The Prime Minister/Prologue

by Hall Caine

THE PRIME MINISTER

PROLOGUE

Scene.—Room in the house of the Minister. Large windows at back. Middle window opened to ground as door to garden. Door open. A clear night. Garden seen without. Beyond garden St. James's Park, with lake, etc. Buckingham Palace in distance. Doors right and left. Fireplace on left. Above mantelpiece a portrait in oils of a young and beautiful woman. A light shining on portrait. Nearer to footlights there is a desk, with electric lamp, etc. It is a night in late summer. Electric light burning.

A round table middle of room. Four gentlemen seated about it. Telephone bells, etc. Sir Robert Temple faces audience. He is about forty-five; has strong clean-shaven face. The others are men of varying ages.

When curtain rises there is a moment of silence. The conference is seen to be one of considerable gravity. Sir Robert touches bell on table. A manservant enters right.

Sir Robert.
Close the window and draw the curtains, Galloway.

Galloway.
Yes, sir. [All sit without speaking while door at back is closed, curtains drawn, etc.

Sir Robert.
Galloway?

Galloway.
Yes, Sir Robert?

Sir Robert.
Call up Mr. Denham at the Foreign Office. Give him my compliments and ask if any message has yet been received from the Embassy.

Galloway.
The Embassy, sir?

Sir Robert.
He'll know which. If not, say I could wish him to put it through to this room the moment it arrives.

Galloway.
Yes, sir.

Sir Robert.
When Lord Burnley comes bring him up immediately.

Galloway.
Yes, sir. [Manservant goes out.

Sir Robert.
Pity our old colleague isn't here. Something must have detained him. No doubt he'll come presently.

Others.
Sure to.

Sir Robert.
I particularly wished that we five should be together to-night.

Others.
Yes, of course, naturally.

Sir Robert.
When the reply to our Ultimatum comes, an answer may be required at once, and, of course, it should be agreeable to all.

Others.
Of course! Of course!

Hallam.
But aren't we alarming ourselves unduly, sir? Is it possible that our neighbours will repeat the blunder of the last war?

Carfax.
They are again so plainly in the wrong. How can they defend such conduct?

Dundas.
They can't and they won't; You may be sure they won't. They've learnt their lesson.

Sir Robert.
My experience is that when a nation has determined upon a policy it is the easiest thing in the world for it to become convinced that it is in the right, and no lesson from the past is sufficient to undeceive it.

Hallam.
True!

Dundas.
Quite true!

Carfax.
Yes, every nation thinks it carries the Ark of the Covenant.

Sir Robert.
Therefore I cherish no illusions to-night. But reply or no reply, all that remains to us is to follow the line of honour.

Others.
Quite so.

Dundas.
So soon after the last war, though!

Hallam.
With all its frightful sorrow and suffering!

Carfax.
Terrible! Terrible!

Enter manservant as before.

Galloway.
Lord Burnley.

Enter Lord Burnley. Elderly man. There are general salutations.

Lord Burnley.
Sorry to be late. Excuse me, Robert. [Nodding round table.] Carfax! Dundas! Hallam! How long do you think it has taken me to reach here in a taxi from my house in Kensington? An hour and a half! Traffic held up everywhere! People walking in procession! Mass meetings in Trafalgar Square! Such unanimity of popular feeling! Have never seen the like of it!

Others.
Ah!

Hallam.
We've certainly got the country behind us, haven't we?

Lord Burnley.
Yes, it's always like that to begin with. Every great war in the history of the world has been heralded by just such outbursts of popular enthusiasm. But when the bill comes in, and the price has to be paid . . .

Carfax.
True!

Lord Burnley.
Terribly true! The people of yesterday thought they were seeing the last of war. "A war to end war," they called it. And yet here we are, so soon afterwards, as the harvest of hate and revenge perhaps . . . ugh!

Dundas.
Yes, reprisals, reprisals, reprisals!

Carfax.
Frightful! If war comes now it will be the most awful tragedy the world has ever witnessed.

Dundas.
Twenty millions of dead—that's the least we can look for.

Hallam.
More—far more! Think of the development of physical force during the years of peace.

Carfax.
Yes, nobody can say what the consequences of war will be now. All past records are useless.

Dundas.
Utterly useless! Whole continents may be wiped out in a year, a month, nay, a week for all we know.

Hallam.
Yes, yes! Man has made his Frankenstein, and now God knows if it will not destroy him.

Sir Robert.
[Who has been listening in silence.] Gentlemen, let us not lose our strength in sentimentality. War is always terrible, and it may be even more terrible in the future than it has ever been in the past. But are we to buy the temporary ease and safety of our bodies at the lasting peril of our souls? In this age of the world, are a little handful of arch-egotists and crowned degenerates to be permitted to plot, intrigue and gamble in the destinies of hundreds of millions of people, in life and death, happiness and misery, with everything God gave us to be ours—on the land, in the air, on the sea? No, the time has come when that terror has to die if liberty is to live, and it is for us to kill it. Therefore we sent our Ultimatum this morning, and if as a consequence we are called upon to make the sacrifices of war for the things that are more to us than life, we must make them— every man, every woman, every child. [There is a moment of silence. Then from within comes the cry of a child. Sir Robert listens, then touches bell. Maidservant enters.] What was that?

Maidservant.
Little Miss Peggy, sir. Awakened from sleep in a fright. Must have been a nightmare. She's calling for her father, and Nurse says she cannot be pacified.

Sir Robert.
[Rising.] Excuse me, gentlemen. [He goes out at right. His colleagues look after him, and then smile.

Carfax.
Isn't that like him?

Dundas.
Isn't it?

Carfax.
How little the world knows him!

Hallam.
How little indeed!

Carfax.
A hard, austere, unyielding nature, without a touch of sentiment, and yet . . .

Hallam.
A person of such underlying tenderness that his highest, gravest, sternest moment may be broken in upon by the cry of a little child!

Dundas.
Strange contradiction!

Hallam.
Extraordinary combination of conflicting characteristics!

Carfax.
What a victim for the designing man!

Hallam.
Or the scheming woman!

Lord Burnley.
No!

Hallam.
No?

Lord Burnley.
The scheming woman—no! Robert Temple carries one talisman against that kind of peril [Pointing to portrait over fireplace], the memory of his dead wife.

Carfax.
Ah! You knew him during his early married life, didn't you?

Lord Burnley.
Yes, through all the sad and hidden years of it.

Carfax.
Rather a hard time, wasn't it?

Lord Burnley.
Very. When Temple came up from the University he was poor—very poor.

Carfax.
Hardly had enough to pay his fees for the Bar— isn't that so?

Lord Burnley.
[Nodding.] Then by some chance he came to know the family of that rich old dunderhead. Lord Nugent. You remember him, Hallam?

Hallam.
Perfectly. A hard old nut if ever there was one.

Lord Burnley.
The old man had two daughters, and Temple fell in love with the younger of them [Indicating portrait]—Margaret. When he asked for her, Nugent almost spat in his face. "The briefless beggar," "the parvenu," and so forth.

Carfax.
Just so.

Lord Burnley.
Things had gone too far though, and in spite of her father's refusal the girl married Temple, and was forthwith cut off for the rest of the old man's life.

Hallam.
She would be.

Lord Burnley.

Then followed ten years of poverty—some say privation. The young wife bore it cheerfully. Never regretted her choice. Always believed in her husband —his talents, his future, his destiny. He would be the first man in England some day.

Others.
Ah!

Lord Burnley.
Then old Nugent died, and not being able to alienate the whole of his fortune. Temple's wife became rich.

Hallam.
Jumped in a moment into ten thousand a year, they say.

Lord Burnley.
[Nodding.] Temple had made some progress, too. Got into Parliament somehow, and produced a considerable impression. And when the great crisis came——

Carfax.
The great war you mean?

Lord Burnley.
[Nodding] And reputations were being made—and lost—in a month, Temple was given a place in the Government.

Hallam.
So that after fifteen years of poverty and obscurity he and his wife broke into great prosperity.

Lord Burnley.
[Nodding.] Into great happiness also. After many years of childlessness a child was born to them—the little girl he has gone upstairs to see. And then the bolt fell—you know how?

Carfax.
The death of his wife?

Lord Burnley.
Her death-warrant anyway. An incurable malady! Temple thought it had been accelerated—perhaps generated—by the long period of their poverty, and reproached himself accordingly.

Others.
Pitiful! Pitiful!

Lord Burnley.
He did everything that love and care could do. Time passed—two years, three years, four. At last he took her to Switzerland.

Hallam.
Yes, up to the Engadine.

Lord Burnley.
No use! Six months later she came back worse than she went, and died, as you remember, in the spring.

Carfax.
Poor wife!

Dundas.
Poor husband!

Lord Burnley.
All the world heard of his bereavement, but nobody was allowed to know how much he felt it. Parliament never knew. Even his colleagues never knew.

Others.
Never!

Lord Burnley.
He had formed his own Ministry in the meantime, and next day, after the funeral, found him on the Treasury Bench as usual. Apparently the same man as ever—proud, austere, reserved, unmoved, and immovable. He had brought in his wife's sister. Lady Dorothy, to look after his house and take care of his little daughter, and . . . that was all.

Carfax.
All?

Lord Burnley.
All that was visible to the eye of the world, I mean. Yes, a strange combination of the iron-willed man and the tender-hearted sentimentalist, I admit. But in danger from the scheming woman—no! Under his stern and cold exterior his dead wife still lives as in a shrine.
[Sir Robert returns to the room.

Sir Robert.
A thousand apologies. It was nothing. My little daughter's nurse had been telling the child some foolish stories before she went to bed. Thought some danger threatened her father, and couldn't be got to sleep without seeing him. Any answer from the Foreign Office?

Others.
No—nothing yet.

Sir Robert.
[Looks at watch] Time enough still. The Ultimatum does not expire until midnight. It's only half-past ten. My sister-in-law has had a little cold supper laid in the next room. Let us go in to it.

Others.
[Rising.] With pleasure!

Carfax.
[Going up.] An hour and a half yet.

Hallam.
[Going up.] They will be sure to wait until the last moment.

Dundas
[Going up.] Sure to.

[The men are passing into room on left when a lady enters by door on right. It is Lady Dorothy Nugent, about thirty-five. She has an open letter in her hand.

Lady Dorothy.
Robert!

Sir Robert.
Dorothy!

Lady Dorothy.
May I speak to you for a moment?

Sir Robert.
[To men.] Excuse me. Go in, gentlemen. Sit down without ceremony. I'll follow you presently. [To Lady Dorothy.] Well?

Lady Dorothy.
Sorry to trouble you at such a time, but the matter is urgent. It's about Peggy. Lucy, the nurse, is no longer a possible person to have charge of such a nervous, imaginative child. She must have a governess immediately.

Sir Robert.
[Going up.] I agree. Find one as soon as possible.

Lady Dorothy.
Another moment, Robert. Do you remember that our dear Margaret used to speak of a Swiss governess whom she wished to engage?

Sir Robert.
[Coming back.] The one she found in the Engadine? I do.

Lady Dorothy.
Well, this letter has come from the girl to-night. It was addressed to Margaret, and I thought you would like me to open it, so I did. Clearly the girl hasn't heard of our darling's death. She writes to say she is leaving her situation, and if Margaret still wishes to engage her she can come to England immediately.

Sir Robert.
[Going up again.] Good! Tell her what has happened, and let her come as soon as possible.

Lady Dorothy.
Of course we shall be taking a certain risk.

Sir Robert.
A risk?

Lady Dorothy.
We have never seen the girl. We know nothing about her.

Sir Robert.
But surely Margaret must have known all about her. In fact, she did. I remember that while she was at St. Moritz she mentioned the girl in more than one of her letters. [Coming down to desk.] Let me see if I can find anything.

Lady Dorothy.
Yes, do. It will be safer.

Sir Robert.
[After taking from drawer a bundle of letters and glancing at one of them.] Ah, here it is. [Reading.] "The references of the young Swiss girl, Freda Michel, whom I thought of as governess for our darling Peggy, turn out to be quite satisfactory. The American family with whom she is at present engaged will give her the warmest recommendations when they leave Europe to return home." That's good enough, isn't it?

Lady Dorothy.
It seems so, certainly.

Sir Robert.
Then write immediately; tell the girl to come to London at once.

Lady Dorothy.
Very well, if you are satisfied.

Sir Robert.
I am, perfectly. [Lady Dorothy goes out. Sir Robert continues to look at the letter, reading parts of it.] "I am sure you will like Freda. She is a sweet, simple, frank, sincere creature. Decidedly pretty, too, with her sea-blue eyes and golden hair." [" Big Ben " is heard chiming the quarter—six beats. Sir Robert folds up the letters, puts them to his lips, returns them to the drawer; switches off the light, and is turning up stage when— Voices are heard from supper-room, and the four men come out, looking very grave.] So soon? Surely you've not finished already?

Lord Burnley.
Robert, there is something we have only just thought of—something serious.

Sir Robert.
What is it?

Lord Burnley.
The reply to our Ultimatum had to reach us before midnight, isn't that so?

Sir Robert.
Undoubtedly.

Lord Burnley.
That would be understood by our neighbour nation to be midnight in the country of dispatch, wouldn't it?

Sir Robert.
Certainly.

Lord Burnley.
Have you remembered the difference in time?

Sir Robert.
Eh?

Lord Burnley.
The difference of an hour between Greenwich and mid-European time?

Sir Robert.
[Embarrassed.] No, I confess, I had not remembered that.

Lord Burnley.
Twelve o'clock in mid-Europe will be eleven in London. Therefore————

Sir Robert.
Therefore there is less than a quarter of an hour left.

Lord Burnley.
That is so.

Sir Robert.
[Sinking into a seat.] And if the reply does not come within a quarter of an hour the absence of an answer will be a declaration of war.

[A strained and painful silence for a moment.

The men seat themselves about the table as before.

Carfax.
But the answer may come still. This telephone bell may ring at any moment.

Hallam.
Besides there may be a breakdown on the wires.

Carfax.
That is possible.

Sir Robert.
[Speaking at the telephone.] Is that you, Denham?— Any answer from the Embassy?—No?—Has there been a breakdown on the continental wires to-night? —Not heard of any? Inquire, please, and ring up immediately.

[He puts back the receiver. There is another painful silence.

Dundas.
[In a low voice.] What is the time now?

Sir Robert.
[Looking at watch.] Seven minutes to eleven.

Lord Burnley.
[Gazing forwards towards audience.] Terrible to think that at this very moment the electric wires may be flashing the awful news through the dark air all over Europe.

[The telephone bell rings. There is a startled movement about the table. Carfax.
Perhaps that is——

Lord Burnley.
Hush!

Sir Robert.
[Taking up receiver and listening.] Denham again? —well?—No interruption?—Continental wires kept clear all evening?—Continue to stand by—Ring up again the moment you hear anything.

[Again Sir Robert puts up the receiver. The voices of the men drop to hushed whispers.

Dundas.
What time now?

Carfax.
[Watch in hand.] Five minutes to eleven.

Lord Burnley.
[With same fixed gaze.] I seem to hear the tramp of twenty millions of men.

Hallam.
Yes, and the scream of shell and the roar of cannon.

Lord Burnley.
[As before.] I see villages and cities given up to the flames—cathedrals devastated—harvests trodden into the earth—only sons falling in battle—the world bleeding to death—women and children slaughtered— whole nations homeless, houseless, on the roads.

Dundas.
Terrible! Terrible!
Hallam.
Such a hideous social tragedy, too! We have tens of thousands of our neighbour nation living in our midst, and shall have to do as we did before—treat them all as enemies.

Carfax.
Yes, the people who have dined at our tables, slept in our beds.

Hallam.
Our alien servants, also—we shall have to turn them all out of doors.

Carfax.
And shut them up in barbed-wire encampments.

Hallam.
Men and women—women particularly, perhaps.

[There is a dull rumble of voices outside in the distance. The men listen to it.

Dundas.
[In a breathless whisper.] What time—now?

Carfax.
Two minutes to eleven.

[The men drop their heads. Sir Robert rises, goes to window, draws back curtains. Park seen outside. Murmur becomes louder; then dies down.

Hallam.
Sir Robert?

Sir Robert.
[At window, in a toneless voice.] Yes?

Hallam.
Can you see the clock of St. Stephen's from there?

Sir Robert.
[Without turning.] No.

Hallam.
When it strikes can you hear it?

Sir Robert.
Yes.

Lord Burnley.
[As before.] It is just as if the whole world were on tip-toe—waiting for the thunder-stroke of fate.

Carfax.
If the telephone rings even now, it may still be peace.

Dundas.
But if not——

Lord Burnley.
[Listening, raising his hand.] Hush!

[Through the awful stillness comes the deep booming of "Big Ben," striking eleven. Boom! Boom! Boom!

[No one moves until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the silence of the night.

[Then Sir Robert returns to the head of the table. All rise. Sir Robert.
[In a deep, low voice, charged with emotion.] It's war!

[The distant murmur of the crowd outside is heard again.

CURTAIN FALLS SLOWLY.