Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The journey into the raldom a strange and tell a
by I hope you will enjoy the chap.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That it will thrill you a little and kill you
a little. So settle back, get a good grip on
your nerve. Where are we going? You'll find out when
we get there.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
The CBS Radio Mystery the Present, come in.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm a g Marshall.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
What is always on our mind and but seldom on
our lips? What is forever contemplated and never comprehended? The
answer is death? Shakespeare would seem to have said at
all when he wrote death unnecessary end will come when
it will come? What is it really unnecessary end? That's
(01:24):
the question that that devils us, and in all probability
will continue to bedevil us until, well, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Until we die. Do as you live in a house,
of course, doing your web clothes certainly.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
So you eat food?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, now go away. You're beginning to annoy me.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Our mystery Grammar Dialogue with Death was written especially for
the mystery Everybody else but Eric and stars Paul Hect
and Fred Gwynn. The story We now bring you took
(02:17):
place about one hundred years ago, a time when no
one knew anything about death, as no one had known
anything a hundred years before that for a thousand remained
as no one knows now Yet.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Then as now, there were fantasies.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
About death, and it's on the basis of one of
them that we had fashioned the story that follows.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I remember it all so well, every detail, what she
was wearing at certain times, what she looked like at
certain moments, where we stood or sat, what she said
and how she said it, what I responded, place we walked,
food we ate, even the dishes we ate from, glasses
(03:02):
we drank from. I'm seeing it all again, hearing it,
or feeling it all for the second time, a kind
of terrible, inevitable deja vu.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Strange, isn't it strange? I loved her so much.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
I know.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The year I left for Heidelberg to study medicine, she
was just a slip of a thing, only sixteen. And
when I came back four years later, she wasn't simply
four years older. She was a new person, no longer
a child to tease and play games with, but a
grown woman to admire and respect and fall in love with.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Which I promptly did. Yes, of course, my father had
written to me about her a few times, but nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Nothing had prepared me for the shock, the delirious surprise
that morning at the railroad station.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Oh lord, George, that's your Lisa.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Oh, yes, sir, that's mine. That's your George.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Come if I could never get here?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You're light? Well the train is it? No?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Jenny?
Speaker 7 (04:17):
Don't say you don't recognize me?
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I die?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
What happened to your pigtails on my head?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Please?
Speaker 7 (04:24):
And they're called brave? Come on, I tail down in
the track. Your father Stillo be in Femary.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I can't get over how you've changed, and you've gone
to hell.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm going to teach your class in anatomy. A professor
needs a must at.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You've changed completely.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
Why do you keep saying that?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Because it's true?
Speaker 7 (04:51):
Yes, here we are.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You'll observe. We have a new horse.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
What happened to Princess?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
We had to have a down.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
You wanted to take the.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Reins, all right?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I learned to write on princess. Remember we used to
ride her bare back, the two of.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Us, me in front, you behind those wild gallops across
the meadow. Should we get started?
Speaker 7 (05:14):
Your father may be home by now. And Hannah's kind
of special.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Supper and you're on it all right. I really love
that sweet horse, all right down to the dollar. You
said you had her foot down. We did. She's fine.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Now let's take a two year old.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
But she's dead. I see you're awesome in your dreams.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
You mean, I mean, I see that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I hear her.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Come on, George, let's get out of this no water.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
On the way home, I tried to remember what she'd
been like when she first came to live with father
and me, A scrowny child of nine or ten. Do
you remember her, Hannah very well. She didn't seem to
prove at all about her parents.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In the awful way they died.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Had she'd been too young to grasp the tragedy of
it all. I found myself hoping that father would be
home by the time we arrived.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I wanted to talk to him about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Annah says, give the roast. Not at ten minutes. Where's Jenny? Father, Jenny,
she's setting table. Well, it's good to have you back, son.
Sorry I couldn't meet your track.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, it's all right, Jenny explained the father about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
How do you think she looks?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She's grown up. But there's something else. On the way home,
she told me you had to have old Princess put down.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Well, Princess was nearly fairy, you know, we could have
had up without fashion. Ever, that's no kind of life,
Jenny says.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
She sees her running across the meadow, sound as a dollar,
looking like a two.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Year old as well.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
She ever has she ever told you then?
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Not directly now, but I've heard her talking to old.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Princess, talking to a dead horse. That's not healthy, perhaps not?
What have you spoken to her about it? George?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We have to remember the life Jenny's had, the circumstances
under which she came here to live, having seen her
father and her mother burned alive screaming from their bedroom window. Well,
that's a terrible thing for a child to go through.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But when she came to live with us, she was
just a normal little girl who was never anything morbid
about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
There isn't anything more of it about Jenny.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
It's seeing a dead horse talking to a dead horse,
being preoccupied with death that.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Way, Jenny isn't preoccupied with death. She simply doesn't believe
in it. She doesn't believe in it. That's a peculiar
thing to say. Never less is true true for Jenny anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, I'm going to speak to her about it.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
You'll do nothing of the sort. You leave Jenny alaw.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But it's morbid, father, it's not healthy.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Who are you to say what's morbid or what's help?
You leave that girl alone, George, I'm wanting you leave
her alone, or you'll answer to me.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I couldn't understand my father, a doctor who faced up
to death and fought at any number of times in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The course of his practice, as I was prepared to
do now that I had an MD after my name.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, and as you know, I took up my residency
at the local hospital and started teaching an evening course
in anatomy. My time was heavily occupied, but every minute
I could spare was spent with Jenny.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
You remember how it was, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I remember going to church together, attending Vesper's long buggy
rides on fine days, local dances, Taffy Fool's country fairs,
a long afternoon, was reading in the summerhouse, as we'd.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Done when we were children. I felt the.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Moment approaching, and I could be certain of my love
for her, though I resisted it as long as I could,
But one late afternoon, sitting with her in the summer house,
I knew it was no longer any use to pretend
to myself or to her.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Jenny, I love you. I love you more than I
can say, almost more than I can bear. I've always
loved you, Jenny.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It's taken me all this long time to realize how
much I love you.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Are you surprised? Not there? You mean you've known it
all along? But I love you. I wanted you toose
that means that you love me. I do love you too,
Oh Jenny, Jenny, will you marry me? Won't you?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Of course you will.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I have to ask my mother. I'm sure she likes you, Jenny,
my darling, your mother much.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You go in the house.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Will you let me stay here by myself for a
little while?
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Will you do that?
Speaker 2 (09:57):
My love? Well, if you want me to, looks so trouble.
I like you very much, Jenny. Father likes you too.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
A dozen conflicting emotions flooded my mind. A girl who
talked to the death, could such a one ever be
truly mine?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And a frenzy compounded of doubt and desire. I told
my father I've asked Jenny to marry me.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Father, Ah, I thought you might do that. Well, I approved.
Has she accepted you? She says she loves me, But
has she accepted your father? At this very minute, Jenny
is in the summerhouse asking her mother's permission to marry
me and her father's ide.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You see? Is that all you can say? You see?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Her father and mother have been dead for ten years,
but she is asking their permission to marry me. Doesn't
that strike you as a very strange thing for a
young girl to do? When she said she talks to
a dead horse, sees it running across the meadow. That
was bad enough, But now to talk to a dead
father and mother, perhaps she thinks she sees them too
when father, if she'll have me, what will I be
(11:16):
taking for.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
A wife, the woman you'll love? What more do you want?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
George?
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Can't yourself very fortunate?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
My boy?
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Consider yourself the luckiest man on earth.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
But I must talk to her about these hallucinations. I
must have it out with her before we can be married.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
You will do nothing of the sort. I forbid it,
You forbid it, God's name? Why Jenny's mind? George has
a delicate balance. It swings perilously between this world and another,
never quite settling, never coming to rest, oslating back and forth,
(11:52):
vibrating like a pendulum. George, don't tamper with that balance,
Do you understand me? Don't tample with it? Oh, by Heaven,
I swear her. Yeah, well, never mind.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
You'll want father.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
We'll finish what you were going to say.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Look here, none of this, George, is it it's it's
it's a gun. Yes, it's a gun. You say one word, George,
that girl about what you call her hallucinations, and I'll
kill you.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That's Jenny.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Remember what I said, George, Leave her around or I'll
kill you.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
You right, George, we can be married.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
My father gave us his blessing. In my happiness and
my expectancy. I drove away all premonitions, all dreams, whatever.
Ticking at the back of my mind was the question,
why had my father spoken as he did so passionately,
so violently.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
You don't know to you he loved her viactly, passionately
loved her.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Death has been written about very little. Love has been
written about a great deal, perhaps because love is the
beginning of everything and death is the end. But what
happens when love and death are intermingled, joined the one
to the other in an eternal embrace. We'll explore this
(13:38):
further Inact too. So George and Jenny plighted their trout,
(13:58):
and under a dire threat George's father for bad his
son ever to speak to his young fiancee about her
curious attachment to all though she has loved.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Who have passed out of this life.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Then, under the spell of his infatuation, George proceeded with
the arrangements were his imminent marriage to the girl of
his heart.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We spent long afternoons in the summer house spinning dreams
of the day that would unite us. We wanted an
extravagant wedding, at least I did. My father's big white
colonial house, set among great old oak trees, with its
center hallway, its winding staircase, its vast.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Reception hall was ideal. You remember it, Hannah, Are you
are after the ceremony?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
If it was a fine day, we would have the
Collatians served in the great rose garden, with a quintette
of musicians.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Playing in tables laden with food.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And I shall be very dashing in my cutaway and
striped trousers and you in what.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
What was you wear?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Jenny?
Speaker 7 (15:01):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean you haven't ordered your wedding dress, not yet.
I thought that was what young brides thought about first.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
What I've been thinking about it?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You have someone come to the house to make it,
won't you.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I don't know, sweetheart. The local shops are all right
for simple things.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
I'd like something simple, I.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Think, Well, as you're sure, look, why don't you take
a trip into the city and see what they have
in the big stores?
Speaker 6 (15:25):
Mixed you that.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Hannah will go with you and help you pick it out.
Speaker 7 (15:28):
I don't want Hannah to go.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
With me, but Hannah has very good taste, Dear, she
could advise me.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
I don't need Hannah to advise. Only my mother will
advise me. My mother will pick out my dress.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I started to speak, then closed my lips firmly against
the words. I remembered my father saying, Jenny's mind has
a delicate balance. It swings between this world and another,
oscillating back, and don't tamper with it again. My love
drowned my fears, and I reached for Jenny's hand.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
What are you thinking about, my love?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
About the wedding.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Why do you look so sad? Who's to pay for it?
Speaker 7 (16:16):
On the caviage, champagne and the musician? Who's to pay
for my dress?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
My dear, do you need money for your dress? For anything?
Who's to pay for it? All? Crescious?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
I'll give you money for the dress and the caviliar,
the champagne, the musicians.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
My father will pay.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
For all that.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Well, that's not right, of course, it's right, Jenny. He
expects to pay for it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
He wants to. You're like his own daughter.
Speaker 7 (16:36):
The father of the bride always pays for those things, Jennie.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He's always done that way, my darling.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
Father wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
I know that he couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
My whole body stiffened.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I murmured some sort of excuse, told her I needed
something from the house, and I fled the summer house,
leaving her immobile pensive trouble. Inside the house, I found
my father, father, it's happened again.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Sit Andrew?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I don't know what to.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Do, Gourche, what's the matter, Jenny?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yes, she and I were sitting in the summerhouse within
there most of the afternoon, making.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Plans for the wedding.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
When we got to the subject of a wedding dress,
it seems that she doesn't want it made, she wants
to buy it.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So I suggested that she.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Take the train into the city and maybe Hannah would
go with her to help.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Her pick it out. Good idea, yes, But Jenny would
have no part of it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
She said, my mother will help me pick it out.
My mother will help me pick out my wedding dress.
Her mother, who burned up in a fire, who's been
in her grave.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Good, George, I know how you feel.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Am I to live with ghosts once we are married? George,
I live with ghosts. We all let will go.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Well, I don't propose to Well, what do you propose
to do?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Father? I didn't say anything when Jenny spoke about.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Her mother, her dead mother, helping her to choose her
wedding dress. I thought of everything you had said, and
I kept quiet.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I'm glad you did.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But then then she suddenly looked very troubled, very perplexed,
and she said, who's to.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Pay for all this? Pay for it? Yes, the dress,
the wedding, the music, a caterer.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Why I shall pay for it? Well, that's what I
told her, Well, who else should pay for it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Her father? Her father, And that's what she said.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
She said it was only fitting and proper that the
bride's father should pay for his daughter's wedding. I think
she she expects her dead father to give her away.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh, she wouldn't. I don't know what she expects.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
I thought she'd want me.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I know, you forbade me to say anything to her
about her her congress with the dead.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I do forbid, but now I must. It's gone too far.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Oh, George, it could be fatal. Yes, there she is.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I'm in here, dear, with father in the in the library.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Say nothing, George.
Speaker 7 (19:05):
Oh, I'm so glad you're here. You can help me.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
What is it you need, Jenny?
Speaker 7 (19:10):
The second volume of something called Materia Medica.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Is there such a book on.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
The bottom shelf?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yes, with the red binding? Oh?
Speaker 7 (19:20):
Oh yes, now let's let's see here volume two.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
What are you looking for, dear?
Speaker 7 (19:28):
Well, I'm not sure. Let me see you, page three
hundred of.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes, yes, it's here. Here it is.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
What is a thousand dollars you pay for my wedding?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Her face was radiant.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
She spread the ten one dollar bills on the floor
and gazed at them delightedly.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
That's for my father and myself. We stared at each other.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
He told me it would be here, father, of course,
And yes, there it is.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Is wonderful, George, wonderful.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
You pay for everything.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Jenny, my dear, it's nearly time for supper. Why don't
you gather up the money and take it up to
your room change for dinner. I want to talk to George.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
All right.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
That's a good gal, you see, George.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
I told you he wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
It wouldn't be proper.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
How did that money get their? Father? Did you put
it there?
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Her father put it there.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
You are worse than she is. You put it there?
Speaker 4 (20:39):
And then somehow know George, Jenny's father put the money
in the book ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Did you know it was there?
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Not until now?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
You see?
Speaker 4 (20:49):
It's money. He owed me money I lent him. I
never expect him to pay it back. And when he
tried to pay it back, I refused to take it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
How did he get in the book the.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Night he came here to give it to me, the
night I refused it? Here in this very wrong? I
remember after a long and somewhat stormy argument. I went
out to call him a carriage, left the ten hundred
dollar bills lying on the desk, and when I came
back to make my peace with him, the money was
(21:20):
no longer there. Of course, I assume he'd put it
back in his pocket, but instead he hid it in
a book he knew i'd eventually open.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Father, it doesn't explain how Jenny came to know it
was there. Don't don't shrug and turn away. We have
to talk about this.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I don't have to, and I don't intend to.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All right, then I'll talk to Jenny about it.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
No, you will come back here, George.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Father, I cannot marry a girl who's living half with
me and half with the dead.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
If you love her, you'll let her be.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
That girl has some sort of communication with the dead
that you can't understand. But it's wrong, right or wrong.
It's hers, it's part of her. You must not interfere.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I have to, Father, You must not, and I have
to do it. Now.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
Don't make me kill you, George.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Give me the gun. Father, Now give it to me.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
George.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I don't hurt you. Give me the gun. I'm sorry, Father,
I'm terribly sorry forgive me. I put the gun in
my pocket. I looked down at my father, on.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
His knees on the floor where I had forced him.
His eyes were filled with tears for whom, for himself,
for Jenny, for me, for what she had done to him,
for what he had almost done to me, or for
what I was about to do to her.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I could not tell.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I went upstairs and lifted my hand to knock on
Jenny's door, and then I heard her voice.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Thank you, Oh, thank you.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
I knew I could count on you.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I've always counted on you, and you've never failed me. Mother.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
Should I have my dress made?
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Or shall we go to the city and buy it?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (23:16):
I wanted to be just right when I walked down
the big staircase. I want to look just right because
your father, you'll be waiting to get the foot of
the stairs. You'll cook your arm just so, and i'll
put mine to yours. Together, we'll walk to where the
(23:37):
minister will be standing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Who's there, it's George. Let me in. I'm not quite dressed, George,
it doesn't matter. Please George, look at me, Jenny, look
at me.
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Let me go, George.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Why that you were talking to just now that because
your father.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Wasn't me, George, and your mother, you were planning your
wedding with them.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's not with me, Start with them.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You were planning your wedding dress with your mother, not
with Hannah, who adores you, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Who helped raise you. I heard you.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You were telling your father he would give you.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
For me in marriage.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Your father is dead, Jenny. He's been dead a long time.
And your mother too, dead and dead. And Princess is
dead too. Princess is not running across any meadow looking
like a two year old.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Princess got to be an old horse. She was thirty
years old and lame.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And someone came and put a bullet between her eyes,
and she died.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
And your mother died too, and your father. They were
burned in a fire, Jenny, a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
But you are.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Alive, Jenny. You are here, and you are alive.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
You know that.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
And I am alive, and we are here, we are now,
and we are alive here, and now do you understand,
my darling? And Hannah will help you you with your
wedding dress, and my father will pay for the wedding.
(25:06):
And when you come down the staircase. He will be
waiting for.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
You, and you will put your arm through his, and you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Will walk together to the place where I will be
waiting for you, and we will be married.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Do you understand, my dearest girl?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Do you understand?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I was holding her arms and staring down into her wide,
frightened eyes and flinging my words into her face. Her
eyes grew wider and wider.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Their expression began to change. But what the change was.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I could not tell.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Was she beginning to understand what I was saying? Or
was she leaving me forever? Hannah? I could not tell.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All I could do was hold her clothes.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Kill it, yep, poor.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
What does one say to someone who will not let go?
What does one do with such a person? It's all
very well to counsel them. Let the dead pass, Berry,
it's dead, But what if they scorn our advice and
cling tenaciously to what they have lost? Or do the
(26:30):
lost ones cling to them as much as a living
hold on to the dead. Do the dead not also
hold on to the living. I'll be back shortly with
a concluding act. Jenny and George about to be married,
(27:01):
But it troubles George that his fiancee still appears to
commune with the spirits of her parents, who met their
death in a fire and years before. Indeed, Jenny appears
to have contact, both visual and auditory, even with a
horse named Princess, an aged mayor, they both rode his children.
(27:22):
It is George's conviction that this morbidity must be erased
from his beloved personality before she could become his wife.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Oh hennah, Hannah, I loved herself.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I know it was for her own sake that I
did what I did.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Of course, for our sake, I should say, for the
health of our marriage, our life together. Perhaps my father
had been right when he said we all live with
our own ghosts, and Jenny.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Should be allowed to live with hers.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I was left in a torment of doubt as I
held her clothes.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
George, what am I to do?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Let them go, Jenny, Let them lie in their graves.
They're dead, my darling, but you and I are living.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
We were going to be married.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Aren't we.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You know we are very soon? Now leave them, Jenny
be with me. Oh lonely, my dear girl. They have
died such things as loneliness, as grief.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yes, joy too, and love. They are for the living,
for us, not for them.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
You really believe that, don't you.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It's true, my dearest, You must believe it too. I'll try, no, sweetheart,
you must do more than that, as you can now.
I am going to be your husband, and you must
rely on me to tell you what is right. I
only want you to be happy.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
You know that. Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, Well, there, together we will exercise these ghosts that
haunt you. I shall try to be very patient, my
dear love, very patient and very loving, cause I do
love you more than pen can write or tongue can tell.
And you must trust in that love, Jenny, and believe
with all your heart that I know what's best.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I held her in my arms for a long time.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Then, Hannah, I think that you've called from downstairs that
supper would be on the table presently, and I released
her to bathe and put on fresh clothes, while I
went down to confront my father.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
He looked very gray and haggard.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
It's done, father, Oh oh, George, it was necessary. I
know you think so.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I am convinced of it.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I know you are if.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
We are ever to be happy together.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
I know, I know, I know, George. I feel very
badly that I that I threatened you for where I did.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
We best forget that.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Father, to threaten you with a gun, I must have
been mad.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We will just forget all about it.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Here's your gun, father, No take it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
No, no, no, no, I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I want you to take it. It will help us
to forget what happened. It'll be as though it never
took place.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
No, you keep the gun, George. I don't want it.
I never want to touch it again. I'm I'm afraid
there's nothing to be afraid of. Well, all the same,
I'm afraid, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I'll keep it until you say you want it back.
So I put the gun in my pocket. It seemed
to make him feel a little better, as though simply
getting it out of his sight with a step toward
erasing the memory of that frantic night. Then I think
that you had announced that supper was served, and the
(30:46):
three of us sat down to eat together. None of
us say very much, which was understandable, and not Still,
we did manage to get through the meal. I had
done right and proper thing. I was sure of that,
Oh sure, I nevertheless, that is what I thought. The
(31:10):
next morning, Jenny did not come down for breakfast. My
father and I left for the hospital together, worked assiduously
all day, and left.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
The phone together late that afternoon.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Hannah said this morning that Jenny is going in the
same day by her wedding dress.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Oh that's splendid.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Hannah wanted to go with her, Jenny, Jenny went alone.
I don't like that, father, Oh, it doesn't necessarily mean anything,
but still you're afraid that Jenny still believe her mother
will help her choose a dress. Oh, I'm sure everything
will come out right.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
So no later.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I told her she must have faith in my love
and my knowledge of.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
What's best for her.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I hope she can do that. Have have you appointed
a date for the.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Wedding, George, Oh the end of the month. We haven't
decided on the precise day.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Where will you live who once you're married, or we
haven't talked about that. Could you would you consider staying
on with me. I'll be lonely without either of you.
Now that's selfish, I know, But George, I'm so used
to Jenny about the house. I'd miss her terribly. But
(32:24):
I mustn't be selfish.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That's all right, father.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
I don't see why we shouldn't live in the house
with you, at least for the time being. It is
a nice house, a beautiful house, and quite large enough
for three. The trees are beginning to bud, they'll be
out for by the time of the wedding's It.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Sounds like a local fire engine.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I'm glad Jenny isn't home to hear that, George.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
It's the summer house, though.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Look at the smallman's old houses burning.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
It's on fire, Jenny.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You tried to save her, Hannah. I know that I
had tried.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
It was no use.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Your father tried, but the fire had gone too far.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Hannah. Who started the fire? I don't know Jenny started.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
If she did, it was my fault. I had made
her life unendurable.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
When I drove away her ghosts, I killed my own,
sweet darkling.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Oh still, yet, the summer house was quite old, the
wood was very dry.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Could have burst into flame by itself the merest spark.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Will I ever know, Hannah?
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Wonder you will?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
When so?
Speaker 6 (33:54):
I think.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
We must aside where she should be buried. George.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, there's the cemetery, of course. Hannah thinks that would
be best.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Her father and mother are buried there. I suppose she'd
want to be near them. Yes, well, whatever you say.
Perhaps I could get permission to bury her here on
the property. Yes, such things can be arranged. I believe
whatever you say. No, George, whatever you say, it's your
(34:32):
privilege and your right to decide.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
All I can think is that she's gone, but I
shall never see her again, never hear her voice.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
We'll talk about it tomorrow, Yes, tomorrow. I'm I'm very tired, George.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I think I'll go off to.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Bed, all right, Father, I'll sit up a while longer.
I don't think I can sleep. Ah well, maybe arrangements.
Good nice son, Good night father.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I'll look in on you when I come upstairs.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Oh, you don't.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Need to, I want to. He pressed my shoulder and
I put my hand over his.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
For an instant, I felt very close to him.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I truly loved him, Hannah, I know you. Later, when i'd.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Grown drowsy, I went upstairs, stopped at the door of
his room and went in without knocking, in case he
was asleep. I saw him lying fully clothed on his bed,
but his shirt sleeve was pushed.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Up about his elbow.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
I think I knew he was dead even before I
touched him, and I knew how.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
He had died.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
I found the minuscule puncture of the needle on his
arm almost immediately, and later I found the slender.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Needle when it had rolled under the bend.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
I've never told you this before, Hannah, but now I
feel I must tell me. I knelt by the side
of his bed that the tears would not come. I
told myself, my father is dead. I even repeated the
word over and over to myself, and then said it aloud.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Dead, dead, dead. I kept saying.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I had lost her and now I had lost him,
all within the space of a few hours. I could
not comprehend how such a monstrous thing could.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Have befallen me.
Speaker 8 (36:38):
Do you understand, Hannah, I understand, But I could not weep.
I could not weep. And do you know why?
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Tell me?
Speaker 8 (36:50):
Because I hated him.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I hated the man I had felt so close to
such a short time before.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And do you know what, I hated him.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And because he wanted to be ahead of me, even.
Speaker 6 (37:07):
There, even who joy, wherever.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
She was, he wanted to be there with her, who
told me he loved her, he must be right. He
left me and went to join her.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
There there there.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I don't know where wherever she was, I don't know,
so don't ask me where.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Tell me the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
I know by his bedside for oh, I don't know
how long, silent, frozen, angry, angry. Yes, no one had
cared enough for me. No one had thought of me,
my life, my.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Lonely life that I had now to face.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
All of them had left me without a thought. Do
you understand what I'm telling you, Hannah?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yes, yes, I was living in a pit.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Of hell I never knew existed, filled with fury, rage,
and desperation.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And then then go on, and I go on.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I got to my feet, and I go on. I
reached in my pocket, I felt something.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I took it out of my pocket. I put it
to my head.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Because go on, I I just heard something.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Sounded like a gun going off. I don't remember anything
like that.
Speaker 6 (38:53):
You when when you realize that you.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I did dead, I did.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
How can that.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
Be your father's gun? From your pocket? You put it
to your head, George, and you fired.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
But I'm here talking to you, Hannah. Can you see me?
Of course I can see you. I can't see you,
but I'm right next to you. You must see me.
Speaker 6 (39:24):
I don't have such gifts, George. Jenny has them.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
But why can't you see me? I'm right here.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
Vibrated at a much faster pace.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Than the living. Can it be true that I am dead?
I killed myself?
Speaker 6 (39:40):
It's true, George.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Why did I do.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
It to join the others? Jenny, my father, oh, the others?
Where will I live now that I'm here in a house?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I think a large right?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Perfect?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Will I be fed?
Speaker 6 (40:03):
They say, you will eat at the essence? Here we
eat at the substance. But you will eat at the.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Essence, Hannah. Yes. Will I visit you now and then
talk to you?
Speaker 6 (40:22):
I hope you will.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
You will turn me away? That's good. Listen, Hannah, listen
to that. What do you hear don't you hear it? Hannah?
Don't you hear it? You must It's princess. It's all princess,
(40:46):
galloping across the meadow looking like a two year old.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And that is how some people envision death and.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
What comes after.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I cannot promise you that.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
They are right. On the other hand, I cannot tell
you they're wrong.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm as ignorant and it's undecided. As you or anyone.
But if they are right.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Should we keep our ears, that's our.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
Eyes open for the sight and sound of those who
have left us?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Perhaps it is better simply to get on with the
only business that we know, the business of living.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I shall return shortly.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Someone said that the dead are not truly dead so
long as they are remembered here on earth.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And that may be true, I'm not prepared to say.
Speaker 5 (41:55):
But assuming that it is true, the flaw lies in
the fact that remembering can be so painful remembering Hertz.
Our cast included Paul Hect, Fred Gwynn and E. V.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Justter.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
The entire production was under the direction of Hyman Brown.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
This is E. G.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Marshall inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for
another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, Pleasants Dreams
The journey into the raldom a strange and tell a
by I hope you will enjoy the chap.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That it will thrill you a little and kill you
a little. So settle back, get a good grip on
your nerve. Where are we going? You'll find out when
we get there.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
The CBS Radio Mystery the Present, come in.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm a g Marshall.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
What is always on our mind and but seldom on
our lips? What is forever contemplated and never comprehended? The
answer is death? Shakespeare would seem to have said at
all when he wrote death unnecessary end will come when
it will come? What is it really unnecessary end? That's
(01:24):
the question that that devils us, and in all probability
will continue to bedevil us until, well, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Until we die. Do as you live in a house,
of course, doing your web clothes certainly.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
So you eat food?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, now go away. You're beginning to annoy me.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Our mystery Grammar Dialogue with Death was written especially for
the mystery Everybody else but Eric and stars Paul Hect
and Fred Gwynn. The story We now bring you took
(02:17):
place about one hundred years ago, a time when no
one knew anything about death, as no one had known
anything a hundred years before that for a thousand remained
as no one knows now Yet.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Then as now, there were fantasies.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
About death, and it's on the basis of one of
them that we had fashioned the story that follows.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I remember it all so well, every detail, what she
was wearing at certain times, what she looked like at
certain moments, where we stood or sat, what she said
and how she said it, what I responded, place we walked,
food we ate, even the dishes we ate from, glasses
(03:02):
we drank from. I'm seeing it all again, hearing it,
or feeling it all for the second time, a kind
of terrible, inevitable deja vu.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Strange, isn't it strange? I loved her so much.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
I know.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The year I left for Heidelberg to study medicine, she
was just a slip of a thing, only sixteen. And
when I came back four years later, she wasn't simply
four years older. She was a new person, no longer
a child to tease and play games with, but a
grown woman to admire and respect and fall in love with.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Which I promptly did. Yes, of course, my father had
written to me about her a few times, but nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Nothing had prepared me for the shock, the delirious surprise
that morning at the railroad station.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Oh lord, George, that's your Lisa.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Oh, yes, sir, that's mine. That's your George.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Come if I could never get here?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You're light? Well the train is it? No?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Jenny?
Speaker 7 (04:17):
Don't say you don't recognize me?
Speaker 6 (04:18):
I die?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
What happened to your pigtails on my head?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Please?
Speaker 7 (04:24):
And they're called brave? Come on, I tail down in
the track. Your father Stillo be in Femary.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I can't get over how you've changed, and you've gone
to hell.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm going to teach your class in anatomy. A professor
needs a must at.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You've changed completely.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
Why do you keep saying that?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Because it's true?
Speaker 7 (04:51):
Yes, here we are.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You'll observe. We have a new horse.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
What happened to Princess?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
We had to have a down.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
You wanted to take the.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Reins, all right?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I learned to write on princess. Remember we used to
ride her bare back, the two of.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Us, me in front, you behind those wild gallops across
the meadow. Should we get started?
Speaker 7 (05:14):
Your father may be home by now. And Hannah's kind
of special.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Supper and you're on it all right. I really love
that sweet horse, all right down to the dollar. You
said you had her foot down. We did. She's fine.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Now let's take a two year old.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
But she's dead. I see you're awesome in your dreams.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
You mean, I mean, I see that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I hear her.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Come on, George, let's get out of this no water.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
On the way home, I tried to remember what she'd
been like when she first came to live with father
and me, A scrowny child of nine or ten. Do
you remember her, Hannah very well. She didn't seem to
prove at all about her parents.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In the awful way they died.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Had she'd been too young to grasp the tragedy of
it all. I found myself hoping that father would be
home by the time we arrived.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I wanted to talk to him about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Annah says, give the roast. Not at ten minutes. Where's Jenny? Father, Jenny,
she's setting table. Well, it's good to have you back, son.
Sorry I couldn't meet your track.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, it's all right, Jenny explained the father about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
How do you think she looks?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She's grown up. But there's something else. On the way home,
she told me you had to have old Princess put down.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Well, Princess was nearly fairy, you know, we could have
had up without fashion. Ever, that's no kind of life,
Jenny says.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
She sees her running across the meadow, sound as a dollar,
looking like a two.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Year old as well.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
She ever has she ever told you then?
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Not directly now, but I've heard her talking to old.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Princess, talking to a dead horse. That's not healthy, perhaps not?
What have you spoken to her about it? George?
Speaker 4 (07:08):
We have to remember the life Jenny's had, the circumstances
under which she came here to live, having seen her
father and her mother burned alive screaming from their bedroom window. Well,
that's a terrible thing for a child to go through.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But when she came to live with us, she was
just a normal little girl who was never anything morbid
about Jenny.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
There isn't anything more of it about Jenny.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
It's seeing a dead horse talking to a dead horse,
being preoccupied with death that.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Way, Jenny isn't preoccupied with death. She simply doesn't believe
in it. She doesn't believe in it. That's a peculiar
thing to say. Never less is true true for Jenny anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, I'm going to speak to her about it.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
You'll do nothing of the sort. You leave Jenny alaw.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But it's morbid, father, it's not healthy.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Who are you to say what's morbid or what's help?
You leave that girl alone, George, I'm wanting you leave
her alone, or you'll answer to me.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I couldn't understand my father, a doctor who faced up
to death and fought at any number of times in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The course of his practice, as I was prepared to
do now that I had an MD after my name.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, and as you know, I took up my residency
at the local hospital and started teaching an evening course
in anatomy. My time was heavily occupied, but every minute
I could spare was spent with Jenny.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
You remember how it was, Hannah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I remember going to church together, attending Vesper's long buggy
rides on fine days, local dances, Taffy Fool's country fairs,
a long afternoon, was reading in the summerhouse, as we'd.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Done when we were children. I felt the.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Moment approaching, and I could be certain of my love
for her, though I resisted it as long as I could,
But one late afternoon, sitting with her in the summer house,
I knew it was no longer any use to pretend
to myself or to her.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Jenny, I love you. I love you more than I
can say, almost more than I can bear. I've always
loved you, Jenny.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It's taken me all this long time to realize how
much I love you.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Are you surprised? Not there? You mean you've known it
all along? But I love you. I wanted you toose
that means that you love me. I do love you too,
Oh Jenny, Jenny, will you marry me? Won't you?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Of course you will.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I have to ask my mother. I'm sure she likes you, Jenny,
my darling, your mother much.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You go in the house.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Will you let me stay here by myself for a
little while?
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Will you do that?
Speaker 2 (09:57):
My love? Well, if you want me to, looks so trouble.
I like you very much, Jenny. Father likes you too.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
A dozen conflicting emotions flooded my mind. A girl who
talked to the death, could such a one ever be
truly mine?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And a frenzy compounded of doubt and desire. I told
my father I've asked Jenny to marry me.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Father, Ah, I thought you might do that. Well, I approved.
Has she accepted you? She says she loves me, But
has she accepted your father? At this very minute, Jenny
is in the summerhouse asking her mother's permission to marry
me and her father's ide.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You see? Is that all you can say? You see?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Her father and mother have been dead for ten years,
but she is asking their permission to marry me. Doesn't
that strike you as a very strange thing for a
young girl to do? When she said she talks to
a dead horse, sees it running across the meadow. That
was bad enough, But now to talk to a dead
father and mother, perhaps she thinks she sees them too
when father, if she'll have me, what will I be
(11:16):
taking for.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
A wife, the woman you'll love? What more do you want?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
George?
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Can't yourself very fortunate?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
My boy?
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Consider yourself the luckiest man on earth.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
But I must talk to her about these hallucinations. I
must have it out with her before we can be married.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
You will do nothing of the sort. I forbid it,
You forbid it, God's name? Why Jenny's mind? George has
a delicate balance. It swings perilously between this world and another,
never quite settling, never coming to rest, oslating back and forth,
(11:52):
vibrating like a pendulum. George, don't tamper with that balance,
Do you understand me? Don't tample with it? Oh, by Heaven,
I swear her. Yeah, well, never mind.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
You'll want father.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
We'll finish what you were going to say.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Look here, none of this, George, is it it's it's
it's a gun. Yes, it's a gun. You say one word, George,
that girl about what you call her hallucinations, and I'll
kill you.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That's Jenny.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Remember what I said, George, Leave her around or I'll
kill you.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
You right, George, we can be married.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
My father gave us his blessing. In my happiness and
my expectancy. I drove away all premonitions, all dreams, whatever.
Ticking at the back of my mind was the question,
why had my father spoken as he did so passionately,
so violently.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
You don't know to you he loved her viactly, passionately
loved her.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Death has been written about very little. Love has been
written about a great deal, perhaps because love is the
beginning of everything and death is the end. But what
happens when love and death are intermingled, joined the one
to the other in an eternal embrace. We'll explore this
(13:38):
further Inact too. So George and Jenny plighted their trout,
(13:58):
and under a dire threat George's father for bad his
son ever to speak to his young fiancee about her
curious attachment to all though she has loved.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Who have passed out of this life.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
Then, under the spell of his infatuation, George proceeded with
the arrangements were his imminent marriage to the girl of
his heart.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We spent long afternoons in the summer house spinning dreams
of the day that would unite us. We wanted an
extravagant wedding, at least I did. My father's big white
colonial house, set among great old oak trees, with its
center hallway, its winding staircase, its vast.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Reception hall was ideal. You remember it, Hannah, Are you
are after the ceremony?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
If it was a fine day, we would have the
Collatians served in the great rose garden, with a quintette
of musicians.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Playing in tables laden with food.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And I shall be very dashing in my cutaway and
striped trousers and you in what.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
What was you wear?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Jenny?
Speaker 7 (15:01):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean you haven't ordered your wedding dress, not yet.
I thought that was what young brides thought about first.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
What I've been thinking about it?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You have someone come to the house to make it,
won't you.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I don't know, sweetheart. The local shops are all right
for simple things.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
I'd like something simple, I.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Think, Well, as you're sure, look, why don't you take
a trip into the city and see what they have
in the big stores?
Speaker 6 (15:25):
Mixed you that.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Hannah will go with you and help you pick it out.
Speaker 7 (15:28):
I don't want Hannah to go.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
With me, but Hannah has very good taste, Dear, she
could advise me.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
I don't need Hannah to advise. Only my mother will
advise me. My mother will pick out my dress.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I started to speak, then closed my lips firmly against
the words. I remembered my father saying, Jenny's mind has
a delicate balance. It swings between this world and another,
oscillating back, and don't tamper with it again. My love
drowned my fears, and I reached for Jenny's hand.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
What are you thinking about, my love?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
About the wedding.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Why do you look so sad? Who's to pay for it?
Speaker 7 (16:16):
On the caviage, champagne and the musician? Who's to pay
for my dress?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
My dear, do you need money for your dress? For anything?
Who's to pay for it? All? Crescious?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
I'll give you money for the dress and the caviliar,
the champagne, the musicians.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
My father will pay.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
For all that.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Well, that's not right, of course, it's right, Jenny. He
expects to pay for it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
He wants to. You're like his own daughter.
Speaker 7 (16:36):
The father of the bride always pays for those things, Jennie.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He's always done that way, my darling.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
Father wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
I know that he couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
My whole body stiffened.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I murmured some sort of excuse, told her I needed
something from the house, and I fled the summer house,
leaving her immobile pensive trouble. Inside the house, I found
my father, father, it's happened again.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Sit Andrew?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I don't know what to.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Do, Gourche, what's the matter, Jenny?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yes, she and I were sitting in the summerhouse within
there most of the afternoon, making.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Plans for the wedding.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
When we got to the subject of a wedding dress,
it seems that she doesn't want it made, she wants
to buy it.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So I suggested that she.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Take the train into the city and maybe Hannah would
go with her to help.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Her pick it out. Good idea, yes, But Jenny would
have no part of it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
She said, my mother will help me pick it out.
My mother will help me pick out my wedding dress.
Her mother, who burned up in a fire, who's been
in her grave.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Good, George, I know how you feel.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Am I to live with ghosts once we are married? George,
I live with ghosts. We all let will go.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Well, I don't propose to Well, what do you propose
to do?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Father? I didn't say anything when Jenny spoke about.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Her mother, her dead mother, helping her to choose her
wedding dress. I thought of everything you had said, and
I kept quiet.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I'm glad you did.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But then then she suddenly looked very troubled, very perplexed,
and she said, who's to.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Pay for all this? Pay for it? Yes, the dress,
the wedding, the music, a caterer.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Why I shall pay for it? Well, that's what I
told her, Well, who else should pay for it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Her father? Her father, And that's what she said.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
She said it was only fitting and proper that the
bride's father should pay for his daughter's wedding. I think
she she expects her dead father to give her away.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh, she wouldn't. I don't know what she expects.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
I thought she'd want me.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I know, you forbade me to say anything to her
about her her congress with the dead.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I do forbid, but now I must. It's gone too far.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Oh, George, it could be fatal. Yes, there she is.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I'm in here, dear, with father in the in the library.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Say nothing, George.
Speaker 7 (19:05):
Oh, I'm so glad you're here. You can help me.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
What is it you need, Jenny?
Speaker 7 (19:10):
The second volume of something called Materia Medica.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Is there such a book on.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
The bottom shelf?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yes, with the red binding? Oh?
Speaker 7 (19:20):
Oh yes, now let's let's see here volume two.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
What are you looking for, dear?
Speaker 7 (19:28):
Well, I'm not sure. Let me see you, page three
hundred of.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes, yes, it's here. Here it is.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
What is a thousand dollars you pay for my wedding?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Her face was radiant.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
She spread the ten one dollar bills on the floor
and gazed at them delightedly.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
That's for my father and myself. We stared at each other.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
He told me it would be here, father, of course,
And yes, there it is.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Is wonderful, George, wonderful.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
You pay for everything.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Jenny, my dear, it's nearly time for supper. Why don't
you gather up the money and take it up to
your room change for dinner. I want to talk to George.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
All right.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
That's a good gal, you see, George.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
I told you he wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
It wouldn't be proper.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
How did that money get their? Father? Did you put
it there?
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Her father put it there.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
You are worse than she is. You put it there?
Speaker 4 (20:39):
And then somehow know George, Jenny's father put the money
in the book ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Did you know it was there?
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Not until now?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
You see?
Speaker 4 (20:49):
It's money. He owed me money I lent him. I
never expect him to pay it back. And when he
tried to pay it back, I refused to take it.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
How did he get in the book the.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Night he came here to give it to me, the
night I refused it? Here in this very wrong? I
remember after a long and somewhat stormy argument. I went
out to call him a carriage, left the ten hundred
dollar bills lying on the desk, and when I came
back to make my peace with him, the money was
(21:20):
no longer there. Of course, I assume he'd put it
back in his pocket, but instead he hid it in
a book he knew i'd eventually open.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Father, it doesn't explain how Jenny came to know it
was there. Don't don't shrug and turn away. We have
to talk about this.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I don't have to, and I don't intend to.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All right, then I'll talk to Jenny about it.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
No, you will come back here, George.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Father, I cannot marry a girl who's living half with
me and half with the dead.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
If you love her, you'll let her be.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
That girl has some sort of communication with the dead
that you can't understand. But it's wrong, right or wrong.
It's hers, it's part of her. You must not interfere.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I have to, Father, You must not, and I have
to do it. Now.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
Don't make me kill you, George.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Give me the gun. Father, Now give it to me.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
George.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I don't hurt you. Give me the gun. I'm sorry, Father,
I'm terribly sorry forgive me. I put the gun in
my pocket. I looked down at my father, on.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
His knees on the floor where I had forced him.
His eyes were filled with tears for whom, for himself,
for Jenny, for me, for what she had done to him,
for what he had almost done to me, or for
what I was about to do to her.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I could not tell.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I went upstairs and lifted my hand to knock on
Jenny's door, and then I heard her voice.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Thank you, Oh, thank you.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
I knew I could count on you.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I've always counted on you, and you've never failed me. Mother.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
Should I have my dress made?
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Or shall we go to the city and buy it?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (23:16):
I wanted to be just right when I walked down
the big staircase. I want to look just right because
your father, you'll be waiting to get the foot of
the stairs. You'll cook your arm just so, and i'll
put mine to yours. Together, we'll walk to where the
(23:37):
minister will be standing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Who's there, it's George. Let me in. I'm not quite dressed, George,
it doesn't matter. Please George, look at me, Jenny, look
at me.
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Let me go, George.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Why that you were talking to just now that because
your father.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Wasn't me, George, and your mother, you were planning your
wedding with them.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's not with me, Start with them.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You were planning your wedding dress with your mother, not
with Hannah, who adores you, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Who helped raise you. I heard you.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You were telling your father he would give you.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
For me in marriage.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Your father is dead, Jenny. He's been dead a long time.
And your mother too, dead and dead. And Princess is
dead too. Princess is not running across any meadow looking
like a two year old.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Princess got to be an old horse. She was thirty
years old and lame.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And someone came and put a bullet between her eyes,
and she died.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
And your mother died too, and your father. They were
burned in a fire, Jenny, a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
But you are.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Alive, Jenny. You are here, and you are alive.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
You know that.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
And I am alive, and we are here, we are now,
and we are alive here, and now do you understand,
my darling? And Hannah will help you you with your
wedding dress, and my father will pay for the wedding.
(25:06):
And when you come down the staircase. He will be
waiting for.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
You, and you will put your arm through his, and you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Will walk together to the place where I will be
waiting for you, and we will be married.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Do you understand, my dearest girl?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Do you understand?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I was holding her arms and staring down into her wide,
frightened eyes and flinging my words into her face. Her
eyes grew wider and wider.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Their expression began to change. But what the change was.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I could not tell.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Was she beginning to understand what I was saying? Or
was she leaving me forever? Hannah? I could not tell.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All I could do was hold her clothes.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Kill it, yep, poor.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
What does one say to someone who will not let go?
What does one do with such a person? It's all
very well to counsel them. Let the dead pass, Berry,
it's dead, But what if they scorn our advice and
cling tenaciously to what they have lost? Or do the
(26:30):
lost ones cling to them as much as a living
hold on to the dead. Do the dead not also
hold on to the living. I'll be back shortly with
a concluding act. Jenny and George about to be married,
(27:01):
But it troubles George that his fiancee still appears to
commune with the spirits of her parents, who met their
death in a fire and years before. Indeed, Jenny appears
to have contact, both visual and auditory, even with a
horse named Princess, an aged mayor, they both rode his children.
(27:22):
It is George's conviction that this morbidity must be erased
from his beloved personality before she could become his wife.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Oh hennah, Hannah, I loved herself.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I know it was for her own sake that I
did what I did.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Of course, for our sake, I should say, for the
health of our marriage, our life together. Perhaps my father
had been right when he said we all live with
our own ghosts, and Jenny.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Should be allowed to live with hers.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I was left in a torment of doubt as I
held her clothes.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
George, what am I to do?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Let them go, Jenny, Let them lie in their graves.
They're dead, my darling, but you and I are living.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
We were going to be married.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Aren't we.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You know we are very soon? Now leave them, Jenny
be with me. Oh lonely, my dear girl. They have
died such things as loneliness, as grief.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yes, joy too, and love. They are for the living,
for us, not for them.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
You really believe that, don't you.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It's true, my dearest, You must believe it too. I'll try, no, sweetheart,
you must do more than that, as you can now.
I am going to be your husband, and you must
rely on me to tell you what is right. I
only want you to be happy.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
You know that. Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, Well, there, together we will exercise these ghosts that
haunt you. I shall try to be very patient, my
dear love, very patient and very loving, cause I do
love you more than pen can write or tongue can tell.
And you must trust in that love, Jenny, and believe
with all your heart that I know what's best.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I held her in my arms for a long time.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Then, Hannah, I think that you've called from downstairs that
supper would be on the table presently, and I released
her to bathe and put on fresh clothes, while I
went down to confront my father.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
He looked very gray and haggard.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
It's done, father, Oh oh, George, it was necessary. I
know you think so.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I am convinced of it.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I know you are if.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
We are ever to be happy together.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
I know, I know, I know, George. I feel very
badly that I that I threatened you for where I did.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
We best forget that.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Father, to threaten you with a gun, I must have
been mad.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We will just forget all about it.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Here's your gun, father, No take it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
No, no, no, no, I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I want you to take it. It will help us
to forget what happened. It'll be as though it never
took place.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
No, you keep the gun, George. I don't want it.
I never want to touch it again. I'm I'm afraid
there's nothing to be afraid of. Well, all the same,
I'm afraid, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I'll keep it until you say you want it back.
So I put the gun in my pocket. It seemed
to make him feel a little better, as though simply
getting it out of his sight with a step toward
erasing the memory of that frantic night. Then I think
that you had announced that supper was served, and the
(30:46):
three of us sat down to eat together. None of
us say very much, which was understandable, and not Still,
we did manage to get through the meal. I had
done right and proper thing. I was sure of that,
Oh sure, I nevertheless, that is what I thought. The
(31:10):
next morning, Jenny did not come down for breakfast. My
father and I left for the hospital together, worked assiduously
all day, and left.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
The phone together late that afternoon.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Hannah said this morning that Jenny is going in the
same day by her wedding dress.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Oh that's splendid.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Hannah wanted to go with her, Jenny, Jenny went alone.
I don't like that, father, Oh, it doesn't necessarily mean anything,
but still you're afraid that Jenny still believe her mother
will help her choose a dress. Oh, I'm sure everything
will come out right.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
So no later.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I told her she must have faith in my love
and my knowledge of.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
What's best for her.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I hope she can do that. Have have you appointed
a date for the.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Wedding, George, Oh the end of the month. We haven't
decided on the precise day.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Where will you live who once you're married, or we
haven't talked about that. Could you would you consider staying
on with me. I'll be lonely without either of you.
Now that's selfish, I know, But George, I'm so used
to Jenny about the house. I'd miss her terribly. But
(32:24):
I mustn't be selfish.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That's all right, father.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
I don't see why we shouldn't live in the house
with you, at least for the time being. It is
a nice house, a beautiful house, and quite large enough
for three. The trees are beginning to bud, they'll be
out for by the time of the wedding's It.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Sounds like a local fire engine.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I'm glad Jenny isn't home to hear that, George.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
It's the summer house, though.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Look at the smallman's old houses burning.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
It's on fire, Jenny.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
You tried to save her, Hannah. I know that I
had tried.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
It was no use.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Your father tried, but the fire had gone too far.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Hannah. Who started the fire? I don't know Jenny started.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
If she did, it was my fault. I had made
her life unendurable.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
When I drove away her ghosts, I killed my own,
sweet darkling.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Oh still, yet, the summer house was quite old, the
wood was very dry.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Could have burst into flame by itself the merest spark.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Will I ever know, Hannah?
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Wonder you will?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
When so?
Speaker 6 (33:54):
I think.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
We must aside where she should be buried. George.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Well, there's the cemetery, of course. Hannah thinks that would
be best.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Her father and mother are buried there. I suppose she'd
want to be near them. Yes, well, whatever you say.
Perhaps I could get permission to bury her here on
the property. Yes, such things can be arranged. I believe
whatever you say. No, George, whatever you say, it's your
(34:32):
privilege and your right to decide.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
All I can think is that she's gone, but I
shall never see her again, never hear her voice.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
We'll talk about it tomorrow, Yes, tomorrow. I'm I'm very tired, George.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I think I'll go off to.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Bed, all right, Father, I'll sit up a while longer.
I don't think I can sleep. Ah well, maybe arrangements.
Good nice son, Good night father.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I'll look in on you when I come upstairs.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Oh, you don't.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Need to, I want to. He pressed my shoulder and
I put my hand over his.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
For an instant, I felt very close to him.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I truly loved him, Hannah, I know you. Later, when i'd.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Grown drowsy, I went upstairs, stopped at the door of
his room and went in without knocking, in case he
was asleep. I saw him lying fully clothed on his bed,
but his shirt sleeve was pushed.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Up about his elbow.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
I think I knew he was dead even before I
touched him, and I knew how.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
He had died.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
I found the minuscule puncture of the needle on his
arm almost immediately, and later I found the slender.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Needle when it had rolled under the bend.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
I've never told you this before, Hannah, but now I
feel I must tell me. I knelt by the side
of his bed that the tears would not come. I
told myself, my father is dead. I even repeated the
word over and over to myself, and then said it aloud.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Dead, dead, dead. I kept saying.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I had lost her and now I had lost him,
all within the space of a few hours. I could
not comprehend how such a monstrous thing could.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Have befallen me.
Speaker 8 (36:38):
Do you understand, Hannah, I understand, But I could not weep.
I could not weep. And do you know why?
Speaker 6 (36:48):
Tell me?
Speaker 8 (36:50):
Because I hated him.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I hated the man I had felt so close to
such a short time before.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And do you know what, I hated him.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And because he wanted to be ahead of me, even.
Speaker 6 (37:07):
There, even who joy, wherever.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
She was, he wanted to be there with her, who
told me he loved her, he must be right. He
left me and went to join her.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
There there there.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I don't know where wherever she was, I don't know,
so don't ask me where.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
Tell me the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
I know by his bedside for oh, I don't know
how long, silent, frozen, angry, angry. Yes, no one had
cared enough for me. No one had thought of me,
my life, my.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Lonely life that I had now to face.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
All of them had left me without a thought. Do
you understand what I'm telling you, Hannah?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yes, yes, I was living in a pit.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Of hell I never knew existed, filled with fury, rage,
and desperation.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
And then then go on, and I go on.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I got to my feet, and I go on. I
reached in my pocket, I felt something.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I took it out of my pocket. I put it
to my head.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Because go on, I I just heard something.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Sounded like a gun going off. I don't remember anything
like that.
Speaker 6 (38:53):
You when when you realize that you.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I did dead, I did.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
How can that.
Speaker 6 (39:05):
Be your father's gun? From your pocket? You put it
to your head, George, and you fired.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
But I'm here talking to you, Hannah. Can you see me?
Of course I can see you. I can't see you,
but I'm right next to you. You must see me.
Speaker 6 (39:24):
I don't have such gifts, George. Jenny has them.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
But why can't you see me? I'm right here.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
Vibrated at a much faster pace.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Than the living. Can it be true that I am dead?
I killed myself?
Speaker 6 (39:40):
It's true, George.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Why did I do.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
It to join the others? Jenny, my father, oh, the others?
Where will I live now that I'm here in a house?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I think a large right?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Perfect?
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Will I be fed?
Speaker 6 (40:03):
They say, you will eat at the essence? Here we
eat at the substance. But you will eat at the.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Essence, Hannah. Yes. Will I visit you now and then
talk to you?
Speaker 6 (40:22):
I hope you will.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
You will turn me away? That's good. Listen, Hannah, listen
to that. What do you hear don't you hear it? Hannah?
Don't you hear it? You must It's princess. It's all princess,
(40:46):
galloping across the meadow looking like a two year old.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And that is how some people envision death and.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
What comes after.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I cannot promise you that.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
They are right. On the other hand, I cannot tell
you they're wrong.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
I'm as ignorant and it's undecided. As you or anyone.
But if they are right.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Should we keep our ears, that's our.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
Eyes open for the sight and sound of those who
have left us?
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Perhaps it is better simply to get on with the
only business that we know, the business of living.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I shall return shortly.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Someone said that the dead are not truly dead so
long as they are remembered here on earth.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
And that may be true, I'm not prepared to say.
Speaker 5 (41:55):
But assuming that it is true, the flaw lies in
the fact that remembering can be so painful remembering Hertz.
Our cast included Paul Hect, Fred Gwynn and E. V.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Justter.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
The entire production was under the direction of Hyman Brown.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
This is E. G.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
Marshall inviting you to return to our Mystery Theater for
another adventure in the macabre. Until next time, Pleasants Dreams
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com