Re-enter KNIGHT.
KNIGHT. Drink this. 'T is water from the virgin springs
Of Carmel, pure and cold. Stains of the world
That leave the heavens clean leave earth's own heart
Immaculate. 'T is but her outer garment
That man and roving beast avail to smear.
The curse of Adam stops at living things
And Nature sleeps untainted. There is healing
In such a fountain draught. Taste of this bread.
Acorns I also bring and well-dried figs.
Take freely: there is plenteous store for both.
For often as I ride a village through
Or tighten as I start from hostelries
My horse's girth, the hospitable dame
Or her young daughter brings me something forth
From the rich larder, now a loaf or fowl
And now a goat-skin full of seasoned wine.
God prompts their kindly hearts and makes them bounteous
Lest my strength fail me ere my journey's end,
Who knows how distant yet.—Come, break thy fast.
Remember, father, this is Christmas Eve
When angels, joining in the songs of earth,
Make mortals joyful, knowing their painful flesh
Allied to deity.
HERMIT. I crave no food.
KNIGHT. Nay, nay, thy faintness called for it but now.
HERMIT. Not hunger gave that cry but wonderment.
KNIGHT. At my poor brother's name?
HERMIT. Thy brother lives.
KNIGHT. Where? Dost thou know him? In this Holy Land?
HERMIT. Poor Damian of the Marches! Verily
His sins are scarlet. Pray for him, fair Knight,
But seek not to discover his abode.
If thou should st find him he would die of shame
For bringing shame upon thee.
KNIGHT. Hast thou seen him?
Or is it slander of a gossip's mouth
That now usurps thy tongue? If he be fallen
He hath the greater need of charity
And some late succour.
HERMIT. Through long wanderings
We never once were parted. In his youth
I deemed him honest, loved him as myself,
Nor doubted he should richly thrive and prosper
Amongst the sons of men. But day by day
The hand of opportunity unmasked
The sleeping guilt within. Envy and greed,
Pitiless malice, pride, and wantonness
Started like lion's cubs that scent their prey
And roared increasingly. Time drew aside
Veil after veil that cloaked his villainy,
Till looking on his stark and naked soul
I stood aghast and trembled.
KNIGHT. God, that made us,
Engraved his sacred image in our hearts
Deeper than cruel eyes may boast to pierce.
Has not my brother too a priceless soul
For which Christ died? Did God not ransom it?
Yes, I will find him, lift him to my breast
And say, "Forget the past. Thy home is here."
HERMIT. Beware! Didst thou embrace him he would die,
And he hath grievous penance yet to do
Ere he be ripe for heaven. In purgatory
The pains are doubly sharp and manifold
With which our guilt is cleansed. Forbear to search.
KNIGHT. This ministration is a task that heaven
Now lays upon me. Hinder not his weal.
What better battle could approve my courage
Than in a brother's soul to fight despair?
If I could bring that brother back to life
Long dead to me, and dead, it seems, to God,
Were't not a deed of Christian chivalry
To win my lady by? Father, I pray thee,
Where is my brother now?
HERMIT. A mystery
Enshrouds his penance. Vain to question more.
A secret vow on which salvation hangs
Lies between him and all men.
KNIGHT. Marvellous!
Where hath he roamed, what nameless sin committed
That I may not embrace him?
HERMIT. Listen, Knight,
For I may tell thee that; and when thou knowest
The sins he shrives and what his penance is,
Assist him with thy charitable prayers
To bear his cross, but lift it not away,
For with it goes his hope of paradise.
KNIGHT. There is indeed some mystery in this.
The pain of it doth weigh upon thy soul
Even in the telling.
HERMIT. Did his own pale lips
Read from the branded tablets of his heart
The record of his sorrows, they could never
More truly speak than I, for all his woes
I knew, and inly felt them as my own.
Would that some ruffian knife had gashed his throat
On that foul day of slaughter, when thy mother
Bore thee afar to safety. Ah, how near
Salvation hung that day above his head!
But wondrously, as Isaac once was spared,
Some voice he heard not stayed the murderous hand,
Then dealing death abroad; and from that mercy
The dreadful brood of all his torments sprang.
They bound his wrists with painful twisted thongs
And drove him with the flocks and captive women
Into their camp, across the smouldering heaps
Of burning rubbish and through sulphurous fumes.
That night he found him tied behind a cart—
The crawling palace of that savage chief
Whose greed had saved him. Shivering he stood,
For they had stripped him, through the starlight hours,
And found no piteous orb less bright above him
For looking on his grief. Alas, his soul
Entered that night into the maze of hell.
For gazing on those stars and on the corpses
Of all he loved and knew, mangled and bare,
Upbraiding heaven with their lidless eyes,
And heaven's eyes still smiling back at them,
He said to his cold heart, "There is no God."
And when the rosy dawn with jocund seeming
Gilded the valley as if naught had chanced,
He, like the morning, banished grief and love,
And in his vain and cruel heart repeating
"There is no God," arose to greet the sun.
They took him to a village by a stream,
And in the market sold him to a Jew,
A long-robed man, who stroked thy brother's hair—
'T was flaxen then and silken as thy own—
And chuckled as he hurried him away
Into a galley, by the margin moored.
They voyaged long, until they reached a vast
And splendid city. Egypt's sunken shore
Stretches behind it, and before its walls
Pharos, by day a pillar and by night
A flaming beacon, greets the mariner.
'T is Satan's capital. If holy men
Have dwelt within it, teaching all the Church,
That was of old. Now Saracens and Jews
Possess it wholly. There no Christian thrives,
But every monstrous and lascivious crime
Findeth a palace or a den to hide it.
There did thy brother waste his youth, a slave,
And no unwilling service did he render
To every base command. His shepherd's skin,
Ruddy with mountain suns, they smoothed with unguents,
And bleached in pillared courts; they shaved his hair,
Forbade him labour, save to hold a torch
While his young masters read, or at the banquet
To mix the lucent sherbets with the snows
Of Sinai's deepest gorge, or in the censer
To drop large incense-grains. He learned to sing
What songs of wine their ribald poets penned,
And all the witch of Lesbos raved of love.
The lute and timbrel in his skilful hands
They loved to place; oft in their languid souls
His wild chant roused some savage memory
And their hearts leapt like leopards in the night
That prowl through broad Sahara. His delight
Was henceforth the choice morsel, the fat fee,
The subtle theft. He brought the gossip home
From the loud market, lest his lord should yawn
The morning long beneath the barber's hands,
Nor praise his wit and to the tittering group
Repeat his story. In the brothel streets
He ran sly errands, nor escaped in fear
If as he passed some wife of Potiphar
Plucked at his tunic. His best art it was
To know the cunning mixture of good wines
And poisons too, if some adulterous slave
Or long-lived uncle or importunate brother
Needed a poison.—Close about his soul
This bitter flood of luxury crept up
Until it choked him. He forgot the past
And blushed to be a Christian. Their vain prayers
He learned to mutter, and was circumcised.
Thrice in the day, and dawn and noon and eve,
He washed his feet and hands, a foolish rite
That left the soul still foul. Twice seven devils
Lodged in his body and tormented him,
And lust pursued him when all ways of lust
Were stale and sickened.
But there came an end.
For by the flesh as he had chiefly sinned,
So in the flesh he had his punishment.
Ulcers and boils, to make another Job,
Thickened upon him, and his beauty gone,
They drove him like a pest from all their gates
Among the lepers. Then he called on God.
Then he remembered all he once had heard
But understood not touching Calvary;
And rising up, all naked as he was,
He plucked the stout stem of a bramble-bush
To be his palmer's staff, and with a rag
That once had been the blanket of a mule
Girded his loins, and stalked into the wild.
KNIGHT. And whither, father, whither did he go?
HERMIT. Mount Sinai first received him, on whose crests
The Lord in the beginning reared his throne,
And from whose spurs and watered crevices
The children of Saint Anthony for ever
Pour praise and supplication. There he dwelt,
Recalling to his troubled memory
The precepts of the faith; but from those haunts
He journeyed soon to deeper solitudes.
KNIGHT. Then he repented and is surely saved?
HERMIT. God grant it, son, God grant it for thy sake.
'T is not a day can change the heart of man,
Though grace doth much. The ancient demons lurk
Still in their dark recesses, and at night,
Or in the idle moments when the soul
Breathes 'mid her travail, suddenly assail.
In the vast wilderness the starving eye
Spies many shapes that feed its lust. To me
The buzz of bees, the lizard's sunny sleep,
The snake's lithe coils are full of languishment.
Oh, how the base blood then assaults the heart
Crying, "Fool, fool, what were the life of heaven
Unless in heaven too the sun were warm
And the blood rose and all the passions flared,
Even as in worms compact of earth and fire
That lecherously writhe? Their goads and stings
Are in thy flesh, why not their ravishment?"
They are strange shapes the devil sometimes takes.
There was a vine that crept along this wall,
Ancient and knotted; far its branches spread
And with their leafy greenness made a bower
Over my cell. The juicy clusters hung
Not far above me, and the little birds
Chirped in the sun-flecked tangle all day long,
Hopping from twig to twig and carolling.
I sat and listened, and methought they said:
"Bad hairy man, thou only in this world
Repinest, hater of thyself and us,
Thou art all nature's single enemy."
And with a doubt that cleft my heart in twain
I sat and pondered what they sang to me.
Then I looked up into the sunlit maze
Of that old vine, I breathed its subtle scent,
I watched its spotted shadows shift and change
With gusty murmurous tremblings of its leaves
And eager tendrils, curling through the air,
Until it seemed as if the thing had life
And was a devil stooping over me
With the obsession of his purring breath
Wooing me to perdition. But I laughed,
For I had dealt with imps of hell before.
I searched the stubble till I found two flints,
Sharp and with something like a cross upon them,
And straight about the vine's outspreading roots
Began to dig. A week, methinks, I dug
With secret joy, well knowing that in vain
The demon thought to ripen all his grapes.
His filthy roots, now dangling in the air,
Dried in the sun. In August fell the leaves,
And the dead branches with the autumn's flaw
Rotted and broke; now, see, they feed my fire.
And when the Spring returns no silly birds
Will fret me with their singing. God be praise
That I could balk that devil: long he mocked
My lonely penance with his evil eye.
But others come anon; and what I suffer
'T is very like thy brother suffers too.
KNIGHT. I cannot think so, father. Thou art weak
And long hast laid the hopes of youth aside.
Thou canst not love. My brother still is young—
HERMIT. Alas, if grief had multiplied his years!
KNIGHT. He yet can love, and any natural voice
Of wood or mountain, or perchance my own,
Might wake in him another better life
Of peace and happy hopes. We love the forest,
We who were nurtured in its magic depths.
Oft has it seemed as if God spoke to us
In the low voices of the prayerful boughs
That whisper nighest heaven.
HERMIT. This false world
Is naught, my son, but what we make of it.
KNIGHT. Then I must think my brother loves the woods
And hears God's message in their murmuring.
Had he dwelt here, a hermit like thyself,
He would have suffered that old vine to grow
And those blithe birds to sing. 'T is positive,
Else other blood than mine must fill his veins.
Oh, I will find him yet.—I leave thee, father.
Thou hast with heavy tidings and great hope
Burdened my soul. Now I must journey on.
I pray, thy blessing.
HERMIT. Kneel, thou happy stranger,
Kneel, for a vision comes into my heart
And I must prophesy. Thus saith the Lord:
"Thou shalt not know thy brother upon earth;
My will forbids. But thou shalt pass him by,
And as Saint Peter's shadow healed a man,
The passing of thee, by my grace and mercy,
Shall save thy brother's soul." This comfort take
And go thy ways.
KNIGHT. The will of God be done.
If not on earth, we yet may meet in heaven.
HERMIT. God grant it.
KNIGHT. May God keep thee.
HERMIT. Fare thee well.
KNIGHT [sings as he goes].
The star stood still o'er Bethlehem
That showed the wise the way,
And where the shepherds sleeping lay
The angels sang to them:
Glory be to God on high
And peace on earth to men.
HERMIT. Lord of Mount Carmel, hearken to my prayer.
God of the hills, accept my sacrifice.
[THE KNIGHT'S RETURN]
A SEQUEL TO A HERMIT OF CARMEL
SCENE.—A wooded lawn before the gate of a castle. In an arbour LADY FLERIDA and NURSE at their handiwork.
NURSE. The dews will soon be falling, Flerida.
Come in, sweet lady.
FLERIDA. Hush! 'T is early yet.
NURSE. 'T is time, methinks, to say the rosary.
FLERIDA. See the sun hanging o'er the darkened hills
Bright as the Host above the multitude
Of bending worshippers! Tell thy beads here,
The congregation of these rustling leaves
Will answer all thy Aves patiently.
NURSE. I 've dropped a stitch. I cannot see to work
'Neath trellises. These gentlefolk are mad.
The mistress of a castle sits without,
Like a poor homeless beggar!
FLERIDA. Nay, go in
And burn thy rush-light while the sun is shining,
Or, by the casement squinting, knit thy hose
While in these gilded clouds the seraphim
Are singing Glory. Go, I follow thee.
NURSE [getting up to go].
Alack, this rheum. Young bones will brave the cold
Till the twitch comes.—Trust me, 't is hazardous,
Sweet child, to tarry here beyond the moat
Alone, when evening falls. Once at thy age
My mother sent me on a night like this
To good old Prior Bennet, at Saint Giles.
He was her uncle and a saintly man—
How well do I remember his grey beard!—
She went to him for shrift, and on that day
She had a fainting turn: she had them oft
Till in the last, poor sainted soul, she died.
I needs must run and fetch him, for to die
Unreconciled was all my mother feared,
And but for that, she had so hard a life
She would have changed it any day for heaven,
And on the way ('t was scarce a rood from home)
An idle foul young lout that sauntered by
Griped at my frock—I tremble at it still—
Thank God, the Virgin willed that at the trice
Friar Peter (he was porter all that month)
Opened the gate to let two pilgrims out,
Bound, as they told us, for Jerusalem.
Else Heaven knows what had become of me,
Or whether I had ever had the face
To cheat my husband, as most wenches do,
Without confessing aught: for I am honest
If ever woman was.
FLERIDA. Go in, go in.
NURSE. Seest thou not I go? Can I make haste
With these poor aching joints? Thou think'st thee safe?
Remember Ulric in his dungeon plans
Vengeance upon you, and his friends abroad
Hatch plans for his deliverance. Thou a maid,
An orphan, friendless, with these ill-paid men
Guarding thy walls, what dost thou fading here?
Who knows but he is dead, thy pretty knight?
His time is up. Were he alive and true
He had spurred home, hearing thy father's death,
To claim thee and make good his heritage.
Fie on this fondness, girl! It had been wiser
To yield to Ulric. Was it not his place
To guard thee? Led he not thy father's men?
Ah, better be his wife, rich, safe, and loved,
Than wait for ever among enemies
For what will never come.
FLERIDA. Poor soul, go in.
The five years are not passed, and if they were
And I had ocular proof that he was dead,
Ulric should not be master in these walls.
But I should open arches in the tower
For bells to swing in, and the grass should grow
Upon the buried hinges of the draw.
Veiled we should walk within the garden-close,
And in the dimmed hall chant our psalmodies
With the frail voice of nuns. So get thee gone,
And summon better counsel to thy heart
Than quavers on thy lips. Go light thy taper,
And pray for the safe-coming of thy liege.
NURSE. I go. But thou, sweet lady, linger not.
The victuals will grow cold, as many a night
They have, since summer makes the twilight long
And thou com'st late to supper.—Ah, poor bones!
[Exit.