Part 22
[Backs away, and goes out bowing low and very calm. Helene sinks into a chair, crushed in spirit, wrenched, mangled.]
HILDA VON DONNIGES. [_Comes forward, and caresses the drooping head of her sister_] Bear up, Helene, my sister! We are your friends, our home is yours, no matter what you have done--we forgive it all. Our home is still yours. Bear up--he is gone--now come with us. [_Helene merely moans_]
FRAU VON DONNIGES. [_In Amazonian flush of success_] No more of this foolishness--no more of it, I say! He is gone; I knew he could not withstand my plain-spoken truths. He could not look me in the eye. You heard me, Hilda; he could not answer--he dare not. Come, Helene!
[Shakes her by the shoulder. Commotion is heard outside.]
LANDLORD. [_Entering by backing into the room, striving by tongue and hands to calm some one outside_] Be calm, kind sir! I am innocent in this matter. The ladies are here--here in the parlor. The man is gone--he never was here. In fact, he left before he came--be calm--I keep a respectable house. The police will raid the place, I fear. Be calm and I will explain all!
HERR VON DONNIGES. [_Purple with rage, big, prosperous--brandishing cudgel_] The Jew--show me the Jew who seduced my daughter! Show him to me, I say! That corrupt scum of society--the man who broke into my house and stole my daughter. [_Waves his cane and smites the air_] Where is that infidel Jew!
FRAU VON DONNIGES. Now, do not be a fool--I sent the Jew on his way. It was not necessary that you should follow. I can take care of this little matter.
HERR VON DONNIGES. Oh, so you protect her, do you? You side with her? You are a party to her undoing! And has the Jew seduced you, too? Where is he, I say? You seem to be deaf. This man who has ruined my home--he is the man I want, not your apologies. The girl is my daughter, I say! [_Suddenly sees Helene crouching in a chair, her face between her knees_] Oh, so you are here, my pretty miss--you who brought ruin on your father's house.
[Puts one foot against chair and overturns it. Kicks at prostrate form of Helene. Then seizing her by the hair, drags her across the room, striking her face with his open hands. The mother, daughter and landlord try to restrain his fury.]
LANDLORD. You will kill her!
FRAU VON DONNIGES. She has brought it on herself! But stop--it is enough.
HERR VON DONNIGES. [_Half-frightened at his own violence, reaching into his pocket brings out purse and throws it at feet of landlord_] Not a word about this!
LANDLORD. Trust me--you will tell of it first!
HERR VON DONNIGES. Is there a carriage at the door?
LANDLORD. Yes.
HERR VON DONNIGES. If any one asks, tell them my daughter is insane--a maniac--and a little force was necessary--you understand?
LANDLORD. I understand.
HERR VON DONNIGES. Here, we must carry her out.
[Tears down curtains from windows and rolls Helene in the curtains.]
LANDLORD. You must pay for those!
HERR VON DONNIGES. Name the amount!
LANDLORD. Why, they cost me----
HERR VON DONNIGES. Never mind. Charge them to the Jew. Here, help carry her--this daughter who has ruined me!
LANDLORD. You act like a man who might do the task of ruining yourself.
[Helene starts to rise. Her father fells her to the floor with the flat of his hand. Seizes her and with the help of the mother and landlord carries her out. Exit, with Hilda following behind, mildly wringing her hands.]
HILDA VON DONNIGES. Oh, why did she bring this disgrace upon us?
* * * * *
ACT FIVE
_Scene:_ Room in house of Herr Von Donniges.
[Furnishings are rich and old-fashioned, as becomes the house of a collector of revenue. Helene pacing the room talking to maidservant, who sits quietly sewing.]
HELENE. It is only a week since I saw Lassalle--only a week. Yet my poor head says it is a year, and my heart says a lifetime. For six days my father kept me locked in that little room in the tower, where not even you were allowed to enter. The butler silently pushed food in at the door and as silently went away. Once each day at exactly noon my father came and solemnly asked, "Do you renounce Lassalle?" and I as solemnly answered, "I will yet be the wife of Lassalle." But since yesterday, when I wrote the letter at their dictation to Lassalle telling him that he was free, and that I was soon to marry Prince Yanko Racowitza, I feel a load lifted from my heart. How queer! Perhaps it is because I am relieved of the pressure of my parents and have been given my freedom!
MAID. Not quite freedom; for see--there is a guard pacing back and forth at the door!
[Guard is seen through the window pacing his beat.]
HELENE. Oh, freedom is only comparative--but now you are with me. I needed some one to whom I could talk. Yet I did not renounce Lassalle until he failed to rescue me--he did not even answer my letter----
MAID. Possibly he did not receive it!
HELENE. But you bribed the porter!
MAID. True; but some one may have paid him more!
HELENE. Listen, do you still think it possible that Lassalle has not forgotten me?
MAID. Not only possible, but probable. A man of his intellect would guess that the letter you wrote was forced from you.
HELENE. A lawyer surely would understand that for things done _in terrorem_ one is not responsible. Now see what I am doing--yesterday I hoped never again to see Lassalle, and now I am planning and praying he will come to me.
MAID. Your heart is with Lassalle.
HELENE. It seems so.
MAID. Then God will bring it about, and you shall be united.
_Enter SERVANT_
SERVANT. Prince Racowitza!
_Enter PRINCE RACOWITZA_
[The Prince is small, dark, dapper, unobjectionable. He is much agitated. Helene holds out her hand to him in a friendly, but non-committal, discreet way. Maid starts to go.]
PRINCE. [_To maid_] Do not leave the room--I have serious news, and your mistress may need your services when I tell her what I have to say!
HELENE. [_Relieved by the thought that the Prince is about to renounce all claims to one so caught in the web of scandal_] You will remain with me, Elizabeth; I may need you. And now, Prince Yanko--I am steeled [_tries to smile_]--give me the worst. [_The Prince making passes in the air, tierce and thrust with his cane at an imaginary foe_] I say, dear Prince, tell me the worst--I think I can bear it. [_Helene is almost amused by the sight of the semi-comic opera-bouffe prince_] Tell me the worst!
PRINCE. Lassalle has challenged your father!
HELENE. [_Blanching_] Lassalle has challenged my father!
PRINCE. To the death. [_Aiming with his cane at a piece of statuary in the corner_] One, two, three--fire!
HELENE. It is not so. Lassalle is opposed to the code on principle.
PRINCE. There are no principles in time of war! Are you ready, gentlemen--One, two, three!
HELENE. [_Contemptuously_] Why do you not fight him?
PRINCE. Is there no way, gentlemen, by which this unfortunate affair can be arranged? If not----
HELENE. You did not hear me!
PRINCE. Oh, yes, I heard you, and I am to fight him at sunrise. Your father turned the challenge over to me!
HELENE. To you?
PRINCE. And your father has fled to Paris--it is a serious thing to be a party to a duel in Germany--a sure-enough duel!
HELENE. But you are not a swordsman, nor have you ever shot a pistol--you told me so once.
PRINCE. But I have been practising at the shooting-gallery for two hours. The keeper there says I am a wonderful shot--I hit a plaster-of-Paris rabbit seven times in succession!
[Helene is excited; her thought is that Lassalle, being a sure shot and a brave man, will surely kill the Prince. This will eliminate one factor in the tangle. Lassalle having killed his man will have to flee--the Government only tolerates him now. And she will flee with him--her father in Paris, the Prince dead, exile for Lassalle--the way lubricated by the gods--good.]
HELENE. [_Excitedly_] Yes, fight him, kill him!
PRINCE. I will fight him at sunrise--at once after the meeting, I will drive directly here. If I am unhurt, we will fly--you and I--for Paris to meet your father. If I am wounded, the carriage will come with the horses walking; if I am dead, the horses will be on a run; if I am unharmed, the horses will simply trot and----
HELENE. [_Who knows that Lassalle will kill the Prince, hysterically_] Will trot--good! And now good-by, good-by!
[Kisses him explosively and backs him out of the door.]
[_Exit Prince._]
HELENE. [_In ecstasy_] Lassalle will kill him!
MAID. I am afraid he will.
HELENE. And this will make us free, free!
MAID. It will exile you.
HELENE. And since this home is a prison, exile would be paradise.
* * * * *
ACT SIX
_Scene:_ Same as Act Five. Time, one day later.
[Very early in the morning. Helene and maid in traveling costume, small valises and rugs rolled and strapped, on center-table.]
HELENE. You gave my letter to Doctor Haenle himself, into his own hands!
MAID. Into his own hands.
HELENE. Then there was no mistake. I told Lassalle I would meet him at the station at seven o'clock--only half an hour yet to spare! We will catch the Switzerland Express. Lassalle will have to go--this affair means exile for him--but for us to be exiled together will be Heaven. Now this is a pivotal point--we must be calm.
MAID. Surely you are calm.
HELENE. Yet I did not sleep a moment all the night.
MAID. Probably Lassalle did not either.
HELENE. Did you hear a carriage?
MAID. [_Peering out of window_] Only a wagon.
HELENE. Listen!
MAID. I hear the sound of horses!
HELENE. Running?
MAID. They are running!
HELENE. My God; yes, they come closer--they are running! Oh, thank Heaven, thank Heaven, the Prince is dead--I am both sorry and glad.
MAID. There, they are turning this way--there, the carriage stops at the door!
HELENE. Dead--the Prince is dead. Now in the excitement that will follow the carrying in of the body, we will escape--we can walk to the station in ten minutes--that gives us ten minutes to spare. Here, you take the rug and this valise, I will take the other. We will find a street porter at the corner, or a carriage. Do not open the door until I tell you!
[Door bursts open and Prince Yanko half-tumbles in.]
PRINCE. I am unharmed--congratulate me--I am unharmed!
[Opens arms to embrace Helene, who backs away.]
HELENE. And Lassalle--Lassalle--where is Lassalle?
PRINCE. He is dead--I killed him!
HELENE. You killed Lassalle--the greatest man in Europe--you killed him!
PRINCE. He fell at the first fire--congratulate me!
HELENE. You lie! Lassalle is not dead. Away! Away! I scorn you--loathe you--away--the sight of you burns my eyeballs--the murderer of Lassalle--away!
[Helene crouches in a corner. Prince stands stiff, amazed. The man, with valises in one hand and rug in shawl-strap, looks on with lack-luster eye, frozen by indecision.]
* * * * *
_Note._--Helene von Donniges married Prince Racowitza three weeks after the death of Lassalle. The Prince died two years later. Princess Helene committed suicide at Munich, March Twenty-six, Nineteen Hundred Twelve, aged sixty-seven years. These facts are of such a dull slaty-gray and so lacking in dramatic interest that they are omitted from the play.
LORD NELSON AND LADY HAMILTON
The last moments which Nelson passed at Merton were employed in praying over his little daughter as she lay sleeping. A portrait of Lady Hamilton hung in his cabin; and no Catholic ever beheld the picture of his patron saint with more devout reverence. The undisguised and romantic passion with which he regarded it amounted almost to superstition; and when the portrait was now taken down, in clearing for action, he desired the men who removed it to "take care of his guardian angel." In this manner he frequently spoke of it, as if he believed there was a virtue in the image. He wore a miniature of her also next to his heart.
--_Robert Southey_
[Illustration: LORD NELSON]
Robert Southey, poet laureate, and conservative Churchman, wrote the life of Nelson, wrote it on stolen time--sandwiched in between essays and epics. And now behold it is the one effort of Robert Southey that perennially survives, and is religiously read--his one great claim to literary immortality.
Murray, the original Barabbas, got together six magazine essays on Lord Nelson, and certain specific memoranda from Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson's sisters, and sent the bundle with a check for one hundred pounds to Southey, asking him to write the "Life," and have it ready inside of six weeks, or return the check and papers by bearer.
Southey needed the money: he had his own family to support, and also that of Coleridge, who was philosophizing in Germany. Southey needed the money! Had the check not been sent in advance, Southey would have declined the commission. Southey began the work in distaste, warmed to it, got the right focus on his subject, used the wife of Coleridge as 'prentice talent, and making twice as big a book as he had expected, completed it in just six weeks.
Other men might have written lives of Lord Nelson, but they did not; and all who write on Lord Nelson now, paraphrase Southey.
And thus are great literary reputations won on a fluke.
* * * * *
Horatio Nelson, born in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight, was one of a brood of nine children, left motherless when the lad was nine years of age. His father was a clergyman, and passing rich on forty pounds a year. It was the dying wish of the mother that one of the children should be adopted by her brother, Captain Suckling, of the Navy.
This captain was a grandnephew of Sir John Suckling the poet, and one of the great men of the family--himself acknowledging it. Captain Suckling promised the stricken woman that her wish should be respected. Three years went by and he made no move. Horatio, then twelve years of age, hearing that "The Raisonnable," his uncle's ship, had just anchored in the Medway, wrote the gallant captain, reminding him of the obligation and suggesting himself as a candidate.
The captain replied to the boy's father that the idea of sending the smallest and sickliest of the family to rough it at sea was a foolish idea; but if it was the father's wish, why send the youngster along, and in the very first action a cannon-ball might take off the boy's head, which would simplify the situation.
This was an acceptance, although ungracious, and our young lad was duly put aboard the stage, penniless, with a big basket of lunch, ticketed for tidewater. There a kind-hearted waterman rowed the boy out to the ship and put him aboard, where he wandered on the deck for two days, too timid to make himself known, before being discovered, and then came near being put ashore as a stowaway. It seems that the captain had made no mention to any one on the ship that his nevy was expected, and, in fact, had probably forgotten the matter himself.
And so Horatio Nelson, slim, slight, slender, fair-haired and hollow-eyed, was made cabin-boy, with orders to wait on table, wash dishes and "tidy up things." And he set such a pace in tidying up the captain's cabin that that worthy officer once remarked, "Dammittall, he isn't half as bad as he might be."
Finally, Horatio was given the tiller when a boat was sent ashore. He became an expert in steering, and was made coxswain of the captain's launch. He learned the Channel in low tide from Chatham to the Tower, making a map of it on his own account. He had a scent for rocks and shoals, and knew how to avoid them--for good pilots are born, not made.
A motherless boy with a discouraged father is very fortunate. If he ever succeeds, he knows it must be through his own exertions. The truth is pressed home upon him that there is nothing in the universe to help him but himself--a great lesson to learn.
Young Nelson soon saw that his uncle's patronage, no matter how well intentioned, could not help him beyond making him coxswain of the longboat. And anyway, if he was promoted, he wanted it to be on account of merit, and not relationship. So he got himself transferred to another boat that was about to sail for the West Indies, and took the rough service that falls to the lot of a jack-tar. His quickness in obeying orders, his alertness and ability to climb, his scorn of danger, going to the yardarm to adjust a tangled rope in a storm, or fastening the pennant to the mainmast in less time than anybody else on board ship could perform the task, made him a marked man. He did the difficult thing, the unpleasant task, with an amount of good-cheer that placed him in a class by himself. He had no competition. Success was in his blood--his silent, sober ways, intent only on doing his duty, made his services sought after when a captain was fitting out a dangerous undertaking.
Nelson made a trip to the Arctic, and came back second mate at nineteen. He went to the Barbadoes and returned lieutenant. He was a lieutenant-commander at twenty, and at twenty-one was given charge of a shipyard. Shortly after, he was made master of a schoolship, his business being to give boys their first lessons in seamanship. His methods here differed from those then in vogue. When a new boy, agitated and nervous, was ordered to climb, Nelson, noticing the lad's fear, would say, "Now, lads, I am with you and it is a race to the crow's-nest." And with a whoop he would make the start, allowing the nervous boy to outstrip him. Then once at the top, he would shout: "Now isn't this glorious! Why, there is no danger, except when you think danger. A monkey up a tree is safer than a monkey on the ground; and a sailor on the yard is happier than a sailor on the deck--hurrah!"
Admiral Hood said that, if Nelson had wished it, he could have become the greatest teacher of boys that England ever saw.
At twenty-three Nelson was made a captain and placed in charge of the "Albemarle." He was sent to the North Sea to spend the winter along the coast of Denmark. A local prince of Denmark has described a business errand made aboard the "Albemarle." Says the Dane: "On asking for the captain of the ship, I was shown a boy in a captain's uniform, the youngest man to look upon I ever saw holding a like position. His face was gaunt and yellow, his chest flat, and his legs absurdly thin. But on talking with him I saw he was a man born to command, and when he showed me the ship and pointed out the cannon, saying, 'These are for use if necessity demands,' there was a gleam in his blue eyes that backed his words."
Before he was twenty-six years old Nelson had fought pirates, savages, Spaniards, French, and even crossed the ocean to reason with Americans, having been sent to New York on a delicate diplomatic errand. On this trip he spent some weeks at Quebec, where he met a lady fair who engrossed his attention and time to such a degree that his officers feared for his sanity. This was his first love-affair, and he took it seriously.
It was time for the "Albemarle" to sail, when its little captain was seen making his way rapidly up the hill. He was given stern chase by the second officer and on being overhauled explained that he was going back to lay his heart and fortune at the feet of the lady. The friend explained that, it being but seven o'clock in the morning, the charmer probably could not be seen, and so the captain in his spangles and lace was gotten on board ship and the anchor hoisted. Once at sea, salt water and distance seemed to effect a cure.
In Nelson's character was a peculiar trace of trust and innocence. Send your boys to sea and the sailors will educate them, is a safe maxim. But Nelson was an exception, for even in his boyhood he had held little converse with his mates, and in the frolics on shore he took no part. Physically he was too weak to meet them on a level, and so he pitted his brain against their brawn. He studied and grubbed at his books while they gambled, caroused and "saw the town."
When he was in command of the schoolship, the second officer taunted him about his insignificant size. His answer was: "Sir, the pistol makes all men of equal size--to your place! And consider yourself fined ten days' pay."
In buying supplies he refused to sign vouchers unless the precise goods were delivered and the price was right. On being told that this was very foolish, and that a captain was entitled to a quiet commission on all purchases, he began an investigation on his own account and found that it was the rule that naval and army supplies cost the government on an average twenty-five per cent more than they were worth, and that the names of laborers once placed on the payroll remained there for eternity. In his zeal the young captain made a definite statement and brought charges, showing where the government was being robbed of vast sums. On reaching London he was called before the Board of Admiralty and duly cautioned to mind his own affairs.
His third act of indiscretion was his marriage in the Island of Nevis to Mrs. Frances Woolward Nesbit, a widow with one child. Widows often fall easy prey to predatory sailormen, and sometimes sailormen fall easy prey to widows. The widow was "unobjectionable," to use the words of Southey, and versed in all the polite dissipation of a prosperous slave-mart capital. Nelson looked upon all English-speaking women as angels of light and models of sympathy, insight and self-sacrifice.
Time disillusioned him; and he settled down into the firm belief that a woman was only a child--whimsical, selfish, idle, intent on gauds, jewels and chucks under the chin from specimens of the genus homo--any man--but to be tolerated and gently looked after for the good of the race. He took his wife to England and left her at his father's parsonage and sailed away for the Mediterranean to fight his country's battles.
Among other errands he had dispatches to Sir William Hamilton, British Envoy at the Court of Naples. Sir William had never met Nelson; but he was so impressed at his first meeting with the little man, that he told his wife afterwards that if she had no objection he was going to invite Captain Nelson to their home. Lady Hamilton had no objection, although a sea-captain was hardly in their class. "But," argued Sir William, "this captain is different; on talking to him and noting his sober, silent, earnest way, I concluded that the world would yet ring with the name of Nelson. He fights his enemy for laying his ship alongside and grappling him to the death."