University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

Another Room in the Castle. Enter Doña Alda and Don Luis.
Don Luis.
Pray, noble lady, how do you kill time?
The constant sameness of a country life
Must sometimes bear with weight on your high spirit.

Doña Alda.
Kill time, kill time! Ne'er breathe those words again—
At least, not where my lord Calaynos hears—
If on his good opinion you set store.
He uses time as usurers do their gold,
Making each moment pay him double interest;
He sighs o'er what in slumber is consumed;
Robs the lead-lidded god of many an hour,
To swell his heaping stores of curious learning.

Don L.
I hope my words no treason to your ears;
I thought not, gentle lady, to offend.
But I have lived in cities, from my birth,
Where all was noise, and life, and varying scene—
Recurrent news which set all men agape—
New faces, and new friends, and shows, and revels,
Mingled in constant action and quick change—
Which things drive on the wheels of time apace;
Nor, but for scanty periods, have I known
The changeless round of a calm country life.
I have not weighed my minutes in fine scales,
As lapidaries do the diamond's dust;
Content am I to wear life's blazing gem,
Nor care what fragments fall in polishing.

Doña A.
I have not passed my life in gayeties;
Duties, not pleasures, have filled up my days.
My lord's domain is large, and peopled thick;
Though most are prosperous, some are old, some poor.
Those that can hither come, I here relieve;
But the more feeble I ride forth to seek,
Freighted with goods which ease their present wants.
Sometimes, I read old books of chivalry,
And fill my wandering brain with idle fears
Of dwarfs, enchanters, giants, eldridge knights,
That throng the crowded world of old romance.
Sometimes, I prattle with my town-bred maid,
A girl of wit, who longs to see Seville,
And has so filled my ears with her desire,
That I 'd fain go, if but to still her tongue.
Then there are household duties infinite,
Known but to women, which I must discharge.

Don L.
So, then, at times you are an almoner,
At times a romance-reader, next a housewife.
These are grave things to spend a life upon!
But where 's Calaynos in this catalogue?—
Does he not cheer you, in your mournful tasks?

Doña A.
Are you his friend, and ask me this of him?
He is a scholar of the strictest caste;
And from the portal of yon study dim
Seldom comes forth into my little world.
He is a man of grave and earnest mind,
Wrapped up in things beyond my range of thought;
Of a warm heart, yet with a sense of duty—
As how he must employ his powerful mind—
That drives all empty trifles from his brain,
And bends him sternly o'er his solemn tasks.
Things nigh impossible are plain to him:
His trenchant will, like a fine-tempered blade,
With unturned edge cleaves through the baser iron.—
Such is my lord, a man above mankind.

Don L.
And can you feel companionship with him,
An intellectual demigod, removed
From all the sympathies that mark our race?
Can your warm woman's heart outpour its griefs,
Or share its gladness, with a soul like his?
Can you unbidden leap upon his breast,
And laugh or weep, as suits your forward mood?
He must despise all smiles, and mock all tears:
Serene, and cold, and calm—an ice-crowned peak,
Towering supreme amid thought's frozen clouds,
Above the thaws that flood our vales of life.

Doña A.
You 're talking of my husband!

Don L.
Of my friend.
Let me be your friend, lady, I beseech.
I fain would see you live in happiness;
And his strange coldness cannot bring you peace.

Doña A.
Husband and wife need not a go-between.
I did not say I lived unhappily;
Nor that Calaynos wanted in his love.
Señor, you take wild license with my speech,
To twist its meaning to so base an end.
I love him, he loves me.

Don L.
Your pardon, madam:
'T was but the share I take in all affairs,
Wherein my friends are mixed. I meant not ill;
Nor, willingly, your harmless words would wrest
To any sinister or false intent.
'T was a mistake; but such a one might hap
In the warm heart of any loving friend.

Doña A.
Well-meaning ill the generous must forgive.
When next we meet, beware how you uprake
The slumbering ashes in the fane of love,
Lest you come off with withered hands!—farewell.

[Exit.]
Don L.
Farewell, thou type of beauty, whom I'll win—
Farewell, thou guileless seat of embryo love—
Farewell, thou temple of my burning heart—
Thou thief of honor—thou enchantress fair,
Who hast upset my nature by thy art,
And killed the latest seeds of good in me!
Farewell, all gratitude, and friendship's trust!
Come, smiling sin, and pour thy honeyed words
On tongue and lips, but in my heart pour gall!—
Come, thin-robed sin, that show'st thy loveliness,
But hid'st thy wickedness and keen remorse!
That I may win my love, and hate her lord—
O, when had love a conscience or a fear!

[Exit.]