The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sweet and Twenty, by Floyd Dell

Stewart Kidd Dramatic Anthologies

Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays

Edited by

FRANK SHAY and PIERRE LOVING

This volume contains FIFTY REPRESENTATIVE ONE-ACT PLAYS of the MODERN THEATER, chosen from the dramatic works of contemporary writers all over the world and is the second volume in the Stewart Kidd Dramatic Anthologies, the first being European Theories of the Drama, by Barrett H. Clark, which has been so enthusiastically received.

The editors have scrupulously sifted countless plays and have selected the best available in English. One-half the plays have never before been published in book form; thirty-one are no longer available in any other edition.

The work satisfies a long-felt want for a handy collection of the choicest plays produced by the art theaters all over the world. It is a complete repertory for a little theater, a volume for the study of the modern drama, a representative collection of the world's best short plays.

CONTENTS

• AUSTRIA
• Schnitzler (Arthur)—Literature
• BELGIUM
• Maeterlinck (Maurice)—The Intruder
• BOLIVIA
• More (Federico)—Interlude
• FRANCE
• Ancey (George)—M. Lamblin
• Porto-Riche (Georges)—Francoise's Luck
• GERMANY
• Ettinger (Karl)—Altruism
• von Hofmannsthal (Hugo)—Madonna Dianora
• Wedekind (Frank)—The Tenor
• GREAT BRITAIN
• Bennett (Arnold)—A Good Woman
• Calderon (George)—The Little Stone House.
• Cannan (Gilbert)—Mary's Wedding
• Dowson (Ernest)—The Pierrot of the Minute.
• Ellis (Mrs. Havelock)—The Subjection of Kezia
• Hankin (St. John)—The Constant Lover
• INDIA
• Mukerji (Dhan Gopal)—The Judgment of Indra
• IRELAND
• Gregory (Lady)—The Workhouse Ward
• HOLLAND
• Speenhoff (J. H.)—Louise
• HUNGARY
• Biro (Lajos)—The Grandmother
• ITALY
• Giocosa (Giuseppe)—The Rights of the Soul
• RUSSIA
• Andreyev (Leonid)—Love of One's Neighbor
• Tchekoff (Anton)—The Boor
• SPAIN
• Benevente (Jacinto)—His Widow's Husband
• Quinteros (Serafina and Joaquin Alverez)—A Sunny Morning
• SWEDEN
• Strindberg (August)—The Creditor
• Wied (Gustave)—Autumn Fires
• UNITED STATES
• Beach (Lewis)—Brothers
• Cowan (Sada)—In the Morgue
• Crocker (Bosworth)—The Baby Carriage
• Cronyn (George W.)—A Death in Fever Flat
• Davies (Mary Carolyn)—The Slave with Two Faces
• Day (Frederick L.)—The Slump
• Flanner (Hildegard)—Mansions
• Glaspell (Susan)—Trifles
• Gerstenberg (Alice)—The Pot Boiler
• Helburn (Theresa)—Enter the Hero
• Hudson (Holland)—The Shepherd in the Distance
• Kemp (Harry)—Boccaccio's Untold Tale
• Langner (Lawrence)—Another Way Out
• MacMillan (Mary)—The Shadowed Star
• Millay (Edna St. Vincent)—Aro da Capo
• Moeller (Philip)—Helena's Husband
• O'Neill (Eugene)—Ile
• Stevens (Thomas Wood)—The Nursery Maid of Heaven
• Stevens (Wallace)—Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise
• Tompkins (Frank G.)—Sham
• Walker (Stuart)—The Medicine Show
• Wellman (Rita)—For All Time
• Wilde (Percival)—The Finger of God
• YIDDISH
• Ash (Sholom)—Night
• Pinski (David)—Forgotten Souls

Large 8vo, 585 pages. Net, $5.00

Send for Complete Dramatic Catalogue

STEWART KIDD COMPANY
PUBLISHERS, CINCINNATI, U. S. A.

STEWART KIDD MODERN PLAYS
Edited by Frank Shay

SWEET AND TWENTY

Stewart Kidd Modern Plays

Edited by FRANK SHAY

To meet the immensely increased demands of the play-reading public and those interested in the modern drama, Stewart Kidd are issuing under the general editorship of Frank Shay a series of plays from the pens of the world's best contemporary writers. No effort is being spared to secure the best work available, and the plays are issued in a form that is at once attractive to readers and suited to the needs of the performer and producer. Buffalo Express: "Each play is of merit. Each is unlike the other. The group furnishes a striking example of the realistic trend of the modern drama."

From time to time special announcements will be printed giving complete lists of the plays.

SHAM, a Social Satire in One Act. By Frank G. Tompkins.
Originally produced by Sam Hume, at the Arts and Crafts Theatre, Detroit.
San Francisco Bulletin: "The lines are new and many of them are decidedly clever."
Providence Journal: "An ingenious and merry little one-act play."

THE SHEPHERD IN THE DISTANCE, a Pantomime in One Act. By Holland Hudson. Originally produced by the Washington Square Players.
Oakland Tribune: "A pleasing pantomime of the Ancient East."

MANSIONS, a Play in One Act. By Hildegarde Flanner. Originally produced by the Indiana Little Theatre Society.
Three Arts Magazine: "This thoughtful and well-written play of Characters and Ideals has become a favorite with Little Theatres and is now available in print."

HEARTS TO MEND, a Fantasy in One Act. By H. A. Overstreet. Originally produced by the Fireside Players, White Plains, N. Y.
St. Louis Star: "It is a light whimsy and well carried out."
San Francisco Chronicle: "No one is likely to hear or read it without real and legitimate pleasure."

SIX WHO PASS WHILE THE LENTILS BOIL. By Stuart Walker.
Originally produced by the Portmanteau Players at Christodora House, New York City.
Brooklyn Eagle: "Literary without being pedantic, and dramatic without being noisy."

OTHERS TO FOLLOW. Bound in Art Paper. Each, net, .50

Sweet and Twenty
A COMEDY IN ONE ACT

By

FLOYD DELL

Author of
MOON CALF

First produced by the Provincetown Players, New York City January 25, 1918, with the following cast:

CINCINNATI
STEWART KIDD COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1921
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT IN ENGLAND

Sweet and Twenty is fully protected by the copyright law, all requirements of which have been complied with. No performance, either professional or amateur, may be given without the written permission of the author or his representative, Stewart Kidd Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sweet and Twenty

Scene—A corner of the cherry orchard on the country place of the late Mr. Boggley, now on sale and open for inspection to prospective buyers. The cherry orchard, now in full bloom, is a very pleasant place. There is a green-painted rustic bench beside the path....

(This scene can be effectively produced on a small stage by a back-drop painted a blue-green color, with a single conventionalized cherry branch painted across it, and two three-leaved screens masking the wings, painted in blue-green with a spray of cherry blossoms).

A young woman, dressed in a light summer frock and carrying a parasol, drifts in from the back. She sees the bench, comes over to it and sits down with an air of petulant weariness.

A handsome young man enters from the right. He stops short in surprise on seeing the charming stranger who lolls upon the bench. He takes off his hat.

HE

Oh, I beg your pardon!

SHE

Oh, you needn't! I've no right to be here, either.

HE

(Coming down to her) Now what do you mean by that?

SHE

I thought perhaps you were playing truant, as I am.

HE

Playing truant?

SHE

I was looking at the house, you know. And I got tired and ran away.

HE

Well, to tell the truth, so did I. It's dull work, isn't it?

SHE

I've been upstairs and down for two hours. That family portrait gallery finished me. It was so old and gloomy and dead that I felt as if I were dead myself. I just had to do something. I wanted to jab my parasol through the window-pane. I understood just how the suffragettes felt. But I was afraid of shocking the agent. He is such a meek little man, and he seemed to think so well of me. If I had broken the window I would have shattered his ideals of womanhood, too, I'm afraid. So I just slipped away quietly and came here.

HE

I've only been there half an hour and we—I've only been in the basement. That's why our tours of inspection didn't bring us together sooner. I've been cross-examining the furnace. Do you understand furnaces? (He sits down beside her) I don't.

SHE

Do you like family portraits? I hate 'em!

HE

What! Do the family portraits go with the house?

SHE

No, thank heaven. They've been bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Horrors, I understand. They're valuable historically—early colonial governors and all that sort of stuff. But there is someone with me who—who takes a deep interest in such things.

HE

(frowning at a sudden memory) Hm. Didn't I see you at that real estate office in New York yesterday?

SHE

Yes. He was with me then.

HE (compassionately)

I—I thought I remembered seeing you with—with him.

SHE (cheerfully)

Isn't he just the sort of man who would be interested in family portraits?

HE (confused)

Well—since you ask me—I—!

SHE

Oh, that's all right. Tubby's a dear, in spite of his funny old ideas. I like him very much.

HE

(gulping the pill) Yes....

SHE

He's so anxious to please me in buying this house. I suppose it's all right to have a house, but I'd like to become acquainted with it gradually. I'd like to feel that there was always some corner left to explore—some mystery saved up for a rainy day. Tubby can't understand that. He drags me everywhere, explaining how we'll keep this and change that—dormer windows here and perhaps a new wing there.... I suppose you've been rebuilding the house, too?

HE

No. Merely decided to turn that sunny south room into a study. It would make a very pleasant place to work. But if you really want the place, I'd hate to take it away from you.

SHE

I was just going to say that if you really wanted it, I'd withdraw. It was Tubby's idea to buy it, you know—not mine. You do want it, don't you?

HE

I can't say that I do. It's so infernally big. But Maria thinks I ought to have it. (Explanatorily) Maria is—

SHE (gently)

She's—the one who is interested in furnaces, I understand. I saw her with you at the real-estate office yesterday. Well—furnaces are necessary, I suppose. (There is a pause, which she breaks suddenly) Do you see that bee?

HE

A bee? (He follows her gaze up to a cluster of blossoms.)

SHE

Yes—there! (Affectionately) The rascal! There he goes. (Their eyes follow the flight of the bee across the orchard. There is a silence, in which Maria and Tubby drift into the limbo of forgotten things. Alone together beneath the blossoms, a spell seems to have fallen upon them. She tries to think of something to say—and at last succeeds.)

SHE

Have you heard the story of the people who used to live here?

HE

No; why?

SHE

An agent was telling us. It's quite romantic—and rather sad. You see, the man that built this house was in love with a girl. He was building it for her—as a surprise. But he had neglected to mention to her that he was in love with her. And so, in pique, she married another man, though she was really in love with him. The news came just when he had finished the house. He shut it up for a year or two, but eventually married someone else, and they lived here for ten years—most unhappily. Then they went abroad, and the house was sold. It was bought, curiously enough, by the husband of the girl he had been in love with. They lived here till they died—hating each other to the end, the agent says.

HE

It gives me the shivers. To think of that house, haunted by the memories of wasted love! Which of us, I wonder, will have to live in it? I don't want to.

SHE (prosaically)

Oh, don't take it so seriously as all that. If one can't live in a house where there's been an unhappy marriage, why, good heavens, where is one going to live? Most marriages, I fancy, are unhappy.

HE

A bitter philosophy for one so—

SHE

Nonsense! But listen to the rest of the story. The most interesting part is about this very orchard.

HE

Really!

SHE

Yes. This orchard, it seems, was here before the house was. It was part of an old farm where he and she—the unhappy lovers, you know—stopped one day, while they were out driving, and asked for something to eat. The farmer's wife was busy, but she gave them each a glass of milk, and told them they could eat all the cherries they wanted. So they picked a hatful of cherries, and ate them, sitting on a bench like this one. And then he fell in love with her....

HE

And ... didn't tell her so.... (She glances at him in alarm. His self-possession has vanished. He is pale and frightened, but there is a desperate look in his eyes, as if some unknown power were forcing him to do something very rash. In short, he seems like a young man who has just fallen in love.)

SHE (hastily)

So you see this orchard is haunted, too!

HE

I feel it. I seem to hear the ghost of that old-time lover whispering to me....

SHE (provocatively)

Indeed! What does he say?

HE

He says: "I was a coward; you must be bold. I was silent; you must speak out."

SHE (mischievously)

That's very curious—because that old lover isn't dead at all. He's a baronet or something in England.

HE (earnestly)

His youth is dead; and it is his youth that speaks to me.

SHE (quickly)

You mustn't believe all that ghosts tell you.

HE

Oh, but I must. For they know the folly of silence—the bitterness of cowardice.

SHE

The circumstances were—slightly—different, weren't they?

HE (stubbornly)

I don't care!

SHE (soberly)

You know perfectly well it's no use.

HE

I can't help that!

SHE

Please! You simply mustn't! It's disgraceful!

HE

What's disgraceful?

SHE (confused)

What you are going to say.

HE (simply)

Only that I love you. What is there disgraceful about that? It's beautiful!

SHE

It's wrong.

HE

It's inevitable.

SHE

Why inevitable? Can't you talk with a girl in a cherry orchard for half an hour without falling in love with her?

HE

Not if the girl is you.

SHE

But why especially me?

HE

I don't know. Love—is a mystery. I only know that I was destined to love you.

SHE

How can you be so sure?

HE

Because you have changed the world for me. It's as though I had been groping about in the dark, and then—sunrise! And there's a queer feeling here. (He puts his hand on his heart) To tell the honest truth, there's a still queerer feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's a gone feeling, if you must know. And my knees are weak. I know now why men used to fall on their knees when they told a girl they loved her; it was because they couldn't stand up. And there's a feeling in my feet as though I were walking on air. And—

SHE (faintly)

That's enough!

HE

And I could die for you and be glad of the chance. It's perfectly absurd, but it's absolutely true. I've never spoken to you before, and heaven knows I may never get a chance to speak to you again, but I'd never forgive myself if I didn't say this to you now. I love you! love you! love you! Now tell me I'm a fool. Tell me to go. Anything—I've said my say.... Why don't you speak?

SHE

I—I've nothing to say—except—except that I—well—(almost inaudibly) I feel some of those symptoms myself.

HE (triumphantly)

You love me!

SHE

I—don't know. Yes. Perhaps.

HE

Then kiss me!

SHE (doubtfully)

No....

HE

Kiss me!

SHE (tormentedly)

Oh, what's the use?

HE

I don't know. I don't care. I only know that we love each other.

SHE

(after a moment's hesitation, desperately) I don't care, either! I do want to kiss you. (She does.... He is the first to awake from the ecstasy.)

HE

It is wicked—

SHE (absently)

Is it?

HE

But, oh heaven! kiss me again! (She does.)

SHE

Darling!

HE

Do you suppose anyone is likely to come this way?

SHE

No.

HE (speculatively)

Your husband is probably still in the portrait gallery....

SHE

My husband! (Drawing away) What do you mean? (Thoroughly awake now) You didn't think—? (She jumps up and laughs convulsively) He thought poor old Tubby was my husband!!

HE

(staring up at her bewildered) Why, isn't he your husband?

SHE (scornfully)

No!! He's my uncle!

HE

Your unc—

SHE

Yes, of course! (Indignantly) Do you suppose I would be married to a man that's fat and bald and forty years old?

HE (distressed)

I—I beg your pardon. I did think so.

SHE

Just because you saw me with him? How ridiculous!

HE

It was a silly mistake. But—the things you said! You spoke so—realistically—about marriage.

SHE

It was your marriage I was speaking about. (With hasty compunction) Oh, I beg your—

HE

My marriage! (He rises) Good heavens! And to whom, pray, did you think I was married? (A light dawning) To Maria? Why, Maria is my aunt!

SHE

Yes—of course. How stupid of me.

HE

Let's get this straight. Are you married to anybody?

SHE

Certainly not. As if I would let anybody make love to me if I were!

HE

Now don't put on airs. You did something quite as improper. You kissed a married man.

SHE

I didn't.

HE

It's the same thing. You thought I was married.

SHE

But you aren't.

HE

No. I'm not married. And—and—you're not married. (The logic of the situation striking him all of a sudden) In fact—! (He pauses, rather alarmed.)

SHE

Yes?

HE

In fact—well—there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't make love to each other!

SHE

(equally startled) Why—that's so!

HE

Then—then—shall we?

SHE

(sitting down and looking demurely at her toes) Oh, not if you don't want to!

HE

(adjusting himself to the situation) Well—under the circumstances—I suppose I ought to begin by asking you to marry me....

SHE

(languidly, with a provoking glance) You don't seem very anxious to.

HE

(feeling at a disadvantage) It isn't that—but—well—

SHE (lightly)

Well what?

HE

Dash it all, I don't know your name!

SHE

(looking at him with wild curiosity) That didn't seem to stop you a while ago....

HE (doggedly)

Well, then—will you marry me?

SHE (promptly)

No.

HE (surprised)

No! Why do you say that?

SHE (coolly)

Why should I marry you? I know nothing about you. I've known you for less than an hour.

HE (sardonically)

That fact didn't seem to keep you from kissing me.

SHE

Besides—I don't like the way you go about it. If you'd propose the same way you made love to me, maybe I'd accept you.

HE

All right. (Dropping on one knee before her) Beloved! (An awkward pause) No, I can't do it. (He gets up and distractedly dusts off his knees with his handkerchief) I'm very sorry.

SHE

(with calm inquiry) Perhaps it's because you don't love me any more?

HE (fretfully)

Of course I love you!

SHE (coldly)

But you don't want to marry me.... I see.

HE

Not at all! I do want to marry you. But—