MRS PATRICK: This is the Outside. Sand (_picking some of it up in her hand and letting it fall on the beach grass_) Sand that _covers_--hills of sand that move and cover.
ALLIE MAYO: Woods. Woods to hold the moving hills from Provincetown.
Provincetown--where they turn when boats can't live at sea. Did you ever see the sails come round here when the sky is dark? A line of them--swift to the harbor--where their children live. Go back!
(_pointing_) Back to your edge of the woods that's the _edge of the dunes_.
MRS PATRICK: The edge of life. Where life trails off to dwarfed things not worth a name.
(_Suddenly sits down in the doorway_.)
ALLIE MAYO: Not worth a name. And--meeting the Outside!
(_Big with the sense of the wonder of life_.)
MRS PATRICK: (_lifting sand and letting it drift through her hand_.) They're what the sand will let them be. They take strange shapes like shapes of blown sand.
ALLIE MAYO: Meeting the Outside. (_moving nearer; speaking more personally_) I know why you came here. To this house that had been given up; on this shore where only savers of life try to live. I know what holds you on these dunes, and draws you over there. But other things are true beside the things you want to see.
MRS PATRICK: How do you know they are? Where have you been for twenty years?
ALLIE MAYO: Outside. Twenty years. That's why I know how brave _they_ are (_indicating the edge of the woods. Suddenly different_) You'll not find peace there again! Go back and watch them _fight_!
MRS PATRICK: (_swiftly rising_) You're a cruel woman--a hard, insolent woman! I knew what I was doing! What do you know about it? About me? I didn't go to the Outside. I was left there. I'm only--trying to get along. Everything that can hurt me I want buried--buried deep. Spring is here. This morning I _knew_ it. Spring--coming through the storm--to take me--take me to hurt me. That's why I couldn't bear--(_she looks at the closed door_) things that made me know I feel. You haven't felt for so long you don't know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here!
And now you'd take _that_ from me--(_looking now toward the edge of the woods_) the thing that made me know they would be buried in my heart--those things I can't _live_ and know I feel. You're more cruel than the sea! 'But other things are true beside the things you want to see!' Outside. Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring.
(_as if resentful of not more deeply believing what she says_) What would there be for me but the Outside? What was there for you? What did you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted?
ALLIE MAYO: I found--what I find now I know. The edge of life--to hold life behind me--
(_A slight gesture toward_ MRS PATRICK.)
MRS PATRICK: (_stepping back_) You call what you are life? (_laughs_) Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand!
ALLIE MAYO: (_under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty_) Ugly!
MRS PATRICK: (_passionately_) I have _known_ life. I have known _life_.
You're like this Cape. A line of land way out to sea--land not life.
ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (_raises her arm, curves it in as if around something she loves_) Land that encloses and gives shelter from storm.
MRS PATRICK: (_facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else out_) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes--land not life.
ALLIE MAYO: Outside sea--outer shore, dark with the wood that once was ships--dunes, strange land not life--woods, town and harbor. The line!
Stunted straggly line that meets the Outside face to face--and fights for what itself can never be. Lonely line. Brave growing.
MRS PATRICK: It loses.
ALLIE MAYO: It wins.
MRS PATRICK: The farthest life is buried.
ALLIE MAYO: And life grows over buried life! (_lifted into that; then, as one who states a simple truth with feeling_) It will. And Springs will come when you will want to know that it is Spring.
(_The_ CAPTAIN _and_ BRADFORD _appear behind the drift of sand. They have a stretcher. To get away from them_ MRS PATRICK _steps farther into the room_; ALLIE MAYO _shrinks into her corner. The men come in, open the closed door and go in the room where they left the dead man. A moment later they are seen outside the big open door, bearing the man away_. MRS PATRICK _watches them from sight_.)
MRS PATRICK: (_bitter, exultant_) Savers of life! (_to_ ALLIE MAYO) You savers of life! 'Meeting the Outside!' Meeting--(_but she cannot say it mockingly again; in saying it, something of what it means has broken through, rises. Herself lost, feeling her way into the wonder of life_) Meeting the Outside!
(_It grows in her as_ CURTAIN _lowers slowly_.)
THE VERGE
First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14, 1921.
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
ANTHONY
HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband
HATTIE, The maid
CLAIRE
DICK, Richard Demming
TOM EDGEWORTHY
ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter
ADELAIDE, Claire's sister
DR EMMONS
ACT I
_The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light from below which comes up through an open trap-door in the floor. This slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY, _a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._
ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine!
(_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself, and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.
The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps lead down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing wall save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of plants leads off.
This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with plants, a laboratory.