University of Virginia Library

ACT V

Scene: The stage of the Grosvenor Theatre. The curtain is down. Scene-shifters struggle with wrecked scenery, and Property-men carry out broken furniture. On the left, his head supported by Europa Troop, St. James's lies unconscious: two Doctors attend him. Sir Tristram, whose clothes are torn and whose face is bruised and bloody, is talking with Mark Belfry on the right. The Orchestra is playing fortissimo. Above the music an occasional whistle or cry is heard as the last of the audience leave the theatre. When the music ceases Warwick Groom enters on the left, and waits his opportunity unseen by the others.
Belfry.
[Writing with a fountain-pen in cheque-book.]
By judgment, instinct, sense and common-sense
Deserted! Stagger me, Tristram! What, what? Why,
There's reams of print on crowd-psychology,
If quarter a century of the footlights left you
Ignorant of the hickory-hearted truth
That God's the popular voice, the public mind!
[Offers Sir Tristram a cheque.
You deal?

Sir T.
[Taking the cheque.]
On terms. What play must I produce?

Belfry.
No terms. [Takes out his pocket-book and writes in it.]
I buy the theatre. Take Europa
To Monte Carlo, or live a decent life
At home here on the balance: it reaches that.
I want the Grosvenor.

Sir T.
Do you mean—retire?

Belfry.
You hit the white. The man that staged a play
To make the Lord sit up in a theatre
Is—fundamentally disqualified.
The man that stands Mark Belfry's impudence
Will take Mark Belfry's money: it never fails.
[Tears from his pocket-book the page on which he has been writing and offers it to Sir Tristram.
Your signature?

Sir T.
[Declines the proffered document and tears up the cheque.]
No; not for twice the sum.
But treble it, and the Grosvenor Theatre's yours.

Belfry.
I want the Grosvenor.
[He writes another cheque and another receipt. Sir Tristram takes the one, endorses it, and signs the other.
So? You don't inquire?

Sir T.
No, Belfry.

Belfry.
I possess the Grosvenor now,
The premier theatre in London. Well,
I'm going to change it to a music-hall.

Sir T.
You won't do that?

Belfry.
I will. The drama's done.
This is a new thing I determine. Say:
I've fifty theatres in America,
And six in London; and I know. It pays,
Variety business pays: the public makes
Its entertainment, and it makes it that.

Sir T.
Drama will flourish while there's love and hate.

Belfry.
Although you wrote it in all the copy-books
'Twould still be true, Sir Tristram—as true as this,
That there must be religion while there's life.
But fashions wear, customs and costumes fade,
And change comes jesting like a conjurer.
The music-hall begins the world again
In Anglo-American drama:—not a joint
Of evolution about it; that's to come:—
A clean solution of continuity
Between the theatre about to be
And that which was. Your Bishop knew a thing:
It's Matter people want. Spirit's played out
For entertainment. Don't attack it, though!
You've had a lesson here to-night to last
A year or two.

Sir T.
I shall not now retire,
But build another theatre. Death or life,
Labour or leisure balance the scales: again
A splendid stage, a strenuous time, because
You purpose to undo the thing I did.

Belfry.
Build me a dozen, and I'll buy them all,
And fill them nightly with variety shows:
I'm at the heart of this and understand.

Sir T.
You don't believe this, Belfry?

Belfry.
Don't I? Say:
You reckon that your English Church is dead
Three hundred years or so, for all the state
It keeps, the wealth it grips?

Sir T.
As dead as Pharaoh;
A mummy spiced and gilded.

Belfry.
So's your drama!
I've heard you say it, and you know it's true;
The play to-night allowed it—the prologue did.
Theocracy and theatrocracy:
The one long dead; the other—

Sir T.
Well?

Belfry.
Stillborn!
Two things there are alive in England now,
As red as blood, as hot as fire: your crude
Salvation Army and your Music-Hall.
The first's no trade of mine; the other is;
And here's my theory of it. Your civilization
Evolves as barbarism in modern cities,
A highly decorated barbarism.
Your houses are merely wigwams where you sleep—
Sometimes. You dine abroad in crowds; then lug
Your indigestion to your music-hall
To drowse and smoke at ease. A play demands
A little intellect—which you hate to use:
Your music-hall assails your muscles mainly,
With ground and lofty tumbling, gymnasts, tramps,
Antipodists, weight-lifters, wrestlers; tricks
That gibe at gravitation; monkeys, dogs;
Illusions; jugglers, bipeds, quadrupeds;
Prodigious force and skill of man and beast,
Trained effort and sustained the savage loves
And feels his muscles pacified to watch.
The muscle business first: then comic turns;
Singers and dancers, bounders, jesters, cranks,
That make your savage laugh: he loves to laugh;
For what's your laughter but a free discharge
Of muscular energy under a pleased
Constraint. As for his slumbering fantasy,
The multitudinous rhythm and massive hues
Of Leicester Square's magnific ballets flood
The channels of his sense with undefined
Voluptuousness: your savage loves to dream
Obscure delights, uncertain glories. . . . What!
I tire you, Tristram? But I like the theme;
It takes me by the throat.

Sir T.
The music-hall
Is utterly obscene, a heinous mart
Of alcohol and meretricious flesh.

Belfry.
A prime, barbaric entertainment, fit
For gorged barbarians!

Sir T.
But the theatre—

Belfry.
Extinct: an anteroom to the nursery;
Annex to the lecture-hall; a mothers' meeting;
A kindergarten: men forsaken it quite.
Out of the music-hall a drama springs,
Naïve, natural, splendid; hidden, impossible,
But happily conceived when he arrives
Who shall beget it. You talk of messages,
Of orientation: there's my Yankee mite—
A budding drama in the music-hall.
I think I've read somewhere that once before
Dramatic monologue became a play—
When Aeschylus turned up in Attica!
You grant the halls are fairly Dionysian—

Groom.
[Stabs Sir Tristram.]
I thought of this upon your wedding-day,
And every summer since.

Sir T.
[Falls]
Help, Hildreth, help!

Belfry.
[Seizes Groom, who makes no resistance]
You murdering hound! Why—Groom! Of all men, Groom!
Prince of good fellows and of actors! Groom!

Enter Hildreth, Salerne, and Abbot. Their clothes are torn and their faces scratched and bruised. Hildreth kneels by Sir Tristram. Salerne and Abbot take charge of Groom.
Hildreth.
Tristram! My friend! My chief!

Sir T.
Hildreth! Good lad!

Europa.
You fool; you dull, dull groom! Let me; let me!
[Europa and Hildreth support Sir Tristram while one of the Doctors attends to his wound.
Tristram, you need me now!

Sir T.
Europa! Yes;
I love to have a woman near me.—Death,
Sudden as I desired: but one regret—
One only; my theatre. If you had struck
Before I sold it!

Groom.
Curse me, can't you, Tristram!

Belfry.
[To himself]
He'll want the bargain cancelled. Shall I? No;
I need the Grosvenor, and the Grosvenor's mine.

[Goes out quickly.
Sir T.
[Giving Hildreth the cheque]
Yet I die solvent, Hildreth. Belfry's cheque:
It rings a merry peal. Unless—By Heaven!
Belfry, you'll not exact this now!

Hildreth.
He's gone,
Sir Tristram.

Sir T.
Fearing the appeal of death,
I verily believe.—A music-hall?
It matters nothing what comes after me:
I had my day.

Groom.
Abuse, deride, provoke
Me back to madness: thought and deed are seas
Asunder: I would lay my own life down
Not to have struck. Machines we are, wound up
To weave we know not what. I languish now
Like wing'd exasperation that expends
A virulent dart, and, hebetated, dies.

Enter Temple.
Temple.
Sir Tristram! Where's my master?

Salerne.
Silence, fool!

Temple.
But something terrible has come to pass.

Sir T.
Something extravagant since Temple shouts.

Temple.
Are you dead also, sir?

Sir T.
Not dead yet, Temple.
Who else is dead or dying? Is Gervase gone?

1st Doctor.
The Bishop breathes again; but cannot live,
Though consciousness returns.

Sir T.
Lay me beside him:
We two should die together.—Let Temple speak
Before you move me.—Temple, what's the matter?

Temple.
Your lady, sir; she's dead; and on the floor
I found this vial.

Sir T.
She lies at peace?

Temple.
She seemed
Asleep. I tiptoed to the dressing-room
Afraid to wake her. Then I felt a ghost
Or something near me. Peeping out, I saw
No motion on the couch; the lady dead,
Her face like paper and her lips all blue.

Groom.
I saw her die as sweetly as she lived,
A sacrifice forlorn. She should have been
A worshipped wife, a mother guarded close
With children: what she was we made her—you
And I—

Sir T.
Enough of that!

Groom.
Enough; it serves
My purpose gallantly! I feel again
The murderer in my nerves, not to be purged
Until the rope swings taut: out of the earth,
Through the foundations of your theatre,
It mounts into my brain, a seething fire.
How good it was to kill you—you that stood
Between me and the world!

Sir T.
You took your chance
With others.

Groom.
No; I left it all to chance,
And trusted to my genius.

Sir T.
I relied
On friendship and the world's goodwill.

Groom.
Cheats, both!
You were my friend, and therefore you betrayed me;
Only a friend it is that can betray;
And every friend's a traitor, first and last.

Sir T.
Friendship and treachery synonymous?
Mine was the stronger nature.

Groom.
The craftier!
You stole my love, you robbed me of my place,
Applause, consideration, ease, renown,
Riches and power that come of eminence;
And this you did by every mean device—
Sad revelation, innuendo, shrug,
Suggestive pity, supercilious smile—

Sir T.
And you?

Groom.
Oh!—I . . . I was magnanimous:
I wished to kill; but to the very last
Hugged the idea of a great eclipse
Of you and yours to send you sighing down
The bitter road, my foot upon the neck
Of all your fame.

Sir T.
You lost the hope of that?

Groom.
Therefore I struck.

Sir T.
A candid murderer.

Groom.
Men
Should kill each other. God, how it satisfies!

2nd Doctor.
You must not talk, Sir Tristram.—Will you remove
That most unhappy man?

[Salerne and Abbot, attended by Blyth and Boulder, who have entered, take Groom up stage.
Groom.
Murder him; stab
The intimate friend, the inevitable foe!
I shall proclaim it from the prisoner's dock:
This is a gospel worth a thousand lies
Of tolerance and love. Did men cut off
The troublers of the world offence would cease.
When bland dissimulation paves a way
With broken pride that was its honest peer,
And chuckling craft destroys us unperceived
High time it is for men to kill outright!

[Groom is taken out.
St. J.
What dreadful voice is that?

2nd Doctor.
A murderer's.

St. J.
Whose?

2nd Doctor.
One Warwick Groom.

St. J.
The actor, Tristram's friend?

2nd Doctor.
The same, my lord.

St. J.
Whom has he slain?

2nd Doctor.
His friend.

St. J.
Is Tristram dead?

Sir T.
I lie here dying, Gervase.—
Ah! Ah! Why torture me! I cannot live.

1st Doctor.
It is the order of our art—

Sir T.
Desist!
Desist, I say, at once; and damn your art.—
Pardon me, Doctor: I never could endure
A scratch with patience: let me die at ease.

1st Doctor.
I might preserve your life a little while.

Sir T.
How long?—Reply!

1st Doctor.
I cannot say.

Sir T.
A year?

1st Doctor.
Oh no! Until the morning at the most.

Sir T.
Take me to Gervase, Hildreth: quickly, Hildreth.
[Hildreth, Europa, and the Doctors bring St. James's and Sir Tristram together, and support them, that they may see each other while they converse.
They've killed you, Gervase.

St. J.
I wished to set them free.
This war will last a thousand years.

Sir T.
For us
The war is over: notwithstanding, speak
Your errand once again. Things in my life
There are I would forget: your message wipes
The world out.

St. J.
All the past, both good and ill,
My message clears away.

Sir T.
Leaving pure Matter:
I love it!—And a world begun anew:
That moved me most of all:—to launch the world
In space again upon a virgin track,
As though the foul old rut and blood-drenched way
Had never been. I feel it, as I die,
So deeply: actual world, and actual man.

St. J.
Yes; let us watch that man! I see him stand
In majesty material, the Nessus-shirt
Of spirit, warp, and woof of legend dyed
In many-coloured Sin, the mordant shame
That cankered life, and clung, a grafted hide,
About his innocent flesh, fallen off, or flayed
With hideous woe, and in its proper filth
Corrupted into naught. Forthwith the world
Begins again, not even a pallid dream
Of legendary pasts to cloud the dawn.
I say it simply;—With the Universe
Man clothes himself; arrayed in time and space,
In darkness and in light, no lamp, no gleam
He follows, for the sun illumines him,
And every sun, his kinsmen in the skies,
The systems, constellations, galaxies.
At home in the empyrean, issuing thence,
His free imagination momently
Remembers flame pellucid, which it was,
And will be in the nebula again,
When all the orbs that stock the loins of night
Return into the sun, and fill with seed
Of chastest fire the impassioned womb of space.

Sir T.
We fill the abyss, left in the Universe
By cancelling God, with the Universe itself.
Great is it, Gervase; but the terror of it!

St. J.
Terror and splendour, Tristram! Who shall tell—
Who shall persuade the kings that God is not,
The politicians, usurers, financiers,
Priests, warriors, that depend on God to bear
The burden of their inhumanities?
All inhumanity that flings itself
On God's unsearchable device will fight
To the last drop of blood, last labouring sigh
For God and Heaven and Hell. And who shall teach
The orphans that their mothers are not; who
Unpeople Heaven of lovers, children, saints?
Women will fight with babies at their breasts,
Old palsied hags, peace-lovers, cripples, cowards,
When this is put to war. Their sons that died
In battle, where are they? Their enemies
That should lament in Hell? The little child
That lived a year and holds its parents' hearts
In dimpled hands for ever? Christ himself
That pardoned wanton women, where is he?

Sir T.
It cannot be undone!

St. J.
It can, it will!
For through the mist of tears and blood I see
A greater breed of men, a nobler world,
An independent power in the Universe,
The Universe itself become aware.

Sir T.
The Universe itself become aware.

[Neither speaks again, and shortly both die within a few moments of each other.