DAVID
Please don't you congratulate me, too! That would be too ironical.
VERA [Agitated, coming nearer]
Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.
DAVID
The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when I know what a terrible failure I have made!
VERA
Failure! Because the critics are all divided? That is the surest proof of success. You have produced something real and new.
DAVID
I am not thinking of Pappelmeister's connoisseurs-I am the only connoisseur, the only one who knows. And every bar of my music cried "Failure! Failure!" It shrieked from the violins, blared from the trombones, thundered from the drums. It was written on all the faces--
VERA [Vehemently, coming still nearer]
Oh, no! no! I watched the faces-those faces of toil and sorrow, those faces from many lands. They were fired by your vision of their coming brotherhood, lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And I could see that you were right in speaking to the people. In some strange, beautiful, way the inner meaning of your music stole into all those simple souls--
DAVID [Springing up]
And my soul? What of my soul? False to its own music, its own mission, its own dream. That is what I mean by failure, Vera. I preached of God's Crucible, this great new continent that could melt up all race-differences and vendettas, that could purge and re-create, and God tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, "Cast it all into my Crucible." And I said, "Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood." And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over the old blood-stains-I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the God of our children. Oh-how my music mocked me! And you-so fearless, so high above fate-how you must despise me!
VERA
I? Ah no!
DAVID
You must. You do. Your words still sting. Were it seven seas between us, you said, our love must cross them. And I-I who had prated of seven seas--
VERA
Not seas of blood-I spoke selfishly, thoughtlessly. I had not realised that crimson flood. Now I see it day and night. O God!
[She shudders and covers her eyes.]
DAVID
There lies my failure-to have brought it to your eyes, instead of blotting it from my own.
VERA
No man could have blotted it out.
DAVID
Yes-by faith in the Crucible. From the blood of battlefields spring daisies and buttercups. In the divine chemistry the very garbage turns to roses. But in the supreme moment my faith was found wanting. You came to me-and I thrust you away.
VERA
I ought not to have come to you.... I ought not to have come to you to-day. We must not meet again.
DAVID
Ah, you cannot forgive me!
VERA
Forgive? It is I that should go down on my knees for my father's sin.
[She is half-sinking to her knees. He stops her by a gesture and
a cry.]
DAVID
No! The sins of the fathers shall not be visited on the children.
VERA
My brain follows you, but not my heart. It is heavy with the sense of unpaid debts-debts that can only cry for forgiveness.
DAVID
You owe me nothing--
VERA
But my father, my people, my country....
[She breaks down. Recovers herself.] My only consolation is, you need nothing.
DAVID [Dazed]
I-need-nothing?
VERA
Nothing but your music ... your dreams.
DAVID
And your love? Do I not need that?
VERA [Shaking her head sadly]
No.
DAVID
You say that because I have forfeited it.
VERA
It is my only consolation, I tell you, that you do not need me. In our happiest moments a suspicion of this truth used to lacerate me. But now it is my one comfort in the doom that divides us. See how you stand up here above the world, alone and self-sufficient. No woman could ever have more than the second place in your life.
DAVID
But you have the first place, Vera!
VERA [Shakes her head again]
No-I no longer even desire it. I have gotten over that womanly weakness.
DAVID
You torture me. What do you mean?
VERA
What can be simpler? I used to be jealous of your music, your prophetic visions. I wanted to come first-before them all! Now, dear David, I only pray that they may fill your life to the brim.
DAVID
But they cannot.
VERA
They will-have faith in yourself, in your mission-good-bye.
DAVID [Dazed]
You love me and you leave me?
VERA
What else can I do? Shall the shadow of Kishineff hang over all your years to come? Shall I kiss you and leave blood upon your lips, cling to you and be pushed away by all those cold, dead hands?
DAVID [Taking both her hands]
Yes, cling to me, despite them all, cling to me till all these ghosts are exorcised, cling to me till our love triumphs over death. Kiss me, kiss me now.
VERA [Resisting, drawing back]
I dare not! It will make you remember.
DAVID
It will make me forget. Kiss me.
[There is a pause of hesitation, filled up by the Cathedral
music from "Faust" surging up softly from below.]
VERA [Slowly]
I will kiss you as we Russians kiss at Easter-the three kisses of peace.
[She kisses him three times on the mouth as in ritual
solemnity.]
DAVID [Very calmly]
Easter was the date of the massacre-see! I am at peace.
VERA
God grant it endure!
[They stand quietly hand in hand.] Look! How beautiful the sunset is after the storm!
[DAVID turns. The sunset, which has begun to grow beautiful just
after VERA'S entrance, has now reached its most magnificent
moment; below there are narrow lines of saffron and pale gold,
but above the whole sky is one glory of burning flame.]
DAVID [Prophetically exalted by the spectacle]
It is the fires of God round His Crucible.
[He drops her hand and points downward.] There she lies, the great Melting Pot-listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth
[He points east] -the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,-black and yellow--
VERA [Softly, nestling to him]
Jew and Gentile--
DAVID
Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross-how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!