Paula: My lord Antonio! my lady! (Seeing Charles.) O!
Charles (strangely): Come here.
Paula: O, sir!
Charles (taking her wrist): Were you not in a haste?
Paula: I—I—I do not know.
Charles: Girl!—Why do you
Drop fearful to your knees?
Paula: 'Tis late, sir, late,
Let me go in!
Charles: You have a mistress who
Keeps quick temptation in her eyes and hair.
A shy mole too lies pillowed on her cheek—
Does she rest well?
Paula: My lord——
Charles: Ah, you would say
She sometimes walks asleep: and you have come
To fetch her?
Paula: Loose me, sir!
Charles: Or she has left
Her kerchief in some nook: you seek it?
Paula: O,
Your eyes! your eyes!
Charles: I have a son: are his
Not like them?
Paula: My wrist, sir!
Charles: It was night, then—night?
You could not see him clearly?
Paula: Mercy!
Charles (looking about): Yet
Perchance he too walks in his sleep. Were it
Quite well if they have met—these two that walk?
Paula: My lady, my sweet lady!
Charles (releasing her): Go, for she
Still wonderful may lie upon her couch,
One arm dropt whitely. If you prayed for her—
If you should pray for her—Something may chance:
There is so much may chance—we cannot know!
(Paula goes.
(Disturbed.) This child who hath but dwelt about her, touched
And coiled the mystery of her hair, has might
Almost too much!
Hæmon: You cloud me with these words.
Were they Antonio's——
Charles: If I but think
"Helena" must you link "Antonio" to it!
Can they not be, yet be apart? Will winds
Not bear them, and not sound them separate!
If angels cry one at the stars will they
But echo back the other?—This is froth—
The froth and fume of folly. You are thick
In falsity, and in disquietude.
Another rapture rules Antonio's eye,
Not Helena.
Hæmon: You know it—yet have led
Her to his arms?
Charles: His arms! Ah, mole to burrow
Thus under blind and muddy misbelief!
To mine is she come here. (Terribly.) Were he a seraph,
And did from Paradise desire to fold her—
No mercy!—But, I will speak as a child,
As he who woke with Ruth fair at his feet;
Long have I gleaned amid the years and lone.
She shall glean softly now beside me—softly,
Till sunset fail in me and I am night.
Hæmon: This is a gin, a net, and I am fast!
Charles: A net to snare what never has been free?
Hæmon: Still must it be this tenderness lives false
Upon your lips.
Charles: "Must," say you, "must," yet stand——
Hæmon: Then shall he rest—lie easy down and rest In treachery?
Charles: He——?
Hæmon: Yes.
Charles: You mean——?
Hæmon: Yes!—yes!
Charles: Antonio?
Hæmon: Is it not open?
Charles (confusedly): No:
Glooms start around me, glooms that seethe and cling.
Hæmon: This maid who called, did she come idly here?
You stir? you rouse?
Charles: A coldness runs in me.
Hæmon: And have not I come strangely on the hour!
Charles: It 'gins to burn!
Hæmon: Not entered a strange way?
Charles: You pause and ever pause upon my patience.
'Twill heave unbearably!
Hæmon: Then hear me, hear!—
Senseless against a bank I found a boy,
Hurled by some ruthless hoof. Near him this key
And writing——
Charles: Tell it!
Hæmon: That avows, mid lines
Clandestine of purport, Antonio
And Helena, under these shades at twelve——
Charles: You bring on me a furious desolation.
But Fulvia, ah, she——
Hæmon: Not there is trust!
She is aware and aids in his deceit.
This writing says it of her.
Charles: Fulvia? No!
No, no!—Though she had sudden whispers for him!
A lie—Yet fast belief fixes its fangs
On me and will not loose me—for against
My hope she set a coldness and a doubt!
O woman woven through all fibres of me!
(Starting up.) But he——!
Hæmon: Ah then, it runs in you, the rush
And pang that answer mine?
Charles (quietly): If they are still——
Hæmon: Under these shades?
Charles: And—lips to lips——
Hæmon: Ah, God!
You will?—you will?
Charles: Hush! something—No, it was
But fate cried out in me, not any voice.
Hæmon: We must be swift.
Charles: It cries again. I will
Not listen! He's not flesh of me—not flesh!
A traitor is no son, nor was nor shall be!
Though it shriek desolation utterly
I will not listen!
Hæmon: Do not!
Charles: And to-day
He shook, ashen and clenched, remembering
The guilty secret in him!
Hæmon: Still he's free.
Charles: My words fell warm as tears—"A rift has come,
A rift, a smile, a breath"—men speak so when
They creep from madness up into some space
Whose element is love.
Hæmon: And will you sink
To a weak palsy—who should o'erwhelm
With penalty!
Charles (rousing): No! all and ever false
Was he who's so when most he should be true!
I will make treachery bitter to all time.
Bring dread on all to whom are given sons!
Down generations shall they peer and tremble,
Look on me as on majesties accursed!—
Search every shade—search, search! You stand as death.
I am in famine till he gives me groan!
(They go in opposite directions.
Enter Fulvia, distressed, and Giulia.
Fulvia: He was with Hæmon?
Giulia: On that seat.
Fulvia: Convulsed,
Yet passionless?
Giulia: His words were low
Fulvia: Why were
You not asleep?
Giulia: I——
Fulvia: Did he beat his hands
Briefly—and then no more?
Giulia: I was behind——
Fulvia: And could not see? But heard their names?
The Greek is still without?
Giulia: My lady, yes.
Fulvia: Your voice is guilty. How came Hæmon in?
Answer me, answer! No, go quickly! If
The duke has entered now and sleeps! Or if——!
(Words and swords are heard, then a shriek
from Helena. Charles rushes in furious
and wounded in the arm, followed
by Helena, Antonio, who is dazed, and
from the Castle side by Hæmon, guards,
etc.)
Antonio: You, you, sir? father? I knew it not, so swift
Your rage fell on me.
Charles (to a guard): Gaping, ghastly fool!
Do you behold him murderous and lay
No hand on him!
Antonio: But, sir——!
Charles: Let him not fawn
About me! Seize him! God forgives not Hell.
Not this blood only but my soul's be on him.
Helena: O, do not, he——
Charles: Stand! stand! Touch me not with
Your voice or eyes or being! They are soft
With perfidy, and stole me to believe
There's sweetness in a flower, light in air,
And beauty in the innocence of earth.
Bind him! Leucadia's just cliff awaits
All traitors—'tis the law, they must be flung
Out on the dizzy and supportless wind.
Fulvia: But this shall never be! No, though your looks
Heave out with hate upon me.
Charles (convulsed, then coldly): You are dead,
And speak to me. Once you were Fulvia—
No more! And once my friend, now but a ghost
Whom I must gaze upon forgetlessly.
Obey, at once! and at to-morrow's sunset!
(Antonio is taken and led out.)
Helena (falling at Charles' feet): You cannot, will not—O, he is your son
And loves you much!
Charles: Touch me not! touch me not!
(To Hæmon.) Lead her away—and quickly, quickly, quickly! (Hæmon goes with Helena through the postern.
Friends—friends—(unsteadily) I am—quite—friendless now—? (Clutching his wounded arm.) Ah—quite! (He faints.)
Fulvia: Charles! Charles! my lord! return!—A numbness
Has barred the way of soothing to his breast!
Curtain.
ACT FOUR
Scene.—A chamber in the Castle, opening on the
right to a hall, curtained on the left from another chamber. In the rear
is a window through which may be seen silvery hills of olive resting
under the late afternoon sun: by it a shrine. Enter the
Captain of the Guard and a
Soldier from the Hall.
Soldier: There is no more?
Captain: Not if you understand.
Soldier: That do I—every link of it! I've served
Under the bold de Montreal, and he
For stratagems—well, Italy knows him!
Captain: You must be quick and secret.
Soldier: As the end
Of the world!
Captain: Our duty's with the duke. But then
Antonio has our love.
Soldier: That has he! Ah,
That has he!
Captain: Well, be close. None must escape,
Remember, none be hurt. As for the princess,
We'll hear the chink of ducats with her thanks.
Soldier: Madonna save her!—The Judas of a father
Who robs her rest!
Captain (looking down the hall): 'Tis she who comes this way.
So go, and haste. But fail not.
Soldier: If I do,
Bury me with a pagan, next a Turk!
(Goes.
Enter Fulvia.
Captain: Princess—
Fulvia: Our plans grow to fulfilment—are
No way misplanted?
Captain: Lady, all seems now
Seasonable for their expected fruit.
Fulvia: No accident appears to threat and thwart them?
Captain: Doubt not a fullest harvest of your hope.
The duke himself shall for this deed at last
Have benediction.
Fulvia: May it be! He's quick,
Though quicker in forgetting. I will move
Him as I may.
Captain: The kind and wise assaults
Your words shall make must move him, gracious lady.
Enter Hæmon.
Hæmon: I seek the duke.
Fulvia (dismissing Captain with a gesture):
You would seek penitence
Were you less far in folly.
Hæmon (as going): O—if he's
Not here, then——
Fulvia: Sorrow too would strain your lips,
Not cold defiance.
Hæmon: Pardon: if you know,
Where is he?
Fulvia: Was it easy to o'erwhelm
Under the ruin of her dreams a sister?
Hæmon: Better beneath her dreams than under shame.
Fulvia: Your rashness cloaks itself in that excuse,
Your ruth, and your suspicion that has doomed
One innocent.
Hæmon: One innocent! His thought
Had but betrayal for her!
Fulvia: 'Tis the Greek
In you avows it, no true voice.
Hæmon: Then 'tis
My father murdered whose last moan I hear
Driven about me in this castle's gray
Cold spaces. And the dead speak not to lie.
Fulvia: No, no. You cannot brave your action with
The spur of that belief.
Hæmon: What want you of me?
Fulvia: This: ache and restlessness are on you.
Hæmon (impatiently): No.
Fulvia: And doubt begins in you that as a wolf
Will scent the wounded quarry of your conscience.
Hæmon: After he lured and wooed her under night
And secrecy?
Fulvia: Not running there will you
Escape its dread pursuit.
Hæmon: He frauded—duped
His father's trust!
Fulvia: Or there! But one refuge
Have you against its bitter ceaseless tooth,
And that above the wilds of self-deceit.
Hæmon: Why do you wind so sinuously about me?
No refuge can be from an hour that's done.
Shall we invert the glass or tilt the dial
To bring it back?
Fulvia: But if there were?
Hæmon: Where is
The duke—I will not bauble.
Fulvia: If there were?
Hæmon: I will no longer listen to the worm,
You set to feed upon me—torturing!
The sun melts to an end, and with the night
Antonio will not be.
Fulvia: Yet there is time.
Hæmon: The duke is fixed.
Fulvia: No matter: 'gainst the swell
And power of this peril you must lean.
Hæmon: I——?
Fulvia: Yes.
Hæmon: You have a plan?
Fulvia: One that is sure. (Steps are heard.)
But through those curtains, quick. For more seek out
The Captain of the guard. The duke comes hither.
(Hæmon goes through the curtains.
Charles enters, worn, dishevelled, and followed by Cecco.
He sees Fulvia and pauses.
Fulvia: I come to plead.
Charles: (turning away): Ah! Nature should have pled
With her your mother, 'gainst conception.
Fulvia: Your trust is causelessly withdrawn. Yet for
A breath again I beg it—for a moment!
Charles: A moment were too much—or not enough.
Is trust a flower of sudden birth we may
Bid bloom with a command?
Fulvia: Ah, that it were,
Or bloomed as amaranth in those we love,
Beyond all drought and withering of ill!
But hear me——!
Charles: Leave these words.
Fulvia: Will you not turn
Out of this rage?
Charles: Leave them, I say, and cease!
Still down the vortex of this destiny
I would not farther have you drawn.
Fulvia: Then from
It draw yourself!
Charles: Myself am but a hulk
Whose treasures have already been engulfed.
Fulvia: Yet shrink from it!
Charles: A son, a friend, a—No,
She was not mine!—I will not turn.
Fulvia: It is
Your fury that distorts us into guilt.
Although he will not render up his heart,
But flings you stony and unfilial speech,
Fearing for her——
Charles: Leave!
Fulvia: We——
Charles: Thrice have I said it!
Fulvia: Yet must I not until your will is wasted.
Charles (angrily): Ah!
(Fulvia sighs then goes slowly.)
Charles: Cecco!
Cecco: My lord?
Charles: The hour?
Cecco (going to window): It leans to sunset.
Charles: The sky—the sky?
Cecco: A murk moves slowly up.
Charles (wearily): There should be storm—gloating of wind and grind
Of hopeless thunders. Lightnings should laugh out
As tongues of fiends. There should be storm.
(His head sinks on his breast.)
(Suddenly.) Yet!—yet!——
Cecco: My lord?
Charles: The glow and glory of her seem
Dead in me!
Cecco: Of—the Greek?
Charles: And yearning has
Grown impotent—as 'twere a moment's folly,
A left and quickly quenched desire of youth
Kindled in me!—To youth alone love's sudden.
Cecco: Sir, dare I speak?
Charles: Speak.
Cecco: When Antonio——
Charles: Cease: but a whisper of his name and I
Am frenzy—frenzy—though the stillness burns
And bursts with it!
(Cecco steps back. A pause.)
Charles: The sun, how hangs it now?
Cecco (going to window): Above the bloody waving of the sea,
Eager to dip.
Charles (staggering up): Ah, I was in a foam——
Bitten by hounds of fury and despair!
Did you not, Fulvia, pleading for them say
They quailed but would not flee and leave me waste?
Cecco: She is not here, my liege.
Charles: Antonio!
Ah, boy! thou ever wast to me as wafts
Of light, of song, of summer on the hills!
Soft now I feel thy baby arms about me,
And all the burgeon of thy youth, ere proud
And cruel years grew in me, comes again
On wings and stealing winds of memory!
Cecco: O, then, sir——
Charles: Yes. Fly, fly! and stay the guard!
He must not—Ah!—down fearful fathoms, down
Into the roar!
(Cecco starts. He stops him.)
Yet he has flung me from
Immeasurable peaks, and I have sunk
Forevermore beneath hope's horizon.
Who falls so close the grave can rise no more.
Cecco: This your despair would wound him more than death.
Forget the girl.
Charles: She? Ah, my sullen, wild,
And gloomy pulse beat with a rightful scorn
Against the hours that sieged it. Stony was
Its solitude and fierce, bastioned against
All danger of quick blisses—till, with fury
For that mute tenderness which women's love
Lays on the desolation of the world,
She ravished it!—Yet now 'tis still and cold.
Cecco: But 'twas unknowingly.
Charles: A woman's smile
Never was luring, never, but she knew it,
As hawk the cruel rapture of his wings.
Cecco: She though is young, and youth——
Charles: Must pay with moan
The shriving!—Ah, the sun—the sun—where burns it?
Cecco: Upon a cloud whence it must spring to night.
Charles: So low?
Cecco: Sir, yes.
Charles: Ah, 'tis? so low?
Cecco: Red now
It rushes forth.
Charles: A breathing of the world,
And then!—Antonio!
Cecco: Again a cloud
Withholds.
Charles: Antonio!
Cecco: It dips, my lord.
Charles (frenzied): O, will great Christ upon it lay no fear!
Let it swoon down as if its sinking sent
No signal unto Death—and plunge, plunge thee,
Antonio, forever from the day!
Has He no miracle will seize it yet!
Nor will lend now His thunder to cry hold,
His lightning to flame off the hands that grasp,
Bidden to hurl thee o'er!
Cecco: 'Tis sunk!
Charles (rushing to window): Yes!—Yes! (Starting back horrified.) The vision of it! Ah,—see you not, see!
They lift him, swing him—Now! down, down, down, down!
The rocks! the lash! the foam!
(Sinks exhausted in his chair. Cecco pours
out wine.)
Enter hurriedly, a Soldier.
Soldier: Great lord!
Cecco: What now!
It is ill-timed!
Soldier: Great lord, there's mutiny!
Cecco: And where?
Soldier: Hear me, great sir, there's mutiny!
Cecco: The town? the town?
Charles (rousing): Ay——?
Soldier: Mutiny! your haste!
Charles: O, mutiny.
Soldier: Sir, yes!
Charles: And do the ranks
Of hell roar up at me?—It is not strange.
Soldier (confused): The ranks of—pardon, lord.
Charles: Do the skies rage——?
They were else dead to madness.
Soldier: Sir, it is
Your guard beyond the gates.
Charles: 'Tis every throat
Of earth and realm unearthly has a cry
Against me and against!
Soldier: No, but a few——
Charles: You doubt it?—Are my eyes not bloody? Say!
Soldier: Sir! sir!
Charles: My lips then are not pale with murder
Bitterly done?
Soldier: Pale—no.
Charles: Yet have I killed;
Spoke death with them—not reasonless—yet death.
And all the lost have echoes of it: hear
You not a spirit clamor on the air?
Ploughing as storms of pain it passes through me.
Mutiny? Go. I could call chaos fair,
And fawn on infinite ruin—fawn and praise.
(Soldier goes.
Yet will not yield! (To Cecco.) My robes and coronet!
(Cecco goes to obey.
I'll sit in them and mock at greatness that
A passion may unthrone. If we weep not
Calamity will leave to torture us,
And fate for want of tears will thirst to death!
Enter Cardinal.