The Naturewoman | Page 8

I couldn't possibly wear
mourning! No, no! I couldn't do that!
MRS. MASTERSON. [Astonished.] Why not?
OCEANA. In the first place, I never mourn.
MRS. MASTERSON. But your own grandfather, my dear!
OCEANA. But I never knew him. Aunt Sophronia . . . I never saw him
in my life!
MRS. MASTERSON. Even so, my dear! Hasn't he left you all his
fortune?
OCEANA. But am I supposed to mourn over that? Why, I'd naturally
be happy about that!
LETITIA. Oceana!
OCEANA. But surely . . wouldn't you be happy about it?
MRS. MASTERSON. My child, one is not supposed to set so much
store by mere money . . .
OCEANA. But Aunt Sophronia, money is power! And isn't anybody
glad to have power? What else did I come here for?

MRS. MASTERSON. I had hoped you had come home for some other
things . . . to see your relatives, for instance.
ETHEL. Here's father!
OCEANA. Uncle Quincy!
DR. MASTERSON. [Enters.] My dear girl! You have come!
[Embraces her.] Why, what a picture you are! A very storm from the
tropics ! My dear Oceana!
OCEANA. I'm so glad to get here.
DR. MASTERSON. Yes, indeed! I can believe it! And a strange
experience it must have been . . . your first plunge into civilization!
OCEANA. Yes, Uncle Quincy! It's been horrible!
DR. MASTERSON. Horrible, my dear? In what way?
OCEANA. It's been almost too much for me. Really . . . I could
understand how it might feel to be sick!
DR. MASTERSON. Why, what did you see?
OCEANA. Everything! It rushed over me, all at once! The people . . .
their dreadful faces! And such noises and odors and sights!
DR. MASTERSON. I hadn't realized . . .
OCEANA. And then the saloons! Rows and rows of them! It is ghastly!
LETITIA. My dear cousin, mother and I contribute regularly to a
temperance society.
OCEANA. But that hasn't helped, has it? I'm almost wild about such
things--they were the real reason I came home, you know.
MRS. MASTERSON. How do you mean?

OCEANA. They had got to my island! They are turning it into a hell!
DR. MASTERSON. In what way?
OCEANA. Why, it's a long story. I didn't write . . . it would have taken
too long. Two years ago there was a ship laid up . . . and the crew found,
quite by accident, that our island rock is all phosphate; something very
valuable . . . for fertilizer, it seems. So they bought land from the
natives, and now there's a company, and a trading-post, and all that.
And oh, my people are going all to pieces!
MRS. MASTERSON. The natives, you mean?
OCEANA. Yes . . . the people I have loved all my life. And I've tried
so hard . . . I've pleaded with them, I've wept and prayed with them!
But they're lost!
LETITIA. You mean rum?
OCEANA. I mean everything. Rum, and cocaine, and sugar, and
canned food, and clothes, and missionaries . . . all civilization! And
worse yet, Aunt Sophronia . . . ah, I can't bear to think of it!
MRS. MASTERSON. What?
OCEANA. You wouldn't let me tell you what. [In a low voice.]
Imagine my people, my beautiful people, with the soft, brown skins and
the big black eyes, and hair like the curtains of night. They are not
savages, you understand . . . they are gentle and kindly. They ride the
rushing breakers in their frail canoes, they fish and gather fruits in the
forests, they dream in the soft, warm sunshine . . . they are happy, they
are care-free, their whole life is a song. And they are trusting,
hospitable . . . the wonderful white strangers come, and they take them
into their homes, and open their hearts to them. And the strangers go
away and leave them a ghastly disease, that rages like a fire in their
palm-thatched cabins, that sweeps through their villages like a tornado.
And the women's hair falls out . . . they wither up . . . they're old hags
in a year or two. And the babies . . . I've helped bring them into the

world . . . and they had no lips . . . their noses were gone! They were
idiots . . . blind . . .
MRS. MASTERSON. [Wildly.] Anna Talbot! I must beg you to have a
little discretion!
LETITIA. Why should we hear about these things, Oceana?
OCEANA. My dear, it comes from America. The ships came from here!
There was one of them I saw . . . "The Mary Jane, of Boston, Mass."
MRS. MASTERSON. No doubt, among such low men . . . men of vile
life . .