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Read Ebook: Annajanska the Bolshevik Empress by Shaw Bernard
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Ebook has 201 lines and 7623 words, and 5 pages
SCHNEIDEKIND. But for her own sake, sir--
STRAMMFEST. Eh?--
SCHNEIDEKIND. For her own sake they had better send her here. She will be safe in your hands.
STRAMMFEST . You are right. Be civil to him. I should choke .
SCHNEIDEKIND . Hullo. Never mind all that: it's only a fellow here who has been fooling with the telephone. I had to leave the room for a moment. Wash out: and send the girl along. We'll jolly soon teach her to behave herself here... Oh, you've sent her already. Then why the devil didn't you say so, you--. Just fancy: they started her off this morning: and all this is because the fellow likes to get on the telephone and hear himself talk now that he is a colonel. What's the matter now?... It's our own people downstairs. Here! do you suppose I've nothing else to do than to hang on to the telephone all day?... What's that? Not men enough to hold her! What do you mean? She is there, sir.
STRAMMFEST. Tell them to send her up. I shall have to receive her without even rising, without kissing her hand, to keep up appearances before the escort. It will break my heart.
SCHNEIDEKIND . Send her up... Tcha! He says she is halfway up already: they couldn't hold her.
The Grand Duchess bursts into the room, dragging with her two exhausted soldiers hanging on desperately to her arms. She is enveloped from head to foot by a fur-lined cloak, and wears a fur cap.
SCHNEIDEKIND . At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right and left of her. Go.
The two soldiers make a supreme effort to force her to sit down. She flings them back so that they are forced to sit on the bench to save themselves from falling backwards over it, and is herself dragged into sitting between them. The second soldier, holding on tight to the Grand Duchess with one hand, produces papers with the other, and waves them towards Schneidekind, who takes them from him and passes them on to the General. He opens them and reads them with a grave expression.
SCHNEIDEKIND. Be good enough to wait, prisoner, until the General has read the papers on your case.
THE GRAND DUCHESS . Let go. . Tell them to let go, or I'll upset the bench backwards and bash our three heads on the floor.
FIRST SOLDIER. No, little mother. Have mercy on the poor.
STRAMMFEST . Hold your tongue.
THE GRAND DUCHESS . Me, or the soldier?
STRAMMFEST . The soldier, madam.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Tell him to let go.
STRAMMFEST. Release the lady.
The soldiers take their hands off her. One of them wipes his fevered brow. The other sucks his wrist.
SCHNEIDKIND . 'ttention!
The two soldiers sit up stiffly.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Oh, let the poor man suck his wrist. It may be poisoned. I bit it.
STRAMMFEST . You bit a common soldier!
GRAND DUCHESS. Well, I offered to cauterize it with the poker in the office stove. But he was afraid. What more could I do?
SCHNEIDEKIND. Why did you bite him, prisoner?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. He would not let go.
STRAMMFEST. Did he let go when you bit him?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. No. . You should give the man a cross for his devotion. I could not go on eating him; so I brought him along with me.
STRAMMFEST. Prisoner--
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Don't call me prisoner, General Strammfest. My grandmother dandled you on her knee.
STRAMMFEST . O God, yes. Believe me, my heart is what it was then.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Your brain also is what it was then. I will not be addressed by you as prisoner.
STRAMMFEST. I may not, for your own sake, call you by your rightful and most sacred titles. What am I to call you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. The Revolution has made us comrades. Call me comrade.
STRAMMFEST. I had rather die.
THE GRAND DUCHESS. Then call me Annajanska; and I will call you Peter Piper, as grandmamma did.
STRAMMFEST . Schneidekind, you must speak to her: I cannot--
SCHNEIDEKIND . The Republic of Beotia has been compelled to confine the Panjandrum and his family, for their own safety, within certain bounds. You have broken those bounds.
STRAMMFEST . You are I must say it--a prisoner. What am I to do with you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. You should have thought of that before you arrested me.
STRAMMFEST. Come, come, prisoner! do you know what will happen to you if you compel me to take a sterner tone with you?
THE GRAND DUCHESS. No. But I know what will happen to you.
STRAMAIFEST. Pray what, prisoner?
THE GLAND DUCHESS. Clergyman's sore throat.
Schneidekind splutters; drops a paper: and conceals his laughter under the table.
STRAMMFEST . Lieutenant Schneidekind.
SCHNEIDEKIND . Yes, Sir.
STRAMMFEST. Come out of it, you fool: you're upsetting the ink.
Schneidekind emerges, red in the face with suppressed mirth.
STRAMMFEST. Why don't you laugh? Don't you appreciate Her Imperial Highness's joke?
SCHNEIDEKIND . I don't want to, sir.
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