(Pointedly.) This is what comes of your Utopian dreams, of your socialism!
(A POLAK WOMAN is seen standing in the doorway, right.)
WOMAN. Doctor!
DR. JONATHAN. Yes.
WOMAN. My baby is seek--I think maybe you come and see him. Mrs.
Ladislaw she tell me you cure her little boy, and that maybe you come, if I ask you.
DR. JONATHAN. Yes, I"ll come. What is your name?
WOMAN. Sasenoshky.
DR. JONATHAN. Your husband is in the shops?
WOMAN. He was, doctor. Now he is in the American army.
DR. JONATHAN. Sasenoshky--in the American army.
WOMAN (proudly). Yes, he is good American now,--he fight to make them free in the old country, too.
DR. JONATHAN. Well, we"ll have a look at the baby. He may be in the White House some day--President Sasenoshky! I"ll be back, Asher.
(The noon whistle blows.)
ASHER. That"s the signal! I"ll get along, too.
DR. JONATHAN. Where are you going?
ASHER. I guess it doesn"t make much difference where I go.
(He walks out, followed by DR. JONATHAN and the WOMAN. The room is empty for a moment, and then MINNIE FARRELL enters through the opposite door, left, from DR. JONATHAN"S office. She gazes around the room, and then goes resolutely to the bench and takes up several test tubes in turn, holding theme to the light. Suddenly her eye falls on GEORGE"S letter, which ASHER has left open on the bench with the envelope beside it. MINNIE Slowly reaches out and picks it up, and then holds it to her lips... She still has the letter in her hand, gazing at it, when AUGUSTA PINDAR enters, right.)
AUGUSTA. Oh, I thought Mr. Pindar was here!
MINNIE. Perhaps he"s been here--I don"t know. I just came in. (She hesitates a second, then goes to the bench and lays the letter down.)
AUGUSTA. He must have been here,--he told me he was coming to talk with Dr. Pindar.
(She approaches the bench and glances at the letter.)
Isn"t that a letter from my son?
MINNIE (a little defiantly, yet almost in tears). I guess it is.
AUGUSTA. It was written to you?
MINNIE. No.
AUGUSTA. Then what were you doing with it?
MINNIE. I just--picked it up. You think I was reading it? Well, I wouldn"t.
AUGUSTA. Then how did you know it was written by my son?
(MINNIE is silent.)
You must be familiar with his handwriting. I think I"d better take it.
(She folds it up and puts it in the envelope.) Does George write to you?
MINNIE. I"ve had letters from him.
AUGUSTA. Since he went to France?
MINNIE. Yes.
AUGUSTA (after a pause). I"ve never approved of Dr. Findar employing you here. I warned him against you--I told him that you would betray his kindness as you betrayed mine, but he wouldn"t listen to me. I told him that a girl who was capable of drawing my son into an intrigue while she was a member of the church and of my Bible cla.s.s, a girl who had the career you had in Newcastle, couldn"t become a decent and trustworthy woman. The very fact that you had the audacity to come back to Foxon Falls and impose on Dr. Pindar"s simplicity, proves it.
MINNIE. You know all about me, Mrs. Pindar.
AUGUSTA. I wasn"t born yesterday.
MINNIE. Oh, ladies like you, Christian ladies, are hard! They won"t believe nothing good of anybody--only the bad. You"ve always been sheltered, you"ve always had everything you"d want, and you come and judge us working girls. You"d drive me out of the only real happiness I ever had, being here with a man like Dr. Jonathan, doing work it"s a pleasure to do--a pleasure every minute!--work that may do good to thousands of people, to the soldiers over there--maybe to George, for all you know! (She burst into tears.) You can"t understand--how could you? After all, you"re his mother. I oughtn"t to forget it.
AUGUSTA. Yes, I"m his mother. And you? You haven"t given up the idea that he may marry you some day, if you stay here and pretend to have reformed. You write to him. George may have been foolish, but he isn"t as foolish as that!
MINNIE. He doesn"t care about me.
AUGUSTA. I"m glad you realize it. But you mean to stay here in Foxon Falls, nevertheless. You take advantage of Dr. Pindar, who is easily imposed upon, as his father was before him. But if I told you that you might harm Dr. Pindar by staying here, interfere with his career, would you be willing to leave?
MINNIE. Me? Me doing Dr. Jonathan harm?
AUGUSTA, Yes. I happen to know that he has very little money. He makes none, he never asks anyone for a bill. He spends what he has on this kind of thing--research, for the benefit of humanity, as he thinks,--but very little research work succeeds, and even then it doesn"t pay.
MINNIE. He doesn"t care about money.
AUGUSTA. Perhaps not. He is one of those impractical persons who have to be looked out for, if they are fortunate enough to have anyone to look out for them. Since he is a cousin of my husband, Mr. Pindar considers him as one of his many responsibilities. Mr. Pindar has always had, in a practical way, the welfare of his working people at heart, and now he proposes to establish a free hospital for them and to put Dr. Pindar in charge of it. This will give him a good living as well as a definite standing in the community, which he needs also.
MINNIE. He"s the biggest man in Foxon Falls today!
AUGUSTA. That is as one thinks. At any rate, he has this opportunity.
Are you going to stand in the way of it?
MINNIE. Me stand in the way of it?
AUGUSTA. If Dr. Pindar accepts the place, you can"t go with him,--you will have to find some other position. Mr. Pindar is firm about that, and rightly so. But I believe Dr. Pindar would be quite capable of refusing rather than inconvenience anyone with whom he is connected.
MINNIE. You"re right there!