by Ayn Rand
ADRIENNE: Beautiful showmanship, Walter. You’ve always been a master of the theater.
TONY: But I suppose it is sort of grand—
ADRIENNE:—opera.
HELEN: What exactly is to happen tomorrow at noon, Walter?
BRECKENRIDGE: I have invited the press to be at the laboratory tomorrow at noon. I shall give them the blueprints—the formulas—everything—to spread in every tabloid.
ADRIENNE: Don’t forget the Sunday magazine sections. BRECKENRIDGE: Adrienne, my dear, surely you don’t disapprove?
ADRIENNE: What’s it to me?
SERGE: Ah, but it is so beautiful! It is an example for the whole world to follow. To me Mr. Breckenridge has spoken about this gift many weeks ago and I said: “Mr. Breckenridge, if you do this, I will be proud a human being to be!”
BRECKENRIDGE: [Turning to INGALLS] Steve?
INGALLS: What?
BRECKENRIDGE: What do you say?
INGALLS: I? Nothing.
BRECKENRIDGE: Of course, Steve doesn’t quite approve. Steve is rather . . . old-fashioned. He would have preferred to keep the whole thing secret in our own hands, and to make a tremendous fortune. Wouldn’t you, Steve?
INGALLS: [Lazily] Oh, yes. I like to make money. I think money is a wonderful thing. I don’t see what’s wrong with making a fortune—if you deserve it and people are willing to pay for what you offer them. Besides, I’ve never liked things that are given away. When you get something for nothing—you always find a string attached somewhere. Like the fish when it swallows the worm. But then, I’ve never had any noble feelings.
SERGE: Mr. Ingalls, that is contemptible!
INGALLS: Cut it, Serge. You bore me.
BRECKENRIDGE: But, Steve, I want you to understand why—
INGALLS: Don’t waste your time, Walter. I’ve never understood the noble, the selfless, or any of those things. Besides, it’s not my fortune you’re giving away. It’s yours. I’m only a junior partner. All I lose is two bits to your dollar. So I’m not going to argue about it.
BRECKENRIDGE: I’m glad, Steve. I made this decision after a great deal of time and meditation.
INGALLS: You did? [Rises] You know, Walter, I think decisions are made quickly. And the more important the step—the quicker. [Walks to stairs]
SERGE: [With a little touch of triumph] I begged Mr. Breckenridge to do this.
INGALLS: [Stops on the stairs on his way up, looks at him. Then:] I know you did. [Exits up the stairs]
HELEN: [Rising] It seems so foolish to ask this—when I’m hostess—but what time is dinner ordered for, Walter?
BRECKENRIDGE: Seven o’clock.
HELEN: Would you mind if I took a look at what my house is like?
BRECKENRIDGE: But of course! How thoughtless of me! Holding you here—when you must be dying of curiosity.
HELEN: [To the others] Shall we make an inspection tour together? The hostess needs someone to guide her.
TONY: I’ll show you. I’ve been all through the house. The laundry in the basement is wonderful.
HELEN: Shall we start with Billy’s room?
BILLY: Yes, please, Mother. I want to go back to my room.
[As FLEMING and FLASH are wheeling BILLY out, Right, BRECKENRIDGE is about to follow]
ADRIENNE: Walter. I’d like to speak to you. [BRECKENRIDGE stops, frowning] For just a few minutes. BRECKENRIDGE: Yes, of course, my dear.
[HELEN and TONY exit after BILLY, FLEMING, and FLASH. SERGE remains]
ADRIENNE: Serge, when you hear someone say to someone else: “I’d like to speak to you”—it usually means “alone.”
SERGE: Ah, but of course! I am so sorry, Miss Knowland! [Bows and exits Right]
BRECKENRIDGE: [Sitting down and indicating a chair] Yes, my dear?
ADRIENNE: [She remains standing, looking at him. After a moment, she says in a flat, hard, expressionless voice:] Walter, I want you to release me from my contract.
BRECKENRIDGE: [Leans back. Then:] You’re not serious, my dear.
ADRIENNE: Walter, please. Please don’t make me say too much. I can’t tell you how serious I am.
BRECKENRIDGE: But I thought it was understood, a year ago, that we would not discuss that subject again.
ADRIENNE: And I’ve stuck it out, haven’t I? For another whole year. I’ve tried. Walter. I can’t go on.
BRECKENRIDGE: You are not happy?
ADRIENNE: Don’t make me say anything else.
BRECKENRIDGE: But I don’t understand. I—
ADRIENNE: Walter. I’m trying so hard not to have another scene like last year. Don’t ask me any questions. Just say that you will release me.
BRECKENRIDGE: [After a pause] If I released you, what would you do?
ADRIENNE: That play I showed you last year.
BRECKENRIDGE: For a commercial producer?
ADRIENNE: Yes.
BRECKENRIDGE: For a cheap, vulgar, commercial Broadway producer?
ADRIENNE: For the cheapest and most vulgar one I could find.
BRECKENRIDGE: Let’s see. If I remember correctly, your part would be that of a very objectionable young woman who wants to get rich, who drinks and swears and—
ADRIENNE: [Coming to life] And how she swears! And she sleeps with men! And she’s ambitious! And she’s selfish! And she laughs! And she’s not sweet—Oh, Walter! She’s not sweet at all!
BRECKENRIDGE: You’re overestimating yourself, my dear. You can’t play a part like that.
ADRIENNE: Maybe not. I’ll try.
BRECKENRIDGE: You want a disastrous flop?
ADRIENNE: Perhaps. I’ll take the chance.
BRECKENRIDGE: You want to be panned?
ADRIENNE: Perhaps. If I have to be.
BRECKENRIDGE: And your audience? What about your audience? [She doesn’t answer] What about the people who love you and respect you for what you represent to them?
ADRIENNE: [Her voice flat and dead again] Walter, skip that. Skip that.
BRECKENRIDGE: But you seem to have forgotten. The Breckenridge Theater is not a mere place of amusement. It was not created just to satisfy your exhibitionism or my vanity. It has a social mission. It brings cheer to those who need it most. It gives them what they like. They need you. They get a great deal from you. You have a duty and a standing above those of a mere actress. Isn’t that precious to you?
ADRIENNE: Oh, Goddamn you! [He stares at her] All right! You asked for it! I hate it! Do you hear me? I hate it! All of it! Your noble theater and your noble plays and all the cheap, trite, trashy, simpering bromides that are so sweet! So sweet! God, so sweet I can hear them grating on my teeth every evening! I’m going to scream in the middle of one of those noble speeches, some night, and bring the curtain down! I can’t go on with it, Goddamn you and your audience! I can’t! Do you understand me? I can’t!
BRECKENRIDGE: Adrienne, my child, I cannot let you ruin yourself.
ADRIENNE: Listen, Walter, please listen. . . . I’ll try to explain it. I’m not ungrateful. I want the audience to like me. But that’s not enough. Just to do what they want me to do, just because they like it—it’s not enough. I’ve got to like it, too. I’ve got to believe in what I’m doing. I’ve got to be proud of it. You can’t do any kind of work without that. That comes first. Then you take a chance—and hope that others will like it.
BRECKENRIDGE: Isn’t that rather selfish?
ADRIENNE: [Simply] I guess it is. I guess I’m selfish. It’s selfish to breathe, also—isn’t it? You don’t breathe for anyone but yourself. . . . All I want is a chance—for myself—to do something strong, living, intelligent, difficult—just once.
BRECKENRIDGE: [Sadly] I believed in you, Adrienne. I did my best for you.
ADRIENNE: I know. And I hate to hurt you. That’s why I’ve stood it for such a long time. But, Walter, the contract—it’s for five more years. I couldn’t take five years. I couldn’t even take it for five days this coming season. I’ve reached my last minute—it’s very terrible, w
hen a person is driven to his last minute, and very ugly. You must let me go.
BRECKENRIDGE: Who’s been talking to you? Steve’s influence?
ADRIENNE: Steve? You know what I think of Steve. When would I talk to him? When do I ever see him?
BRECKENRIDGE: [Shrugging] It just sounds like him.
ADRIENNE: Do you know what made me speak to you today? That stupendous thing you announced. I thought . . . you’re doing so much for humanity, and yet . . . why is it that the people who worry most about mankind have the least concern for any actual human being?
BRECKENRIDGE: My dear, try to understand. I’m acting for your own good. I can’t let you ruin your career.
ADRIENNE: Let me go, Walter. Give me my freedom.
BRECKENRIDGE: Freedom—for what? Freedom to hurt yourself.
ADRIENNE: Yes!—if necessary. To make mistakes. To fail. To be alone. To be rotten. To be selfish. But to be free.
BRECKENRIDGE: [Rising] No, Adrienne.
ADRIENNE: [In a dead, flat voice] Walter . . . do you remember . . . last summer . . . when I ran my car into a tree? . . . Walter, it was not an accident. . . .
BRECKENRIDGE: [Severely] I refuse to understand what you mean. You’re being indecent.
ADRIENNE: [Screams] Goddamn you! Goddamn you, you rotten, holy, saintly bastard!
INGALLS: [Appearing at the top of the stairs] You’ll ruin your voice, Adrienne—and you won’t be able to do Little Women again.
[ADRIENNE whirls around and stops short]
BRECKENRIDGE: [As INGALLS comes down the stairs] I believe this is the kind of performance you’ll enjoy, Steve. So I’ll leave Adrienne to you. You’ll find you have a great deal in common. [Exits Right]
INGALLS: The acoustics in this room are great, Adrienne. Does wonders for your diaphragm—and your vocabulary.
ADRIENNE: [Stands looking at him with hatred] Listen, you. I have something to tell you. Now. I don’t care. If you want to make wisecracks, I’ll give you something real to wisecrack about.
INGALLS: Go ahead.
ADRIENNE: I know what you think of me—and you’re right. I’m just a lousy ham who’s done nothing but trash all her life. I’m no better than a slut—not because I haven’t any talent, but worse: because I have and sold it. Not even for money, but for someone’s stupid, drooling kindness—and I’m more contemptible than an honest whore!
INGALLS: That’s a pretty accurate description.
ADRIENNE: Well, that’s what I am. I know also what you are. You’re a hard, cold, ruthless egoist. You’re just a laboratory machine—all chromium and stainless steel. You’re as efficient and bright and vicious as a car going ninety miles an hour. Only the car would bump if it ran over someone’s body. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even know it. You’re going ninety miles every one of the twenty-four hours—through a desert island, as far as you’re concerned. A desert island full of charts, blueprints, coils, tubes, and batteries. You’ve never known a human emotion. You’re worse than any of us. I think you’re the rottenest person I’ve ever met. I’m inexcusably, contemptibly, completely in love with you and have been for years. [She stops. He stands motionless, looking at her silently. She snaps:] Well? [He does not move] You’re not going to pass up a chance like this for one of your brilliant wisecracks? [He does not move] Shouldn’t you answer—something?
INGALLS: [His voice is very soft and very earnest. It is the first sound of simple sincerity to be heard from him:] Adrienne . . . [She looks at him, astonished] I am thinking that I haven’t heard it. I can’t answer. Had you said it to me yesterday—or the day after tomorrow—I’d answer. Today, I can’t.
ADRIENNE: Why?
INGALLS: You know, sound vibrations never die in space. Let’s think that what you said hasn’t reached me yet. It will reach me day after tomorrow. Then—if I’m still able to hear it and if you still want me to hear it—I’ll give you my answer.
ADRIENNE: Steve . . . what’s the matter?
INGALLS: Day after tomorrow, Adrienne. Perhaps sooner. But if not then—then never.
ADRIENNE: Steve, I don’t understa—
INGALLS: [Picking up a magazine from the table, in his normal, conversational tone] Have you seen this week’s World? There’s a very interesting article on the progressive income tax. It demonstrates how the tax works for the protection of mediocrity. . . . The problem of taxation, of course, is extremely complex.
ADRIENNE: [She is turned away from him, her shoulders sagging a little, but she does her best to follow his lead and speaks obediently, in as good an imitation of a conversational tone as she can manage—but her voice sounds very tired] Yes. I’ve never been able to figure out an income tax blank or an insurance policy.
[HELEN, BRECKENRIDGE, SERGE, and TONY enter, coming down the stairs]
INGALLS: Well? What do you think of the house, Helen? HELEN: [Without enthusiasm] It’s lovely. BRECKENRIDGE: [Proudly] She couldn’t think of one thing that I hadn’t thought of already.
INGALLS: As usual.
BRECKENRIDGE: Oh say, I mustn’t forget. I’ll tell you all while Billy isn’t here; it’s a little surprise for him. Tonight, at ten o’clock, when it gets dark, I shall give you a demonstration of my invention. Its first public demonstration. We’ll start celebrating the Fourth of July tonight, a little in advance. We’ll have fireworks—I’ve had them lined up—[Points]—over there, on the other side of the lake. I’ll set them off—from the garden—without touching them, without wires, by remote control—by mere electrical impulses through the air.
TONY: Could I see the machine?
BRECKENRIDGE: No, Tony. Nobody can see the machine till tomorrow. Don’t try to find it. You won’t. But you will all be the first witnesses of its action. [Shrugs gaily] Think of it! If someday they make a movie of my life, you will all be impersonated in that scene.
SERGE: They always make the lives of the great men in the cinema.
INGALLS: All that Walter needs now to be a great man is to get assassinated.
HELEN: Steve!
INGALLS: Well, he came pretty close to it once—so I guess that’ll have to do.
HELEN: He . . . did what?
INGALLS: Didn’t you know that Walter almost got bumped off—about a month ago?
HELEN: [Aghast] No! . . .
INGALLS: Oh, yes. Someone’s tried to get him. Under very mysterious circumstances, too.
BRECKENRIDGE: Just an accident, probably. Why talk about it?
HELEN: Please tell me, Steve.
INGALLS: There isn’t really much to tell. Walter and Serge drove down to Stamford, one evening, and stopped at the laboratory, and dragged me down here to see the house—the “Dawsons’ ” house—it was just being finished then. Well, the three of us got separated, looking around, and then I heard a shot—and I saw Walter picking up his hat, with a hole through it. It was a new hat, too.
HELEN: Oh! . . .
INGALLS: Well, we called the police, and all the building workers were searched, but we never found the man who did it or the gun.
HELEN: But it’s fantastic! Walter doesn’t have an enemy in the world!
INGALLS: I guess you never can tell.
[FLEMING enters, Right, goes to sideboard, pours himself a drink, and stands drinking, ignoring the others]
HELEN: And then?
INGALLS: That’s all. . . . Oh, yes, there was another funny thing. I had a bag in the car—just a small bag with some old junk in it. When we got back to the car, we found the lock of that bag broken open. There was nothing inside that anyone would want, and whoever did it hadn’t even looked inside, because the things were just as I’d left them, but the lock was broken. We never figured that out, either.
HELEN: Walter! . . . Why didn’t you tell me about this?
BRECKENRIDGE: That is precisely why, dear—so that you wouldn’t be upset, as you are now. Besides, it was nothing. An accident or a crank. I told Curtiss about it—told him not to admit any strangers to the house—but nobody ca
me and nothing happened.
INGALLS: I told Walter that he should carry a gun—just in case—but he wouldn’t do it.
HELEN: But you should, Walter!
BRECKENRIDGE: I do. I got one.
INGALLS: I don’t believe it. You know, Walter is afraid of guns.
BRECKENRIDGE: Nonsense.
INGALLS: You said so yourself.
BRECKENRIDGE: [Indicating cabinet] Look in that drawer.
[INGALLS opens the drawer and takes out the gun]
INGALLS: You’re right—for once. [Examining the gun] Nice little job. That will take care of any—emergency.
HELEN: Oh, put it away! I don’t like them myself.
[INGALLS replaces the gun in the drawer and closes it]
TONY: It doesn’t make sense. A man like Mr. Breckenridge—why would anyone—
BRECKENRIDGE: Of course it doesn’t make sense. And I don’t see why Steve had to bring that up—today of all days. . . . Well, shall we go on to look at the grounds? Wait till you see the grounds, Helen!
HELEN: [Rising] Yes, of course.
[FLEMING swallows another drink and exits Right]
BRECKENRIDGE: Adrienne, my dear—coming?
ADRIENNE: [In a flat voice] Yes.
BRECKENRIDGE: No hard feelings, of course?
ADRIENNE: No.
BRECKENRIDGE: I knew you’d be all right. I wasn’t angry. An actress’ temper is like a summer storm.
ADRIENNE: Yes.
[She walks out through the French doors, followed by BRECKENRIDGE, SERGE, and TONY]
HELEN: [Stops at the French doors, turns] Coming, Steve?
[He does not answer and stands looking at her. Then:]
INGALLS: Helen . . .
HELEN: Yes?
INGALLS: You are not happy, are you?
HELEN: [With amused reproach] Steve! That’s one of those questions that should never be answered—one way or the other.
INGALLS: I’m asking it only . . . in self-defense.
HELEN: In . . . your own defense?
INGALLS: Yes.
