MURRAY. What I've been sayin'? I sure do--every word of it!
EILEEN (_puzzled_). I can't understand how anyone could---- (_With a
worried glance over her shoulder._) I think I'd better look for Miss
Gilpin, hadn't I? She may wonder---- (_She half rises from her chair._)
MURRAY (_quickly_). No. Please don't go yet. Sit down. Please do. (_She
glances at him irresolutely, then resumes her chair._) They'll give you
your diet of milk and shoo you off to bed on that freezing porch soon
enough, don't worry. I'll see to it that you don't fracture any rules.
(_Hitching his chair nearer hers--impulsively._) In all charity to me
you've got to stick awhile. I haven't had a chance to really talk to a
soul for a week. You found what I said a while ago hard to believe,
didn't you?
EILEEN (_with a smile_). Isn't it? You said you hoped you wouldn't get
well too soon!
MURRAY. And I meant it! This place is honestly like heaven to me--a
lonely heaven till your arrival. (Eileen _looks embarrassed._) And why
wouldn't it be? I've no fear for my health--eventually. Just let me
tell you what I was getting away from---- (_With a sudden laugh full of
a weary bitterness._) Do you know what it means to work from seven at
night till three in the morning as a reporter on a morning newspaper in
a town of twenty thousand people--for _ten years_? No. You don't. You
can't. No one could who hadn't been through the mill. But what it did
to me--it made me happy--yes, happy!--to get out here--T.B. and all,
notwithstanding.
EILEEN (_looking at him curiously_). But I always thought being a
reporter was so interesting.
MURRAY (_with a cynical laugh_). Interesting? On a small town rag? A
month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten
years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue
moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony.
(_He laughs again._) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of
the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, unable to sleep through a meeting of the Common Council on
account of the noisy oratory caused by John Smith's application for a
permit to build a house; making a note that a tugboat towed two barges
loaded with coal up the river, that Mrs. Perkins spent a week-end with
relatives in Hickville, that John Jones---- Oh help! Why go on? Ten
years of it! I'm a broken man. God, how I used to pray that our
Congressman would commit suicide, or the Mayor murder his wife--just to
be able to write a real story!
EILEEN (_with a smile_). Is it as bad as that? But weren't there other
things in the town--outside your work--that were interesting?
MURRAY (_decidedly_). No. Never anything new--and I knew everyone and
every thing in town by heart years ago. (_With sudden bitterness._) Oh,
it was my own fault. Why didn't I get out of it? Well, I didn't. I was
always going to--to-morrow--and to-morrow never came. I got in a
rut--and stayed put. People seem to get that way, somehow--in that
town. It's in the air. All the boys I grew up with--nearly all, at
least--took root in the same way. It took pleurisy, followed by T.B.,
to blast me loose.
EILEEN (_wonderingly_). But--your family--didn't they live there?
MURRAY. I haven't much of a family left. My mother died when I was a
kid. My father--he was a lawyer--died when I was nineteen, just about
to go to college. He left nothing, so I went to work on the paper
instead. And there I've been ever since. I've two sisters, respectably
married and living in another part of the state. We don't get
along--but they are paying for me here, so I suppose I've no kick.
(_Cynically._) A family wouldn't have changed things. From what I've
seen that blood-thicker-than-water dope is all wrong. It's thinner than
table-d'hote soup. You may have seen a bit of that truth in your own
case already.