 | The Soldier of Fortune |  |
ACT I.
SCENE I.
The Audience Hall in Sigismund's Palace. Enter a Herald, followed by a Pursuivant.HERALD
The King is risen, and the day begins.
PURSUIVANT
This is the marriage morn of Sigismund!
Let cannon tell the cloud, cloud tell the stars,
Till, on the pealing echoes of our news,
The sun-ball, floated in its lake of air,
Is jarred, and trembles!
(A burst of ordnance.)
[Enter rather hurriedly the Count of Gemmingen and a Courtier. Other Nobles and Courtiers begin to pass confusedly across the stage during their dialogue frequently whispering together.
2
(in a low voice)
Arnheim fell this morning.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
Art perfect upon this? Who told thee so?
COURTIER
'Tis blazed already; there is a pack of troopers
Cursing anent these tidings: honest fellows,
They mint ingenious oaths in their dismay.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
Conrad must ride to rescue. Think you, friend,
This upstart harbours any martial pith?
COURTIER
Trust me, no cantle! 'Tis a moodish youth
Propt on the favour of our shallow queen.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
She doth affect him? Why?
COURTIER
Some rusty Count
Begat this Conrad, who a world of years
Ago was our Queen Bertha's quondam true-love.
They say, she was contracted half to him;
But Sigismund cast favourable glances,
3
And shelved the musty Count.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
Court favour runs
Upon the strangest wheels.
COURTIER
That knowledge came
Before my first court-suit had dropt a button,
Or moulted one gold tag. Our life is crammed
Here with surprises. No man may predict
Upon what veering eddy, what rash wind,
This royal pair, Bertha and Sigismund,
Will launch their paper boats.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
I find him altered
Rarely of late. Last night, after his ride,
He seemed more like a charnel-shelf's dry mummy
Than a live, breathing king.
COURTIER
Our eye-shot tallies—
He cannot last much longer.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
If he die—
4
(whispers)
You are the next in blood.
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
That nearness makes me
So faintly welcome here. But I regard
These things as naught; a cup of good canary
Is sweeter than ambition.
COURTIER
Sir, you are wise—
Our sultan, he sleeps late!
COUNT OF GEMMINGEN
He quaintly chooses
His morn of over-rest. His doting wits
Replace themselves in cradle, and want pap-meat,
To find an opiate syrup in this news,
Which rends our realm as earthquake.
SECOND COURTIER
(coming up from behind and tapping his shoulder)
Curb your tongues:
Hush, he is coming: duck your heads and go.
COURTIER
(to Gemmingen)
Shall we make exit or remain?
5
Go, quickly;
Our Emperor comes with an angry eye;
'Twere better to defer our salutations.
(He turns to withdraw.)
A NOBLE
Sir, you are on my foot.
SECOND COURTIER
Sir, you have caught
Your sleeve-lace in my sword-knot.
[Exeunt Count of Gemmingen, Courtier, Nobles and Courtiers, hurriedly, jostling each other off. Sigismund and Bertha enter from different sides of the stage. They meet in the centre.
BERTHA
Nay, both hands,
Both hands, my husband: shall our wedding morn
Enter our halls ungreeted? Dear old Day,
A little weaker and more white each year
He comes from roaming in the void with stars;
Humbly returns, true to his time, knocks once
Feebly upon the panel, sighs, looks round,
And takes his annual seat beside our hearth,
Revives his withered fingers at our fire,
Warms in his corner, chats with us his hour,
6
And stumbles out again for one more year,
Lame, blind, and grey, to wrestle in the march
And radiant onset of more mighty stars.
The vast and burning pathways of the void
Vex his old feet: severe with golden eyes
The strong young planets with their consort moons
Despise and pass him. But the old wanderer
Crawls round his orbit somehow with the best
Of Ether's rolling children: and once more
He comes into his chair, and whispers, ‘Hail,—
I made you one some forty years ago,
And, like an ancient swallow, I return,
To the old wedding-nest beneath your eaves.
I go and I return—if I return—
For such a blindness deepens round my eyes,
I fancy, I may never come again,—
And, therefore, this time welcome me the more.
For in that steep and labyrinthine void,
Stars drop, like summer flies, and are not found.
So shall I sink down somewhere in that night,
And feel the beaming wheels of God's elect
New lights, that churn and grind me into haze—
So I may come no more!’
SIGISMUND
Old day of bells,
Welcome! There goes the minster's thunder growl,
7
Of fellow watch-dogs down. A furlong east,
Second in emphasis and harshness, rocks
The swinging tongue of Holy Sepulchre.
Then, with her pert white steeple perched in air,
Sweet little Sainted Emily chimes in,
Like the sudden laughter of a girl surprised;
Or the repeated tinkle of a thrush
Before he settles into his stream of song.
The wind shakes with the music of them all
Giving me joy: joy on this sable morn,
When the mute knell should be unchained and break
This carillon with dirges. Shall I send
And chide their irony of triumph dumb,
Because we know—
BERTHA
Nay, let that rest, my lord,
For the division of a day.
SIGISMUND
It shall.
This is my wedding morn: I claim an hour
Before I cope with this vexation. Come,
And let me kiss thy kindly wishes back,
My Bertha, best old bride with silver hair;
Trouble will keep, so let them clash their bells,
8
Come to thy old man, read how worn he is:
Kiss out the wrinkled lines across his brow:
Relume the faded eyes which found thee fair
On this day forty years— (a pause)
. Merciful God!
Four times ten slow long years! How are they gone?
Wife, wife, how dare we sit outside our graves
After such lapse enormous? Can we dream
To see another anniversary?
BERTHA
God keep you, Sigismund, for many more.
SIGISMUND
Nay, sweet, that cannot be. My feet tread down
The ruined brinks of bone-pits. A bruised thing,
My instinct is to hide and crawl away
Out of the strong reproachful stress of light
Into dark places. For the noon begins
To sting with an intolerable beam
My haggard eye-balls. Others, fair and young,
Wide-eyed out-stare the vivid Phœbus, hold
Orbs, that wink not, full on his disc, and dare
Ascend a staircase ladder broad in beams;
And the god teems out amber aureoles
On their ascending foreheads, till they burn
As daffodils just level with the sun
Steeping blue distances of April dawn;
9
They bathe their heads, new Memnons in whose curls
Auroral torches bicker. Up they go
To reach down stars!
BERTHA
And presently descend
Foul-handed as the folk who rake at fires;
They went to glean the starry floors for gold,
And found some lumps of clay, no better grained
Than the red mud caked round the hoofs of swine,
Whose styes are near the hovels of their birth;
Wherein their wiser brothers dwell content,
And heed their hogs with unaspiring hearts,
And mock these sky-explorers on return
With a sneer baleful, saying, ‘It is best
To take thy fate in quiet. Feed and rot
After thy feast in chambers with the worm;
Why wilt thou scale the stars in thy desire?
Clay art thou, and clay only shalt thou find;
For, as the hand that seeketh, so shall be
Its treasure trove; and thou, impure, shalt rake
Pollution from the living herb of heaven.’
SIGISMUND
Alas, my Bertha, thou hast imaged well,
How youth aspires to wrench his crown off God,
And presently is tumbled out of heaven,
10
I fain must lift my withered voice and cry,
How beautiful is Youth, despite its folly,
Despite its mad presumption; glory of God,
Gloss of the flower-face, whither art thou gone?
Thou movest with such beauty in thy limbs,
That, ere we understand one tithe of the grace
In which thou glidest o'er us, thou art past,
And with thee go garland, and feast, and song,
The cup-wine is exhausted to its grounds;
The very hand, which holds the beaker, aches.
Spectre of man, limp home: thy turn is done:
Thy foot-hold feeble, all thy fingers numb;
Thou tremblest as a feather on a pool,
Where there is hardly any hint of wind
Moving the level water just at eve,
And yet it twists and drives and has no peace.
BERTHA
Hale are you yet near others of your age.
SIGISMUND
I know, that we are both of us quite grey,
And, that I sit more near the shore of shade
By half a decade than this wife of mine,
Who is not young to shake so with her hand:
Ah, poor old love, cold are thy lips indeed,
And grey thy cheek; I miss its patch of rose.
11
My roses brought me thee: their use is past;
Let them go then: old husband, thou art mine,
Rosy or grey, fast till the final dawn.
Let the bloom perish, I can laugh; for Love
Is stronger than the poppy's petal shed
After an hour's expansion. Smile with me,
Old sweetheart, for the most triumphant river
Runs into briny death, and spring's best leaf
Awaits the wormy ground. So smile or weep!
SIGISMUND
I am out of tune for smiling with the cold;
The East lays silver crust on palace pipes,
Whence wary swallows long have flitted home.
The shrewd wind pinches my old shoulder-blades:
These halls of mine used to be weather-proof;
But now in legion icy currents creep
Through mason-work and window lozenges—
A sorry palace; we could warm our bones
As well inside a wind-mill on a moor.
The year is ebbing and the land is sad
With blots of vapour. Sere leaf-terraces
Shudder beneath the black breeze stinging them,
And grind their rusty masses, leaf on leaf,
Branch against branch. And over all the rack
Rides paler than a moon-mist, and its cloud
12
This make-believe, whose few belated flowers
Stare numbly upwards at the place of stars,
Born after time. Come hither, love, and gaze
Out at my side across the frosty lands;
Lo, at our oriel, this old lover pair,
Bridegroom and bride, link frozen fingers, set
Chill palms together, as in rose-time once
In that long yesterday since we were one.
Does not this prospect emblem our life well?
Nearly a waste, outspreading its gaunt sides
Of flat, coarse herbage to the region hills;
A scrub of woodland, bushes more than trees;
A huddled hamlet, like a broken comb
With half the teeth gone. Bertha, search this waste,
Sweeten its ragged unfertility,
I am sick of such a kingdom: I am shamed
That we have journeyed by so mean a road:
Have all those miles we came no land-mark?
BERTA
One—
There is a bourn, whereby one mother found
Infinite weeping. Far, far off it lies;
When on its heavy grasses the light turns,
Then it burns out, one small white sepulchre,
The shallow grave of our sole baby son—
13
When we were dust, in purple.
SIGISMUND
Peace, have peace!
You break me on your words as with a wheel.
Why do you bring this up? Well, my son died,
Who had a realm to give him; while among
The fetid lanes and pestilential stews,
My hinds are overrun with rats and sons,
And have no crust for either!
BERTHA
God changed that;
And gave us afterwards another child.
SIGISMUND
A girl he gave us, which in heirless halls
Is changing rubies for red tinselled glass,
Or nightingales for lapwings.
BERTHA
Petulant!
Use better words; the girl is well enough.
SIGISMUND
Ay, in all else save boyhood amply well,
Which wanted, we remain in need of all.
14
Across our leaden evening life she moves;
A golden star, beneath whose tender beams
The shepherd of the shadow quietly
Shall call us to our pens and fold us both
In for the night. O Bertha, were this all,
And had we hope of limping to our graves
In peace, the girl would do. But hark! out there,
The turbulent hoarse trumpet, the wild drum,
The stained and shaggy pack of soldier wolves
Raise hymns to Discord. Up, our armies, out:
Stem back this cloud of furies! Ah, my queen,
Our host is ready, who shall captain it?
A girl! And is our house dwindled to this,
Who nursed so many warriors in her day?
Can Adelheid encase her limbs in iron?
Steel gloves would strain her wrist and nerveless hand;
Her long hair would not pack inside a helm;—
And so the full sting of our loss bites home.
O for a son, to back my battle steed,
And make the air sing round my falchion's sweep!
O for some kindred hand to catch this slave
By his crisp beard, and toss him prone to earth,
And trample on this hireling captain's head,
This Conrad, whom my penury of boys
Makes me endure detestable and trust
With all my armies; though I read him plain
15
Traitor in all but daring to rebel!
BERTHA
You lead whole funerals of weeping words
Along the dusty purlieus of your past;
And in their midst, as on a dead man's car
Hung round with answerable garlands, lies
One thought, which cannot speak with upturned eyes,
The dreadful thing we dare not talk about,
Or name out plainly yet. While, to divest
Our minds of this dread image, which we bear,
We wail aloud for others long since dead;
And, with this hireling retinue of woe,
These weepers paid to pull lip-corners down,—
We deign to pitch our grief. O shame, my king!
Turn round and face the bier, strip back its pall,
Envisage close, peruse the lineaments
Of this disaster. 'Tis a child pretence
To bear it shrouded on its graveyard way,
And by a tacit compact to pretend
We carry nothing dustwards.
SIGISMUND
Bertha, Bertha,
Give me a little time. I will be brave
Soon. Do not chide me. I am nearly ready:
16
Break on me now.
BERTHA
Like a drowned foeman's face,
The more we try to cram it under the flood,
The more it rises up at us—and stares!
So with this topic most detestable,
It will recur—Good Sigismund—
SIGISMUND
I say,
Tell me the news, for there is news. I am knit
And resolute to hear it now: speak on!
BERTHA
Well, well, if you be calm—
SIGISMUND
So calm I am,
That not this storm of tidings can unleaf
One branchlet of my patience!
BERTHA
They have told you?
Ah, but I feared they would.
SIGISMUND
There is no fear,
I have not heard it! In the utter hush
17
Just when the doze lay sweetest at my heart
In pulses of supreme beneficence
Bland as an angel's feather—in it rolled
A hustle and a clamour, at my head
A scraping of great heels, and they flowed in,
Scared varlets, rubbing open their dazed eyes,
With one big word tripping their drowsy tongues,
‘Arnheim is lost, is sacked, is overthrown,
Is fallen, is blazed into fine cinder-dust!’
Pealing the dismal changes like a pack
Of bellmen, ‘dole, death, dust:’ roaring it out
Above my pillow with no more concern
Than if they haled a ploughman from his crib
To quench his rick a-burning. By Saint Paul,
To rouse a king so roughly was ill done:
To crush in on me, like a cry of hounds,
Without the prelude of one usher's knock,
And snap my precious spell of morning sleep—
Arnheim is lost! Why, lost then let her be:
They might have surely let an old man doze!
BERTHA
And thou art wise, my king, who canst salute
Tidings of harm with one calm ‘is it so?’
Why should we rave? why reach up hands at God
To alter, which He cannot, yesterday?
18
The finger of their King alone is strong
Now and to-morrow. Ah! no tear redeems
Our little frontier town. My sole regret
Is, that these ravens of ill-omened news
Should flap across the morning we were wed:
And I lament that almanacks next year
Will have black crosses at its number set,
And prick our feast for reprobation out,
Changing its daring, ruby-lettered name
Into a sentence like an epitaph.
So shall they change our day, as its wreaths alter,
Whose pale dry buds—I save them even now—
Crumble to dust—and we shall follow them—
Then is poor Arnheim lost!
SIGISMUND
Why, so she is;
And I can say, ‘she is gone;’ and then sit down;
And find we are fallen into a chiller year,
And chafe my palms, and chatter trifling things.
Only time has been—not so long ago—
When at this news I should have hurled my limbs
Into the saddle blindly with a roar.
And dug my spurs in backwards, shaken reins
And ridden charger after charger dead,
Until, my armour flaked with blood and foam,
19
I thundered on her gates with gloves of steel
And dragged her back or died!
BERTHA
Love, be content;
See, how you cough and shake!
SIGISMUND
Ah! town, my town,
I played among thy streets: my mother died
Up in the grey gaunt castle near the well
And chestnuts. I have lost even her grave:
Another kingdom's earth holds her, not mine;
They might have left me this one cantle of grass,
This turf or two of daisy roots. Gone, gone!
Ah! Bertha, but indeed I loved the town;
My little city clean as a child's toy,
Set in a square with hooded corner towers
And white bright walls, the turf swells up at them;
Then in a heap the quaint dun-gabled roofs
Crowning it all. Why, you could take it up
Almost into the hollow of your hand.
So snug it lies, compacted in its nook,
Here where my crutch goes, in a scoop of pine-wood—
For, you must know, the forest clings about it
To north and east, borders and hems it in
20
Suddenly round the corner, sees the pines
And plunges off among them with a wail—
They must have bridged it since; but I recall
Spitting a bayed red wolf where my shoe rests;
We pricked him in the pines, he scambled down,
And here he made his stand, and snapt and whined
Against us in a crimson flash of tide.
My Arnheim! No, their Arnheim! O my God!
Leave me not rusting in this crust of age;
Waken me up, flash anger into my brain;
A poor old feeble king, hard on his grave,
Dull, weary, almost blind; turning his cheek
To any smiter. Out, hot tears, and flow
At thy dishonour. In thy name thou art
Monarch and great, but in all strength to save
A phantom with a crown. For Arnheim weep;
Ah, city, fair and lost—Who yielded her?
Who flung her gates wide with such ready wrists?
Whose hireling hand beckoned the alien in
So easily? I scent Rebellion here,
And Treason winds her finger in this web,
Or never trust me more. All comes out plain.
Traitors, it seems, are crawling round and in,
Frequent as flies along our corridors.
They will betray a mistress or a friend,
A town, a king, a sister, or a secret,
21
Push greasy gold across their prurient palms,
And they will cringe and smile and call thee god—
Hounds of the gutter, kennel dogs, lean curs,
Who will be-slaver any master's heels,
Detestable. Ah, sweet saints up in heaven,
Rend them and ruin their accursèd herd,
Fall in blue forks and split their houses up,
Singe all their faces like a bed of reeds,
And let them burn, burn slowly and burn long!
BERTHA
Leave them to God and let these curses rest.
SIGISMUND
Let them beware, I say, let them beware!
The aged lion is a lion still,
Ay, and a king, and dreadful to his last;
Although he roams the desert-side no more
Among his tawny sons, but bides at home,
Grey-golden, breathing thunder, in his lair.
Let no man say, ‘He drowses, hath no harm,
His fangs are worn away; turn in our dogs,
And let us bate him like a village steer!’
BERTHA
None deem thee thus; none dare to nurse this mind.
22
Nay, by those starry seven that watch the pole,
You need not travel to the brink of the world,
Or search the steep of Thule to unearth
Such gracious vipers; native to this room
They bask among our bedding, nest in floors,
And honey-comb the palace as their own.
I know them, and indeed you know them well;
And some are courtiers, and a captain one,
But adders, Bertha, adders all of them.
Mark, how they slide about on audience days,
Veiling their sneers at one old man enthroned
With varnish of unwilling deference.
They push about in careless unconcern,
As if they were at market; they ignore
The presence of the deputy of God;
They loll against the columns quite at ease;
They shrug, they nod, they whisper at their will,
To inform the general herd below the ropes,—
That, with protesting laughter in their sleeve,
These gentlemen are good enough to come,
And flash in radiant plumes along our halls.
Still, while this moth of worm-worn palace fringe,
This maggot of old velvet, Ceremony,
Seals up their lips just now, let gestures speak
And tell the honest rabble all they mean;
Which would run thus could dumb thought gain a tongue:
23
Be not deluded if we bow and cringe:
We are content to pay a little show
Of reverence to this regal dotard pair:
Usage exacts this serious pantomime,
And Custom, which is God to gentlemen,
Says, so it has been, therefore let it be;
And we obey: but notice well, good hinds,
Who turn our furrows and crowd in to stare—
We are your rulers, not this king of straw.
He is our puppet: all his tapes and wires
Are in our hand to tighten: showmen we
Of this old majesty, this bunch of capes:
We put him on a crown, set straight its rim.
And wedge the sceptre ready for his fist:
Then we arrange his mantle, drape its folds
To mask the shrivelled kernel of the man.
So, bravely he begins to shine in gold
And purple. There he sits against the blue
Like an incarnate sunset flushing gems:
It is a pretty sight. No harm is done.
The delvers are impressed, go home and dig
The better, howl no more for civic rights,
And with meek spades divide their cousin worms,
Since they are clothed in fustian, he with Heaven!
Not useless are these pageants, you observe;
Merely remember, that one master hand
Unseen doth dress the doll and deck the stage.
24
Rest and remain in our most righteous hands.
We are the state, not this old spectre, we!’
BERTHA
Why dost thou weapon crude Rebellion's lips
With such an armed audacity of words?
Who does thee wrong, my king? No soul of all.
SIGISMUND
O, they are mighty, captains of renown;
They sit at home and wage big wordy wars—
Why, such a feeble phantom as myself
Could yield a town at the first bugle-call,
As in their valour they with Arnheim did.
But I will break the slumber of my age,
And flash in panoply on Arnheim yet.
We are none so broken as these boasters deem—
O, we have supped with men on battle-eves,
Who were as gods to these rash puny boys;
Insolent boys, who gibe and dare not smite,
Who fill my halls of peace with blaring words,
And at the crack of danger crouch meek dogs;
Who snarl and sneer. O God, wise God in rest,
Breathe back into my arm its ancient iron;
Fill me with lusty battle for a day;
Sough off this scaly pestilence of age;
25
To teach these children how their fathers fought
Who thought no coffin sweeter for their bones
Than, if they lost a citadel, to lie
Under its fallen rampart; overthrown,
Yet with no hint of shame upon their shield!
O Arnheim, Arnheim!
BERTHA
Peace, my husband, peace!
Our sorrow is our sorrow. But a king
Should seem above the wound of mortal harm,
And rear himself more upright in his chair,
And nurse a prouder eye. He royalest
Can mutely watch his once calm sea upcurling
To such a head of hurrying tempest-wrath,
That it must whelm and snap him like a reed;
And yet with no lament can dumbly see
His liquid grave swing on.
SIGISMUND
You bid me perish
More tamely than a sheep. But wolves are round,
And one lamb of my cities have they torn,
So I will bleat and bleat. These raveners,
Hearing me wail, may drop her from their jaws,
For not a clown will budge!
26
Vex not thy soul.
One finger only of thy realm is reft.
One town thou art the poorer; no great woe,
And nothing shameful. In the game for land
Kings lose and win, like dicers tossing cubes,
Lose one day, win to-morrow. Sup one eve
With Crœsus, beg with Belisarius
The morning after. Thou shalt win.
SIGISMUND
Enough
Red earth to roof my face in silver rain,
And keep my feet unfrosted in the snow,
When I do sleep dishonoured. Let those rest
Upon the pillow of whose dying bed
Victory lays her chaplet; who have earned.
Mighty in hand, their haven of repose.
But I, the last page of whose clean-writ life
Is blotted with defeat, how shall I doze
Yet in my grave until my name be clean?
Shall I desire to lay my harness by
Amid this rumour of beleaguered towns,
Loss and reproof? when traitors perch their nest,
Like martins, flat against my window sills
And in the hinges of my very doors,
Breeding and sitting watchful;—when I wake
27
My kingdom of a limb; and no man goes
To stanch her bleeding? If I had a son—
My son is in his grave these many years,
He keepeth bitter silence and is cold—
Could he arise and ease my shoulder-blades
Loaded with many burdens. Could he hear
The laughter of the rebel as I strain
And stumble, breathing hard,—I think the dead
Would gather tear-rain in his dusty eyes,
At such forlornness! To no living man
Will I commend my sorrow. Look around;
Holpen of none, abandoned, almost scorned,
Whence shall we hope for love, whose ears are tired
With empty deference of many mouths?
Can we find one to trust, whom all obey?
Who shall be worthy of our seat, our sword,
And wear our empty robes when we are gone?
Who shall weigh life and death as grains of sand,
My doomsman with my signet on his hand,
My frown across his forehead, almost mine
The gesture, mine the voice? Who shall be son
Of my hereafter? who shall woo a girl,
And find a kingdom in a virgin's ‘yea,’
And raise, as monarch from her nuptial bed,
Graft of my daughter's love, replacing us,
With hurry of little feet, that patter down
28
Shall sit like little sparrows in the sand
And watch the fountains? Whose this youngest bud,
Who fills the dusty cradle covered up
In the closed chamber where our baby died?
Where is the prince of promise, where is he?
Are his feet weary with the mountain glens,
And doth he dally with the vineyard girls?
Or laggard, on some river-island, turns
His boat, and slumbers in the wild swan's home?
One thing I know, our chosen is not here.
I search the narrow faces round my throne,
Between these apes and goats I cannot choose;
There is no brow among the lordlings here
Meet to sustain the intolerable load
Of splendour in this irksome diadem,
As consort to our child, king that shall be.
But I take oath upon the cup of Christ,
That men shall never stamp our ducats here
With Conrad's hateful face.
BERTHA
What voice in the street,
What cupboard whisper, what bird's note in the air
Hath made thee harp on that? This man defamed
Hath done thee service and shall do thee more.
Thy soldier, watching for thy word, he slays.
29
‘Peace!’ and he sheathes again his duteous sword.
None lead men out as he does: no man's word
Is better with the host. Regard, O King,
Thine other captains; he, as Hesper, shines
Among a flock of leaden clouds: he soars
A golden drifting eagle of the foam
Over the cackle of the hoarse grey gulls.
As to our youngling daughter, this poor bird
Would shudder at the clash of marriage bells;
Leave her in freedom for a few more moons:
If she has fancies—and all girls have some—
She knows her duty and will lay them by
In lavender with other childish gauds;
When the right royal lover clatters in,
With a cloud of plumes, barons and pursuivants,
She shall say ‘Yes,’ if policy says so;
And leave that blind attraction men call love
To common girls and milkmaids. Adelheid
Will give one sigh for Conrad and say, ‘Come,
Royal and great and husband, I am here;
The bride is ready, Come! Poor Conrad!’
SIGISMUND
Plague
And pestilence increase his poverty,
Who is rich at least in dupes, who tire their arms
30
Ay, traitor; I do mean it; I speak plain,
And teach how far a traitor, how untrue,
How arm-pit deep in treason's pasty mire;
While Loyalty, which should ascend to God,
Benumbed by serpent fascination trails
Its heavy wings: for all Kings under Christ
Watch the great Python, who with hungry eyes
Sits coiled beneath our thrones, to whom we toss
Morsels and sops, when he puts up his flat
Lean head and faintly flickers with his fangs,—
And lull him back to sleep, whose bestial name
Is Liberty; and many fools run mad
At his faint hissing, which in crazy ears
Sounds like the laughter of a mermaid's song;
And this worm may have bitten Conrad's hand;—
For I do know him sour and malcontent,
Cruel and cold, bitter and bloodthirsty,—
One measuring us daily with steel eyes,
As if he chose the knife-spot. Ay, you wince,
For this it comes to; neither less nor more—
Brief would our session be, if Conrad's love
Knew how to make its briefness shorter still.
The love of my supplanter chides my stay:
Away, old man, hide somewhere, out of sight!
Hast then no refuge? Nay, not one: my heaven
Is wanted for the young new star, my sea
31
Alone remains, my spacious outspread earth:
But here not less my rival's glory needs
Such elbow-room, such freedom for its stride,
That he would push me under with the mole,
Lest, scarecrow-like, my insignificance
Should vex him, as he swings along our meads—
You do commend me a meek son-in-law—
BERTHA
There, out you flash again!
SIGISMUND
Great patient Lord,
Hesperus, Osprey, Conrad—by what name
We may approach thee unapproachable—
We do confess that we are grown quite grey:
We have been unmolested on our throne
Too many days, so long. Thou hast forborne
Divinely, deeply tried. O wax not wroth,
O be not very angry, that we breathe
And take our meat; Death is in fault, not we,
Who have outpast the customary term.
We know 'tis hardly decent to be here,
And yet, young Phœbus, spare us! See, I kneel—
BERTHA
Have done: you are a child.
32
At which last word
Another sorrow, thick as Hell, glooms out,
To herald me such news as Œdipus
Heard once at Thebes, and trod his crown in mire.
But thou, our heiress, maid of many woes—
Better be born of our least vine-dresser,
Rather be cradled in a swineherd's hut,
Than be one step in the ladder for this knave
To scale up at the sun with; spurned away,
When he sits supping in the golden halls;
Heiress of evil, orphan of content—
When we are in our graves!
BERTHA
Who talks of tombs?
We yet can guard our heads; this shaft of sorrow
Sings towards us, and we shelter till its barb
Bite the dull ground and quiver harmless there.
SIGISMUND
You argue ill: the blind God mischievous
Hath twanged his arrow to a hair's-breadth true.
Laugh, if you list. You women are all one.
I cannot simper at this inference;
Our shrewd suspicion, almost certitude,
That the detestable—I name him not—
33
And half-a-hundred gilded sugar-plums
Of lover lies stale as the Deluge dove,
Wins for his easy kingdom our meek child's
Most unsuspicious bosom. O these girls
Are won with feigning all days in the year—
You hardly need put bait upon the barb,
So briskly in all weathers will they come.
Why should I break my heart with discontent
About so stale a thing? God made girls fools
For some wise purpose. With their shallow hearts
An honest wooer will most poorly speed—
A rogue of lies and tinsel always wins.
And, since to name the sun brings out his beams,
Here, nothing loth, our gentle treason comes
Primed with disaster to the very beard.
And, as first beadlet on his string of woes,
Lo, he begins with Arnheim!
Enter Conrad and Raban
CONRAD
King and great,
Disaster needs no usher to thy throne,
Peril and Death tread ceremony down,
And at thy footstool we unbidden kneel,
Arnheim and duty our excuse. Sire, Sire!
Thy city is up, hot at her inmost heart
34
Wakes up, looks scared, and asks each passer-by,
‘Am I awake; or do I, dreaming, hear
The chances of a dream?’ They toll the bells:
No wagons swing along the public ways:
None sell or buy; the market baskets stand
Deserted; and the painted mountebanks
Forget their poles, and crowd to read the news.
Pale children, haggard women at their doors,
Gather and whisper. In the public squares
The men in noisy clusters, up and down,
Discuss the portent, point, gesticulate;
And, if a soldier passes, a low growl
Tells him the solid burgher grows afraid
For his fat bales at home. One cry goes out,
That even now the spoiler on thy walls
Is marching. As before him Arnheim fell,
So shall this mother-city in his snare
Be broken, be abolished. As I came,
I heard a drunken fellow on a cask,
Under a tavern-porch, wine on his face,
Wine on his hands, sawing them emptily
Over a swarm of boors, to whom he made
Oration, roaring out, ‘Ye are dead dogs,
One cometh with a halter for you all.
Lap the sweet wine a little longer: none
Drinks when the lips are worn off from his skull.
35
Whose heralds are at Arnheim, cutting throats
For the red yule-tide of their master's birth.’
So sings he out, and some catch up the cry,
Of how the spoiler in his glory comes:
As on between the clouds some golden light
Rolls down the dawn; or, great with silver rains,
A lordly river, swollen in its pride,
Wipes at its tread the harvest-promise prone,
And, on the hill-sides tearing, fills and fills
The earth with deluge. If our Arnheim died
At the mere lifting of his banner's wing,
At the first crash in ether of his flutes,
At the storm shaken from his trumpet tubes,
Without one arrow sailing, one bow strung,
How shall our gates resist his whirlwind arm?
Arise, for it is time, our lords, and save us!
SIGISMUND
We thank them and their meek ambassador,
It is a fair complaint.—Am I a god,
To hold all sorrow from your doors and mine?
To sweep the world clean of this cobweb Care
Will be my duty next. Answer these hounds—
They are not worth my saving, if I could;
So they may yap and yell. Save such, indeed
Hath no king ever lost a town before,
36
Should dog the hearse of this one? Save the boors!
How save them? Is there magic in our robes?
Or is our sceptre a diviner's wand,
That all these mouths should roar and rate at us
For being merely human? Are ye come,
Revolters, disobedient, malcontents,
At the first gleam of steel and crack of danger,
Crowding as abjects round my purple knees?
Must the King save you? Have you done your King
Such service? Hath he profit at your hands?
What tribute have you brought these many days?
None, save that one sour berry from a tree
Grown in your devil's garden, full of tares—
The apple of death and treason. Have your bills
In at the rind, and crunch it, kites and ganders!
In your good days ye kick against my throne,
More ready none to pluck its sides away,
And tear its slabs up into breaches; when
Sour Tribulation, bound about with flowers,
Snores in the lap of Peace; while Goblin Fear
Dreams at a barrel-head, and damns the King.
But when each phantom wakens, rubs its lids,
Hungrier, out of temper, from its sleep,
Then, then begins their furious festival
To tune of crackling villages a-glare,
To light of leaping cloud in lurid globes,
With mad complexities of moribund
37
In helter-skelter flying, who feel Death
Come at their refluent ringlets, twisting in
The stealthy fingers, ere his backward clutch—
Then, when you cannot step in the street for dead,
These cravens cry on me. Lo, then it comes,
That to one goal they hustle, wrestle, crouch,
Crawl on one point in heaps of prone despair,
Toss themselves in before me, strew my floors,
A jumbled sea of arms and writhing limbs,
Come to be saved, healed, coaxed and comforted—
Whither? By Chaos, to their mocked-at King!
Can he, your ridicule of yesterday,
Become the pivot of a reeling earth?
Ye pray to one ye spat upon before
To shield your faces and to save your hides,
Because—he is paid to do it, being King,
Else why should they maintain a King at all?
They dare rush in and roundly tell me this—
For all entreaty savours of command
When they entreat. They bully when they pray,
Saying, ‘O lord, the oppressor is coming on,
The vale-heads tremble with his instant wheels,
He reaches out his hand to rend our gates,
His fingers almost scrape their brazen tires;
Before him fans his breath as furnace-air,
And in it we are shrivelled up and rolled
Together as a beech-leaf. Now begins
38
Thy battle, lead and vanquish, up, prevail!
Wipe him away; snap off his charger's hoofs,
Break up his chariot wheels, strike off his helm—
Or else beware, a thing of greater fear,
Our formidable curse!’ The curse of hares,
Who mouth against the lion in his sand!
These are my most obedient burghers, they
Who, when their garners burst and teeth are tired,
Will haggle with me on each silver disc
And doit of tribute. Blunt and honest souls,
Plain men are they. We tax them overmuch.
Why should their sweat pay for a world of pageant,
A costly court, a useless army too?
They are plain folk, care not to pick their phrase.
But only let a dozen helmets gleam
Under the walnuts in a frontier pass,
Their note is rarely altered. Ah, the sneer
Becomes a howl of ‘save us!’ Curs, curs, curs!
O, but they chafe and chafe me. ... You do well,
Conrad, my lord, to let us largely hear,
How the town gutters mock the palace vane!
CONRAD
O, Sire, dismiss this anger. We must act
Before the dial creeps another hour,
Or lose this city always.
39
Lose or win,
How can they push this loss inside my doors?
If my mere wish can save beleaguered towns,
Which cranes, rams, ladders, arrows, catapults,
And men with iron backs, like burnished flies
In number and persistence, day and night
Settle around and try to creep within—
If such effect from my volition flow,
I shall learn soon that 'tis my royal task
To keep the demi-dead in hospitals
Quick and alive, to redden leathern cheeks,
To polish up lack-lustre filming eyes,
To find new breathing cells for putrid lungs,
To heal whole wards, lest if one cripple die
The rabble roar, ‘Depose him!’
CONRAD
In this view
Thy hands are clean, my King, of Arnheim's fall!
The event came on us like a sudden knife,
Too swift to catch the assassin at the wrist.
Hearten us, King, in saying, ‘So it was:
All rumour else is idle. God came down
And smote this city from us at a blow.’
The shepherd wakes in vain, if, as of heaven,
A sudden blot drops earthwards out of the sun,
40
And rises up an eagle with a kid.
If in this way the foeman's iron heels
Fastened on Arnheim, we, thy remnant herd,
Reproach thee nowise for the missing lamb.
But there are whispers, and disloyal ones,—
Rumours which make allegiance mutineer,—
How, faint with famine, half her garrison
On crutches at the loopholes, eating rats
And drinking tainted wells, day after day
She wrote for succour; and each morning rose,
And yet her iron girdle narrowed in,
But no help came. Once more she wrote, and fell
Cursing—ah, whom? Forgive her; she is dead!
SIGISMUND
Now, by my sword, this moves my soul to flame.
Beautiful Arnheim, did they leave thee, then,
To wail aloud so long in agony?
Could thy tear pluck no dastard from his chair
In my great comfortable hall? Would none
Turn out into the whitened roads austere,
And ride their faces red against the flakes?
And these are—well, God save the mark—my soldiers,
And not a bevy of white dancing girls
Who play at mock assaults with bullrushes ...
I am the worst served monarch in the world,
41
I do adjure you, Conrad! Raban! all!
Why did no succour march?
CONRAD
By Christ his tree,
I, King, reply that, till this morning, pealed
No hint of Arnheim's peril on my ears.
For aught I knew, our northern frontier lay
Still as a child is with a cherry bunch.
RABAN
They say, the townsmen sent a piteous scroll,
That should have groaned if parchment had a voice.
SIGISMUND
Is Arnheim's letter melted into air?
RABAN
Melted or lost! They say his wits are both,
The loon, who brought this sorrow in his pack;
Who rode and rode, until the land grew dark
Before him, fainting at thy palace gate,
Blind from the saddle. Some one picked him up,
And wisely put him into hospital,
Where now he most uncomfortably raves;
Wits has he none to speak of, yet avers
42
And drew the parchment from his feeble gripe,
Saying, the King should see it presently.
And now—being merely madman—he enquires
If ‘presently’ means ‘never’ here at Court?
SIGISMUND
Who bade you speak?
RABAN
My lord, I am reproved,
And kiss thy footstool!
SIGISMUND
Thou, a crippled scribe,
Born in my stable, littered with my dogs,
To speak so pertly, when these gentlemen,
Leaders and lords, are in this audience dumb. ...
As for this letter ... it is surely lost. ...
And yet how lost ... our judges shall enquire. ...
Now for the town: ride, Conrad, hurry and ride:
Take men, men, men: my army—take it all.
Do what you will; you are named General.
Be absolute as I am in this war:
Hurry and ride: I gird my sword on you;
Redden it well and bring it home: ride, ride—
You will get Arnheim once again, good Conrad—
I say you will—now go.
43
It shall be done.
[Exeunt Conrad, Raban, and Captains.
SIGISMUND
Let me get air and breathe. ... Are they quite gone?
I am well rid of them ... the pack may ride
To Erebus; I care not. Hearken, sweet,
I was in peril, yet I baffled them—
Warily, ay. Thank Heaven, I hold a brain:
That Raban nearly nosed my secret out.
Indeed, I made a kind of slip. ... Saints, kings,
St. Peter, David, suffered lapses each. ...
Well gone are they. How shall an old man keep
A clear, cool head in this new whirl of time?
A tinsel age of mock and make-believe,
Of strange wants and reverberate emptiness!
But in my father's days a King was King,
Able to feel his feet and have his way
With reason or no reason, wrong or right:
That I call reigning: but these modern ways
Of asking leave and ducking to the crowd
Disgrace the ermine. If thou be a King,
Bear a King's nature: art thou reptile born,
Crawl on contented in thy wormy rings.
Had I but ruled in those gone, worthy days
I had built my throne into such adamant,
44
Not one mere slip due to these failing eyes
Should shake its fabric like a weanling's toy!
BERTHA
Speak out, my King: deal not in devious phrase:
Hast thou misread their letter craving aid?
Safe ears are mine and faithful.
SIGISMUND
Hearken then—
Bury this secret in sepulchral lips
Never to come again out at the air.
When Arnheim wrote ... come nearer, lean thy ear ..
Thus it befell ... did you hear something move
Behind yon curtain'd door? Up! Fling it wide ...
No one? The wind among our tapestries
Is like a mocking bird, and takes the sound
Of feet and heavy breath and crumpled gowns.
Well, caution, best of watch-dogs, oft must bark
At nothing. .. You shall hear it from the egg
Without more prelude. Know, these untried boys
Sneer at the pilot, whose worn heavy eyes
Guide on the vessel through the floating miles
Night after night; while they in easy beds
Dream of the shore and curse the laggard keel,
He must watch always, wakeful, unrelieved,
45
At length the harbour: cabled to the side
Safe rocks the ship: out they leap: hurry home:
Who turns to thank the helmsman? Surely none.
Grateful? Not they: this loon was paid to steer;
And, though they might have provendered the shark
And supp'd the dog-fish, if his eyes had closed—
Who now fears drowning, sure of steadfast earth?
But if a little thorn of twinkling rock,
Undotted in a chart of devious seas,
Scratch out a plank or drill an eyelet hole
In the good timbers of our floating home,
Whereby these drowsers in the cabin find
Salt in their mouths, and Neptune gushing chill
Round their warm berths. On whose devoted head
Do execrations thicken? Rend and tear
The silly pilot. To a man the crew
Rush up and rate him, author of their bale.
Dismiss the parable and learn the fact—
Upon a certain night, when three or four
Great stars begin to rule the vacant heaven;
They, that is some one, cram a paper in
Beneath my palace gate. No fool of mine
Informs me whence it came, who wrote its lines;
My pursy seneschal, dull as a mule,
Pompously enters, sets the missive down,
Bows and retires with a flourish of his leg.
46
I find its seals are difficult to rend,
That it bemires my fingers with red mud,
That, even as I clasp it, warmth exudes
Yet from the haste of some ignoble hand;
I shudder and I set it down to dry.
O, I supposed it naught; some petty wrong;
Some boor, who beat his fellow in a ditch
About a freckled wench or glass of ale;
Whereon, the weaker and the worsted hind
Must have at least a royal arbiter
To salve his bruises and restore his trull.
Add, that the missive came at my dull hour
Inopportunely; when my senses ache,
And I am chiefly drowsy, mad for rest.
Who shall impeach me, if I thrust the scroll
Yet unperused beneath my pillowed head?
That night I slept, a miracle for me,
As soundly as a woodman or a girl;
The bundle lulled me like a sack of hops.
Night passes; and a budget of new cares
Clamour with dawn against my bedroom doors,
And, ere I well be wakened, cry, ‘Hear us!’
So in the crush and jostle of affairs,
Which strive for audience in my kingly mind,
This one poor letter is unheard, thrust out,
And sheer forgotten.—Now my breast is clean
47
Sure I am old: do I deny my age?
I will not be perused with such blank eyes:
What have I done to draw these glances out?
Bertha, say something: look not thus at me:
Make some reply. Why, many scores of towns
Have sent appeals and letters by the ream
In the long years of my most weary reign
To which I gave no answer; and no brick
Has loosened out of any of their walls
For my anterior silence. It is strange
And pitiful. Thy arm, my Bertha; come:
No hint of this to Conrad: let us go.
[Exeunt.
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