Chapter 64
(Exeunt POLICE. MABEL tears herself from FREDERIC and exits, followed by her sisters, consoling her. The MAJOR-GENERAL and others follow the POLICE off. FREDERIC remains alone.)
RECIT-FREDERIC
Now for the pirates' lair! Oh, joy unbounded!
Oh, sweet relief! Oh, rapture unexampled!
At last I may atone, in some slight measure, For the repeated acts of theft and pillage Which, at a sense of duty's stern dictation, I, circ.u.mstance's victim, have been guilty!
(PIRATE KING and RUTH appear at the window, armed.)
KING: Young Frederic! (Covering him with pistol) FREDERIC: Who calls?
KING: Your late commander!
RUTH: And I, your little Ruth! (Covering him with pistol) FREDERIC: Oh, mad intruders, How dare ye face me? Know ye not, oh rash ones, That I have doomed you to extermination?
(KING and RUTH hold a pistol to each ear)
KING: Have mercy on us! hear us, ere you slaughter!
FREDERIC: I do not think I ought to listen to you.
Yet, mercy should alloy our stern resentment, And so I will be merciful-- say on!
TRIO--RUTH, KING, and FREDERIC
RUTH: When you had left our pirate fold, We tried to raise our spirits faint, According to our custom old, With quips and quibbles quaint.
But all in vain the quips we heard, We lay and sobbed upon the rocks, Until to somebody occurred A startling paradox.
FREDERIC: A paradox?
KING: (laughing) A paradox!
RUTH: A most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox!
A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha! ha!
KING: We knew your taste for curious quips, For cranks and contradictions queer; And with the laughter on our lips, We wished you there to hear.
We said, "If we could tell it him, How Frederic would the joke enjoy!"
And so we've risked both life and limb To tell it to our boy.
FREDERIC: (interested). That paradox? That paradox?
KING and RUTH: (laughing) That most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox!
A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho! ho!
CHANT--KING
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal, Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal, Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and- twenty.
Through some singular coincidence-- I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy-- You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February; And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover, That
RUTH: Ha! ha! ha! ha!
KING: Ho! ho! ho! ho!
FREDERIC: Dear me!
Let's see! (counting on fingers) Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!
ALL: Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! ho!
FREDERIC: (more amused than any) How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way, Years twenty-one I've been alive, Yet, reck'ning by my natal day, Yet, reck'ning by my natal day, I am a little boy of five!
RUTH/KING: He is a little boy of five!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
ALL: A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!, etc.
(RUTH and KING throw themselves back on seats, exhausted with laughter)
FREDERIC: Upon my word, this is most curious-- most absurdly whimsical. Five-and-a-quarter! No one would think it to look at me!
RUTH: You are glad now, I'll be bound, that you spared us.
You would never have forgiven yourself when you discovered that you had killed two of your comrades.
FREDERIC: My comrades?
KING: (rises) I'm afraid you don't appreciate the delicacy of your position: You were apprenticed to us-- FREDERIC: Until I reached my twenty-first year.
KING: No, until you reached your twenty-first birthday (producing doc.u.ment), and, going by birthdays, you are as yet only five-and-a-quarter.
FREDERIC: You don't mean to say you are going to hold me to that?
KING: No, we merely remind you of the fact, and leave the rest to your sense of duty.
RUTH: Your sense of duty!
FREDERIC: (wildly) Don't put it on that footing! As I was merciful to you just now, be merciful to me! I implore you not to insist on the letter of your bond just as the cup of happiness is at my lips!
RUTH: We insist on nothing; we content ourselves with pointing out to you your duty.
KING: Your duty!
FREDERIC: (after a pause) Well, you have appealed to my sense of duty, and my duty is only too clear. I abhor your infamous calling; I shudder at the thought that I have ever been mixed up with it; but duty is before all -- at any price I will do my duty.
KING: Bravely spoken! Come, you are one of us once more.
FREDERIC: Lead on, I follow. (Suddenly) Oh, horror!
KING/RUTH: What is the matter?
FREDERIC: Ought I to tell you? No, no, I cannot do it; and yet, as one of your band-- KING: Speak out, I charge you by that sense of conscientiousness to which we have never yet appealed in vain.
FREDERIC: General Stanley, the father of my Mabel-- KING/RUTH: Yes, yes!
FREDERIC: He escaped from you on the plea that he was an orphan?
KING: He did.
FREDERIC: It breaks my heart to betray the honoured father of the girl I adore, but as your apprentice I have no alternative. It is my duty to tell you that General Stanley is no orphan!
KING/RUTH: What!
FREDERIC: More than that, he never was one!
KING: Am I to understand that, to save his contemptible life, he dared to practice on our credulous simplicity?
(FREDERIC nods as he weeps) Our revenge shall be swift and terrible. We will go and collect our band and attack Tremorden Castle this very night.
FREDERIC: But stay-- KING: Not a word! He is doomed!
TRIO
KING and RUTH: FREDERIC
Away, away! my heart's on fire; Away, away! ere I expire-- I burn, this base deception to I find my duty hard to do to- repay. day!
This very night my vengeance dire My heart is filled with anguish dire, Shall glut itself in gore. It strikes me to the core.
Away, away! Away, away!
KING: With falsehood foul He tricked us of our brides.
Let vengeance howl; The Pirate so decides.
Our nature stern He softened with his lies, And, in return, To-night the traitor dies.
ALL: Yes, yes! to-night the traitor dies!
Yes, yes! to-night the traitor dies!