MICHAEL
No! One more smile.
BARBARA [agitated ] Why would you have me smile?
MICHAEL [passionately] Oh, when you smiled, It was—it was like sunlight coming through Some window there, [Pointing to the Minster] —some vision of Our Lady. [She drops her flowers.—He picks them up and gives them back slowly.
BARBARA
Who are you? You are some one in disguise.
MICHAEL [bitterly] A man—that passes for a mountebank.
BARBARA [eagerly] I knew!
MICHAEL
What then?
BARBARA
Thou art of noble birth.
'T is some disguise, this playing with the fire!
MICHAEL
Yes.—For to-day, I lord it with the fire.
But it hath burned me, here.
[Touching his breast.]
[Overcome for the moment, she draws away.—
The PIPER, coming down, speaks stealthily to MICHAEL,
who is still gazing.
PIPER
For all our sakes!
There is bad weather breeding.—Take to thy heels.
[BARBARA turns back to see MICHAEL withdrawing reluctantly, and throws a rose to him with sudden gayety.
BARBARA
Farewell to you, Sword-Swallower!—farewell!
MICHAEL [looking back] Farewell to you, my Lady, in-the-Moon. [Exit. [JAN clings once more to the PIPER, while the other children hang about. VERONIKA calls to her boy, from the steps.
VERONIKA
Darling.—
PIPER [drawing nearer] Is this your Boy?
VERONIKA
Ay, he is mine;
My only one. He loved thy piping so.
PIPER
And I loved his.
HANS' WIFE [stridently] Poor little boy! He's lame!
PIPER
'T is all of us are lame! But he, he flies.
VERONIKA
Jan, stay here if you will, and hear the pipe,
At Church-time.
PIPER [to him] Wilt thou?
JAN
[softly]
Mother lets me stay
Here with the Lonely Man.
PIPER
The Lonely Man?
[JAN points to the Christ in the Shrine. VERONIKA crosses herself.
The PIPER looks long at the little boy.
VERONIKA
He always calls Him so.
PIPER
And so would I.
VERONIKA
It grieves him that the Head is always bowed,
And stricken. But he loves more to be here
Than yonder in the church.
PIPER
And so do I.
VERONIKA
What would you, darling, with the Lonely Man?
What do you wait to see?
JAN [shyly] To see Him smile.
[The women murmur. The PIPER comes down further to speak to VERONIKA.
PIPER
You are some foreign woman. Are you not?
Never from Hamelin!
VERONIKA
No.
AXEL'S WIFE
[to her child]
Then run along.
And ask the Piper if he'll play again
The tune that charmed the rats.
ANOTHER
They might come back!
OLD URSULA
[calling from her window]
Piper! I want the tune that charmed the rats!
If they come back, I'll have my grandson play it.
PIPER
I pipe but for the children.
ILSE
[dropping her doll and picking it up]
Oh, do pipe
Something for Fridolin!
HANSEL
Oh, pipe at me!
Now I'm a mouse! I'll eat you up! Rr—rr!—
CHILDREN
Oh, pipe! Oh, play! Oh, play and make us dance!
Oh, play, and make us run away from school!
PIPER
Why, what are these?
CHILDREN
[scampering round him]
We're mice, we're mice, we're mice! . . .
We're mice, we're mice! We'll eat up everything!
MARTIN'S WIFE [calling] 'T is church-time. La, what will the neighbors say?
ILSE
[Waving her doll]
Oh, please do play something for Fridolin!
AXEL'S WIFE
Do hear the child. She's quite the little mother!
PIPER
A little mother? Ugh! How horrible.
That fairy thing, that princess,—no, that Child!
A little mother?
[To her]
Drop the ugly thing!
MARTIN'S WIFE
Now, on my word! and what's amiss with mothers?
Are mothers horrible?
[The PIPER is struck with painful memories.]
PIPER
No, no. But—care
And want and pain and age. . .
[Turns back to them with a bitter change of voice]
And penny-wealth,—
And penny-counting.—Penny prides and fears—
Of what the neighbors say the neighbors say!—
MARTIN'S WIFE
And were you born without a mother, then?
ALL
Yes, you there! Ah, I told you! He's no man.
He's of the devil.
MARTIN'S WIFE
Who was your mother, then?
PIPER
[fiercely]
Mine!—Nay, I do not know. For when I saw her,
She was a thing so trodden, lost and sad,
I cannot think that she was ever young,
Save in the cherishing voice.—She was a stroller;
My father was a stroller.—So, you have it!
And since she clave to him, and hunger too,
The Church's ban was on her.—Either live,
Mewed up forever,—she! to be a nun;
Or keep her life-long wandering with the wind;
The very name of wife stript from her troth.
That was my mother.—And she starved and sang;
And like the wind, she roved and lurked and shuddered
Outside your lighted windows, and fled by,
Storm-hunted, trying to outstrip the snow,
South, south, and homeless as a broken bird,—
Limping and hiding!—And she fled, and laughed,
And kept me warm; and died! To you, a Nothing;
Nothing, forever, oh, you well-housed mothers!
As always, always for the lighted windows
Of all the world, the Dark outside is nothing;
And all that limps and hides there in the dark;
Famishing,—broken,—lost!
And I have sworn
For her sake and for all, that I will have
Some justice, all so late, for wretched men,
Out of these same smug towns that drive us forth
After the show!—Or scheme to cage us up
Out of the sunlight; like a squirrel's heart
Torn out and drying in the market-place.
My mother! Do you know what mothers are?—
Your children! Do you know them? Ah, not you!
There's not one here but it would follow me,
For all your bleating!
AXEL'S WIFE
Kuno, come away!
[The children cling to him. He smiles down triumphantly.
PIPER
Oho, Oho! Look you?—You preach—I pipe!
[Reenter the men, with KURT and JACOBUS,
from the Rathaus, murmuring dubiously.
[The PIPER sets down JAN and stands forth, smiling.
JACOBUS
[smoothly]
H'm! My good man, we have faithfully debated
Whether your vision of so great a sum
Might be fulfilled,—as by some miracle.
But no. The moneys we administer
Will not allow it; nor the common weal.
Therefore, for your late service, here you have
Full fifteen guilders,
[Holding forth a purse]
and a pretty sum
Indeed, for piping!
KURT [ominously] Take them!
JACOBUS
Either that,
Or, to speak truly, nothing!
[The PIPER is motionless]
Come, come. Nay, count them, if you will.
KURT
Time goes!
PIPER
Ay. And your oath?
KURT
No more; Enough.
[There is a sound of organ music from the Minster.]
VERONIKA [beseechingly] Ah, Kurt!
KURT
[savagely to the crowd]
What do ye, mewling of this fellow's rights?
He hath none!—Wit ye well, he is a stroller,
A wastrel, and the shadow of a man!
Ye waste the day and dally with the law.
Such have no rights; not in their life nor body!
We are in no wise bound. Nothing is his.
He may not carry arms; nor have redress
For any harm that men should put on him,
Saving to strike a shadow on the wall!
He is a Nothing, by the statute-book;
And, by the book, so let him live or die,
Like to a masterless dog!
[The PIPER stands motionless with head up-raised, not looking at KURT. The people, half-cowed, half-doubting, murmur and draw back. Lights appear in the Minster; the music continues. KURT and JACOBUS lead in the people. JACOBUS picks up the money-purse and takes it with him.
VOICES [laughing, drunkenly] One thousand guilders to a 'masterless dog'! [Others laugh too, pass by, with pity and derision for the PIPER, and echoes of 'MASTERLESS DOG!' Exeunt WOMEN and MEN to the Minster. Only the children are left, dancing round the motionless figure of the PIPER.
CHILDREN
Oh, pipe again! Oh, pipe and make us dance!
Oh, pipe and make us run away from school!
Oh, pipe and make believe we are the mice!
[He looks down at them. He looks up at the houses. Then he signs to them, with his finger on his lips; and begins, very softly, to pipe the Kinder-spell. The old CLAUS and URSULA in the windows seem to doze.
The children stop first, and look at him, fascinated; then they laugh, drowsily, and creep closer,—JAN always near. They crowd around him. He pipes louder, moving backwards, slowly, with magical gestures, towards the little by-streets and the closed doors. The doors open, everywhere.
Out come the children: little ones in night gowns; bigger ones, with playthings, toy animals, dolls. He pipes, gayer and louder. They pour in, right and left. Motion and music fill the air. The PIPER lifts JAN to his shoulder (dropping the little crutch) and marches off, up the street at the rear, piping, in the midst of them all.
Last, out of the Minster come tumbling two little acolytes in red, and after them, PETER the Sacristan. He trips over them in his amazement and terror; and they are gone after the vanishing children before the church-people come out.
The old folks lean from their windows.
OLD URSULA
The bell, the bell! the church bell! They're bewitched!
[Peter rushes to the bell-rope and pulls it. The bell sounds heavily. Reenter, from the church, the citizens by twos and threes and scores.
OLD URSULA
I told ye all,—I told ye!—Devils' bargains!
[The bell]
[KURT, JACOBUS, and the others appear.]
KURT
Peter the Sacristan! Give by the bell.
What means this clangor?
PETER the Sacristan
They're bewitched! bewitched!
[Still pulling and shouting.]
URSULA
They're gone!
KURT
Thy wits!
OLD CLAUS
They're gone—they're gone—they're gone!
PETER the Sacristan
The children!
URSULA
—With the Piper! They're bewitched!
I told ye so.
OLD CLAUS
—I saw it with these eyes!
He piped away the children.
[Horror in the crowd. They bring out lanterns and candles.
VERONIKA holds up the forgotten crutch'
VERONIKA
Jan—my Jan!
KURT [to her] Thy boy! But mine, my three, all fair and straight.—
AXEL'S WIFE
[furiously to him]
'T was thy false bargain, thine; who would not pay
The Piper.—But we pay!
PETER the Sacristan
Bewitched, bewitched!
The boys ran out—and I ran after them,
And something red did trip me—'t was the Devil.
The Devil!
OLD URSULA
Ah, ring on, and crack the bell:
Ye'll never have them back.—I told ye so!
[The bell clangs incessantly]
Curtain