Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (8 page)

Vera.
I dare not ask them what they are plotting about.
Oh, why is Alexis not here?

Pres.
Prince, this is most valuable information. Michael, you were right. If it is not to-night it will be too late. Read that.

Mich.
Ah! A loaf of bread flung to a starving nation.
A lie to cheat the people.
(
Tears it up.
) It must be to-night. I do not believe in him. Would he have kept his crown had he loved the people? But how are we to get at him?

Prince Paul.
The key of the private door in the street. (
Hands key.
)

Pres.
Prince, we are in your debt.

Prince Paul
(
smiling
). The normal condition of the Nihilists.

Mich.
Ay, but we are paying our debts off with interest now. Two Emperors in one week. That will make the balance straight. We would have thrown in a Prime Minister if you had not come.

Prince Paul.
Ah, I am sorry you told me. It robs my visit of all its picturesqueness and adventure. I thought I was perilling my head by coming here, and you tell me I have saved it. One is sure to be disappointed if one tries to get romance out of modern life.

Mich.
It is not so romantic a thing to lose one’s head, Prince Paul.

Prince Paul.
No, but it must often be very dull to keep it. Don’t you find that sometimes? (
Clock strikes six.
)

Vera
(
sinking into a seat
). Oh, it is past the hour! It is past the hour!

Mich.
(
to
President
). Remember to-morrow will be too late.

Pres.
Brothers, it is full time. Which of us is absent?

Consps.
Alexis! Alexis!

Pres.
Michael, read Rule 7.

Mich.
“When any brother shall have disobeyed a summons to be present, the President shall enquire if there is anything alleged against him.”

Pres.
Is there anything against our brother Alexis?

Consps.
He wears a crown! He wears a crown!

Pres.
Michael, read Article 7 of the Code of Revolution.

Mich.
“Between the Nihilists and all men who wear crowns above their fellows, there is war to the death.”

Pres.
Brothers, what say you? Is Alexis, the Czar, guilty or not?

Omnes.
He is guilty!

Pres.
What shall the penalty be?

Omnes.
Death!

Pres.
Let the lots be prepared; it shall be to-night.

Prince Paul.
Ah, this is really interesting! I was getting afraid conspiracies were as dull as courts are.

Prof.
Marfa.
My forte is more in writing pamphlets than in taking shots. Still a regicide has always a place in history.

Mich.
If your pistol is as harmless as your pen, this young tyrant will have a long life.

Prince Paul.
You ought to remember, too, Professor, that if you were seized, as you probably would be, and hung, as you certainly would be, there would be nobody left to read your own articles.

Pres.
Brothers, are you ready?

Vera
(
starting up
). Not yet! Not yet! I have a word to say.

Mich.
(
aside
).
Plague take
her! I knew it would come to this.

Vera.
This boy has been our brother. Night after night he has perilled his own life to come here.
Night after night, when every street was filled with spies, every house with traitors.
Delicately nurtured like a king’s son, he has dwelt among us.

Pres.
Ay! under a false name.
He lied to us at the beginning. He lies to us now at the end.

Vera.
I swear he is true. There is not a man here who does not owe him his life a thousand times. When the bloodhounds were on us that night,
who
saved us
from arrest, torture, flogging, death,
but he ye seek to kill? —

Mich.
To kill all tyrants is our mission!

Vera.
He is no tyrant. I know him well! He loves the people.

Pres.
We know him too; he is a traitor.

Vera.
A traitor! Three days ago he could have betrayed every man of you here,
and the gibbet would have been your doom.
He gave you all your lives once. Give him a little time — a week, a month, a few days; but not now! — O God,
not now!

Consps.
(
brandishing daggers
). To-night! to-night! to-night!

Vera.
Peace, you gorged adders; peace!

Mich.
What, are we not here to annihilate? shall we not keep our oath?

Vera.
Your oath! your oath!
Greedy that you are of gain, every man’s hand lusting for his neighbour’s pelf, every heart set on pillage and rapine;
who, of ye all, if the crown were set on his head, would give an empire up for the mob to scramble for? The people are not yet fit for a Republic in Russia.

Pres.
Every nation is fit for a Republic.

Mich.
The man is a tyrant.

Vera.
A tyrant! Hath he not dismissed his evil counsellors. That ill-omened raven of his father’s life hath had his wings clipped and his claws pared, and comes to us croaking for revenge. Oh, have mercy on him!
Give him a week to live!

Pres.
Vera pleading for a king!

Vera
(
proudly
). I plead not for a king, but for a brother.

Mich.
For a traitor to his oath, for a coward who should have flung the purple back to the fools that gave it to him. No, Vera, no. The brood of men is not dead yet, nor the dull earth grown sick of child-bearing. No crowned man in Russia shall pollute God’s air by living.

Pres.
You bade us try you once; we have tried you, and you are found wanting.

Mich.
Vera, I am not blind; I know your secret. You love this boy, this young prince with his pretty face, his curled hair, his soft white hands. Fool that you are, dupe of a lying tongue, do you know what he would have done to you, this boy you think loved you? He would have made you his mistress, used your body at his pleasure, thrown you away when he was wearied of you; you, the priestess of liberty, the flame of Revolution, the torch of democracy.

Vera.
What he would have done to me matters little. To the people, at least, he will be true. He loves the people — at least, he loves liberty.

Pres.
So he would play the citizen-king, would he, while we starve?
Would flatter us with sweet speeches, would cheat us with promises like his father, would lie to us as his whole
race have
lied.

Mich.
And you whose very name made every despot tremble for his life, you, Vera Sabouroff, you would betray liberty for a lover and the people for a paramour!

Consps.
Traitress! Draw the lots; draw the lots!

Vera.
In thy throat thou liest, Michael! I love him not. He loves me not.

Mich.
You love him not? Shall he not die then?

Vera
(
with an effort, clenching her hands
). Ay, it is right that he should die. He hath broken his oath.
There should be no crowned man in
Europe
. Have I not sworn it? To be strong our new Republic should be drunk with the blood of kings. He hath broken his oath. As the father died so let the son die too.
Yet not to-night, not to-night. Russia, that hath borne her centuries of wrong, can wait a week for liberty. Give him a week.

Pres.
We will have none of you! Begone from us to this boy you love.

Mich.
Though I find him in your arms I shall kill him.

Consps.
To-night! To-night! To-night!

Mich.
(
holding up his hand
). A moment! I have something to say. (
Approaches
Vera
; speaks very slowly.
) Vera Sabouroff, have you forgotten your brother? (
Pauses to see effect;
Vera
starts.
) Have you forgotten that young face, pale with famine; those young limbs twisted with torture; the iron chains they made him walk in? What week of liberty did they give him? What pity did they show him for a day? (
Vera
falls in a chair.
) Oh! you could talk glibly enough then of vengeance, glibly enough of liberty. When you said you would come to
Moscow
, your old father caught you by the knees and begged you not to leave him childless and alone.
I seem to hear his cries still ringing in my ears, but you were as deaf to him as the rocks on the roadside; as chill and cold as the snow on the hill. You left your father that night, and three weeks after he died of a broken heart. You wrote to me to follow you here. I did so; first because I loved you; but you soon cured me of that; whatever gentle feeling, whatever pity, whatever humanity, was in my heart you withered up and destroyed, as the canker worm eats the corn, and the plague kills the child. You bade me cast out love from my breast as a vile thing, you turned my hand to iron, and my heart to stone; you told me to live for freedom and for revenge. I have done so; but you, what have you done?

Vera.
Let the lots be drawn! (
Conspirators
applaud.
)

Prince Paul
(
aside
). Ah, the Grand Duke will come to the throne sooner than he expected. He is sure to make a good king under my guidance. He is so cruel to animals, and never keeps his word.

Mich.
Now you are yourself at last, Vera.

Vera
(
standing motionless in the middle
). The lots, I say, the lots! I am no woman now. My blood seems turned to gall; my heart is as cold as steel is; my hand shall be more deadly. From the desert and the tomb the voice of my prisoned brother cries aloud, and bids me strike one blow for liberty. The lots, I say, the lots!

Pres.
Are you ready. Michael, you have the right to draw first; you are a Regicide.

Vera.
O God, into my hands! Into my hands! (
They draw the lots from a bowl surmounted by a skull.
)

Pres.
Open your lots.

Vera
(
opening her lot
). The lot is mine! see the bloody sign upon it! Dmitri, my brother, you shall have your revenge now.

Pres.
Vera Sabouroff, you are chosen to be a regicide. God has been good to you. The dagger or the poison? (
Offers her dagger and vial.
)

Vera.
I can trust my hand better with the dagger; it never fails. (
Take dagger.
) I shall stab him to the heart, as he has stabbed me. Traitor, to leave us for a ribbon, a gaud, a bauble, to lie to me every day he came here, to forget us in an hour.
Michael was right, he loved me not, nor the people either.
Methinks that if I was a mother and bore a man-child I would poison my breast to him, lest he might grow to a traitor or to a king. (
Prince Paul
whispers to the
President.
)