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Read Ebook: Wyoming by Ellis Edward Sylvester
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Ebook has 2114 lines and 58821 words, and 43 pages
JANE. You don't think he's dead, do you?
JACK. That or strayed I guess. He was always the black sheep of the family.
JANE. It was certainly very good of your father to come to America to find his brother. Where did he think he was, do you suppose, in Australia?
JACK. Well--his brother always had an antipathy for Americans. He married an American!
GLORIA . Have you seen Kathryn--anyone? I have a very important letter for her.
JACK. I didn't know anything was of importance to Kathryn, now that she's in love with me.
GLORIA . Kathryn in love with you? Mr. Hargrave, you must be mistaken.
JACK. No--she proposed to me yesterday.
JANE. And did you accept?
JACK. No, I wanted to surprise Kathryn by refusing, and then to startle her by proposing myself. This afternoon I have chosen for my surprise. Three o'clock I think would be the appropriate hour.
JANE. The surprise, Jack, may be yours, but the romance remains with Kathryn. Eve will out, you know, and Kathryn has proposed again.
JACK. Again! May I ask who it is who has been so bold as to be proposed to?
JANE. Oh, it's still in the family.
JACK. The family?
JANE. Yes, Kathryn has proposed to your father. She said her love for you was of no import, that her love for your father was based upon degrees of reverential confidence which marriage alone could be trusted to dispel.
JACK . I presume, Jane, that you refer to somebody else's father.
JANE. Your very own.
JACK. Impossible!
JANE. She recognized him at once.
JACK. How so?
JACK. Improbable.
JANE. Why so?
JACK . I have no father.
JANE. Of course if you have no father, that settles it. You have often spoken to us of one, just the same.
JACK. So I have. But he's not a real father.
GLORIA. What sort of a father is it that's not a real father?
JACK. Oh, mine's adopted.
JANE. You mean that you're an orphan, an adopted son, or something of the sort?
JACK. Yes; father found me; on a Friday.
JANE. Found you? On a Friday?
GLORIA . I don't see anything peculiar in the day at all, Jane. It is one of the seven, and to be found in all the best calendars. Have you found Kathryn, Jack?
JACK. I think I have. I think she's in the next room.
DILL. Pardon the contradiction, sir, but Miss Kathryn is in the Park. Picking convolvulus I think. Convolvulus very sweet today, sir.
JACK. Was she alone, Dill?
DILL . No, sir; no, sir. I think she's with your father, sir.
JACK . Foolish father! foolish father! Really I cannot begin to account for such conduct on my parent's part. The sense of family obligation in the old is appallingly on the wane. But perhaps he's forgotten his glasses. Father's been wearing glasses for twenty years and performs the most revolting capers whenever he's without them. He becomes a boy all over again. Have you got a book on fathers, Jane? Or perhaps I'll see him from the window.
GLORIA . I think a book on daughters is what you really need, Jane. I need not say that Kathryn has never been a daughter to you.
JANE. Of course not, Gloria. How could she have been? But Kathryn is my adopted daughter.
GLORIA . Kathryn is not your daughter at all! Kathryn is my daughter.
JANE. How unexpected, Gloria! Since when did you discover this?
GLORIA. I have never discovered it at all, of course. I have known it from the first.
JANE. Then that Friday, that biblical Friday, twenty years ago, when you came to me with tears in your eyes--and a basket and a baby--
GLORIA. I did it for your sake, Jane. I thought it would add to your character.
JANE. Why didn't you adopt Kathryn yourself, Gloria? You might have done that for your daughter.
GLORIA. For reasons of my own, and my husband's, I thought it best to allow you to.
JANE. Your child is quite your treasure, Gloria, you hide it so cleverly. As for your husband, I think you must have buried him.
GLORIA. We were married on our trip to London--yours and mine. My husband's father did not approve of the match and our marriage was annulled. Events which have since transpired allow us to be reunited.
JANE. It seems very strange this, your marrying your own husband.
GLORIA . It is strange, beautifully, idealistically strange. Oh, you never could believe me, never!
JANE. I believed you once, Gloria.
GLORIA . In the exact spot where I said I had found the basket--
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