University of Virginia Library

GENEVIEVE AND ALEXANDRA

Genevieve
Why look at me so much as if today
Were the last day on earth for both of us?
Not that I'm caring on my own account—

Alexandra
Now for the love of heaven, dear Genevieve,
And for your love of me, and I'm your sister,
Say why it is that little tongue of yours,
Which God gave you to talk with and so tell
What evil it is that ails you, tells me nothing.
You sent for me as if the world were dying
All round you, quite as dogs do that are poisoned,
And here I am; and I'll be dying soon,
Of common ordinary desperation,
Unless you tell me more now in five minutes
Than I shall ferret for myself in ages.
Moreover, if you leave it all to me,
I'll make it a phenomenon so monstrous
That you may see me flying out of here
Like something scared. What in the Lord's name is it?

Genevieve
Poor child, have you no eyes?

Alexandra
Two, Genevieve;
But they were never sharp enough to find
A way to make the man who married you
See more in me than in six hundred others.
I would have given half my fingers then
To make him look at me as if he saw me;
But it was you he saw, and you were frightened.
I wish the creature might have cared enough
To frighten me! But I was just a thing
With skirts and arms and legs and ears and hair,
Like all the rest he saw—till he saw you.
You know it, and I say it. That's all over.

Genevieve
My God, there's no beginning to some things,
Or I could speak. For two weeks I have waited
For you to make it easy to be hard;
And yet you tell me now that you have eyes!
Did you have eyes last night?

Alexandra
I thought so.

Genevieve
Yes?

Alexandra
You are coming then to something, after all.
You may be coming, if one will only wait,
To what you mean. Surely you don't mean Her?

Genevieve
I'll never look to you again for words
Where I find only silence.

Alexandra
Now I see:
You counted on my old unpleasant way
Of saying to you what you say to the cat.
You've always been an angel, Genevieve;
I understand, and I'll be generous.
I'm old enough, the good Lord knows, who gave me
A feature or two fewer than I could use
Of beauty, and you more than you can use;
Or so it seems. The Lord's ways are past all
Our delving, and we've each of us a book
To read that has a leaf we'll not lay open.
It's an old game, and one Time plays with women
Who cannot meet the Lord half way. That's you,
My angel. There'll be something done about it;
For Time has had an eye even on you
These years together. Don't forget old sayings,
For they are true and they have not much mercy.

Genevieve
And what's this you are saying of old sayings?
It's not the old I want now, but the new.
I've had enough that's old. I've had enough—
Year after year of it. Do I look old?

Alexandra
Not yet; you needn't fret. But even at that,
There's time enough to tear the calendar
When days are dead.

Genevieve
She's older than I am.

Alexandra
She knows, my dear.

Genevieve
She knows it, and he knows it!

Alexandra
But that's not all he knows, or all she knows.

Genevieve
What are you saying now?

Alexandra
Dear Genevieve,
I'm saying something new. Lord save us all,
I'm saying something new. You cried and crumpled
For me to do it, and you only ask,
‘What are you saying now?’ I'm saying this:
I'm saying there are men to take your gift
Of pride and ice and fear of being mortal,
And having it, to be happy all their days—
And others to do nothing of the sort;
I'm saying also that this man you married
Is not a cyclops or a cannibal
Who means to eat you pretty soon, even though
An alabaster shrine with now and then
A taper burning low, or going out,
Is not what he calls home, or good religion.
He calls it something else, and something worse.
I'm sorry, but he does.

Genevieve
And you defend him.

Alexandra
Defence and understanding, as I know them,
Are not of a necessity the same.

Genevieve
How do you know so much?

Alexandra
I don't know much;
I know a little. I wish you knew a little.

Genevieve
I wish you knew a little more.

Alexandra
You're crying.

Genevieve
Well, if I am, what of it? I am not
The only woman who has ever cried.
I'm not the only woman, I dare say,
Who's in a cage, beating on iron bars
That even other woman cannot see.

Alexandra
Surely I see them—with a difference.

Genevieve
How good of you to see them!

Alexandra
Genevieve,
Be quiet until you know yourself again.
You tell of cages and of iron bars,
And there are bars, I grant you: bars enough,
But they are not of iron. Do you believe,
Because a man—a rather furry man
Who likes a woman with a dash of Eve
To liven her insensible perfection—
Looks now and then the other way, that you
Are cribbed in iron for the whole blessed length
Of all your silly days? Why won't you see,
With all those eyes of yours that you don't use,
How little of what you have would be required
To send that other one to Jericho,
Or where you will? I wish I had your face!
If so, you might be free now as I am;
Free as a bird. O Lord, so free, so free!
I'll tell you what I'll do. Some day or other,
When I'm at home, I'm going to throw a brick
At that superb tall monstrous Ching-Chang vase
In the front room, which everyone admires.
There'll be a noise, and that will make a change.
You made a change, and all you get of it,
That I see, is a reason to be jealous.
Lord love us, you'll be jealous next of me,
Because your sacrificing spouse made out
Somehow to scratch my cheek with his hard whiskers
To honor my arrival. He might as well
Have done it with a broom, and I've a guess
Would rather.

Genevieve
I can only say again
I wish you knew a little more.

Alexandra
And I—
I wish you fancied less.

Genevieve
Oh, is it fancy?

Alexandra
Whatever it is, you make it what it is.
I know the man. He wants his house to live in.
He's not the sort who makes another man's
Romance a nightmare for the humor of it;
He's not one to be spinning webs of gold
As if he were a spider with an income;
He's what he is; and you that have him so,
I see, are in the best of ways to lose him.
But who am I, to talk of him? You made me,
And you'll remember that. Now now that's all over.

Genevieve
You pat me as you would a little dog.

Alexandra
Of course.

Genevieve
I wish you knew a little more.

Alexandra
My darling, you have honored me three times
In wishing that identical sweet wish;
And if in all agreement with your text
I say as much myself and say it louder,
You'll treasure to my credit, when I'm dead,
One faint remembrance of humility.
Although I don't think you are listening,
I'm saying to you now that I'm an insect.
Lord, what a sigh!

Genevieve
I hear you—all you say;
And what you say to me so easily
May be the end of wisdom, possibly.
And I may change. I don't believe I shall,
Yet I may change—a little. I don't know.
It may be now that I don't care enough;
It may be too that I don't know enough—
To change. It may be that the few lights left
Around the shrine, as you say, may go out
Without my tending them or watching them.
It seems a jealous love is not enough
To bring at once to light, as I have seen it,
The farthest hidden of all mockeries
That home can hold and hide—until it comes.
Well, it has come. Oh, never mind me now!
Our tears are cheap, and men see few of them.
He doesn't know that I know.

Alexandra
Genevieve,
Say something, if you only say you hate me.
Poor child, I cannot ask if you are right—
Or say that you are wrong, until I find
A gleam at least of meaning in all this.
Only, remember that of all small things
That have the most infernal power to grow,
Few may be larger than a few small words
That may not say themselves and be forgotten
No more, then. I can live without an answer.
Indeed, I may be wrong; and it may be
That you are not my bogey-burdened sister.

Genevieve
The farthest hidden things are still, my dear.
They make no noise. They creep from where they live
And strike us in the dark; and then we suffer.
And you my sister, of all women living,
Have made me know the truth of this I'm saying.
And you, as I'm a fool, know nothing more
Than what I've hardly said. Thank God for that.

Alexandra
Why mock yourself with more unhappy names
Than sorrow shares with reason? Why not lay
For ever, with me to help you if I can,
The last of all the bogeys you have seen
Somewhere in awful corners that are dark
Because you make them so and keep them so?
You like the dark, may be. I don't. I hate it.
Now tell me what it is you've ‘hardly said’;
For I assure you that you've hardly said it.

Genevieve
Oh yes, I said it; and you might have heard it.
You make a jest of love, and all it means.
I can bear that. The world has always done it,
The world has always borne it. Many men
And women have made laughter out of those
Who might as well have been in hell as here,
Alive and listening. When a love can hold
Its own with change no more, 'twere better then
For love to die. There might be then, perhaps,
If that were all, an easy death for love;
If not, then for the woman.

Alexandra
If that were all?
You speak now as if that were not enough.

Genevieve
It seems it isn't. There's another corner;
And in that corner there's another ghost.

Alexandra
What have I done? Have I done anything?

Genevieve
Yes, you have made me see how poor I am;
How futile, and how far away I am
From what his hungry love and hungry mind
Thought I was giving when I gave myself.

Alexandra
But when his eyes are on you, I can swear
That I see only kindness in his eyes.

Genevieve
I'll send you home if you say that again.

Alexandra
Be tranquil; I shall not say that again,
But tell me more about his hungry mind—
I understood the rest of it. Good Lord,
I never knew he had a hungry mind!

Genevieve
He hasn't one when you are with him.

Alexandra
What!

Genevieve
I say he hasn't one when you are with him.
You feed him. You can talk of what he knows
And cares about. Six years have been enough
To make what little mind I've ever had
A weariness too large for his endurance.
He knows how little I shall ever know;
He knows that in his measure I'm a fool.
And you say there's a—kindness in his eyes!
You tell me that! I'd rather be his dog.

Alexandra
What in the name of ruin, dear Genevieve,
Do you think you are doing now with words?

Genevieve
I'd rather be a by-word in the city,
And let him have his harem and be happy.

Alexandra
It's only your too generous invention,
I'm sure, that gives him one. I'm still about,
And I've a quick ear for iniquities.

Genevieve
To make up for an eye that's not so quick,
Most likely. You may talk yourself to sleep.
Assured that all the while I sit and listen
I shall see only kindness in his eyes.
I'd rather see him coming with a club
Than with his kindness. Though you may not like it,
I know what I would rather do than see
Some of the things that you would have me see.

Alexandra
I'd rather you would see him as he is—
Not as a nightmare that you may have had,
Once on a time, condemns and injures him.

Genevieve
You would not have him injured for the world.
I thought so, but no matter what I thought.
I'd rather live in hovels and eat scraps,
And feed the pigs and all the wretched babies;
I'd rather steal my food from a blind man,
And give it back to him and starve to death;
I'd rather cut my feet off and eat poison;
I'd rather sit and skin myself alive
Than be a fool! I'd rather be a toad
Than live to see that—kindness in his eyes!

Alexandra
Poor Genevieve! Don't think that you alone
Of womankind have had these little fancies.
You are not saying this—don't imagine it.
Your nerves are talking now, and they don't know
Or care what they are saying.

Genevieve
Never mind that.
My needs are many, but I don't need that.

Alexandra
Poor Genevieve!

Genevieve
And don't say that again!