University of Virginia Library

Scene I:

—A room in the Volsung House, Watling Street. Inga Volsung in the doorway, attended by a footman; Oswald in the passage.
Inga.
Must see me! Oswald! Tell him I am tired.—
No; stay a moment.

[Enters the room.
Oswald
[enters the room].
Close the door quietly.

The Footman goes out closing the door.
Inga.
Ask if he brings a message from the King.—
No; not that either.—Ask ... Find out for me—
[Sees Oswald.
How mean of you! How mean!

Oswald.
If that were all!
One thing is left me—one; my love for you.

Inga.
I cannot listen, Oswald.

Oswald.
Not for myself!
Your body and your soul—your sanity
On earth, your sanctity hereafter, stand
In utter peril.

Inga.
I am sorry, Oswald.
I suffer more than you; your hurt will heal;
But it will pain me all my life to think
How I mistook my heart and wounded yours.

Oswald.
How shall I make you understand!

Inga.
I do.
Your words mean nothing; but the sounds express
The frenzy of a lover undeceived,
Whom love had led astray. I feel your need
To see me; and I think 'twas not so mean
To bribe my servant: Love and war are one—
Above all honour and integrity.—
Now you must leave me.

Oswald.
Look at me.

Inga.
I look,
And see a young man terribly perplexed;
A strong man, too, but simple; one that does
A woman's bidding always:—therefore, go.

Oswald.
That was I, to the life; but now you see
Pity and horror come to warn you.

Inga.
Heavens!
What can have happened in this casual world?
Again a man in earnest.—Tell me all.

Oswald.
When in the morning you resumed your troth,
And left me loveless, I perceived the King
In ambush of your fancy hidden close.
O you may flame with anger; but I know:
When souls are all one wound they understand
Astoundingly. The bruit of Mammon brought
You back to Christianstadt; the thought of him
Expelled the thought of me—

Inga.
I spoke of Mammon,—
Certainly; and who wouldn't?—Salient whims
Of love forlorn to strange conclusions leap!—
Go on: the rest of this pathology.

Oswald.
The rest of this pathology is hell
A hundredfold.—You must not see the king:
His thought has whipped about you like a snake
That coils to kill.

Inga.
How can you speak, how think
Such common things of me!

Oswald.
Why, when I came
You hoped I brought a message from the King!
O, you must gird yourself and fly far hence,
Beyond the rumour of him; out of sight!
To think of him at all is to be his—
I mean with any fanciful concern
About his person and his dazzling looks,
Or captivated notion of his power,
His purpose and the terror of his deeds;
For terror fascinates, with beauty blent,
Above all witchcraft. Aptly you would fall
Into his liking; and then?—the night comes down:
He must have everything; the heart, the mind,
The soul—from those he loves he drains them all;
And breaks and brays to powder those he hates.
His very touch is fatal; the legate died
To-day when Mammon laid his hand upon him.
For me, whom he has made his creature—God
In Heaven! O God! O God!—I daily die,
And nightly; kept awake (like prisoners jabbed
With lances lest they sleep) by red-hot blades
My other self, remorse, drives hissing home.
And cannot leave him! Cannot go away,
And be the man I was! He has me fast,—
Enframed in deeds like Gottlieb in the rack?

Inga.
What do you say? Like Gottlieb in the rack?

Oswald.
I said it: in the rack. I've come from that;
And from the abbey, which we've set on fire
To make the church of Christ the hearth of hell.

Inga.
You tell me Mammon racked the abbot?

Oswald.
Racked
The abbot; and I hear his dismal song;—
And more of it I'll hear.—O Inga, fly
From Christianstadt!

Inga.
King Mammon racked a man!
The twentieth century;—and he racked a man!
What a gigantic being!

Oswald.
Already caught!

Inga.
And then to burn the abbey!—But that's not true?

Oswald.
It's true. And this is true,—that you and Mammon
Ripen to be each other's victims. He,
Soon as he heard your name, recalled our worship,
Our boyhood's joy in you, and hotly wrote,
Commanding you to come.

Inga.
I had no letter!

Oswald.
He tore it; for I lied to him, and said
You meant to visit him.

Inga.
You did!—A light!
No wonder he displayed no wonder!

Oswald.
Who
Displayed no wonder?

Inga.
Some one dear to me.—
What were we talking of? My mind went off
Upon a pleasant errand.—You said you lied;—
And then?

Oswald.
I saved you so for that one time;
And now again I save you. O, you see
The peril! Rather drop into your grave,
Oblivion and eternal nothingness,
Than be renowned in Mammon's legend, thick
With sin like night with darkness—turbulent night
In storm-tossed Thule when the piebald moon
Slinks down behind a swarthy, plunging tide,
And writhen waves break blindly on the cliffs—
As I am broken on the world's wild shore.

Inga.
That kind of pathos irks me. Foolish fellow!
Fly hence yourself, lacking the strength to be
Âme damnée of such greatness as your King's.—
When did you rack the abbot?

Oswald.
Deep in the toils!

Inga.
But tell me, Oswald.

Oswald.
Scarcely an hour ago.

Inga.
An hour ago! He left my arms straightway
To rack a man! How great!

Oswald.
What have you said?
Did that escape you, Inga? Is it true?
You will not answer? “Left your arms,” you said.
The slippery truth slipped out against your will?
He sent for you?

Inga.
He did not send.

Oswald.
You ... went!
The vortex of him sucked you to himself!
And he seduced you! I read it in your eyes.
Now—now I understand the abandonment
With which he racked the abbot!—And you smile,—
A subtle smile.—Your thoughts he first debauched
With hurrying words, tremendous images,
And most divulsive message; then your body
Melted like wax.—And still you stand and smile;
For though your body melted your heated mind
Was steeled in Mammon's lust. Women are hard;
Mammon will make them his;—all women, once
They seize his meaning.

Inga moving backwards and holding Oswald's glance with her smiling eyes goes slowly out.
Oswald.
Gone—out of my life!
And into what?—I still forget myself.
My share in this? A more appalling woe
Than any suffered yet! I feel my tattered heart
In anguish drift like seaweed on the surf.—
If I could state it calmly to myself:—
He sent me to prepare the rack. While I
Awaited him, in labour to believe
He meant my trial only, she my love
Had canonized, dissolving in his arms,
Forgot me;—or remembered:—both of them
Triumphant in contemptuous betrayal?
The utter inhumanity of that
Might yet have been the fabled irony
And poignant sauce of fate; but Mammon knew;
Had offered gallantly—so gallantly!—
To plead my cause with her whose virgin soul
He tore to bits without a thought of me.—
There's something here I want; something unhoped
I fear to tell myself.—Have done with fear!
There's freedom in it; and the tenderest nerve
My conscience quivers with is strung and taut
To break the personal power that bound me damned
In scrupulous fidelity. My soul
Recovers hardihood to disavow
Mammon and all his works, and to repent!

[Goes out.