University of Virginia Library

Scene III:

—A room in the Royal Palace, Christianstadt. Windows at the back overlook the palace yard. On the left is a piano at which Guendolen sits.
As the curtain rises, Prounice enters and, sitting at an open window, takes up some sewing.
Guendolen.
What was the hurrying prattle in the air?

Prounice.
Machine-guns, madam.

Guendolen.
Oh, I feared it, Prounice!
Not half a nihilist was hurt I hope?

Prounice.
People were hurt; and some, they say, are dead.

Guendolen.
How mournful, Prounice, and how terrible!
Why should our happiness be dyed in blood?
Dear Heaven ... No Heaven to call on? No; no Heaven:
Only my own delight. The power of it!
The imperial conceit of the one world
Usurps me, and uplifts my womanhood,
With the new-birth and blossom of my love.—
[Improvises on the keyboard, searching for a theme.
How did it happen, Prounice?

Prounice.
I cannot say.
The King may tell you: he will soon be here.

Guendolen.
Unless he speaks of it, I shall not ask.—
Prounice, what noise is that?

Prounice.
The sentry's horse,
Shaking his headstall.

Guendolen.
Music is passion, Prounice;
All their music: speechless, but eloquent.
I sometimes think that speech can utter nothing,
And only music means.—Is that the King?

Prounice.
I heard no sound outside.

Guendolen.
'Twas in my heart—
A trampling cavalcade.—Listen to this.
[Having found a theme that pleases her she elaborates it.
You like it, Prounice?

Prounice.
Buoyant, martial music.
Your composition, madam?

Guendolen.

Prounice.
Will you rest a while?
Will you lie down?

Guendolen.
You know I never rest.

Prounice.
If you rend music from your heart-strings thus,
Soul of my soul, you'll break the instrument!

Guendolen.
No, Prounice. Dearest woman ... listen!

[Faint shouting is heard from the street, and shortly the sound of the royal entry in the palace yard.
Prounice.
The King.

[Goes out.
Guendolen leaves the piano and looks out. Returning to the piano, she plays a series of triumphant chords, then rises and waits in the centre of the room.
Mammon
[entering].
Oh, stately Queen of Thule! Sweet queen of me!

Guendolen.
I have conceived! I have conceived a son!

Mammon.
How can you tell?

Guendolen.
How can we tell when light
Appears in Heaven and darkness dies?

Mammon.
We know!
The winepress of the morning overflows;
And crimson fountains in the swarthy east,
That well with dawn and vintage of the day,
Replenish earth again.

Guendolen.
Even so I know
A day has dawned in me: within, without,
My wedded, fertile body blushes still,
And morning in my swelling bosom breaks.

Mammon.
Oh love, we two are of such eager heart,
So pregnant with the future, such devout
Desirers of the world, of birth, of life,
That all our thoughts anticipate events,
And like a hound that courses thrice the road,
Before his master gambolling sprightfully,
Our minds are there and back and forth again
In front of fate and time's expedient march.
Last night the moon, her chin upon the sea,
Watched like a woman at her window: wait
Until next synod on another wave
She reassumes her vigil: tell me then
Your ship is freighted for a nine months' voyage,
For now you cannot know.

Guendolen.
Oh, but I do!
With the ninth star of love, in love's ninth swoon,
Most poignant, most intolerably sweet
Of all the ecstasies that made of me
A paradise indeed, your inmost being—
I cannot speak it!—Life took root in life:
My body seemed to be eternity;
I felt a new beginning of the world
Deep in my womb as in the heart of Heaven.

Mammon.
Infinite beauty of a woman's mind
Set free! I doubt no longer, Guendolen:
The budding jewel of our lives is clasped
Already in the richest casket wrought
Of the elements, the body and soul of you.
Nothing can stop me now! The fates obey
My will! Unchristened, disinherited,
A prisoner bound and doomed to living death,
I said I should be king in Thule and you
The happy mother of my son. Behold,
Although they married you and thrust their God
Between us, while the labour of their minds
Still racked them with the wrongs they failed to do,
As if my destiny were pulped and fed
To vast machinery filling in an hour
The travail of the years, death found them out,
You are my consort, pregnant with my love,
And I the hated outcast, King in Thule!
My thought becomes the fashion of the world
Before I know!