Mercer. I'm glad we've met. How long ago was that?
Lady M. Since she was stolen it is fourteen years;
Yet in that time no tears have wet my eyes:
For when we knew the darling child was lost,
My husband all his other hopes gave up—
His office, and advancement, whose sure strides
Pursued him constantly, dogged as time;
His friends and schemes political; his fame,
Which years and dignity bore shoulder-high:
He gave them all to buy this little pearl
Whose price exceeds the value of the world.
O, in our heart her dainty shape is shrined,
And keeps it pulsing; and she goes not out
Till wintry death expel her summer reign,
And freeze that ruddy home to be his house.
Mercer. Why, fourteen years ago I lost a wife,
The sweetest girl that ever blessed a man.
Some happy months, and then I crossed the seas:
I sailed from Naples, and she went to Rome.
When I returned my friends in Rome were gone,
Whither I found not. Then my wife had died,
I thought, in child-bed, and looked up the news.
I did not there discover what I feared,
But found in place a most conflicting tale
Of brigandage; and murders had been done.
Some ransomed, some let go, some corpses found,
Left unaccounted for a child and woman.
I searched until my purse and I were lank,
In hope to find these two; then, back to sea.
Having made many voyages and much wealth
I still pursued my calling, for in it
I found from sorrow, refuge; though, alone,
In midnight watches I have often wept
To hear the waves with melancholy tongues
Lapping my ship, to see the crowded stars
Rejoicing like a family in heaven.
And so I marvel that you, being a woman,
From weeping should refrain since love so great
Beats in your heart for such a priceless loss.
Lady M. The war of hope and fear made desolate
The wine-press of our tears immediately;
And since the imminence of our great loss,
Our constant, wearisome world-wandering
Has all unqualified our eyes for tears:
I tell you we have gone through all the world.
First every city, town, Italian croft,
All hermitages, and all robbers' dens,
From wintry Blanc to fiery Aetna's base,
We searched, or sharpened others' eyes with gold
To ransack for our treasure: if two beings,
Having between them for their inspiration
One soul alone, might lose it, and yet move
To seek their riven life, with wanner looks,
With ghostlier, more eagle-sighted eyes,
Than those with which we glanced through Italy,
They could not pierce the region that they haunt:
Obscurity was all revealed to us.
Thereafter every morn a measured space
Of weary world our gaunt eyes oversee:
Round with the day from east to west we go.
Twelve years, now past, from Rome we westward hied;
And here, grown old, foot-sore, heart-sore, and poor
In earthly gold, but rich in hope's bright coin
We wander west again.
Mercer. Most noble souls!
You shall not lack for gold while I have wealth.
O, you administer a chastisement
To my unwinged proceedings in my search
For wife and child, which should have distanced yours
Who travel only for a daughter.
Lady M. No;
She is our niece, but loved more than a daughter.
Mercer. I never heard, nor read, of such a love.
Lady M. O, but you never saw, nor shall behold,
So lovable a creature! I would more
Lose her and pine for her than be the dame,
The happy dame, of seven lusty boys
Like any I have seen—the loveliest.
Mercer. What kin is she?—your husband's or your own?
Lady M. Her father was my husband's elder brother;
His wife died when our little one was born.
I reared her, loved her, and her infancy
Laid hold upon my husband. Six years passed;
And then her father wished her back again.
Upon that news a sickness of my husband's
Became a malady that claimed my care,
Dividing so my grief. A worthy priest,
Once chaplain to her father, leaving us—
We spent the summer in the Apennines—
We trusted our one jewel to his care.
But on the way a brigand regiment
Killed him and others who would not submit.
The captives being ransomed, she was missed,
She and her nurse; and fourteen years reveal
But little further light. Her father's dead;
She is our ward; and we, her only friends.
Mercer. What news is this! A woman and a child
In both our stories unaccounted for!
You spoke of further light.
Lady M. Hope not too much.
We met one, Julio, twice among the hills,
Where he confessed he led the robber-band
That wrought our woe; but of the nurse and child
Professed whole innocence and ignorance.
When he was captured and condemned to die
He asked to see my husband. Penitent,
He told him all he knew, a dreadful tale.
While others plundered, he had marked a maid
Who carried in her arms a lisping child:
Seizing his fancy, her he laid hold upon;
She struggled hard; he in his greedy haste—
For though the leader, if he took her not
And any other were possessed of her,
He might not claim her—the loud-screaming babe
Tore from her, bent to kill; but on its breast,
Its clothing being rent, there gleamed a cross
Of gold, whereon in diamonds quaintly set
Christ hung on ruby nails with ruby blood:
It turned aside his purpose. Nigh them knelt
Another woman, wringing of her hands,
And weeping o'er another infant dead.
Afraid to desecrate the symbol blest,
He pressed the child, from early earthly death
Saved by the cross, into this Rachel's arms,
And swung the maid, discumbered harshly so,
Upon his horse, and kept her for his own.
The other woman with the cross-saved child
Escaped, and took with her a store of gold.
Mercer. This woman who escaped must be my wife:
It is my wife! Resource was still her forte;
By countless proofs her sleight of head she showed,
Nor were her hands less cunning in their kind.
I have not known in any clime of earth,
Where trade constrained, or pleasure led me on,
One of her sex likelier for such a deed
As this checkmating of the brigand band:
And with it all a girl most feminine;
The deepest scrutiny would never dream
What strength lay sleeping with an open eye
Beneath her melting gaze and rosy mouth,
Like fire that underburns a flowery mead.
Pardon me, pray, I have not talked of her
To any one alive for many years.
Why she should travel in that company,
Not leaving word, nor sending any news,
I can but marvel.
Lady M. Here my husband comes.
Enter Sir James Montgomery.
Sir James. News, news!
Lady M. O heaven!
Sir James. I'll tell you as we go.
[They go out.
ACT IV
SCENE.—A Wood.
Enter Edmund and May.
May. Where is your bubbling mirth that overflowed
In fresh, fantastic volume yester-eve?
If doleful thoughts should shadow any face,
My past might countenance such mirroring,
And see, I laugh; yea, by all merry things
Light-hearted am I! 'Tis the sun, I think.
Why are you sad? If you still raise your brows,
And stare so, like a spaniel, and unslack
The pressure of your lips, I'll think, indeed,
You mean to mimic my lost love, and steal
With stolen looks my heart.
Edmund. Am I like him?
May. When you look sad you are, and when you laugh,
I think he would have laughed so if he could.
Edmund. You think him dead.
May. Sometimes, and sometimes not.
Edmund. Say you were certain of his death, what then?
May. In weeds that widows wear I'd hide myself
In some far lonely land, and mourn for him
Among the hills and streams; and read his book;
And, feeding seld and spare, woo fickle death,
Who flirts with weaklings and bears off the strong,
For one cold kiss to take my soul to him.
Edmund. There is no man that's worthy of such love.
May. I think not of his worth or want of worth;
I love him. But if gentle manliness,
Beauty, and honour, and unsounded passion
Deserve a maid's devotion, my poor love
Is but a scanty tribute to his worth;
And—woe, alas!—its date of payment past,
And the robbed creditor far hence or dead,
Its garnered hoard weighs heavy on my heart.
Edmund. Fear not, fear not. There's something whispers me
Your love will be rewarded, in so far
As to possess your sweetheart can amend
The lengthy woe you suffer for his sake.—
Now, here's a thing to do to make you glad.
Suppose that I'm the true and true-loved earl:
I'll go into that grove, and suddenly
Emerging, light on you; and you will know me,
Or I will know you, or we'll know each other,
Or let our unthought act the instant mould.
May. O, in his story there's a scene like that!
I'm sitting reading in my sweetheart's book
A passage where he finds me reading it.
Edmund. A curious notion!
May. Shall we act that scene?
Edmund. Yes, if you please. But have you got the book?
May. Yes; here it is. Now hide; and I will change
To suit the place the passage.
Edmund. Very well.
[Goes out.
May [reading]. "Now it chanced that May Montgomery was resident in
this town at the very time of Edmund's arrival. One afternoon the
love-sick girl took her book to the glen, and sitting down in the shadow
of a tree endeavoured to alleviate her passion by reading aloud the scene
wherein her lover had represented her in just such a situation, and so
engaged. She had read over the description of herself lying on her mossy
couch, and her cheek was flushed with the anticipation of the interview
about to ensue in the narrative between her lover and herself, when the
branches rustled behind her and a voice——"
Edmund [within]. May Montgomery!
May. O Heaven! Deceitful ears! "—and a voice whispered 'May
Montgomery.' She accused her fancy of cheating her, and proceeded with her
reading——"
Edmund [within]. May Montgomery!
May. O me! this voice is agonising! Fancy, you will make me mad!
"—when the voice again whispered her name. She exclaimed on fancy for
torturing her so, and laying the book upon the ground, was about to
stretch herself, leaning on her elbows with her fingers in her ears,
when a shadow came——"
Good my eyes have you leagued with my ears, then?
There is a shadow! Oh!
Re-enter Edmund.
Edmund. Turn not away.
Your hands late held my book. Take now the hand
That wrote the book.
May. Are you a ghost, a ghoul,
A vampire, come to plague me for my sin
In killing him with scorn whose form you bear?
I beg no mercy, for the doom is just.
But no; you are an angel; it must be:
No spirit foul could harbour in your shade:
And you have come to tell me I'm forgiven.
Edmund. I'm neither ghost, nor ghoul, nor angel, May:
I am your lover in carnation true,
A bodiment much better than of yore,
Edmund, with health restored and joy complete,
Since it is crowned with what he never hoped,
The freely-given diadem of your love.
May. I think you surely are the devil, sir.
This acting is too good: you're like him too.
Edmund. Him!—whom?—the devil?
May. O, no! Earl Edmund.—Love, I know you now.
[He offers to embrace her.
No, sir; I will go to the grave unkissed by any man, if I do not find the
true Earl Edmund. I think I must begin and search for him. I wait and
wait, and time is all that comes and goes. When I think that on every hour
I bestow a treasure of hope, and that some day I may have entertained so
many hours as to have spent all my fortune in that kind; and when I
remember that all this expense may be waste, for my love may be in heaven;
and when I think that if he be alive every hour removes my memory further
from him; that he may love another, that he may be married, then I cling
to the skirts of every parting hour, and sigh at the knell that tolls its
departure and the advent of the next.—But let us act again.—
O yes, I know you, Edmund, and I love you.
But can you then forgive me for my scorn?
Edmund. Forgive—forgive? There's nothing to forgive.
May. O, I was very foolish, very young!
I did not know how great a thing love is:
That woman's love is like the spacious sea,
And man's love like the mirroring of the sky.
O, I knew nothing! Yet, I should have known.
Now, I know all; your book has been my school,
My manual, my cyclopaedia:
It tells me of the all in all of love,
And teaches that its soul cannot be told,
That action is its highest eloquence.
Edmund. The silence of your lips, my gentle love,
Is richer, rosier, than the ruddiest gold;
The diamonds and the rubies of your speech
Become them well.
May. You act too warmly, sir.
Edmund. I do not act at all; I am myself.
May. Nay, then, I think you are beside yourself.
Be moderate, sir.—You uttered only words;
And words are breath; and then, a lover's breath!
Hot, gasping, poisonous air!
Edmund. O no, my May!
Love's breath is hot and healthy as the breeze
That floats the summer from the sunny south,
With merry crews of nightingales and swallows,
As sweet and swift as are the words of love.
May. O words and songs and sounds are merely stones,
When love is as an empty hungry gulf.
Edmund. Ay, but when love is certain of a feast,
Then words and songs and sounds are spicy whets.
May. Yes, yes; dear love, dear love. Speak on, speak on.
Edmund. Say after me what I will say to you,
The words that are the sweetest in the world,
And are an act when all a soul is in them.
You are the cause that makes me whisper them,
And, being said, from you claim like effect.
If what I say be of such worth to you,
As, said by you, 'twill hold in my esteem,
Then this will be a changing gold for gold:
I love you.
May. I love you.
Edmund. The only words
Worth learning, speaking, writing, singing, graving.
The middle word, the linking word, the 'love'
Is like eternal space; and 'I' and 'you'
Mark out a sky and earth, and gather in
Time, heaven, and hell.
May. O, happiness alone!
We hedge about an Eden, I and you.
Edmund. Eden, indeed! Adam I envy not
His grand originality; for when
I say to you, 'Sweet May Montgomery,
I love you,' I speak words I seem to make.
As sweet and strange they are as when first said
By Adam when he first beheld his Eve.
I feel within, about me, and above
The freshness of creation. Everything
Is new, and every word a white-hot poem:
I am a poet, too, as great as Adam;
To speak, as in his time, is to invent.
'I,' 'you'—O, these are words new-forged and bright!
And herein am I happier than he—
I love, not Eve, but May Montgomery.
May. O me! I would that I could find my love!
You are in love, too, for your speech betrays you.
Pray, tell me of your love; I told you mine.
Edmund. Not now; the hour is past. Come; we must run.
How they will mock us!
May. We've been happy, though.
[They go out, running.