The Countess Cathleen Part 13

Alors les pauvres sollicit'erent en vain pr'es de Ketty d'epouill'ee, elle ne pouvait plus secourir leur mis'ere;-elle les abandonnait 'a la tentation.

Pourtant il n'y avait plus que huit jours 'a pa.s.ser pour que les grains et les fourrages arriva.s.sent en abondance des pays d'Orient. Mais, huit jours, c''etait un si'ecle: huit jours n'ecessitaient une somme immense pour subvenir aux exigences de la disette, et les pauvres allaient ou expirer dans les angoisses de la faim, ou, reniant les saintes maximes de l'Evangile, vendre 'a vil prix leur 'ame, le plus beau pr'esent de la munificence du Seigneur toutpuissant.

Et Ketty n'avait plus une obole, car elle avait abandonn'e son ch'ateaux aux malheureux.

Elle pa.s.sa douze heures dans les larmes et le deuil, arrachant ses cheveux couleur de soleil et meurtrissant son sein couleur du lis: puis elle se leva r'esolue, anim'ee par un vif sentiment de d'esespoir.

Elle se rendit chez les marchands d''ames.

--Que voulez-vous? dirent ils.

--Vous achetez des 'ames?

--Oui, un peu malgr'e vous, n'est ce pas, sainte aux yeux de sapbir?

--Aujourd'hui je viens vous proposer un march'e, reprit elle.

--Lequel?

--J'ai une 'ame 'a vendre; mais elle est ch'ere.

--Qu'importe si elle est pr'ecieuse? L''ame, comme le diamant, s'appr'ecie 'a sa blancheur.

--C'est la mienne, dit Ketty.

Les deux envoy'es de Satan tressaillirent, Leurs griffes s'allong'erent sous leurs gants de cuir; leurs yeux gris 'etincel'erent:--l''ame, pure, immacul'ee, virginale de Ketty c''etait une acquisition inappr'eciable.

--Gentille dame, combien voulez-vouz?

--Cent cinquante mille 'ecus d'or.

--C'est fait, dirent les marchands: et ils tendirent 'a Ketty un parchemin cachet'e de noir, qu'elle signa en frissonnant.

La somme lui fut compt'ee.

Des qu'elle fut rentr'ee, elle dit au majordome:

--Tenez, distribuez ceci. Avec la somme que je vous donne les pauvres attendront la huitaine n'ecessaire et pas une de leurs 'ames ne sera livr'ee au d'emon.

Puis elle s'enferma et recommanda qu'on ne vint pas la d'eranger.

Trois jours se pa.s.s'erent; elle n'appela pas; elle ne sort.i.t pas.

Quand on ouvrit sa porte, on la trouva raide et froide: elle 'etait morte de douleur.

Mais la vente de cette 'ame si adorable dans sa charit'e fut d'eclar'ee nulle par le Seigneur: car elle avait sauv'e ses concitoyens de la morte 'eternelle.

Apr'es la huitaine, des vaisseaux nombreux amen'erent l'Irlande affam'ee d'immenses provisions de grains.

La famine n''etait plus possible. Quant aux marchands, ils disparurent de leur h'otellerie, sans qu'on s'ut jamais ce qu'ils 'etaient devenus.

Toutefois, les p'echeurs de la Blackwater pr'etendent qu'ils sont enchain'es dans une prison souterraine par ordre de Lucifer jusqu'au moment o'u ils pourront livrer l''ame de Ketty qui leur a 'echapp'e. je vous dis la l'egende telle que je la sais.

-Mais les pauvres l'ont racont'e d''age en 'age et les enfants de Cork et de Dublin chantent encore la ballade dont voici les derniers couplets:-

Pour sauver les pauvres qu'elle aime Ketty donna Son esprit, sa croyance m'eme Satan paya Cette 'ame au d'evoument sublime, En 'ecus d'or, Disons pour racheter son crime, Confiteor.

Mais l'ange qui se fit coupable Par charit'e

Au s'ejour d'amour ineffable Est remont'e.

Satan vaincu n'eut pas de prise

Sur ce coeur d'or; Chantons sous la nef de l''eglise, Confiteor.

N'est ce pas que ce r'ecit, n'e de l'imagination des po'etes catholiques de la verte Erin, est une V'eritable r'ecit de car'eme?

The Countess Cathleen was acted in Dublin in 1899, with Mr.

Marcus St. John and Mr. Trevor Lowe as the First and Second Demon, Mr. Valentine Grace as Shemus Rua, Master Charles Sefton as Teig, Madame San Carola as Mary, Miss Florence Farr as Aleel, Miss Anna Mather as Oona, Mr. Charles Holmes as the Herdsman, Mr.

Jack Wilc.o.x as the Gardener, Mr. Walford as a Peasant, Miss Dorothy Paget as a Spirit, Miss M. Kelly as a Peasant Woman, Mr.

T. E. Wilkinson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty as The Countess Kathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy because of the language of the demons or of Shemus Rua, and because I made a woman sell her soul and yet escape d.a.m.nation, and of a lack of patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who, it seems, never did such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to break the peace, that a score or so of police were sent to the theatre to see that they did not. I had, however, no reason to regret the result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans alike insisted on the freedom of literature.

After the performance in 1899 I added the love scene between Aleel and the Countess, and in this new form the play was revived in New York by Miss Wycherley as well as being played a good deal in England and America by amateurs. Now at last I have made a complete revision to make it suitable for performance at the Abbey Theatre. The first two scenes are almost wholly new, and throughout the play I have added or left out such pa.s.sages as a stage experience of some years showed me enc.u.mbered the action; the play in its first form having been written before I knew anything of the theatre. I have left the old end, however, in the version printed in the body of this book, because the change for dramatic purposes has been made for no better reason than that audiences--even at the Abbey Theatre--are almost ignorant of Irish mythology or because a shallow stage made the elaborate vision of armed angels upon a mountain-side impossible. The new end is particularly suited to the Abbey stage, where the stage platform can be brought out in front of the prosceniurn and have a flight of steps at one side up which the Angel comes, crossing towards the back of the stage at the opposite side. The princ.i.p.al lighting is from two arc lights in the balcony which throw their lights into the faces of the players, making footlights unnecessary. The room at Shemus Rua's house is suggested by a great grey curtain-a colour which becomes full of rich tints under the stream of light from the arcs. The two or more arches in the third scene permit the use of a gauze. The short front scene before the last is just long enough when played with incidental music to allow the scene set behind it to be changed.

The play when played without interval in this way lasts a little over an hour.

The play was performed at the Abbey Theatre for the first time on December 14, 1911, Miss Maire O'Neill taking the part of the Countess, and the last scene from the going out of the Merchants was as follows:-

(MERCHANTS rush out. ALEEL crawls into the middle of the room; the twilight has fallen and gradually darkens as the scene goes on.)

ALEEL. They're rising up-they're rising through the earth, Fat Asmodel and giddy Belial, And all the fiends. Now they leap in the air.

But why does h.e.l.l's gate creak so? Round and round, Hither and hither, to and fro they're running.

He moves about as though the air was full of spirits.

OONA enters.)

Crouch down, old heron, out of the blind storm.

OONA. Where is the Countess Cathleen? All this day Her eyes were full of tears, and when for a moment Her hand was laid upon my hand, it trembled.

And now I do not know where she is gone.

ALEEL. Cathleen has chosen other friends than us, And they are rising through the hollow world.

Demons are out, old heron.

OONA. G.o.d guard her soul.

ALEEL. She's bartered it away this very hour, As though we two were never in the world.

(He kneels beside her, but does not seem to hear her words. The PEASANTS return. They carry the COUNTESS CATHLEEN and lay her upon the ground before OONA and ALEEL. She lies there as if dead.)