The Vision

THE VISION
[ONE-ACT PLAY]

PERSONS IN THE PLAY

An Old Labourer
His Old Wife
His Daughter
A Labourer Boy
An Old Man, a Vision of twenty years hence.

[Scene: Interior of a labourer’s cottage .. .. .. Evening. The labourer’s wife, an old woman, is cooking her husband’s meal in a dark comer to the right. Her young daughter is seen sitting by kneading wheat-cakes.]

Daughter: You slept a long sleep at mid-day, mother of me, and I all the while keeping watch over your quiet face. Dead and gone to the other life I thought sometimes you were, but then again you smiled in your sleep and I knew you full of life.

Old Woman: Child of me! God in the blue skies were good to us if he would close up our life…for we are poor and poverty they say now-a-days do be a crime! The poor ones suffer while the rich folk hold the whole big world in their strong hands .... and mock our poverty ... It was not this like in days gone by … Ah, child of my bosom! these be bitter times!

Daughter: I have often heard my father say this too, that hunger like a tongue of fire is licking the children’s empty stomachs and of women, he often does be talking .... who hide their pure naked bodies in cold earth digging out graves for themselves, there being no money to buy them their share of clothing .... and he often speaks of their men; God save them from shame .... their men, father says, are hard-worked as if they be bullocks or dumb creatures ... They are flogged till their strong male flesh cries out “Tyranny!” “Blood!” and such like noises!

Old Woman (weeping): And your father is a man too! … He comes to his cottage how often with a dark cloud on his brow, and when I ask him “What be the matter with my child’s father?” he smiles and cools my burning bosom with a cheerful word! ... and when at the deep of night he sleeps, I wake and under his share of tattered shirt, I see stripes like blue flame, and marks like purple flame, and such-like signs of his master’s cruelty, out there among the fields. These are cruel times, dear child of my womb, but we must live somehow till the great Master of all sings “Come to my Field of Glory!”

Daughter: Poor mother! how brave you are, and you so old and broken and that sorrowful... and father, he is a saintly soul the like of him they shall find beyond the great big clouds!

Old Woman: But, my girl, our chains must break somewhere, sometime, if we only wait, for, as I slept at mid-day, I fell into dreaming.

Daughter: It was then you smiled and I knew you full of life! What did you dream, mother?

Old Woman: Fields! green fields! and millions of poor labourers ... The hot sun baking their naked brown bodies, men, women and children … The poor women hiding their shame beneath their tattered breast cloth, and a meagre rag round their pale bodies. The children crying, crying for bread and yearning for a patch of cool shadows ... Among them of a sudden sprung a man, their master, with hard cruel looks of him, cracking his whip in the air ... The cracking sound frightened the young ones who shrieked in themselves, and choked their shrieks in their tired little throats parched and desert-like for want of water. Then again, as of a sudden, dear child of me, I glimpsed your father labouring and wiping the sweat at his brow, among the labourers. The blood of me jumped up like a mad woman and yelled, when the master lashed his body because he saw a tear-­drop break in the edge of his eye! “O cruel God!” I cry in my dreaming, “Where be justice? Be there justice?” when a voice brake from the trees in the field “Yea! as long as God do be in the blue sky and the heart of the labourer!”

Daughter: Mark you mother! “As long as God is in the blue sky and the heart of the labourer”... and have we not always thought on His mercy?

Old Woman: Then a figure, as of the days to be, stood in the midst of the labourers in the fields and cried “The day is yours! You are all kings! The tyrant shall bend low and drop his eye-balls in the dust!”

Daughter: May be, it is a vision, for we poor people do often see visions ... We dream ... and the dreams of the poor, they say, are born in God’s purple heart-core.

Old Woman (looking out of the cottage-door): The sun is red on the edge of the sky. How like a bit of bleeding flesh! May be your father comes on his roadway home … where he shall rest after his scanty meal ... Child! ... but, God knows, how many new stripes our eyes must suffer on the old trembling body of him in the darkness of night!

Daughter: I shall wet them with my tears, mother, and cover up their flames with the love of my heart ... butwho be he coming on the roadway alone ... a boy quietly weeping.

Old Woman: A labourer lad may be; call him in that we may love him and ease his little breast of its vast sorrows. (Exit Daughter)

A labourer-boy ... God have mercy on the labourer and his woman and his young one.

(Enter Daughter with the little labourer-child who is sobbing.)

Boy: O! Grandmother of me!

Old Woman: What hath befallen thee, little angel?

Boy: I have no corner of the world to hide me ... Hide mc in your lap ... O hide me – anywhere!

Daughter: The poor wee soul is trembling … and he so young and lovely! ... who hath hurt thee little lonely angel? ...

Boy: My master ... the cruel master ... His eyes are dark and poison-like, and in his tongue a black scorpion crawl ... He flogs us all day, and with a long long whip; looking serpent-like; His fingers are thick and hard and strong like mountains that we do see ... and we hate him ... He is a bad master … I don’t want to serve a bad master ... A cruel unfeeling master … and he not paying us wages at the end of daylight!

Daughter: Poor tiny sorrowing bosom!

Old Woman: And he is only one of the millions that do be crying ...

Daughter: Have you no father?

Boy: They say he is gone to another land where the fields are fine and the Master that do be there is a good kind Master, and He paying wages to him in silver stars, they, say ... and my mother ... my own darling mother ... (Sobs).

Old Woman: God rest her soul in peace, may be she toohas run away from our world of pale shadows ... Poor boy of the bleeding heart! ...

Boy: Gone! ... but not to father. She is gone, no one knows where, and she leaving a bitter tale in the mouths of the labourers.

Daughter: Poor woman! and she brought him into the world to be living by his little self all lonely in this great big world! .. why did she leave thee, little one?

Boy: The master that does be treating us like worse than dogs, the field-folk say he took her with him one evening ... for wages, he said, she, the mother of me, believed his lips that lied ... for we poor folk do be simple and believe the world truthful ... and then, the field folk say, she fled in shame, in a kind of rage ... an outrage, the field-folk say, and I living alone now in this world of many fears. Hide me, O grandmother of me, or send me to my father in the fields that do be fine and the Master do be kind and good doling out wages in silver stars as they say.

Old Woman: Child of me! let us feed this little angel. It is hungry he is ... this boy of the fields ... Fear no more, wee heart. It is you will be with us and call me your mother, you will ... and a father will come to you at the setting-in of dark. Forget the cruel master.

(The daughter sets a plate of evening meal before the lad and a  mug of water.)

Boy (eating hungrily): Good folk! I have not supped nor eaten I have for two days past, nor could I forget my share of pride and ask for a morsel, for we poor folk do often be proud and ashamed to beg ... we are ... and we that sore and hungry ... Now God be praised, there do be kind folk among the poor ... O! the wealthy folk are cruel, cruel, no mercy in their hearts, or no heart may be for mercy to enter … For days we hunger and no wages given us ... What are we to do, God save us … Many there do be steal and plunder to keep them full of life … and often it is caught they are and sent to closed rooms with bars, prison, the field-folk call it … and they do be happier there for sure of bread and water it is they be, and scanty work, and a roof to keep the sun-burn from them …

(The boy finishes his meal.)

Old Woman: He is weary and sleep will hush the flame of his eyelids ...

(The daugher spreads apiece of mat in the corner to the left.)

There little boy! sleep till the dawn be red on the hills and a new day begin for your heart that has known sorrow.

Boy: (Goes towards mat to sleep): Now God be praised! there do be kind folk among the poor ... The rich folk are cruel ... cruel ... (falls asleep).

(The stage begins to grow dark. Only a faint sense of approaching star-light is felt pulsing in the darkness.)

Old Woman: His wee body is old with sorrow ... He has stripes too and they do be the badge of the tribe of labourers.

Daughter: Mother! the hills are beginning to sleep too ... and father is still out in the fields ... Punished, may be, and forced to end more work than is his usual share … But there he comes with a quiet splendour in his eyes … Father!

(Enter Father unusually calm and preoccupied as if he were touched with vision and prophecy.)

You come late and the darkness growing on the hillside ... already a star breaks.

Old Woman: Punished may be and worked into the heart of the grey evening.

Old Man (smiling with an inner consciousness of new power): No! Woman of my poverty! a strange thing hath befallen! … I fell asleep on the roadside ... and I coming over the tired fields to our home the labour of tile daylight being done ... my limbs trembling and worn, my eyes closing on the red wake of the sun … and, as of a sudden, a soft touch on my feverish head woke me .. then darkness folding the hillside .. In my dreams I dreamed that we knelt … You, your daughter, and I, ... in prayer to the great Master in the Land of the Stars and of the sunrise, where everything that chanceth do be beautiful ... Oho! but who may you childer be? ...

Old Woman:    A labourer child … and seeking that he is refuge in our love and poverty … 

Old Man: How like a God he sleeps!

Daughter: But they say that God does never be asleep ... He ever waketh, some say.

Old Woman: And some, that sleepeth. He for certain! ... for there are strange things befalling the world of His own making! no justice in any corner ... But when He wakeneth, the flowers shall blossom once and the desert laugh like a red rose.

Daughter: Let us pray the great God then and wake Him ... (wakes up the sleeping boy) May be, the prayers of four souls do be stronger than of three .... and the fourth a pretty child of pure heart ... That may be will make our voices fill His blue sleep in Heaven ... for the child’s voice is sweet ever ... and God loveth children.

(The boy wakes up and comes to the Old W oman.)

Old Man: Here is your father, dear angel.

Boy: A night of stars to you father, dear angel.

Old Man: How like a God he speaks!

Old Woman: Child of our poverty! Bend low and kneel with us. We shall wake up the sleeping God in the blue skies ... that is.

Boy: That is where my father does be working in fields that are fine ... and the Master is good and loving he is.

Old Man: Pray with us. The prayer of the poor may be heard for once, if they be from the flowering mouth of a child! (They kneel to pray. Suddenly a lightning runs through the room as if to herald the voice of thunder. Then an Old Man, the Vision­-of Twenty-Years-Hence-appears.)

Vision of Twenty Years Hence: Rise, souls in prayer! I live in the present, I who have always lived in the past ... I Come from the Master of the skies and my lips are flaming with prophecy! People who know me call me “Vision of twenty years hence!” – and many there are who feel my presence day and night ... Labourers! poor labourers, fear not! times are soon coming when you shall be powerful masters! when your race that is now bruised and under the word of fetters, will seek its freedom through you. Labourers! fear not! for the tyrant shall not prosper long! He shall die a bitter death, his eyes shall be put out, and his mouth, closed with a coward’s silence … His limbs will tremble in heavy chains, and all the rich blood that has oozed out of your bodies and the bodies of your women and children shall gush in an eternal stream from out his nostrils ... He shall kneel before each one of you ... man, woman and child, in the garments of a slave, he that was once your hard master ... Rise, Souls in prayer, Labourers! a destiny of kingship awaits you! You are the makers of the future … and at your bleeding feet opens the splendid white Road  to Peace and Immortality.

(Disappears. The stage is growing bright, as though a new dawn were being ushered into the world of darkness.)

Boy: God in the blue skies hath woken, mother!

Old Man: My dream of mid-day hath come to pass!

Boy: A fine old being! He cometh from the blue skies and the Master that does breathe there, may be ...

Daughter: Miracle!

Old Man: Twenty years hence! and then a white dawn shall break through the black hills of our sorrow ... This boy may be hath brought vision with him ... I shall go, stand in the midst of the suffering labourers and give them this message.

“The tyrant shall die! ... Ye shall be kings – Twenty years hence!”

[Curtain]

–From “SHAMA’ A”, July 1920