The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

(Scene 2. The Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall. VIRGINIA sits slackly in an old-fashioned wheeled chair, gazing into nothingness.)

LEONARD
How are you today, Virginia? Sleep well?

VIRGINIA

(galvanizing)

How can there be sleep for those of us who see the flesh melted off the world? Have you come to gloat over the shattered splintered fragments of my body? You care nothing for what they do to me! You macerate my soul. With sleep comes horrible dreams. I was trapped in a drainpipe with the savage hairy man who squats, gobbling and belching, dabbling at my entrails. Soon I will be shrouded in snail slime sticky from the hollow stalk.
Get away from me! I don’t want to see you!

LEONARD

(humbly)

I’ve brought chocolate creams. You used to love those.

VIRGINIA
You are a shadow. You torment me with shadows of the people I might have been, all my unborn selves. Go away, Leonard. Your cause is hopeless.

LEONARD
No cause is hopeless as long as we can talk.

VIRGINIA
I have nothing to say to you. Your kind disgusts me.

LEONARD
You can’t realize how utterly you would end my life too if you died or ever dismissed me. Aren’t I still your precious Mongoose? Aren’t you my beloved Mandrill?

VIRGINIA
Any real relationship between men and women is unattainable. It’s all nonsense and lies.

LEONARD
Weren’t we going to create our own special relationship? A real marriage, unlike everyone else’s, a vital, living thing. That’s what we promised.

VIRGINIA
And then you brought me to George’s house, you traitor.

LEONARD
Officialdom requires certification following suicide attempts! You’d be a ward in chancery! This is the only way!

(He seems about to sit down, she stops him)

VIRGINIA
If you sit I’ll start screaming and I won’t stop.

LEONARD
I’m so afraid of the future, Virginia, if you can’t get strong.

VIRGINIA
You want me to tolerate filthy fingers stuck down my throat! That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?

LEONARD
Is eating chocolate creams so terrible?

(He offers the box)

VIRGINIA
Don’t come near me.

(He sets the box on the little table, kneels)

LEONARD
I would grovel to you and kiss your toes if you would only listen to me, Virginia. Aren’t you better now? Aren’t you getting stronger? Look, you’re free and out of your straps. You’re sleeping some and eating a little. Have the hallucinations gone away?

VIRGINIA
I’m terrified of sleep. I’m terrified of chloral and the nightmares it provides. When I wake at night and understand all the terror, violence and unreason still presiding over the universe it is worse than death. I am nothing. I am nobody. I am I-less.

LEONARD
Didn’t you always say that only writing that brings order to madness? You called art humanity’s one defense.

VIRGINIA
Art is a conspiracy among the civilized. Yet how can we call people civilized who insist on enslaving half their populace? Behold myself, empty-handed and force-fed, by your order. I know I have a good mind, but you have surrendered me to the very people bent on destroying it.

LEONARD
Civilization is largely humbug, Virginia. That may be the only thing I’ve learned. I always felt I’m playing a part upon a stage. You’re the only honest person I’ve ever met and now you’re at risk. I just want you to get well, Virginia, so we can plan our hundred books.

VIRGINIA
You care nothing for my plans! Shall I ever write again one of those sentences that gives me the most intense pleasure? For years now, people jerked wires to make me jump like a jack in the box when all I want is peace. I long to be ten miles beneath the sea. Here I am stuck in polar ice, harassed by barbarians.

LEONARD
Your ice drifts toward home.

VIRGINIA

I have no home.

LEONARD

You will get well and our life will become possible again. As soon as you gain weight and master some calm and some cheer, we are free!

VIRGINIA
Calm and cheer in a world like this one! Don’t treat me like some retarded infant. When we walked together at Asheham you inveighed against the world as a stupid, corrupt brothel.

LEONARD
And I still believe that. I wanted to go into politics but politics is brutal and discouraging. Now I think I must change the world through workers’ cooperatives. We must stand up against all the evils that we see.

VIRGINIA
You said writers are born to be unhappy.

LEONARD
I fear to some extent that must be true. It’s harder on you, because you’re a sensitive, poetic writer. But if we swear to support each other –

VIRGINIA
My punishment is unending. Mother didn’t approve of school for girls. Boys should go everywhere and know everything, and girls should stay home and know nothing. All my brothers were sent to school, where I must say they did horribly. George and Gerald were incurably stupid and Thoby jumped out a window rather than write his prep. But I learned Greek! I learned Latin! I read every book in Father’s library, all on my own! And here I am, sentenced to Bedlam for it.

LEONARD
When you have seen the squalor that I have, you will realize that Dalingridge Hall is no punishment, Virginia.

VIRGINIA
It’s a punishment for me. Think of its owners, in their smug pride, rulers of the universe. How can you of all people, abide them? But they seduce even you with their privilege, luxury and glamor. What is the use of the finest education in the world if it teaches people not to hate force but to use it? Why can’t we learn the arts of understanding people’s lives and minds? All that the professions preach is worship of the sacred tree of property.

LEONARD
The doctors say you pushed yourself too hard.

VIRGINIA
Is that what you really think, that diving deep is dangerous? Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.