Charl. What ha' we here? A sheet! a hair! a beard!
What end was this disguise intended for?
No matter what. I'll not expostulate
The purpose of a friendly accident.[171]
Perhaps it may accommodate my 'scape.
—I fear I am pursued. For more assurance,
I'll hide me here i' th' charnel house,
This convocation-house of dead men's skulls.
[In getting into the charnel house he takes hold of a death's head; it slips, and he staggers.
Death's head, deceivest my hold?
Such is the trust to all mortality.
[Hides himself in the charnel house.
Enter D'Amville and Castabella.
Cast. My lord, the night grows late. Your lordship spake
Of something you desired to move in private.
D'Am. Yes. Now I'll speak it. The argument is love.
The smallest ornament of thy sweet form
(That abstract of all pleasure) can command
The senses into passion and thy entire
Perfection is my object, yet I love thee
With the freedom of my reason. I can give
Thee reason for my love.
Cast. Love me, my lord?
I do believe it, for I am the wife
Of him you love.
D'Am. 'Tis true. By my persuasion thou wert forced
To marry one unable to perform
The office of a husband. I was the author
Of the wrong.
My conscience suffers under't, and I would
Disburthen it by satisfaction.
Cast. How?
D'Am. I will supply that pleasure to thee which he cannot.
Cast. Are ye a devil or a man?
D'Am. A man, and such a man as can return
Thy entertainment with as prodigal
A body as the covetous desire,
Or woman ever was delighted with.
So that, besides the full performance of
Thy empty husband's duty, thou shalt have
The joy of children to continue the
Succession of thy blood. For the appetite
That steals her pleasure, draws the forces of
The body to an united strength, and puts 'em
Altogether into action, never fails
Of procreation. All the purposes
Of man aim but at one of these two ends—
Pleasure or profit; and in this one sweet
Conjunction of our loves they both will meet.
Would it not grieve thee that a stranger to
Thy blood should lay the first foundation of
His house upon the ruins of thy family?
Cast. Now Heaven defend me! May my memory
Be utterly extinguished, and the heir
Of him that was my father's enemy
Raise his eternal monument upon
Our ruins, ere the greatest pleasure or
The greatest profit ever tempt me to
Continue it by incest.
D'Am. Incest? Tush!
These distances affinity observes
Are articles of bondage cast upon
Our freedoms by our own objections.
Nature allows a general liberty
Of generation to all creatures else.
Shall man,
To whose command and use all creatures were
Made subject, be less free than they?
Cast. O God!
Is Thy unlimited and infinite
Omnipotence less free because thou doest
No ill?
Or if you argue merely out of nature,
Do you not degenerate from that, and are
You not unworthy the prerogative
Of Nature's masterpiece, when basely you
Prescribe yourself authority and law
From their examples whom you should command?
I could confute you, but the horror of
The argument confutes my understanding.—
Sir, I know you do but try me in
Your son's behalf, suspecting that
My strength
And youth of blood cannot contain themselves
With impotence.—Believe me, sir,
I never wronged him. If it be your lust,
O quench it on their prostituted flesh
Whose trade of sin can please desire with more
Delight and less offence.—The poison o' your breath,
Evaporated from so foul a soul,
Infects the air more than the damps that rise
From bodies but half rotten in their graves.
D'Am. Kiss me. I warrant thee my breath is sweet.
These dead men's bones lie here of purpose to
Invite us to supply the number of
The living. Come we'll get young bones, and do't.
I will enjoy thee. No? Nay then invoke
Your great supposed protector; I will do't.
Cast. Supposed protector! Are ye an atheist? Then
I know my prayers and tears are spent in vain.
O patient Heaven! Why dost thou not express
Thy wrath in thunderbolts to tear the frame
Of man in pieces? How can earth endure
The burthen of this wickedness without
An earthquake? Or the angry face of Heaven
Be not inflamed with lightning?
D'Am. Conjure up
The devil and his dam: cry to the graves:
The dead can hear thee: invocate their help.
Cast. O would this grave might open and my body
Were bound to the dead carcass of a man,
For ever, ere it entertain the lust
Of this detested villain!
D'Am. Tereus-like
Thus I will force my passage to—
Charl. The Devil!
[Charlemont rises in the disguise, and frightens D'Amville away.
Now, lady, with the hand of Charlemont
I thus redeem you from the arm of lust.
—My Castabella!
Cast. My dear Charlemont!
Charl. For all my wrongs I thank thee, gracious Heaven.
Th'ast made me satisfaction to reserve
Me for this blessed purpose. Now, sweet Death,
I'll bid thee welcome. Come, I'll guide thee home,
And then I'll cast myself into the arms
Of apprehension,[172] that the law may make
This worthy work the crown of all my actions,
Being the best and last.
Cast. The last? The law?
Now Heaven forbid! What ha' you done?
Charl. Why, I have
Killed a man; not murdered him, my Castabella.
He would ha' murdered me.
Cast. Then, Charlemont,
The hand of Heaven directed thy defence.
That wicked atheist! I suspect his plot.
Charl. My life he seeks. I would he had it, since
He has deprived me of those blessings that
Should make me love it. Come, I'll give it him.
Cast. You sha' not. I will first expose myself
To certain danger than for my defence
Destroy the man that saved me from destruction.
Charl. Thou canst not satisfy me better than
To be the instrument of my release
From misery.
Cast. Then work it by escape.
Leave me to this protection that still guards
The innocent. Or I will be a partner
In your destiny.
Charl. My soul is heavy. Come, lie down to rest;
These are the pillows whereon men sleep best.
[They lie down, each of them with a death's head for a pillow.
Re-enter Languebeau Snuffe, seeking Soquette.
Lang. Soquette, Soquette, Soquette! O art thou there? [He mistakes the body of Borachio for Soquette.
Verily thou liest in a fine premeditated readiness for the purpose. Come, kiss me, sweet Soquette.—Now purity defend me from the sin of Sodom!—This is a creature of the masculine gender.—Verily the man is blasted.—Yea, cold and stiff!—Murder, murder, murder! [Exit.
Re-enter D'Amville distractedly: he starts at the sight of a death's head.
D'Am. Why dost thou stare upon me? Thou art not
The soul of him I murdered. What hast thou
To do to vex my conscience? Sure thou wert
The head of a most doggèd usurer,
Th'art so uncharitable. And that bawd,
The sky there: she could shut the windows and
The doors of this great chamber of the world,
And draw the curtains of the clouds between
Those lights and me, above this bed of earth,
When that same strumpet Murder and myself
Committed sin together. Then she could
Leave us i' the dark till the close deed was done.
But now that I begin to feel the loathsome horror of my sin, and, like a lecher emptied of his lust, desire to bury face under my eye-brows, and would steal from my shame unseen, she meets me
I' the face with all her light corrupted eyes
To challenge payment o' me. O behold!
Yonder's the ghost of old Montferrers, in
A long white sheet climbing yon lofty mountain
To complain to Heaven of me.—
Montferrers! pox o' fearfulness! 'Tis nothing
But a fair white cloud. Why, was I born a coward?
He lies that says so. Yet the countenance of
A bloodless worm might ha' the courage now
To turn my blood to water.
The trembling motion of an aspen leaf
Would make me, like the shadow of that leaf,
Lie shaking under 't. I could now commit
A murder were it but to drink the fresh
Warm blood of him I murdered to supply
The want and weakness o' mine own,
'Tis grown so cold and phlegmatic.
Lang. Murder, murder, murder! [Within.
D'Am. Mountains o'erwhelm me: the ghost of old Montferrers haunts me.
Lang. Murder, murder, murder!
D'Am. O were my body circumvolved
Within that cloud, that when the thunder tears
His passage open, it might scatter me
To nothing in the air!
Re-enter Languebeau Snuffe with the Watch.
Lang. Here you shall find
The murdered body.
D'Am. Black Beelzebub,
And all his hell-hounds, come to apprehend me?
Lang. No, my good lord, we come to apprehend
The murderer.
D'Am. The ghost (great Pluto!) was
A fool unfit to be employed in
Any serious business for the state of hell.
Why could not he ha' suffered me to raise
The mountains o' my sins with one as damnable
As all the rest, and then ha' tumbled me
To ruin? But apprehend me e'en between
The purpose and the act before it was
Committed!