Monday, July 4, 2016

Episode 6: The Great Lady




Monday, July 4, 1966

The top of Widows Hill is a strange and lonely place, and the great hulk of Collinwood sits like a sleeping monster on its crest. I know I should leave—and yet I can’t, not as long as I feel the answers I’ve been looking for might be here. Here in the darkness and the dust of hidden years, surrounded by the ghosts of the past and the fears of the present, I’ve decided to search—and hope—and wait.

Vicki, looking for David, goes down to the basement, where she is accosted by yet another strange man. He demands to know why she is there, who she is, and grabs her wrist, hurting her. When Liz comes down, she asks Matthew (for that is his name), not Vicki, what is going on.

Liz informs Matthew that Vicki will be living with them from now on.
“Doing what, ma’am?”
We may infer from this that Liz never bothered to tell the hired man that she had engaged a governess.
“What’s the matter with that man?” Vicki wants to know once Matthew has gone upstairs. “Why does he act like that?”
“Because he found you somewhere you weren’t supposed to be.”
Was Vicki ever told to stay out of the basement? I don’t think so. And I suppose that you never told Matthew she existed is beside the point, Liz?
Vicki says (yet again) that she was looking for David. Liz sends her to the drawing room to await a discussion. Vicki must be getting pretty tired of these “discussions.”
Liz finds David hiding behind a crate in, oh, yes, the basement. She reminds him she doesn’t want him to roam around down here because he could get hurt. David insists Vicki wants to hurt him. And spy on him too. And she was snooping.

Vicki comes into the drawing room to find Matthew cleaning out the hearth. “Morgan. Matthew Morgan,” he says.
“Winters. Victoria Winters,” she gruffly responds in imitation before telling him she hopes they can be friends.
Matthew takes Vicki to the window to show her the trees his house lies beyond. Liz gave it to him—eighteen years ago. He used to have to clean the floors of the cannery, and he never knew whether he would ever escape the stench. Mrs. Stoddard took him out of there. She is a great lady. (Someone else is probably doing that job now, wondering if he will ever escape.)
There were a lot of servants at Collinwood back then. Just before Matthew came, Liz fired them all. (One wonders whether they think of her as a great lady, although I suppose she gave them a nice severance package.) Vicki wants to know why.
“Miss, I live out there, I do the heavy work around the place, I take care of the gardens, and I mind my business. I hope you can do the same.”

Liz gives David a Rover Boys book they find in the basement. When David hears it used to belong to his hated father, he loses all interest. Again, he wants Vicki to leave. He wants his mother (who is not well, according to Liz) to come back. Is this connected to the Burke Devlin situation? David insists that, as long as Vicki is there, his mother won’t return.
Liz assures him that Vicki would never want to keep a child away from his mother. “She was brought up in an orphanage, and she was a very lonely child.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”

Carolyn advises Vicki to follow the trail of the money. Liz arrives in the drawing room and asks Carolyn to leave them alone. At this moment, Carolyn also gets a call from Joe Haskell. Joe has a surprise for her.

Liz tells Vicki that David is afraid of her and they all need to convince him that he’s wrong. When there’s a convenient segue in the conversation, Vicki brings up the $50-a-month question and notes that a lot happened there eighteen years ago.
Liz admits her husband left eighteen years ago but insists there is no connection to Vicki’s “monthly allowance.” Liz wants Vicki to trust her.

Vicki asks Carolyn whether her offer of a ride to town is still open. Carolyn has to wait for Joe and his surprise. Vicki prepares to take the long walk to the bus stop, but Carolyn lends her the car instead. She advises Vicki to watch the curves going down the hill. “They sneak up on you.”
After Vicki leaves, Liz, having heard the door, asks if someone just came in.
“No, Mother, it was just one of our ghosts starting to rattle around a bit.”


Cast, In Order of Appearance


Victoria Winters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexandra Moltke
Matthew Morgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .George Mitchell
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joan Bennett
David Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .David Henesy
Carolyn Stoddard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nancy Barrett

Fashion by Ohrbach’s
Directed by Lela Swift
Story created and written by Art Wallace

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