University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

—In Court. Darkledge, Calmstorm, Waning Slinely, and others, with a crowd of spectators.
Dark.
Close down the eastern window, officer!
The racket of the eager street about
Disturbs the court.

Calm.
[Rising.]
And yet, of all who help to make this din
This man alone is held in servile bonds
Because he owes a certain petty sum to this.
The suitor, failing, as he has, by courts of law,
From lack of goods, to seize, to get his own,
Has now a fraud to charge, and hurries here,
To find or make this man a criminal:
For this free state allows no man to breathe
A prison's air for money's mere mischance.
The learned gentleman who spake for law
And not for truth, said, as well knows the court—
The court wrote it out with a bold, broad pen
To stare, hugely and black, against the prisoner—
That this one knew at heart, from first to last,
The land he laid in pledge was trash, to grow
Grasses and stubbles, not seats for castles,
Or cities in their largeness and their strength:
That he, this prisoner, in his secret soul,
Knew this, but kept the cheap delusion up,
To live on the other's hard-wrought means,
A Cheat (they say), a Knave, a Hypocrite!
The court has knowledge that the whole wide land
Was in a city thrown, with towers to the skies,
Walls laid to the root and centre of the earth,
By general zeal, wildness not singly his,
A fever lodged at large and not his special guest—
This knows the court, know all who sit
Beneath this roof: the wide earth we stand on knows it;
A wealth-desire, that swallows up land, house,
The sea and all it holds, the vital air—
More hungry than the whirlwind, gaunt and fierce,
When down it shakes its gloomy mane, the trees
Of all the earth, and rushes, hungry still,
Out on the wild, unmeasured space.

Slinely rises and interposes.
Slinely.
Will the court permit me that I report
For the Organ, its doings of to-day?

Dark.
The court do not object.

Calm.
Nor I; if he will be that that he should,
The clear, sound glass through which the world may see,
As if it looked upon it, the chances of this case—
And not a mirror to distort, misshape,
And render back, dark and false-imaged, all:
Set down, would he but be the friend of truth,
The room, the hour, the attitude of each,
How stands the speaker, how the audience stand,
Whether the judge, with eyes and mind awake,
Listens to what is for the prisoner said,
Or stares upon his plea, half-slumbering.
If you are called to sound the bell of truth,
Let its clear voice your air-borne pages ring
Over the land, unmuffled and unmarred.

[To Slinely.
Dark.
He knows his duty, sir, and has the court's consent.

Calm.
I grant it, sir; we all our duties know,
And now that we're aroused and pricked to hear
With ears wide-opened—

Dark.
[Studiously interrupting.]
What tumult's that in yonder crowd?

Officer.
'Tis Lifeless, a poor hanger-on of the court,
Crowding for an end of bench, and because
He's lost it, is shuffling out of court.

Calm.
A moment's use more of the wise court's ear.
A Hypocrite, a Knave, a debt-struck Cheat!
Let all men pay in full their honest debts
In heaven's own coin, the world will need change sides—

Dark.
[Starting.]
You're not content, eh, with the things that stand,
You seek a change throughout the world?

Calm.
I do. A change that gliding 'mid the forms of life—
Shall crumble down the old-cemented wrongs,
E'en at a touch, yes, instant, all throughout,
As though, when thus I dash mine angry heel
Against the earth, I could shake down,
In all its continents, on all its shores—
Its homes, its temples, and its justice-halls,
Its prisons, fortresses, and towers of state!
[Darkledge regards him in amaze.
Due! there are some dues beside the dollar!
This man is debtor now, this very hour,
Unto this other! Take this one from the box,
And put the other there! For where's the courtesy,
Truth and honest dealing in look and hand,
And speech, whereof he wronged and robbed, so oft,
This prisoner? A daily fraud and hourly:
Practiced within the law, the rogue's enclosure,
Read by the candle-light of courts. Break on this court,
Thou purer blaze! that judges, soul-smit, may fall
Saul-like, in worship.

Dark.
[Angrily.]
Halt, sir, the court
Cannot sit silent, and listen to this talk.
The court worships nothing, 'twould have you know.

Calm.
Then Nothing is a devil bigger by a mountain's girth,
Than e'er he claimed to be before!

Dark.
You mock us, do you?
Stand ready here, a force of officers!
We mean the court will not let counsel say
What thing it worships, kneels to, prays to, judges by—
There is the Bible, there the Statute-book!—
[Looking towards Slinely.]
We're understood?

Sline.
[Rising.]
If the court please, we've writ for the public eye,
“The court has its own well-established worship,
“Of which 'twill not be questioned by counsel over-curious:
“The Bible's there, and there the Statute-Book—
“We stand by both. Now let the case proceed!”

Calm.
That is your record, is it?—
Sit down, thou foolish man! and slit thy quills—
Out of the court's mere idle words of chance,
You've built a lie as black and huge as Alleghany!

Sline.
We ask the court's protection: shall he
Upbraid us that we fairly chronicle
The pure judgments of the court?

Calm.
Protect! Banish you, rather, into
A desert everlasting beyond these walls,
No more to write the misinterpreted truth.

Dark.
These matters are not in the case, nor
Any part of it. He must not be disturbed:
In what he does, he must take his free course—

Calm.
And so must I. Thou man of perfect truth,
That in the Saul-like blaze sitt'st radiant!—
Even thou, Darkledge, the judge immaculate.—

Dark.
Come forward, officers! on either side
Stand ready on your staves: if he affront
The court, seize him, and bear him swiftly down!—

Calm.
And in the edges of its fire, the prisoner's withes are snapped!
Think what it is to be Heaven's chancellor!
You sit upon that bench, as on his throne
Sits He, to measure out the golden grains of justice,
Which are the bread and staff of this world's life.
Unseen his angels come, each minute, down,
And back return, reporting what Darkledge,
In his evil thought or good, determines.
See! o'er the judge's face God's visible shadow
Passes. He signs and trembles, trembles but signs.

[The order is handed to the Clerk by Darkledge.
Clerk.
[Reading.]
The order's adverse to the prisoner.

Calm.
You're in the cold, hard cell, as fixed as if
The frozen sea in ice had locked you!
[To the prisoner.
Another day is added to the days
Of wrong! His forehead smites the cruel rail,
As though a bolt had struck him from afar!

[Exit Calmstorm.—Scene closes.