Part 2
In the course of subsequent adventures Maleine becomes the attendant of Uglyane, the daughter of the wicked Queen Ann, whom Hjalmar is now to marry. In that capacity she carries to her mistress a false message saying that Hjalmar is not going to keep a tryst, and instead goes herself. Later there is a knocking at a door, and Maleine enters in the white robes of a bride. Queen Ann tells old Hjalmar that he must choose between herself and the returned Princess, and plans to make use of a poison, which the physician determines to make harmless. Then there is another storm, and Maleine is alone in the night with a large black dog quivering in a corner of the room. Old Hjalmar and Queen Ann come to her door, and pretending to do her hair, the Queen twists a rope round Maleine’s neck and strangles her. The madman, who at Maleine’s previous appearance, pointing at her, had made the sign of the cross, thrusts his head in at the window but is hurled back into the moat by the king. The murderess puts the corpse to bed. In the fifth and last act the same storm is raging. The castle is struck by lightning and a mass falls into the moat. Within all are asking for the king and Queen Ann. When they enter there are bloodstains in the king’s white hair. Maleine’s dead body is discovered, and the king drags in Ann, proclaiming her guilt and his own. Hjalmar stabs the murderess and then kills himself.
In “Les Sept Princesses” there is a vast hall of marble with seven white marble steps covered by seven pale silken cushions on which the seven princesses are sleeping. The sun is setting, and in its fading light may be seen a black marshy country and oak and pine forests. Along the canal between dark willows, a great warship advances. On the terrace the old king and queen and a messenger watch the approaching vessel. The king’s vision fails him and it is the queen who describes the full spread of sail touching the willows, and the oars like a thousand legs. From the ship, when the anchor drops, the prince descends. He is shown the seven sleepers, who are not to be awakened, as the doctor has forbidden it. “How white they are, all seven! Oh, how beautiful they are, all seven! How pale, how strange they are, all seven! But why are they asleep, all seven?” says the prince. He indicates his preference for one of the seven. “That,” says the queen, “is Ursula, who has waited seven years for her lover.” The others are Genevieve, Helen, Cristabel, Madeleine, Claire, and Claribella. Why was Marcellus so long in coming? Night and day they have been watching along the canal. The sailors turn the ship to a monotonous song with the burden, “We shall return no more, we shall return no more.” The sisters still sleep. The queen is frightened at the plight of her granddaughters and sobs against the window, the watchers seek to enter, but neither door nor window can be opened. The king and Marcellus make their way in through a subterranean passage. All the sleepers but Ursula awake. “She is not asleep,” says the queen. “Pour water on her.... Open the door.... It is too late.... Shut! shut!” All cry, shaking the door, and knocking at the window: “Open, open!” A black curtain falls.
“Nobody,” says Mr. Thomas, “who has read ‘Les Aveugles’ and ‘L’Intruse’ could doubt the authorship of ‘Les Sept Princesses.’ Here are the same agitated, helpless people speaking in abrupt, simple, and oft-repeated phrases. Here again, something is going on which they do not understand, and are impotent to arrest or change. But the matter of both earlier plays was a not improbable incident which was developed, it may be extravagantly, but in a manner that touched human beings. If ‘Les Aveugles’ was extraordinary, while ‘L’Intruse’ was not extraordinary in any way, both were easy to understand. But ‘Les Sept Princesses’ is a picture drawn for its own sake. It has its logic, but the elements in it seem chosen, like those of ‘La Princesse Maleine,’ because they are attractive in themselves—the marble hall and stairs, the terrace, the dark land of marshes and forests, the canal and the warship, the seven princesses in white sleeping on the stairs, the swans, the prince arriving to claim one of them and finding her at last dead, the old king and queen shut outside the hall and knocking vainly at the windows; only, these elements are combined without any of the unwieldiness of ‘La Princesse Maleine,’ without interfering with themselves or with anything else. It is simply a picture in Maeterlinck’s manner, and this manner has the effect of creating a feeling of helplessness and smallness in the presence of fate and the earth.”
It was not until a later period that Maeterlinck came under the influence of the American Emerson. “A Belgian Emerson,” Mr. James Huneker has said, “but an Emerson who had in him much of Edgar Allan Poe.” Surely it was not through Emerson that Maeterlinck found the author of “The Raven.” Nor is it certain that there was any direct inspiration at all. More likely it is that the same visions burned early in the brain of the Flemish mystic that had seethed in the mind of the gifted, erratic American half a century before. There was no need for him to know “The House of Usher” of the Poe tale. Was there not a House of Usher perched on every Flemish hill, at the bottom of every Flemish valley? Was not the man a forerunner of Maeterlinck who wrote this?
“Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the heaven and of the earth, and of the mighty sea—and of the genius that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore, too, in the sayings that were said by the Sybils, and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves which trembled round Dodona, but as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all.”
Or this?
“And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror and stand trembling and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.”
The landscape of most of those early Maeterlinck plays is the landscape of “Ulalume”:
The skies they were ashen and sober, The leaves they were crisped and sear, It was night in the lonesome October In my most immemorial year. It was hard by the dim lake of Auber In the misty mid-region of Weir, It was down by the dark tarn of Auber In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
But it was a more material setting that Maeterlinck gave to “The Miracle of St. Anthony.” Not the intangible Nowhere or the impalpable At any Time, but the present day, a commonplace house, and a small provincial town in the Low Countries. Instead of stately marble pillars, or primeval forest, or limitless sea, a room with leather-covered benches against the walls, two wooden stoves and an umbrella stand, on which are hats, a cape and wraps. Instead of swans and sleeping beauties, the old drudge Virginie, with her skirts turned up and her legs bare, swabbing the floor. In the next room is lying the body of the Maiden Lady Hortensia, who in her lifetime had been exceedingly generous in her donations to the church, and especially devoted to the memory of the blessed St. Anthony of Padua. It is the Saint himself, come to restore her to life as a reward for her piety, who presents himself at the door-sill as the curtain rises. In appearance he is not as the dead woman might have expected. Bare-headed and bare-footed, his beard and hair are scrubby and tangled, and he is clothed in a soiled, sack-like, and much dirtied cowl. The story of how he was received by the relatives, the doctor, the parson, and the gathered guests may be read by those who turn to the following pages. It was first presented to American play-goers by the Washington Square Players under the direction of Mr. Edward Goodman at the Bandbox Theatre in New York, the evening of May 7th, 1915. It had the quality of novelty, for it was one of the least known of all the plays. There was a story current at the time that it was produced from the manuscript. What Maeterlinck himself thinks of it, what place in his mind it has in his whole scheme of literary production, the writer cannot say. That is a matter as elusive as the man himself is elusive. To illustrate that elusiveness by a personal reminiscence:
It was six years ago, in the days when the world was happy with the blessedness of a peace that seemed likely to endure, and when the occasional cloud on the political horizon was regarded as nothing more than a mirage, that the writer and a friend—the latter one of the firm of M. Maeterlinck’s American publishers—made a journey to the south of France for the purpose of paying their respects to the Belgian mystic in his Nice home. In London we had been advised by Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, whose admirable translations have done so much to make Maeterlinck’s name a household name to English-speaking readers. “Here is his latest letter,” said Mr. Teixeira. “It is dated from his villa in the Quartier des Beaumettes, which is the rising ground at the western end of the town. You will find him there; that is, if you succeed in finding him at all. For he is a very difficult man to find. That is one of his peculiarities.”
It was the night before the departure from Nice. Our time was limited. At its môle in the swarming harbor of Marseilles, the Sant Anna, which was to carry us on its roundabout, five thousand mile journey, with New York as the ultimate destination, was preparing for its leaving of the next day. We started on the quest. At the hotel they could tell us nothing. The driver of the fiacre engaged was no better informed. Surprised but undaunted we were soon winding slowly between high stone walls, up the beautiful Beaumettes slope. From villa to villa we travelled, to be met everywhere by puzzled, negative headshakes. “M. Maeterlinck? We do not know him. We have never heard of him. We do not think that he is of the Quartier. Perhaps if you enquire at the villa beyond you will learn something.” For two hours in the darkness sweet scented by the breath of the semi-tropical plants and flowers, we kept up the search. But it was in vain. Here indeed was a prophet unknown in his own country. What was the reason for the mystery? Was there a vast conspiracy of silence and pretended ignorance on the part of his neighbors? Were solitude and freedom from interruption so necessary to his being that the great man had sworn them to secrecy? Or had he draped himself in some mysterious veil, some figurative coat of invisible green, through which the eyes of those who dwelt in the Quartier des Beaumettes had never been able to see? We never found out. There was about the enigma something weird, something almost uncanny. We had been told to seek him in a mansion by the sea. We could hear the waves of the Mediterranean beating against the rocks below. But was it another ocean—an ocean of the Never, Never Land that had been meant?
It was many and many a year ago In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden lived, whom you all may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.
Is there a real Maeterlinck house? we asked ourselves. Or is his habitation of such dream stuff as the House of Usher? Is the land of Maeterlinck a material land, or is it somewhere “hard by the dim lake of Auber, in the misty mid-region of Weir: down by the dark tarn of Auber, in the Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir?”
THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY
THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY
_The entrance-hall of a large old-fashioned house. Front-door on the left. At the back, a few steps with on the left a glass door with lace curtains, leading to the dining-room, and on the right a fair of folding glass doors, also with lace curtains, leading to the drawing-room. Against the wall, a leather-covered bench, one or two wooden stools and an umbrella-stand with hats and coats on it._
_The curtain rises on VIRGINIE, the old servant. Her skirts are pinned up, showing her bare legs and sabots; she is surrounded with brass pails, swabbing-cloths, brooms and scrubbing-brushes and is busily washing the flagstones composing the floor. She stops working from time to time, blows her nose noisily and wipes away a big tear._
_There is a ring at the front-door. VIRGINIE half opens it, revealing on the threshold a long lean old man, barefoot, bareheaded, with tangled hair and beard, and clad in a sort of frieze habit of faded brown, muddy, out of shape and patched._
VIRGINIE
(_Holding the door ajar._) This is the thirty-sixth time that I’ve been to the door.... Another beggar! Well, what is it?
SAINT ANTHONY
Let me in.
VIRGINIE
No, you’re all over mud. Stay there. What do you want?
SAINT ANTHONY
I want to come in.
VIRGINIE
What for?
SAINT ANTHONY
To bring Mademoiselle Hortense back to life.
VIRGINIE
Bring Mademoiselle Hortense back to life? Get out! Who are you?
SAINT ANTHONY
Saint Anthony.
VIRGINIE
Of Padua?
SAINT ANTHONY
The same. (_His halo lights up and shines._)
VIRGINIE
Lord bless me, it’s true! (_She opens the door wide, falls on her knees and mutters a prayer, with her hands folded over the handle of her broom, after which she kisses the hem of the SAINT’S habit and continues, in a mechanical and bewildered sing-song._) Saint Anthony, pray for us! Blessed Saint Anthony, look down upon us! Saint Anthony, pray for us!
SAINT ANTHONY
Shut the door.
VIRGINIE
(_Gets up crossly._) Wipe your feet on the mat. (_SAINT ANTHONY wipes them awkwardly._) No, that won’t do: rub them hard, rub them hard. (_She closes the front door._)
SAINT ANTHONY
(_Pointing to the folding-doors._) She is laid out in there.
VIRGINIE
(_In an astonished voice of delight._) Yes, but how did you know? It’s wonderful! She’s there, in the drawing-room.... The poor dear lady! She was only seventy-seven. That’s no age at all, is it?... She was a very pious and deserving lady, you know. She suffered a great deal.... And she was very rich. They say she’s left two million francs. That’s a lot of money.
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
It all goes to her two nephews, Monsieur Gustave and Monsieur Achille. And she’s left legacies to the Rector, to the church, to the beadle, to the sacristan, to the poor, to the Curate, to fourteen Jesuits and to all the servants, according to the length of time that they were with her. I get most. I’ve been in her service for thirty-three years, so I shall have three thousand three hundred francs. That’s a good sum.
SAINT ANTHONY
It is.
VIRGINIE
She owed me nothing; she always paid me my wages regularly. You can say what you like, you won’t find many mistresses who would do as much, after they were dead and gone. She was one of the best of women. And we’re burying her to-day.... Everybody has sent flowers. You ought to see the drawing-room. It’s a glorious sight. There are flowers on the bed, on the table, on the chairs, on the piano. And nothing but white flowers: it’s perfectly beautiful. We simply don’t know where to put the wreaths. (_A ring at the door. She opens it and returns with two wreaths._) Here are two more. (_Examines the wreaths and weighs them in her hands._) Aren’t these lovely? Just hold them a minute till I finish my work. (_She gives the wreaths to SAINT ANTHONY, who takes one in each hand obligingly._) They’re taking her to the cemetery this afternoon. Everything has to be nice and clean; and I’ve only time to....
SAINT ANTHONY
Take me to the corpse.
VIRGINIE
Take you to the corpse? Now?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
No, it can’t be done. You must wait a bit; they are still at lunch.
SAINT ANTHONY
God bids me hurry; there is no time to lose.
VIRGINIE
What do you want with her?
SAINT ANTHONY
I’ve told you: I want to bring her back to life.
VIRGINIE
You want to bring her back to life? Seriously, do you want to raise her from the dead?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
But she’s been dead three days.
SAINT ANTHONY
That’s why I wish to raise her from the dead.
VIRGINIE
For her to live again as before?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
But then there won’t be any heirs?
SAINT ANTHONY
Of course not.
VIRGINIE
But what will Monsieur Gustave say?
SAINT ANTHONY
I don’t know.
VIRGINIE
And will she take back the three thousand three hundred francs which she gave me because she was dead?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes, of course.
VIRGINIE
That’s a nuisance.
SAINT ANTHONY
Have you no other money, no savings?
VIRGINIE
Not a farthing. I have an invalid sister who takes every penny I earn.
SAINT ANTHONY
Well, if you are afraid of losing your three thousand francs....
VIRGINIE
Three thousand three hundred francs....
SAINT ANTHONY
If you’re afraid of losing the money, then I won’t raise her from the dead.
VIRGINIE
Couldn’t I keep the money and you bring her back to life just the same?
SAINT ANTHONY
No, you must take it or leave it. I came down in answer to your prayers: it’s for you to choose.
VIRGINIE
(_After a moment’s reflection._) Well, then, bring her back to life all the same. (_The SAINT’S halo lights up and shines._) What’s the matter with you now?
SAINT ANTHONY
You have pleased me.
VIRGINIE
And then does that lantern thing light up?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes, of itself.
VIRGINIE
That’s funny.... But don’t stand so near the lace curtains, or you’ll set them on fire.
SAINT ANTHONY
There’s no danger: it’s celestial flame.... Take me to the body.
VIRGINIE
I’ve told you: you must wait. I can’t disturb them now. They’re still at lunch.
SAINT ANTHONY
Who?
VIRGINIE
Why, my masters, of course! The whole family! First her two nephews, Monsieur Gustave and Monsieur Achille, with their wives and children, Monsieur Georges, Monsieur Alberic, Monsieur Alphonse and Monsieur Désiré.... And cousins, male and female, and the Rector and the Doctor and I don’t know who besides: friends and relatives from a distance, whom I’d never seen. They’re very rich people.
SAINT ANTHONY
Really?
VIRGINIE
Did you notice the street?
SAINT ANTHONY
What street?
VIRGINIE
Why, ours, of course! The one in which our house stands.
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
It’s a handsome street. Well, all the houses on the left-hand side of the street, except the little one at the end, the baker’s shop, belong to Mademoiselle Hortense. Those on the right-hand side are Monsieur Gustave’s. There are twenty houses. That means money.
SAINT ANTHONY
No doubt.
VIRGINIE
(_Pointing to the halo._) Look, your lantern thing is going out.
SAINT ANTHONY
(_Feeling his halo._) Yes, I’m afraid....
VIRGINIE
Doesn’t it keep burning very long?
SAINT ANTHONY
It all depends upon the thoughts that feed it.
VIRGINIE
Yes, they own woods ... and farms ... and houses galore! Monsieur Gustave has a starch-factory: Gustave’s Starch, you’ve heard of it, I expect! Oh, they’re an amazingly well-off family. There are four of them who live on their incomes and do no business at all. That’s splendid, that is!... And such friends and acquaintances and tenants!... Well, they’ve all come to the funeral, some of them from ever so far. There’s one, I’m told, who travelled two days and two nights to get here in time. I’ll show him to you: he has a lovely beard.... They’re lunching here. They haven’t finished yet. We can’t disturb them. It’s a great lunch: there are twenty-four of them sitting down to it. And I’ve seen the bill of fare: there’s oysters, two soups, three entrées, crayfish in jelly, and trout _à la Schubert_. Do you know what that is?
SAINT ANTHONY
No.
VIRGINIE
No more do I. They say it’s very good; but it’s not for you and me. There’s no champagne, because of the mourning; but there’s every other kind of wine. Mademoiselle Hortense had the best cellar in the town. I’ll try and get you a good big glass, if they leave any; then you’ll see the sort of thing.... Wait, I’ll go and look what they’re doing. (_She goes up the steps, draws back the curtains and peeps through the glass door on the left._) I think they’re beginning the trout, the trout _à la Schubert_. Oh, there’s Joseph moving the pine-apple. They’ve a good two hours before them. You’d better take a seat. (_SAINT ANTHONY goes to the leather-covered bench and is about to sit down._) No, no, not there, you’re much too dirty! Sit on the stool. I must get on with my work. (_SAINT ANTHONY sits down on a stool; VIRGINIE resumes her work and takes up a pail of water._) Look out! Lift up your feet; I’m going to splash the water.... No, don’t stay there; you’re in my way; and it’s not cleaned yet.... Go over there in the corner; push the stool against the wall. (_SAINT ANTHONY obediently does as she tells him._) There, now you won’t get your feet wet. Aren’t you hungry?
SAINT ANTHONY
No, thank you, but I’m rather in a hurry; so go and tell your masters.
VIRGINIE
You’re in a hurry? What have you got to do?
SAINT ANTHONY
Two or three miracles.
VIRGINIE
I can’t tell them anything while they’re at lunch. We must wait till they’ve had their coffee. Monsieur Gustave might be very angry.... I don’t know what sort of reception he’ll give you; he doesn’t like having poor people in the house. You don’t look over-prosperous.
SAINT ANTHONY
No, saints are never prosperous.
VIRGINIE
They have money given them, though.
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes, but not everything that’s given to the saints reaches heaven.
VIRGINIE
You don’t mean it? Then do the priests take what we give? I’ve heard it said; but I wouldn’t believe.... There now, I’ve got no water left!... I say!
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes?
VIRGINIE
Do you see a brass tap on your right?
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes.
VIRGINIE
There’s an empty pail beside it. Would you mind filling it for me?
SAINT ANTHONY
With pleasure.
VIRGINIE
You see, I’ll never get all this cleaning done if some one doesn’t help me. And there’s nobody to help me: they’re all losing their heads.... It’s a terrible job, a death in the house! You know that as well as I do. A good thing it doesn’t happen every day.... Monsieur Gustave will make a fuss if everything isn’t clean and shining when his guests come through here.... He’s not easy to please.... And I still have all the brass to do.... There, turn the tap; that’s right.... Bring me the pail.... Aren’t your feet cold? Tuck up your gown or it’ll get wet.... Mind the wreaths; put them on the stool.... That’s right, that’s capital. (_SAINT ANTHONY brings her the pail_.) Thanks, you’re very kind.... I want one more. (_A sound of voices and of chairs being pushed back._) Listen! What’s that? I’ll go and see. (_She goes to the glass door._) Hallo, the master has got up! What can it be? Have they quarrelled?... No, the others are eating.... Joseph is filling up the Rector’s glass.... They are finishing the trout.... The master is coming to the door.... Why, I might speak to him as he comes out and tell him that you....
SAINT ANTHONY
Yes, do, please; tell him at once.
VIRGINIE
Very well. Put down the pail; I don’t want it. Here, take this broom. Not like that! You’d better sit down again. (_SAINT ANTHONY obeys and sits on the two wreaths lying on the stool._) Hi, what are you doing? You’re sitting on the wreaths!
SAINT ANTHONY
I beg your pardon. I’m a little short-sighted.
VIRGINIE