University of Virginia Library

A CRYING IN THE NIGHT

Persons:

• A Sick Girl
• A Girl Friend

Scene: A poorly but neatly furnished cottage bedroom, adjoining and opening into a kitchen.
Sick Girl:
It's in the kitchen. Don't you hear it crying?

Girl Friend:
There's nothing there but trouble of the flue
With wind and rain.

Sick Girl:
You know, when it was dying
It cried like that.—What shall I, can I do?—

Girl Friend:
You poor, poor thing! there, there.

Sick Girl:
I saw the fire
Was low, and put it ... underneath the coal;
And as it burned its cry rose high and higher.—
Tell me?—Can imperfection have a soul?
An embryo, no human thing could love,
That must associate itself with shame!—
Are you quite sure there's nothing in the stove?—
Ah, God! ah, God! for what am I to blame?

Girl Friend:
Keep still; and try to think of that no more.
You will go mad if you keep on like this.

Sick Girl
(listening intently):
Now! don't you hear it crying at the door?—
Surely you must.—How horrible it is!—
To think it suffers there!—But you—you know
How, so unthinking, and how, unprepared
For all, I've suffered. It was like a blow.
I should have been advised, and never dared
To face my mother.

Girl Friend
(positively):
Why, you should have shared
Your trouble with her.

Sick Girl:
Never, never that!
To have her know? That would have ended all.
But how I've suffered!—Smiling I have sat,—
Smiling, yet dreadful of what would befall:
Fearful of every movement; as I went
Studying concealment; she suspecting naught.
God help me now to keep her ignorant
Of this my crime, that blackened all my thought
For months, till it was done.—But let it be.—
You are the one who understood somehow,
You are the one who has befriended me. ...
But, listen!—don't you hear it crying now?—

Girl Friend:
Lie quiet. 'T is the wind in some wild crack. ...
I know your mother.—That she'd be away
These two bad days now! When does she come back?

Sick Girl:
I fear to-morrow; or, perhaps, next day.
Could we devise some plan to make her stay?—

Girl Friend:
The sooner she returns the better.

Sick Girl:
Nay!—
Oh, had my father lived this had not been!
How hard life is! how miserable and hard!—
When father died I was not seventeen,
And from that time it seems my life was marred.
I had to go to work.—Then brother died.—
It seems all things combined to make me bad.
I lost my place. How was I to decide?
We had to live.—No work was to be had.
There was but one thing left: my hands were tied;
And I was sold, like any slave: nor knew
Who in the end would pay the reckoning.
There was no other thing for me to do.
I was so ignorant of everything.
This way seemed easy. God would give no sign.
And there was mother who was ailing much,
And if I lost her, too, what fate were mine!
The wonder is that God permitted such. ...
But that's a thing Life often wonders at—
God's huge indifference, and disregard
Of all distress; the misery, leaving scarred,
Or stained, the soul, that gropes in utter night:
Ah, if the soul had but a little light!—
There came no sign. My faith brought nothing in.
We could not live on prayer, when by our hearth
Starvation sat, gaunt knuckled, hand on chin,
Staring the soul dead. What was virtue worth
Before that stare, that mixed it with the earth?
Something to barter in the House of Sin,
Of little value, and just left to rot,
Whether 't is sold, or whether it is not.

Girl Friend:
You must not talk like that.—'T will injure you.

Sick Girl:
And does it matter?—Shall I live?—For what?

Girl Friend:
Your mother!—When she comes what will you do?

Sick Girl
(with determination and conviction):
Oh, when she comes I must be out and up.

Girl Friend:
Have in the doctor.

Sick Girl:
That would not be safe.
He would ask questions.—

Girl Friend:
Well, then. Drink this cup
Of tea: 't will help you.

Sick Girl
(suddenly starting up, a look of inexpressible fear on her face):
Hark!—the little waif
Is crying there again!—Oh, you must hear!—
You hear but say you don't.

Girl Friend
(shuddering):
You make me creep.
It's just perhaps a singing in your ear
The tea would make.

Sick Girl
(sobbing):
Will it always weep,
And never cease, from year to haunted year?

Girl Friend
(going cautiously to the kitchen door; listening; and then returning to the Sick Girl's side):
There's nothing there, I tell you, but your fear.—
Be quiet now and try to go to sleep.

Sick Girl
(gazing wildly about the room):
I can not sleep. And yet not for myself
Am I afraid. You know what I believe:
The Bible there upon that under-shelf
Damns me forever. Not for that I grieve—
But that the Thing had life which I thought dead!
That it had life, and was so slain by me,
That makes the crying here, here in my head,
And in my heart the piercing agony.

Girl Friend:
I think, perhaps, I'll have the doctor in.

Sick Girl:
Not you!—And have him know?—Put that thought by!
You'd have the whole town yelping of my sin.
Think of my mother!—Ah!—I'd rather die.

Girl Friend:
Then I must go.

Sick Girl:
And leave me here with it!

Girl Friend:
Yes; I must go.

Sick Girl:
And would you leave me so?—
When I'm afraid the door there where you sit,—
If you should go, will open very slow
And it will enter, with its blackened face,
All accusation, and its eyes aglow
With God's damnation.

Girl Friend
(concealing her own terror under a nervous smile):
There is not a trace
Of sense in all this horror!—If I stay
You'll have to talk less.

Sick Girl:
That's my girl-friend Grace!
How kind you are. But close the kitchen door,
And shut the voice out.—If I could but pray,
Then it might hush its crying; take away
This terror too down deep in my heart's core.

Girl Friend:
You're hard on your poor self. If you could sleep!

Sick Girl:
I can not sleep, I can not sleep to-night!
That crying there. If you would only keep
The door locked fast, and light another light.

Girl Friend
(goes into the kitchen, returns with another lighted lamp):
There now. Don't trouble. It is closed once more. (Closing door.)

I've brought the kitchen lamp along.

Sick Girl:
That's right.—
And did you hear it crying as before?

Girl Friend:
Naught heard I save the water in a pan
Simmering and steaming. Now I'll lock the door.

(Goes to the door and locks it carefully.)
Sick Girl
(with a sigh of relief):
To me you are far braver than a man.
(Listening intently for a minute or two.)
It's stopped its wailing. (Brightening up.)

When my mother comes
To-morrow morning I must be about.

Girl Friend:
You'll stay in bed.

Sick Girl:
Lie here and bite my thumbs?—
No; I'll be up. And better, too, no doubt.

Girl Friend:
You'll kill yourself.

Sick Girl
(with pensive pathos):
There is no other way.
I have to pay—that's all that I regret.
It is the woman always has to pay.
The man can sin: his sin entails no debt.—
(After a long pause):
But what I did I did deliberately
For money for my mother, who has fought
Want all her life!—That clears me, don't you see?
(With conviction):
And if she never knows—why give 't a thought?—
(She lifts herself, listening again. Smiles wanly as if satisfied with the stillness, and sighs):
Now prop my pillow up, and smooth the sheet:
I feel so drowsy.—Ah, the hush is deep!
It's good as music; but to me more sweet
Than any sound.—And, oh, how I shall sleep!