EILEEN (puzzled). I can't understand how anyone could—— (With a worried glance over her shoulder.) I think I'd better look for Miss Gilpin, hadn't I? She may wonder—— (She half rises from her chair.)
MURRAY (quickly). No. Please don't go yet. Sit down. Please do. (She glances at him irresolutely, then resumes her chair.) They'll give you your diet of milk and shoo you off to bed on that freezing porch soon enough, don't worry. I'll see to it that you don't fracture any rules. (Hitching his chair nearer hers—impulsively.) In all charity to me you've got to stick awhile. I haven't had a chance to really talk to a soul for a week. You found what I said a while ago hard to believe, didn't you?
EILEEN (with a smile). Isn't it? You said you hoped you wouldn't get well too soon!
MURRAY. And I meant it! This place is honestly like heaven to me—a lonely heaven till your arrival. (Eileen looks embarrassed.) And why wouldn't it be? I've no fear for my health—eventually. Just let me tell you what I was getting away from—— (With a sudden laugh full of a weary bitterness.) Do you know what it means to work from seven at night till three in the morning as a reporter on a morning newspaper in a town of twenty thousand people—for ten years? No. You don't. You can't. No one could who hadn't been through the mill. But what it did to me—it made me happy—yes, happy!—to get out here—T.B. and all, notwithstanding.
EILEEN (looking at him curiously). But I always thought being a reporter was so interesting.
MURRAY (with a cynical laugh). Interesting? On a small town rag? A month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony. (He laughs again.) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, unable to sleep through a meeting of the Common Council on account of the noisy oratory caused by John Smith's application for a permit to build a house; making a note that a tugboat towed two barges loaded with coal up the river, that Mrs. Perkins spent a week-end with relatives in Hickville, that John Jones—— Oh help! Why go on? Ten years of it! I'm a broken man. God, how I used to pray that our Congressman would commit suicide, or the Mayor murder his wife—just to be able to write a real story!
EILEEN (with a smile). Is it as bad as that? But weren't there other things in the town—outside your work—that were interesting?
MURRAY (decidedly). No. Never anything new—and I knew everyone and every thing in town by heart years ago. (With sudden bitterness.) Oh, it was my own fault. Why didn't I get out of it? Well, I didn't. I was always going to—to-morrow—and to-morrow never came. I got in a rut—and stayed put. People seem to get that way, somehow—in that town. It's in the air. All the boys I grew up with—nearly all, at least—took root in the same way. It took pleurisy, followed by T.B., to blast me loose.
EILEEN (wonderingly). But—your family—didn't they live there?
MURRAY. I haven't much of a family left. My mother died when I was a kid. My father—he was a lawyer—died when I was nineteen, just about to go to college. He left nothing, so I went to work on the paper instead. And there I've been ever since. I've two sisters, respectably married and living in another part of the state. We don't get along—but they are paying for me here, so I suppose I've no kick. (Cynically.) A family wouldn't have changed things. From what I've seen that blood-thicker-than-water dope is all wrong. It's thinner than table-d'hôte soup. You may have seen a bit of that truth in your own case already.