The Piper | Page 5

--some vision of Our Lady. [She drops her flowers.--He picks them up
and gives them back slowly.

BARBARA Who are you? You are some one in disguise.
MICHAEL [bitterly] A man--that passes for a mountebank.
BARBARA [eagerly] I knew!
MICHAEL What then?
BARBARA Thou art of noble birth. 'T is some disguise, this playing
with the fire!
MICHAEL Yes.--For to-day, I lord it with the fire. But it hath burned
me, here. [Touching his breast.] [Overcome for the moment, she draws
away.-- The PIPER, coming down, speaks stealthily to MICHAEL,
who is still gazing.
PIPER For all our sakes! There is bad weather breeding.--Take to thy
heels.
[BARBARA turns back to see MICHAEL withdrawing reluctantly, and
throws a rose to him with sudden gayety.
BARBARA Farewell to you, Sword-Swallower!--farewell!
MICHAEL [looking back] Farewell to you, my Lady, in-the-Moon.
[Exit. [JAN clings once more to the PIPER, while the other children
hang about. VERONIKA calls to her boy, from the steps.
VERONIKA Darling.--
PIPER [drawing nearer] Is this your Boy?
VERONIKA Ay, he is mine; My only one. He loved thy piping so.
PIPER And I loved his.
HANS' WIFE [stridently] Poor little boy! He's lame!
PIPER 'T is all of us are lame! But he, he flies.
VERONIKA Jan, stay here if you will, and hear the pipe, At
Church-time.
PIPER [to him] Wilt thou?
JAN [softly] Mother lets me stay Here with the Lonely Man.
PIPER The Lonely Man? [JAN points to the Christ in the Shrine.
VERONIKA crosses herself. The PIPER looks long at the little boy.
VERONIKA He always calls Him so.
PIPER And so would I.
VERONIKA It grieves him that the Head is always bowed, And
stricken. But he loves more to be here Than yonder in the church.
PIPER And so do I.
VERONIKA What would you, darling, with the Lonely Man? What do
you wait to see?

JAN [shyly] To see Him smile.
[The women murmur. The PIPER comes down further to speak to
VERONIKA.
PIPER You are some foreign woman. Are you not? Never from
Hamelin!
VERONIKA No.
AXEL'S WIFE [to her child] Then run along. And ask the Piper if he'll
play again The tune that charmed the rats.
ANOTHER They might come back!
OLD URSULA [calling from her window] Piper! I want the tune that
charmed the rats! If they come back, I'll have my grandson play it.
PIPER I pipe but for the children.
ILSE [dropping her doll and picking it up] Oh, do pipe Something for
Fridolin!
HANSEL Oh, pipe at me! Now I'm a mouse! I'll eat you up! Rr--rr!--
CHILDREN Oh, pipe! Oh, play! Oh, play and make us dance! Oh, play,
and make us run away from school!
PIPER Why, what are these?
CHILDREN [scampering round him] We're mice, we're mice, we're
mice! . . . We're mice, we're mice! We'll eat up everything!
MARTIN'S WIFE [calling] 'T is church-time. La, what will the
neighbors say?
ILSE [Waving her doll] Oh, please do play something for Fridolin!
AXEL'S WIFE Do hear the child. She's quite the little mother!
PIPER A little mother? Ugh! How horrible. That fairy thing, that
princess,--no, that Child! A little mother? [To her] Drop the ugly thing!
MARTIN'S WIFE Now, on my word! and what's amiss with mothers?
Are mothers horrible? [The PIPER is struck with painful memories.]
PIPER No, no. But--care And want and pain and age. . . [Turns back to
them with a bitter change of voice] And penny-wealth,-- And
penny-counting.--Penny prides and fears-- Of what the neighbors say
the neighbors say!--
MARTIN'S WIFE And were you born without a mother, then?
ALL Yes, you there! Ah, I told you! He's no man. He's of the devil.
MARTIN'S WIFE Who was your mother, then?
PIPER [fiercely] Mine!--Nay, I do not know. For when I saw her, She
was a thing so trodden, lost and sad, I cannot think that she was ever

young, Save in the cherishing voice.--She was a stroller; My father was
a stroller.--So, you have it! And since she clave to him, and hunger too,
The Church's ban was on her.--Either live, Mewed up forever,--she! to
be a nun; Or keep her life-long wandering with the wind; The very
name of wife stript from her troth. That was my mother.--And she
starved and sang; And like the wind, she roved and lurked and
shuddered Outside your lighted windows, and fled by, Storm-hunted,
trying to outstrip the snow, South, south, and homeless as a broken
bird,-- Limping and hiding!--And she fled, and laughed, And kept me
warm; and died! To you, a Nothing; Nothing, forever, oh, you
well-housed mothers! As always, always for the lighted windows Of all
the world, the Dark outside is nothing; And all that limps and hides
there in the dark; Famishing,--broken,--lost! And I have