ACT V—THE DEATH OF THE MAN
[When the curtain rises the stage is discovered wrapped in a vague, dim, flickering light—the sort of light which makes it difficult to distinguish objects at the first glance. Gradually, however, as the eye grows accustomed to the gloom, the following picture begins to stand out from the obscurity.
[The scene is a large, low hall or cellar, to which there are neither doors nor windows, but which is entered by a ladder leading down from a trapdoor in the ceiling. The walls are bare of ornamentation, and so thickly encrusted with dirt that almost they seem to be covered with leather made out of the hide of some gigantic wild beast. Along the back wall runs a rudely constructed drinking-bar, containing rows of bottles filled with variously-coloured liquids; and in front of this bar the proprietor of the den is seated on a low stool, with his hands clasped over his stomach. His face is pale, save for a pair of brilliantly red cheeks, and his head bald, while his neck and chin are covered with a large tawny beard. His whole expression denotes absolute lethargy and indifference, and he retains this attitude unchanged throughout the entire Act—never at any time making the least modification in his posture.
[At a number of small tables persons of both sexes are seated drinking—the apparent number of these individuals being increased by the fantastic shadows which dart hither and thither over the walls and ceiling of the room. All have faces both horrible and repulsive, but in such infinite variety of ugliness that they resemble, rather, an assortment of hideous masks. Likewise, the majority of them have one or more features either grotesquely exaggerated or wholly absent, such, for instance, as a gigantic nose or no nose at all, eyes wildly protruding or shrunk to imperceptible slits, a throat horribly goitred or a chin receding to the point of deformity. Also, most of them have coarse, matted hair which covers the greater portion of their faces. Yet, despite this bizarre variety of feature, there is a marked similarity in the general appearance of these creatures—a similarity which finds its most distinctive characteristic in the greenish, corpselike hue with which their faces are overlaid, no matter whether the face be rudely jocular or convulsed with semi-maniacal fear and horror. As for the bodies of the drunkards, they are clad in the most miserable of rags, of a uniformly dull, monotonous colour, and disclosing here a livid, bony hand or knee, and there a deformed or concave chest. Indeed, some of the wretches are almost naked, whilst the Women are indistinguishable from the men, save for the fact that they are, if anything, the more uncouth. Men and women alike have tremulous hands and heads, and whenever a drunkard rises to walk about, he or she moves as though treading upon an exceedingly slippery, uneven, or unstable surface. Finally, the same timbre of voice—a sort of harsh and grating croak—is common to all, and they mouth their words as haltingly as they walk, with lips which seem frozen.
[At a table a little apart from the rest there sits the Man. His white, dishevelled head is bowed upon his arms, and he maintains this attitude unchanged until the moment, towards the close of the Act, when he rises and speaks for the last time. Like the drunkards, he is very poorly clad.
[In another corner of the room there stands the motionless figure of the Being in Grey. In the Beings hand a fast-expiring candle (its flame now grown thin and blue) is flickering heavily, as at one moment it droops downwards over the edge of the candlestick, and at another darts upwards into a fine point as it casts gleams of a lurid, deathlike hue over the statuesque face and chin of the Being.]
Dialogue of the Drunkards.
O my God, my God!
See how the room is heaving about! I can scarcely keep an eye fixed upon anything at all!
It is shivering as though with ague—ceiling, tables, floor, and walls!
It is as though we were at sea!
Hark! Do you hear that strange sound—a sound as of iron wheels being rattled, or of great stones rolling down a hillside—showers of stones as thick as raindrops?
Pooh! That sound is in your own ears. 'Tis the blood makes it. My blood too is playing me strange pranks, for it has turned all thick and black, and smells of vodka. It will scarce pass through the veins now, and when it draws near to the heart it dams itself up, and refuses to flow at all.
I can see lightning flashing, lightning flashing!
And I can see great funeral-piles, with men burning on them! I can smell the horrid smell of their roasting flesh I I can see black shadows dancing round them! Hi, shadows! Let me come and dance with you awhile!
O my God, my God!
I must have another dram. Who will join me? No one? Then a curse upon you all! I will drink alone.
See! A lovely woman is kissing me on the lips! She smells of musk, and her teeth are like a crocodile's I Ugh! She will bite me, she will bite me! Away, harridan!
I am no harridan. I am only an old serpent with young, and have been watching little serpents crawl out of my womb this hour past, or more. See the little devils, how they wriggle about! Hi, you! Do not you dare to tread upon my serpent brood!
Where are you off to?
Who is that going away? Sit down again. You make the whole room shake with your tread.
No, I dare not stay; I dare not sit down again.
Nor I. When I sit down I feel the horrors coming over me.
Over me too. Let me pass, I say!
[A number of the drunkards rise, and go surging towards the entrance-ladder—overturning some of the tables during their staggering progress.]
See what that monster is doing! For two hours past it has been trying to climb on to my lap, only it cannot succeed. I keep driving it away, yet it always returns. At what sort of a game is it playing?
I feel as though a swarm of cockroaches were buzzing about, and nesting in my skull.
And I as though my skull were splitting in two—as though the very brains were coming out of it. They must have turned all maggoty, those brains, for they smell like mouldy cheese.
Or, rather, like carrion.
O my God, my God!
To-night I am going to creep up to her on my hands and knees, and slit her throat for her. Yes, her blood shall flow to-night; that nice red blood of hers shall soon be streaming down her breast.
Three men keep following me about everywhere. Some day they mean to catch me alone in some dark, lonely spot, and murder me. At this very moment they are waiting for me outside.
What sort of a creature is it keeps walking about over the walls and ceiling?
O my God! They have come in! They are after me!
Who are?
Those three men! I cannot move hand or foot! Whatever shall I do? Whatever shall I do?
See! My clothes are slipping off me! Soon I shall be turned inside out—and a fine sight I shall look then!
Help, some one! Help! A monster is after me! It is seizing me by the hand! Help! Help!
What is it? God be with us! 'Tis a! monstrous spider! Help! Help!
[For a few moments some of the drunkards continue reiterating these cries for help.]
Oh, we are drunk; that is all. Go and call down the rest of the town. It is so cold and miserable up there.
No, no; I dare not ascend into the street. If I were to do so I should find her waiting for me, and raging like a wild beast. She would kill me, to a certainty.
Well, there are enough of us here already, so let us have some more liquor, and be merry.
No, no! It only gives me the horrors. I have been shaking with them this many an hour past.
Better the horrors than real life. Who would want to be sober, and to go back to real life?
Not I!
Nor I! I would rather stay down here. No, I have no wish to go back to life.
Nor has any one else.
O my God, my God!
Why does the Man come here? He drinks little, but he sits much. We don't want his company.
No, indeed! Let him go home, since he has a home to go to. 'Tis a home with sixteen rooms in it!
Yes, but they are empty now. Only the rats scamper and squeak in them.
But he has a wife?
No, she is dead.
[Throughout this dialogue the Old Women seen in Act I have, one by one, been entering the drinking den. Clad in the same weird garments as before, they seat themselves silently in places vacated by departing revellers. Likewise they continue to enter during the dialogue which follows. Neither their entry nor the fact of their interjecting scattered remarks into the general conversation seems to excite surprise among the company present, nor even to be noticed.]
Mingled Dialogue of Drunkards and Old Women.
The Man is near his end now. He can scarce stand for very weakness. Do you know, he has a mansion with sixteen rooms in it! Sixteen rooms!
Listen to the beating of his heart, how irregular and feeble it is! Soon it will have stopped for ever.
Hi, Man! Invite us to your mansion, since there are sixteen rooms in it.
Yes, that heart will soon have stopped for ever. It is an old, weak, diseased heart now.
He has gone to sleep, the drunken fool! This is a strange place to sleep in, but he seems able to do it. He might die in his sleep. Wake him up, some one.
Hi, Man! Wake up I
Think how that heart used to beat when it was young and strong.
[The Old Women chuckle,]
Who says more liquor? By the way, there seems to be a larger company present now.
What do you mean? I see only the same company as before.
I am going up into the street to raise the alarm! I have been robbed! I am nearly naked I See how my green skin is showing through!
Well, go; and good luck to you!
Do you remember the night when the Man was born? I think you were present on that occasion?
I am dying, I am dying! O my God! Who will carry me to the grave, or lay me in it? My corpse will be left to cumber the streets like a dog's, to be trodden upon by passers-by, to be ridden over and crushed! O my God, my God!
Do you remember the Relations saying, "Let us congratulate you, dear kinsman, on the birth of a son"?
I am certain you are wrong when you say that the circle can be squared. I will prove to you how absurd it is.
Well, you may be right.
O my God, my God!
Only an ignoramus in geometry would make such an assertion. I do not admit it—do you hear? I do not admit it.
Do you remember how the Man's Wife looked, in her poor pink dress and shabby hair-riband?
Yes; and the flowers, too—the May lilies with the dew not dry upon them, the violets, and the grasses?
"Do not touch them, dear: children; do not touch the flowers."
[The Old yeomen chuckle.]
O my God, my God!
[By this time the drunkards have all departed, and their places been taken by the Old Women. The light has been growing steadily fainter, until only the form of the Being in Grey and the white, drooping head of the Man stand out clearly under shafts of light fatting upon them from above.]
Dialogue of the Old Women alone.
Good evening to you!
And to you! What a glorious night it is!
We are all here, are we not? How are you?
I have caught a little cold, I think.
[The Old Women chuckle.]
This time we shall not have very long to wait. Death and the Man have nearly met.
See the candle! See its thin, blue, ragged flame! It has almost no wax now—only wick.
Yes; but it seems reluctant to go out?
Well? Are not all candles reluctant to go out?
Come, come! No quarrelling, no quarrelling! Whether the candle chooses to go out or not, the Man's time is fast ebbing away.
Do you remember his motor-car? Once it nearly ran me down.
And his mansion, too, with the sixteen rooms in it?
Yes. I was in them a short while ago. The rats nearly devoured me, and the draughts nearly blew me away, for some one had stolen the window-frames from their sockets, and the wind was tearing through the rooms.
And you had a snooze on the very bed on which his Wife died, did you not? Oh, you sentimental old thing!
I did. But I must confess that some queer thoughts passed through my mind as I wandered through those rooms. There used to be such a charming nursery in the mansion, and I felt hurt to see that its windows were all shattered, and that the wind was blowing the dust in clouds over the floor. And there used to be such a lovely little cradle in the room! Now the rats are making their nests in that nursery, and rocking their children to sleep in that cradle.
Oh the dear little naked rat-children!
[The Old Women chuckle.]
And on a table in the study, I saw some broken toys—a little horse without a tail, a pasteboard helmet, and a red-nosed clown doll. I played with them each in turn, and tried on the helmet. It would have suited me well enough if it had only been a trifle less mouldy and covered with dust.
And surely you paid a visit to the grand salon where the ball was given that night? What a gay scene it was!
Yes, I went in there too. But judge of my surprise when I found it in darkness, with the windows broken, and the wind whistling round the cornices!
Ah! That would serve as music.
Yes, of course. And the walls were all lined with guests—with guests sitting there in the darkness! You should have seen how queer they looked!
We can imagine it.
And you should have heard them ejaculating with their old wheedling lips, "How rich it all is! How sumptuous!"
Oh, you are joking!
Yes, I am only joking. You know my playful disposition.
How "rich" indeed, how "sumptuous," everything must have looked when you went in!
Man, do you remember the tune that played at your ball?
Ah! he is near his death now.
Do you remember how the dancers surrounded you, and how tenderly, how bewitchingly, the music played? It played like this.
[The Old Women form a semicircle around the Man, and begin softly to hum the tune which was played at his ball.]
Let us have a ball ourselves. It is so long since, I had a dance!
Very well. "Imagine this to be a palace—a supernaturally beautiful palace."
First of all we must call the musicians. One cannot have a proper ball without music.
The musicians?
Yes, certainly. Do you not remember them?
[The Old Women give a shrill cry, and instantly there are seen coming down the ladder the same three musicians who played at the Man's ball. The fiddler folds a handkerchief on his shoulder, to form a pad for his fiddle, and they begin to play with extraordinary energy. Yet the music is soft and low, as in a dream.]
Now we can have our ball!
"How rich it all is!"
"How sumptuous!"
"How brilliant!"
Do you remember it, Man?
[Softly humming to the music, the Old Women begin to circle round the Man—mouthing with their lips, and making, a horrible travesty of the movements of the white-robed dancers who danced at the Man's ball. To the first phrase of the tune they whirl themselves round; to the second they converge and retire; to the third and fourth they whirl themselves round in their places—stepping softly, and on tiptoe, as, at intervals, they whisper, in the Man's ear:]
Do you remember it, Man?
You are going to die soon, but do you remember it?
Do you remember it?
Do you remember it?
You are going to die soon, but do you remember it?
[The dance becomes swifter, the motions more abandoned, and strange, wailing notes begin to make themselves heard in the voices of the Old Women as they hum the tune, and reiterations of weird laughter to run softly round the circle like a ripple. Each time that the dancers pass before the Man they shoot into his ear such whispered ejaculations as:]
Do you remember it, Man?
Do you remember it?
How ravishing it all was—how voluptuous? How delightful to the soul?
Do you remember it, Man?
You are going to die soon!
You are going to die soon!
You are going to die soon!
Do you remember it, Man?
[Still more swiftly the Old Women circle in the dance; still more wild and uncouth their antics become. Suddenly all become stricken to silence, and come to a dead stop—even the musicians standing arrested in the exact attitudes of playing, and remaining perfectly silent and motionless. The Man rises, and tries to stand upright, with his handsome grey head shaking tremulously. Lastly, in a startlingly loud voice—a voice charged with entreaty, wrath, and mortal agony—he cries out, with a pause between each several phrase:]
Where is my armour-bearer?—Where is my sword?—Where is my buckler?—I am without arms!—To my aid!—Speed!—Speed!—My curse be upon——-
[He falls back dead upon the chair, with his head bowed upon his breast. At the same moment the candle in the hand of the Being in Grey gives a last flicker and goes out. Instantly the scene becomes wrapped in deep shadow—a shadow which seems to come creeping, down the entrance-ladder, and gradually to envelop the whole. Finally, no light whatever is left upon the stage but a solitary shaft resting upon the head of the corpse. Only a low, vague murmuring can be heard proceeding from the Old Women—a sort of whispering and chuckling.]
The Being in Grey.
Silence ye! A man is dead!
[Again there is silence; save that a cold, passionless voice is heard re-echoing as from a great distance, "Silence ye! A man is dead!" Slowly the gloom deepens, though the crouching, mouselike forms of the Old Women still remain faintly visible in the obscurity.
[Presently they begin to circle around the corpse again—at first without a word or sound of any kind, but gradually with renewed humming of the refrain of the tune. Also, the musicians begin again to play, but With music that is soft and low like dream music; until, in proportion as the gloom deepens, the strains of the musicians and the humming of the Old Women grow louder, the dance recovers its former wildness and abandon, and the revelry becomes, not so much a dance, as a furious swirl and rush around the dead Man—a movement accompanied by stamping of feet, shrill yells, and frequent bursts of weird laughter. In time the darkness becomes complete, except for the shaft of light which is resting upon the head of the corpse; until this also is extinguished, and the scene becomes wrapped in a blackness of obscurity which the eye cannot pierce. From its depths come sounds of the dancers' wild movements, yells, bursts of laughter, and the now strident, discordant strains of the musicians. At length, when the combined din has attained the extreme pitch of pandemonium, the sounds are suddenly wafted away to, apparently, a great distance, and die away. Then again there is silence—absolute, unbroken silence.]