University of Virginia Library

SCENE II

[A clearing in the forest. Edward, sitting on some faggot-wood, is stringing together bluebells and primroses which he has just gathered. A misselthrush is singing overhead.]
EDWARD.
[He hears a rustling in the leaves, and bounds to his feet.]

[He swings himself on to a bough, and swarms the tree. Alfred, disguised as a vagrant, passes underneath, pausing an instant, and taking up the flowers that are lying on the ground.]
ALFRED.
Children, or lovers, must have passed this way,
Or lovers therefore children; for the twain
Have this in common, that they lightly cull
The sweets of nature, but to throw away
And let them wilt when gathered.

[He lays the flowers on the ground and passes on.]
EDWARD.
He mutters to himself some droneful saw,
After his kind. The very primroses
To his sad gaze beseem but ruefully;
And little kens he that those bluebells keep,
There where they lie, within their threaded stems,
The secret of a joy unspeakable.
But lo! a nest, and five blue eggs still warm
With love's close brooding! If the misselthrush
That shrilled so gleefully till scared away
Had mated here, I must have spared his crib.
But never doth he build as high as this.
True poet that he is, he nesteth low,
Only to soar in song! These eggs bespeak
The satin-shining starling, whistling thief,
Who mocks his betters and parades aloft
On borrowed notes. So will I filch these beads,
To make my woodland wreath still worthier
For her white throat.
[He descends the tree, blows the eggs, and threads them with the primroses and bluebells. Holding them out before him]
A necklace for a queen.

EDGIVA
(coming noiselessly from behind the faggot-stack, and kneeling in front of him).
The queen is here!
For love can seat the lowliest on a throne,
And—do you love me?

EDWARD
(raising her).
Sceptre is there none,
Sceptre nor sword, should these be mine to give,
I would not halve with you.

EDGIVA.
Halve but yourself,
And 'twere enough. Nay, give it all to me,
And never take away! But will you not,
For true love's sake, entrust to me your name,
That I may say it when you are not near,
And, saying it, may fancy you less far?

EDWARD.
Know me as Edward; 'tis a princely name:
And if the world should ever call me prince,
Be sure that you my princess then would be.

EDGIVA.
Noble you must be: noble too am I,
If true the tale that Danewulf loves to tell
When twilight duskens round the crackling logs;
How, striding hearthward through the forest glade,
He heard a mewling in an eagle's nest,
And, swarming to the wychelm's topmost fork,
Found me, strange callow nestling, not yet fledged,
A golden fillet round my dimpled wrist,
Awake and wailing; cradled there, he deems,
By widowed chieftain worsened in the fight,
And fleeing for his life.

EDWARD.
No! dropped from Heaven.
Too fair, too sweet, for any seed of earth,
My blossom of the air, my sky-sent gift,
My love from otherwhere, with not a touch
Of the gross ground!

EDGIVA.
O woodland way of love!
Wealthiest of all, that never says enough
Till every flower be hired by lordly speech
To bear its burden.

EDWARD.
More, much more, than speech!
Look! I have made a necklace for your neck,
Worthy its fresh and fair simplicity.
The Pagans have our gold and jewels filched,
And left us nought but steel, wherewith, please Heaven!
We'll have the gold and jewels back again:
So for your throat I have neither ore nor gem.
Yet gaze hereon! These golden primroses,
These topaz shells, these bells of amethyst,
Are—nay, but let me round them on your neck,
And then with kisses pay your jewel-smith.

[He fastens them round her throat.]
EDGIVA.
How you all spoil me! You, the most of all!
My mother,—other mother have I none,
And she no other child,—Danewulf's free wife,
Is fain to hinder me when I would drudge,
Vowing that hand of woman noble-born
Should touch nought baser than the dainty task
Of pirn or needle; but I heed her not:
And these poor arms you fold about you now,
Oft scrub the settle, scour the pans, and knead
The homely dough. You handle but the sword! [Breaking away from him.]

I am not meet for you.

EDWARD
(embracing her tenderly).
So much more meet,
Because you are a woman, scorning not
A woman's duty. For my father says,
Work is the noblest lot and life of man,
While war is but the weapon wrought to clear
A path for peaceful labour.

EDGIVA.
I should love
To know your father.

EDWARD.
So you shall, some day,
When, Alfred's peaceful daydreams all fulfilled,
Men may beneath their roof-tree safely sit,
Not harried by these rovers of the sea,
This way, and that, finding no settled home
For such a winsome tenderling as thou!

EDGIVA.
Last night I had a dream, a foolish dream,—
Nay, shall I tell it you? for still you count
My folly wisdom,—an unmeaning dream,
Withal that haunts me waking,—how there shone
Out of my body in the ebon night
A light—a light!—that, steady as a star,
But dazzling as the noonday sun in heaven,
Lighted all England!

EDWARD
(folding his arms round her).
Dream that may come true,
My fair soothsayer! But till then, no word
Of this . . . the highest, heavenliest thing on earth!

EDGIVA.
Now come and see my home. The needfire burns
With no more tell-tale watch than one old serf,
That craved for passing bit and sup within,
And whom my mother set beside the hearth
To heed the griddle-cakes, the while she sped
To milk the wayward goats; and Danewulf too
Is far amid the clearing, raking mast,
To fat the hogs. Come! just a little while.