University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

Morning.—A Library opening on to a Garden.
Lina alone.
Lina.
O how I thirst and hunger, face to face,
To curse them! not to have seen it! not to have seen
What all were loud of! I to be made the jest
Of all in the house, down to the very scullion,
The kitchen's merriment—a moving joke—
The jeer of the stables! would that I could stab him!
And be the rabble's wonder, days and weeks?
The news of papers, and the talk of taps—
Closed with the rope and hangman? Stab her? why,
That, if one weighs it, is but poor revenge,
Perhaps a loss of that for which one seeks.
No; be not rash; yet rein your passion in,
Though it should choke you, till occasion shriek
“Loose it!”—then—then? Why, here her Vivian comes
I'll scare my Damon. [Enter Vivian Mordaunt].
What you, Vivian, here?

Vivian.
Why, is it strange to see me?

Lina.
But so soon
What miracles cannot that boy effect,
The pigmy Cupid! to have made you rise
By this! by nine! nay, trust your eyes! an hour,
A whole full hour, before you saw the sun,
Unsmitten; then too, sir, your stay was late,
Or I'm mistaken, so the marvel's more;
What brings you? Why, the bees are hardly out,
And larks alone and labourers yet abroad;
Come, tell me why you're here?

Vivian.
Are you not here?

Lina.
How sweet a compliment! most neatly turned.
Ah! there you poets distance others so!
Still, there's this trifling drawback from the worth
Of all your flatteries, you so deal in lies.

Vivian.
I—lies?—Miss Merton?

Lina.
O I crave your grace,
Sir Vivian Mordaunt, Baronet, M.P.—
(Title for title)—if bare words affright,
We'll mask them; this one shall have dainty trim;
Your nerves being weak, we'll fit it for your sight,
And call it—fiction; that's poetic phrase.
Now, own you're false.

Vivian.
As false as all my tribe.

Lina.
No falser? Well, you're of a lying crew;
I'd best have shunn'd you.

Vivian.
[Aside].
Does she know the truth?
Or only banter in her bitter vein?
[Aloud].
You'd best have shunned me? Why, your talk is strange.

Lina.
The world is strange, Sir Vivian. Men are strange.
Life and its ways are stranger than I dream'd.
We live to learn strange wisdom.

Vivian.
Come—you deal
In riddles; I

Lina.
Can guess them? can you? Do!
Do!—Nay, where's Helen? Helen shall be here
To praise your quickness; she might guess them, too.
Ah, here she comes; she has a pleasant face;
I know you love that it should bless your dreams. [Enter Helen].

Ah Helen, did you feel your ears a-fire?
I see your cheeks are burning; Vivian and I
Were talking of you. Why, how quick you're pale,
But now a poppy! I but told you, sister,
We talked of you. What could we say but good?
I love you—don't I? Vivian, do not you?
You love my sister?

Vivian.
Love?—your sister?—yes.

Lina.
Why there you two stand, tongue-tied—red and white,
As if, poor children, you were girl and boy,
And feared a scolding. What have you to fear?
Come, have you written anything of late?
What, poet, not a sonnet, good or bad?
Hand me that purple volume from the shelf!
Not Tennyson—the next—a poet too—
The gentler Browning; how I hoard them both!
You've read her masterpiece—her Geraldine?
Her Duchess May—that has the antique ring?
She's great, because she's earnest.

Vivian.
True—her heart
Throbs through her sentences, and so they live.

Lina.
Ah, here's a poem that is talked of much;
You know it surely—Bertha in the Lane?
What think you of it? Sure you know it, sister?
The tale's a wild one—not a jot from life—
It must be fancied. On her dying bed,
The elder of two sisters,—as 'twere I,
You listening, sobs into the younger's ears
The untold sorrow that had made her die,
Heart-broken—how, hedge-hidden, in the lane
That names the tale, her own betroth'd she heard
Wooing her sister—both so false to her;
How she had locked this sorrow in her heart
From all but heaven, and in her tender love
For this false sister, she had made them one,
And died to bless them,—blessing them, content.
What think you of the story? Vivian, you?
Surely a touching one, with tenderest love,
And woman's noblest teachings over-brimm'd;
One to fill eyes with purifying tears,
And leave all hearts but better'd? Come,—I'd hear
A poet's judgment of a poet's tale;
Mind, of the tale—the story; for its form,
Spare our poor ears a talk of rhymes and rules
Obey'd or broken.

Vivian.
Why, what can I say
But echo your opinion? Who can praise
Enough the pen that such a wonder drew
Of angel meekness? Who can

Lina.
And you think
This patient sufferer was no puling fool
To take her wrongs so lightly? Do you so?
What thinks our Helen? Does she think so too?
What not a word? Why, it is but a tale
We talk of, sister—it is but a tale;
There never was a sister was so false.
Nor ever yet a man, forsworn, so base
As to make a sister turn a sister's days
To bitterness. Have you a word for them?

Vivian.
O Lina, Lina, 'tis an erring world,
A world where all must suffer and forgive
Much—evil, call it—who would win to heaven.
And for this story that this poet tells,
Might there not, Lina, might there not be said
Something—a something even for those who erred?
Say that a man who thinks he truly loves,
And in that thought has pledged his faith to one,
While yet he can change

Lina.
While yet he can change?
I thought you said his faith was pledged?

Vivian.
Yes—yes—
But not at the altar.

Lina.
And what matters that?
The whole earth is truth's altar. Palter not;
There's not an instant but we front a God,
Here—everywhere. Think you—think you that heaven,
Heaven asks of where and when a lie is lied,
And holds speech nothing, spoken in the sight of God,
And for eternity, false—true or false—
As eternity shall teach each soul to learn?
O palter not; faith plighted 'neath a roof,
On some square feet, made holy by a priest,
Is not a whit more damning, being broke,
Than troth sworn freely elsewhere on God's earth,
That God has blessed and sanctified himself.
Go on.

Vivian.
I did not say I did not blame

Lina.
Blame?

Vivian.
Ay, condemn.

Lina.
Condemn?

Vivian.
What should I say?

Lina.
Loathe—hate—curse—curse such falseness—foul in him,
But fouler in the sister, base of heart—
(Give me that water!) she that did not spurn him
At the first breath of his baseness, but could plot,
And plot, and plot, against a sister's heart,
Stealing the very thing that made life sweet,
Without which life were but a thirst for the grave,
And days but lived for vengeance. Curse them! Curse them!

Helen.
O Vivian—Vivian!

Vivian.
Look! your sister faints!
Helen—sweet Helen—drink, sweet Helen—Helen!
Sprinkle her forehead—Lina—Lina—mercy!

Lina.
Mercy? I? Why it's but a poet's tale—
Is't not—we talked of? You excusing breach
Of oaths, and those who broke them—I but speaking
Even as my nature prompts me;—I'm not one,
You know, for boudoir nicety of phrase—
And spoke, in natural words, what such a baseness
Would move me to—not being perfection quite,
And weakness, like this wonder in the song,
But a mere woman—flesh, and blood, and fire—
That, stung, will sting, and trodden on, will turn.
It moved her strangely, though. What could so move her?
Well, here's Ninette, and, as I like not scenes,
I'll to the sunshine, and henceforth take care
To criticize my favourites and their songs,
Seeing we treat them so as if they were truths,
By myself. Au revoir! see—she's coming to.