SCENE--Two days out. A section of the promenade deck. MILDRED DOUGLAS
and her aunt are discovered reclining in deck chairs. The former is a
girl of twenty, slender, delicate, with a pale, pretty face marred by a
self-conscious expression of disdainful superiority. She looks fretful,
nervous and discontented, bored by her own anemia. Her aunt is a
pompous and proud--and fat--old lady. She is a type even to the point
of a double chin and lorgnettes. She is dressed pretentiously, as if
afraid her face alone would never indicate her position in life.
MILDRED is dressed all in white.
The impression to be conveyed by this scene is one of the beautiful,
vivid life of the sea all about--sunshine on the deck in a great flood,
the fresh sea wind blowing across it. In the midst of this, these two
incongruous, artificial figures, inert and disharmonious, the elder
like a gray lump of dough touched up with rouge, the younger looking as
if the vitality of her stock had been sapped before she was conceived,
so that she is the expression not of its life energy but merely of the
artificialities that energy had won for itself in the spending.
MILDRED--[_Looking up with affected dreaminess._] How the black smoke
swirls back against the sky! Is it not beautiful?
AUNT--[_Without looking up._] I dislike smoke of any kind.
MILDRED--My great-grandmother smoked a pipe--a clay pipe.
AUNT--[_Ruffling._] Vulgar!
MILDRED--She was too distant a relative to be vulgar. Time mellows
pipes.
AUNT--[_Pretending boredom but irritated._] Did the sociology you took
up at college teach you that--to play the ghoul on every possible
occasion, excavating old bones? Why not let your great-grandmother rest
in her grave?
MILDRED--[_Dreamily._] With her pipe beside her--puffing in Paradise.
AUNT--[_With spite._] Yes, you are a natural born ghoul. You are even
getting to look like one, my dear.
MILDRED--[_In a passionless tone._] I detest you, Aunt. [_Looking at
her critically._] Do you know what you remind me of? Of a cold pork
pudding against a background of linoleum tablecloth in the kitchen of
a--but the possibilities are wearisome. [_She closes her eyes._]
AUNT--[_With a bitter laugh._] Merci for your candor. But since I am
and must be your chaperone--in appearance, at least--let us patch up
some sort of armed truce. For my part you are quite free to indulge any
pose of eccentricity that beguiles you--as long as you observe the
amenities--
MILDRED--[_Drawling._] The inanities?
AUNT--[_Going on as if she hadn't heard._] After exhausting the morbid
thrills of social service work on New York's East Side--how they must
have hated you, by the way, the poor that you made so much poorer in
their own eyes!--you are now bent on making your slumming
international. Well, I hope Whitechapel will provide the needed nerve
tonic. Do not ask me to chaperone you there, however. I told your
father I would not. I loathe deformity. We will hire an army of
detectives and you may investigate everything--they allow you to see.
MILDRED--[_Protesting with a trace of genuine earnestness._] Please do
not mock at my attempts to discover how the other half lives. Give me
credit for some sort of groping sincerity in that at least. I would
like to help them. I would like to be some use in the world. Is it my
fault I don't know how? I would like to be sincere, to touch life
somewhere. [_With weary bitterness._] But I'm afraid I have neither the
vitality nor integrity. All that was burnt out in our stock before I
was born. Grandfather's blast furnaces, flaming to the sky, melting
steel, making millions--then father keeping those home fires burning,
making more millions--and little me at the tail-end of it all. I'm a
waste product in the Bessemer process--like the millions. Or rather, I
inherit the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the
energy, none of the strength of the steel that made it. I am sired by
gold and darned by it, as they say at the race track--damned in more
ways than one, [_She laughs mirthlessly_].
AUNT--[_Unimpressed--superciliously._] You seem to be going in for
sincerity to-day. It isn't becoming to you, really--except as an
obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a sort of
sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must confess you like
that better.
MILDRED--[_Again affected and bored._] Yes, I suppose I do. Pardon me
for my outburst. When a leopard complains of its spots, it must sound
rather grotesque. [_In a mocking tone._] Purr, little leopard. Purr,
scratch, tear, kill, gorge yourself and be happy--only stay in the
jungle where your spots are camouflage. In a cage they make you
conspicuous.
AUNT--I don't know what you are talking about.
MILDRED--It would be rude to talk about anything to you. Let's just
talk. [_She looks at her wrist watch._] Well, thank goodness, it's
about time for them to come for me. That ought to give me a new thrill,
Aunt.
AUNT--[_Affectedly troubled._] You don't mean to say you're really
going? The dirt--the heat must be frightful--
MILDRED--Grandfather started as a puddler. I should have inherited an
immunity to heat that would make a salamander shiver. It will be fun to
put it to the test.
AUNT--But don't you have to have the captain's--or
someone's--permission to visit the stokehole?
MILDRED--[_With a triumphant smile._] I have it--both his and the chief
engineer's. Oh, they didn't want to at first, in spite of my social
service credentials. They didn't seem a bit anxious that I should
investigate how the other half lives and works on a ship. So I had to
tell them that my father, the president of Nazareth Steel, chairman of
the board of directors of this line, had told me it would be all right.
AUNT--He didn't.
MILDRED--How naive age makes one! But I said he did, Aunt. I even said
he had given me a letter to them--which I had lost. And they were
afraid to take the chance that I might be lying. [_Excitedly._] So it's
ho! for the stokehole. The second engineer is to escort me. [_Looking
at her watch again._] It's time. And here he comes, I think. [_The
SECOND ENGINEER enters, He is a husky, fine-looking man of thirty-five
or so. He stops before the two and tips his cap, visibly embarrassed
and ill-at-ease._]
SECOND ENGINEER--Miss Douglas?
MILDRED--Yes. [_Throwing off her rugs and getting to her feet._] Are we
all ready to start?
SECOND ENGINEER--In just a second, ma'am. I'm waiting for the Fourth.
He's coming along.
MILDRED--[_With a scornful smile._] You don't care to shoulder this
responsibility alone, is that it?
SECOND ENGINEER--[_Forcing a smile._] Two are better than one.
[_Disturbed by her eyes, glances out to sea--blurts out._] A fine day
we're having.
MILDRED--Is it?
SECOND ENGINEER--A nice warm breeze--
MILDRED--It feels cold to me.
SECOND ENGINEER--But it's hot enough in the sun--
MILDRED--Not hot enough for me. I don't like Nature. I was never
athletic.
SECOND ENGINEER--[_Forcing a smile._] Well, you'll find it hot enough
where you're going.
MILDRED--Do you mean hell?
SECOND ENGINEER--[_Flabbergasted, decides to laugh._] Ho-ho! No, I mean
the stokehole.
MILDRED--My grandfather was a puddler. He played with boiling steel.
SECOND ENGINEER--[_All at sea--uneasily._] Is that so? Hum, you'll
excuse me, ma'am, but are you intending to wear that dress.
MILDRED--Why not?
SECOND ENGINEER--You'll likely rub against oil and dirt. It can't be
helped.
MILDRED--It doesn't matter. I have lots of white dresses.
SECOND ENGINEER--I have an old coat you might throw over--
MILDRED--I have fifty dresses like this. I will throw this one into the
sea when I come back. That ought to wash it clean, don't you think?
SECOND ENGINEER--[_Doggedly._] There's ladders to climb down that are
none too clean--and dark alleyways--
MILDRED--I will wear this very dress and none other.
SECOND ENGINEER--No offence meant. It's none of my business. I was only
warning you--
MILDRED--Warning? That sounds thrilling.
SECOND ENGINEER--[_Looking down the deck--with a sigh of
relief._]--There's the Fourth now. He's waiting for us. If you'll come--
MILDRED--Go on. I'll follow you. [_He goes. Mildred turns a mocking
smile on her aunt._] An oaf--but a handsome, virile oaf.
AUNT--[_Scornfully._] Poser!
MILDRED--Take care. He said there were dark alleyways--
AUNT--[_In the same tone._] Poser!
MILDRED--[_Biting her lips angrily._] You are right. But would that my
millions were not so anemically chaste!
AUNT--Yes, for a fresh pose I have no doubt you would drag the name of
Douglas in the gutter!
MILDRED--From which it sprang. Good-by, Aunt. Don't pray too hard that
I may fall into the fiery furnace.
AUNT--Poser!
MILDRED--[_Viciously._] Old hag! [_She slaps her aunt insultingly
across the face and walks off, laughing gaily._]
AUNT--[_Screams after her._] I said poser!
[_Curtain_]