Eugene O'Neill The First Man
ACT I
It is around four o'clock of a fine afternoon in early fall.
As the curtain rises, MARTHA, CURTIS and BIGELOW are discovered. MARTHA is a healthy, fine-looking woman of thirty-eight. She does not appear this age for her strenuous life in the open has kept her young and fresh. She possesses the frank, clear, direct quality of outdoors, outspoken and generous. Her wavy hair is a dark brown, her eyes blue-gray. CURTIS JAYSON is a tall, rangy, broad-shouldered man of thirty-seven. While spare, his figure has an appearance of rugged health, of great nervous strength held in reserve. His square-jawed, large-featured face retains an eager boyish enthusiasm in spite of its prevailing expression of thoughtful, preoccupied aloofness. His crisp dark hair is graying at the temples. EDWARD BIGELOW is a large, handsome man of thirty- nine. His face shows culture and tolerance, a sense of humor, a lazy unambitious contentment. CURTIS is reading an article in some scientific periodical, seated by the table. MARTHA and BIGELOW are sitting nearby, laughing and chatting.
BIGELOW-[Is talking with a comically worried but earnest air.] Do you know, I'm getting so I'm actually afraid to leave them alone with that governess. She's too romantic. I'll wager she's got a whole book full of ghost stories, superstitions, and yellow- journal horrors up her sleeve.
MARTHA-Oh, pooh! Don't go milling around for trouble. When I was a kid I used to get fun out of my horrors.
BIGELOW-But I imagine you were more courageous than most of us.
MARTHA-Why?
BIGELOW-Well, Nevada-the Far West at that time-I should think a child would have grown so accustomed to violent scenes-
MARTHA-[Smiling.] Oh, in the mining camps; but you don't suppose my father lugged me along on his prospecting trips, do you? Why, I never saw any rough scenes until I'd finished with school and went to live with father in Goldfield.
BIGELOW-[Smiling.] And then you met Curt.
MARTHA-Yes-but I didn't mean he was a rough scene. He was very mild even in those days. Do tell me what he was like at Cornell.
BIGELOW-A romanticist-and he still is!
MARTHA-[Pointing at CURTIS with gay mischief.] What! That sedate man! Never!
CURTIS-[Looking up and smiling at them both affectionately- lazily.] Don't mind him, Martha. He always was crazy.
BIGELOW-[To CURT-accusingly.] Why did you elect to take up mining engineering at Cornell instead of a classical degree at the Yale of your fathers and brothers? Because you had been reading Bret Harte in prep. school and mistaken him for a modern realist. You devoted four years to grooming yourself for another outcast of Poker Flat.[MARTHA laughs.]
CURTIS-[Grinning.] It was you who were hypnotized by Harte-so much so that his West of the past is still your blinded New England-movie idea of the West at present. But go on. What next?
BIGELOW-Next? You get a job as engineer in that Goldfield mine- but you are soon disillusioned by a laborious life where six- shooters are as rare as nuggets. You try prospecting. You find nothing but different varieties of pebbles. But it is necessary to your nature to project romance into these stones, so you go in strong for geology. As a geologist, you become a slave to the Romance of the Rocks. It is but a step from that to anthropology- the last romance of all. There you find yourself-because there is no
MARTHA-[After a pause-sadly.] Poor Curt.
BIGELOW-[Ashamed and confused.] I had forgotten-
MARTHA-The years have made me reconciled. They haven't Curt.[She sighs-then turns to BIGELOW with a forced smile.] I suppose it's hard for any of you back here to realize that Curt and I ever had any children.
BIGELOW-[After a pause.] How old were they when-?
MARTHA-Three years and two-both girls.[She goes on sadly.] We had a nice little house in Goldfield.[Forcing a smile.] We were very respectable home folks then. The wandering came later, after- It was a Sunday in winter when Curt and I had gone visiting some friends. The nurse girl fell asleep-or something-and the children sneaked out in their underclothes and played in the snow. Pneumonia set in-and a week later they were both dead.
BIGELOW-[Shocked.] Good heavens!
MARTHA-We were real lunatics for a time. And then when we'd calmed down enough to realize-how things stood with us-we swore we'd never have children again-to steal away their memory. It wasn't what you thought-romanticism-that set Curt wandering- and me with him. It was a longing to lose ourselves-to forget. He flung himself with all his power into every new study that interested him. He couldn't keep still, mentally or bodily-and I followed. He needed me-then-so dreadfully!
BIGELOW-And is it that keeps driving him on now?
MARTHA-Oh, no. He's found himself. His work has taken the place of the children.
BIGELOW-And with you, too?
MARTHA-[With a wan smile.] Well, I've helped-all I could. His work has me in it, I like to think-and I have him.
BIGELOW-[Shaking his head.] I think people are foolish to stand by such an oath as you took-forever.[With a smile.] Children are a great comfort in one's old age, I've tritely found.