University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

The Bar in the Inn.
Enter Reuben, looking up at the clock.
Reuben.
Peggy, your clock is wrong,—and yet this quiet
Corroborates the clock! One may almost
Discern the hours by anything; our clocks
Are needed but for minutes. In this house
Each hour has its own sound; for, even now,
This silence has a ring that tells the time.
The husbandman can note it in the field
By the peculiar creaking of his plough;
The housewife by the blinking of her fire;
And they that live in cities know the stride
Of any hour that walks along the streets.

Enter Margaret.
Margaret.
Now, where have you been raking to all night?
Perhaps you think I did not see you pass.
Pray, keep away your hand. Go chuck her chin
With whom you have been walking.

Reuben.
By this hand,
Thou hast thyself been with me all the night;
And, like the marble Venus of the wood,
Hast stood before me in the dusky shades.
I throned thee up in niches of the clouds,
To be admired by all night's gazing eyes;
And, from my bended knee up to thy throne,
My heart would leap to think thee all my own.

Margaret.
And by such leaps it overleaps the mark.
But do not think to cheat me with fine talk
Of marble Venuses and hearts that leap
Up from a bended knee. Be plain, confess,
That with some country lass you've been to-night
Hanging about the lanes.

Reuben.
'Twould wrong the sun,
And prove a man insane, if, in broad day,
To pick his steps he used a farthing light.

Margaret.
I grant the insanity, but not the wrong.
The monarch sun smiles at the little act.
He is not wrong'd more than his light is paled
By that poor farthing blaze; nor yet withholds
One ray from him that would insult his light.

Reuben.
Then be thou like the sun and feel no wrong.

Margaret.
O, do not think you wrong me: you may flirt
With all the country lasses in the place:
It makes no odds to me: not it, not it.

Reuben.
Thy busy brain hath spun both warp and woof,
And woven of itself this spider's web;
And love is wrestling in it like a fly.
Sit down and I will brush it from thy brain,
And loose the wingèd prisoner from its snare.
Sit down beside me and I'll tell thee all.

Margaret.
O, keep it to yourself. Pray, why should I
Be made to listen to your love affairs? (Sits down beside him.)

Impudent gipsies! What care I for them!

Reuben.
When first I cross'd the bridge to-night, this house
Buzzed like a hive with honest country men,
Who talk'd, and laugh'd, and sang all in a breath.
And thou wert on the move from room to room.
But why should I come in to sit and stare,
Without this luxury of sweet discourse;
To see thee at the beck of everyone,
And but a passing word, a smile, a glance,
Fall to my share—who would have all of them,
Compress'd, distill'd, served up on those red lips,
And drink their spirit thus?

(Kisses her.)
Margaret.
But not alone?

Reuben.
Not if thy sweet idea be a presence.—
On coming by the church, I met—

Margaret.
So, so!
I thought it would come out. Persuade me now
It was by chance, mere chance, you met her there.—
Now do not come so near me. Pray, keep off.
Who was she? But I do not want to know.

Reuben.
I met a cobbler coming by the church.
Reproof sits in thy unbelieving eyes;
But if the cobbler come not here to-night,
And witness this the truth, then may those eyes
Never again receive me in soft folds,
But be the hard impenetrable glass
That they are now.

Margaret.
I cannot, for my life,
See what can take you into woods alone
At these late hours, or any time alone.
I have no fellowship with anything
That smacks not of humanity; no love
For dusky shades, cold skies and mewling streams,
Unless they are alive with whisper'd words
Or ring with merry laughter; and mute night,
That, like a cockatrice with myriad eyes,
Sits staring at the earth, I hate and shun,
Making it day inside with cheerful lights.
Oh, frightful is that silence which redounds
The beat of one's own heart! And solitude,
In which we breathe the fume of our own thoughts,
Is no more pleasant than a smoky house.
Your musing, moping, solitary fits
Are a disease.

Reuben.
Of which be thou the cure.
There is a dancing spirit in thy veins
Which sets my blood on tiptoe. Let my breast
To thine lie nearer, love, so that my heart,
By sympathy, may time itself to thine.

Margaret.
O, not through bony ribs can hearts be moved,
But through the electric channels of the brain;
As, when some sudden news leaps in the ear,
The heart is on the instant beating time
To the music of that news; or when we read
Some stirring tale that gallops to a close,
The heart goes with it and obeys the theme.
If you would have your heart keep time with mine,
Be minded as I am.

Reuben.
Then, in my ear
Drop thou thy heart's best news, or let me read,
Within the stirring volume of those eyes,
The tale which I could wish might never close;
Or hand lock'd into hand, or lip to lip,
Or cheek heaved on the soft sea of thy breast;
Whichever way thy spirit may embue
My languid being with thy richer life!
And then, ah then!—

Margaret.
If you indeed were true—
If there were one true bosom amongst men,
And that were yours, I'd give myself unto it,
Confidingly as does a new built ship
Pass from her mother's arms into the sea—
Into the bosom of the fondling sea,
Who proudly bears away his new-made bride.

Reuben.
Yes, while in view of home, and all her friends,
He gently dallies with this maiden bride:
But when he takes her to his desert keep,
Far off into the friendless waste of waves,
A very Blue Beard does her lord become;
And having beaten her, he thrusts her down
In some vile dungeon, never to be seen:
Or spurns her from him on a foreign shore
To languish in neglect. Or if, perchance,
He brings her home again, a haggard thing,
It is to cast her on her parent's bosom,
Then run away and leave her. Faithless sea!
Yet, if my breast were true as the false sea,
The trim-built Peggy would resign herself
Unto it with the surety of a duck
That throws itself upon a glassy lake.

Margaret.
I almost think your eye does not deceive,
But may not trust your words.

Reuben.
Then take the eye.
Spirits out of the flesh could not deceive;
Their closest thoughts lie bare, and all may read.
The guile is in this clothing of the soul,
In which the only loop-holes are the eyes.
Think'st thou, my sweetest, we shall live and love
After this shabby habit is put off?

Margaret.
Most surely, yea. They tell us who best know.

Reuben.
Ah, that is why I doubt it; that we need
Telling at all—not born into the fact.
But do'st thou think, for ever? love for ever!
As much as we do now? O, heaven indeed!
Our earthly cares laid in an earthly grave,
And evermore to feel this luxury
Of being with each other—this deep pulse
That beats to the extremest edge of joy
In both our breasts at once, as from one heart,
Whose office is to give out love for blood!
Were it not heaven to be always thus,
Without the dread of coming separation?

Margaret.
Such is not heavenly love. The love you paint
Is deeply tinged with earth: it is, indeed,
Our greatest earthly care, and must go down
With all our lesser cares into the grave.
This ache o' the heart which we on earth call love,
Little befits us for the love in heaven.
It is too pure for our sin-spotted souls,
Which must be washed in the living blood of Christ,
Ere they can take the dye of heaven on.

Reuben.
But is not earth God's earth? He loves the best,
And lives the most, who fills the God-given cup
Of present capability to the brim—
E'en though he stain it with earth's blood-red wine,
Unfitting it for nectar. Change of drink
Will have a change of cup. But I want none,
Either of cup or drink. From this sweet thee
There overflows into my chaliced heart
A nectar which the gods themselves might sip,
And be the more celestial. Lay thy cheek
Here, love, and I will live upon its glow.
Hear'st thou the satisfaction of my heart
That bears so sweet a burden?—God! to die,
And be for ever thus!—Time, cease thy hours,
Arrest us in our deepest trance of joy,
That we, when thou art run, may so remain
Through the eternal day.

Margaret.
Reuben, my Heart!
Let us not go too deep in this god's cup,
For fear the dregs prove devil's drink.

Reuben.
Then, bring
Right sovereign ale, for here King Crispin comes.—
Politic prince! one who submits his rule
All to the understandings of his subjects,
Yet, stooping, takes the measure of their foot.
Inheriting the ancient virtue, he
Heels more than any doctor, cures more soles
Than all the curates of them: nor restricts
His bounty to their higher wants alone,
But sometimes adds to his poor subjects' corn;
Yea, bountifully administers his awl,
And measures out his mercy to the last.
O, worthy king of cobblers!

Enter Joseph. Exit Margaret.
Joseph.
Sweet King Love,
That would not talk of death and the old churchyard.
I see, I see; nor do I marvel thou
Should'st see an Eden in this sinful earth.
And, welt me, but this Eve of thine would make
A worse place Eden. The forbidden fruit
Might ripen in the sunshine of her eyes—
Ripen to heavenly sweetness; and the sin
Of taking it were such a tempting sin,
That angels might transgress and be forgiven.

Reuben.
What will you have, Joseph? Let us sit down inside.
I'll talk to you now about any mortal thing—
Aye, or immortal either. When the heart
Stands proudly on the top of its desires,
No longing unaccomplished, then the mind—
Perch'd high above the ambitious mists that creep
Out of the marshy troubles of our nature—
Sees far and clearly. Come: what shall we have?

[They pass into the inner room.