 | Calmstorm, the reformer |  |
4. PART IV.
SCENE I.
—A Council Chamber. Magistrates of the City assembled. In the background, Calmstorm.Chief Mag.
The House of Idiots on the island—
What order on that, gentlemen?
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The ordinance regulating the venders of wine and tavern licenses comes first, I think.
Another Mag.
I have in my hand the keeper's list, which shows they had twenty-five pounds of bread last week, and I am told, on good authority, that an end window of the prison hangs over their house, through which the convicts cast frequent crumbs and morsels of food.
A Mag.
That house should be suppressed—it's a shameful waste of the public money—if they were let alone, the race would die out in a short time, and the whole thing be ended.
Calmstorm comes forward.
Calm.
Shame on you all, ye talking Nothings!—
I 'd say, were 't not a deep, throat-clogging lie,
I am a suppliant here for certain poor,
Outcast, down-trodden, and most pitiful men:
I am a quarreler with your narrowness,
Upbraider of your laws—
Chief Mag.
Another time
We'll hear you, sir.
Calm.
Another time, another time!—
The court of politic-pated fools: the hour
That on its instant hinges turns, swings some
Into the everlasting gulf remediless,
And others lets, for a brief day, upon
The light of life: God on his single finger
Of the instant time, poises the universe,
And all its goings-on.
Chief Mag.
You come unlike all other suitors here,
Brandishing an open blade before our eyes.
Calm.
The law prohibits not that I should bear
A sword, and wave it when and where I will:
'T is good that you should see its edge at times—
Should know there is a quick divorcer
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Upon your faces flat—
Ye sordid scorners of the spirit's right!—
And when the pigmiest thinker seeks your ear,
Beg him to speak forever, and be still!
A blight upon your babble at the full!—
Though men with the black plagues should howl,
And all community should fall at odds,
The endless battle still goes on, and on.
Be seasoned to your shame, or swift or slow,
The food you snatch from hunger's icy teeth,
That the dull malady may clinch you,
Where you sit, or the keen anguish lead you
Through the gaping streets,
A show for boys to mock, and men to scorn!
A Mag.
He 's mad.
Several Mags.
Unquestionably mad.
Another Mag.
It were charity to have him cared for: a sad spectacle to see a man, of his fair look, brought to this pass: we'll place him in custody of an officer.
A Mag.
The people should not have their minds distracted and their persons endangered by such a man at large.
Calm.
You sit as if the moon were in your upturned eyes!
A hundred souls, know you, a hundred souls,
Now make a hundred trumpets of the air,
That Heaven may hear them through the watchful day,
In the slow creeping night.—
In storm he sometimes answers, oftener
In silence working at the heart and core;
When one day falls the evil tree, with all its fruit,
Though the sun shine, and by it flows
The smiling stream.
Ch. Mag.
You must not menace us!
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Menace! Who threatens dogs before he strikes?
Would that He above vouchsafed, as once he did,
To write upon the whited wall the order of his wrath!
A few swift strokes should slid the idle thread,
And let you drop to chambers too serene,
Where talkers lie alone; flatterers apart
Must mole the ground to reach them;
And empty hands, once gesture-mad,
May play in the dust!
The storm is at your back and blows you thither,
Swifter than rivers over cataracts.
[Exit Calmstorm.
The Mags.
Mad, mad beyond all cure!
[Scene closes.
SCENE II.
—Umena and Dorcas. A Country Road, beyond the City.Dorcas.
Behold in yonder nibbled field, Umena,
A bright young foal as happy as the day,
That when he moves seems to possess the earth,
And, when he stops, to own the air he stands in
In beauty's right. E'en so, so fair and so unbacked
The foal was, which our gracious Saviour rode,
In the old time, over the branching palms
And followed by the people jubilant.
Umena.
O, mightier, Dorcas, in his beauty, far,
Than that other, the pale white horse of Death,
That rides against Him.
Dorcas.
How, when he pricks his ears,
They twinkle in the air, and shake the light off
That it drops like dew upon the ground!
Umena.
Look, Dorcas! toward the East,
[Points to Buildings before them.
A dark gray Sorrow rises—the House
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That 'gainst the glad pulses of the Brain
In hushy darkness moves.
Dorcas.
And yet,
The swallows in the air are free to rove.
In a pure instinct, clear of mortal taint!—
They wind about the Heaven as if it were their own.
Umena.
For Heaven, Dorcas, is careful of their ways.
And, still beyond, where skim their wings e'en now,
The white walls rise that are the free man's grave
Yet while he lives!
[A prison in the distance.
Dorcas.
Keep from those windows far,
All fair, free Things of Nature, lest the wild eyes
That glitter through their bars make you to droop,
E'en as you fly.
Umena.
Farther, yet farther on—
Behold, a dull, obscure, low, dusky shed,
[An asylum.
In the cold shadow of the prison-walls,
Slumbers and cowers in beast-like fear.—
Have you the basket, Dorcas, safely borne?
Dorcas.
Yes, yes—food for the body here I bear,
[Shows the basket.
To raise it from its cold decline; and here's the viol
You bade me bring, to speak unto the ear,
And raise the spirit yet another step
Up toward its bright estate.
Umena.
There is another thing,
Sweeter to taste than is the nectared fruit,
And music more to the weary spirit's ear,
To whisper softly to the low-down soul,
And nourish it sweetly back to what it was
Six thousand happy years ago!
Dorcas.
The Book, the Book I bear,
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Upon the slimy ooze and troublous state,
Where soon on yonder shore we mean to tread—
But lo,—we've wandered past the gate,
And must go back to find the way.
[Exeunt.
Umena.
[Returning and appearing before the gate.]
I pray
That Calmstorm be not hurt at heart
When he shall learn this act of ours!—He thinks
These wrongs must righted be, not each by each,
But with a general scope, storm-like falling
On the massed vileness, not like the light,
Gently and slow and single-rayed.
Dorcas.
The beauty of this world is bred
In single growths, of flower and leaf and tree:
Each sapling in the woodland knows his right
To his own color, and leans in the air
To the separate murmur of his own fond leaves.
Umena.
Yes, one by one, the children of the dark
Are led into the day.
[Umena, Dorcas, enter at the gate.
SCENE III.
—A Chamber. Darkledge and Slinely.Slinely.
It all works well; swiftly and excellently,
The cloud grows in the air and thickens
As it nears him; be silent and be cautious.
Dark.
There is a summons drawn to be let slip
Against him for the old court-contempt,
When comes the moment fullest of distress
And swift to o'erwhelm him.
Sline.
Be silent and be cautious, Darkledge—
There is no need we should be known in this;
Nature and Providence and excellent men
Work out our pure designs more surely
In a happy secresy, than could our hands,
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The general mind by what the Organ oft
Hath spoken, is colored to a touch
For any figure we would draw therein.
Dark.
The service of the summons shall be left
That it may seem the last and crowning act
Of the indignant people, eager, most
In vindication of Justice and the Law:
And shall be laid upon his evil head
Most lightning-like, when know we well
Your cunning under-plot has cut the roots beneath.
Sline.
The whirlwind, Darkledge, that towards him sweeps,
Has lightning in its breast, and stony hail
And blinding darkness, deep beyond the elements.
Dark.
There shall be no blow struck?
Sline.
None other than the irresistible stroke
Wherewith the people's breath reverberates
In the doomed ear! No finger on him laid,—
Nor shall a single hair be touched by aught
Save by the awed and eager power within
The man, that in an hour may whiten it.
Dark.
Sweet Judgeship, and high seat of power!
Oh, who could lose, without a pang,
The waiving courtesy of the men of worth,
The uplooking faces of the multitude,
The hushed and terrible awe of prisoners
At the charge!
Sline.
We meet again in half an hour!
[Exeunt severally.
SCENE IV.
—A street. First Citizen. Second Citizen, &c.Second Cit.
The elements are all astir: whate'er
Of base, of mean design or falsest hope
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From every point the desperate shouters cry,
And make it seem that Heaven ordains his death.
First Cit.
Bravely we should make up our force of men,
And in a body, show that we uphold
His hands, e'en at the direst edge of peril.
Third Cit.
Calmstorm withdraws himself, nor will be seen
To-day, because the city has declared
'Gainst a poor suitor in the wealth-struck courts.
First Cit.
Fear not, his countenance will clear as the great day goes on.
This little cross cannot defeat his soul—
As though a cloud through the wide heavens should chase
The sun and seek to quench it!—
What though the eagle on the earth may sit
Awhile, and see the clouds, nor see the sun,
The folded thunder of his wings he yet
Shall free, and quell despairing with his upward look!
Sec. Cit.
Gather the people,
If we can, in the Great Square, an hour from this.
First Cit.
We, in the flush of youth, the spirit's flush,
Should love him, cheer him, nourish and sustain;
For beautiful and bright he seems to us,
The earnest helper of his brother man,
As though the day had clothed him with his sun,
The night had crowned him with her peaceful stars!
[Exeunt severally.
SCENE V.
—A street. Calmstorm, Waning.Wan.
Can you look up, from where we stand, and by
The nearest church-clock, the great brown one, tell me
What time of day it is?
Calm.
I am not time-noter to the city,
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We both behold, I think, I think I may—
Upon the one.
Wan.
Upon the one! Exactly:
I was afraid your senses with your judgment
Might have gone, if what I heard was true.
Calm.
You prologue nothing with a grievous face.
Whate'er your ear has heard, your tongue,
Free as the clock to strike, might say without a fear.
Wan.
To speak as you would have me, plainly,
The city teems in every corner of its breadth
With rumors of a dark and dreadful front:
That you esteem the world, as now it goes,
Cheaper than the clipt hair in barbers' shops,
Have spoken evil of the sacred Press,
Are a blasphemer in your common speech,
Calling, in Courts of Justice, upon Heaven
Wantonly, and worst and last of all,
That you denounce the honest magistracy.
Calm.
Having a friendly faith in what I aimed at,
You laughed away those whisperings of the town?
Wan.
I did not, Calmstorm; I thought it rather
Became me to wear a sad and serious look,
'Till you had given me rightful leave to laugh,
By purging from your name such hideous stains.
Calm.
You did?
Wan.
I did.
Calm.
Were there a special God, who by himself,
Sate in His sole Heaven, and kept a count
Through all the endless ages, of broken troths
In man or woman, to Him I'd lift mine eyes
And ask, how He had entered there the name
You bore this morning!
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Pardon me, Calmstorm, 'till I have told you,
For your own use and special good alone,
A score of writs or near that number,
Issue to-morrow in the State's name,
Or that of many injured people,
Who rouse, 'tis said, at mention of your practices.
Calm.
Are any in the name of injured Waning?
Wan.
You know, you know there could be none, for though
I think you rash, indeed, you have meant well,
And mostly thought well,—so have your accusers.
Calm.
Is it then so?
These men do rise against me, one and all?
Wan.
Desperately.
Calm.
And this must pass unquestioned,
And they go challengeless?
Wan.
I think it must.
Calm.
It shall not pass! Shall the stale politician,
Or pampered magistrate, and the loose
Wielder of a wicked pen, so keep at bay
The keen and gnashing hunger of the world?
Although it rive the very ear of peace,
And crack the charter of the insolent day,
I'll make appeal.
[He moves toward an elevated ground.
Waning attempting to hold him back.]
Upon your perilled life,
Waning, you stay me now!
[Pushes him away.
(Aloud, and toward the distant streets.)
Ye men that bear
The iron load of unavailing toil,
Ye women housed in the obscure despair,
Ye children reared with eyes that drink the light
But to grow dim before the noon has come!
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Do ye not feel the mountain weight of life
As I do now? When strain the links of life
With the hard pang of much—how much—desired
And little got, look ye not upward then
Into the empty heaven, as with the hope
That it might rain relief? and yet anew,
And day by day, the ever-blinding dust
To which hard labor grinds the fair green earth,
Whirls up aloft. Rain, Rain, the blessed Rain,
With peace, content, and the old Eden-life—
Oh let it fall!
Wan.
You cry aloud in vain.
They're deaf or far away.
Calm.
The earth is dry, and all its fountains dry—
Blest be the shower that falls, and let it fall
At once!
[As certain stragglers give promise of approach, Waning glides away.
Who would have dreamed the trial-hour
Would see him wear this ugly mask of doubt,
And weigh his words in scruples? And yet,
I cannot forget, there was a shadow
Creeping ever before and round about his acts
Foreboding this: He always spoke his farewells
Doubtingly, and shuddered at good-bye
As if he grinned at death. This fear
Lay deeper in his nature than I thought,
And all his powers are fellows of the same
Height and aspect. The Organ-master,
In his blind toil of venomous and underground report,
Is working, it seems, and Darkledge, the Judge,
I cannot doubt, has put the wasting grindstones
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The white sail bears its way, to sink when Heaven
Withholds its breezes!
[Exit Calmstorm.
SCENE VI.
A street. First Politician. Second Politician, &c.Second Pol.
Have you assembled the committees,
And shown them, clearly, how this honest man
Opposes all their kind, all close and secret councils,
Would have all business done under the sky,
And free to all?
Third Pol.
They know it and they hate
Him for it.
First Pol.
In the great Hall, I, yesterday
Denounced him, a rioter, disorderer
Of affairs, who had some hidden views
To serve, which he concealed, and they'd do well
To learn and nip in the bud.
Sec. Pol.
They'll do it?
First Pol.
They'll pass his house, as if by accident,
Now, in an hour, and greet him with their sense
Of his deserts, the voice of the opinion
Which sways the world—the Public Voice.
Third Pol.
In all the news-haunts of the town, 'tis known
How dangerous a man he is.
First Pol.
Fail we to put him down,
The noisome stuff he broaches will put us down,
And it might be a long June day before
We rose again. Be full and prompt at gathering.
[Exeunt.
SCENE VII.
A street. First Rabble. Second Rabble, &c.First Rab.
It is appointed that, an hour from this,
We gather and move toward Calmstorm.
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Whoever sings in the nose or groans a deeper bass,
Or shrieks most hideously: But not a blow!
Third Rab.
Oh, not a blow! That's the old fashion,
But the new one cuts deeper than the knife—
Is that right?
First Rab.
The doctrine that we live by.
You might as well consider too he bears a sword,
And would not be perhaps o'er-kind to his assailer!
But some of you that know the business,
Rush back and forth through distant streets,
And raise the terrible cry of fire,
And let the bells ring in the markets
Dreadfully. This will perplex and confound
Him at the dark hour as if the end of time
Was near, and the Great Burning lit.
Third Rab.
Hurrah, hurrah for that! That draws no blood.
[Exeunt, shouting.
SCENE VIII.
—A street. First Beggar. Second Beggar, &c.First Beg.
What, that man
That wants to shut the poor-house—
Second Beg.
And who says
We shall not run the streets; 'gad we'll go
If it's half a mile! I'll clatter my basket
Before his door, worse than a dozen coopers.
Third Beg.
Yes, lads, he's the man who says he wants to serve us—
He serve us!—a starveling from a back street
Himself. If he had been a grave, round,
Red-cheeked citizen who offered alms
It would be well! But he, a sick white man,
Whose door's unsilvered with his name,
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He's no better than we!
Sec. Beg.
We'll clatter him deaf,
With every basket in the town.
Enter, another Beggar.
Fourth Beg.
News, Tom, news—Lifeless is dead!
I heard as I came out at break of day,
A poor dead man was floating in the river:
And true enough when I got there, who should
I see, with his old gaunt look sharpened a little,
In his old dress, and dull, slow, fishy eyes—
But Lifeless.
Third Beg.
Thrown himself in?
Fourth Beg.
Partly he might—
A banker's coach backed for the rich man's ease—
From restiveness of his o'erpampered horses,
Pushed him from the wharf's end, as though
By merest chance—I guess he meant they should,
And this way saved the hanging of himself.
Sec. Beg.
No doubt now if the truth was known my Jack,
This Calmstorm had a hand in it. Let's off, boys.
[Exeunt, hastily.
SCENE IX.
—At the entrance to a House. Calmstorm to him Enter Waning.Wan.
Calmstorm, bestir you!—Through the near streets
The howling beggars rush in eager troops:
They cry you've striven to crush them basely;
And down another way the people pour,
Nor will I forget, the officers of the Law
Come on, wielding their staves in terrible
Array against you.
Calm.
Alas, he seems at this quick instant
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[Aside.
Wan.
They will not, be sure, window-shatter your house
Nor on your person wreak their pent-up rage:
With hisses, howls, and every hideous cry,
With looks of scorn and finger-pointing hate,
Motions and looks remembered long after
The speedy blow, they'll make themselves known to you.
I hope that all will yet go well, but we,
Radical apart in soul, must part e'en here.
Calm.
We parted many years ago when first
You had a doubt.
Wan.
Should Darkness, Calmstorm, cover up your fame—
I was your well-wisher to the end.
[Exit Waning.
Enter Umena.
Umena.
Why sped Waning away so swiftly?
Calm.
He speeds unto his ends, and I to mine.
Umena.
I've marked, of late, when Waning talked with you
At the same minute his eye looked at you
And away: and his feet he shuffled
As one who forges fables. His friendship is, I fear,
Declining.
Calm.
It is declined to dust and nothingness.
Umena.
And is it for this you walk so much apart,
And pause perpetually, gazing at the great Earth
As if to pierce a Secret that she hides forever?
Calm.
The world, is better and worse, Umena,
Than that I deemed when first I laid my hand
Upon it, to soothe it, as I hoped,
Into a better harmony.—There is
A jar incurable through all its chords.
Umena.
O say not that its woe's not med'cinable!
For, up and down the wide world's sounding way,
The Saviour walks: the loaves and fishes still distributes
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Within the house and on the open way.
Calm.
O, will the Power that governs us
And shapes the world, let honest Fortune blow
And waken music only! Through orders limitless
Let faculty, in each peculiar man,
Find its free range, unpewed in priestly fears,
And shackleless of slavish ordinance!
Umena.
A sadness creeps into your voice, unlike
Yourself: What evil is it shadows your brow,
And shakes your step?
Calm.
Nothing, my dear and gentle wife.
If the dark hour draws near, thief-like it comes;
I feel it not, and sleep as yet with the bright
Morning shining over me, a few hours onward.
Umena.
There is a fear that lives within his hope,
Too great for it to nourish and endure.
[Aside. Exit Umena.
Calmstorm.
The world I now have walked, for two
And thirty summers, have seen the good man
Often hang his head, and the raised villain's brow
Affront the light unblenched.
The two great wheels of time and chance roll on,
Still on their axle rides the bulky world,
And overbears justice, and truth, and manly force,
And lowly merit, downcast pure desert.
There was a Power, there is a Power,
Unto whose heart these children should be
All as one: whose mantle should enfold
The beggared crutch, and be a garment
To the gilded throat, a Power above despair,
Aloof from petty wrong, and capable
As the wide earth to do its wish.
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As still they would, the onward masses move
Beneath the bannered fate that conquers with a look
And quells before it strikes. Why stand ye still
When through the air there springs a cry
For help?
Lift up, lift up the banner Thou!—
The new, the fair—land of too many hopes,
Too many fears!—Oh, I could weep e'en now,
At thought of what thou art, what thou may'st be:—
That I go hence shall not dethrone thee, mother!
Be fairer thou that I am gone, and I
Lie down to rest gently as any child
Pillowed in softest sleep by summer play.
The People, the howling Beggars, and the Law
Sweep towards me—the invincible hour is come—
It need not that they bear their frightful staves,
Or bring their scornful looks or tongues of hate:
The sky, the all-surrounding air, both far and near,
Is thronged beyond the presence of all hate,
With faces that for many, many days,
Loathing and fierce, have smitten me, where'er
I walked. The hour, the hour is come.
[Exit.
| Calmstorm, the reformer | |