University of Virginia Library

SCENE V

[Prince Lucifer and Eve walking, hand in hand, up the mountain-side.]
EVE.
I feel so sad.

LUCIFER.
Do you regret the valley?

EVE.
No, but I seem unequal to the heights,
Save when I hold your hand.

LUCIFER.
Then hold it always;
For then to me it feels that high and low,
Mountain and vale, are only one, and make
Completion of each other.

EVE.
Would that I
Could reconcile all opposites, like to you!
Teach me the secret.

LUCIFER.
It is learnt, not taught,
And 'tis in our own journeyings we discern
Life's contradictions but adjust the weight
The heart has got to bear, which else were galled
Were all the load one side. See! Daylight is
Indebted to the darkness that 'tis day,
Spring unto winter that we hail it spring;
And all things live upon their opposite,
Whose death would kill them.

EVE.
As I live on you,
Light-Bearer to my darkness! Yet 'tis sad
To think that men—that men!—live, throbbing men,
Not faggots nor mere panniers of a pack,
Should balance thus each other by their feuds
Concerning God, Heaven, truth, and right itself.
'Twas peace, if peace of ignorance, to fancy
There is one truth for all.

LUCIFER.
Sweet! would you like
To close your books?

EVE.
No, for to close them would
Be closing one approach to you. And then
This fruit of knowledge has a bitter sweetness
That gives me taste for more. If but your voice,
Not the dumb page, did always tutor me.
Then 'twould be sweetness only, yet not cloy.
Oft when my head says “yes,” my heart says “no,”
Save you be near. Then head and heart alike
Catch but one sound and echo one assent.

LUCIFER.
Count Abdiel has left us.

EVE.
When? For long?

LUCIFER.
As long as the experiment provides
Sport for his cynic humour. He has gone
Down to the valley, seeking wedlock's chain:
Chain he will carry loosely. Can you guess
Who she may be, the victim of his mood?

EVE.
It must be Elspeth. But you do not doubt
He will be good to her?

LUCIFER.
He will not kill her;
At least not all at once, nor wittingly;
He will not beat her;—O be sure of that.
Nor will he starve her of material food,
Nor leave her naked to the wind and snow.
She will have meat and raiment, roof and fire,
And all things proper to the dignity
Of her they call Count Abdiel's lawful wife.
But if she love him and he love her not,
Alas! poor penitent! her days will be
Hungry, and cold, and homeless, and her nights
More solitary than is sleep. Good? good! What good
Is goodness unto love that craves for love
And nauseates other food? All best is bad
To love the epicure, unless the meat
Be seasoned by himself.

EVE.
And do you fear
He will desert her?

LUCIFER.
If desertion need
Abstraction of the body, presence, speech,
Perchance he will be faithful: who can say?
But there is worse abandonment than that:
The solitary fear, the unshared hope,
The loneliness of anguish. These decree
Unregistered divorce. The double board,
The double bed, may leave life single still.
Only the chemistry of love can make
Two atoms one.

EVE.
Then both, 'twould seem, must love.

LUCIFER.
They must, and equally; or else, more close
That contact be, more strong repugnancy.
Circles that more than touch must intersect,
Is an old truth; and true it is of all,
Save those who love. Then, then they interfuse
Into another and a perfect sphere.

EVE.
How can you fuse with me? Is't sure you do,
Or but inhale the incense of my love
As something fragrant?

LUCIFER.
Were that so, I should
Myself but be an altar, cold and deaf,
Decked with the flowers of your idolatry;
A god indeed, the worst of all the gods,
Devouring my own worshipper. Alas!
Such gods abound. I am not one of them.

EVE.
O surely not! I did not fear you were.
But your loving me seems strange, unnatural.

LUCIFER.
'Tis nature lets me love you; artifice
Had stood between us.

EVE.
Have you loved, before?

LUCIFER.
There are so many counterfeits of love,
One knows them only by assaying them.

EVE.
Then might not this too be a counterfeit?

LUCIFER.
Nay, 'tis true coinage, dear. For Time who robs
Mortality of much, withal secretes
For age some recompense, though not in full.
Just as the owl comes out when sweet birds roost,
So wisdom, moping substitute for song,
Haunts the grave twilight of departed youth.

EVE.
But you,—but you, are wise and young as well,
Sage as the owl, yet soaring as the lark,
My Prince!

LUCIFER.
I am, as long as you do think it.
But wiser, surely, by past counterfeits,
I now love's true from spurious effigy
At touch distinguish. Question not too much
Of all that was which makes me all I am.
Woman loves best the first time, man the last.
Her love is blossom, but his love is fruit.
Most times, alas! blossom with blossom mates,
For young and fair by fair and young is drawn,
And both are blown away upon the wind,
Dainty as spring and as ephemeral.
But love that through all seasons is to last,
Must paragon that happy tree which keeps
The mellow fruit among the glistening leaves
Till comes the bloom to join it. Blossom mine,
Content you with my ripeness!

EVE.
O speak on!
There is a freshness in your words mature,
That makes conviction instinct, instinct trust.

LUCIFER.
Then let conviction, trust, and instinct be
The tributary streams to loitering love,
To urge its currents onward till they flow,
Lost in the sea of self-oblivion.
Sweet! love me to the uttermost of love,
Nor halt, to freeze mid-way!

THE WEISSHORN.

EVE.
O if we could be
Like to the high inviolate stars that keep
Aloof from contact, and for ever shine
As young and virginal as on the night
When first they dawned on space!

LUCIFER.
But, sweet, you know
That there are double stars whose motion is
To circle round each other, round and round.

EVE.
Yet do not even these some distance keep,
Lest they should perish of propinquity?
What if it be that love must, starlike, live
On faithful separation!

LUCIFER.
Chilly creed!
Chilly as night itself, which lends no warmth
Though all the stars be shining. See them now,
Burnished battalions of the disciplined sky,
All to their post, all at their silent watch,
To hold the rear of yesterday until
To-morrow bring its reinforcements up
To rout the darkness! . . . You are silent, sweet.

EVE.
True love is silent, like to a fixed star,
And only gazes. Nay, look down, not up!
You will not find me there. I am not cold;
Or if I seem so now, it only is
The snow that comes to take the snow away.
See, it is gone—gone—gone!

LUCIFER.
Come to my heart!
And if there be a nearer place than that,
Come there!

THE MATTERHORN.

THE WEISSHORN.

THE MATTERHORN.