 | God and Mammon |  |
5
ACT I
Scene I:
—The harbour of Christianstadt. In the sound are battleships, cruisers, and other craft, gay with bunting. Villages are visible on the opposite shore, and immediately behind them fields of ripe grain slope upwards to the foot of a low range of hills. In the distance mountains rise: some of the higher summits are snow-capped, and forests hang about their flanks.
On the left an esplanade crowded with spectators overlooks a landing-stage. Along the wall are various advertisements and automatic machines.
On the right is the royal motor-car with an attendant car behind it, and a first-class army motor in front. Each car is served by two chauffeurs.
The Surtur, a declassed battleship, has just entered the sound and come to moorings about three cables' length from the quay: the Harbour-master and a signalman are receiving a flagged message from this vessel.
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Magnus.
If he should land?
Aurelian.
Arrest him, prince.
Magnus.
You think
He comes without repentance?
Aurelian.
If he comes
Without repentance, seize him; for the King's
Decree is absolute:—Not to re-enter
Thule save as a convertite, baresark
And haltered.
Magnus.
You were present: tell the thing
That happened when my brother lost his name.
Aurelian.
It passed before I knew: so utterly
Irrational, sudden and so beyond
Conception was it, that I think no man
Can tell, except the King and he.
Magnus.
I would
I knew the truth! The Princess of the Isles,
She may—she must remember: must she not?
Aurelian.
I question, prince. He held her hand in his;
The wedding-ring above her finger-tip
Hung like an aureole in his shaken grasp
When the fit took him: such a hideous wrench
Would dislocate her soul.
Magnus.
And yet her mind
Might keep a dream-like record, afterwards
Developed in remembrance.
Aurelian.
Doubtless mind
Becomes a magic mirror, wherein events,
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Unsummoned like the thoughts we would not think.
Magnus.
I'll ask her when she lands. My father, gracious
Tyrant, issues decrees without preamble,
Reason or rubric, comment, gloss or note:
My brother's outlawed; I, become prince royal,
Now marry her who was my brother's bride.
To be a monarch's heir over the head
Of seniority: it captivates.
To marry her I worshipped, heart and soul
With boyish adoration, she having passed
Irrevocably, as it seemed, beyond
The scope of my desire—after long wooing
To marry Guendolen at last: it comes
Like sounds of old-known music seaward borne
To ears of homesick castaways, returned
From shipwreck, hunger and the haunt of death.
So great it is for me that I must taste
No drop of bitter conscience in the cup:
My bride shall tell me how my brother sinned
That I may know the justice of his fall.
Aurelian.
Oh, barbarous!
Magnus.
But it means for her besides
Much peace of mind!
Aurelian.
The message from the Surtur.
Magnus.
What says the Surtur?
Harbour-master.
First, the question, prince:—
“Is Mammon penitent, or ill, or dead?”
This was acknowledged promptly. The reply:—
“Prince Mammon, happily alive and well,
Will land at once. His launch now leaves the Surtur.”
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Contempt and vanity: no word at all
Of penitence.—Oswald, advance these men.
Oswald enters with a guard of honour.
Magnus.
Arrest my brother when thus I lift my finger.—
I'm well assured that chance is guiltless here:
Arriving with the Lorelei he means
Against my marriage some matured device:
The first blow shall be mine: the first and last.
Guendolen, attended by Prounice and several ladies, appears on the deck of the Lorelei and lands immediately. The crowd is silent; but a neighbouring fort fires a salute of twenty-one guns.
Magnus.
Welcome to Thule, princess and my bride!
Aurelian.
Welcome to Thule, princess!
Several Voices.
Welcome! welcome!
Guendolen.
I thank you, Magnus; and I thank you all.
Magnus.
Is this your silent woman?
Guendolen.
Prounice? Yes;
Prounice is with me, faultless and silent still.
Magnus.
I am glad to see you, Prounice.
Guendolen.
She will not speak.
Magnus
[taking Guendolen aside].
How hard the wooing was! Eternities
Have loitered through the world since first you bade
Me wait.
Guendolen.
At last, and willingly I come—
(These guns for me! Boom, harbingers of war!
For war I bring; I feel it in my heart.)
I come to you, not lightly to be wed
As is the destiny of women; come,
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Though moved and deeply moved; I come, resolved
By meditation, as a wine matures
In unmixed darkness, and in solitude
Renewed by tears and sighs, and forged and framed
In many bitter agonies of prayer:
And thus, and thus I come, my dearest prince,
To do with you the sweet, heroic wrong
Both Heaven and earth require of us.
Magnus.
The wrong?
My love is vast enough for both; and soon
You will begin to love, feeling my heart
About you like an arbour where a goddess
Humanly makes her home; and afterwards
Compose your mundane life in being loved
By so devout a will as mine shall prove.
Guendolen.
Too richly said for me! Translate it, prince:
Speak to this woman, Guendolen of the Isles.
Magnus.
Speak to the woman! Guendolen! My hope
Puts forth at last a sanguine flower!
Guendolen.
Translate!
Magnus.
I hoped, believed, I trusted, dreamt and prayed
That when you were my bride, my wife, my mate,
Soon would you share my happiness in you,
And come at last to take a deep delight
In him that made you happy in yourself.
Guendolen.
Oh, you are skilled in love! That's not the wrong.
My dearest, could I wed and give my soul
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And torment rare! I hate that other prince
Whom once I loved, and love you perfectly.
Magnus.
You hate my brother?
Guendolen.
The enemy of men—
A being lost, inhuman, death alive.
Magnus.
Unhappy Christian!
Guendolen.
Mammon, prince and fiend!
I loved him: oh, he was my first love, Magnus!
And when he earned his name of Mammon, then
I loved him most—for one wild moment.
Magnus.
Loved!
Guendolen.
In sinful fancy.—Why do we tarry here?
Magnus.
We must.—Tell me and quickly, Guendolen,
The truth of that. Although I saw and heard,
Remembrance of it never lived with me:
Three years ago it was a boy who watched,
Entranced, enslaved and fettered by your looks,
When in the chancel on that high day of doom
My brother by my father was unchristened;
And now none speak of it but with reserve,
Forbiddenly, in gloss and palliative,
As if the air had ears and thunder lurked
In cloudless skies to smite free-speakers: tell,
With signs and looks, image and sleight of speech,
But on the instant get it uttered now.
Guendolen.
Here, stared at, on the quay! No, for the thing
Would move me piteously.
Magnus.
Though you dissolve in tears
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Guendolen.
Reason or none?
Magnus.
Tremendous reason, urgent on the sea,
Will not be balked. Tell, Guendolen;—tell;—tell!
Guendolen.
I must on such a summons. At twenty-one
Your brother on his birthday, about to wed
Her who is yours, abruptly flushed like dawn,
And from his eyes there spouted jets of brine
That hissed upon my hand, unringed in his,
So brackish fell the tears, so thick and hot.
Before the Abbot at the altar, heard
By King and council and all the states of Thule,
In sighing pauses, that convulsed his body
As deep sounds jar an organ, counterscored
Also with laughter immelodious, torn
From him hating it and ashamed, he cried—
Magnus.
How terrible my brother's moods!
Guendolen.
He cried,
“These withered vows are not for me; to say
Them palsies thought. Miasma-like your prayers
Offend me and your ritual stops my heart.
By instinct in my boyhood I broke the pale
Of Christendom, displeased because no God
Regarded me when for myself I sought
A message from on high: no force occult
Obeyed when I, exacting miracles,
Ordered a puddle in my path to dry;
No powers of Hell rejoiced to win the soul
I offered for omnipotence. I stand
Outside of fable, uprooted from the world
That lives in God and Sin and Heaven and Hell.”
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This to King Christian!
Guendolen.
Think of it! And this—
“There is no God and Christ has had His day:
Your sacraments befoul the things they bless.”
Magnus.
God! And my father?
Guendolen.
“No son of mine!” he thundered.
(It was believed the prince's vagrant mind,
After a devious course, had turned to God:
The shattered happiness of that o'erthrew
King Christian's self-command.) Raving, he cried,
“A changeling, you! All God's good earth disowns you!
To sea, to sea, blaspheming outcast! Hence!
Far off from Thule range the unblessed waste!
Never be seen within our coasts again
But baresark and in haltered penitence:
Till then Prince Mammon is your name. Begone,
Apostate!” He, unchristened harshly thus,
Departed sobbing from the Abbey. Stunned,
I heard aloft the echo of his tread
Haunting the clerestory like ghostly steps;
And knew no sight or sound or hope or fear
Until the evening when the Surtur steamed
Seaward athwart my window, he on board,
An exile.
Magnus.
Infamy! What could it serve
To taint the Abbey's cloistered air with breath
So blasphemous?
Guendolen.
As clear as thought and love
In one ecstatic trial of my soul
I saw and felt his meaning: to begin
The world again and let the past be past.
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Of me; upon its tide I reached the shore
Unnoted; in a vision of the world
Begun anew, fragrant with love and held
By men of might, I stepped into the sea
And swam after my lover; but between
Me and the massive Surtur hurling smoke
To Heaven, upon a crested wave appeared
The Son of Man, even as He walked the deep
In Galilee.
Magnus.
You saw the Son of Man!
Guendolen.
A golden light about Him and His robe
As red as blood, swiftly He came to me.
He showed no wounds, He spoke no word, nor sighed,
But looked and looked, wistfully and with wonder.
It seemed—how can I say it?—yet it seemed
Behind the wonder and the wistfulness
A terror beat, as if He surely knew
His hour had come—He and His cross to be
Consigned to the lumber-room with other toys,
Religions, deities, hobby-horses, dolls.
I gazed and sank, expecting death; but Christ
Upheld me: hand in hand with Him
I trod the slippery water. On the shore
He left me, His till death. Though He Himself,
Conceived and born again even of my womb,
Should come to preach the passing of His name,
I still should love and pray for Jesus' sake.
Magnus.
And is your love of me for Jesus' sake?
Guendolen.
Ay, Magnus; for yourself in the name of Christ.
My agony was this: to take the veil
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Now, your tremendous reason.
Magnus.
The sinful choice?
Guendolen.
I was as good as married, Magnus: vowed,
Betrothed and in my thought your brother's wife.
My love for you is sin if truth be truth,
Religion holy, and Christ the Son of God.
Magnus.
And yet you love me in the name of Christ?
A foolish subtlety your restless brain
Perplexes sense with: not your heart's conviction?
Guendolen.
My heart's profound conviction.
Magnus.
And resolve?
To live in sin with me?
Guendolen.
To sin with you.
When we are married, Magnus, I can speak;
At midnight in your arms, in darkness hid,
I shall unfold my meaning.—Your reason, now,
Tremendous, on the sea?
[The guns of the Surtur announce the landing of Prince Mammon.]
What battleship
Salutes, and who arrives?
Magnus.
My reason. Spell
The name.
Guendolen.
I hardly make it out. That ... Magnus!
The Surtur!
Magnus.
With my brother, home, uncalled,
Unheralded.
Guendolen.
Can he be penitent?
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These guns forbid the thought.
Guendolen.
Does the king know
Of Mammon's coming?
Magnus.
None imagined it
Until the Surtur steamed into the sound.
Guendolen.
This was the battleship that haunted us:
Its smoke upon the border of the world,
A dusky plume, portentous in the sun;
Its shifting wedge of beams electrical,
A threat by night.
Magnus.
A prearranged event!
You think the Surtur dogged the Lorelei?
Prince Mammon followed you?
Guendolen.
A battleship
Frequented our horizon, now on the lee,
And now to windward, troubling us at times
With ominous fancies.
Mammon enters and is welcomed by the crowd.
Guendolen.
Magnus, look! Oh, look!
What kind of man is this? He comes from Hell.
More wonderful than man he seems! From Heaven?
Beautiful, terrible! Mammon! Mammon! Look!
The world is different since he landed! Keep
Beside me! Terror tames me.
Mammon.
Is it true
You wed my brother, Guendolen?
Guendolen.
In the name
Of Christ.
Mammon.
And in the name of love?
Guendolen.
I love
Your brother.
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You thought so, Guendolen; but now
You love his brother, Mammon: me, again
Upon the instant as you loved me once—
And always in the seedplot of your soul,
As fertile ground adores the beams of day.
Guendolen.
Magnus! Magnus!
Magnus
[signals to Oswald].
Traitor to God and man!
Oswald and the guard make Mammon prisoner.
Mammon.
Now, borrow patience from the name you lost!
A little Christian patience yet awhile.
Magnus, my brother, lead me to the King.
Magnus.
Better for you to die a thousand deaths
Than stand before the King impenitent.
Mammon.
Impenitent? I know not what you mean.
If to lament that ever I was born,
With burning passion to beget my kind,
With eyes and ears to note the tragic things
That diaper the wrinkled web of life;
A pregnant brain that momently conceives
A new solution and a new despair;
And in my pulse an amaranthine hope
Luxuriant on the ruddy brink of Hell—
Which is my heart, my heart: if to be choked
With tears I cannot shed, beholding her
I love—and will possess; to swoon with awe
Upon the golden threshold of the day,
The portal of the sun; to shudder yet
With fever, palsy, death when music sounds
Its infinite appeal, or beauty breaks
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Perfumes the way, or when the crescent moon,
Recut anew in pallid gold, adorns
The saffron sunset, like an odour changed
To purest chrysolite and hung in heaven:
If hope, despair, remorse, compassion, love,
Endurance, sorrow, pity, terror, joy,
The mingled heritage of both the worlds,
Be fibres of impenitence, my soul
Is most impenitent.
Magnus.
This heathen cult
Of sensuous things, and loose abandonment
To nature and the world, proclaim a soul
Indeed uncontrite. Knowing the King's decree,
How dared you enter Thule?
Mammon.
If it be death
To enter Thule impenitent, my time
To die has come.
Magnus.
Death daunts you not: but think
What dungeons are: darkness and idlesse nigh
And day; disquiet, frenzy, hebetude.
Mammon.
A dungeon can be burst. I should escape,
If not by subtler means, by dogged death.
Aurelian.
Send him away! Debate the thing no more!
Aboard the Surtur with him! At once aboard
Magnus.
I think it lies within my choice to keep
Or cast him out.—Brother, I give you leave
Now to depart from Thule. The seas are broad
All countries of the world—except your own,
And our ally, the Empire of the Isles,
Closed by your foul apostasy—await
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Mammon.
I know the seas and countries of the world:
I like them all: Thule alone I love.
This is my native earth; my roots struck deep
In Thule—stem and branch and filament
That nourished me with riches of romance,
With dulcet stuff of love, enchantment, song,
With strength of martyrdom, adventure, war;
And, though I did deracinate my soul,
My purpose is to plant it deeper still
In virgin ground of Thule. My home is here;
I live in Thule—and the Universe:
The one I cannot leave alive or dead;
The other willingly I shall not—bound
Or free, despised or honoured.
Guendolen.
Christian, I
Beseech—
Mammon.
My name is Mammon to the end.
Guendolen.
But Christian—Mammon. ... Oh, I cannot speak!
Magnus.
If honestly you love your native land
'Twere wise to leave it. Like a quicksand here
Opinion swallows weekly factions—doomed
To sprout again, as if, like dragon's teeth,
Compost and seed in one, the desert dust
They could impregnate, or the beach itself
Impoverished day and night by barren tides;
Inbred religions like ephemeral moths
Flutter and fade; system from system springs
By fission; prophets, anarchs, orators.
Foretell, foment, harangue: alone, secure
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Of folk, the throne of Thule stands, a rock
Indeed of ages, a secular rock
Remaining still unblasted in the fall
Of kingdoms. Leave Thule, and succession treads
An undisputed way. If you remain,
Your death, your life, abasement, prison, bonds,
Or liberty in full—whate'er your fate,
Your presence here, above or underground,
Divides our world between us, and begins
Conspiracy, divulsion, overthrow
Of Thule and the one free throne in Europe.
Mammon.
Who can predict the event of my abode
In Thule, of my function in the world?
A man apart, no antitype am I:
My presence means emotion, mystery, fear;
My deeds shall be unparagoned in time.—
Lead me before the King.
Voices.
The prophet! Speak!
The prophet! Let him speak! Loud let him speak!
Starkad appears above on the esplanade. He is naked except for a bearskin. His hair and beard are well cared for: he is not an old man.
Guendolen.
What monstrous man is that?
Magnus.
A debauchee
Of fantasy: sign of the times, insane
With knowledge, daily trumpeted abroad,
Of fresh discoveries—radiants, elements,
New lice, new stars, new worlds, new microcosms;
Signposts and milestones in the Milky Way;
The soul of matter and the bourne of space.—
What would you, Starkad?
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Prophet, prophesy!
Magnus.
The folk applaud. 'Twill please them every way
If we give audience.
Guendolen.
Audience, Magnus?
Magnus.
Yes,
And patiently.
Mammon.
In times agone the kings
Of the earth usurped the world's conceit
By being kingly: now we must be nice.
Magnus.
Nothing unpopular shall mar to-day.—
Your errand, prophet, quickly.
Starkad.
Not with you,
Prince Magnus, but with Mammon would I speak—
Name awful, yet auspicious; itself a fate.
Mammon.
Obscene pretender, keep your lunacies
For ears incontinent.
Starkad.
Restrain your scorn.—
You will work wonders. I predict for you
Great power.
Mammon.
Great power? What can you know of power?
What is the fount of power? the seed of power?
Starkad.
The fount and seed of power? Torture as coarse
As flame, as exquisite as music strained
With sanguine teardrops from the soul of love;
And solitude, the utter fate of fate
Reserved for the immortals: thence come strength,
Dominion, worship and the world's applause.
Mammon.
The world's applause? I seek my own.
Starkad.
All men
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Who would applaud themselves.
Mammon.
So tonguesters think.
Starkad.
And kings and clowns.
Mammon.
What privilege is yours
In public places to appear undraped?
Starkad.
I have my skin.
Mammon.
You would be, wanting it,
Monstrous indeed—rawhead and bloody bones.
Starkad.
I mean my bearskin.
Mammon.
What heroic deed,
Or infamy sublime, is paid or punished
In your apparel?
Starkad.
My savage garb itself
Is most heroic and its own reward.
Mammon.
Before you took to this of prophecy
What were you?
Starkad.
One who sought the world's applause.
Mammon.
And having failed to please began to curse.
Starkad.
I burrowed in the bowels of the earth,
Profoundly solitary—
Mammon.
Out of sight
And out of mind, you—
Starkad.
Utterance is vouchsafed
Me; silence! Out of sight and out of mind
I sank, down swifter than the dexterous mole
That pierces woven turf and kneaded ground
Expressly as the fisher cleaves the green
Translucent gulf, where pearl, in living cells
Secreted, hives and ripens. From the top
Of heaven the lark's uplifted song pursued
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Of cities, traffic, armies, armaments,
The rumble of the world, had ceased o'erhead
Like sounds of service in an upper room.
I groped through veins of fire, I fathomed ores
And ancient buried streets that no man trod,
But mammoths only and lizards huge as hills;
I read the rock-hewn legend subterrene,
And bathed my body in the central fire.
Hence am I naked nerve, unarmed, unclad;
Hence none can help me, none can understand.
Yet must I prophesy though none believe;
Yea, though my wine is bitterness, my meat
A tainted portion, love an agony,
And life a point of time whereon I hang
Impaled. By endless torture men grow great,
As I have grown, as you will grow, King Mammon:
Great, to discover in the core of greatness
A maggot of chagrin, putrescent death.
[Goes out.]
Mammon.
Prophet, a word!
Magnus.
He will not speak again,
Nor yet be seen, till next the moon is full.
Mammon.
So lunatic! He called me King.
Magnus.
I heard.
Mammon.
And heed the prophecy?
Magnus.
Strange things are told
Of gross unlikelihoods foreseen by him;
And this I marked:—No sooner had you cried,
“Who shall predict the event of my abode
In Thule, of my function in the world?”
When one appeared who did predict the event.
Mammon.
Oh, you can hunt out omens, tokens, signs,
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Yes, and by brooding on them, give them scope.
Mercurial minds react. Come, here's my fate!
Pence! pence!
Oswald gives Mammon some coppers.
Mammon.
The devil himself his scripture quotes
For copper coins of idle fools or busy,
Like a blind beggar reading holy things.
[Drops a penny in the slot of an automatic fortune-teller, on the dial of which is a picture of the devil.]
A penny for your thoughts, good namesake, hoofed
And horned! I swore I was no antitype,
Forgetting you, old Mammon.—Slowly, Satan!
What says the automatic augur? Read!
Oswald
[reads].
“You will recover more than you have lost.”
Mammon.
That's not my news! You grind out stocks and shares—
Or horses!—Hey? dull devil that you are!
[Drops another penny.
Come; round you go again! And think of me.—
Let the cat die! Not there? Creep on! At last!
Now read this second message out of Hell.
Oswald
[reads].
“Success is certain if you have the pluck.”
Mammon.
Still wide of me! Mahound, unhappy brute,
No whit refined in twice a thousand years,
For skulking jobbery angle, and timid lust,
With tarnished gold and ladies fair and false;
But intellect and fantasy—for them
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[Drops a third penny.
That's threepence, fiend! Once more your gin-horse round!
The kingdoms of the world—try me with them:
Your lunatic competitor called me King.—
The third attempt of damned improvidence
To touch veridical prediction. Read.
Oswald
[reads].
“Your expectations will be realized.”
Mammon.
My expectations will be realized!
The banal witchcraft of it! So they will—
Or any man's! Stocks, horses, women, weather;
When down disaster comes the destined wretch
Confesses in his beard, remembering all
His deep dubiety, cunctation, fear,
“My expectations have been realized!”
Now from the Delphic pythoness to him
That borrows bruin's hide and cheats his soul
With vision, or to this profane machine,
This slotted automatic augury,
The raker in the future has still to note
The dull, deceiving cavil of the phrase,
The indifferent snare set in the open field
That traps the wiliest bird. By Heaven and Hell,
The world is what it was, the fool of fate,
The dupe of hope in custody of time,
The martyr of suspense! But if I live
I'll change the mood of men.—My father, Magnus;
Lead me before him.
Magnus.
You choose it, then; not I.
Mammon.
No one save I myself can choose for me.
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Your blood be on your head.
Mammon.
My time will come;
But not to-day, nor yet for many a day.
I know a thing automatons and freaks
Would never guess, would never dream.
Magnus.
What thing?
Mammon.
That I am I. Once more a man says that.
—Which carriage?
Magnus.
Forward. Take him with you, Oswald.
Mammon guarded, and attended by Oswald enters the foremost car.
Aurelian.
He filled out space here: none of us could think
While he at large disported unperturbed
His abject, arrogant personality.
Magnus.
I spoke my mind.
Aurelian.
With dignity and power!
My words undid my meaning. He lacks restraint,
Is what I should have said; and blurts the burden
Of his heart unthinkingly, so holds the ears,
The eyes of all in sight and sound of him.—
Strength I deny him, prince: his influence comes
From deep susceptibility; we feel
His tremor shake the world, and look to see
Body and spirit fly asunder. Mark
How his name affects him: 'twill eat him up,
This high infernal title, cancer-like.
Guendolen.
Unless we cure him.
Magnus.
Cure him, Guendolen?
Guendolen.
Your father's edict:—Penitent, baresark
And haltered. If the name of Mammon works
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The very sound, and feels himself imbued
With purpose by it, how would it quell his pride
To bring him pinioned in before the King,
Baresark and haltered? The effect of that
On so responsive, so untamed a man?
Aurelian.
Like all untamed things, subject to profound
Dismay, irrational terror, instant change
Upon the shaking of a leaf.
Guendolen.
He might—
Before your father, seated on his throne,
Majestical and old and terrible—
He might—in sackcloth, Magnus, with a rope
For necklace, as the King commanded him—
He might conceive it fate, the act of God;
He might be suddenly converted, Magnus!
Magnus.
Like Saul. Indeed he might. And for my father?
Guendolen.
Him we must not tell.
Magnus.
Not tell my father? Why?
Guendolen.
Seeing his eldest born, his prodigal,
Return at last in penitential garb
After these years, the old man's hungry heart
Will snatch his son with such devouring welcome
That even a prouder child of sin than he
Would lie, would die rather than undeceive
An old man so rejoiced with heavenly news.
Aurelian.
A Christian bait to catch a wanton soul.
Magnus.
Fishers of men we are! But if the King
On his contrition reinstates him?
Guendolen.
If—
27
Magnus.
This fickle marriage, Guendolen:
King of the Isles and Emperor of Ind,
Your father gives his daughter to the heir
Of Thule's ancient crown—Mammon; or me,
Your lover, much in doubt.
Guendolen.
Shall we reject
A ruse that seems inspired? What would you give
To save your brother from eternal death?
Would I not sacrifice myself and you?
Oh, Magnus, think! If Christendom were doomed,
The penitence of one so highly placed—
Aurelian.
With such a legend, such a character,
So marked, so known!—
Guendolen.
It might defer the end,
And keep us holy for a hundred years.
Magnus in silence hands Guendolen to a seat. Aurelian, Prounice and the others take their places, and the cars move off amid the shouts of the spectators.
| God and Mammon | |