The King-maker

Brighton. October 1891.

In a comfortably furnished sitting-room, with windows looking upon the sea-parade, a Woman of distinguished beauty sits reading beside the fire, so intently occupied that she pays no heed to the entry of the Servant, who unobtrusively lights the gas, draws down the blinds, and closes the curtains. Then taking up a tea-tray, served for two, she retires, and the reader is left alone. But not for long. The slam of the street-door causes an attention which the coming and going of the Servant has failed to arouse; and now, as the door opens, the brightened interest of her face tells that, without seeing, she knows who is there. Quietly, almost furtively, she lets fall the paper she has been reading, and turns to her husband eyes of serene welcome, meeting confidently the sharp interrogation of his glance.

PARNELL. What are you doing?

KATHARINE. I was reading.

PARNELL. Yes? What?

KATHARINE. Those papers you just brought in.

PARNELL. And I told you not to.

KATHARINE (smiling). I was wilful and disobeyed.

PARNELL (picking up the paper, and looking at it with contemptuous disgust). Why did you?

KATHARINE. Isn’t “wilful” a sufficient answer, my dear?

(And with a covert look of amusement she watches him tear and throw the paper into the fire.)

Why do you try to make me a coward? You aren’t one yourself.

PARNELL. That gutter-stuff! (And the second paper joins its fellow in the flames.)

KATHARINE. Now wasn’t that just a bit unnecessary? After all, they are helping to make history. That is public opinion—the voice of the people, you know.

PARNELL. Not our people!

KATHARINE. Oh? Have you brought back any better news—from there?

PARNELL. Nothing special. The result of the election was out.

KATHARINE. You didn’t wire it. How much were we to the bad?

PARNELL. A few hundred. What does more or less matter? It’s—it’s the priests who are winning now.

KATHARINE. With divided congregations as the result.

PARNELL. Yes. But I’d rather they won than the politicians. They are honest, at any rate. Poor fools!

KATHARINE. So it’s the real country we are seeing now?

PARNELL. Yes. That’s the material I’ve had to work with!

KATHARINE. Wonderful—considering.

PARNELL. And now—now one gets to the root! But I always knew it.

KATHARINE. So you are not disappointed?

PARNELL. No; only defeated. Yet I did think once that I was going to win.

KATHARINE. So you will.

PARNELL. When I’m dead, no doubt ... some day. You can’t fight for a winning cause, and not know that.

KATHARINE. But you are not going to die yet, dearest.

PARNELL (with a deep sigh of dejection). Oh! Wifie, I’m so tired, so tired!

KATHARINE. Well, who has a better right? Be tired, my dear! Give yourself up to it: let everything else go, and just rest! You are tired out. That’s what I’ve been telling you.

PARNELL. Too much to do yet. Even dying would take more time than I can spare just now.

KATHARINE. But you must spare time to live, my dear—if you really wish to.

PARNELL. Wish? I never wished it more—for now I am living. I’m awake. Doubts are over.

KATHARINE. King ... look at me! Don’t take your eyes away, till I’ve done.... One of those papers said (what others have been saying) that it was I ... I ... need I go on?

PARNELL (with grim tenderness). Till you’ve done: you said....

KATHARINE. I—that have ruined you.

PARNELL. That’s just what they would say, of course. It’s so easy: and pleases—so many.

KATHARINE. All the same—by mere accident—mayn’t it be true? It has happened, you know, sometimes, that love and politics haven’t quite gone together.

PARNELL. Love and politics never do. Do you think I’ve loved any of my party-followers: that any of them have loved me?

KATHARINE. Doesn’t—O’Kelly?

PARNELL. He’s gone now—with the rest.

KATHARINE. Didn’t Mr. Biggar?

PARNELL. Dead.... No.

KATHARINE. Still, you love—Ireland.

PARNELL. Not as she is to-day—so narrow and jealous, so stupid, so blind! Has she anything alive in her now worth saving? That Ireland has got to die; and, though it doesn’t sound like it, this is the death-rattle beginning. Ireland is going to fail, and deserves to fail. But another Ireland won’t fail. She’s learning her lesson—or will learn it, in the grave. Something like this was bound to come; but if it were to come again twenty years on, it wouldn’t count. She’d know better.

KATHARINE. Twenty years! We shall be an old couple by then.

PARNELL. In the life of a nation twenty years is nothing. No. Ireland was shaped for failure: she has it in her. It had got to come out. Subjection, oppression, starvation, haven’t taught her enough: she must face betrayal too, of the most mischievous kind—the betrayal of well-meaning fools. After that, paralysis, loss of confidence, loss of will, loss of faith—in false leaders. Then she’ll begin to learn.

KATHARINE. Do you mean that everything has failed now?

PARNELL. Yes; if I fail. I’m not thinking of myself as indispensable: it’s the principle. That’s what I’ve been trying to make them understand. But they won’t, they won’t! Independence, defiance—they don’t see it as a principle, only as an expedient. They may make it a cry, they may feel it as their right; but when to insist on it looks like losing a point in the game—then they give up the principle, to become parasites! That’s what is happening now. It’s the slave in the blood coming out—the crisis of the disease. That’s why I’m fighting it: and will, to the death! And when—when we are dead—some day: she’ll come to her senses again—and see! Then—this will have helped.

KATHARINE. But will it?

PARNELL. Why? Don’t you believe that Ireland will be free some day?

KATHARINE. I did when she chose you for her leader.

PARNELL (bitterly). A dead leader, one whom she can’t hurt, may do better for her.

KATHARINE. Don’t say “dead”!

PARNELL. I shan’t be alive in twenty years, my dear. And it may take all that.

KATHARINE. Without you it will take more.

PARNELL. It won’t be “without me.” That’s what I mean. They may beat me to-day; but I shall still count. Think of all Ireland’s failures! Grattan’s Parliament counts; “Ninety-eight” counts; Fitzgerald counts; O’Connell counts; her famines, her emigrations, her rebellions—all count.

KATHARINE. Does Butt count?

PARNELL. He wasn’t a failure: he didn’t try to do anything. If Ireland needs more failures, to make a case for her conviction, shall I grudge mine? Yes, all her failures count: they get into the blood! Why, even the silly statues in her streets mean more than statues can mean here. Prosperity forgets; adversity remembers. Even hatred has its use: it grips, and drives men on.

KATHARINE. Did you need—hatred, to do that for you?

PARNELL. Yes: till I got love!... Reason, conviction aren’t enough. Morley said a good thing the other day. The English, he said, meant well by Ireland: but they didn’t mean it much.

KATHARINE. I suppose that’s true of some?

PARNELL. Quite true: and what is the most that it amounts to? Compromise. Morley’s an authority on compromise. And yet I like him: I get on with him. But he’s too thick with Gladstone to be honest over this. Curious his having to back the conventions, eh?

KATHARINE. Why does he?

PARNELL. Because the political salvation of his party and its leader comes before Ireland. He means well by her: but he doesn’t mean it so much as all that. Still he’s the only one of them who doesn’t pretend to look on me as a black sheep. He too has to work with his material. That’s politics. The Nonconformist conscience means votes—so it decides him: just as the priests decide me.... They would decide him in any case, I mean. And so—so it goes on.... “Look here upon this picture, and on this”: Ireland trying to please England; England trying, now and then, to please Ireland! I don’t know which is the more ludicrous; but I know that both equally must fail. And they’ve got to see it!—and some day they will. It won’t be “Home Rule” then....

(So for a while he sits and thinks, his hand in hers. Then he resumes.)

My ruin? What would my ruin matter anyway? Put it, that the making public of our claim—our right to each other—is to be allowed by any possibility to affect the cause of a nation—the justice of that cause: doesn’t that fact, if true, show that the whole basis of the political principles they have so boasted, and on which we have so blindly relied, was utterly and fantastically false and rotten? Haven’t we, providentially, given the world the proof that it needed of its own lie?

KATHARINE. We didn’t give it, my dear.

PARNELL. Well, their proof has satisfied them, anyhow: as they are acting on it. Oh! When I see what poor, weak things nations really are—so inadequately equipped for the shaping of their own destinies—I wonder whether in truth the history we read is not the wrong history—mere side history, to which a false significance has been given, because so much blood and treasure have been expended on it, which just a little expenditure of common sense might have spared.... Think of all the silly accidents and blunders, in Ireland’s great chapter of accidents, which have counted for so much—even in these last few years!... The Phœnix Park business—an assassination, for which perhaps only a dozen men were responsible—and at once, for that one act, more suppression and hatred and coercion are directed against a whole nation: Crimes Acts, packed juries, judges without juries, arrests without charge, imprisonments without trial. So logical, isn’t it? What a means for putting a foreign Government right in the eyes of the people who deny its moral authority!... And then—Pigott, that shallow fraud, driven to suicide by those who were at first so eager to believe him: and the exposure of his silly forgery turns elections, makes Home Rule popular! Coming by such means, would it be worth it?... Gladstone, honourably hoodwinking himself all those years, accepting you as our secret go-between—and you making no pretence, my dear! Oh, I suppose it was the right and gentlemanly thing for him to pretend not to know. It was also, it seems, good politics. Chamberlain knew too—must have known; for Chamberlain’s no fool; and yet to his friend, the deceived husband, said nothing! It wasn’t politics; not then. Now—now it’s the great stroke, and Home Rule goes down under it.... Is that history, or is it “Alice in Wonderland”?... If you are my ruin now, you were also my ruin then, when you were helping me to think that I could win justice for a nation from politicians like these: win it by any means except by beating them, bringing them to their knees, making them red with the blood of a people always in revolt, till their reputation stinks to the whole world! And when they do at last climb down and accept the inevitable, then their main thought will be only how to save their own face—and make it look a little less like the defeat they know it to be!

KATHARINE. My dear, you are so tired. Do rest!

PARNELL. I am resting: for now—thanks to you—I have got at the truth! Political history is a thing made up of accidents; but not so the fate of men or of nations whose will is set to be free. No accident there! That you were tied to a man you wouldn’t live with, who wouldn’t live with you—was an accident. But our love was no accident; it was waiting for us before we knew anything. You and I had each a star which shone at the other’s birth.

KATHARINE. Your star was mine, dearest. I hadn’t one of my own.

PARNELL. Well, if nations wish to be fooled, let them go to the devil their own way, not laying the blame of their own folly on others! But having got you—would I ever have let you go for any power under Heaven? Why (as soon as you were free) did I marry you? I knew that, politically, it was a blunder: that over there it would go against us—prove the case. Half Ireland cared nothing for the verdict of an English jury. But when we married, they had to believe it then.... Well, I wanted them to believe it. I know my love would have waited, had I asked her. And it wasn’t—it wasn’t honour, my dear; it was much more pride: for I am a proud man, that I own: and not less since I have won you.

KATHARINE. If you hadn’t been proud, dearest, you would never have got my love.

PARNELL. Oh, yes, I should. Those who love, don’t love for qualities good or bad. They love them in the person they love—that’s all. You have qualities which I didn’t care about till I found them in you. To love is to see life—new!

KATHARINE. And whole. Some day—alone by ourselves—we will!

PARNELL. Don’t we already?

KATHARINE. Yes, if only—these other things didn’t interfere. But I promised; so they must.

PARNELL. My dear, when they have quite broken me—they will in time—then I’ll come.

KATHARINE. You promise to go right away?

PARNELL. I promise, sweetheart.

(Moving toward each other they are about to embrace, when the door opens, and the Servant enters carrying a card upon a tray.)

SERVANT. If you please, sir.

(Parnell takes the card; there is a pause while he looks at the name.)

PARNELL. Will you say I am engaged.

(The Servant goes. Parnell hands the card to his wife.)

I don’t know the man. Do you?

KATHARINE. No. And yet I seem to remember. Yes; Willie had a man-servant of that name.

(The Servant returns, bearing a folded note upon her tray.)

SERVANT. If you please, sir, I was to give you this.

PARNELL (having read the note). Is the man still there?

SERVANT. Yes, sir.

(There is a pause.)

PARNELL. Show him in.

(As the Servant goes he hands the note to Katharine, and watches while she reads it.)

So—you remember him?

KATHARINE. Only the name.... I may have seen him, now and then.

(And then enters a smooth-shaven man, sprucely dressed, with the irreproachable manners of a well-trained servant. First, with a murmured apology, he bows to the lady; then, having respectfully waited till the silence becomes marked, says:)

MAN. Good evening, sir.

PARNELL (glancing again at the note). You are a valet?

MAN. Yes, sir.

PARNELL. Are you wanting a place?

MAN. No, sir. I have a place.

PARNELL. Well?

MAN. That gentleman, sir—my last employer, dismissed me without a character.

(His reference is to the note which Parnell still holds open in his hand.)

PARNELL. Well?

MAN. That’s all, sir.

PARNELL. Then what have you come here for?

MAN. To give you this, sir.

(He draws out and presents a letter, rather soiled by keeping, which has already been opened. There is a pause, while Parnell looks first at the address, then runs his eye over the contents.)

PARNELL. May I show it to—this lady?

MAN. Oh, yes, sir.

PARNELL. Whom, I take it, you recognise?

MAN. Yes, sir. (And meeting her glance, he bows once more.)

(Parnell hands over the letter, and while Katharine reads there is a pause.)

PARNELL. Did you bring me this expecting money for it?

MAN. No, sir.

PARNELL. I see it has a date. You could have let me have it before?

MAN. Yes, sir.

PARNELL. More than—six months ago?

MAN. More than a year ago, sir.

PARNELL. Quite so. And you did not?

MAN (eyeing him steadfastly). No, sir. I was still comfortable in his service then, sir.

PARNELL (ironically, after a pause of scrutiny eye to eye). I am singularly obliged to you.... How did you come by it, may I ask?

MAN. Well, sir, he’d been dining out, sir. Left it in his pocket—hadn’t posted it.

PARNELL. I see.... Had your dismissal anything to do with this?

MAN. Oh, no, sir. That only happened quite recently.

PARNELL. And then—he dismissed you without a character, you say? Do you think you deserved one?

MAN. From him, sir?—yes, sir.

PARNELL (coldly amused). That is a good answer. Have you been put to any expense coming here?

MAN. Just my return fare, sir.

PARNELL. And were you expecting me to——?

MAN. No, sir; I could have sent it in the post, if I’d wished.

PARNELL (surprised). Do you mean, then, that I may keep this letter?

MAN. Yes, sir.

PARNELL. I may do what I like with it?

MAN. Just what you like, sir.

PARNELL. Thank you.

(After a pause of meditation he very deliberately tears up the letter and puts in into the fire. Then, with rather icy politeness:)

I am much obliged to you; and I wish you a good evening.

(A little crestfallen, but with quiet self-possession, the man accepts the termination of the interview.)

MAN. Good evening, sir. (He moves to the door.)

PARNELL. Stop!

(The man turns as the other goes towards him, and they meet face to face.)

You haven’t given yourself a very good character, coming here, my man; but you might have done worse. Anyway, you’ve washed your hands of it now. Don’t do things like that again.

MAN. No, sir.

(And as he stands hesitating, Parnell opens the door.)

Thank you, sir.

(The man goes. Parnell closes the door after him, comes meditatively across, and sits down. There is a long pause.)

KATHARINE. What are you—thinking?

PARNELL. A year ago!... If he had come to me with that a year ago—what should I have done?

KATHARINE. You would have done just the same.

PARNELL. Torn it up? And put it in the fire?—I’m not so sure.

KATHARINE. But I am. Hadn’t he the same right as I had, to live his own life?

PARNELL. My dear, I said “a year ago.” That means before the case came on. That would have stopped it—for good.... If I had had it—I might have been tempted.

(Watching him, she sees him smile.)

KATHARINE (rather tremulously). Are you glad—that you didn’t have it?

PARNELL. And use it? Yes: I am—glad!

KATHARINE (throwing herself into his arms). Oh, my dear! Why, that means everything. You’re glad! You’re glad!

PARNELL (clasping her). Oh, my own love, my own dear sweet!

KATHARINE. You regret—nothing?

PARNELL. Nothing. Haven’t I made you sure of that—yet?

KATHARINE. Oh, my King!—my King!

(And just then the paper in the grate kindling into flame, he points to it.)

PARNELL. Look! there goes—our proof.

KATHARINE. It doesn’t matter.

PARNELL. It never did.

KATHARINE. That’s what I mean.

PARNELL. But, politically, it might have made a world of difference.

KATHARINE. Yes—to the world; not to us. We wanted to be as we are, didn’t we?

PARNELL. As we are, and as we were—how long is it?—eleven years ago. There’s been no change since. When I go back to my star, I shall have found what I came for. That’s what matters most. Souls either find or lose themselves—live or die. I lived: I shouldn’t have done, on this earth, but for you—but for you.

(There is a pause. He sits meditating.)

KATHARINE. And of what—now?

PARNELL. The next generation—possibly the next but one: you and I gone, and Ireland free. In this last year we may have done more for that—than we could ever have planned. We’ve given them a bone to bite on: and there’s meat on it—real meat. And because of that, they call you my ruin, eh? I look rather like one, I suppose, just now. But as I came home to-night, all my mind was filled with you; and I knew that to me you were worth far more than all the rest. And then suddenly I thought—what am I worth to you?

KATHARINE. This—that if now you told me to go—because it was for your good—I’d go—glad—yes glad that you’d made me do for you, at last, something that was hard to do—for the first time, dearest, for the first time!

PARNELL (deeply moved). That so? Not an accident, then, eh?

KATHARINE (embracing him). Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!

PARNELL. How true to life love makes everything!—so clear and straight—looking back now. Through you I’ve learned this truth at any rate—that there are two things about which a man must never compromise—first his own soul, the right to be himself—no matter what others may think or do.

KATHARINE. And the other?

PARNELL. His instinct, of trust or distrust, in the character of others. I hadn’t any real doubt, but I compromised with instinct to gain my end: did things I didn’t believe were any good—accepted the word of men I didn’t trust. Home Rule itself was a compromise that I made myself accept. But I never really believed in it. For you can’t limit the liberty of a nation, if it’s really alive. Then came the smash—that woke me. And that I was awake at last our love came to be the proof.... Something different has got to be now. Ireland will have to become more real—more herself, more of a rebel than ever she has been yet. If, thirty years hence, my failure shall have helped to bring that about—an Ireland really free—then I’ve won....

(The words come quietly, confidently; but it is the voice of an exhausted man, whose physical resources are nearly at an end. For a long time he sits quite still, holding his wife’s hand, saying nothing, for he has nothing more to say. A high screen behind the couch on which they rest cuts off the gaslight; only the firelight plays fitfully upon the two faces. Suddenly the brightness falls away, and over that foreshadowing of death, now only three days distant, the scene closes.)

The Man of Business

Dramatis Personæ

Joseph Chamberlain (Ex-Minister).

Jesse Collins (His Friend).

A Distinguished Visitor.

A Nurse.