FullReads

HAROLD.
( frightened )

No!

ISABEL.
Yes! If she is not already here and looking for you….

HAROLD.
Impossible!

ISABEL.
Those letters were very convincing, Harold!

HAROLD.
( shaking his head )

Not in the face of the universal belief of all Evanston in my guilt.

ISABEL.
Then she has forgiven you anyway.

HAROLD.
( sadly )

You do not know her.

ISABEL.
Don’t I? No, Harold, this is to be our last breakfast together. You wouldn’t have her walk in on us, would you?–And that reminds me. We’re out of coffee. You must go and get some while I dress. And go to the little French bakery for some brioches.

HAROLD.
In these clothes?

ISABEL.
Or Jim’s. Just as you like.

HAROLD.
Very well. I shall go as I am.

( Gloomily )
After all, I don’t know why I should mind one more
farcical touch to my situation. A grown man that
doesn’t know how to earn his living–

ISABEL.
I’ve suggested several ways.

HAROLD.
Yes, acting! No. I’d rather starve.

ISABEL.
There are other alternatives.

HAROLD.
Yes. Looking over the scientific magazines and finding out about new inventions, and writing little pieces about them and selling that to other magazines!

ISABEL.
Why not?

HAROLD.
A pretty job for a poet! What do I know about machinery?

ISABEL.
All the poets I know pay their rent that way. And they none of them know anything about machinery.

HAROLD.
All right. I’m in a crazy world. Everything’s topsy-turvy. Even the streets have gone insane. They wind and twist until they cross their own tracks. I know I’ll get lost looking for that French bakery. ( He goes to the door.) Greenwich Village! My God!

He goes out. She, after a moment, goes into the back room. The charwoman enters, and commences to clean up the place. Isabel comes back, partly clothed and with the rest of her things on her arm, and finishes her toilet in front of the mirror. A sort of conversation ensues.

THE CHARWOMAN.
A grand day it’s going to be.

ISABEL.
( after a pause )

–Do you think I’m a bad woman, Mrs. Murphy?

MRS. MURPHY.
Come, now, it’s not a fair question, and me workin’ for you. I’ve no call to be criticizin’ the way you do behave. It’s my business to be cleanin’ up the place, and if ’tis a nest of paganism, sure ’tis not for my own soul to answer for it at the Judgment Day. And a blessed thought it is, too, that they that follow after the lusts of the flesh must go to hell, or else who knows what a poor soul like me would do sometimes, what with seein’ the carryin’s-on that one does see. But I’d not be breathin’ a word against a nice young lady like yourself.

ISABEL.
What do you think of Mr. Falcington?

MRS. MURPHY.
Well, as my sister that’s dead in Ireland used to say, and we two girls together, “Sure,” she said, “there’s no accountin’ for tastes,” she said. And you with a fine grand man the like of Mr. Jim, to be takin’ up with a lost sheep like this one. But I’d not be sayin’ a word against him, for it’s a pretty boy he is, to be sure. Well, there’s a Last Day comin’ for us all, and the sooner the better, the way the young do be shiftin’ and changin’ as the fancy takes them. I say nothin’ at all, nothin’ at all–but if you’ve a quarrel had with Mr. Jim, why don’t you make it up with him?