The Tragic Mary :: :: University of Virginia Library

Tush, child, that were a small matter: he makes onslaught on the delicate fabric of the mind; he invades the region of alternatives and possibilities, and crushes the tender shoots of inclination. I have not a brain to bear predatory impairment. Sweet wife, there were gentler housing for thy sick spouse at Stirling.

Lady Lethington

What! You will not leave the queen?

213

Lethington

Ay, haply for the moment, for the quieting of my country, and the re-knitting of my mind.

Lady Lethington

You are not faithful?

Lethington

The chameleon, my pretty moralist, is faithful to the light through variance—its susceptibility changes its dyes. Faithful to what?

Lady Lethington

To be faithful is to be fixed and constant. To be faithful in religion is to have ever the same mind toward God.

Lethington

The fidelity of an imbecile! I must love my God humanly, not with stiff constancy, but with every mood I have—not a single devout strain—but with jealousy, contrition, humbleness, and pride. Shall we give all our heart to a mortal, and a few notes of piety to our God? But your pardon, my rigorous philosopher; I demand of you nothing better than the observance of your own maxims. It is the glory of a woman to maintain the creed of her espousals. How prospers the royal honeymoon upstairs?

Lady Lethington

Most unhappily, to judge by the queen's countenance. But she will not lose her senses, as ’tis reported. It is the duke who blocks up the passage, and lets his hands drop.

(Bothwell is heard tramping above)

Lethington

He is insufferable—do but listen!—the confusion of palaces. Mary, heaven arm thee with thy lord's fell eloquence to bring down the queen.

Lady Lethington

I am ever your servant to perform your behests. Your kisses are the bribe of my obedience.

214

You seek to make me an unhappy wife, that my fortunes may equal those of my mistress.

Lethington

Nay, my spouse, you are mated with wisdom, and the price of wisdom is above rubies. Be not malcontent. Go, urge the queen. The ambassadors start for England to-night. It may be I too shall be absent. (Kissing her)
God be with you, dear.

Exit Lady Lethington
(Turning to the despatches)

The last service I shall perform for her! The duke had slain me yesterday, but for her intervention. I must leave her; it is the beginning of my great attachment. Farewell to ideas, dreams, policies; farewell to unity! The heir to the English kingdom should be full of all comely conditions, and she hangs as a blanched leaf on a bough. Yet it pierces me to the heart to note how she keeps her queenship to me as I were the single loyal subject in the world. Could she recover! She must bide somewhere in prison (shrugging his shoulders as he hears more noise)
till we get that barbarian hanged. Afterwards . . . No, there is no restoration possible; but I shall but seem to abandon her. I am cursed by the tenacity of my affections. When I was a boy they set me to keep watch over the dead. It was a duty without issue; and there is in me a fund of patience for a sort of posthumous religion.

Enter the Queen
(She takes a pen and bends over the despatches)
Queen
I do not ask

215

How you have told the truth of these last days
You have had vision of.

Lethington
(Apart)
She need not lower
Her lids, her wide, brimmed eyes are reticent;
And yet there is expansion on the lips
And brows—that luminous, poetic shine,
The presage of some great impolicy.

Queen
(Putting away the despatches)
Ay, I have signed them all; if dreamily,
Forgive me: for a peace comes down and softens
My sorrows when I dream. How bare the world
Would be without the dead!

Lethington
Of whom, dear queen,
May you be taking thought?

Queen
I think no more
Of one or two; they come in multitudes
Within me, down the currents of my blood;
And the great, outer host drawn in with breath.
There is no time in them; it is alike
If they fell ages back, or yesterday;
And Helen, shadowed by Ægyptus' shore,
Moves close to me; she clasps Theonoë
About the neck, and through the lotus-flowers
The women press together.

Lethington
Ay, the phantom,
Not the live Helen.

Queen
She who was a queen.
I love the legend that she never swerved

216

From wifely faith, that Paris' capture was
A spectre that dislimned into thin air
When Proteus from his shadow in the rocks
Rose, and restored his guarded fugitive
Unblemished to her husband. All those years
Of bloodshed and reproach she had been held
In sanctuary, and where her soul received
No sound of her ill-fame. It seems to me
One may be so withdrawn, even from the clamour
Of those who love and fight and suffer wrong
For the poor image of oneself, the clay,
Not the live creature, Lethington. I seek
To give you apprehension of the facts
That have been open to your ken these last
Tumultuous weeks—for you have still your queen
Preserved by mystic charity from taint
Of noisome accident, and overcome
Of none, being so secluded in herself,
Storms have no access to her.

Lethington
Can you doubt,
My sovereign, that my deepest faith is yours,
Though to pursue your pretty simile,
I hold the lovely Greek so deep in awe,
That when I see her injurers, almost
I perish of pure passion, as the elms,
Planted about Protesilaus' tomb,
Faded as fast as their aspiring shoots
Caught glimpse of Ilium.

217

Queen
Hush, that red Dunbar.
(Taking his hands and clasping them)
How many years
You were my mother's counsellor; how oft
By luring sagesse you have drawn me back
From folly: you can aid me now no more.
Wide ruin overhangs. ’Tis pitiful
To bear a name that in its overthrow
Carries fair kingdoms, and leaves tremulous
The pillars of the church: I bear such name,
I front such ominous fortune. Put away
These papers; it is plain that we must part:
God will not suffer me one comfort now.
I cannot see you murdered in my sight;
Therefore you must be gone. Yet stay awhile—
(Taking an ornament from her neck)
I have an oval ornament of gold,
Enamelled with a curious device
From Æsop's fable of the netted lion,
And his most nimble-toothed deliverer;
With these Italian words: non mancano
Le forze a chi basto l' animo
Written around it. I have often sighed,
Touching the trinket, ere I laid it by—
For see, the violet cord is worn with use—
O'er this entoiled, forsaken royalty,
And the persistent, liberating force
Beside it. Should there ever be occasion
For breaking the captivity, return

218

This gift; my cipher graven within its lid
Is pregnant as a pass-word to my love,
And closer than a signet. You have never
Signed any the vile bonds my enemies
Have published in their hate: receive this token
Of grace and benediction from your queen.

Lethington
Madam, this golden outbreak fron the cloud . . .

Queen
My courtier! I shall lose so soon the voice
Whose every invocation was a spell,
And yet must break its music. We shall talk
No more together. Though I were content
To lie and let the waves fall over me,
As a wrecked barque that, when the storm is spent,
Suffers the soft mishandling of the tides,
I still am treasurer of the crown. How fares
My boy? You have much intercourse with Mar;
The lords are gathered in a camp at Stirling
Around his cradle.

Lethington
Have but patience, madam,
You too shall be delivered.

Queen
How is this?
It doth not need conspiracy to quench
Ambition such as his, so dissolute.
(Throwing herself on a seat and passionately weeping)
I cannot banish him; he would return.

Lethington
Ay, the light, spectral way of guilty souls:

219

You have your rosary.

Queen
It will be pastime
To count my beads on the dark swards of hell.
Maitland, my soul is ciphered Catholic,
And yet I have withdrawn the licences
At the duke's pleasure. I am slight of will. Enter Bothwell

Leave us till dinner-time.

Bothwell
(Advancing)
What, closeted
With Lyd, your secretary—an old offence!
You shall not have another faithful servant
Like David Riccio. Ah, you whiten, sir.

Lethington
It is my wont at blasphemy. Proceed!
Are these for my revision?

(Attempting to take some papers from Bothwell)
Bothwell
(Grasping them)
I have writ
Brief record of my mind and purposes
To England. I can front Elizabeth
As you; I do not need your artifice.
(Turning to the Queen)
O Marie, would you see a borderer
Expend his hate, at last fall to the feast
Of long, unsated, devilish detestation?
(Relaxing his hold at the Queen's intercession)
Nay then, he shall be spared; but since you cast
On me your ravishment, and since you turn
The dun side of your beauty to my face,

220

Setting the wind of your hot sighs to blast
My rash, desirous moments, since you thwart me,
And magnify this pard—I will unfold
The smooth and cowardly creature you esteem.
This man heard Morton promise me your hand,
And to and fro he journeyed prospering
My heady plans; he is the sorcerer
To lure your mates to death, one after one;
He sits, and sees them drop away from you,
But yet he meddles not. Now chat together;
He will advise you how you may entoil
A second victim. I will leave you now.

Exit
Queen
To think that you were with me at Dunbar!

Lethington
You saved my life.

Queen
(Looking toward the door)
He cannot be a king;
They wither, or are murdered, or grow mad
Who link themselves with me in sovereignty.
Twilight and ruin settle on us both!
Oh, might we be forgotten; could we lie
In the blank pardon of oblivion! That,
Alack, can never be; there is no man
Can give me safety, or protection, or
Peace from vicissitude; I have no lover,
Servant or friend; and yet I am beloved
Even to marvel. I can pray no more,
I have no more dependence upon God;
And none on any of His creatures, none.
Go, tell my story as you learnt it, add

221

New matter. If I sat beside the fire,
In prison with my maids, and never spoke,
While you put forth fresh libels, or confirmed
The common talk, you could not injure me:
My silence would have privilege.

Lethington
Your pardon;
My task is now to write an epitaph:

Here lies a royal lady who defamed
Each soul that did her service, unashamed;
And loved to raise the vicious to such grace
That heaven and hell were centred in one place.

So I unclasp my shackles.

(Unclasping the ornament)
Queen
(Looking steadfastly at Lethington)
By consent
He seized me at Dunbar? The Tolbooth gauged
The pressure of my passions; and the cartels
Will pass me truly to posterity,
While you admit the portrait?

Lethington
Libellers
Are sure of popularity. My brain
Treasures a rare, untarnished miniature;
With that I shall not part.
(She gazes at him, sobbing)
Nay, pardon now,
Full pardon, great, obliterating sea,
Of love o'erwhelm me! You have heaven's own measure:
The seventy-times-and-seven is in your eyes,
Immeasurable grace. There is no need

222

Of this slave's token; but I put it back.
(Kissing the gold ornament)
God shield you from dishonour! May He draw
Blood of me, when my life has other use
Than to protect your titles.

Queen
It was thus
I dreamed of you. Farewell.