The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 88

CECILIA

It will have to be borne. We must work--both of us.

ALBERT (_to Amadeus_)

Yes, and it remains to be seen what effect a real sorrow like this may have on you. It's just what you have lacked so far. I expect you'll get a lot out of it. In a sense, I might almost envy you.

PETER

What's the matter?... Look here, mamma, how they jump about! That's the king, and this is the devil.

ALBERT

Come on, sonny, and play your piece to _me_. But I insist that the hero must either marry in the end, or be carried off by the devil. In either case you can go home quite satisfied when the curtain drops.

(_He goes out with Peter_)

CECILIA (_after a glance at Amadeus, starts to follow them_)

AMADEUS

Cecilia!

CECILIA (_turns back_)

AMADEUS (_pa.s.sionately_)

Why didn't you show me the door, Cecilia, when you knew...?

CECILIA

Well, _did_ I know?... I have loved you, Amadeus. And all I wanted, perhaps, was that the inevitable end should be worthy of our love--that we should part after a final moment of bliss, and with a pang.

AMADEUS

With a pang, you say...? Do you really feel anything like that?

CECILIA (_coming close to him and speaking very gently_)

Why don't you try to understand me, Amadeus? I feel it just as keenly as you do. But there is another thing I feel more strongly than you, and it is well for us both that I do. It is this, Amadeus, that we have been so much to each other that we must keep the memory of it pure. If that was nothing but an adventure last night, then we have never been worthy of our past happiness.... If it was a farewell, then we may expect new happiness in the future ... perhaps.... (_She starts toward the garden_)

AMADEUS

And that's our reward, then, for having always been honest to each other!

CECILIA (_turning toward him again_)

Honest, you call it...? Have we always been that?

AMADEUS

Cecilia!

CECILIA

No, I can't think so any longer. Let everything else have been honest--but that both of us should have resigned ourselves so promptly when you told me of your pa.s.sion for the Countess and I confessed my affection for Sigismund--that was not honest. If each of us had then flung his scorn, his bitterness, his despair into the face of the other one, instead of trying to appear self-controlled and superior--then we should have been honest--which, as it was, we were not. (_She walks across the veranda outside and disappears into the garden_)

AMADEUS (_to himself_)

All right--then we were not honest. (_After a pause_) And suppose we had been?! (_For a moment he seems to consider; then he goes to the writing desk and puts the ma.n.u.script music lying there into the little handbag; after a glance into the garden, he goes into his own room, returning at once with his hat and overcoat; then he opens the handbag again and picks out a ma.n.u.script, which he places on the piano; then he goes out rapidly, taking hat, overcoat and handbag with him; a brief pause follows_)

CECILIA (_enters and notices that the handbag is gone; she goes quickly into Amadeus' room, but returns immediately; she crosses the room to the main entrance and remains standing there, opening her arms widely at first, and then letting them sink down again; going to the piano, she catches sight of the ma.n.u.script lying there and picks it up; while looking at it, she sinks down on the piano stool_)

PETER (appears on the veranda with Albert and calls from there) Mother!

CECILIA (_does not hear him_)

ALBERT (_observing that Cecilia is alone and sunk in grief, takes Peter with him into the garden again_)

CECILIA (_begins to weep softly and lets her head sink down on the piano_)

CURTAIN

COUNTESS MIZZIE

OR

THE FAMILY REUNION

(_Komtesse Mizzi oder der Familientag_)

A COMEDY IN ONE ACT

1907

PERSONS

COUNT ARPAD PAZMANDY

MIZZIE } His daughter