University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.

Enter Damer Grey and Hope, followed by Avice.
GREY
(speaking as he enters)
Safe here? A pretty tale! Safe anywhere!
Did you forget that he was blind? For shame!
You thought to meet him as we came? You thought!
I'll wager that you did not think at all!
Is this your care?

HOPE
O, father, chide me not!
He sent me from him.

GREY
Sent? Why did you go?
You should have made believe to go, and stayed
To watch his dangerous steps.

HOPE
Why, so I did,
But he suspected me.

GREY
You are so fine
You cannot brook suspicion; you would rather
See such a man whom you profess to love
Fall from a precipice, than stretch your hand
To save him, if he bids you not. Come now,
Do you know where you left him?

HOPE
Here.

GREY
Oh, well,
Very well—knowing that you left him here
You are content, although you find him not;
He was here—and he should be here—that's all—
And you are satisfied. But I, his father,
Only his father, am less rational.
Prove to me by a hundred arguments
That on this square of earth he ought to stand, [Striking the ground with his stick.

Must stand, has no escape from standing here,
Yet, if I stand here too, and see him not,
I feel a fault i' the logic. Raymond! Ho!
Answer! What, Raymond! Raymond!

HOPE
(wringing her hands)
Not a sound!
The path lies straight—that treacherous brink of fern
Was far behind—he could not face that way,
And darkness is familiar to his feet,
O! he's not lost, but gone!

GREY
This is mad talk.
Where? how? with whom? Would gipsies kidnap him,
Like some gay-snooded babe? You cannot think
To stay my hunger with such hollow trash;
Devise some better fancy.

[Hope weeps.
AVICE
(to Hope)
Why do you bear it?
You should not weep; you have no cause to weep;
No momentary speck of doubtful blame
Can touch you.

HOPE
O! I think not of myself,
The woe is here—it nothing comforts me
To say I did not bring it. If I knew him
Unhurt and happy, I could be content
To give him up for ever.

AVICE
Is that love?
I'd rather have the thing I love dead here [touching her breast

Than crowned in Germany.

HOPE
With that you prove
You never loved at all. What shall we do?
In this mere blank we breathe not. He has sunk
As a ship sinks, with all her moving freight
Of work, thought, hope, where the split water shuts,
A waste without a mark; he has ceased like sound
Which in the sudden silence leaves no trace.
We must go out and search the world for him,
Or wait at home and die for want of him;
We are so cloaked and fettered by despair
We cannot stir. Let us sit down awhile
And tell each other how we love him, tell
How noble and how tender was his soul,
How his blind life made music in our home
We would give all our eyes to hear again;
The dumb compulsion of such love as ours
May wring him back from the veiled destiny
Which holds him from us. Here I touched him last;
I will beseech the ground to give him back
Or gape and cover me.

[She throws herself on the ground.
GREY
Why, Hope—why, child—
Look up—he may be safe—break not my heart
For your sake also. I was all amazed
And knew not what I said.

HOPE
You said but truth;
I should have clung about his knees, and saved him
Against his will.

AVICE
Saved him from what? Heaven help us!
The creature's gone ten minutes, and you talk
As if you had the knife-hilt at your palm
Wherewith he slew himself. I'll lay my life
(Dearer than his) there's nought amiss with him.
I lose my patience; are you one of those
Who moan and make not? Here!

[Discovering the letter.
HOPE
(taking it with trembling hands)
O read it to me,
For I am blind as he is.

GREY
Let me have it. [He reads the letter aloud.

And here his secret sign! Safe and content!
Too hard a nut for me! And how content
Knowing we could not know that he was safe?
Is that his love and duty? I am ashamed
Of all this wasted agony.

HOPE
Rejoice
That it is wasted—do not judge him yet;
We shall hear all ere long. Let us go in
And muse together of this mystery,
Which, till he speaks again, we cannot pierce.

GREY
I'll not forgive him.

HOPE
Father!

GREY
Nay, I will not.

[Exeunt Grey and Hope, hanging on him.
AVICE
(alone, looking after them)
Aye, muse together, one in childish wrath
That beats it knows not what, and one in faith
As childish, trusting where it cannot know.
Well for them that one disentangled soul
Stands by, to smooth their web! Now, if I knew
Where he is gone! Why, Hope, who watches him
So closely that the germs of ungrown thought
Should not escape her, rests in ignorance!
What worth is Love that cannot read the heart
But stirs like a vague wind about the woods
Which, ceasing, leaves the shaken stems to feel
That proper life and movement of the sap
Which it affected not. I am full of words
Like philosophic preachers who make plain
The doctrine, though they never do the works;
I know the shape and trouble of this Love
Too well to trust my heart in reach of it.
But see, here comes my dream-fed boy, who waits
Through patient ages for a smile from Hope
And, winning it, is sadder than before
Because no blush goes with it. I'll stand by
And hear his murmurs.

(She draws back.)
Enter Vernon, with a rose.
VERNON
Three times she passed; three times I lacked the force
To give her this poor rose I plucked for her;
O fool! She heeds thee not enough to spurn thee;
The placid toleration of her smile
Grinds me to dust! Yet will I shrine her now
Above me, where she is, and gird her round
With homage and obeisance, such as maids
Pay to the limnèd image of their saint,
Nor seek return, except by miracle.
Alas, a weary life, that dwarfs the soul
Until it dies by wasting.

AVICE
(advancing)
Are you there?
O, you are sad to-day.

VERNON
You read my face
As the cliff-watchman reads the passing sail,
Named in a moment.

AVICE
Truly I am glad
When sympathy can do the work of knowledge.

VERNON
Since you discern my sorrow, tell its cause.

AVICE
'Tis a strange sorrow, if it springs from Hope,
Should not Hope cure it?

VERNON
Do not play with me.
Reveal me such a cure, and I—no, no,
I must be thankless for a boon so vast
That it leaves room for nothing but itself.

AVICE
Alas, poor Hope, I would she saw your heart
Beside that one she dotes on!

VERNON
Can it be
That having won the queen of all the world
He is but half her servant?

AVICE
We are seekers,
And what we have, we heed not. She's not wise.
Will she take counsel? She is at his neck
Hanging so closely that he sees her not;
She stands not in the picture of his life
Noted by light, or veiled by tempting shade,
But, if he find a flower, and stretch his hand
To pluck it, then he feels her; so his jewel
Becomes an obstacle. You shrink—I wound you
Against my will.

VERNON
That she should love him so
Hurts more than that he so should scorn her love.

AVICE
Hush, hush, you must not say I spoke of scorn;
He loves her with a brother's temperance,
Less than himself; and she is satisfied.
So would I be if I were sure of him,
But—

VERNON
Tell me how to help her!

AVICE
Do not hold me
So close. You hurt my hands.

VERNON
O pardon me.
You have such vivid speech, you show the brink
With her upon it, and I thought I saved her.
What can I do?

AVICE
Am I so poor a thing
That only by mistake my hand is pressed?
Tut! he perceives not.

VERNON
Hear me—

AVICE
Not a word;
I meant it not. Let us agree to watch;
Be this our compact—thoughts may strike aside,
And judgments fail, but let us watch for facts
Which cannot err. You that are Raymond's friend—
(Men show themselves to men) lead him to talk,
Keep back your heart and feel for his, and find
How he regards her; test him for her sake,
That when we know the truth with certainty
We may take counsel and devise for her
How she shall bear it.

VERNON
I'll be led by you.

AVICE
Take him alone, and touch him to the quick.
Match her with others, tempt him till he says
He wearies in the everlasting light
Which shows him all. 'Tis right that we should know.
Or if, thus catechized, his creed comes out
Immaculate (it will not) let us know it;
Herein we are Hope's servants in her sleep,
And when she wakes she thanks us.

VERNON
In that service
I cast away the life I value not,
And thank you that you show me how to give it.

[Exeunt.