Part I — Scene 4 Flashcards
START OF SCENE
“Our last meeting which fell on July Fourteenth——”
MRS. BASSETT. Bastille Day!
Pardon me?
MRS. BASSETT. It fell on Bastille Day! But, honey, that was the meeting before last.
You’re perfectly right. I seem to be on the wrong page———
MRS. BASSETT. Butter-fingers?
Thank you, Roger—Vernon. Here we are! July twenty-fifth! Correct?
MRS. BASSETT. Correct!
“It was debated whether or not we ought to suspend operations for the remainder of the summer, as the departure of several members engaged in the teaching profession for their summer vacations———”
MRS. BASSETT. Lucky people!
“—had substantially contracted our little circle.”
MRS. BASSETT. —“Decimated our ranks!”
Is that—is that—the doorbell?
MRS. BASSETT. It sure did sound like it to me.
Excuse me a moment. I think it may be———Yes, it is—our guest of honor! Everybody, this is Dr. John Buchanan, Jr.
JOHN. Did I miss much?
Not a thing! Just the minutes—I’ll put you on the love-seat. Next to me. We mustn’t crush this lovely garment. Well, now! We are completely assembled!
MRS. BASSETT. Vernon has his verse play with him tonight!
Is that right, Vernon?
MRS. BASSETT. Those dead poets can keep!
Mrs. Bassett, everybody! This is the way I feel about the verse play. It’s too important a thing to read under any but ideal circumstances. Not only atmospheric—on some cool evening with music planned to go with it! —But everyone present so that nobody will miss it! Why don’t we———?
ROGER. Why don’t we take a standing vote on the matter?
Good, good, perfect!
ROGER. Now, Mrs. Bassett, no rough tactics, please!
Has everybody got fans? John, you haven’t got one!
MRS. BASSETT. This is a free country, I can speak my opinion. And I have read up on him. Go on, Rosemary. I wasn’t criticizing your paper.
Mrs. Bassett is only joking, Rosemary.
ROGER. I never heard that about him.
Mrs. Bassett is mistaken about that. Mrs. Bassett, you have confused Blake with someone else.
MRS. BASSETT. That’s where it happened, fired a gun at him in a drunken stupor, and later one of them died of T.B. in the gutter! All right. I’m finished. I won’t say anything more. Go on with your paper, Rosemary. There’s nothing like contact with culture!
Before Rosemary reads her paper on Blake, I think it would be a good idea, since some of us aren’t acquainted with his work, to preface the critical and biographical comments with a reading of one of his loveliest lyric poems.
ROSEMARY. I’m not going to read anything at all! Not I!
Then let me read it, then… This is called “Love’s Secret.”
ALMA. Then let me read it, then… This is called “Love’s Secret.”
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be,
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
ALMA. Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told him all my heart.
Trembling, cold in ghastly fear
Did my love depart.
ALMA. Did my love depart.
No sooner had he gone from me
Than a stranger passing by,
Silently, invisibly,
Took him with a sigh!
MRS. BASSETT. Honey, you’re right. That isn’t the man I meant. I was thinking about the one who wrote about “the bought red lips.” Who was it that wrote about the “bought red lips”?
John!
JOHN. I have to call on a patient!
Oh, John!
MRS. BASSETT. No supercilious comments out of you, sir! Go on, Rosemary. She has such as beautiful voice!
Please excuse the interruption, Rosemary. Dr. Buchanan had to call on a patient.
MRS. BASSETT. I bet I know who the patient was! Ha-ha! That Zacharias girl whose father own Moon Lake Casino and goes everywhere with a pistol strapped on his belt. Johnny Buchanan will get himself shot in that crowd!
Why, Mrs. Bassett, what gave you such an idea? I don’t think that John even knows that Zacharias girl!
