Three Plays Part 21

BELCREDI. Anyway, I've never asked you to take me seriously.

DONNA MATILDA. Yes, I know. But with him one couldn't joke (_changing her tone and speaking to the Doctor_). One of the many misfortunes which happen to us women, Doctor, is to see before us every now and again a pair of eyes glaring at us with a contained intense promise of eternal devotion.

(_Bursts out laughing_). There is nothing quite so funny. If men could only see themselves with that eternal fidelity look in their faces! I've always thought it comic; then more even than now. But I want to make a confession--I can do so after twenty years or more. When I laughed at him then, it was partly out of fear. One might have almost believed a promise from those eyes of his. But it would have been very dangerous.

DOCTOR (_with lively interest_). Ah! ah! This is most interesting! Very dangerous, you say?

DONNA MATILDA. Yes, because he was very different from the others. And then, I am ... well ... what shall I say?... a little impatient of all that is pondered, or tedious. But I was too young then, and a woman. I had the bit between my teeth. It would have required more courage than I felt I possessed. So I laughed at him too--with remorse, to spite myself, indeed; since I saw that my own laugh mingled with those of all the others--the other fools--who made fun of him.

BELCREDI. My own case, more or less!

DONNA MATILDA. You make people laugh at you, my dear, with your trick of always humiliating yourself. It was quite a different affair with him. There's a vast difference. And you--you know--people laugh in your face!

BELCREDI. Well, that's better than behind one's back!

DOCTOR. Let's get to the facts. He was then already somewhat exalted, if I understand rightly.

BELCREDI. Yes, but in a curious fas.h.i.+on, doctor.

DOCTOR. How?

BELCREDI. Well, cold-bloodedly so to speak.

DONNA MATILDA. Not at all! It was like this, doctor! He was a bit strange, certainly; but only because he was fond of life: eccentric, there!

BELCREDI. I don't say he simulated exaltation. On the contrary, he was often genuinely exalted. But I could swear, doctor, that he saw himself at once in his own exaltation.

Moreover, I'm certain it made him suffer. Sometimes he had the most comical fits of rage against himself.

DOCTOR. Yes?

DONNA MATILDA. That is true.

BELCREDI (_to Donna Matilda_). And why? (_To the doctor_).

Evidently, because that immediate lucidity that comes from acting, a.s.suming a part, at once put him out of key with his own feelings, which seemed to him not exactly false, but like something he was obliged to valorize there and then as--what shall I say--as an act of intelligence, to make, up for that sincere cordial warmth he felt lacking. So he improvised, exaggerated, let himself go, so as to distract and forget himself. He appeared inconstant, fatuous, and--yes--even ridiculous, sometimes.

DOCTOR. And may we say unsociable?

BELCREDI. No, not at all. He was famous for getting up things: _tableaux vivants_, dances, theatrical performances for charity: all for the fun of the thing, of course. He was a jolly good actor, you know!

DI NOLLI. Madness has made a superb actor of him.

BELCREDI.--Why, so he was even in the old days. When the accident happened, after the horse fell....

DOCTOR. Hit the back of his head, didn't he?

DONNA MATILDA. Oh, it was horrible! He was beside me! I saw him between the horse's hoofs! It was rearing!

BELCREDI. None of us thought it was anything serious at first. There was a stop in the pageant, a bit of disorder.

People wanted to know what had happened. But they'd already taken him off to the villa.

DONNA MATILDA. There wasn't the least sign of a wound, not a drop of blood.

BELCREDI. We thought he had merely fainted.

DONNA MATILDA. But two hours afterwards....

BELCREDI. He reappeared in the drawing-room of the villa ...

that is what I wanted to say....

DONNA MATILDA. My G.o.d! What a face he had. I saw the whole thing at once!

BELCREDI. No, no! that isn't true. n.o.body saw it, doctor, believe me!

DONNA MATILDA. Doubtless, because you were all like mad folk.

BELCREDI. Everybody was pretending to act his part for a joke. It was a regular Babel.

DONNA MATILDA. And you can imagine, doctor, what terror struck into us when we understood that he, on the contrary, was playing his part in deadly earnest....

DOCTOR. Oh, he was there too, was he?

BELCREDI. Of course! He came straight into the midst of us.

We thought he'd quite recovered, and was pretending, fooling, like all the rest of us ... only doing it rather better; because, as I say, he knew how to act.

DONNA MATILDA. Some of them began to hit him with their whips and fans and sticks.

BELCREDI. And then--as a king, he was armed, of course--he drew out his sword and menaced two or three of us.... It was a terrible moment, I can a.s.sure you!

DONNA MATILDA. I shall never forget that scene--all our masked faces hideous and terrified gazing at him, at that terrible mask of his face, which was no longer a mask, but madness, madness personified.

BELCREDI. He was Henry IV., Henry IV. in person, in a moment of fury.

DONNA MATILDA. He'd got into it all the detail and minute preparation of a month's careful study. And it all burned and blazed there in the terrible obsession which lit his face.

DOCTOR. Yes, that is quite natural, of course. The momentary obsession of a dilettante became fixed, owing to the fall and the damage to the brain.

BELCREDI (_to Frida and Di Nolli_). You see the kind of jokes life can play on us. (_To Di Nolli_): You were four or five years old. (_To Frida_): Your mother imagines you've taken her place there in that portrait; when, at the time, she had not the remotest idea that she would bring you into the world. My hair is already grey; and he--look at him--(_points to portrait_)--ha! A smack on the head, and he never moves again: Henry IV. for ever!

DOCTOR (_seeking to draw the attention of the others, looking learned and imposing_).--Well, well, then it comes, we may say, to this....

(_Suddenly the first exit to right, the one nearest footlights, opens, and Berthold enters all excited_).

BERTHOLD (_rus.h.i.+ng in_). I say! I say! (_Stops for a moment, arrested by the astonishment which his appearance has caused in the others_).

FRIDA (_running away terrified_). Oh dear! oh dear! it's he, it's....

DONNA MATILDA (_covering her face with her hands so as not to see_). Is it, is it he?

DI NOLLI. No, no, what are you talking about? Be calm!