University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

A Room. Several young men seated around a table.
First Speaker.
Another name would make our list complete;
And since our number is to be restricted,
I should advise we look about for one
Having some quality that we yet want.
Knows any one where Reuben spends his nights?
He used to come amongst us; but of late
He might be dead, or married.—Have you mark'd
How friendships, be they ever so alive,
Grow cold and die without a special cause?

Second Speaker.
Nothing is fix'd: the granite ribs that shield
The continents from the besieging sea,
Are being lick'd into soft layers of sand.
In time the dogged sea will have his day.
Where cities lie i' the sun, where sickles glance,
Where lovers walk in lanes, and cottages
Wreathe up their lazy smoke in sylvan nooks,
There will be nothing then but sea, blue sea!
A sea of change is ever in our hearts,
Ebbing and flowing; blotting out the lines
That character our present, and anew
Giving our life its margin. Our old loves
Embedded lie, like strata out of date.
Yet who can say they will not rise again
For other, and it may be higher, use?
Buried formations, older than the flood,
Come up and serve the wants of this our day.

Third Speaker.
We are like beads in a kaleidoscope;
And as time moves it round and round, we slip
Out of one fellowship into another,
In hue and form all different: yet through all
Runs the old beauty both of form and hue.

Fourth Speaker.
Or like a pack of cards play'd by the gods:
And as they shuffle, cut, and deal us out,
We find ourselves in many different suits;—
Now link'd between a brace of arrant knaves
With side-long glances, winking to each other;
Now hand in hand with kingly sorts of men
That look straight forward with bright royal eyes;
Then in a company of jolly trumps,
Breezy in mirth, with the world all at their feet,
Carrying the game before them; and anon,
Close quarter'd with dull miserable rags
That lack the virtue of one living thought,
And can but mutely wait till they are play'd.

Fifth Speaker.
The presences of men are double. This
Which fills the eye and babbles to the ear,
Is but the covert to a timid doe,
Scarce ever to be seen upon the lawns,
But marvellous in beauty when beheld.
Words and side watchings keep that presence in.
Behind the rags you speak of, there is that
Which shrinks from your keen eyes.—In my school time.
I had a cousin; and on holidays
We ever were together: long, long days
We wander'd in lone places, side by side;
Or sat whole hours upon the river's brink,
With not one word between us. Since he died
I've sought in vain another silent mate:
For every one will speak, or wish to speak,
And thus we never can come near enough.—
I dreamt one night there was a crowd of men,
And not one spoke: all were rapt up in thought.
But I could see their spirits coming out,
And flitting, ghost-like, 'mid the silent frames,
Communing with each other without speech.
And when I woke I thought upon my cousin,
And those long days in which we never spoke.

Second Speaker.
Let us be silent now: our ghosts will creep
Out of their tenements, like mice at night
When one sits in his slippers, and the fire
Has wink'd itself asleep, and the haunting clock
That had been still all day, goes like a sprite
Ticking through all the house,—O, then they come
Like little clues of worsted o'er the hearth,
And peep about with their black diamond eyes,
Till he's in love with them, and pleased to think
That in the very house with him there are
So many living things that he may love.
Let us be quiet, then, we double men,
And see our beauteous presences come out.
But if we move a foot, or speak one word,
Lord, what a splutter to regain their holes!

First Speaker.
They will not come to watchers: Nature gives
To the unconscious only, things divine.—
Our list still wants a name. I mentioned one,
And that one for this reason. There are some
Whose natures are so mellow in themselves,
They seem to mellow everything they touch;
Most passive souls that put out no strong will,
Their action being chymical. Unknown,
E'en to themselves, they draw bad humours out,
And drop on fever'd natures balmy dew.
Reuben has that rare virtue.

Fourth Speaker.
Rare defect!
For that it is defect in him is clear.
He is so undecided in himself
That he takes on the hue of any one,
Be that black, white or green—sinner or saint,
Or simple innocent; and any whim
That any fool may broach, still finds in him
Forbearance, and is even reflected back
With added light on its enraptured sire.
Rare virtue this! I call it rare deceit.

First Speaker.
O no, he is sincere, and only takes
The good that will be found in all bad things.
What if he tackle to a vice at times,
And like an angler runs it with the stream?
Trust me, before he leaves it, it will lie
In all its bareness, strangled at his feet,
Its weak side uppermost.

Fourth Speaker.
Not with a line,
But with a net he fishes. All is fish
That comes to Reuben's net—very good fish.

Sixth Speaker.
He has a strange one in it now, I hear—
A very wary nibbler that has had
Most choice baits offer'd to her. She comes up
And sculls provokingly around the hook,
Swinging her saucy tail; then makes a feint,
As if about to take: the fisher's heart
Is up and all on tip-toe for the sport.
'Twas but a nibble, and she's up the stream
To play the same game with some other heart.
The finest twisted lines, the daintiest hooks,
With all old Izaak's art to boot, have fail'd
To wile this sly one from her watery home.
But Reuben comes, and in his blundering way,
Using no art at all, casts in his net,
When straight she falls into it, and is his.

First Speaker.
But has he landed her, and has he knelt
Upon the soft green cushion by her side?
Till then, who knows but she may use an art,
The deeper in seeming none? I do not like
A woman with the habits of a fish,
Treating men's hearts as if they were mere baits
For her especial self, and each conceal'd
A barbed hook which she might rob, then leave.
Your mermaids ever have deceivers been.

Sixth Speaker.
Of wooers she has fifty more at least,
That ply her more than Reuben, and hold out
Flattering inducement: he but lays his heart,
Not in low fawning duty at her feet,
But as a well, over whose brim she stoops,
And sees she is the goddess of its deeps:
And, gazing in, she finds her thoughts all lost
In his soft love, which, like an azure sky,
Is mirror'd deep beneath. So that, in him
Her senses being lost, her art is gone,
And love's fine madness leads her like a child.

Second Speaker.
The ladye love of fifty belted knights
Would not go mad for one. But who is she
That in her single bosom thus absorbs
The dues of fifty maids?

Sixth Speaker.
You know the Inn,
Over the river where the two roads meet
And marry with each other on the bridge?
That Inn, her sire has kept for many a year;
And in the good old times when coaches ran,
And carriers and drovers lined the roads,
He fill'd his coffers. The good times went out,
And railway trains had damn'd the house, when lo!
Out of her girlhood's disregarded bud
Burst Margaret into beauty, and became
The house's saviour.

Second Speaker.
I see, I see:
She sets about enlisting simple swains,
And keeps them drinking for the house's good—
Half drunk with love, and half with country ale.
Her heart is sacrificed to save the house,
And this you call the doctrine of salvation.

Sixth Speaker.
If men ask drink, it is no part of hers
To serve them with sour looks. If they admire
The sparkling light dancing in her black eyes,
The fine dark stormy beauty in her hair,
The dimpling cheek that mantles like a sea
Flush'd by a ruddy sunset, is it then
Her part to drive them from the house, which house,
Being public, is as free to them as her?
If fifty men would have her, she is led,
Driven, perhaps against her fair intent,
To use the arts I spoke of.

First Speaker.
And you say
Reuben, of all the fifty, is the man!
But since she is not yet securely his,
He has his work before him; and our ends
Were poorly served by the mere patch of heart
That he could spare. Therefore, let each of us
Think of some other friend, so that our list
May be completed the next time we meet.

[Exeunt.