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.
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.)