Ah, priestly sir.
Cardinal: Infuriate man!
Charles: Speak so.
I lust for bitterness.
Cardinal: What have you done!
Charles (shuddering, then smiling): Watched the sun set. Did it not, think you, bleed
Unwontedly along the waves?
Cardinal: O horror!
Horrible when a father slays and smiles!
Charles: Not so, lord Cardinal, not so!—but when
He slays and smileth not.
Cardinal: Beyond all mercy!
Charles: Therefore I smile. Men should not mid the trite
Enchanting and vain trickery of earth
Till they no longer hope of it, or want.
Smiles should be kept for life's unbearable.
Cardinal: Murderer!
Charles: Ah!
Cardinal: Heretic!
Charles: Well.
(Goes to shrine and casts it out the window.)
Cardinal: Fool! fool!
Charles: There are no wise men, O lord Cardinal.
Cardinal: Heaven let Antonio's death under the sea
Make every wave a tongue against your rest,
And 'gainst the rock of this impenitence!
(Charles listens as to something afar off.)
No wind should blow that has not sting of it,
No light stream that it stains not!
Charles (sighing): You have loosed
Your robe, lord prelate—see.
Cardinal: O stone! thou stone!
Charles: Have peace. A keener cry comes up to me
Than frenzy can invoke: a vaster pain
Than justice from Omnipotence may call.
Cardinal: My lips shall learn it.
Charles: "Father" moans it. "Father!"——
It is my ears' inheritance forever.
Enter Fulvia
Fulvia: Lord Cardinal, one of your servants has
In quarrel been struck, and mortally 'tis feared.
Quickly to him: then I may plead of you
Escort to Rome.
Cardinal: I do not understand.
Fulvia: But shall.
Cardinal: To Rome?
Fulvia: Do not pause here to learn
With the dear minutes of a dying man.
(Cardinal goes.
Charles: You baffle and bewilder.
Fulvia: Well.
Charles: You—?—Yes!
I am beat off by it.
Fulvia: Ten years of shelter
Have you held over me.
Charles: Ten years——
Fulvia: Whose days,
Whose every moment else had borne a torture.
Charles: Now——?
Fulvia: I, perhaps, must go.
Charles: Must?—Still I grope.
Fulvia: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calm
And melancholy dusk no shadow is
Or niche but may remember prayer for thee.
Charles: To Rome? You must?—I am under a spell.
Fulvia: We, thou and I, after the battle's foam
Or chase's tired return, often have breathed
The passionate deep hours away in rest
And sympathy.
Charles: Say on. Your voice—I marvel——
Fulvia: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slow
With quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.
Charles: You go?—But, on!—your tone—in it I feel——
Fulvia: Have we not fast been friends?
Charles: What hath your voice?
Fulvia: Such friends have we not been as grow up from
Eternity?
Charles: You say it, and I wake.
Fulvia: Such friends—till yesterday you——
Charles: Ah!
Fulvia: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.
Charles: I had forgot—forgot!—the sun!—the sea!
The sea!—Antonio!—The cliff—the surf!
The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!
Fulvia: Be calm.
Charles (rising excitedly): I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!
A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed
This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them,
If he——
Fulvia (drawing him to his chair): Be patient—calm.
Charles: I—I—remember,
'Tis night!
Fulvia: Yes, night.
Charles: The sun's no more! It hath
Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.
Fulvia: Beyond?—Ah!
Charles (quickly): Fulvia?
Fulvia: 'Tis hard to think!
Charles: You utter and he seemeth still of life.
Fulvia: He was a child in mimic mail clad out
When first this threshold poured its welcome to me.
Charles: Softly you muse it, and call to your eyes
No quailing nor a flame of execration!
You do not burst out on me? from me do
Not shrink as from an executioner?
Fulvia: I am a woman who in tears came to
Your strength, in tears depart.
Charles: And will not judge?
But fear me—fear, and flee?—You shall not go!
Fulvia: Perhaps
Charles: Again "perhaps"—this calm "perhaps!"——
To Rome?—I say you shall not.
Fulvia: Yet should he,
Antonio, from those curtains come——
Charles: Should—should?
You speak not reasonably. Why do you say
"If he should come?"
Fulvia: Because——
Charles: You've touched
And led me trembling from reality!
Those curtains?—those?—just those?—You shall not go.
Fulvia: I will not then.
Charles: But something breaks from you,
And as an air of resurrection stirs.
Speak; on your words I wait unutterably.
Fulvia: Did not a soldier lately come, my lord,
Breathless with eager speech of mutiny——?
Charles: Well—well——?
Fulvia: Within your guard?
Charles: My guard? No—yes——
What do I see yet cannot in your words?
Fulvia: The mutiny was roused at my command.
Charles: Say it—say all!
Fulvia: To save you the mad blot
Of a son's blood.
Charles: Antonio——?
Fulvia: Lives!
Charles: Low—low——
Joy come too furious has piercing peril.
He lives?—You have done this? With these soft hands,
These little hands, held off the shears of Fate?
Have dared? and have not feared?
Fulvia: Your danger was
My fear—that, and no more.
Charles: He lives?—I have
No worth, no gratitude, no gift that may
Answer this deed—no glow, no eloquence
But would ring poor in rarest words of earth.
He lives?—Years yet are mine. Too brief they'll be
To muse with love of this!
Fulvia: No, no, my lord.
Charles: But where is he? Belief, tho' risen, strains
In me as if 'twere fast in cerements
That seeing must unbind.
Fulvia: Turn then, and see.
(Antonio steps from the curtains.)
Charles: Antonio!—boy! boy!
Antonio: My father! (They embrace.)
Re-enter Cardinal.
Cardinal: Princess,
If your decision and desire are still——
(Sees Antonio.)
Fulvia: Your eyes look upon flesh, lord Cardinal.
(A cry is heard, then weeping.)
Antonio (startled): Whose pain is this?—strangely it hurts me—strangely!
Enter Cecco hastily, bearing robe and coronet.
Cecco: My lord, the lady Helen's little maid——
(Sees Antonio. Shrinks from him.)
Antonio: What of her? Are you horrified to stone!
Her maid?—There are than risen dead worse things
And worse to dread!—her maid?
Cecco: Sir——
Antonio: Forth with it!
She direness of her mistress brings? some tale
That earth elsewhere abyssless gaped her up?
That butterfly or bud turn asp to bite her?
Cecco: Sir—she—the maid craves audience with the duke.
Antonio: Fetch her, and quickly.
(Cecco goes.
Fulvia: Reason, Antonio.
She will but whimper, tell what overmuch
Of grief her mistress makes for you: of tears
Your sunny coming will dry in her.
Antonio (putting her aside): These
Hours come not of any good, but are
Infected with resolved adversity.
This dread!——
Fulvia: They ever dread who have but quit
The shadow of some doom and the dismay.
Re-enter Cecco, with Paula weeping.
Antonio: Girl! girl! Thy mistress?
Paula (shrinking): O!——
Antonio: I am no ghost.
Thy mistress?
Paula: Mary, Mother! (Sinks praying.)
Antonio (lifting her up): Look on me. See!
I have not been down in the grave, nor ev'n
A moment beyond earth. Do you not hear!
Paula (looking at him): Sir!
Antonio: Tell me.
Paula (hysterically): Go to her, O, go to her.
Antonio: But, child——?
Paula: She, O!—go seek her, O, she is——
Antonio: Where, Paula?
Paula: Blind all day she moaned and wept.
Antonio: My Helena!
Paula: And when the sun was gone,
Came quiet, kissed me—O, go seek her, sir!
Antonio: Kissed you——?
Paula: Then to me gave these jewels. O!
And darkly cloaked stole out into the night.
Charles: Alone?
Antonio: Whither, quick, whither?
Paula: Ah, I do
Not know: but she——
Antonio: Pray, pray, tell out your dread.
Paula: Last night she said, "My heart is in my lord
Antonio's to beat or cease with it."
I learned her words—they seemed so pretty.
Charles (gasping): Ah!
Antonio: Why do you gasp?—Paula——
Charles: If she—the cliff!
Antonio: The cliff! The—?
(Staggers dizzily, then rushes out.
Charles: Let one go with him—bring
Us what hath passed—hath passed.
(A Soldier goes.
Paula (with uncontrollable terror): My lady!
Charles: Child,
I cannot bear thy voice upon my heart!
It hath a tone—a clutch—no more, no more!
I cannot bear it! We must wait. No hap
Has been—no hap, I think—surely no hap.
Enter Bardas deprecatingly, followed by Antonio.
Bardas: Antonio! not in the sea? You live?
Antonio: I say, where is she?
Bardas: You are mortal?
Antonio (groaning with impatience): O
This utter superstition! (Pricking his arm.) Is it not blood?
Bardas: You live! and live? but let her think your death!
You let her! still devising for yourself
Safety and preservation!
Antonio: She's not safe?
Bardas: O, safe—if she had shrift!
Charles (hoarsely): The dead are so!
Bardas: Ay, so.
Antonio: And none above the grave?—no answer?
Bardas: She came unto the cliff amid her tears—
Her being all into one want was fused,
You down the wave to follow.
Antonio: But you grasped——?
You held her?
Bardas: Yes——
Antonio: Then—well?
Bardas: She had a phial.
Antonio: God! God!
Bardas: Out of her breast she drew it swift,
And instant of it drank.
Antonio: Drank? and she fell?
No?—no?—Ah but you dashed it from her lips?
She did but taste?——
Bardas: Only: and then——
Antonio: More? more?
Bardas: "Is 't not enough," she pled to me, "Enough
That I must wander the cold way of death
Unto his arms? Go hence! There is no rest.
I will go down and clasp him, drift with him
To some unhabited gray ocean vale
God hath forgot. There will we dwell away
From destiny and weeping, from despair!"
Charles: You left her?
Bardas: As I held her piteous hand
Came revellers who saw us—jested her
Of taking a new love. She broke my grasp——
Antonio: And leapt?—down the wide air?
Bardas: Swifter than all
Prevention.
Antonio: Helena! O Helena!
That all thy loveliness should fare to this,
Thy glory go in dark calamity!
Bardas: I saw her as she leapt and until death
Shall see no more.
Antonio (drawing): Blot it from you! Her face,
Her sorrow and her fairness shall not stand
Imprisoned in your eye, tho' 'twere to cry
Relentlessly your crime.—But no—but no!
(Sheathing his sword, he pauses, then staggers suddenly out.)
Paula: Let me go to my lady!
Charles: Still her! She
Forever hath a fluttering, a cry,
Undurably. It presses the lone air
With sensitive and aching agony.
Paula (witlessly, in tears): I know thy song, my lady, I know, I know!
'Twas pretty and 'twas strange, but now I know.
(Sings.) Sappho! Sappho!
In maiden woe
(Let alone love, it spurns and burns!)
Wept—wept, and leapt—
O love is so!
(Let alone love, it burns!)
My lady! O my lady! my sweet lady!
(She is led out.)
Fulvia: This is most sad—most sad, and pitiful.
Charles: I cannot bear her voice upon my heart
Enter Agabus gazing into the air.
Again this monk? this dog of death?—and now?
Agabus: My trusty Shadow (Laughs madly.) Ha, he has been here!
My king o' the worms and all corruption!—
(Approaching Charles.) Lovers, and lovers! O she leapt as 'twere
To Christ and not sin's Pit! And he is gone
To follow her! The devil's nine wits are
Too many!
(Wanders about.)
Fulvia: My lord! Your limbs are frozen,
And bloodlessly you stand! Move, rouse, O breathe!
It is not truth but madness that he speaks.
(A cry and clanking of armor are heard
in the Hall. A Soldier bursts into the chamber.)
Soldier: O duke! O duke! (Sinks to his knee.)
Charles: (gazes at him, struggling to speak): Rise—go—and, if thou canst—
To pray.
Soldier: O sir——!
Charles: You have no tidings.
Soldier: Sir——
Charles (desperately): None, fool! but come to say what silence groans,
What earth numb and in deadness raves to me.
To tell Antonio hath gone out and o'er
A precipice hath stepped for sake of love.
This is not tidings—hath it not on me
Been fixed forever? It is older than
Despair, as old as pain! (To Hæmon, who has entered.) Your sister——
Bardas: Hæmon——!
Cardinal: Hold him not in this anguish.
Fulvia: She and our
Antonio have left us to our tears.
(Hæmon stands motionless.)
Charles: Let no one groan. I say let no one groan—
Fury on him that groans! (He blindly rocks to and fro.)
Fulvia: My lord!
Charles (taking her hand): Well—come.
(As in a trance.)
There's much to do. We will think of the dead.
Perchance 'twill keep them near us: speak to them,
And they may answer while we wait, may float
Dim words on moonbeams to us. O for one
That shall sound of forgiveness and of rest!
(More wildly.)
O I have started on the mountain's brow
A tremor that has loosed the avalanche;
And penitence too late—too late—too late—
Was powerless as flowers along its path!
(He sinks back into his chair and stares
hopelessly before him.)
Curtain.