Our Town: Act 2

Some babies that weren’t even born before have begun talking regular sentences already; and a number of people who thought they were right young and spry have noticed that they can’t bound up a flight of stairs like they used to, without their heart fluttering a little.

Nature’s been pushing and contriving in other ways, too: a number of young people fell in love and got married.

MRS. WEBB shakes the grate, adds coal to her stove, turns damper, fills coffee pot at sink.

Went down to Maine and become a parson.

MRS. GIBBS near stove stops to blow nose, on verge of tears.

Frank, weddings are perfectly awful things. Farces,—that’s what they are!

I get a shock every time I think of George setting out to be a family man—that great gangling thing!

MRS. GIBBS. (at the table, drinking her coffee, meditatively) Yes...people are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.

I was afraid we’d run out and eat our meals in silence, that’s a fact. —Well, you and I been conversing for twenty years now without any noticeable barren spells.

I got the impression she’s crying.

You put on your overshoes. It’s raining torrents.

GEORGE returns reluctantly to the kitchen and pantomimes putting on overshoes.

GEORGE. (startled, choking over his coffee) Oh, fine, I’m fine. (Pause. Earnestly.) Mr. Webb, what sense could there be in a superstition like that?

Well, you see—on her wedding morning a girl’s head’s apt to be full of...clothes and one thing and another.

A girl’s apt to be a mite nervous on her wedding day.

MR. WEBB. (With alacrity. Suddenly looking at GEORGE.) Oh, yes; oh, yes. Don’t you misunderstand me, my boy. Marriage is a wonderful thing,—wonderful thing. And don’t you forget that, George.

GEORGE crosses the stage to his own home, bewildered and crestfallen.

George, it's a fact, you’ve got awful conceited and stuck-up, and all the girls say so.

EMILY. (to him, arguing nobly against her inclinations) But, George, maybe it’s very important for you to go and learn all that about—cattle judging and soils and those things.

STAGE MANAGER. (pretending to be affronted) What’s that? George Gibbs, do you mean to tell me—!

They walk in grave silence across the stage and pass through the trellis at the Webbs' back door and disappear.

When all is ready the STAGE MANAGER strolls to the center of the stage, down front, and, musingly, addresses the audience.

Y’see, some churches say that marriage is a sacrament.

MRS. WEBB. I don’t know why on earth I should be crying... Oh, I’ve got to say it: you know, there’s something downright cruel about sending our girls out into marriage this way. I hope some of her girl friends have told her a thing or two. It’s cruel, I know, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I went into it blind as a bat myself, (in half-amused exasperation) The whole world’s wrong, that’s what’s the matter.

Suddenly THREE MEMBERS of his baseball team appear downstage right and start whistling and catcalling to him.

MR WEBB arrives at the pulpit with EMILY, leaves her facing GEORGE and goes to his seat.

His voice sinks to an unintelligible mumble over which rises the voice of MRS. SOAMES.

The stage is suddenly arrested into silent tableau.

The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will,—

He now looks at the audience for the first time, with a warm smile that removes any sense of cynicism from the next line.