THE GRAND DUCHESS [indignantly]. Comrade! You!!! Go. [She fires two more
shots. He vanishes.]
STRAMMFEST [making an impulsive movement towards her]. My Imperial
Mistress--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Stop. I have one bullet left, if you attempt to take
this from me [putting the pistol to her temple].
STRAMMFEST [recoiling, and covering his eyes with his hands]. No no: put
it down: put it down. I promise everything: I swear anything; but put it
down, I implore you.
THE GRAND DUCHESS [throwing it on the table]. There!
STRAMMFEST [uncovering his eyes]. Thank God!
THE GRAND DUCHESS [gently]. Strammfest: I am your comrade. Am I nothing
more to you?
STRAMMFEST [falling on his knee]. You are, God help me, all that is left
to me of the only power I recognize on earth [he kisses her hand].
THE GRAND DUCHESS [indulgently]. Idolater! When will you learn that our
strength has never been in ourselves, but in your illusions about us?
[She shakes off her kindliness, and sits down in his chair.] Now tell
me, what are your orders? And do you mean to obey them?
STRAMMFEST [starting like a goaded ox, and blundering fretfully about
the room]. How can I obey six different dictators, and not one gentleman
among the lot of them? One of them orders me to make peace with the
foreign enemy. Another orders me to offer all the neutral countries 48
hours to choose between adopting his views on the single tax and being
instantly invaded and annihilated. A third orders me to go to a damned
Socialist Conference and explain that Beotia will allow no annexations
and no indemnities, and merely wishes to establish the Kingdom of Heaven
on Earth throughout the universe. [He finishes behind Schneidekind's
chair.]
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Damn their trifling!
STRAMMFEST. I thank Your Imperial Highness from the bottom of my heart
for that expression. Europe thanks you.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. M'yes; but--[rising]. Strammfest, you know that your
cause--the cause of the dynasty--is lost.
STRAMMFEST. You must not say so. It is treason, even from you. [He
sinks, discouraged, into the chair, and covers his face with his hand.]
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not deceive yourself, General: never again will a
Panjandrum reign in Beotia. [She walks slowly across the room, brooding
bitterly, and thinking aloud.] We are so decayed, so out of date, so
feeble, so wicked in our own despite, that we have come at last to will
our own destruction.
STRAMMFEST. You are uttering blasphemy.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. All great truths begin as blasphemies. All the king's
horses and all the king's men cannot set up my father's throne again. If
they could, you would have done it, would you not?
STRAMMFEST. God knows I would!
THE GRAND DUCHESS. You really mean that? You would keep the people in
their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons
again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising
sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And
all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror
a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few
orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in
unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell
into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid,
so heartless?
STRAMMFEST. You must be mad to think of royalty in such a way. I never
yawned at court. The dogs yawned; but that was because they were dogs:
they had no imagination, no ideals, no sense of honor and dignity to
sustain them.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. My poor Strammfest: you were not often enough at
court to tire of it. You were mostly soldiering; and when you came home
to have a new order pinned on your breast, your happiness came through
looking at my father and mother and at me, and adoring us. Was that not
so?
STRAMMFEST. Do YOU reproach me with it? I am not ashamed of it.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, it was all very well for you, Strammfest. But
think of me, of me! standing there for you to gape at, and knowing that
I was no goddess, but only a girl like any other girl! It was cruelty to
animals: you could have stuck up a wax doll or a golden calf to worship;
it would not have been bored.
STRAMMFEST. Stop; or I shall renounce my allegiance to you. I have had
women flogged for such seditious chatter as this.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Do not provoke me to send a bullet through your head
for reminding me of it.
STRAMMFEST. You always had low tastes. You are no true daughter of the
Panjandrums: you are a changeling, thrust into the Panjandrina's bed by
some profligate nurse. I have heard stories of your childhood: of how--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Ha, ha! Yes: they took me to the circus when I was a
child. It was my first moment of happiness, my first glimpse of heaven.
I ran away and joined the troupe. They caught me and dragged me back to
my gilded cage; but I had tasted freedom; and they never could make me
forget it.
STRAMMFEST. Freedom! To be the slave of an acrobat! to be exhibited to
the public! to--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, I was trained to that. I had learnt that part of
the business at court.
STRAMMFEST. You had not been taught to strip yourself half naked and
turn head over heels--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Man, I WANTED to get rid of my swaddling clothes and
turn head over heels. I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to. I can do it
still. Shall I do it now?
STRAMMFEST. If you do, I swear I will throw myself from the window so
that I may meet your parents in heaven without having my medals torn
from my breast by them.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, you are incorrigible. You are mad, infatuated.
You will not believe that we royal divinities are mere common flesh and
blood even when we step down from our pedestals and tell you ourselves
what a fool you are. I will argue no more with you: I will use my power.
At a word from me your men will turn against you: already half of them
do not salute you; and you dare not punish them: you have to pretend not
to notice it.
STRAMMFEST. It is not for you to taunt me with that if it is so.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. [haughtily]. Taunt! I condescend to taunt! To taunt a
common General! You forget yourself, sir.
STRAMMFEST [dropping on his knee submissively]. Now at last you speak
like your royal self.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, Strammfest, Strammfest, they have driven your
slavery into your very bones. Why did you not spit in my face?
STRAMMFEST [rising with a shudder]. God forbid!
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Well, since you will be my slave, take your orders
from me. I have not come here to save our wretched family and our
bloodstained crown. I am come to save the Revolution.
STRAMMFEST. Stupid as I am, I have come to think that I had better save
that than save nothing. But what will the Revolution do for the people?
Do not be deceived by the fine speeches of the revolutionary leaders and
the pamphlets of the revolutionary writers. How much liberty is there
where they have gained the upper hand? Are they not hanging, shooting,
imprisoning as much as ever we did? Do they ever tell the people the
truth? No: if the truth does not suit them they spread lies instead, and
make it a crime to tell the truth.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Of course they do. Why should they not?
STRAMMFEST [hardly able to believe his ears]. Why should they not?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Yes: why should they not? We did it. You did it, whip
in hand: you flogged women for teaching children to read.
STRAMMFEST. To read sedition. To read Karl Marx.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Pshaw! How could they learn to read the Bible without
learning to read Karl Marx? Why do you not stand to your guns and
justify what you did, instead of making silly excuses? Do you suppose
I think flogging a woman worse than flogging a man? I, who am a woman
myself!
STRAMMFEST. I am at a loss to understand your Imperial Highness. You
seem to me to contradict yourself.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Nonsense! I say that if the people cannot govern
themselves, they must be governed by somebody. If they will not do their
duty without being half forced and half humbugged, somebody must force
them and humbug them. Some energetic and capable minority must always
be in power. Well, I am on the side of the energetic minority whose
principles I agree with. The Revolution is as cruel as we were; but its
aims are my aims. Therefore I stand for the Revolution.
STRAMMFEST. You do not know what you are saying. This is pure
Bolshevism. Are you, the daughter of a Panjandrum, a Bolshevist?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. I am anything that will make the world less like a
prison and more like a circus.
STRAMMFEST. Ah! You still want to be a circus star.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Yes, and be billed as the Bolshevik Empress. Nothing
shall stop me. You have your orders, General Strammfest: save the
Revolution.
STRAMMFEST. What Revolution? Which Revolution? No two of your rabble of
revolutionists mean the same thing by the Revolution What can save a mob
in which every man is rushing in a different direction?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. I will tell you. The war can save it.
STRAMMFEST. The war?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Yes, the war. Only a great common danger and a great
common duty can unite us and weld these wrangling factions into a solid
commonwealth.
STRAMMFEST. Bravo! War sets everything right: I have always said so. But
what is a united people without a united army? And what can I do? I am
only a soldier. I cannot make speeches: I have won no victories: they
will not rally to my call [again he sinks into his chair with his former
gesture of discouragement].
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Are you sure they will not rally to mine?
STRAMMFEST. Oh, if only you were a man and a soldier!
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Suppose I find you a man and a soldier?
STRAMMFEST [rising in a fury]. Ah! the scoundrel you eloped with! You
think you will shove this fellow into an army command, over my head.
Never.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. You promised everything. You swore anything. [She
marches as if in front of a regiment.] I know that this man alone can
rouse the army to enthusiasm.
STRAMMFEST. Delusion! Folly! He is some circus acrobat; and you are in
love with him.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. I swear I am not in love with him. I swear I will
never marry him.
STRAMMFEST. Then who is he?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Anybody in the world but you would have guessed long
ago. He is under your very eyes.
STRAMMFEST [staring past her right and left]. Where?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Look out of the window.
He rushes to the window, looking for the officer. The Grand Duchess
takes off her cloak and appears in the uniform of the Panderobajensky
Hussars.
STRAMMFEST [peering through the window]. Where is he? I can see no one.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Here, silly.
STRAMMFEST [turning]. You! Great Heavens! The Bolshevik Empress!