(Mrs. Starkweather crosses to table, greets others characteristically and is served with tea by Connie.)
(Chalmers waits respectfully on Starkweather.)
Starkweather
(Looking up from note-book.) That will do, Tom.
(Chalmers is just starting across to join others, when voices are heard outside rear entrance, and Margaret enters with Dolores Ortega, wife of the Peruvian Minister, and Matsu Sakari, Secretary of Japanese Legation both of whom she has met as they were entering the house.)
(Chalmers changes his course, and meets the above advancing group. He knows Dolores Ortega, whom he greets, and is introduced to Sakari.)
(Margaret passes on among guests, greeting them, etc. Then she displaces Connie at tea-table and proceeds to dispense tea to the newcomers.)
(Groups slowly form and seat themselves about stage as follows: Chalmers and Dolores Ortega; Rutland, Dowsett, Mrs. Starkweather; Connie, Mr. Dowsett, and Hubbard.)
(Chalmers carries tea to Dolores Ortega.)
(Sakari has been lingering by table, waiting for tea and pattering with Margaret, Chalmers, etc.)
Margaret
(Handing cup to Sakari.) I am very timid in offering you this, for I am sure you must be appalled by our barbarous methods of making tea.
Sakari
(Bowing.) It is true, your American tea, and the tea of the English, are quite radically different from the tea in my country. But one learns, you know. I served my apprenticeship to American tea long years ago, when I was at Yale. It was perplexing, I assure you at first, only at first I really believe that I am beginning to have a how shall I call it? a tolerance for tea in your fashion.
Margaret
You are very kind in overlooking our shortcomings.
Sakari
(Bowing.) On the contrary, I am unaware, always unaware, of any shortcomings of this marvelous country of yours.
Margaret
(Laughing.) You are incorrigibly gracious, Mr. Sakari. (Knox appears at threshold of rear entrance and pauses irresolutely for a moment)
Sakari
(Noticing Knox, and looking about him to select which group he will join.) If I may be allowed, I shall now retire and consume this tea.
(Joins group composed of Connie, Mrs. Dowsett, and Hubbard.)
(Knox comes forward to Margaret, betraying a certain awkwardness due to lack of experience in such social functions. He greets Margaret and those in the group nearest her.)
Knox
(To Margaret.) I don't know why I come here. I do not belong. All the ways are strange.
Margaret
(Lightly, at the same time preparing his tea.) The same Ali Baba once again in the den of the forty thieves. But your watch and pocket-book are safe here, really they are.
(Knox makes a gesture of dissent at her facetiousness.) Now don't be serious. You should relax sometimes. You live too tensely.
(Looking at Starkweather.) There's the arch-anarch over there, the dragon you are trying to slay.
(Knox looks at Starkweather and is plainly perplexed.) The man who handles all the life insurance funds, who controls more strings of banks and trust companies than all the Rothschilds a hundred times over the merger of iron and steel and coal and shipping and all the other things the man who blocks your child labor bill and all the rest of the remedial legislation you advocate. In short, my father.
Knox
(Looking intently at Starkweather.) I should have recognized him from his photographs. But why do you say such things?
Margaret
Because they are true.
(He remains silent.) Now, aren't they? (She laughs.) Oh, you don't need to answer. You know the truth, the whole bitter truth. This is a den of thieves. There is Mr. Hubbard over there, for instance, the trusty journalist lieutenant of the corporations.
Knox
(With an expression of disgust.) I know him. It was he that wrote the Standard Oil side of the story, after having abused Standard Oil for years in the pseudo-muck-raking magazines. He made them come up to his price, that was all. He's the star writer on Cartwright's, now, since that magazine changed its policy and became subsidizedly reactionary. I know him a thoroughly dishonest man. Truly am I Ali Baba, and truly I wonder why I am here.
Margaret
You are here, sir, because I like you to come.
Knox
We do have much in common, you and I.
Margaret
The future.
Knox
(Gravely, looking at her with shining eyes.) I sometimes fear for more immediate reasons than that.
(Margaret looks at him in alarm, and at the same time betrays pleasure in what he has said.) For you.
Margaret
(Hastily.) Don't look at me that way. Your eyes are flashing. Some one might see and misunderstand.
Knox
(In confusion, awkwardly.) I was unaware that I that I was looking at you in any way that
Margaret
I'll tell you why you are here. Because I sent for you.
Knox
(With signs of ardor.) I would come whenever you sent for me, and go wherever you might send me.
Margaret
(Reprovingly.)
Please, please It was about that speech. I have been hearing about it from everybody rumblings and mutterings and dire prophecies. I know how busy you are, and I ought not to have asked you to come. But there was no other way, and I was so anxious.
Knox
(Pleased.) It seems so strange that you, being what you are, affiliated as you are, should be interested in the welfare of the common people.
Margaret
(Judicially.) I do seem like a traitor in my own camp. But as father said a while ago, I, too, have dreamed my dream. I did it as a girl Plato's Republic, Moore's Utopia I was steeped in all the dreams of the social dreamers.
(During all that follows of her speech, Knox is keenly interested, his eyes glisten and he hangs on her words.)
And I dreamed that I, too, might do something to bring on the era of universal justice and fair play. In my heart I dedicated myself to the cause of humanity. I made Lincoln my hero-he still is. But I was only a girl, and where was I to find this cause? how to work for it? I was shut in by a thousand restrictions, hedged in by a thousand conventions. Everybody laughed at me when I expressed the thoughts that burned in me. What could I do? I was only a woman. I had neither vote nor right of utterance. I must remain silent. I must do nothing. Men, in their lordly wisdom, did all. They voted, orated, governed. The place for women was in the home, taking care of some lordly man who did all these lordly things.
Knox