University of Virginia Library

Scene I.—A Room in Grey's House.

Enter Grey and Carlton meeting.
GREY
How is't with her to-day?

CARLTON
Ere I can answer
I must be certified which way you ask.
Will you have muffled words that show themselves
For what they are not? Will you go blindfold
To the very brink, and set your foot on flowers
With nothing under? I can lead you so,
And leave you so—or will you take the truth?
I have that dagger in mine armoury—
'Tis seldom asked for.

GREY
I'm too old for truth:
Time has so bruised me with his buffetings
That a touch hurts me now. Too old for truth,
Yet too familiar with her bitter looks
For any mask to cheat me. Say your will,
And like a meagre alms, the fact shall slip
Through your closed fingers.

CARLTON
Then, she is no worse.

GREY
Why, then, she is no better! O, my heart!
Why did I cross her in her brighter time
Which was to be so short? Not a rough word
I ever spoke, but grates against me now—
And she, that used to look so pitiful,
With gentle pardons asked, and no wrong done,
Scared often from that timid joy of hers
As far as tears, were I to show her now
These penetrations of my slow remorse,
Would soothe me with her soft bewildered eyes
And tell me truly she remembered not.
She was so sweet, Carlton, she was so sweet,
Remembering nothing done against herself,
But taking all the common kindnesses
For great bestowals—O, my fatal tongue!
Said I ‘she was’?

CARLTON
Do not reproach yourself.
Life is a mirror for such loving eyes
To show them nothing harder than themselves;
We watchers from without, wasting our tears,
Pity the grief which their unconscious magic
Transforms before it touches them.

GREY
You talk
Madly—for it is nothing else but grief
That kills her now.

CARLTON
Be careful, friend! she comes.

[Hope is led in and supported to a couch.
HOPE
Stand not there doubting how to look at me
But smile a bright good-morning, for to-day
Is more than good for me.

GREY
How so, sweet heart?

HOPE
Because it is my birthday.

GREY
Ah!

HOPE
No sighs!
Since you forgot it, you must be my debtor
As I would have you, father, with no gift,
For I have such a boundless boon to ask
That all the birthdays I shall ever have
May sum themselves in this, and take their gifts
Before they come, so best. Come, sit by me,
And let me lay my lips against your ear
And whisper it as softly as a kiss;
Nay, closer yet—sixteen long years ago,
Upon my first remembered birthday, father,
You had me closer yet. What's this? You shrink;
Are you afraid of me?

GREY
(hastily)
There is a message
I should deliver—I'll return, and grant
All your requests.

[Exit Grey.
HOPE
(looking afeer him)
Alas! I fear he weeps.

CARLTON
Few men so near the final slopes of life
Are pleased with talk about the first ascent.

HOPE
It was not for himself, it was for me.
You cluster round me kindly, each one holding
A screen, and thinking that he hides the place
To which I walk, but I am looking at it
Past all your pretty obstacles. It seems
A fair land and a pleasant. But I go
Not as a saint, I am too weak for triumph,
But merely having missed my place in life,
Very tired and very certain of my rest.

CARLTON
Take you so placidly the thought of death?

HOPE
As one who lies awake at night and hears
How nightingales are singing in the woods,
And from that far fine ecstasy divines
That somewhere in the world there is a place
Where he might be, full of untroubled music,
With nothing harsher than a nightingale,
And thinks, ‘I will go there to-morrow night
And be among the branches and the songs.’
O, try that nobody should weep for me!
I have made no one happy, and 'tis hard
To cause an hour of sadness

CARLTON
But they love you.

HOPE
I'd have their love no longer than my life,
Or that of the first flower upon my grave;
Nay, it should die when I do, going with me
And waiting with me till we meet again,
Like something rare and precious which we hide
Till the great feast-day, when we wear our crowns
And show our treasures.

CARLTON
See, he comes again.

Re-enter Grey.
GREY
Now for your boon—'tis yours before 'tis named.
What can I do for you?

HOPE
You will not let me
Kneel at your feet?

GREY
Be not so foolish, child!
Why plead so fiercely when you have my promise?

HOPE
(putting her arms round him)
I'll hold you to it then. I want your pardon
For one who has offended. Do you love me
Enough for this?

GREY
O peace! you shall not stain
Your lips.

HOPE
O peace! you shall not break my heart!
Shall Time, which wears away the sharpest grief,
Do nothing against Anger? You have had
Your wrath—just wrath—is it not satisfied
With a year's raging? Let it go to sleep!
The Days, like a great host of armèd men,
March onward over all things and prevail;
They do not pause, they do not break their ranks,
They sweep the unresisting Universe,
And what they find they leave not as they found,
But the most rugged and uncomely wastes
Are levelled by the ceaseless tramp of Time,
And even the precipice becomes a path,
And ways whereon we fainted and despaired
Melt into prospects, and are beautiful.
You must not stand against the general law:
'Tis your necessity to yield to-day,
As once it was your virtue to be stern.

GREY
That's but a Woman's logic; all the proof
Lies in the wish. But I am darker-hued,
And cannot make a mirror of myself
For every passing face. I am myself;
My friends must bear me as I am.

HOPE
I give
My logic to your scorn; hear but my tears,
And yield your better judgment. O, my father!
I am passing from you quickly. Very soon
Where you have seen my face and heard my voice
There shall be nothing but the silent cloud
Which is so near us now; and I, within it,
May lie asleep until the Master calls,
Filled with some tender and contenting dream
Which I divine not now, as a babe lies
Untroubled by the tempests of the world,
Soothed by the smile that touches it. Perhaps
This your last gentleness before I die
Shall be remembered as I wake again;
Let me not wake with ‘no’ upon my heart!
'Twill sadden you to see this empty couch
And know I took this pain away with me.

GREY
Have pity, Hope!

HOPE
O, is it not for you
I plead? I want to give you back your son
Before you lose your daughter.

GREY
He has killed you!

HOPE
Not he, mine own weak heart. Some happy lives
Are like to landscape pictures; each new touch
Dwarfs and drives back what filled the former scene,
Till at the frame and foreground of the whole,
A drift of flowers against a summer green
Is more important than a city. These
Pass brightly through their changes and have peace.
But otherwise it is with her whose picture
Holds nothing but a face; through all the tints
It grows, and all the touches strengthen it,
And all the world is a background for it;
And so it sucks away the Painter's life.
But there we lose comparison: the painter
Sees his work done, and takes another face.
'Tis Art's perpetual miracle, to give
All the cruse holds, yet keep it always full:
Alas, we find no parallel for this
Save when Love answers Love. Pray pardon me;
I wander through a thousand thoughts, and start
If any touch me.

GREY
Will you go and rest?

HOPE
Nay, but I have not won my boon.

GREY
Be patient;
We'll talk of it to-morrow. 'Tis not well
To turn your thoughts that way.

HOPE
To turn my thoughts?
You do not change the river's course, because
You push aside the leaves to look at it.
Do not be hard to me!

GREY
My dearest child—

HOPE
O now I know you are resolved against me!
Leave me, you love me not! Was ever heart
So beaten and so broken without help
As this poor heart which shall so soon be cold,
Which no one comforts now!

[She weeps.
CARLTON
Let her not weep;
She may die before our eyes!

GREY
Have all you will!
Nay sweet, nay bird, no tears—did she believe
I had the heart to baulk her? Only tell me
What I should do—I'd go to bitter Moscow
To fetch one smile! Say, shall I bring him home,
Myself! To-night?

HOPE
(looking up)
Will you indeed do so?

GREY
So? Aye and twenty so's to win that look;
But I must have my guerdon. You must sleep,
And eat, and mend!

HOPE
O, with so light a heart
I can go lightly up the hardest hills!
I was afraid you would not.

GREY
Calmly now,
While I am absent. Think of something else,
That's the true cure for all things. So, goodbye,
And keep a tranquil face till I return;
No tears again! Remember!

[Exit Grey.
HOPE
I have lured him
To his own peace.

CARLTON
I fear me, not to yours.

HOPE
My life is at its cadence; all the skill
Of all the world defers not the sure close
By more than a few lingering passages,
Which, if they sound like sorrow, only make
The after-silence welcome. But for them
There is a future; if I join them not
Before I die, they stand apart for ever,
For my poor ghost should come against my will
And wave them from each other bitterly:
If I must haunt them, let it be with thoughts
Of peace and pardon, clasping them together
With the mere pity of remembering me
As I would be remembered.

CARLTON
Now I lead you
To your much-needed rest.

[Exeunt Carlton and Hope.