The Melting-Pot Part 29

[_Embracing her. He sits down, she lovingly at his feet._]

VERA [_Looking up at him_]

Then you _do_ care?

DAVID What a question!

VERA And you don't think wholly of your music and forget me?

DAVID Why, you are behind all I write and play!

VERA [_With jealous pa.s.sion_]

Behind? But I want to be before! I want you to love me first, before everything.

DAVID I do put you before everything.

VERA You are sure? And nothing shall part us?

DAVID Not all the seven seas could part you and me.

VERA And you won't grow tired of me--not even when you are world-famous----?

DAVID [_A shade petulant_]

Sweetheart, considering I should owe it all to you----

VERA [_Drawing his head down to her breast_]

Oh, David! David! Don't be angry with poor little Vera if she doubts, if she wants to feel quite sure. You see father has talked so terribly, and after all I was brought up in the Greek Church, and we oughtn't to cause all this suffering unless----

DAVID Those who love us _must_ suffer, and _we_ must suffer in their suffering. It is live things, not dead metals, that are being melted in the Crucible.

VERA Still, we ought to soften the suffering as much as----

DAVID Yes, but only Time can heal it.

VERA [_With transition to happiness_]

But father seems half-reconciled already! Dear little father, if only he were not so narrow about Holy Russia!

DAVID If only _my_ folks were not so narrow about Holy Judea! But the ideals of the fathers shall not be foisted on the children. Each generation must live and die for its own dream.

VERA Yes, David, yes. You are the prophet of the living present. I am so happy.

[_She looks up wistfully._]

You are happy, too?

DAVID I am dazed--I cannot realise that all our troubles have melted away--it is so sudden.

VERA You, David? Who always see everything in such rosy colours? Now that the whole horizon is one great splendid rose, you almost seem as if gazing out toward a blackness----

DAVID We Jews are cheerful in gloom, mistrustful in joy. It is our tragic history----

VERA But you have come to end the tragic history; to throw off the coils of the centuries.

DAVID [_Smiling again_]

Yes, yes, Vera. You bring back my sunnier self. I must be a pioneer on the lost road of happiness. To-day shall be all joy, all lyric ecstasy.

[_He takes up his violin._]

Yes, I will make my old fiddle-strings _burst_ with joy!

[_He dashes into a jubilant tarantella. After a few bars there is a knock at the door leading from the hall; their happy faces betray no sign of hearing it; then the door slightly opens, and BARON REVENDAL'S head looks hesitatingly in. As DAVID perceives it, his features work convulsively, his string breaks with a tragic snap, and he totters backward into VERA'S arms. Hoa.r.s.ely_]

The face! The face!

VERA David--my dearest!

DAVID [_His eyes closed, his violin clasped mechanically_]

Don't be anxious--I shall be better soon--I oughtn't to have talked about it--the hallucination has never been so complete.

VERA Don't speak--rest against Vera's heart--till it has pa.s.sed away.

[_The BARON comes dazedly forward, half with a shocked sense of VERA'S impropriety, half to relieve her of her burden. She motions him back._]

This is the work of your Holy Russia.

BARON [_Harshly_]

What is the matter with him?

[_DAVID'S violin and bow drop from his grasp and fall on the table._]

DAVID The voice!

[_He opens his eyes, stares frenziedly at the BARON, then struggles out of VERA'S arms._]

VERA [_Trying to stop him_]

Dearest----

DAVID Let me go.

[_He moves like a sleep-walker toward the paralysed BARON, puts out his hand, and testingly touches the face._]

BARON [_Shuddering back_]

Hands off!

DAVID [_With a great cry_]

A-a-a-h! It is flesh and blood. No, it is stone--the man of stone!

Monster!

[_He raises his hand frenziedly._]

BARON [_Whipping out his pistol_]

Back, dog!

[_VERA darts between them with a shriek._]

DAVID [_Frozen again, surveying the pistol stonily_]

Ha! You want _my_ life, too. Is the cry not yet loud enough?

BARON The cry?

DAVID [_Mystically_]

Can you not hear it? The voice of the blood of my brothers crying out against you from the ground? Oh, how can you bear not to turn that pistol against yourself and execute upon yourself the justice which Russia denies you?