University of Virginia Library

Scene IV:

—The drawing-room in Ole Larum's house. Crawford and Tamberskelver enter together. Jelke follows them.
Crawford.
Before the others come can you and I
Agree? What have you ready for the world?

Tamberskelver.
The great idea, the greatest hitherto:—
That the Teutonic peoples should evolve
A god. I cannot of myself, with all
My sworn inceptors, in a night secrete
Divinity: the old, haphazard growth,
In hordes and savage minds, of heathen gods
Consumed uncounted years and high events
Legend itself forgets: therefore we know
The conscious evolution of a god,
How expedite soever, must yet await
A common bent, a universal will.
I and my compeers brood upon the germ
So boldly sown, the mystery so begun;
But we are few: we need the swarm of swarms,
The trance of myriad fantasies, the long
Refinement of inexorable time.

Crawford.
While outworn workers starve! And men and women,
By love's oppressive sequel terrorised
Refuse to wed; or wedding, bolt and bar
The portal where the generations crowd,
Turning the busy thoroughfare of life
To a blind alley at the wide world's end.

Jelke.
Disparage our palladium-method, guard
And mechanism of marriage, whereby we save
Society!

Crawford.
A mad catholicon,
A killing cure that antedates despair,
And strangles life and love to purchase both,
Upon a sordid altar offering up
The treasured fate and future of the world
In satisfaction of a callous lust.

Jelke.
You counselled it! 'Twas you who taught our women
To make the way of pleasure a cul-de-sac,
And close the secret door of life at will.

Crawford.
Only a respite for a race condemned
To automatic slavery.

Jelke.
Respite only!
Have you a pardon in your pocket then?

Crawford.
I have the absolution of the world.

Larum, Ribolt, Vibbe and Stromer enter together.
Crawford
[too preoccupied to pause, produces a handful of money].
Behold the unpardonable sin itself,
Poor poverty, is promptly cleansed by this—
Your only soap, your only miracle.
The more it's used, the more it multiplies;
And Neptune's barbarous blade of rusty hoop
Will fleece the stiffest upper lip as clean
As any patent razor, if this be plied
With systematic brush. This is the soap
That washes wrinkles out and beauty in,
Restores virginity and swindles death.
The bubbles of it, blown advisedly,
Become enchanted islands. With it, for it,
The fiercest wars are waged—

Larum.
Enough! We scold
Each other like the warring winds of heaven
In epics, and our purposes are wrecked.
Put up your money: some immortal end
Alone can join divergent minds like ours.

Crawford.
The scorn of money and material aid
Is still the ruin of immortal ends.
If you command not money, money chains
Immortal purpose to a mortal oar
In this old galley of a world where men
From century to century, age to age,
For ever disenchanted, ask of fate,
“What do we here, Elijah and the rest?”

Larum.
Here are we met to cancel differences,
And find a common measure of appeal
Against the full-blown tyranny of Mammon.

Ribolt.
Appeal to arms! Rebellion summons us.

Tamberskelver.
Yes, but the ground. What broader base than this:—
A new God for the Teutons? A battle-cry
To stir the calmest soul!

Jelke
[to Crowford].
We want the truth!
Have you renounced all mechanism in marriage?

Crawford.
It never was a corner-stone with me.

Vibbe
[to Crawford].
Do you deny our sacred human right
To sterilise the proletariate,
And bring the classes whining to their knees?

Jelke.
The only revolution since time began!

Vibbe.
Escape, salvation, and the way to heaven!

Crawford.
It cuts both ways: the classes also lock
The door of life at will; thus there remains
The same proportion: always rich and poor
In stable equilibrium, whatever change
May overtake the fashion of the thing.

Larum.
The triple cleavage widens, and we fall,
Irreparably sundered.

Tamberskelver.
Neo-pagans,
Inceptors and reformers, this juncture fails
To solder us; our triad cannot be.

Crawford.
I say it can; but not as neo-pagans,
Inceptors and reformers—three tall stools
That would be always down, as each in turn
Essayed to sit upon the other two.
Our titles and our tenets for a while
We must resign, and step by step pursue
Our common purpose, Mammon's overthrow.

Tamberskelver.
Yes, but the motive?

Crawford.
Let it be strong enough!
Success endorses motive, means and all.
And for the means:—We want the wealth of Thule.

Larum.
The wealth of Thule! Do you mean the money?

Crawford.
The money. To my comrades I would say,
The first and last word of our propaganda:—
Get money; all the money: then we can set
The world to work, sans class, sans mass. The world
At work; and all contented, leisured, rich!
The money of the world will run to that,
With ample annual reserve to be
A pill against all earthquakes. There's my cure
For mechanism in marriage: when all are rich—

Larum.
Or poor.

Crawford.
No, rich:—as all will be, when none
Is wealthier than his neighbour;—then womenfolk,
Relieved of every economic care,
Can revel boldly in maternity.
But that's beside my argument.—I want
The cash and bullion in the bank of Thule.

Larum.
The cash and bullion?

Jelke.
Break the bank of Thule!

Crawford.
One step without the wealth of Thule not
The strongest here can take—beyond the pace
That tedious movements trudge, and none of us
Intends; for we are all self-conscious fellows,
Pledged in our hearts to make the world sit up,
And toast the triumph of our principles
Before we die. With Thule's wealth in hand
We can destroy the ruthless reign of Mammon
That like a three-square barricade impedes
The outset where our roads converge.

Larum.
Destroy
The monarchy?

Crawford.
And o'er its ruins march
To place and power. We can accomplish this—

Larum.
What “we” is that?

Crawford.
We, forces of the age.

Larum.
And afterwards?

Ribolt.
Great war between us three,
Darraigned to fight for empire of the world!
Foreground and background, middle-distance,—all
The picture and perspective overjoy
The neo-pagan.

Larum.
We take no part in war.
The conflict of opinion and the swift
Emergence of a resolute inception
Engage our lofty hopes. Yet this finance
Disquiets us: to cut the sinews, grub
The roots of war, although we break the bank,
And break the brittle letter of the law,
Would sanction crime as harvest sanctions toil.

Crawford.
And so it would! Two things are possible:
To seize the wealth of Thule and depose
King Mammon. I see no further forward: there's
The open road, two furlongs in the light.

Larum.
Then darkness, and the future hiding hell.

Crawford.
But I would traverse this illumined way
Though worse than hell behind the darkness hid.

Ribolt.
And I, by all the gods!

Jelke.
And I!

Vibbe.
And I!

Tamberskelver.
For your first furlong, how do we advance?

Crawford.
By brutal means abused in every land,
The bomb.

Larum.
I'll hear no more of this: a haunt
For generous conspirators, my house
Affords no shelter to the evil thing
That kills and wounds at random.

Crawford.
Mistake me not.
No wanton anarchist am I who flings
A bomb, and flees, a terror-stricken fool
Hoping to terror-strike, knowing himself,
And thinking every man, a coward. I
Am he that never wasted word or deed;
So hold your tongues and listen with your brains.
The high explosive is the friend of man—
The one Messiah vouchsafed us hitherto.
Like all Messiahs crucified at first
(I mean in useless havoc thrown away)
By me it shall be honoured and employed
In splendid services. With fifty bombs
The people in an hour could overturn
All government in Europe; as we to-night
Intend in Thule.

Larum.
No, a thousand times!

Crawford.
Listen and understand.—Every third soldier
In Europe as in Thule, calls himself,
With some specific, a revolutionist.
A day's possession of a country's wealth,
And the most abject beggar in the land
Could buy a country's army, and straight upset
Established things. Now here in—

Rykke
[entering hurriedly].
Fire! The abbey!
King Mammon burns the abbey!

Larum.
Of Christianstadt?
The Abbey of Christianstandt?

Rykke.
On fire:—the square
By two battalions held; and Mammon, mad,
At a window, watching.

Larum.
Get back your breath.

Ribolt.
Is Mammon Surtur? Is Ragnarök begun?

Tamberskelver.
Fire's the bright seed of change! Mammon came down
To till the soil for my Teutonic myth.

Larum.
Now, Rykke, speak.

Rykke.
None fight the flames; the engines,
Picketed off, block up the streets, at hand
Should the fire travel: but the winds are dumb.
In every part the abbey burns.

Larum.
The abbey!
It must be saved! Who'll save it?

Rykke.
I, for one.

Stromer.
And I? Not for a new religion spick
And span, and I myself the God of it,
Would I exchange our abbey.

Larum.
Now we feel,
We think, we know: the very shrine of us!

Rykke.
The tombs and trophies of our ancestors!

[Goes out.
Stromer.
The mausoleum of our storied past!

[Goes out.
Larum.
A pier and sea-wall in the shifting sand
Against oblivion and the storm of time!

[Goes out.
Crawford.
The terror of the bomb, more than the fire,
A treacherous pretext, hails these fellows hence.

Tamberskelver.
Skin-deep, like beauty, are the souls of these.

Crawford.
But ours are in our entrails; anchored, stem
And stern, in flesh and blood; not to be driven
By gusts of sentiment.—Are you with us?

Tamberskelver.
I am with you to the overthrow of Mammon.
Thereafter for the Teuton and the God
We must evolve: to have conceived this great
Idea is to be sick with it until
It springs to life.

Crawford.
All great ideas help.
For me the world's an economic world:
Philosophy, morality, religion
Begin where I leave off,—that's in the clouds.

Ribolt.
We waste an opportunity. This fire
Engages Christianstadt. Your bomb to-night
Might catch the ear of Thule—a thunder peal
To shake us out of Mammon's tyranny.

Crawford.
Let it be tried to-night. I am tired of words;
Have reached that stage where, were I less than man,
I might go dropping bombs at random, just
To make a noise; but when I stake my life
I win or lose the world.—First to my house;
And there the means, the purpose and the plan
I'll lay before you all.

Ribolt.
Words never yet
Did anything: 'tis only deeds that do.

[They go out.