Arthur from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

ARTHUR: Why not? It would do you some good. You with your books, your anthologies, your metaphysical poets. William Blake and John Donne. They're dead, Hertha. All your lovers are dead and bound up in books. They can't touch you. They can't make love to you tonight. They've been in the ground too long. Don't you know that? (He turns out the suspended light above.) This is life and you're scared of it. You've never come up against it before. You haven't found it in any of your alphabetical files. It's taken you by surprise, Hertha, the way it took me when I came back from Europe and saw Heavenly Critchfield again, laughing at me the way that she used to. It hurts you. It's big and awful and crazy and makes you want to run and hise from it. But you can't Hertha. Hiding doesn't do any good. (He catches one of her hands which she holds before her in a defensive gesture.) You've got little hands--they're little candle-wax hands.

HERTHA (faintly): Let go of me, Arthur.

ARTHUR: No. I won't let go.

HERTHA: Please do.

ARTHUR: No.

HERTHA: If you don't I'll have to call Miss Schlagmann.

ARTHUR: Go ahead. Call her.--Haven't you ever been kissed? No. Only in books. By William Blake and John Donne. "Go, and catch a falling star,/Get with child a mandrake root."--Those are your lovers but they've got cold lips. They've been in the ground so long not even April can make them warm, again, Hertha. But I'm not cold. Heavenly thinks I am but she's mistaken. The whiskey's made me warm for a change. I'm hot inside. If I touched you with my lips you'd think you'd been scorched by fire. You'd crumple up like a little white moth that's flown into the candle flame, Hertha. That's what you'd do. (He pulls her against him.)

Arthur from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams

ARTHUR: Yes. I told her that I was in love with her, and she said that I should go out and get drunk because that was the only thing that would do me any good. So I got drunk. It's the first time I ever got drunk in my life and it was swell. Till I started thinking about her again making lov to Dick Miles.

HERTHA: Arthur! I'm sorry, I-- (She extends her hand towards him in a slight, pitying gesture.)

ARTHUR: I can forget all that with you, can't I? You're a girl, too. you could make love as well as she could. But not with Dick Miles. With me. (He moves toward her. Hertha steps back.) What are you backing away for? Are you scared? That's flatterineg. Nobody's ever been scared of me before. I was like you, Hertha. I hid behind books all the time because they used to call me a sissy when I was a kid in school. I never got over that. Not till tonight when I got drunk. God! I never knew it could be so good to get drunk and feel like a man inside. Literature and the arts. Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms. Concerts, matinees, recitals--what's all that? If I told you you'd blush. You don't like that kind of language. Sure, I sat through all of that stuff and thought it was great. Got my stuff published in those little magazines with the big cultural movements. Art for art's sake. Give America back to the Indians. I thought I was being highbrow. Intellectual. The hell with that stuff. Dick Miles's got the right idea. He was the one that she gave herself to, not me, not me.  The one that got drunk and had himself a good time, he was the one that got Heavenly, and me with me intellectual pretensions, my fancy education, and my father's money--what did I get? Pushed in the face! Thrown over for a boy that clerks in a drugstore because he knows how to make love and I don't! Well now I can, too. I can get drunk and act like the rest of them. How about it, Miss Neilson? Why don't you come out from behind those tortoise-shell glasses of yours? (He reaches across the table and plucks them off.)

Dick from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (3)

DICK: You don't want me to! Lissen, Heavenly!

HEAVENLY: No!

DICK: Have you ever spent a night on the river, honey?

HEAVENLY: Let go of me!

(He forces her down on the bench and holds her against him.)

DICK: Have you ever spent a night on a river barge, honey? That clean wet smell of the woods and maybe a hole in the roof you can see the stars through? Katydids hummin' an' bullfrogs off in the shadows. That dark warm smell of the water real close an' the sound that it makes that's so quiet it's sca'cely a sound, just a big, big blackness movin' around you, an' up on the deck a nigger pickin' a fiddle an' singin' an ole river song, an' that lazy soft rise an' fall of the water under the boat an' the lightnin' bugs blinkin' way off over there on the flat cotton fields or down in the cypress break an' that wild coon laughter all of a sudden comin' up out of the dark where they're makin' love on the levee--like cryin' almost--an' then not a thing anymore but that slow slappin'-slap of the water . . .

HEAVENLY: Dick--

DICK: I've spent nights like that on the river! By myself or with a bunch of fellows--but never with a girl I loved!

Dick from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

No! I won't take it! (He catches her shoulders.) Honey, it takes a pair of boots and a flannel shirt to make me feel like a man. I'm sick of bath salts and spirits of ammonia. An' I wouldn't like cotton much better. Cotton's soft. It's fuzzy stuff that sticks to your fingers. I wouldn't like that. I want to get my hands on something hard and tough that fights back, like the river. When you're fighting a river you're fighting something your size. Don't you see? They've put out flood warnings up at Friar's Point. She's rose six feet since morning. Fifty-nine, that's flood stage, and God only knows when she'll stop. They'r fighting like crazy to hold her back but she keeps on coming, big an' yellow an' daring 'em all to try an' make her stay put. She'll win this time maybe. Push right through their sandbags an' run 'em out of the county, tearin' down sharecroppers' houses an' drownin' the stock. If the people are lucky they'll climb on top of their roofs an' we'll take 'em off in boats. But some of 'em won't be lucky. Ole Mammies with breakbone fever ain't good at roof climbing. The river'll catch 'em at night an' they won't have a chance. But maybe next time we'll win. we'll catch her an' tame her an' make her stay in her place. That's a big job, honey, the kind of job that I want!

Heavenly from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams (2)

HEAVENLY: I know, I know! I'm a fool!--Look!

ARTHUR: What?

HEAVENLY (softly): It's the first lightnin' bug!

(Pause. Music is heard.)

HEAVENLY: Wonder what makes 'em go off and on like that?--Did you take any science courses at Oxfo'd? I took geology my third year at high.

ARTHUR (coldly): Did you really?

HEAVENLY: Yes. We used to go out on field expeditions they called 'em, collectin' fossils an' things.

ARTHUR: That must've been nice!

HEAVENLY: Yes, an' just think!--Someday we'll be fossils, too. They'll dig us up an' say, "Gosh, what long legs that girl had?"--or "Didn't he have nice ears!" --An' that's all they'll know about us, i suppose.

ARTHUR: I suppose so.

HEAVENLY: It won't matter who we got married to or whether we lived to be old or died young. They won't care; it won't make any difference to them. We'll just be little marks on a piece of rock. Or maybe not even that much.--Does it make you feel sad?

Heavenly from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams

HEAVENLY: Oh--nothing. (She smiles almost mockingly and lowers her eyes.) Look. It's a bunny-rabbit. (She has twisted her white handkerchief into the semblance of a long-eared rabbit's head.) It's wiggling its ears at you. It says "Shame on Ahthuh fo' usin' such long words!" (She laughs.) It says, "If I went to school at Oxfo'd I'd be sma't too an' use big words, but I'm just a dumb little bunny that doesn't know anything but how to wiggle its ears an' eat grass!" (Slowly, dreamily she shakes the handkerchief out--she smiles sadly and shakes her head.) Poor bunny! He's all disappeared--he's just a little white hankie now. But he still smells nice. (She lifts it delicately to her nostrils, glancing provocatively at Arthur from under her dark lashes.) He smells like dead lose leaves. Mmmm. Aunt Lila makes your talisman roses into sachets when they're withered an' puts 'em in our handkerchief boxes--gives 'em such a sad, sweet smell. (She smiles.) Like old maids' memories, that's what it reminds me of! (She sniffs the cloth delicately once more, and then smooths it thoughtfully on her lap. Suddenly she raises her face to Arthur's with a look of startling intensity.) I'd rather die than be an old maid! (Pause for emphasis.)

ARTHUR: Surely that's not a possibility!

HEAVENLY (intensely): Oh, yes it is. All the boys go No'th or East to make a livin' unless they've got plantations. And that leaves a lot of girls sitting out on the front porch waitin' fo' the afte'noon mail. Sometimes it stops comin'. And they're still sitting out there on the swing in their best white dresses, smilin' so hard it's a wonder they don't crack their faces--so people across the street won't know what's happened! "Isn't it marvelous weather? The sky's so perfectly blue! Mother and I put up six quarts of blackberry jam last night!"--Oh, God!-- (She rises quickly and walks over to the French window.) That's why girls like me act so silly, Ahthuh, like music an' dancing instead of books and things, because we're scared inside, so scared it makes us feel sick at the stomach--

ARTHUR: Scared of what?

HEAVENLY: Of sitting out there forever on the front porch in our best dresses!

Hertha from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams

HERTHA: I see. (Pause.) Sometimes I wonder if anybody's ever gone anyplace--or do we always just go back to where we started?--I guess there's something significant about the fact that the world is round and all of the planets are round and all of the planets are round and all of them are going round and round the sun! (She laughs.) The whole damned universe seems to be laid out on a more elliptical plan. (She rises.) But I can't get used to it, Arthur. I can't adjust myself to it like you're doing-- (She gropes for words.) --You see I can't get oer the idea that it might be possible for somebody--sometime--somewhere--to follow a straight line upwards and get some place that nobody's ever been yet! (Pause.)

ARTHUR (looking up at her with a slight smile): You mean to Paradise, don't you?

HERTHA: You're laughing at me. You think it's foolish.

ARTHUR (slowly): I know what you mean. But I don't believe in it. I think it's just one of those romantic fallacies that everybody gets knocked out of him in the course of time.--Where are you going?

HERTHA: I'm going on up the rest of the way.

Dick from "Spring Storm" by Tennessee Williams

Not the kind that ties ropes around people. (He goes to the edge of the bluff.) Listen to those whistles blowin'. They're gettin' out now. Pretty soon they'll be settlin' down in their overstuffed chairs t' look at the evenin' papers. Gettin' the news of the day. Who went to Mrs. Smith's afternoon tea. What happened in Czechoslovakia at eleven A.M. Who's runnin' for gov'nor in the state of Arkansas. Ain't that somethin' for you, you bastards, you poor beer guzzlers. Tomorrow you'll wake up at half past six with alarm clocks janglin' like hell's own beautiful bells in your ears. The little woman will get her fat shanks out of bed an' put on the coffee to boil. At a quarter past seven you'll kiss her good-bye, you'll give her a cold eggy smack on the kisser. She'll tell you to remember your overshoes. Or to stop at the West End butcher's for a pound o' calves' liver. Don't forget, Papa. Papa, for God's sake don't forget to bring home that thirty cents worth of calves' liver. That's good, that's sweet of you, Papa. --Bye-bye! (He turns slowly back to Heavenly.) And they call that livin' down there. I got another word for it, Heavenly, and it don't commence with an "I"!