DION--Tell him it's the devil come to co...

(Brown sits in the chair at left reading an architectural periodical. His expression is composed and gravely receptive. In outline, his face suggests a Roman consul on an old coin. There is an incongruous distinction about it, the quality of unquestioning faith in the finality of its achievement.

There is a sudden loud thumping on the front door and the ringing of the bell. Brown frowns and listens as a servant answers. Dion's voice can be heard, raised mockingly.)

DION--Tell him it's the devil come to conclude a bargain.

BROWN--(suppressing annoyance, calls out with forced good nature) Come on in, Dion. (Dion enters. He is in a wild state. His clothes are disheveled, his masked face has a terrible deathlike intensity, its mocking irony becomes so cruelly malignant as to give him the appearance of a real demon, tortured into torturing others.) Sit down.

DION--(stands and sings) William Brown's soul lies moldering in the crib but his body goes marching on!

BROWN--(maintaining the same indulgent, big-brotherly tone, which he tries to hold throughout the scene) Not so loud, for Pete's sake! I don't mind--but I've got neighbors.

DION--Hate them! Fear thy neighbor as thyself! That's the leaden rule for the safe and sane. (then advancing to the table with a sort of deadly calm) Listen! One day when I was four years old, a boy sneaked up behind when I was drawing a picture in the sand he couldn't draw and hit me on the head with a stick and kicked out my picture and laughed when I cried. It wasn't what he'd done that made me cry, but him! I had loved and trusted him and suddenly the good God was disproved in his person and the evil and injustice of Man was born! Everyone called me cry-baby, so I became silent for life and designed a mask of the Bad Boy Pan in which to live and rebel against that other boy's God and protect myself from His cruelty. And that other boy, secretly he felt ashamed but he couldn't acknowledge it; so from that day he instinctively developed into the good boy, the good friend, the good man, William Brown!

BROWN--(shamefacedly) I remember now. It was a dirty trick. (then with a trace of resentment) Sit down. You know where the booze is. Have a drink, if you like. But I guess you've had enough already.

DION--(looks at him fixedly for a moment--then strangely) Thanks be to Brown for reminding me. I must drink. (He goes and gets a bottle of whisky and a glass.)

BROWN--(with a good-humored shrug) All right. It's your funeral.

DION--(returning and pouring out a big drink in the tumbler) And William Brown's! When I die, he goes to hell! Skoal! (He drinks and stares malevolently. In spite of himself, Brown is uneasy. A pause.)

BROWN--(with forced casualness) You've been on this toot for a week now.

DION--(tauntingly) I've been celebrating the acceptance of my design for the cathedral.

BROWN--(humorously) You certainly helped me a lot on it.

DION--(with a harsh laugh) O perfect Brown! Never mind! I'll make him look in my mirror yet--and drown in it! (He pours out another big drink.)

BROWN--(rather tauntingly) Go easy. I don't want your corpse on my hands.

DION--But I do. (He drinks.) Brown will still need me--to reassure him he's alive! I've loved, lusted, won and lost, sang and wept! I've been life's lover! I've fulfilled her will and if she's through with me now it's only because I was too weak to dominate her in turn. It isn't enough to be her creature, you've got to create her or she requests you to destroy yourself.

BROWN--(good-naturedly) Nonsense. Go home and get some sleep.

DION--(as if he hadn't heard--bitingly) But to be neither creature nor creator! To exist only in her indifference! To be unloved by life! (Brown stirs uneasily.) To be merely a successful freak, the result of some snide neutralizing of life forces--a spineless cactus--a wild boar of the mountains altered into a packer's hog eating to become food--a Don Juan inspired to romance by a monkey's glands--and to have Life not even think you funny enough to see!

BROWN--(stung--angrily) Bosh!

DION--Consider Mr. Brown. His parents bore him on earth as if they were thereby entering him in a baby parade with prizes for the fattest--and he's still being wheeled along in the procession, too fat now to learn to walk, let alone to dance or run, and he'll never live until his liberated dust quickens into earth!

BROWN--(gruffly) Rave on! (then with forced good-nature) Well, Dion, at any rate, I'm satisfied.

DION--(quickly and malevolently) No! Brown isn't satisfied! He's piled on layers of protective fat, but vaguely, deeply he feels at his heart the gnawing of a doubt! And I'm interested in that germ which wriggles like a question mark of insecurity in his blood, because it's part of the creative life Brown's stolen from me!

BROWN--(forcing a sour grin) Steal germs? I thought you caught them.

DION--(as if he hadn't heard) It's mine--and I'm interested in seeing it thrive and breed and become multitudes and eat until Brown is consumed!

BROWN--(cannot restrain a shudder) Sometimes when you're drunk, you're positively evil, do you know it?

DION--(somberly) When Pan was forbidden the light and warmth of the sun he grew sensitive and self-conscious and proud and revengeful--and became Prince of Darkness.

BROWN--(jocularly) You don't fit the rôle of Pan, Dion. It sounds to me like Bacchus, alias the Demon Rum, doing the talking. (Dion recovers from his spasm with a start and stares at Brown with terrible hatred. There is a pause. In spite of himself, Brown squirms and adopts a placating tone.) Go home. Be a good scout. It's all well enough celebrating our design being accepted but--

DION--(in a steely voice) I've been the brains! I've been the design! I've designed even his success--drunk and laughing at him--laughing at his career! Not proud! Sick! Sick of myself and him! Designing and getting drunk! Saving my woman and children! (He laughs.) Ha! And this cathedral is my masterpiece! It will make Brown the most eminent architect in this state of God's Country. I put a lot into it--what was left of my life! It's one vivid blasphemy from sidewalk to the tips of its spires!--but so concealed that the fools will never know. They'll kneel and worship the ironic Silenus who tells them the best good is never to be born! (He laughs triumphantly.) Well, blasphemy is faith, isn't it? In self-preservation the devil must believe! But Mr. Brown, the Great Brown, has no faith! He couldn't design a cathedral without it looking like the First Supernatural Bank! He only believes in the immortality of the moral belly! (He laughs wildly--then sinks down in his chair, gasping, his hands pressed to his heart. Then suddenly becomes deadly calm and pronounces like a cruel malignant condemnation) From now on, Brown will never design anything. He will devote his life to renovating the house of my Cybel into a home for my Margaret!

BROWN--(springing to his feet, his face convulsed with strange agony) I've stood enough! How dare you . . . !

DION--(his voice like a probe) Why has no woman ever loved him? Why has he always been the Big Brother, the Friend? Isn't their trust--a contempt?

BROWN--You lie!

DION--Why has he never been able to love--since my Margaret? Why has he never married? Why has he tried to steal Cybel, as he once tried to steal Margaret? Isn't it out of revenge--and envy?

BROWN--(violently) Rot! I wanted Cybel, and I bought her!

DION--Brown bought her for me! She has loved me more than he will ever know!

BROWN--You lie! (then furiously) I'll throw her back on the street!

DION--To me! To her fellow creature! Why hasn't Brown had children--he who loves children--he who loves my children--he who envies me my children?

BROWN--(brokenly) I'm not ashamed to envy you them!

DION--They like Brown, too--as a friend--as an equal--as Margaret has always liked him--

BROWN--(brokenly) And as I've liked her!

DION--How many million times Brown has thought how much better for her it would have been if she'd chosen him instead!

BROWN--(torturedly) You lie! (then with sudden frenzied defiance) All right! If you force me to say it, I do love Margaret! I always have loved her and you've always known I did!

DION--(with a terrible composure) No! That is merely the appearance, not the truth! Brown loves me! He loves me because I have always possessed the power he needed for love, because I am love!

BROWN--(frenziedly) You drunken bum! (He leaps on Dion and grabs him by the throat.)

DION--(triumphantly, staring into his eyes) Ah! Now he looks into the mirror! Now he sees his face! (Brown lets go of him and staggers back to his chair, pale and trembling.)

BROWN--(humbly) Stop, for God's sake! You're mad!

DION--(sinking in his chair, more and more weakly) I'm done. My heart, not Brown--(mockingly) My last will and testament! I leave Dion Anthony to William Brown--for him to love and obey--for him to become me--then my Margaret will love me--my children will love me--Mr. and Mrs. Brown and sons, happily ever after! (staggering to his full height and looking upward defiantly) Nothing more--but Man's last gesture--by which he conquers--to laugh! Ha--(He begins, stops as if paralyzed, and drops on his knees by Brown's chair, his mask falling off, his Christian Martyr's face at the point of death.) Forgive me, Billy. Bury me, hide me, forget me for your own happiness! May Margaret love you! May you design the Temple of Man's Soul! Blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit! (He kisses Brown's feet--then more and more weakly and childishly) What was the prayer, Billy? I'm getting so sleepy. . . .

BROWN--(in a trancelike tone) "Our Father who art in Heaven."

DION--(drowsily) "Our Father." . . . (He dies. A pause. Brown remains in a stupor for a moment--then stirs himself, puts his hand on Dion's breast.)

BROWN--(dully) He's dead--at last. (He says this mechanically but the last two words awaken him--wonderingly) At last? (then with triumph) At last! (He stares at Dion's real face contemptuously.) So that's the poor weakling you really were! No wonder you hid! And I've always been afraid of you--yes, I'll confess it now, in awe of you! Paugh! (He picks up the mask from the floor.) No, not of you! Of this! Say what you like, it's strong if it is bad! And this is what Margaret loved, not you! Not you! This man!--this man who willed himself to me!

O’Neill, Eugene. The Great God Brown. Act 2, Sc.3. 1926.

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