University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

—A Chamber in Ambla's Cottage.
Ambla and Gideon discovered.—Gideon in an attitude of affectionate attention, kneeling at the side of Ambla.
Ambla.
It was this stony, stubborn, mountain-towering pride,
That kept me dumb to you—though I beheld
Your pale young face, and saw your troubled steps,
It would not let me speak and tell you all;
But best it is that you should know it, now—
Re-word it as I will it shakes my soul.—
Your father, Gideon, was a haughty man,
Severe, yet fond! He thought that I had sinned
Against his love with that gay paramour,
Who was no more—than birds are to the tree
They hover o'er—to me who lived in mine
Own thoughts above suspicion's climbing.
Alas!

Gideon.
Did my father ne'er reproach you,
With his doubts?

Ambla.
Not in a breath; but in his stern,
Calm, silent way, he called his enemy
(As he would have him,) to the fatal test—
They fought—a word from me had saved his life!—
I lived with cold disdain, counselled with her,
In all my acts: the morning when they were
To meet, and met, shone like a bride new dressed—
But never more such morning came to me—
He fell!

Gideon.
My father?

Ambla.
[Agitated.]
He did. Oh, blackest hour,
That bred a thousand and a thousand like you!

Gideon.
Be calm, dear mother—you smote him not.

Ambla.
I did: it was
My silence winged, with gliding and sure death,
The aim that never, never had been made—
If I had willed and wished to stay it.
Oft, oft do I recall that dreadful time,
In all its minutes of tremendous wo;
I see, as then, your father move—a towered man,
Strong in the life of youth entrenched within
His manly form—towards the bloody field;
I watch the hours, I count the mournful clock—
Now, now the blow is struck; and now I see him,
As wide the yellow sun streams ghastly down,
Come back, a mangled corpse, and not a man!
Frenzy and wildness seize upon my brain,
And the gaunt shape of him I sacrificed
To my most wicked pride, before me stands—
Even now, dressed in the sanguine colors
Of that dreadful hour! Shield, shield me, Gideon,
From the awful form.

Gideon.
'T is but the vision of your troubled mind!
Still and subdue this sea-like grief, dear mother!
You have rendered long and ample quittance,
For your slight act of inconsiderate pride;
'T is this which shakes your steps, darkens your looks,
By day, makes solitary walks and the mooned night
Your friend—I thought, and, trembling, feared 'twas thus—
(And yet I smile, to think 't is this, and not
The other) for I, alone, have heard you,
When you knew it not, mutter often
In sleep, and even waking, drop words by chance,
That showed a soul disturbed with such remorse.

Ambla.
So caused and so allowed by me, your father's death,
My son, has been an ever-living dagger
To my heart, shining with dreadful light,
Flashing the past anew, and quick withdrawn
And quick returned, to pierce me only deeper:
The world we lived in lost its spell for me—
I daily moved, a loathed and lonesome thing;
In silence and in throngs, in all assemblages
Of peace, or prayer, or strife, was left to stand
Apart, feeding upon my pangs, and drinking
Memory's bitterest seas to the bottom!

Gideon.
Pass, pass, dear mother, pass that hour.

Ambla.
I fled the city where we then were dwelling,
Glad to abjure its hateful stones forever,
And sped alone with you, my only hope
And stay, in hand, smiling upon my way,
To this lone wilderness (lone then it was,
A greenness unspotted with a human home),
Familiar with the woods and open fields,
And sky and stars, and spirits, if such there be,
That walk them all.

“Gideon.
Uncompanied were you in this wild place,
“This lonesome, mournful, penitential wilderness?

“Ambla.
By none, save you, who prattled only then,
“And had not risen to boyish speech: you 're all
“That came with me into this world of woods,
“Are all in all to me, and ever have been.—
“In my mind's wildering pangs I often sought,
“Yet innocently, communion with the thoughts
“And fancies of the unseen world, have willed
“Or dreamed, or known beings, that others saw not.

“Gideon.
I fear you, mother, yet I love—
“These things may be, and yet they may not.

“Ambla.
Be they or not, what Deacon formal
“Or earthy Magistrate, shall stay or speed them?

“Gideon.
Oh, mother, put not your body in peril
“Of their chains, although your spirit walk the stars,
“Pure as their light, when first it shone.

“Ambla.
Were but mine eye purged clear of all dimness
“Got of the earth—think you, I could not see,
“Each hour, spirits of blest and perfect men,
“Walk up and down this green before our door,
“Beneath yon woody trees, or entering at times,
“This low sad shed of ours, to talk with me,
“As did the angels in the olden time?

“Gideon.
I 've sometimes, mother,
“Thought a fire shone in your eyes that burned up
“Space and all its clogging motes, and looked
“Whither they would. They 're milder now!

“Ambla.
Spirits possess the earth, 'till men, cities
“And habitations of gross clay, uprear thereon:
“They haunt this uncontaminated scene
“More than old regions with their towers,
“And smoky streets, and angry piles of war.
“From the old time these things have been, and shall
“They be no more? Spirits affect, or may,
“This beautiful fair land, dewy, and new,
“And suitable, in dark or bright, to their blest ways.
Hark! Gideon, hear you no trumpet sounding?

Gideon.
[In amaze.]
I hear nothing.

Ambla.
The air is musical not far from this,
No mortal playing!
Unstop your ears and be of faith! Behold,
In ecstasy and not in pain, it vanishes
Toward the wood, where the soft-dropping cloud
Kisses the leaves. We'll forth and follow it.

Gideon.
[Aside.]
I see that time and grief have swerved her mind;
Her age and troubles need my arm, and she
Shall have it, defence against the world, and all
The world, in its worst wickedness can bring!
I fear it, mother.

Ambla.
Fear it!—you do not hear it yet.
It takes its way each afternoon toward
The Hill; and I pursue it. Come, Gideon!

[Ambla apparelled to go forth, encounters at the door, Pudeater, the Officer, L. H.
Pudeater.
Ha! ha! I have you in the very nick,
Just as your wings are spread to fly, Mistress.

[Seizes Ambla.
Gideon.
What mean you, Sirrah Pudeater?

Pudeater.
I mean she is arrested, under warrant
Of the worshipful Justice Fisk.

Gideon.
What, for a—

Pudeater.
The same: I take her
As a common witch.

Gideon.
Shall I smite down
This idiot to the ground, or will you go?

Pudeater.
Strike not me, Master Gideon, I'm not
To be struck, the warrant says.

Ambla.
I go, Gideon!
But tarry you, nor step within the snare.
Tarry thou here, Gideon! observe a strict
And temperate way within these humble walls,
And kindly think of all thine old mother's
Foregone life, as of a dream.

Gideon.
Could all the firmament of stars
Remain on one side Heaven, refusing
To force their way, into the other dark,
I might; wither you go, I go.
Let the same bolt pierce both our hearts!

Ambla.
My son, the aspect you turn on me now—
Less strange and ominous,—makes this following
A pleasure. [To Pud.]
Lead forth, we wait on you!

Gideon.
[Aside.]
A pleasure that, cloud-like, wraps a thunder's pang
Within. The following of a cold hearse is sad,
Or a friend's footsteps flying o'er the sea,
Ne'er to return, or him who wanders in his mind;
Lost in the wilderness: sadder than all,
A mother held to earth by sacred bonds
Of love, or snatched into a realm forbidden;
When wicked men possess the judgment seat,
Which shall prevail, who knows?—alas! alas!

[Exeunt.