Source: http://www.fullbooks.com/Angels--Ministers3.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:12:21+00:00

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fate of men or of nations whose will is set to be free. No accident there!
KATHARINE. Your star was mine, dearest. I hadn't one of my own.
proud man, that I own: and not less since I have won you.
KATHARINE. And whole. Some day--alone by ourselves--we will!
KATHARINE. You promise to go right away?
SERVANT. If you please, sir.
PARNELL. Will you say I am engaged.
I don't know the man. Do you?
SERVANT. If you please, sir, I was to give you this.
PARNELL (_having read the note_). Is the man still there?
KATHARINE. Only the name.... I may have seen him, now and then.
PARNELL (_glancing again at the note_). You are a valet?
PARNELL. Are you wanting a place?
MAN. No, sir. I have a place.
PARNELL. Then what have you come here for?
MAN. To give you this, sir.
PARNELL. May I show it to--this lady?
PARNELL. Whom, I take it, you recognise?
PARNELL. Did you bring me this expecting money for it?
PARNELL. I see it has a date. You could have let me have it before?
PARNELL. More than--six months ago?
MAN. More than a year ago, sir.
PARNELL. Quite so. And you did not?
singularly obliged to you.... How did you come by it, may I ask?
PARNELL. I see.... Had your dismissal anything to do with this?
MAN. Oh, no, sir. That only happened quite recently.
MAN. From him, sir?--yes, sir.
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. I may do what I like with it?
MAN. Just what you like, sir.
I am much obliged to you; and I wish you a good evening.
you might have done worse. Anyway, you've washed your hands of it now.
Don't do things like that again.
KATHARINE. You would have done just the same.
PARNELL. Torn it up? And put it in the fire?--I'm not so sure.
PARNELL. And use it? Yes: I am--glad!
means everything. You're glad! You're glad!
PARNELL (_clasping her_). Oh, my own love, my own dear sweet!
PARNELL. Nothing. Haven't I made you sure of that--yet?
KATHARINE. Oh, my King!--my King!
PARNELL. Look! there goes--our proof.
KATHARINE. That's what I mean.
PARNELL. But, politically, it might have made a world of difference.
PARNELL. As we are, and as we were--how long is it?--eleven years ago.
but for you--but for you.
PARNELL (_deeply moved_). That so? Not an accident, then, eh?
KATHARINE (_embracing him_). Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!
own soul, the right to be himself--no matter what others may think or do.
though mind functioned on body with difficulty, uncertain of its ground.
CHAMBERLAIN. I hadn't noticed. Time doesn't matter to me now.
JESSE COLLINGS. No; but I like to be punctual. It's my nature.
JESSE COLLINGS. Joe, you are looking better to-day.
often do that. Why did you?
years and begin to forget other things, our childhood comes back to us.
JESSE COLLINGS. Now I wonder if that's true?
JESSE COLLINGS. Mine hasn't begun to come back to me.
CHAMBERLAIN. You aren't old yet.
JESSE COLLINGS. I'm over eighty.
CHAMBERLAIN. Good for another twenty years. And once you were my senior.
We weren't quite boys together, Collings; but we've been good friends.
JESSE COLLINGS. Thank God for that!--Joe.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, I do. More now than I used to.
JESSE COLLINGS. Is my talk tiring you?
CHAMBERLAIN. Not at all.... Please go on!
dear friend. Your record will stand the test better than that of others.
CHAMBERLAIN. "Laid up" is a kind way of putting it, Collins.
_sitting_ up I find you.
states the case, counts, is worth troubling about?
never a man of imagination.
JESSE COLLINGS. You are, when you say that!
Englander" myself, once--that's still going on.
CHAMBERLAIN (_bitterly_). Yes, it's a fine business!
JESSE COLLINGS (_startled)._ Don't you still believe in it?
CHAMBERLAIN. As a business? Yes. But it's going to fail all the same.
There's nobody to run it now.
JESSE COLLINGS. We mean to run it, Chamberlain! You'll see!
CHAMBERLAIN. I know you do, Collings. You are loyalty itself.
JESSE COLLINGS. There are others too. I'm not the only one.
CHAMBERLAIN. You are the best of them.
JESSE COLLINGS. No, I won't admit that.
best are still to come. Time's with us.
JESSE COLLINGS. Don't you think so yourself?
CHAMBERLAIN. Not now. I did once.
JESSE COLLINGS. You always said so.
on having faith in myself, I shouldn't be--as I am now.
JESSE COLLINGS. But what--what made you lose it?
illustrative of defeat_.) Threw it away. You know who I mean?
JESSE COLLINGS (_cautiously, _rather reluctantly_). I suppose I do.
CHAMBERLAIN (_watching to see the effect of his news_).
He's coming to-day: to see me.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, it's all been nicely arranged--just a call in passing.
"pathetic" for one of them.
JESSE COLLINGS. Did he himself----?
never managed to charm anybody.
JESSE COLLINGS. You made friends--and kept them.
Unionism: made a hard and fast contract of it, and made them stick to it.
instinct betrayed me, and I was done!
JESSE COLLINGS. But--wasn't the war necessary?
point where we couldn't go back; and so we just had to go on--and on.
us. They might have gone on, till we got sick of it, and the world too.
business, Collings--it was a facer!
JESSE COLLINGS. Bannerman; and--the other?
CHAMBERLAIN. Comes to see me to-day. But it won't be a business meeting.
He'll not say anything about it--if he can help.
JESSE COLLINGS. Have you and he--had words ever?
was always so wonderfully accommodating, so polite, so apologetic even.
JESSE COLLINGS. And when you left him?
a business politician--I ought to have done.
JESSE COLLINGS. If you had--should we have won, straight away?
and sometimes does it brilliantly.
JESSE COLLINGS. What will he talk about?
JESSE COLLINGS. Yes, yes, I know you did.
no difference. That's what I call business.
JESSE COLLINGS (_warmly_). But you've always been honourable.
better. He has used it, and he has done better. I don't whine about it.
asked himself here--just now: not just now.
JESSE COLLINGS. What has "just now" to do with it?
don't think that even a posy of these would really interest him.
JESSE COLLINGS. I don't think we shall live to see that!
CHAMBERLAIN. I shall not; you may.
CHAMBERLAIN (_cajolingly_). Oh, yes, you do! Anyway--I want you to.
You will send me a wreath that will be worth having.
two hands pleadingly on the swathed knees, wants to speak but cannot.
behind you to give you a hint that you are tiring me--staying too long.
JESSE COLLINGS. Good-bye, my dear Joe, and--God bless you.
apologising for the length of his stay by the softness of his going.
CHAMBERLAIN. Is he in there, waiting to see me?
CHAMBERLAIN. Ask him to come in.
NURSE. It would be less tiring for you, sir.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes. Ask him to come in.
CHAMBERLAIN. Not too much out of your way, I hope?
express my pleasure in seeing you again.
CHAMBERLAIN. Well, what there is of me, you see. You are looking well.
DIST. V. And you--much better than I expected.
CHAMBERLAIN. Did you expect anything?
not going to tire you?
CHAMBERLAIN. It's far more likely to tire you, I'm afraid.
on the journey. Motoring bores me terribly.
CHAMBERLAIN. Then you had really meant coming this way, in any case?
proposed itself, all fitted together perfectly.
CHAMBERLAIN. Are they having a house-party?
CHAMBERLAIN. Are you? You don't look like it.
end of the session can one be otherwise?
CHAMBERLAIN. Is all going on there--as usual?
product, perhaps, of the seventeenth century.
CHAMBERLAIN. In Tudor times Prime Ministers were permanent, weren't they?
those days. And there's something to be said for it.
of character; the other doesn't.
undue familiarity.... That has never happened to you, has it?
CHAMBERLAIN. Thank you. So I--guessed.
I made up my mind to come and see you.
CHAMBERLAIN. That was very kind of you.
DIST. V. No, it wasn't; it was natural. We've worked together--so long.
CHAMBERLAIN. If you had not thought it possible--should you have come?
DIST. V. I cannot conceive how that would have made any difference.
communication--especially between friends; but it has to serve sometimes.
not?--recommended that it should be used--for concealment.
CHAMBERLAIN. So you think that--in words at any rate--I've been honest?
DIST. V. I should say pre-eminently.
more loyal than you, Chamberlain.
two men looking in opposite directions--is an embracing one.
everything--that still, in the main, we were in general agreement.
DIST. V. You helped to avert them.
here then. And if I were, I should be no use.
CHAMBERLAIN. You did--when you accepted my resignation.
CHAMBERLAIN. I thought so then. But it has turned out differently.
CHAMBERLAIN. As a diminishing force? Yes; I shan't disappoint you.
said_.) But not that at all!
myself at last. This is no miscalculation--like the other.
DIST. V. Was that one?
CHAMBERLAIN. It certainly had not the effect I intended.
CHAMBERLAIN. No; but I thought you, and the rest, would follow.
maintaining your strength, are you not? The doctors--are hopeful?
DIST. V. But I had this from members of your own family.
CHAMBERLAIN. Quite so; it is they who supply them.
DIST. V. Then, if the source is so authoritative, surely it must be true.
CHAMBERLAIN. Are newspaper paragraphs in such cases--ever true?
DIST. V. Perhaps I am no judge. As you know, I seldom read them.
uncertain, one has to act as if one were sure.
political deaths first and last.
DIST. V. That, in itself, is an ageing experience.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes? ... I wonder.
DIST. V. Oh, but surely!
CHAMBERLAIN. _I_ wasn't sure; but I take your word for it.
births: those who go have become more intimate: one has got to know them.
Yes, the departures do certainly overshadow the arrivals.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yet sometimes they must have come to you as a relief.
DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, don't say that! It isn't true.
CHAMBERLAIN. Oh! I wasn't thinking of myself just then.
DIST. V. You were thinking, then, of somebody?
they be glad to get that now?
DIST. V. At the time it was impossible.
Did you go and see him--when he was dying?
opponents) made an exception in your case.
CHAMBERLAIN. Harcourt, too, always spoke of you with affection.
DIST. V. Oh, yes; we had a brotherly feeling about Rosebery, you know.
he lost his following, his brilliancy all went with it.
to lose my heart in politics: it's not safe. But--you charmed me.
DIST. V. Chamberlain, I must ask. What is there between us?
CHAMBERLAIN. Nothing--nothing now at all--or very little.
DIST. V. You have been--far more than others I could name.
important, there's bound to be a change of relations.
DIST. V. In our case I don't admit that it has happened.
game better than you. I made a mistake.
DIST. V. Do you mean, then, that you intended to break _me_?
CHAMBERLAIN. Oh, no. But I meant to--persuade you.
of that sheet was the beginning of--my defeat, your victory.
a sense: out of office, that is to say.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, but you will come back. I shan't.
DIST. V. But--in all its essentials--what you stand for will.
it has gone. I missed it.
DIST. V. You do well to remind me. You shouldn't have let me tire you.
CHAMBERLAIN. You don't. You used to, now and then, when we didn't agree.
my pace.... Here I sit, stock still.
embarrassment_). With your old associates still round you, I see!
have had a share in your career, have they not?
mere accident. Would you like to take one with you?
buttonhole_). I notice, too, that it has a scent.
it in England yet, and nowhere growing so well as they do here.
morning that as a type of the really successful man you had beaten me.
been such a champion at it, the mud would have swallowed you up alive.
Instead of that, you have made it a tower of defence against your enemies.
That's why I regard you not only as so successful, but so British.
slung it at my opponents?
DIST. V. Doesn't that rather indicate failure?
has played me out. That's the difference.
DIST. V. I am confident that history will give a different verdict.
been a blunder; his great work in Ireland may yet have to be reversed.
held good for a hundred year, I should incline to regard as statesmanship.
Pitt's policy you now question?
only say, when does history begin to get written? We don't know.
one lives? That, it seems to me, is our main responsibility.
than the whole lot of us; but we pulled him down--and I enjoyed doing it.
did it--just as you were sorry for Wyndham.
DIST. V. But I did nothing!
Unionists were not in such close alliance then; he might have succeeded.
Randolph went down: never the same man again.
DIST. V. But, my dear Chamberlain, we had our agreed compact.
it might have succeeded. Where would our compact have been, then?
hope. It failed because you remained loyal to your convictions.
shouldn't have been a Home Ruler? I was to begin with, remember.
DIST. V. Standing for a very different Bill, I imagine.
CHAMBERLAIN. Which you would still have opposed. But I should have won.
DIST. V. Certainly, if we had lost you, it would have made a difference.
too. It had to be done. ...And here I am.
DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, you distress me deeply!
CHAMBERLAIN. Of course I do. D'you think I haven't distressed myself too?
Do I look like a man who hasn't been through anything?
DIST. V. Then--there is a cloud between us, after all.
last time he spoke in the House? And I saw you looking on, pitying him.
doing yourself harm. You ought not to go on. Stop, I do beg of you!
CHAMBERLAIN. Stop? Why stop? What does it matter now?
mustn't tire myself in tiring you.
DIST. V. You shall. I promise.
till we meet again, my dear Chamberlain, good-bye!
CHAMBERLAIN. Good-bye...You can find your way?
DIST. V. (_turning gracefully as be goes_). Perfectly!
CHAMBERLAIN. So that's the end, eh?... Charming fellow!
SCENE; _Washington. March 4th,_ 1921.
streets of the capital, celebrating the inauguration of the new President.
triumph insistent and strained, having in it no beauty and no joy.
carefully aside, then begins very deliberately to pull off his gloves.
sinks back in his chair, and in a voice of resigned weariness speaks_.
EX-PRES. So ... that's over!
TUMULTY. It hasn't tired you too much, I hope?
EX-PRES. Too much for what, my dear Tumulty? I've time to be tired now.
What else, except to be tired, is there left for me to do?
EX-PRES. He let me go.
TUMULTY (_shrewdly_). You would have gone in any case.
place, what do you think of him?
TUMULTY. A new President always does.
EX-PRES. Yes ... couldn't have been friendlier....It let me alone.
TUMULTY. Well, of course, they'd come mainly to see the new President.
very kind, very considerate. I feel grateful.
TUMULTY. I think, President--Forgive me; the word slipped out.
TUMULTY. I think there's been more loyalty--at heart--than you know.
couldn't be avoided)--well; they didn't cut so deep as they seemed to.
in the past) more hardly than I judge myself ... Tumulty, I've failed.
TUMULTY (_extenuatingly_.) In a way--yes: for a time, no doubt.
EX-PRES. Because you don't know.
TUMULTY. Governor, I know a good deal.
faith in it! It was that did for me!
much: and the mischief was done before I knew.
TUMULTY. You don't need to name him, President.
cooperation of those who didn't agree with me so thoroughly as you did.
badly; they didn't respond. So--I did all myself.
TUMULTY. When you _had_ paid attention, you mean.
sure that I was right (I'm as sure of that now as ever) and yet to fail.
did not want justice to be done.
reception when you got to Paris.
conviction there; each must stick to his brief. That's what wrecked us.
victorious nation--has gotten it at heart to say, "We, too, have sinned."
Allies found satisfaction! What a picture for posterity!
their revenge, and now they've got it: and look what it is costing them!
orders to see that you took it.... You will?
TUMULTY. You said "the people," Governor?
the vote _of_ the Senate: where's the difference?
your stand gave hope to the best of them, so long as hope was possible.
noise enough. Anyway--seems you didn't hear 'em.
TUMULTY (_expostulant_). I'm not doing that, Governor!
difficult to make them face where honour lies.
many of us: what you knew about them, I mean.
error--I acknowledge it, Tumulty: that I believed in honour.
things over there, to the top people, I mean.
become one. But for that, he might--he just might ... yet who can tell?
That tied him. I was alone.
Governor: for a man all alone you did wonders.
me to agree. Clever, clever; that was his first win.
EX-PRES. (_with a dry laugh_). The man who told me he was on my side.
were glad. Yes, _he_ was glad, too.
that you'd better rest now?
home again. But, though I listened for it then, there seemed no response.
me, and I stayed on, and signed my failure with the rest.
TUMULTY (_for a diversion pointing to the covered cup_).
Pardon me, Governor, you must obey orders, you know. They are not mine.
and sets it down again_.) There! now let your conscience be at rest.
more because those I was amongst didn't believe in ghosts--not then.
difficult. But they will--some day.
"Temptation," as you call it, what's the proposition?
not admit failure because I wanted to save my face.
Governor. That didn't count, I reckon.
agreed. To win that, I was willing to give up my soul.
TUMULTY. It's the Covenant, you mean, Governor?
me; let them think that it was so--just to give this one thing its chance.
telling the truth. Was I wrong, Tumulty--was I wrong?
right, and that I should win!
TUMULTY (_doing his best_). It _will_ live, Governor!
faith can live on when policies lie dead. Think what it might have been!
longer Caesar's--but Man's. That--that was what I saw!
dream! Was I wrong, Tumulty, was I wrong?
as I do will ever say you were wrong, Governor.
it not have been better to say "I have failed"?
mind. That's not fair, you know.
and plead the ratification of the Treaty which they--and I--had made.
it was a just war.
the will to war takes hold of a people--does it remain the same people?
destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?--you do not know.
becomes--horrible; though the cause of your war may be just.
the Nation then; and, with justice as my one end, I drove home my point.
their cry: and they took few prisoners--you know that, Tumulty.
there she will remain. The salving might tell too much.
true? Would it matter now?
up his flag--cross-bones and a skull.
TUMULTY (_struggling in the narrow path between wrong and right_).
with no choice in the matter.
of men who had no choice in the matter at all. Remedy? There's only one.
men were not afraid--Love would win.
hardest thing to teach--because all the world is so much afraid.
THE PRESENCE. Mr. Tumulty ... my dear.
EX-PRES. My medicine? Yes. Your orders came through, and have been obeyed.
THE PRESENCE. It wasn't medicine. I made it myself.
EX-PRES. Then I beg its pardon--and yours.
twelve o'clock to-day? I'm not going to allow any overtime now.
to give and to get them obeyed.
of how you give them.
EX-PRES. You see, Tumulty--it's all a matter of "how."
to know how you are. I thought I would come and see first.
THE PRESENCE (_indicating the receiver_). He's there.
TUMULTY (_with swelling-bosom_). Governor, that was a great answer!
EX-PRES. Easily said, Tumulty. But is it true?
ruefully at his painfully oversqueezed hand, and begins rubbing it softly.

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