It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and as young Eng[240]lish girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned,—only those would acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin flourishes only when insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it.
An English Park
One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act, however, illustrates the English poise already referred[241] to; Tresham regains his equilibrium with enlarged vision, his salvation is accomplished, his soul awakened.
ACT III
Scene I.—The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under Mildred's window. A light seen through a central red pane.
Enter Tresham through the trees.
Again here! But I cannot lose myself.
The heath—the orchard—I have traversed glades
And dells and bosky paths which used to lead
Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering
My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend
Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade
Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,
And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts
Again my step: the very river put
Its arm about me and conducted me
To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun
Their will no longer: do your will with me!
Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme
Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.
But I ... to hope that from a line like ours
No horrid prodigy like this would spring,
Were just as though I hoped that from these old
Confederates against the sovereign day,
Children of older and yet older sires,
Whose living coral berries dropped, as now
On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,
On many a beauty's wimple—would proceed
[242]No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root,
Hither and thither its strange snaky arms.
Why came I here? What must I do? [A bell strikes.] A bell?
Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch
—Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now,
And I obey you! Hist! This tree will serve.
[He retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, enter Mertoun cloaked as before.