as Sudermann and Stanley Houghton have dealt with it: the chasm between the old and the young,--the tragic struggle of parents against their children, the one frantically holding on, the other recklessly letting go. But "Rutherford and Son" is more than that. It is a picture of the paralyzing effect of tradition and institutionalism on all human life, growth, and change.

_John Rutherford_, the owner of the firm "Rutherford and Son," is possessed by the phantom of the past--the thing handed down to him by his father and which he must pass on to his son with undiminished luster; the thing that has turned his soul to iron and his heart to stone; the thing for the sake of which he has never known joy and because of which no one else must know joy,--"Rutherford and Son."

The crushing weight of this inexorable monster on Rutherford and his children is significantly summed up by young John:

_John._ Have you ever heard of Moloch? No.... Well, Moloch was a
sort of a God ... some time ago, you know, before Dick and his kind
came along. They built his image with an ugly head ten times the
size of a real head, with great wheels instead of legs, and set him
up in the middle of a great dirty town. And they thought him a very
important person indeed, and made sacrifices to him ... human
sacrifices ... to keep him going, you know. Out of every family they
set aside one child to be an offering to him when it was big enough,
and at last it became a sort of honor to be dedicated in this way,
so much so, that the victims came themselves gladly to be crushed
out of life under the great wheels. That was Moloch.

_Janet._ Dedicated--we are dedicated--all of us--to Rutherfords'.

Not only the Rutherford children, their withered _Aunt Ann_, and old _Rutherford_ himself, but even _Martin_, the faithful servant in the employ of the Rutherfords for twenty-five years, is "dedicated," and when he ceases to be of use to their Moloch, he is turned into a thief and then cast off, even as _Janet_ and _John_.

Not love for _John_, his oldest son, or sympathy with the latter's wife and child induces old _Rutherford_ to forgive his son's marriage with a mere shop-girl, but because he needs _John_ to serve the house of Rutherford. The one inexorable purpose, always and ever!

His second son _Richard_, who is in the ministry, and "of no use" to old _Rutherford's_ God of stone, receives the loving assurance: "You were no good for my purpose, and there's the end; for the matter o' that, you might just as well never ha' been born."

For that matter, his daughter _Janet_ might also never have been born, except that she was "good enough" to look after her father's house, serve him, even helping take off his boots, and submitting without a murmur to the loveless, dismal life in the Rutherford home. Her father has sternly kept every suitor away, "because no one in Grantley's good enough for us." _Janet_ has become faded, sour and miserable with yearning for love, for sunshine and warmth, and when she at last dares to partake of it secretly with her father's trusted man _Martin_, old _Rutherford_ sets his iron heel upon her love, and drags it through the mud till it lies dead.

Again, when he faces the spirit of rebellion in his son _John_, _Rutherford_ crushes it without the slightest hesitation in behalf of his one obsession, his one God--the House of Rutherford.

_John_ has made an invention which holds great possibilities. By means of it he hopes to shake of the deadly grip of the Rutherfords'. He wants to become a free man and mold a new life for himself, for his wife and child. He knows his father will not credit the value of his invention. He dare not approach him: the Rutherford children have been held in dread of their parent too long.

_John_ turns to _Martin_, the faithful servant, the only one in the confidence of _Rutherford_. _John_ feels himself safe with _Martin_. But he does not know that _Martin_, too, is dedicated to Moloch, broken by his twenty-five years of service, left without will, without purpose outside of the Rutherfords'.

_Martin_ tries to enlist _Rutherford's_ interest in behalf of _John_. But the old man decides that _John_ must turn over his invention to the House of Rutherford.

_Rutherford._ What's your receipt?

_John._ I want to know where I stand.... I want my price.

_Rutherford._ Your price--your price? Damn your impudence, sir....
So that's your line, is it?... This is what I get for all I've done
for you.... This is the result of the schooling I gave you. I've
toiled and sweated to give you a name you'd be proud to own--worked
early and late, toiled like a dog when other men were taking their
ease--plotted and planned to get my chance, taken it and held it
when it come till I could ha' burst with the struggle. Sell! You
talk o' selling to me, when everything you'll ever make couldn't pay
back the life I've given to you!

_John._ Oh, I know, I know. I've been both for five years. Only I've
had no salary.

_Rutherford._ You've been put to learn your business like any other
young fellow. I began at the bottom--you've got to do the same....
Your father has lived here, and your grandfather before you. It's
your inheritance--can't you realize that?--what you've got to come
to when I'm under ground. We've made it for you, stone by stone,
penny by penny, fighting through thick and thin for close on a
hundred years.... It's what you've got to do--or starve. You're my
son--you've got to come after me.

_Janet_ knows her father better than _John_; she knows that "no one ever stands out against father for long--or else they get so knocked about, they don't matter any more." _Janet_ knows, and when the moment arrives that brings her father's blow upon her head, it does not come as a surprise to her. When old _Rutherford_ discovers her relation with _Martin_, his indignation is as characteristic of the man as everything else in his life. It is not outraged morality or a father's love. It is always and forever the House of Rutherford. Moreover, the discovery of the affair between his daughter and his workman comes at a psychologic moment: _Rutherford_ is determined to get hold of _John's_ invention--for the Rutherfords, of course--and now that _Martin_ has broken faith with his master, his offense serves an easy pretext for _Rutherford_ to break faith with _Martin_. He calls the old servant to his office and demands the receipt of _John's_ invention, entrusted to _Martin_. On the latter's refusal to betray _John_, the master plays on the man's loyalty to the Rutherfords.

_Rutherford._ Rutherfords' is going down--down. I got to pull her
up, somehow. There's one way out.... Mr. John's made this metal--a
thing, I take your word for it, that's worth a fortune. And we're
going to sit by and watch him fooling it away--selling it for a song
to Miles or Jarvis, that we could break to-morrow if we had half a
chance.... You've got but to put your hand in your pocket to save
the place and you don't do it. You're with them--you're with the
money-grubbing little souls that can't see beyond the next shilling
they put in their pockets.... When men steal, Martin, they do it to
gain something. If I steal this, what'll I gain by it? If I make
money, what'll I buy with it? Pleasure, maybe? Children to come
after me--glad o' what I done? Tell me anything in the wide world
that'd bring me joy, and I'll swear to you never to touch it.... If
you give it to me what'll you gain by it? Not a farthing shall you
ever have from me--no more than I get myself.

_Martin._ And what will Mr. John get for it?

_Rutherford._ Rutherfords'--when I'm gone. He'll thank you in ten
years--he'll come to laugh at himself--him and his price. He'll see
the Big Thing one day, mebbe, like what I've done. He'll see that it
was no more his than 'twas yours to give nor mine to take.... It's
Rutherfords'.... Will you give it to me?

_Martin._ I take shame to be doing it now.... He worked it out along
o' me. Every time it changed he come running to show me like a bairn
wi' a new toy.

_Rutherford._ It's for Rutherfords'....

Rutherfords' ruthlessly marches on. If the Rutherford purpose does not shrink from corrupting its most trusted servant, it surely will not bend before a daughter who has dared, even once in her life, to assert herself.

_Rutherford._ How far's it gone?

_Janet._ Right at first--I made up my mind that if you ever found
out, I'd go right away, to put things straight. He wanted to tell
you at the first. But I knew that it would be no use.... It was _I_
said not to tell you.

_Rutherford._ Martin ... that I trusted as I trust myself.

_Janet._ You haven't turned him away--you couldn't do that!

_Rutherford._ That's my business.

_Janet._ You couldn't do that ... not Martin....

_Rutherford._ Leave it--leave it ... Martin's my servant, that I pay
wages to. I made a name for my children--a name respected in all the
countryside--and you go with a workingman.... To-morrow you leave
my house. D'ye understand? I'll have no light ways under my roof. No
one shall say I winked at it. You can bide the night. To-morrow when
I come in I'm to find ye gone.... Your name shan't be spoken in my
house ... never again.

_Janet._ Oh, you've no pity.... I was thirty-six. Gone sour.
Nobody'd ever come after me. Not even when I was young. You took
care o' that. Half of my life was gone, well-nigh all of it that
mattered.... Martin loves me honest. Don't you come near! Don't you
touch that!... You think that I'm sorry you've found out--you think
you've done for me when you use shameful words on me and turn me out
o' your house. You've let me out o' jail! Whatever happens to me
now, I shan't go on living as I lived here. Whatever Martin's done,
he's taken me from you. You've ruined my life, you with your getting
on. I've loved in wretchedness, all the joy I ever had made wicked
by the fear o' you.... Who are you? Who are you? A man--a man that
takes power to himself, power to gather people to him and use them
as he wills--- a man that'd take the blood of life itself and put it
into the Works--into Rutherfords'. And what ha' you got by it--what?
You've got Dick, that you've bullied till he's a fool--John, that's
waiting for the time when he can sell what you've done--and you got
me--me to take your boots off at night--to well-nigh wish you dead
when I had to touch you.... Now!... Now you know it!

But for the great love in her heart, _Janet_ could not have found courage to face her father as she did. But love gives strength; it instills hope and faith, and kindles anew the fires of life. Why, then, should it not be strong enough to break the fetters of even Rutherfords'? Such a love only those famished for affection and warmth can feel, and _Janet_ was famished for life.

_Janet._ I had a dream--a dream that I was in a place wi' flowers,
in the summer-time, white and thick like they never grow on the
moor--but it was the moor--a place near Martin's cottage. And I
dreamt that he came to me with the look he had when I was a little
lass, with his head up and the lie gone out of his eyes. All the
time I knew I was on my bed in my room here--but it was as if
sweetness poured into me, spreading and covering me like the water
in the tarn when the rains are heavy in the fells.... That's why I
dreamt of him so last night. It was as if all that was best in me
was in that dream--what I was as a bairn and what I'm going to be.
He couldn't help but love me. It was a message--I couldn't have
thought of it by myself. It's something that's come to me--here
(_putting her hands on her breast_). Part of me!

All that lay dormant in _Janet_ now turns into glowing fire at the touch of Spring. But in _Martin_ life has been marred, strangled by the iron hand of Rutherfords'.

_Martin._ Turned away I am, sure enough. Twenty-five years. And in a
minute it's broke. Wi' two words.

_Janet._ You say that now because your heart's cold with the
trouble. But it'll warm again--it'll warm again. I'll warm it out of
my own heart, Martin--my heart that can't be made cold.

_Martin._ I'd rather ha' died than he turn me away. I'd ha' lost
everything in the world to know that I was true to 'm, like I was
till you looked at me wi' the love in your face. It was a great love
ye gave me--you in your grand hoose wi' your delicate ways. But it's
broke me.

_Janet._ But--it's just the same with us. Just the same as ever it
was.

_Martin._ Aye. But there's no mending, wi' the likes o' him.

_Janet._ What's there to mend? What's there to mend except what's
bound you like a slave all the years? You're free--free for the
first time since you were a lad mebbe. We'll begin again. We'll be
happy--happy. You and me, free in the world! All the time that's
been 'll be just like a dream that's past, a waiting time afore we
found each other--the long winter afore the flowers come out white
and thick on the moors--

_Martin._ Twenty-five years ago he took me.... It's too long to
change.... I'll never do his work no more; but it's like as if he'd
be my master just the same--till I die--

_Janet._ Listen, Martin. Listen to me. You've worked all your life
for him, ever since you were a little lad. Early and late you've
been at the Works--working--working--for him.

_Martin._ Gladly!

_Janet._ Now and then he give you a kind word--when you were wearied
out mebbe--and your thoughts might ha' turned to what other men's
lives were, wi' time for rest and pleasure. You didn't see through
him, you wi' your big heart, Martin. You were too near to see, like
I was till Mary came. You worked gladly maybe--but all the time your
life was going into Rutherfords'--your manhood into the place he's
built. He's had you, Martin,--like he's had me, and all of us. We
used to say he was hard and ill-tempered. Bad to do with in the
house--we fell silent when he came in--we couldn't see for the
little things,--we couldn't see the years passing because of the
days. And all the time it was our lives he was taking bit by
bit--our lives that we'll never get back.... Now's our chance at
last! He's turned us both away, me as well as you. We two he's sent
out into the world together. Free. He's done it himself of his own
will. It's ours to take, Martin--our happiness. We'll get it in
spite of him. He'd kill it if he could.

The cruelty of it, that the Rutherfords never kill with one blow: never so merciful are they. In their ruthless march they strangle inch by inch, shed the blood of life drop by drop, until they have broken the very spirit of man and made him as helpless and pitiful as _Martin_,--a trembling leaf tossed about by the winds.

A picture of such stirring social and human importance that no one, except he who has reached the stage of _Martin_, can escape its effect. Yet even more significant is the inevitability of the doom of the Rutherfords as embodied in the wisdom of _Mary_, _John's_ wife.

When her husband steals his father's money--a very small part indeed compared with what the father had stolen from him--he leaves the hateful place and _Mary_ remains to face the master. For the sake of her child she strikes a bargain with _Rutherford_.

_Mary._ A bargain is where one person has something to sell that
another wants to buy. There's no love in it--only money--money that
pays for life. I've got something to sell that you want to buy.

_Rutherford._ What's that?

_Mary._ My son. You've lost everything you've had in the world.
John's gone--and Richard--and Janet. They won't come back. You're
alone now and getting old, with no one to come after you. When you
die Rutherfords' will be sold--somebody'll buy it and give it a new
name perhaps, and no one will even remember that you made it.
That'll be the end of all your work. Just--nothing. You've thought
of that.... It's for my boy. I want--a chance of life for him--his
place in the world. John can't give him that, because he's made so.
If I went to London and worked my hardest I'd get twenty-five
shillings a week. We've failed. From you I can get when I want for
my boy. I want--all the good common things: a good house, good
food, warmth. He's a delicate little thing now, but he'll grow
strong like other children.... Give me what I ask, and in return
I'll give you--him. On one condition. I'm to stay on here. I won't
trouble you--you needn't speak to me or see me unless you want to.
For ten years he's to be absolutely mine, to do what I like with.
You mustn't interfere--you mustn't tell him to do things or frighten
him. He's mine for ten years more.

_Rutherford._ And after that?

_Mary._ He'll be yours.

_Rutherford._ To train up. For Rutherfords'?

_Mary._ Yes.

_Rutherford._ After all? After Dick, that I've bullied till he's a
fool? John, that's wished me dead?

_Mary._ In ten years you'll be an old man; you won't be able to make
people afraid of you any more.

When I saw the masterly presentation of the play on the stage, _Mary's_ bargain looked unreal and incongruous. It seemed impossible to me that a mother who really loves her child should want it to be in any way connected with the Rutherfords'. But after repeatedly rereading the play, I was convinced by _Mary's_ simple statement: "In ten years you'll be an old man; you won't be able to make people afraid of you any more." Most deeply true. The Rutherfords are bound by time, by the eternal forces of change. Their influence on human life is indeed terrible. Notwithstanding it all, however, they are fighting a losing game. They are growing old, already too old to make anyone afraid. Change and innovation are marching on, and the Rutherfords must make place for the young generation knocking at the gates.

THE IRISH DRAMA

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Most Americans know about the Irish people only that they are not averse to drink, and that they make brutal policemen and corrupt politicians. But those who are familiar with the revolutionary movements of the past are aware of the fortitude and courage, aye, of the heroism of the Irish, manifested during their uprisings, and especially in the Fenian movement--the people's revolt against political despotism and land robbery.

And though for years Ireland has contributed to the very worst features of American life, those interested in the fate of its people did not despair; they knew that the spirit of unrest in Ireland was not appeased, and that it would make itself felt again in no uncertain form.

The cultural and rebellious awakening in that country within the last twenty-five years once more proves that neither God nor King can for long suppress the manifestation of the latent possibilities of a people. The possibilities of the Irish must indeed be great if they could inspire the rich humor of a Lady Gregory, the deep symbolism of a Yeats, the poetic fancy of a Synge, and the rebellion of a Robinson and Murray.

Only a people unspoiled by the dulling hand of civilization and free from artifice can retain such simplicity of faith and remain so imaginative, so full of fancy and dreams, wild and fiery, which have kindled the creative spark in the Irish dramatists of our time. It is true that the work of only the younger element among them is of social significance, yet all of them have rendered their people and the rest of the world a cultural service of no mean value. William Butler Yeats is among the latter, together with Synge and Lady Gregory; his art, though deep in human appeal, has no bearing on the pressing questions of our time. Mr. Yeats himself would repudiate any implication of a social character, as he considers such dramas too "topical" and therefore "half bad" plays. In view of this attitude, it is difficult to reconcile his standard of true art with the repertoire of the Abbey Theater, which consists mainly of social dramas. Still more difficult is it to account for his work, "Where There is Nothing," which is no less social in its philosophy and tendency than Ibsen's "Brand."

WHERE THERE IS NOTHING

"Where There Is Nothing" is as true an interpretation of the philosophy of Anarchism as could be given by its best exponents. I say this not out of any wish to tag Mr. Yeats, but because the ideal of _Paul Ruttledge_, the hero of the play, is nothing less than Anarchism applied to everyday life.

_Paul Ruttledge_, a man of wealth, comes to the conclusion, after a long process of development and growth, that riches are wrong, and that the life of the propertied is artificial, useless and inane.

_Paul Ruttledge._ When I hear these people talking I always hear
some organized or vested interest chirp or quack, as it does in the
newspapers. I would like to have great iron claws, and to put them
about the pillars, and to pull and pull till everything fell into
pieces.... Sometimes I dream I am pulling down my own house, and
sometimes it is the whole world that I am pulling down.... When
everything was pulled down we would have more room to get drunk in,
to drink contentedly out of the cup of life, out of the drunken cup
of life.

He decides to give up his position and wealth and cast his lot in with the tinkers--an element we in America know as "hoboes," men who tramp the highways making their living as they go about, mending kettles and pots, earning an honest penny without obligation or responsibility to anyone. _Paul Ruttledge_ longs for the freedom of the road,--to sleep under the open sky, to count the stars, to be free. He throws off all artificial restraint and is received with open arms by the tinkers. To identify himself more closely with their life, he marries a tinker's daughter--not according to the rites of State or Church, but in true tinker fashion--in freedom--bound only by the promise to be faithful and "not hurt each other."

In honor of the occasion, _Paul_ tenders to his comrades and the people of the neighborhood a grand feast, full of the spirit of life's joy,--an outpouring of gladness that lasts a whole week.

_Paul's_ brother, his friends, and the authorities are incensed over the carousal. They demand that he terminate the "drunken orgy."

_Mr. Joyce._ This is a disgraceful business, Paul; the whole
countryside is demoralized. There is not a man who has come to
sensible years who is not drunk.

_Mr. Dowler._ This is a flagrant violation of all propriety. Society
is shaken to its roots. My own servants have been led astray by the
free drinks that are being given in the village. My butler, who has
been with me for seven years, has not been seen for the last two
days.

_Mr. Algie._ I endorse his sentiments completely. There has not been
a stroke of work done for the last week. The hay is lying in ridges
where it has been cut, there is not a man to be found to water the
cattle. It is impossible to get as much as a horse shod in the
village.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I think _you_ have something to say, Colonel
Lawley?

_Colonel Lawley._ I have undoubtedly. I want to know when law and
order are to be reëstablished. The police have been quite unable to
cope with the disorder. Some of them have themselves got drunk. If
my advice had been taken the military would have been called in.

_Mr. Green._ The military are not indispensable on occasions like
the present. There are plenty of police coming now. We have wired to
Dublin for them, they will be here by the four o'clock train.

_Paul Ruttledge._ But you have not told me what you have come here
for. Is there anything I can do for you?

_Mr. Green._ We have come to request you to go to the public-houses,
to stop the free drinks, to send the people back to their work. As
for those tinkers, the law will deal with them when the police
arrive.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I wanted to give a little pleasure to my
fellow-creatures.

_Mr. Dowler._ This seems rather a low form of pleasure.

_Paul Ruttledge._ I daresay it seems to you a little violent. But
the poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must
take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it. Have we
not tried sobriety? Do you like it? I found it very dull.... Think
what it is to them to have their imagination like a blazing
tar-barrel for a whole week. Work could never bring them such
blessedness as that.

_Mr. Dowler._ Everyone knows there is no more valuable blessing than
work.

_Paul Ruttledge_ decides to put his visitors "on trial," to let them see themselves as they are in all their hypocrisy, all their corruption.

He charges the military man, _Colonel Lawley_, with calling himself a Christian, yet following the business of man-killing. The Colonel is forced to admit that he had ordered his men to fight in a war, of the justice of which they knew nothing, or did not believe in, and yet it is "the doctrine of your Christian church, of your Catholic church, that he who fights in an unjust war, knowing it to be unjust, loses his own soul." Of the rich man _Dowler_, _Paul Ruttledge_ demands whether he could pass through the inside of a finger ring, and on _Paul's_ attention being called by one of the tinkers to the fine coat of _Mr. Dowler_, he tells him to help himself to it. Threatened by _Mr. Green_, the spokesman of the law, with encouraging robbery, _Ruttledge_ admonishes him.

_Ruttledge._ Remember the commandment, "Give to him that asketh
thee"; and the hard commandment goes even farther, "Him that taketh
thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also."

But the worst indictment _Ruttledge_ hurls against _Mr. Green_. The other professed Christians kill, murder, do not love their enemies, and do not give to any man that asks of them. But the Greens, _Rutledge_ says, are the worst of all. For the others break the law of Christ for their own pleasure, but "you take pay for breaking it; when their goods are taken away you condemn the taker; when they are smitten on one cheek you punish the smiter. You encourage them in their breaking of the Law of Christ."

For several years _Ruttledge_ lives the life of the tinkers. But of weak physique, he finds himself unable to withstand the rigors of the road. His health breaks down, and his faithful comrades carry him to his native town and bring him to a monastery where _Paul_ is cared for by the priests. While there he begins to preach a wonderful gospel, a gospel strange to the friars and the superior,--so rebellious and terrible that he is declared a dissenter, a heathen and a dangerous character.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Now I can give you the message that has come to
me.... Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have
brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up,
that we are going back to the joy of the green earth.... For a long
time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half
blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten
that the green Earth was the Love of God, and that all Life was the
Will of God, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to
the impulse of their hearts. They gathered the great Earth to their
breasts and their lips, ... in what they believed would be an
eternal kiss. It was then that the temptation began. The men and
women listened to them, and because when they had lived ... in
mother wit and natural kindness, they sometimes did one another an
injury, they thought that it would be better to be safe than to be
blessed, they made the Laws. The Laws were the first sin. They were
the first mouthful of the apple; the moment man had made them he
began to die; we must put out the Laws as I put out this candle. And
when they had lived amidst the green Earth that is the Love of God,
they were sometimes wetted by the rain, and sometimes cold and
hungry, and sometimes alone from one another; they thought it would
be better to be comfortable than to be blessed. They began to build
big houses and big towns. They grew wealthy and they sat chattering
at their doors; and the embrace that was to have been eternal
ended.... We must put out the towns as I put out this candle. But
that is not all, for man created a worse thing.... Man built up the
Church. We must destroy the Church, we must put it out as I put out
this candle.... We must destroy everything that has Law and Number.

The rebel is driven from the monastery. He is followed by only two faithful friars, his disciples, who go among the people to disseminate the new gospel. But the people fail to understand them. Immersed in darkness and superstition, they look upon these strange men as evildoers. They accuse them of casting an evil spell on their cattle and disturbing the people's peace. The path of the crusader is thorny, and _Colman_, the friar disciple of _Paul_, though faithful for a time, become discouraged in the face of opposition and persecution. He weakens.

_Colman._ It's no use stopping waiting for the wind; if we have
anything to say that's worth the people listening to, we must bring
them to hear it one way or another. Now, it is what I was saying to
Aloysius, we must begin teaching them to make things, they never had
the chance of any instruction of this sort here. Those and other
things, we got a good training in the old days. And we'll get a
grant from the Technical Board. The Board pays up to four hundred
pounds to some of its instructors.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, I understand; you will sell them. And what
about the dividing of the money? You will need to make laws about
that. Oh, we will grow quite rich in time.

_Colman._ We'll build workshops and houses for those who come to
work from a distance, good houses, slated, not thatched.... They
will think so much more of our teaching when we have got them under
our influence by other things. Of course we will teach them their
meditations, and give them a regular religious life. We must settle
out some little place for them to pray in--there's a high gable over
there where we could hang a bell--

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, yes, I understand. You would weave them
together like this, you would add one thing to another, laws and
money and church and bells, till you had got everything back again
that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things
asunder.

_Aloysius._ Brother Paul, it is what I am thinking; now the tinkers
have come back to you, you could begin to gather a sort of an army;
you can't fight your battle without an army. They would call to the
other tinkers, and the tramps and the beggars, and the sieve-makers
and all the wandering people. It would be a great army.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, that would be a great army, a great wandering
army.

_Aloysius._ The people would be afraid to refuse us then; we would
march on--

_Paul Ruttledge._ We could march on. We could march on the towns,
and we could break up all settled order; we could bring back the old
joyful, dangerous, individual life. We would have banners. We will
have one great banner that will go in front, it will take two men to
carry it, and on it we will have Laughter--

_Aloysius._ That will be the banner for the front. We will have
different troops, we will have captains to organize them, to give
them orders.

_Paul Ruttledge._ To organize? That is to bring in law and number.
Organize--organize--that is how all the mischief has been done. I
was forgetting,--we cannot destroy the world with armies; it is
inside our minds that it must be destroyed.

Deserted, _Paul Ruttledge_ stands alone in his crusade, like most iconoclasts. Misunderstood and persecuted, he finally meets his death at the hands of the infuriated mob.

"Where There Is Nothing" is of great social significance, deeply revolutionary in the sense that it carries the message of the destruction of every institution--State, Property, and Church--that enslaves humanity. _For where there is nothing, there man begins._

A certain critic characterized this play as a "statement of revolt against the despotism of facts." Is there a despotism more compelling and destructive than that of the facts of property, of the State and Church? But "Where There Is Nothing" is not merely a "statement" of revolt. It embodies the spirit of revolt itself, of that most constructive revolt which begins with the destruction of every obstacle in the path of the new life that is to grow on the débris of the old, when the paralyzing yoke of institutionalism shall have been broken, and man left free to enjoy Life and Laughter.

LENOX ROBINSON

HARVEST

_Timothy Hurley_, an old farmer, slaves all his life and mortgages his farm in order to enable his children to lead an idle, parasitic life.

Started on this road toward so-called culture by the school-master, _William Lordan_, _Hurley's_ children leave their father's farm and in due time establish themselves in society as priest, lawyer, secretary and chemist, respectively.

The secretary son is ashamed of his lowly origin and denies it. The lawyer son is much more concerned with his motor car than with the condition of the farm that has helped him on his feet. The priest has departed for America, there to collect funds for Church work. Only _Maurice_, the youngest son of _Timothy Hurley_, remains at home as the farm drudge, the typical man with the hoe.

_Jack Hurley_, the chemist, and _Timothy's_ only daughter _Mary_, retain some loyalty to the old place, but when they return after an absence of years, they find themselves out of touch with farm life, and they too turn their back on their native heath. _Jack Hurley's_ notion of the country is that of most city people: nature is beautiful, the scenery lovely, so long as it is someone else who has to labor in the scorching sun, to plow and toil in the sweat of his brow.

_Jack_ and his wife _Mildred_ are both extremely romantic about the farm.

_Jack._ It stands to reason farming must pay enormously. Take a
field of oats, for instance; every grain that's sown gives a huge
percentage in return.... I don't know exactly how many grains a
stalk carries, but several hundred I'm sure ... why, there's no
investment in the world would give you a return like that.

But soon they discover that every grain of corn does not yield hundreds of dollars.

_Maurice._ You can't have a solicitor, and a priest, and a chemist
in a family without spending money, and for the last ten years
you've been all drawing money out of the farm ... there's no more to
drain now.... Oh, I suppose you think I'm a bloody fool not to be
able to make it pay; but sure what chance have I and I never taught
how to farm? There was money and education wanted to make priests
and doctors and gentlemen of you all, and wasn't there money and
education wanted to make a farmer of me? No; nothing taught me only
what I picked up from my father and the men, and never a bit of
fresh money to put into the farm only it all kept to make a
solicitor of Bob and a chemist of you.

During _Jack's_ visit to the farm a fire breaks out and several buildings on the place are destroyed. Much to the horror of the well-bred _Jack_, he learns that his father himself had lit the match in order to get "compensation." He sternly upbraids the old farmer.

_Jack._ Didn't you see yourself how dishonest it was?

_Timothy._ Maybe I did, but I saw something more, and that was that
I was on the way to being put out of the farm.

_Jack_ is outraged; he threatens to inform on his own people and offers to stay on the farm to help with the work. But two weeks' experience in the field beneath the burning sun is more than delicate _Jack_ can stand. He suffers fainting spells, and is in the end prevailed upon by his wife to leave.

_Mary_, old _Hurley's_ daughter, also returns to the farm for rest and quiet. But she finds no peace there, for the city is too much in her blood. There is, moreover, another lure she cannot escape.

_Mary._ I was too well educated to be a servant, and I was never
happy as one, so to better myself I learned typing.... It's a hard
life, Jack, and I soon found out how hard it was, and I was as
dissatisfied as ever. Then there only seemed one way out of it ...
and he ... my employer, I mean.... I went into it deliberately with
my eyes open. You see, a woman I knew chucked typing and went in for
this ... and I saw what a splendid time she had, and how happy she
was--and I was so miserably unhappy--and how she had everything she
wanted and I had nothing, and ... and.... But this life made me
unhappy, too, and so in desperation I came home; but I've grown too
far away from it all, and now I'm going back. Don't you see, Jack,
I'm not happy here. I thought if I could get home to the farm and
the old simple life it would be all right, but it isn't. Everything
jars on me, the roughness and the hard living and the coarse
food--oh, it seems ridiculous--but they make me physically ill. I
always thought, if I could get away home to Knockmalgloss I could
start fair again.... So I came home, and everything is the same, and
everyone thinks that I'm as pure and innocent as when I went away,
but ... but ... But, Jack, the dreadful thing is I want to go
back.... I'm longing for that life, and its excitement and splendor
and color.

In her misery and struggle a great faith sustains _Mary_ and keeps her from ruin. It is the thought of her father, in whom she believes implicitly as her ideal of honesty, strength and incorruptibility. The shock is terrible when she learns that her father, even her father, has fallen a victim to the cruel struggle of life,--that her father himself set fire to the buildings.

_Mary._ And I thought he was so simple, so innocent, so
unspoiled!... Father, the simple, honest peasant, the only decent
one of us. I cried all last night at the contrast! His
unselfishness, his simplicity.... Why, we're all equally bad now--he
and I--we both sell ourselves, he for the price of those old houses
and I for a few years of splendor and happiness....

The only one whom life seems to teach nothing is _Schoolmaster Lordan_. Oblivious of the stress and storm of reality, he continues to be enraptured with education, with culture, with the opportunities offered by the large cities. He is particularly proud of the Hurley children.

_Lordan._ The way you've all got on! I tell you what, if every boy
and girl I ever taught had turned out a failure I'd feel content and
satisfied when I looked at all of you and saw what I've made of you.

_Mary._ What you've made of us? I wonder do you really know what
you've made of us?

_Lordan._ Isn't it easily seen? One with a motor car, no less.... It
was good, sound seed I sowed long ago in the little schoolhouse and
it's to-day you're all reaping the harvest.

"Harvest" is a grim picture of civilization in its especially demoralizing effects upon the people who spring from the soil. The mock culture and shallow education which inspire peasant folk with awe, which lure the children away from home, only to crush the vitality out of them or to turn them into cowards and compromisers. The tragedy of a civilization that dooms the tillers of the soil to a dreary monotony of hard toil with little return, or charms them to destruction with the false glow of city culture and ease! Greater still this tragedy in a country like Ireland, its people taxed to the very marrow and exploited to the verge of starvation, leaving the young generation no opening, no opportunity in life.

It is inevitable that the sons and daughters of Ireland, robust in body and spirit, yearning for things better and bigger, should desert her. For as _Mary_ says, "When the sun sets here, it's all so dark and cold and dreary." But the young need light and warmth--and these are not in the valley of ever-present misery and want.

"Harvest" is an expressive picture of the social background of the Irish people, a background somber and unpromising but for the streak of dawn that pierces that country's dark horizon in the form of the inherent and irrepressible fighting spirit of the true Irishman, the spirit of the Fenian revolt whose fires often slumber but are never put out, all the ravages of our false civilization notwithstanding.

T. G. MURRAY

MAURICE HARTE

"Maurice Harte" portrays the most sinister force which holds the Irish people in awe--that heaviest of all bondage, priestcraft.

_Michael Harte_, his wife _Ellen_, and their son _Owen_ are bent on one purpose; to make a priest of their youngest child _Maurice_. The mother especially has no other ambition in life than to see her son "priested." No higher ideal to most Catholic mothers than to consecrate their favorite son to the glory of God.

What it has cost the Hartes to attain their ambition and hope is revealed by _Ellen Harte_ in the conversation with her sister and later with her husband, when he informs her that he cannot borrow any more money to continue the boy in the seminary.

_Mrs. Harte._ If Michael and myself have our son nearly a priest
this day, 'tis no small price at all we have paid for it.... Isn't
it the terrible thing, every time you look through that window, to
have the fear in your heart that 'tis the process-server you'll see
and he coming up the boreen?

_Old Harte_ impoverishes himself to enable his son to finish his studies. He has borrowed right and left, till his resources are now entirety exhausted. But he is compelled to try another loan.

_Michael._ He made out 'twas as good as insulting him making such a
small payment, and the money that's on us to be so heavy. "If you
don't wish to sign that note," says he, "you needn't. It don't
matter at all to me one way or the other, for before the next
Quarter Sessions 'tis Andy Driscoll, the process-server, will be
marching up to your door." So what could I do but sign? Why, 'twas
how he turned on me in a red passion. "And isn't it a scandal,
Michael Harte," says he, "for the like o' you, with your name on
them books there for a hundred and fifty pounds, and you with only
the grass of nine or ten cows, to be making your son a priest? The
like of it," says he, "was never heard of before."

_Mrs. Harte._ What business was it of his, I'd like to know? Jealous
of us! There's no fear any of his sons will ever be anything much!

_Michael._ I was thinking it might do Maurice some harm with the
Bishop if it came out on the papers that we were up before the judge
for a civil bill.

_Mrs. Harte._ ... 'Tisn't once or twice I told you that I had my
heart set on hearing Maurice say the marriage words over his own
brother.

_Maurice_ comes home for the summer vacation, looking pale and emaciated. His mother ascribes his condition to the bad city air and hard study at school. But _Maurice_ suffers from a different cause. His is a mental struggle: the maddening struggle of doubt, the realization that he has lost his faith, that he has no vocation, and that he must give up his divinity studies. He knows how fanatically bent his people are on having him ordained, and he is tortured by the grief his decision will cause his parents. His heart is breaking as he at last determines to inform them.

He reasons and pleads with his parents and implores them not to drive him back to college. But they cannot understand. They remain deaf to his arguments; pitifully they beg him not to fail them, not to disappoint the hope of a lifetime. When it all proves of no avail, they finally disclose to _Maurice_ their gnawing secret: the farm has been mortgaged and many debts incurred for the sake of enabling him to attain to the priesthood.

_Michael._ Maurice, would you break our hearts?

_Maurice._ Father, would you have your son live a life of sacrilege?
Would you, Father? Would you?

_Mrs. Harte._ That's only foolish talk. Aren't you every bit as good
as the next?

_Maurice._ I may be, but I haven't a vocation.... My mind is finally
made up.

_Mrs. Harte._ Maurice, listen to me--listen to me! ... If it went
out about you this day, isn't it destroyed forever we'd be? Look!
The story wouldn't be east in Macroom when we'd have the bailiffs
walking in that door. The whole world knows he is to be priested
next June, and only for the great respect they have for us through
the means o' that, 'tisn't James McCarthy alone, but every other one
o' them would come down on us straight for their money. In one week
there wouldn't be a cow left by us, nor a horse, nor a lamb, nor
anything at all!... Look at them books. 'Tis about time you should
know how we stand here.... God knows, I wouldn't be hard on you at
all, but look at the great load o' money that's on us this day, and
mostly all on your account.

_Maurice._ Mother, don't make my cross harder to bear.

_Mrs. Harte._ An' would you be seeing a heavier cross put on them
that did all that mortal man and woman could do for you?

_Maurice._ Look! I'll wear the flesh off my bones, but in pity spare
me!

_Mrs. Harte._ And will you have no pity at all on us and on Owen
here, that have slaved for you all our lives?

_Maurice._ Mother! Mother!

_Mrs. Harte._ You'll go back? 'Tis only a mistake?

_Maurice._ Great God of Heaven!...you'll kill me.

_Michael._ You'll go back, Maurice? The vocation will come to you in
time with the help of God. It will, surely.

_Maurice._ Don't ask me! Don't ask me!

_Mrs. Harte._ If you don't how can I ever face outside this door or
lift my head again?... How could I listen to the neighbors making
pity for me, and many a one o' them only glad in their hearts? How
could I ever face again into town o' Macroom?

_Maurice._ Oh, don't.

_Mrs. Harte._ I tell you, Maurice, I'd rather be lying dead a
thousand times in the graveyard over Killnamartyra--

_Maurice._ Stop, Mother, stop! I'll--I'll go back--as--as you all
wish it.

Nine months later there is general rejoicing at the Hartes': _Maurice_ has passed his examinations with flying colors; he is about to be ordained, and he is to officiate at the wedding of his brother _Owen_ and his wealthy bride.

_Ellen Harte_ plans to give her son a royal welcome. Great preparations are on foot to greet the return of _Maurice_. He comes back--not in the glory and triumph expected by his people, but a driveling idiot. His mental struggle, the agony of whipping himself to the hated task, proved too much for him, and _Maurice_ is sacrificed on the altar of superstition and submission to paternal authority.

In the whole range of the Irish drama "Maurice Harte" is the most Irish, because nowhere does Catholicism demand so many victims as in that unfortunate land. But in a deeper sense the play is of that social importance that knows no limit of race or creed.