Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected, but repeated unconventional punctuation and accents remain.

The cover was created by the transcriber by adding the title to the original cover and is placed in the public domain.

THE MODERN DRAMA SERIES
EDITED BY EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS
GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS
OR
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE DEVIL

A PHILOSOPHICAL COMEDY BY
GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
MCMXIII

COPYRIGHT 1913 THE JOHN W. RUMSEY CO.

COPYRIGHT 1913 MITCHELL KENNERLEY

THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A

[CONTENTS]

INTRODUCTION

There is to me something typically American about the life-story leading up to the play contained in this volume—a story in which the creation and publication of that play will undoubtedly represent only a temporary climax. I want to tell it, not only as a curiosity, but as something that has genuine significance to the world of letters. The meaning of this story, read in conjunction with the work that has grown out of it, is that the time when books were bred by books only is about gone now. The new literature will come straight out of life, apparently, and will in consequence have made a decided gain, even though it may have lost something else. As it springs forth, full-blooded and ready-tongued, we shall undoubtedly hear melancholy voices proclaim the vulgarization of poetry. But if, on hearing such protests rising from some anæmic scholar’s cloistered cell, we look back through the ages and fix our gaze not only on the little followers but on the great leaders—on the Dantes and Shakespeares and Cervanteses and Molières—then we shall find that almost always the term of opprobrium quoted above has implied a vitalization of the supposedly menaced art form.

The author of “The Red Light of Mars” is now in his thirtieth year, having been born on January 7, 1884, in Howard County, Maryland. His father was a Baltimore merchant and insurance broker, who, in his turn, had a Confederate blockade runner for father and an officer in the English army for grandfather. His mother sprang from an old French middle-class family, which had to emigrate from Dijon after the Edict of Nantes.

George Bronson-Howard studied in a private school in London, in the public schools of Baltimore, and in the City College of the same place. At fourteen he lost both parents, just as he was about to enter Johns Hopkins University, his age having been carefully concealed in order that the examinations might be open to him. Instead he became a messenger in the Weather Bureau at Baltimore. While thus employed, he submitted successfully to the first of a series of civil service examinations, each one of which required some skilful disingenuousness lest the applicant’s age prove an insuperable obstacle. During the next seven years, Mr. Bronson-Howard busied himself successively as follows:

Reporter on the Baltimore American; clerk in the office of the Secretary of the Navy; stenographer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; reporter on the Brooklyn Citizen; press representative for one of the Frohman theatres and for one of George W. Lederer’s productions; reporter on the New York Herald; clerk in the Bureau of Navigation at Washington; clerk in the office of the Collector of Customs at Manila, Philippine Islands; assistant to the Collector of Customs at Iloilo, on the island of Panay; newspaper correspondent at Manila; member of the Philippine Constabulary; contributor of fiction stories to various newspapers and magazines; employé of the Imperial Chinese Customs Service at Canton; agent of the Imperial Chinese Government in Shantung Province; war correspondent for the London Chronicle with the Russian army in Manchuria; magazine and newspaper writer at San Francisco.

He was twenty-one when he came East and began to produce a series of clever, quick-moving stories, designated by himself “as melodramatic magazine yarns.” The type of hero around which they were built was wholly new: a secret agent of the State Department. Appearing in book form under the title of “Norroy, Diplomatic Agent,” those stories met with such success that their author found himself relieved for a long time from all necessity of “pot-boiling.”

Since then he has written more stories, three romances—one of which so far has only been published in Germany—essays, plays, criticism, musical revues, etc. He has acted as play reader for the late Henry B. Harris, as dramatic editor on Smith’s Magazine, as dramatic critic on the New York Morning Telegraph, as vaudeville impresario at Paris, and as librettist for the Winter Garden at New York. He has dramatized a novel and novelized a play. He has lived at London, Baltimore, New York, Paris, and Nice—to settle down at last in a house of his own at Belleterre, Port Jefferson, Long Island.

So far Mr. Bronson-Howard has a dozen plays of every conceivable type to his credit, some of them being wholly his own and some being written in collaboration with others. Most of these works have already been produced, some with marked success, and others are scheduled for performance in the immediate future. Thus, for instance, “The Red Light of Mars” will be staged by H. H. Frazee during the season of 1913-14.

There are two qualities that seem to characterize all of Mr. Bronson-Howard’s dramatic productions: a keen perception of the demands and possibilities of the stage, and a shrewdly humorous grasp of human nature. His command of stagecraft is so facile that at times it strikes the critic as a danger to his art. And it has the faults as well as the merits generally accompanying such facility. He would probably be much surprised if he heard himself referred to as a “psychologist”—and yet that is just what he is, in his own practical, intuitive, American way. With these two qualities, which provide for the framework of his art, goes, as its informing and directing spirit, a strong inclination to “side with the under dog.”

Edwin Björkman.

LIST OF PLAYS BY GEORGE BRONSON-HOWARD

The Only Law (with Wilson Mizner), 1909;

Spring Time (with Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon (Wilson)), 1910;

Snobs, 1911;

An Enemy to Society (with Wilson Mizner), 1911;

Rhett Maryl, 1912;

The Reef (with David Belasco), 1912;

The Red Light of Mars, 1913.

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS
OR
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE DEVIL
A Philosophical Comedy

PERSONS

(in order of appearance)

THE RED LIGHT OF MARS

THE FIRST ACT

The study and laboratory of Doctor Addington Agnus, Rothlyn, Long Island.

Entrances: Folding-doors to laboratory; door to garden; spiral stairway; door to hallway.

A long, low white room: white-panelled, white book-shelves, furniture, etc.; upholstered in light yellow and light blue chintz.

Garden seen through two windows on either side of upper door. Folding-doors to laboratory closed.

A sunny day in early winter: late morning. The sun is almost blinding on the white room and the highly polished brasses.

A bright wood-fire burns.

As the curtain rises: a knocking on the garden door, which continues. The knob rattles. The door gives way, almost precipitating Thomas Vanillity on his face.

Vanillity is a college professor, lean, spare, ascetic-looking; wears a dark gray English walking suit; tailed coat; derby hat. Has typical sad Englishman’s moustache, a “drooper”; closely shaven lantern jaws. Carries neatly folded umbrella.

VANILLITY (evidently astounded at unlocked door)

Well: upon my word—upon my word! (Picks up hat, umbrella, etc., which have fallen, and straightens himself) I wonder if he’s in? (A slight explosion from laboratory; he drops articles again) Yes, he’s in! (Picks up articles a second time; straightens tie, etc., in glass; twirls moustache; then goes to fire; stretches out hands) A-a-ah!

[A second knocking on garden door.

VANILLITY (going to folding-doors and calling into laboratory) Oh, Addington, Addington, my boy! (A second explosion from laboratory. Vanillity goes to door, admitting Judge Hippolyte Critty: grossly but respectably fat, with an unctuous smile and a walrus-tusk moustache)

JUDGE CRITTY (smiling genially)

Ah! Professor! Professor! Come to claim all the credit of your pupil’s great discovery? (Waves hand toward laboratory)

VANILLITY (with painful humility)

I did nothing, Judge, nothing. A man like Dr. Agnus would succeed without my teaching or anyone’s. (Shows by his attitude some servility to the Judge)

JUDGE CRITTY (warming hands at fire)

Well, he thinks you’re responsible. “If it wasn’t for Professor Vanillity,” he keeps saying—

VANILLITY

I never knew so painfully modest a boy—

JUDGE CRITTY (they are both at fire)

Boy—you’ve hit it—boy! The great scientist (bows to laboratory doors) retains all his boyish shyness and lack of confidence. He even (preening himself) gives me credit for part of his success. Because once I said the time was coming when science would keep us alive forever. He says that put him on the track.

VANILLITY (with melancholy satisfaction, looking toward laboratory) Immortality! No more building up just for Time to tear down!

JUDGE CRITTY (in a smoking-room manner, ribald)

And making us independent of women!

VANILLITY (shocked)

My dear Judge!

JUDGE CRITTY

Of good women, I mean. They are the only dangerous kind. We learned how to handle the bad ones a few thousand years ago!

VANILLITY

My dear Judge!

JUDGE CRITTY (going back to the days of boyish confidences) Tommy: it’s my profession to be a hypocrite. That’s why I enjoy talking to you. Being absolutely dependent on me, you can’t give me away. (Laughs foxily) If I didn’t have you, I’d become a Catholic. I simply can’t keep all my cleverness to myself. That’s why most people enjoy confession. And so I say again: the good women are the only dangerous kind! (Goes to cellarette) Have a drink! There! (Pours)

VANILLITY

My dear Lytey—

JUDGE CRITTY

Nonsense, down with it! I need you today, and when you’re dead sober, you’ve got a conscience. (Drinking with him) Have a cigar! Take it! (Lights cigars for Vanillity and himself)

[Vanillity’s face brightens as drink and cigar affect him.

JUDGE CRITTY

Yes, sir! The only dangerous kind! That’s why I’m sorry for that poor fellow! (Nods toward laboratory)

VANILLITY

Ssh! Ssh!

JUDGE CRITTY

Pooh! He doesn’t know anybody’s on earth when he’s working—poor devil!

VANILLITY

Poor devil? Poor fellow? Who just won the Nobel prize—the most discussed scientist in the world?

JUDGE CRITTY

And a year from now forgotten!

VANILLITY

Absurd! (Seeing the Judge’s solemn look) Why?

JUDGE CRITTY

In love!

VANILLITY

With a very sweet girl—a very ambitious girl!

JUDGE CRITTY

Ambitious for herself—yes.

VANILLITY

But—

JUDGE CRITTY (looks at watch)

She’ll be here any minute now: was to meet me here quarter to. I came before time to find you; knew you’d be the first to congratulate him! Another drink?

VANILLITY

My dear Lytey—

[Judge Critty forces it on him; Vanillity’s smile becomes a beam.

JUDGE CRITTY

She’s bringing John Magnus and William Tromper with her.

VANILLITY (dazed)

John Magnus!

JUDGE CRITTY

And William Tromper!

VANILLITY (dazed)

John Magnus!!

JUDGE CRITTY

And William Tromper’s the general manager of the Magnus Steel Works! He’s going to offer our friend (waving toward laboratory) one hundred thousand dollars a year! Chief chemist of the works!

VANILLITY

One hundred thousand dollars a year? My God!! (A silence; changed tone; nods toward laboratory) But he won’t take it!

JUDGE CRITTY

He will take it. That’s your job!

VANILLITY (starts)

Mine?

JUDGE CRITTY

And mine. To persuade him!

VANILLITY (dazed)

Fanny wants him to?

JUDGE CRITTY

Yes! And so do you.

VANILLITY

I? Never! (Springs to his feet)

JUDGE CRITTY

Have another drink!

VANILLITY

My dear Lytey—

JUDGE CRITTY

Take it! (Having poured it, he forces it on Vanillity again) And so do you! (With emphasis)

VANILLITY

It’s wicked! It’s sinful!

JUDGE CRITTY

Have—

VANILLITY

No; I won’t have another drink! I know you can smother every good feeling in me with a little liquor—

JUDGE CRITTY

Believe me: not a little!

VANILLITY

But this I won’t do; I will not; I won’t! To stop a man on the trail of immortality? No! No! No!

JUDGE CRITTY

I said good women were the only dangerous kind, didn’t I?

VANILLITY

She wants it? Why?

JUDGE CRITTY

For the reason that nine hundred and ninety-nine Americans do anything “to be as good as anybody.” One hundred thousand dollars a year is the income on two million. It will enable her to gratify every social ambition. She’s ambitious: for herself—I said that, too.

[Vanillity falls into a stupefied rage; his hand sneaks toward decanter; a horn is heard off stage.

JUDGE CRITTY (at window)

Here they are! (Swiftly) Now, mind! (Fiercely) D’you understand?

VANILLITY

I will not!

JUDGE CRITTY

You will! And I’ll tell you why. Magnus put me where I am, and he’ll put me on the Supreme Bench the first vacancy. Then I’ll put you into the first College Presidency! Now, d’you understand?

[A knock at the door.

VANILLITY

Man, it’s awful. It’s sacrilege.

JUDGE CRITTY

It’s life. Unfortunately. But life just the same. We didn’t make life. But we have to live it. Here! Have another drink. (Pours it)

[A second knock is heard; Vanillity hesitates over the drink.

JUDGE CRITTY (impatiently whispering)

Come on—come on!

[Vanillity gulps it and sits disconsolate. Judge Critty opens the door for Fanny Felix, her mother, Mrs. Felix, John Magnus, and William Tromper. Fanny is, par excellence, the well-bred, cold, detached, sure-of-herself American girl of the upper class, very lace-y and lingerie-y. Mrs. Felix looks almost as juvenile; she has less dignity; her coat-collar and tie might be a man’s; her smart hat is feminine enough, and so are her small, high-heeled shoes. John Magnus has an air and an eyeglass; wears a morning coat, vest, and trousers of light gray, and a gray top-hat to match; needs only a pair of binoculars slung over his shoulder to be attired for the races. William Tromper is the vulgar, pig-headed, ignorant, self-made American business man. His small pig-like eyes show sullen hatred, an animal’s cunning, and a savage’s determination. He is continually ready to assert authority over supposed inferiors and equality with superiors: the breed that has made America infamous. He is dressed in that stiff supposed-to-be-correct fashion that marks such people: a suit of expensive but ugly, hard-faced cloth, pressed into knife-like creases about the lapels and trousers; a shining white waistcoat, starched and creased; a hard-boiled shirt; a mathematically perfect rhomboid of a sausage-like necktie; shining, creaky laced shoes of patent leather, etc. When the party enters, and during the first few words of the following conversation, Magnus’s valet takes their heavy motoring coats.

MAGNUS

Here before us, Judge? (Shakes hands)

MRS. FELIX (to Vanillity, shaking hands)

The chauffeur let me drive! Glorious!

FANNY (ditto)

Yes, your hands won’t be fit to be seen for a week.

JUDGE CRITTY (speaking over his shoulder while shaking hands with the women) I don’t think Professor Vanillity ever had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Magnus.

MAGNUS (reprovingly)

I have not had that honor. (Shakes hands) Professor—Mr. Tromper—

TROMPER (in his best middle-class behavior)

Pleased to meet you, Professor. Pleased to see you again, Judge.

JUDGE CRITTY (urbanely)

Just had a little talk with my old friend here; he shares our opinion, Mr. Magnus.

MAGNUS

I do not know that I hold any opinion on the subject, Judge Critty. I came along simply to please the young lady.

VANILLITY (with a ray of hope and in a tone slightly thickened by drink) Then, Mr. Magnus—you don’t wholly believe in the sacrifice of a career for money? (Magnus frowns and looks crushingly at Judge Critty)

JUDGE CRITTY

The Professor is inquiring as to your views, Mr. Magnus. (Looking hard at Vanillity) His own are fixed—

TROMPER

Sacrifice, did I hear you say, Professor? A young fellow gets an offer of a fortune a year and you talk about sacrifice. He hasn’t had any career yet.

VANILLITY (with spirit)

The Nobel prize.

TROMPER (sneers)

Forty thousand dollars for—how many years’study and work—

FANNY

Dr. Agnus is thirty-two—

TROMPER

Say twenty-five years’schooling and work to make forty thousand dollars—that ain’t much of a career? I made that much long before his age.

MAGNUS

The case is different here. Yours can be no criterion. You married probably on less than Dr. Agnus’s schoolboy allowance—

TROMPER

Grew up together, we did. She worked and I worked. To a man that wants comforts, it’s cheaper, marrying.

MAGNUS (smiling)

Showing just how far apart the cases are. The young lady here (nods toward Fanny) does not make marriage cheaper.

FANNY (correctly)

Really, Mr. Magnus—

MAGNUS

I withdraw, with apologies.

FANNY

But don’t you want Addington to do this?

MAGNUS

I haven’t been conscious of wanting anything these many years, Fanny.

MRS. FELIX (smiling)

You don’t need to be, John. You lift your eyebrows and people hustle. You get what you want before you’re conscious of wanting it. But you do want Dr. Agnus to take his offer (points to Tromper), don’t you?

MAGNUS

Do I, Tromper?

TROMPER

Well, sir—

MRS. FELIX

He means, shall he tell the truth?

MAGNUS

The lady wishes you to tell the truth, Tromper.

TROMPER

Well, sir—

MRS. FELIX

Take your time. A business man can’t speak the truth so quickly. That takes practice.

TROMPER (to Magnus)

Well, sir, if what you said about the young doctor is true—

FANNY (triumphantly)

And it is true. I told him, myself.

TROMPER

That one chemical discovery of his alone will save the mills—I wouldn’t undertake to say how much—that is, if he can do it!

FANNY

He can!

MAGNUS

Well?

FANNY

Well? (Her eyes turn toward the laboratory)

MAGNUS

He is in apparently. (To the others) We are all agreed upon the matter?

JUDGE CRITTY (hastily)

I can answer for Professor Vanillity and myself.

FANNY

And I for mother!

MRS. FELIX

I think it is a shame, Fanny.

MAGNUS

Apparently Tromper answers for me.

JUDGE CRITTY

I think we can convince the young man where his duty lies—

MRS. FELIX

I wish I could convince the lot of you where your duty lies! Can’t you see that all this comes from not giving women the vote long ago?

FANNY

Mother, dear!—exercise your monomania at any other time than this!

MAGNUS (to Mrs. Felix, amused)

Really?

MRS. FELIX

Really! When a woman is allowed to figure out her duty to the nation, she’ll want her husband to give it his best, instead of giving his best to her.

FANNY

What nonsense, mother! A man’s first duty is to his home—

MRS. FELIX

Give them the vote, and they’ll sacrifice the home to make the nation.

MAGNUS (seated, crossing legs)

Ladies, proceed! This is strangely interesting to me.

MRS. FELIX

It will be more than interesting to you when we win, John Magnus. Why do you control the money-market of America? Because women, having no interest in business, urge their men to make as much money as they can. They can do this only by taking advantage of other people’s weakness; not realizing that, if they do this to weaker people, stronger men will do it to them. And so it’s dog eat dog, and as you’re the biggest one in the kennel you eat them all—

FANNY

Mother! Are you losing all your manners?

MAGNUS

Thanks for making me a big dog anyhow, Loo—But how would women voting change all this?

FANNY

Oh, mother!—please!

MRS. FELIX

Why, as soon as women realize that modern laws of business, applied to the home, would make every man a thief and every woman a prostitute, they’ll stop urging their husbands to make more than the next man—

MAGNUS

Loo! I hereby subscribe any reasonable sum you say to the cause of suffrage—thereby planning my own downfall!—

MRS. FELIX

Or showing your contempt!—Well! you’re amusing anyhow, John Magnus. If somebody could make you take things seriously, you’d be as great a man as your subsidized newspapers say you are—

JUDGE CRITTY

Really, my dear Mrs. Felix;—even the hysterical newspapers admit Mr. Magnus is a great man!

MAGNUS

My dear press-agent—we are in the presence of my friends, not of the public. You may consider yourself off duty.

MRS. FELIX

No man can be selfish and great. Mr. Magnus only amuses himself by playing a game with the public. But how he can be amused by winning games from his inferiors, I don’t know. That’s the kink in his greatness.

MAGNUS

I have just begun to realize their inferiority, Loo. That’s why the game begins to bore me—

MRS. FELIX

Start teaching them instead of beating them, then.

MAGNUS

Anything to get back my interest in life! How shall I begin?

MRS. FELIX

By endowing that brilliant boy in there to carry on his search for immortality—give him some of your useless millions.

FANNY

Mother! He isn’t a beggar. He can give himself and me everything we need by work.

MRS. FELIX

Yes, but can he give the world everything—

TROMPER

He can give the world more iron rails for railroads; more armor-plate for battleships—

MRS. FELIX

More money for Magnus, you mean. Railroads and battleships never made anybody wiser or happier—