The Piper Part 20

PIPER No, never.

VERONIKA [Half to herself, distraught between suspense and hope]

I must be patient.

PIPER Woman, they all are mine.

I hold them in my hands; they bide with me.

What's breath and blood,--what are the hearts of children, To Hamelin,--while it heaps its money-bags?

VERONIKA You cared not for the money.

PIPER No?--You seem A foreign woman,--come from very far, That you should know.

VERONIKA I know. I was not born There. But you wrong them. There were yet a few Who would have dealt with you more honestly Than this Jacobus, or--

PIPER Or Kurt the Syndic!

Believe It not. Those two be tongue and brain For the whole town! I know them. And that town Stands as the will of other towns, a score, That make us wandering poor the things we are!

It stands for all, unto the end of time, That turns this bright world black and the Sun cold, With hate, and h.o.a.rding;--all-triumphant Greed That spreads above the roots of all despair, And misery, and rotting of the soul!

Now shall they learn--if money-bags can learn-- What turns the bright world black, and the Sun cold; And what's that creature that they call a child!-- And what this winged thing men name a heart Beating queer rhythms that they long to kill.-- What is this hunger and this thirst to sing, To laugh, to fight,--to hope, to be believed?

And what is truth? And who did make the stars?

I have to pay for fifty thousand hates, Greeds, cruelties; such barbarous tortured days A tiger would disdain;--for all my kind!

Not my one mother, not my own of kin,-- All, all, who wear the motley in the heart Or on the body:--for all caged glories And trodden wings, and sorrows laughed to scorn.

I,--I!--At last.

VERONIKA Ah, me! How can I say: Yet make them happier than they let you be?

PIPER Woman, you could!--They know not how to be Happy! They turn to darkness and to woe All that is made for joy. They deal with men As, far across the mountains, in the south, Men trap a singing thrush, put out his eyes,-- And cage him up and bid him then to sing-- Sing before G.o.d that made him,--yes, to sing!

I save the children.--Yes, I save them, so, Save them forever, who shall save the world!-- Yes, even Hamelin.-- But for only _you_, What do they know of Children?--Pfui, _their own_!

Who knows a treasure, when it is his own?

Do they not whine: '_Five mouths around the table_; _And a poor harvest. And now comes one more_!

_G.o.d chastens us_!'--Pfui!--

VERONIKA [apart, dully]

. . . But I must be patient.

PIPER You know, you know, that not one dared, save you,-- Dared all alone, to search this devil's haunt.

VERONIKA They would have died--

PIPER But never risked their _souls_!

That knew I also.

VERONIKA Ah!

PIPER 'Young faces,' sooth, The old ones prate of!--Bah, what is't they want?

'Some one to work for me, when I am old; Some one to follow me unto my grave; Some one--for me!' Yes, yes. There is not one Old huddler-by-the-fire would shift his seat To a cold corner, if it might bring back All of the Children in one shower of light!

VERONIKA The old, ah, yes! But not--

PIPER The younger men?

Aha! Their pride to keep the name alive; The name, the name, the little Hamelin name, Tied to the trade;--carved plain upon his gravestone!

Wonderful! If your name must chain you, live, To your gaol of a house, your trade you love not,--why, Best go without a name, like me!--How now?

Woman,--you suffer?

VERONIKA Ah, yet could I laugh, Piper, yet could I laugh, for one true word,-- But not of all men.

PIPER Then of whom?

VERONIKA Of Kurt.

PIPER Bah, Kurt the Councillor! a man to curse.

VERONIKA He is my husband.

PIPER [shortly]

Thine? I knew it not.

Thine? But it cannot be. He could not father That little Jan,--that little shipwrecked Star.

VERONIKA Oh, then you love him? You will give him back?

PIPER The son of Kurt?

VERONIKA No, not _his_ son! No, no.

He is all mine, all mine. Kurt's sons are straight, And ruddy, like Kurt's wife of Hamelin there, Who died before.

PIPER And you were wed. . .

VERONIKA So young, It is all like some dream before the sunrise, That left me but that little shipwrecked Star.

PIPER Why did you marry Kurt the Councillor?

VERONIKA [humbly]

He wanted me. Once I was beautiful.

PIPER [wonderingly]

What, more than now?

VERONIKA Mock if you will.

PIPER I mock you; O Woman, . . . you are very beautiful.

VERONIKA I meant, with my poor self, to buy him house And warmth, and softness for his little feet.

Oh, then I knew not,--when we sell our hearts, We buy us nothing.