University of Virginia Library

ACT V.

Scene I.—A Room in Grey's House.

Enter Grey and Carlton meeting.
GREY
How is't with her to-day?

CARLTON
Ere I can answer
I must be certified which way you ask.
Will you have muffled words that show themselves
For what they are not? Will you go blindfold
To the very brink, and set your foot on flowers
With nothing under? I can lead you so,
And leave you so—or will you take the truth?
I have that dagger in mine armoury—
'Tis seldom asked for.

GREY
I'm too old for truth:
Time has so bruised me with his buffetings
That a touch hurts me now. Too old for truth,
Yet too familiar with her bitter looks
For any mask to cheat me. Say your will,
And like a meagre alms, the fact shall slip
Through your closed fingers.

CARLTON
Then, she is no worse.

GREY
Why, then, she is no better! O, my heart!
Why did I cross her in her brighter time
Which was to be so short? Not a rough word
I ever spoke, but grates against me now—
And she, that used to look so pitiful,
With gentle pardons asked, and no wrong done,
Scared often from that timid joy of hers
As far as tears, were I to show her now
These penetrations of my slow remorse,
Would soothe me with her soft bewildered eyes
And tell me truly she remembered not.
She was so sweet, Carlton, she was so sweet,
Remembering nothing done against herself,
But taking all the common kindnesses
For great bestowals—O, my fatal tongue!
Said I ‘she was’?

CARLTON
Do not reproach yourself.
Life is a mirror for such loving eyes
To show them nothing harder than themselves;
We watchers from without, wasting our tears,
Pity the grief which their unconscious magic
Transforms before it touches them.

GREY
You talk
Madly—for it is nothing else but grief
That kills her now.

CARLTON
Be careful, friend! she comes.

[Hope is led in and supported to a couch.
HOPE
Stand not there doubting how to look at me
But smile a bright good-morning, for to-day
Is more than good for me.

GREY
How so, sweet heart?

HOPE
Because it is my birthday.

GREY
Ah!

HOPE
No sighs!
Since you forgot it, you must be my debtor
As I would have you, father, with no gift,
For I have such a boundless boon to ask
That all the birthdays I shall ever have
May sum themselves in this, and take their gifts
Before they come, so best. Come, sit by me,
And let me lay my lips against your ear
And whisper it as softly as a kiss;
Nay, closer yet—sixteen long years ago,
Upon my first remembered birthday, father,
You had me closer yet. What's this? You shrink;
Are you afraid of me?

GREY
(hastily)
There is a message
I should deliver—I'll return, and grant
All your requests.

[Exit Grey.
HOPE
(looking afeer him)
Alas! I fear he weeps.

CARLTON
Few men so near the final slopes of life
Are pleased with talk about the first ascent.

HOPE
It was not for himself, it was for me.
You cluster round me kindly, each one holding
A screen, and thinking that he hides the place
To which I walk, but I am looking at it
Past all your pretty obstacles. It seems
A fair land and a pleasant. But I go
Not as a saint, I am too weak for triumph,
But merely having missed my place in life,
Very tired and very certain of my rest.

CARLTON
Take you so placidly the thought of death?

HOPE
As one who lies awake at night and hears
How nightingales are singing in the woods,
And from that far fine ecstasy divines
That somewhere in the world there is a place
Where he might be, full of untroubled music,
With nothing harsher than a nightingale,
And thinks, ‘I will go there to-morrow night
And be among the branches and the songs.’
O, try that nobody should weep for me!
I have made no one happy, and 'tis hard
To cause an hour of sadness

CARLTON
But they love you.

HOPE
I'd have their love no longer than my life,
Or that of the first flower upon my grave;
Nay, it should die when I do, going with me
And waiting with me till we meet again,
Like something rare and precious which we hide
Till the great feast-day, when we wear our crowns
And show our treasures.

CARLTON
See, he comes again.

Re-enter Grey.
GREY
Now for your boon—'tis yours before 'tis named.
What can I do for you?

HOPE
You will not let me
Kneel at your feet?

GREY
Be not so foolish, child!
Why plead so fiercely when you have my promise?

HOPE
(putting her arms round him)
I'll hold you to it then. I want your pardon
For one who has offended. Do you love me
Enough for this?

GREY
O peace! you shall not stain
Your lips.

HOPE
O peace! you shall not break my heart!
Shall Time, which wears away the sharpest grief,
Do nothing against Anger? You have had
Your wrath—just wrath—is it not satisfied
With a year's raging? Let it go to sleep!
The Days, like a great host of armèd men,
March onward over all things and prevail;
They do not pause, they do not break their ranks,
They sweep the unresisting Universe,
And what they find they leave not as they found,
But the most rugged and uncomely wastes
Are levelled by the ceaseless tramp of Time,
And even the precipice becomes a path,
And ways whereon we fainted and despaired
Melt into prospects, and are beautiful.
You must not stand against the general law:
'Tis your necessity to yield to-day,
As once it was your virtue to be stern.

GREY
That's but a Woman's logic; all the proof
Lies in the wish. But I am darker-hued,
And cannot make a mirror of myself
For every passing face. I am myself;
My friends must bear me as I am.

HOPE
I give
My logic to your scorn; hear but my tears,
And yield your better judgment. O, my father!
I am passing from you quickly. Very soon
Where you have seen my face and heard my voice
There shall be nothing but the silent cloud
Which is so near us now; and I, within it,
May lie asleep until the Master calls,
Filled with some tender and contenting dream
Which I divine not now, as a babe lies
Untroubled by the tempests of the world,
Soothed by the smile that touches it. Perhaps
This your last gentleness before I die
Shall be remembered as I wake again;
Let me not wake with ‘no’ upon my heart!
'Twill sadden you to see this empty couch
And know I took this pain away with me.

GREY
Have pity, Hope!

HOPE
O, is it not for you
I plead? I want to give you back your son
Before you lose your daughter.

GREY
He has killed you!

HOPE
Not he, mine own weak heart. Some happy lives
Are like to landscape pictures; each new touch
Dwarfs and drives back what filled the former scene,
Till at the frame and foreground of the whole,
A drift of flowers against a summer green
Is more important than a city. These
Pass brightly through their changes and have peace.
But otherwise it is with her whose picture
Holds nothing but a face; through all the tints
It grows, and all the touches strengthen it,
And all the world is a background for it;
And so it sucks away the Painter's life.
But there we lose comparison: the painter
Sees his work done, and takes another face.
'Tis Art's perpetual miracle, to give
All the cruse holds, yet keep it always full:
Alas, we find no parallel for this
Save when Love answers Love. Pray pardon me;
I wander through a thousand thoughts, and start
If any touch me.

GREY
Will you go and rest?

HOPE
Nay, but I have not won my boon.

GREY
Be patient;
We'll talk of it to-morrow. 'Tis not well
To turn your thoughts that way.

HOPE
To turn my thoughts?
You do not change the river's course, because
You push aside the leaves to look at it.
Do not be hard to me!

GREY
My dearest child—

HOPE
O now I know you are resolved against me!
Leave me, you love me not! Was ever heart
So beaten and so broken without help
As this poor heart which shall so soon be cold,
Which no one comforts now!

[She weeps.
CARLTON
Let her not weep;
She may die before our eyes!

GREY
Have all you will!
Nay sweet, nay bird, no tears—did she believe
I had the heart to baulk her? Only tell me
What I should do—I'd go to bitter Moscow
To fetch one smile! Say, shall I bring him home,
Myself! To-night?

HOPE
(looking up)
Will you indeed do so?

GREY
So? Aye and twenty so's to win that look;
But I must have my guerdon. You must sleep,
And eat, and mend!

HOPE
O, with so light a heart
I can go lightly up the hardest hills!
I was afraid you would not.

GREY
Calmly now,
While I am absent. Think of something else,
That's the true cure for all things. So, goodbye,
And keep a tranquil face till I return;
No tears again! Remember!

[Exit Grey.
HOPE
I have lured him
To his own peace.

CARLTON
I fear me, not to yours.

HOPE
My life is at its cadence; all the skill
Of all the world defers not the sure close
By more than a few lingering passages,
Which, if they sound like sorrow, only make
The after-silence welcome. But for them
There is a future; if I join them not
Before I die, they stand apart for ever,
For my poor ghost should come against my will
And wave them from each other bitterly:
If I must haunt them, let it be with thoughts
Of peace and pardon, clasping them together
With the mere pity of remembering me
As I would be remembered.

CARLTON
Now I lead you
To your much-needed rest.

[Exeunt Carlton and Hope.

Scene II.—A Room in Raymond's House opening to a Garden.

Enter Three Gentlemen.
FIRST GENTLEMAN
Will he be seen to-day?

SECOND GENTLEMAN
Aye, in an hour;
If your name's on his list, you take your turn
Among the audiences.

FIRST GENTLEMAN
Was ever rise
So swift as this? twelve little months ago
Unheard of—now a column of the State!
Pray Heaven he reel not, but such sudden growths
Are seldom deeply rooted.

THIRD GENTLEMAN
I have heard
He seeks the public course with such a passion,
Being less than happy in his proper home.

FIRST GENTLEMAN
Why, he hath a fair wife.

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Tush, there's the reason!
A woman may be too fair for a wife.

SECOND GENTLEMAN
For shame! For shame!

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Nay, I malign her not;
She may be pure as starlight, but you want
A comfortable candle for your book
When you sit back i' the evening.

SECOND GENTLEMAN
(looking from the window)
Come aside.
She is with him now. I saw them cross the lawn.
He passes to his cabinet by this,
And if he find us here before the time
'Twill grieve him deeply.

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Or, in simpler phrase,
He'll rate you soundly?

SECOND GENTLEMAN
Well, his courtesies
Do sometimes take the shape of anger.

THIRD GENTLEMAN
Ah,
We'll spare you. Come away.

[Exeunt Gentlemen by a side door.

Scene III.

Enter Raymond from the Garden followed by Avice.
RAYMOND
(speaking as he enters)
I have no more to say.

AVICE
Saying no more
You have said nothing.

RAYMOND
(turns and confronts her)
How?

AVICE
(arranging her skirts)
That's a great gust,
But I'm unruffled. Will you go with me
To the Duke's to-night? 'Tis not till twelve o'clock;
There's time to cool.

RAYMOND
Avice!

AVICE
Did you not say
You had said all? What tongues these husbands have,
Who can say all, and nothing to the purpose,
And after all, find something left unsaid
Which was, perhaps, the only thing to say
With any show of reason! What's your will?

RAYMOND
You cannot cheat me with this mask of scorn,
While fire beneath the lids, and sobs i' the throat,
And all the little feeble frame aquiver,
Mock you, as if a child should run to your knee
And cry, ‘Look at me; I'm asleep!’ Be wise:
You are not a child.

AVICE
I am angry—nothing else!

RAYMOND
O, that need make no difference. Be angry,
'Twill pass the time more quickly; my commands
Reach not your temper, but your acts.

AVICE
I thank you
For telling me the scope of your commands.
Pray issue one! I'll watch it curiously
And see what happens.

RAYMOND
I must have your promise.

AVICE
Indeed! And by what means?

RAYMOND
You are my wife—

AVICE
Alas, I am!

RAYMOND
You cannot anger me.

AVICE
Why, what a splendid Actor! He's not angry,
With all the signs of fury in his face,
Voice, gesture, language, incoherent all
With feigned similitude of wrath unfelt.
I must applaud.

RAYMOND
I ask you for your promise!

AVICE
(clapping her hands)
Encore! That tone was perfect!

RAYMOND
You can hang
That shining trifle which you call your heart
Round any neck; I had it here on mine
A little longer than I wanted it—
It can bear tossing; but I'll have the name
Which I have given you, clear as mountain snow
Which blushes if the sun but looks at it.
There has been one low whisper; if I hear
Another—

AVICE
Will you murder me?

RAYMOND
(grasping her)
I might
Do that.

AVICE
Be proud that you can make me pale.
I am a woman and you frighten me.

RAYMOND
Enough. Consider it at leisure.

[Going.
AVICE
(in tears)
Raymond!

RAYMOND
O pardon me, my wife, the time is past.
Water the rock and it shall teem with roses
Sooner than any praying by dead Love
Shall rouse a pulse of life. It is not there.

[Exit into his cabinet.
AVICE
(stamping and sobbing)
That he should see me weep! We should be made
Of iron, we women, having so much more
To bear than men have. This is not for love;
'Tis tremor of the nerves: a little more
Of some hard-sounding gas i' the air I breathe;
A touch of coming thunder; subtle scent
Of hostile flowers—would strike me just as low,
So poorly are we furnished for the conflict
Wherein we are to die. Were I a man
I would treat women gently. I have borne
More than I should, but 'tis the last disdain
He shall cast at me. I would cross the world
To get beyond the limit of his touch,
Yet I stay here. If I could drown myself
Before his eyes—O! when the water closed
So soft, so cold, so fast, upon my face
Which he once thought so fair, I should not see
Whether he stretched his hand; I might go down
Into the darkness, dreaming that he cared.
Why does this ghastly fancy stand before me
Like something that shall happen? I'm not well;
I must get hence, go somewhere, anywhere
Away from this inhuman faithless place
Which took the name of home to poison me
With deadly breathings. Anywhere from here!

[Exit Avice.

Scene IV.

Enter Grey and Second Gentleman.
GREY
If you will give me leave to wait for him
I'll undertake you blameless.

SECOND GENTLEMAN
Since I know you
For what you are—his father—I've no choice.
Pray seat yourself. He may be long.

GREY
I thank you.

[Exit Second Gentleman.
GREY
(alone)
The Fates who crown our moments, keep their crowns
Till we have ceased to covet them. Time was
When all this lackeyed greatness would have thrilled me
To perfect rapture; now it pierces me,
As it should him, with only the sharp thought
Of her who should have shared it. Ha, he comes
Before I looked for him.

Enter Raymond.
[Grey stands with averted face.
RAYMOND
(speaking to himself as he enters)
I was too hard.
I'll talk to her again. What, Avice?

[Grey turns and faces him.
RAYMOND
(starting back)
Father!

GREY
Aye, if you call me so.

RAYMOND
(trying to recover himself)
You are as welcome
As you will let me make you, though you come
More like an apparition than a guest,
Sudden and solemn.

GREY
As I seem, I am.
The message which compels me to your presence
Comes from the confines of another world.

RAYMOND
Compels you to my presence! So, you leave me
With no soft pretext for a doubt! So be it!
Yet if you only face me like my fate
Searching the weaker points to strike the deeper,
Inexorable as that frosty hand
Which touches summer thickets in the dark,
And warns them of sure winter—yet I give you
The heartiest welcome which these lips have uttered
Since I became a host. This is my house,
Father, and therefore yours. Command the whole;
I your chief servant will solicit you
To take such entertainment as you can
And pardon all defects.

GREY
There's much to pardon.

RAYMOND
I know it.

GREY
I am come to do an errand
And so return. The time is short—as short
As the last pause of an advancing tide
Ere the wave breaks and covers all. Your cousin—
Do you remember her? She that was once
Light of your life and mine—do you remember?
Hath bid me fetch you to her.

RAYMOND
Father, tell her
I cannot come.

GREY
Will you be so consistent
To the last moment? Executioners
Allow a dying boon.

RAYMOND
I am afraid
To ask your meaning.

GREY
You are slow to read it.
She has touched the farther edge of that sweet life
Which you have made so sad. It is her will
To see you once; and I must do her will:
There's nothing left but this to do for her,
Except to hide our faces when she dies,
And hold our sobs back lest they vex her soul
Which ever grieved for grief of others.

RAYMOND
Dying?
Why has she lived so long in such a world
Not worth a moment of her! I remember
Things which I cannot speak of! Just a smile—
Just one, which came before she smiled no longer
And looked a lifetime of such innocent joy
As seems impossible. Will it come back?
Will she smile so in heaven, forgetting me
Who sent her there? I cannot understand
Why that which was so sweet should be so bitter;
But the image of that little tender smile,
Which had no pathos in it, breaks my heart.
I saw it, and I shrank to darkness from it,
Longing to see no more, before I knew
That she was dying. O, I'll go to her!
I think I wish that I may be too late;
That's base—but I was always base to her.
Each way is terrible; to see her face,
Or to think always of it. Is she changed?
Shall I have power to bear it?

GREY
Calm yourself:
She must not see you thus.

RAYMOND
I know, I know.
Doctor and nurse speak ever so—be quiet
Under the pressure grinding you to dust;
Come softly through the half-closed door, stand still,
Hush! Be not troublesome with your despair,
For she is dying. O! what is it to her,
So near the insensibilities of heaven,
That any worthless heartstrings, left for ever,
Crack audibly? She shall have no more pain;
She never knew, she never guessed, what 'tis
To stare into this inner darkness, seeing
No star, and yet discerning everything
And saying to the inseparable Self
Which writhes and hesitates beside the pit,
‘Thou hast done this. Go down!’

GREY
I did not think
You could have felt so deeply.

RAYMOND
No—you thought
Because I did the wrong, I had no heart
To feel the wrong I did. If there be such,
Why, make their torments ready—but for me
Hell is unnecessary.

GREY
Cease, my son.
The foulest Past is cleansed by penitence,
And sure I am you shall be pleaded for
By angel's prayers.

RAYMOND
By hers? If God be just
They should be millstones at my neck. Come, father,
Since I must lay my head upon this block
Let not the stroke be slow. To show the sword,
Whetted, and poised, and pausing, is not mercy.
Lead and I follow—yet a word—I fear
I may take flight upon the threshold. Tell me
That I may know how to constrain myself.
What shall I see.

GREY
O, nothing terrible.
Dying is not so different from living.
For fairness, pallor; and for speaking, sighing;
And for the careless shining of young eyes
Washed bright by easy tears, a faint far glory
Reflected from the place at which they gaze,
To which they go.

RAYMOND
O, how you touch my wounds!
If Death be so like Life, that revelation,
Which is so gentle for the purer sort,
Must be, for some, exposure and dishonour
Which mountains cannot cover.

GREY
She shall bring you
To better thoughts.

[Exeunt Grey and Raymond.

Scene V.—A Room in Grey's House, as before. Hope on the Couch, Avice kneeling beside her.

HOPE
And so you come to me
To tell me that the treasure which you took
Out of my trembling grasp, has proved so soon
Too weighty for your own.

AVICE
Nay, not too weighty.
I am strong enough.

HOPE
Well, you have cast it down.

AVICE
Even so.

HOPE
Why did you touch it?

AVICE
Is it thus
You soothe me—with such passion in your voice?

HOPE
Why left you not the love that was not yours
To her who would have held it on her heart
While the heart beat? Why did you take my life,
Not even to feed and satisfy your own,
But just to crush it and have done with it
Like some pernicious insect in your path?
You have done this, you have destroyed us both,
With two sweeps of your careless onward hands
That catch at something new across the fragments
Of the scorned vase which held their former flowers—
You have sinned thus, not as a woman sins
With tears and turnings back, but airily
Like some cold spirit with a woman's face
Playing with pain because it has no fear
Having no heart. You that have done all this,
Come, asking to be soothed—I have no answer!
Go, let me die in peace.

AVICE
Am I thus banished?
I thought you would have pitied me. I thought
That standing on the edge of the next world
You saw too much of it to be perplexed
By all our stormy landscapes; I believed you
Already half an angel, but I'm glad
To think you are too angrily alive
To be near dying.

HOPE
O, if you had loved him,
The pang which parted us had been my last:
I were content to shut my eyes and take
My necessary doom; but now I see
I was slain for pastime.

AVICE
Charge it upon him!

HOPE
I charge it on myself; 'tis an old fault
In women, so to love with all their strength
That they can find no strength without their love.

AVICE
Cousin, I would give up my worthless life
To win yours back.

HOPE
Would you indeed do so?

AVICE
Indeed, with all my heart.

HOPE
Why, then, forgive me
Who thought you heartless. I shall take more love
Into my grave than I have seen before it;
There shall be roses laid in these dead hands
Which now have nothing in them.

AVICE
Talk not thus;
It is too pitiful.

HOPE
Are you so tender?
For me these tears? These tears are not for me!
O, when the rock is cleft, the water springs
To any hand, but there was only one
Able to cleave it. I have often noted
A tree, when a great wind has stirred the root,
Shake at a breath; even so will sights of pity
Which we perceive not in our happy walks,
Start up around us when our eyes are sad
And make them rain at once. Speak truly to me,
Speak truly to the dying, who so soon
Shall read you to the depths—why do you weep? [She takes Avice's face between her hands and looks fixedly at her.

Is your heart breaking for the love of him
Whom you would cheat with semblances of scorn?
Is it so breaking? Ah, you weep the more—
I have the key of this fountain; so, make ready
To meet him. He is coming.

AVICE
Hide me! Hide me!

HOPE
Be calm, he shall not see you.

AVICE
Wherefore comes he?

HOPE
I sent for him.

AVICE
You, you! But he is mine!
O do not take this vengeance for your wrongs.
Leave him—I could not live a day alone
With mine own conscience and without his heart;
You are so good, you cannot understand
What happens, when the world slips from your feet
Without a hold on heaven—you can but fall—
Fall—through the blank—to nothing. Save me, save me!
This is your work.

HOPE
Trust me.

AVICE
Why should I trust?
If I were you I would not give him up;
Why should you be less faithless than myself;
What claim have I, except that I have killed you?
I had forgotten that I am his wife
And you are all for duty; there I hold him,
There you submit—I am safe upon that ground—
Am I not? Answer me!

HOPE
Alas, poor child,
How well your tumult teaches me my peace!
I am beyond your sorrows and my own;
As, in the hollows of the roaring brook
Lie little floors of darkness and of calm
Where some forgotten foamflake, cast aside,
Stays on the level water, moving not
But breaking slowly all the summer day
Till not a tear remains, so seems my life,
As you rush past. The day is nearly done
And the last bubble melts, and by to-morrow
There shall not be a trace. Enough—he comes.

[Avice conceals herself.

Scene VI.

Hope—Avice concealed. Enter to them Grey and Raymond. Raymond stops short. Grey advances to Hope's couch.
GREY
I bring him— (he starts)
Ah, my child!

HOPE
You see a change.
O father, it is nothing. Know you not
Five sunset minutes change the great world more
Than many hours of day? The colours die,
And the light deepens—do not wish it less—
It shines before it ceases.

GREY
Let me raise you.

HOPE
No, touch me not, but make him come to me
And lay his hand in mine.

GREY
Alas, my son!
If you can bear it, do as she desires.

[Raymond falls on his knees by Hope.
RAYMOND
Do not forgive me, do not look at me;
There is no kind of pang I have not earned.
Let me receive my wages and depart
To mine own place.

HOPE
My life has been in vain,
But my death heals you. Let my words abide,
They are as medicine poured into your wounds,
To sting—and then to soothe—and then to cure.
Time draws this virtue from them. Knowing it,
I can speak boldly, and you shall remember
More than you hear; that I have pardoned you
Long since, and that my sleep is sweet to me
And nothing mars it. I did love you well.
My thoughts of you are tender as the dreams
Where our dead faces smile to us again
And we are not surprised. For you were mine—

RAYMOND
I am! I am! The madness of an hour—

HOPE
(putting her hand on his mouth)
Hush—let me pass in gentleness and peace!
Cast not the dust of earth upon these wings
Which should be white and spotless, as they catch
Some edge of splendour from the open gates
Ere they shall enter. Friends, there is a pause
Before we part, and they who love and part
Are ever wont to make some sweet exchange,
Of word, or gift, or memory, which they take
Into the distance, to console themselves.
I have my keepsake ready—do not lose
The hurrying moment—what have you for me?
If you have wronged me, do not think of it; [While she speaks Raymond rises and stand looking at her.

My last hour is your own, what went before
Shall take its colour; let it be for me
Goodbye at morning, with the day to come
For those I leave, full of delicious hours
Which I may think of as I pass afar,
Which I may see, when I have quite forgotten
The murmurs and the agonies of life.
Give me this comfort now before I die,
That I may hear the harmonies of Heaven
Begin, before I join them. Avice! Come! [Avice enters and throws herself at Raymond's feet.

Take her the second time, and be the first
Never remembered more!

RAYMOND
Kneel not to me;
I have no heart for anger or for love,
My life is going down into this grave.

[He raises Avice.
Enter Vernon behind.
AVICE
Will you, in time, remember that you loved me?

[She hides her face on Raymond's heart.
RAYMOND
O what is Time but memory of time
Which is no more! Be patient with me, wife,
Mine was the greater sin.

HOPE
(speaking very softly)
Here is the seat,
And here the sunset stays upon your face—
I'll lead you one step farther. Shall I tell you
How beautiful it is? I can see all;
I'll keep it all for you.

[She sighs.
GREY
Be still—she sleeps!

VERNON
(who is standing by the couch)
Say what you will—she's dead!