 | Remorse |  |
Scene I
The Sea Shore on the Coast of Granada.Don Alvar, wrapt in a Boat cloak, and Zulimez (a Moresco), both as just landed.
Zulimez.
No sound, no face of joy to welcome us!
Alvar.
My faithful Zulimez, for one brief moment
Let me forget my anguish and their crimes.
If aught on earth demand an unmix'd feeling,
'Tis surely this—after long years of exile,
To step forth on firm land, and gazing round us,
To hail at once our country, and our birth-place.
Hail, Spain! Granada, hail! once more I press
Thy sands with filial awe, land of my fathers!
Zulimez.
Then claim your rights in it! O, revered Don Alvar,
Yet, yet give up your all too gentle purpose.
It is too hazardous! reveal yourself,
And let the guilty meet the doom of guilt!
Alvar.
Remember, Zulimez! I am his brother,
Injured indeed! O deeply injured! yet
Ordonio's brother.
Zulimez.
Nobly-minded Alvar!
This sure but gives his guilt a blacker dye.
Alvar.
The more behoves it I should rouse within him
Remorse! that I should save him from himself.
Zulimez.
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the inmost
Weeps only tears of poison!
Alvar.
And of a brother,
Dare I hold this, unproved? nor make one effort
To save him?—Hear me, friend! I have yet to tell thee,
That this same life, which he conspired to take,
Himself once rescued from the angry flood,
And at the imminent hazard of his own.
Add too my oath—
Zulimez.
You have thrice told already
The years of absence and of secrecy,
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A suborned murderer have the power to dictate
A binding oath—
Alvar.
My long captivity
Left me no choice: the very wish too languished
With the fond hope that nursed it; the sick babe
Drooped at the bosom of its famished mother.
But (more than all) Teresa's perfidy;
The assassin's strong assurance, when no interest,
No motive could have tempted him to falsehood:
In the first pangs of his awaken'd conscience,
When with abhorrence of his own black purpose
The murderous weapon, pointed at my breast,
Fell from his palsied hand—
Zulimez.
Heavy presumption!
Alvar.
It weighed not with me—Hark! I will tell thee all;
As we passed by, I bade thee mark the base
Of yonder cliff—
Zulimez.
That rocky seat you mean,
Shaped by the billows?—
Alvar.
There Teresa met me
The morning of the day of my departure.
We were alone: the purple hue of dawn
Fell from the kindling east aslant upon us,
And blending with the blushes on her cheek,
Suffused the tear-drops there with rosy light.
There seemed a glory round us, and Teresa
The angel of the vision!
Had'st thou seen
How in each motion her most innocent soul
Beamed forth and brightened, thou thyself would'st tell me,
Guilt is a thing impossible in her!
She must be innocent!
Zulimez.
Proceed, my lord!
Alvar.
A portrait which she had procured by stealth,
(For even then it seems her heart foreboded
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A portrait of herself with thrilling hand
She tied around my neck, conjuring me,
With earnest prayers, that I would keep it sacred
To my own knowledge: nor did she desist,
Till she had won a solemn promise from me,
That (save my own) no eye should e'er behold it
Till my return. Yet this the assassin knew,
Knew that which none but she could have disclosed.
Zulimez.
A damning proof!
Alvar.
My own life wearied me!
And but for the imperative voice within,
With mine own hand I had thrown off the burthen.
That voice, which quelled me, calmed me: and I sought
The Belgic states: there joined the better cause;
And there too fought as one that courted death!
Wounded, I fell among the dead and dying,
In death-like trance: a long imprisonment followed.
The fulness of my anguish by degrees
Waned to a meditative melancholy;
And still the more I mused, my soul became
More doubtful, more perplexed; and still Teresa,
Night after night, she visited my sleep,
Now as a saintly sufferer, wan and tearful,
Now as a saint in glory beckoning to me!
Yes, still as in contempt of proof and reason,
I cherish the fond faith that she is guiltless!
Hear then my fix'd resolve: I'll linger here
In the disguise of a Moresco chieftain.—
The Moorish robes?—
Zulimez.
All, all are in the sea-cave,
Some furlong hence. I bade our mariners
Secrete the boat there.
Alvar.
Above all, the picture
Of the assassination—
Zulimez.
Be assured
That it remains uninjured.
Alvar.
Thus disguised
I will first seek to meet Ordonio's—wife!
If possible, alone too. This was her wonted walk,
And this the hour; her words, her very looks
Will acquit her or convict.
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Will they not know you?
Alvar.
With your aid, friend, I shall unfearingly
Trust the disguise; and as to my complexion,
My long imprisonment, the scanty food,
This scar—and toil beneath a burning sun,
Have done already half the business for us.
Add too my youth, since last we saw each other.
Manhood has swoln my chest, and taught my voice
A hoarser note—Besides, they think me dead:
And what the mind believes impossible,
The bodily sense is slow to recognize.
Zulimez.
'Tis yours, sir, to command, mine to obey.
Now to the cave beneath the vaulted rock,
Where having shaped you to a Moorish chieftain,
I'll seek our mariners; and in the dusk
Transport whate'er we need to the small dell
In the Alpujarras—there where Zagri lived.
Alvar.
I know it well: it is the obscurest haunt
Of all the mountains—
[Both stand listening.
Voices at a distance!
Let us away!
[Exeunt.
| Remorse | |