University of Virginia Library

CYRIL.

FOUR SCENES FROM A LIFE.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

• Cyril.
• Mrs. Vere, his Mother.
• The Duchess of Lansdale his Mother's Friend.
• Lord Stanerly his Mother's Friend.
• Cyril's College Friends.

Scene I.—Cyril's Rooms at College.
Scene II.—Mrs. Vere's Drawing-room in London.

I. PART I.—CHOICE.

Scene I.—Cyril's Room. After Supper.

Cyril and his Friends.
FIRST FRIEND
So, having crowned you for the second time,
We say good-night.

CYRIL
How for the second time?

FIRST FRIEND
You were crowned first, when these astonished airs
Took such a crowd of ‘Cyrils’ from our lips
Echo was crushed among them; when we heard
Your name in its own place, the top of honour;
Working its little miracle at once,
For Grey was pleased, and Essingdon surprised;
Two sights our Cambridge never saw before.

SECOND FRIEND
Surprised? You wrong my judgment and his fame.

FIRST FRIEND
Well, you reared up your eyelashes, and said
‘Cyril? Indeed!’ When made you such a speech
Foodless, till now? I know you had not lunched.

SECOND FRIEND
Tut! tut! I had some tea.

CYRIL
O! that explains it!
I thought the tea-light glistened in your eyes
And warmed you with unwonted eloquence.
But not the less I thank you—my success
Reveals a world of hidden love. Good-night.

[They take leave.
THIRD FRIEND
No satire after supper, by your leave!
'Twill spoil your dreams.

CYRIL
I have no need to dream.

THIRD FRIEND
Ay, Cyril, a proud word! He needs not dream
Who has achieved. I'm sorry for the world,
Because achievement ever means farewell,
And one may weep in parting from a dream.

CYRIL
‘Farewell’ is as a shield, whose other face
Bears the strong word ‘Advance.’

THIRD FRIEND
I lose my breath.
Where will this going spirit take you? First
A heap of unconsidered scholarships,
Last year the Craven—Senior Wrangler now—
Both sides of knowledge scaled! Vouchsafe to rest
On the clear summit, pass not while we gaze
From Alp to Andes!

CYRIL
Fie! You do but mock
My dumb ambitions with such hyperbole!

THIRD FRIEND
In your vocabulary, hyperbole
Is construed into fact.

CYRIL
No, no. Good-night.

[Exit Third Friend.
FOURTH FRIEND
That which you worked for, Cyril, you have won,
But I must spur you with reproachful praise
To labours half completed. You were once
The fairest promise in my crew—you paused
Just when by two short weeks of guided toil
You might have gained that hold upon the water!
(I flatter not) you paused, before you gained it.
'Tis not too late—you will have leisure now—
If once you get that grip upon the water
I'll say you are the foremost man alive.

CYRIL
Well, captain, you shall write my epitaph
And say ‘He might have been.’

FOURTH FRIEND
I should be loth
To give you such a ‘finis.’ Think of it!

[Exit Fourth Friend. A group advances to take leave.
ONE
Good-bye, old fellow.

ANOTHER
When you're chancellor
Make me your secretary!

ANOTHER
Not his line,
He speaks too well to wait.

ANOTHER
Aye, when St. Stephen's
Resounds with him, and in the streets men ask
‘Have you read Cyril's speech?’ ‘When, do you think,
He was most great—now? Or in that assault
Which hurled the Cabinet to earth last year?’
We shall behold each other, and recall
The first young roarings of his thunder-talk
In our debates!

ANOTHER
And some of us will laugh
To think how well we thought we answered him,
Our monarch in disguise, only not crowned
Because he had not stretched his hand out.

ANOTHER
Cyril,
You shall hear clarions in your sleep to-night.

[Exeunt all but one friend and Cyril.
FRIEND
You are sad, Cyril.

CYRIL
Only tired.

FRIEND
But I,
Who see your heart, can see how ill they read it;
Decyphering all the titles of your fame
Blind to its import.

CYRIL
Speak, interpreter;
Reveal the thought they missed.

FRIEND
[Cyril covers his face with his hands.

CYRIL
Aye, did it show you all?
That were a window worth the looking through!
Friend, you know more than I.

FRIEND
'Tis possible.
Ships have I seen that rode the tempest out
But stranded in the calm! I'll counsel you,
Being your friend—be wary in the calm!
That shallow stillness drifts you to a shoal
And tells you all the while you have not moved.
Let the dear home embrace and let you go,
But not entangle you. There lies your peril.

CYRIL
You think so?

FRIEND
Nay, I know it. Never think
I scorn that ease which I would sting you from;
The lovely danger and the tender sleep
Spread between you and greatness. For the heights
Your soul was born, therefore I bid you mount;
Let not the tranquil virtue of your love
Become temptation!

CYRIL
O, you speak blind words!
Blind as a poniard which perceives no wound
Though its point touch the heart. Yet will I thank you,
For words, aye and the winds that carry them,
Are full of seeds; we breathe them as we walk,
Nor see what forces of unconscious growth
We take into our souls. I'll talk to you
Another time. Good-night.

FRIEND
What, have I vexed you
With frank goodwill? Are you so soon a king
Who must be answered, but not questioned? Cyril,
Beware of pride!

CYRIL
Good night.

FRIEND
Why then, good night,
Since you dismiss me. I am sorry for it.

CYRIL
(taking him by the shoulders goodhumouredly)
Take your intolerable wisdom hence;
I'll beg your pardon when we meet again,
Now I want peace.

FRIEND
I knew you did. Good night.

[Exit.
[Cyril stands silent with clasped hands as if overpowered with thought—then speaks suddenly:
CYRIL
A little—helpless—soft—three-summered child
Working for bread! A man of fourscore years
Dying before he hears the name of Christ!
Of Christ, who died two thousand years ago
With prints of children's kisses on His hands
Beside the nails—and died for only this,
That men should love each other, and know Him.
O, in the darkness of our Christendom
To wander eighty years without a star
And die bewildered, as you hear of life
For the first time! It might have been myself,—
And I, who know it, am alive, awake,
Strong, full of victory—nay, what can I do,
What is there left for me to do, but go
And pour the medicine of my Master's Name
Into these gaping wounds which groan for Him,
This dreadful Christian land, which sets her babes
To toil, and thrusts away her wearied hearts,
Without their rest, and flaunts her hollow cross
Before the nations like a self-crowned saint,
And buys and sells and prospers and is cruel!
If I should say I heard Him in the night
Cry ‘Follow me’ men would believe me mad;
Aye, shake their heads and make allowance for me,
Because I hear when they are deaf. I think
It was not only by Gennesareth
That He cried ‘Follow me.’ O! in that land,
That milk-and-honey land, compassionate
Of all her children, by necessity,
Because God made her flowing for their need,
How wept He for the poor! Why, all His words
His tender wisdom, sorrowful rebuke,
Trumpet of hope or thunder of command,
Or whisper from the vast serene of Truth
Which no man sees and lives, were incomplete
Without that cadence ‘Care ye for the poor!
What would He say in England, where skies freeze
And cities starve the nakedness of want?
What of our souls that perish at church-doors,
Our harvests rotting while the reapers feast?
Receive me, few that labour! Not by choice,
By force I join you, having seen these things,
Henceforth unable to avert mine eyes,
But grateful for this mist and help of tears
Whereby the vision grows endurable! [A pause.

I do suppose this is the sacrifice
Required of me,—that I should slay their hopes
Gathered around my feet confidingly
Like children certain of their coming joy.
I grieve more than I should—so small a thing
To give—a cost not worth the counting—yet
All that we have. I quote the Widow's mite,
And wonder if she left a son at home
Who grudged it. That would make the giving hard. [A pause.

A man is happy, having two dear homes
Though he leave both. And this, the first, consoled
For my departure, yet not cold to me,
Wise, beautiful, benignant, and beloved,
Left, but not lost,—a root from which I grow,
Not a mere ground to leap from—Ah, farewell!
I feel not how the presence of this time,
The shadow of these shrines, this friendship-world,
Gladness of toil and glee of holyday,
Hope, difficulty, failure, fault, and glory,
Can pass into remembrance! But, from these,
I move and linger to the deeper home
Lying within my life, there still to lie
Though the life change. Now, while my triumph shines
On those soft faces in Northamptonshire,
I think about the cloud which I must bring.
If I had grieved them sooner, I could bear
Better to grieve them now; but I, who made
Their Paradise, must drive them out of it
Although they have not sinned. It must be done.
I would my heart were broken into words
That they might read it piece by piece, so learning
The thing that I must do and they must bear.
How beautiful were Life, if we could make
All our steps forward, tangled by no pause,
Whether it be but flowers about the feet,
Or serpents in the path. I think the martyrs
Felt not the death they feared not, but they felt
Only the pangs of all those pleading eyes
Which held them from it. What a child am I
To let my little burden seem so great!

Scene II.—The Drawingroom of Mrs. Vere (Cyril's Mother).

Mrs. Vere—Duchess of Lanslade—Lord Stanerly.
DUCHESS
You shine beneath your lustre of good news
Like a ring stirred in sunlight. If I talk
Till you drop down with listening, half my joy
Is still untold. I knew him from a child;
A month between my soldier's age and his—
Ah, when they went so grievously to school
Who thought the little pale-face had such brains?

MRS. VERE
He was before his elders. I can see
How the class towered around him. I was vexed
Until I found the youngest of his mates
Had two years more of growth.

DUCHESS
My Alfred's height
Served but to make conspicuous idleness—
Well, it becomes him now.

MRS. VERE
He looks so well
In regimentals.

DUCHESS
Make no vain pretence
To grace him with a thought! Me he contents.
(Poor boy, I wish he were beside us now!)
Your themes are greater. When your victor comes
Tell him how glad I am.

MRS. VERE
He has a heart
Quick to discern a friend.

DUCHESS
Blanche told us first;
Rosy and breathless with her news she broke
Upon my toilet—I forgave it her—
All the dear glories of her playfellow
She counts her own. You should have seen the child!

MRS. VERE
(to Lord Stanerly)
You have said nothing yet.

LORD STANERLY
I think the more.
I waited for this day. Now he fulfils
Uttermost hope; 'tis no mere student-crown
Marking a life for leisure; this is power;
I tested and am sure of it—this hand
Will do triumphantly what work it finds.
You'll trust him to me?

MRS. VERE.
Do you ask for him?

LORD STANERLY
Hark in your ear—the chief has heard of him:
Give me one year to pave his working-path,
And it shall lead him to the Cabinet

MRS. VERE
What—a career? You promise it!

LORD STANERLY
I swear it;
You need not thank me; we are proud of him:
I speak with knowledge.

MRS. VERE
All my dreams at once!
I tremble with this weight of joy.

LORD STANERLY
We leave you
To grow familiar with it.

DUCHESS
When he comes
Give him my love. Make him remember Blanche,
Sprung into womanhood, but losing not
The careless magic of those childish hours
When he heaped meadow-gold about her feet
And called her ‘little wife!’

MRS. VERE
You are too kind
With such remembrances.

[They shake hands. Exeunt Duchess and Lord Stanerly.
MRS. VERE
(alone)
His ‘little wife’?
Scarce big enough for such distinction now;
I'll not remind him. Strange that she should like
To mention her inglorious Alfred here;
There's no accounting for these mother-hearts!
I should be lenient—being set, myself,
Above all need or reach of charity.
O! I am happy; in my splendid sky
There's not a threatening finger-breadth of cloud;
I fear to fall asleep, lest I should die
Full-handed in the leisure of my glory
Ere I have quaffed it. See, he should be here! [Looks at her watch.

Ah—the dear step!

Enter Cyril. She hurries to meet him.
MRS. VERE
My king! My pride! My darling!

CYRIL
Dear mother!

[They embrace.
MRS. VERE
You are pale—you have done all,
And have our full permission to be tired!
You must rest now, my Cyril—for a month
You shall lie down in fern and watch the clouds,
And sigh among the singing of the birds,
And see the sweet flower-problems solve themselves
Without your help, and never think at all,
But keep a novel ready by your hand,
Turning no page; so shall you come refreshed
Where that impatient Future waits for you
To mount and rein and ride it.

CYRIL
I am glad
That you are pleased.

MRS. VERE
You are so like a man;
Ashamed to show that you are satisfied:
Are you too proud for this? Come, let me coax you!
Confess your triumph like a fault, and make
Decent excuse; tell us you could not help it
Being born so wise; or say you worked so hard
Because the work was easy; that success
Comes more by chance than merit—talk your fill
Of nonsense, so it smooth you into smiles:
I'll question nothing if I see the smiles,
I'm pining for them.

CYRIL
Mother, be content!
This day is yours—we'll keep it all for joy;
A rose upon the threshold, which we lift
To our hearts, before we enter.

MRS. VERE
Ah, you reach
After new crowns. I know what lies for you
Beyond that threshold. You shall enter, Cyril!
So would I have a man, afire for work!
Women should arm their knights, but times are vile
When the soft hand of service and caress
Is forced to goad the loiterers; you shall find
I have prepared the way.

CYRIL
But, tell me, how?

MRS. VERE
Lord Stanerly was here, your father's friend,
Whose eye has watched you with expectancy
Slow kindling into welcome. You are his,
Nay rather he is yours; among your honours
He too was mastered. He has pledged his word,
He makes you—Cyril, do not laugh at me;
You shall have office while the year is young;
But I pass through the present morning light
To the near noon—you shall be Premier, Cyril;
I say it, I, your mother—ere I am old
All men shall point and whisper where I pass
‘There goes his mother.’

CYRIL
(Aside)
I would fain have waited,
But this involuntary falseness drives me
Against the pain of truth. (Aloud)
Mother, I'll ask you
If I have done my best?

MRS. VERE
Why, you have done
Best of the world.

CYRIL
Then have I wrung from life
This guerdon, say this justice, that my choice
Is free.

MRS. VERE
Your choice? But Fortune lackeys you,
Assiduous, anxious, she forestalls your choice
With more than it dared dream of.

CYRIL
So she does;
But not as you would have her. Dearest mother,
Give me the right to mould my life.

MRS. VERE
What mean you
By this strange harping upon ‘choice’ and ‘right’?

CYRIL
O! not my right, sweet mother, but my need!
I speak because we are alone. I pause
On my first height to draw my breath and gaze—
I see but two things—misery and God.

MRS. VERE
I hear you not aright.

CYRIL
Beside our path
There lies a lovely world; warm distances,
Whose softness penetrates the nearer ways,
Making the tiniest grass-blade at our feet
A promise and a mystery. How full
Is growing Earth of Heaven! There's not a tint
But tells us how the sunshine tempered it;
How all the stems reach upward, uttering
Their protest against Darkness! Everywhere
We tread on revelations and appeals,
And for the soul that sees and construes them
Nothing is wanting. This would be to walk
Through beauty into holiness. But O!
Hosts of blind souls are dying everywhere
Out of the limits of our natural day;
Prostrate in dust, knowing of this sweet earth
Nothing but stains and thorns. They are half the world
For which He died; we, the bright other half,
We on the heights, we in the happy airs,
What can we do but stretch our arms to them?

MRS. VERE
I would not check your generous pity, son;
Give what you will.

CYRIL
But I will give myself!
Little enough; yet it may save a child
Or comfort a worn woman.

MRS. VERE
You are mad!
Was it for this you toiled and won your wreath?
What would you do?

CYRIL
Mother, there is a place
Where little helpless infants work for bread
And old men die without the name of Christ.
You would not wish to keep me from that place
Which cries aloud for me?

MRS. VERE
This is a fever;
It is the too much working of your brain,
You must be soothed and saved from reckless acts
Till you are stronger. Such a heat as this,
In the first blundering ages of the world,
Made monks and foolish hermits.

CYRIL
Nay, not so;
For these recluses were the cowards of God;
They loved, but could not trust Him. They beheld
The tumult of that sea whereon He walks
And fled; but I will cross the waves to Him,
Making my very faithlessness a prayer,
Sure of Him though I sink.

MRS. VERE
Alas, alas!
How shall I reason with you? You have heard
Some strange fanatic. Only grant me this;
Wait for the teaching processes of Time;
You shall convince yourself; your wiser thoughts
Shall temper these conclusions. Test them thus;
If all men dreamed like you, God's goodly world
Would be a desert.

CYRIL
No, a Paradise,
Where those who take His bounty with one hand
Would give it with the other, and grow poor
By making many rich.

MRS. VERE
I would I knew
What man it is who has bewitched you thus!

CYRIL
Why should it seem incredible that God
Who made me, speaks to me? You think He made me?

MRS. VERE
(weeping)
I know what havoc of familiar duty
This wild religion makes! You are too good
For plain commands like honouring your mother!

CYRIL
O gentle mother, never wroth till now,
Now in love only, pardon, as you used
To pardon all our wrongs and waywardness—
The gay ingratitude of childish hearts
Which count no cost because they feel no pang!
No preacher but yourself converted me;
You led me up to God.

MRS. VERE
I, Cyril?

CYRIL
You!
I knew it not till lately, when I found
This, in the silent treasury of gifts
Poured from your ceaseless hand. How long ago
I cannot tell—I see myself a child
To whom infinity, and life, and death
Were like a great lawn in a parable
Beside a pleasant river. As I walked
On our own lawn, half-conscious of such thoughts,
Stirring like sap that shall force out the flower
When the time comes, you caught me from the grass
And showed where I had nearly set my foot
On some slight miracle of tiny life:
‘God made it,’ so you said; ‘destroy it not!’
I, loving that kind lesson, answered you
In wonder, ‘Are all children in the world
Taught to be tender? Or do these things die
Under a thousand careless feet?’ Perchance
I thought, if so, what use in saving one.
But you, with deeper logic, ‘What I say
Is for yourself. You see, and you are taught,
And you must save!’ O, mother, pluck the fruit
Of your own seed—all that I am is yours.
As in the street by venerable walls
Some passer strays, and hears the softened choir,
And takes a sweet psalm-fragment on his lips,
Singing it as he walks, but knowing not
Where it was learnt, till suddenly he wakes
And in the city's heart remembers it,
And fits the tune with holy words, well-pleased
To find himself at worship—such am I.
Out of the music of your heart you gave
One note, which I have murmured till it swells
To a litany of angels.

MRS. VERE
(falls on his neck)
Ah, my son,
Die not from me because you are so good!
Live only, and I cross you not!

CYRIL
Your word
Abides, and I, who see and know, must save
All that I can. If I be any worth
(I dare not think so), mother; if my toil
Have won what you and I suppose a crown,
Nay, not a crown, a sword—we cast it low
At those dear Feet, to take it from those Hands.
Now for the joy of service, and the rest
Of work, and all the breaking lights of Hope
That make a constellation of the sky
While sleepers call it night; so to walk on
Till the Day dawn and all the voices blend
In one vast welcome to our risen Lord!

II. PART II.—TRIAL.

[Scene I.]

Cyril in his study. Evening.
CYRIL

Enter Markham.
CYRIL
O! not to-night!

MARKHAM
How, friend—you welcome me
Strangely.

CYRIL
You come like Mephistophiles
To tempt me when I waver.

MARKHAM
Rather say
To help you when you stumble.

CYRIL
Ay, but to help me
Into that path whereon I would not walk.

MARKHAM
So—you are weak—you strike before I threaten.
Are you that miracle, an honest saint,
Who, having braced his armour on, confesses
That it has flaws, and that he fears a wound?
What has dismayed you?

CYRIL
Only solitude
And my own soul. I perish in the calm.
You, like a new wind, shake my sleeping sails
Against their work; so come, refreshing shock,
And I'll encounter you.

MARKHAM
Lift the metaphor
And let us see the fact—you are not content.

CYRIL
Is any man content?

MARKHAM
We men of earth,
Who see but with our eyes, and think life short
For all our eyes can show us, are content.

CYRIL
If your philosophy comes but by gazing
Make the gaze deep, and you shall learn in time
Enough of noble sadness; for I think
All men who look around them, and within,
Take leave of their boy-laughter.

MARKHAM
Say you so,
Believing that God rules the world He made
And made for His own ruling? Infidels
Put such a creed to shame. I hold, myself,
A deaf Law better than a scornful God
Who hears and heeds not. In the hollow Past
Under the root of Time, only discerned
By penetrative eyes of after-thought,
Was movement—you would say the Spirit moved,
But I, the Matter; germs evolving laws,
Or laws in germ, but only by their work
Revealed. We, looking from these latter heights,
Can trace them, step by step, and none astray,
None needless, so that from the vague At-first,
Wherein all things seemed possible, there grew
(Because each moment limited the next)
These final certainties, which cannot be
Other than as they are. Did we know all
(Haply we shall) we should perceive how all,
All kinds, all shapes, all shades of difference,
All acts, all thoughts, all signs and modes of being,
Are as they must be; wheresoe'er you touch
The interminable chain, you touch a link,
Result and cause—a moment, which concludes
The Past, begins the Future. Therefore Life
Must be received in patience; as we live
We mend and mould, and hand it to our sons
More gently than we took it from our sires.

CYRIL
Where learned you this strange history?

MARKHAM
Do you ask?
Behold a pupil of the Universe!

CYRIL
Lo, friend, you deem me credulous, and proclaim
(You, uncommissioned by a miracle)
The top of mystery! Your logic builds
On likelihood; a balance, not a base,
Safe till disturbed. I wait a surer proof.
At every point and pause of your advance
You pass an ambush, and neglect a doubt,
And choose one path among a thousand. Nay,
'Tis a hard task to prove by circumstance
In all its motives and particulars
Merely one deed, done by one living man,
And would you make the world by't? Pray you tell me
How many million moments in the years
Did pass, whereat some tiny difference
May not have changed it all? Some sudden witness
(If such there were) might burst upon you now
And quench you with a fatal ‘thus it was,’
Leaving you dumb for ever. Sure I am
It might teach angels sarcasm, to behold
These dust-born sticklers, bound by etiquette
Never to mention God in His own world,
Who guess through all the ages, and devise
Gossip, about Creation.

MARKHAM
[He seats himself. Cyril remains standing at the window.

CYRIL
Reason, friend,
Is only half the mystery of Man;
Till you have felt a truth it is not yours
Though Reason grasp it in her iron hand.
I have heard learn'd musicians, who by the hour
Would stuff you with elaborate sequences
And fretful involutions; faultless all,
Ingenious, satisfactory and cold,
Not to be answered—till a Master came
And with some sudden simple turn of sound
Would charm you to unreasonable tears
At his fifth note.

MARKHAM
I am too plain a man
To follow argument by parable.

CYRIL
One greater than ourselves held parable
The fittest teaching for the plainest men.

MARKHAM
You pass the question.

CYRIL
But I touch in passing.
Let us speak heart to heart. This creed of yours
Is not the sole philosophy. We, who judge
By fruits, and tracing, not too certainly,
The backward story of this various world,
Divine an undetected difference
In each unknown Beginning, before growth,
I think we reason no whit worse than you
Who, as the long lines lessen to a point,
Believe they issued from it; making sense
The measure of the Thing which it perceives,
Not of its own perception. Circumstance
Stretched through incalculable tracts of Time
Life's limit, mould, condition, is to you
A god—to us a great Epiphany.
We wonder—and examine—and adore;
You wonder—and examine—and deny:
Which is more wise?

MARKHAM
(rising and joining Cyril at the window)
This is the way with you,
You run all themes to one. I meant to talk
Not of these origins and theories,
But of the present evils, which I take
For calm necessities, to be endured
By patient sages—you—

CYRIL
For devil's work
To be annihilated by God's men!
Ah—did you see it pass?

MARKHAM
What passed? You are pale.

CYRIL
That dismal, desperate, unholy thing
Which was a child and should be now a man,
One of your ‘calm necessities.’

MARKHAM
A man?
No more? I deemed you watched along the street
Some drifting wreck of woman.

CYRIL
Always women!
There is some deep unsoundness in the Time
When it stares ever at the sins of women
And lets its men alone. Or, by your leave,
What kind of God were He that should be served
Only by women, and whose laws were made
Merely for girls to keep? Have done with this,
And let a man concern himself with men.
We are the poison—we who are the springs—
Lords of the heavenly heritage we waste,
False to high charges, deaf to glorious notes
Which ring around us as we walk. For us
Build refuges, and sanctify retreats
And open daily churches! We were meant
To be as tender, temperate, pure, devout,
As the most cloistered maiden upon earth;
We have our strength for this, to conquer evil.
You hold with me—shall we go down at once
And track this monster?

MARKHAM
If in such a quest
Your energies are spent, I marvel not
I found you sorrowful. 'Tis frenzy, Cyril!
Die if you will in watching by the sick
While the pulse quivers and the slow eyes move,
But let the dead be buried out of sight,
You cannot raise them. When you have done all,
When your bright years, and all the happy gifts
That might have made you famous, and the hopes
(Wings, till you crushed them), and the high pursuits
Which beautified your time, and the fine hues
Which your unshackled and deliberate hand
Might lay and touch and soften, till you made
A finished picture, all are sacrificed,
And dreary toil among earth's basest things
Possesses and degrades you—is there fruit?
How many hard hearts melted can you show
For your own broken? Cyril, is there one?

CYRIL
Man, am I Christ that I should change men's hearts?
I have a work to do. You talk to me
Like my temptations. Ere you came, I strove
With some such thought; it does not plague me now,
I am afire for work. There is a haunt
Down yonder where the worst and wildest souls
(And sometimes too the saddest) congregate;
There oft I go in twilight and encounter
Strange moments. Here and there I sow a word,
An alms, a prayer—what do I know of fruit?
That shall be garnered when the harvest comes;
But I may save a soul by speaking there,
Or I might lose a soul by leaving it,
Or lastly I am merely at my post
And do this business on my own account.
Will you come with me?

MARKHAM
Aye, to study life
In a new aspect.

[They go down into the Street.
CYRIL
Is it not wonderful
To see that gentle glory in the sky
Behind the houses? Lo, how black they look,
Knowing how foul and mean a world they hide
From the still splendours of eternity!
Yet is the twilight fairness spread for them,
With all its tints profuse and delicate,
As for the mountains and the royal woods
Which have a right to it. Behold the Spire,
It is not black, it enters into light
And is transfused—see where the river makes
A second firmament—God still has witness
In man's aspiring and in earth's repose
Despite all evil.

[A Woman stops Cyril.
WOMAN
O sir, will you come
To see my husband? It is soon to ask,
But since the morning he has cried for you,
And still he mutters to himself the words
You spoke, and seems to sort them in his thoughts,
Trying to note them all. He will not sleep
Till he has seen your face.

CYRIL
Well, he shall see it,
I'll give him that small comfort. Say to him
He may expect me in an hour.

WOMAN
I know
I shall be dearly welcome for that word.

[Exit.
[A young Girl passes.
CYRIL
Too late i' the streets, my child—what is your errand?

GIRL
(shyly)
My father sent me to buy bread.

CYRIL
Go home
And say I sent you. I will bring the bread
As I come back. Good-night.

[Exit Girl.
CYRIL
(lays his hand on a Boy's shoulder)
Ah, runaway,
I have you. Stand and answer. Nay, you shall!
Why have you fled from school? What—not a word?
I'll tell you then—unless you are ashamed
To hear yourself explained.

BOY
Please sir—

CYRIL
How meek
You are to me! We have been friends, but now
I'll not be friends with you till you are meek
In the right place. Come, you shall do your duty;
'Tis but a coward's part to run away
Because you heard some talk about your faults.

BOY
Sir, sir, it was not that.

CYRIL
Well, I believe
'Twas nothing. Breakfast at my house to-morrow
And tell me all.

BOY
I'll come, sir.

CYRIL
So
Good-night, and grow more wise.

[Exit Boy.
MARKHAM
Are these your sheep?

CYRIL
O, very harmless lambs. If these were all
I might be gathering daisies all the day.
Look here!

[They stop and look in at the window of a house. There is a fire, and men and women of the lowest description are gathered around it; others enter and join the group. Oaths and foul language are

---

246

heard among them. In one corner of the room a woman is stooping over a sick child. It lies on the floor with a pillow under its head.
MARKHAM
Why, there's our ruffian! I profess
In fitting company! That downward man,
With all the deadly sins upon his face,
I should not like to meet i' the dark. There's one
With a most feeble voiceless countenance,
Merely an empty vessel, to be filled
With poison if you please—and there a woman
Brazen, hard-eyed, incredible—and here
One like a beast, cunning and ravenous—
One spiritless and haggard as a corpse.
Fie, what a group! Now, if I thought as you
That these are rushing to a certain doom
I could not bear—

CYRIL
(grasping his hand)
O, not the future, friend!
The visible damnation of these souls
Tears me to pieces! True, the sleeker sins
Of our soft equals may appear as black
In that strong Light which penetrates and proves,
(For Sin is viler than its consequence);
But we have knowledge, we have looked on God,
We choose our path. What can we say of these,
Who feed on darkness, and embrace contempt,
And breathe pollution? Had they any choice?
When have they seen the good or heard the true?
O! how should they believe themselves beloved
Being so forgotten? If I stand aloof
These sins are mine!

MARKHAM
You are too passionate.
The world is full of these uneven lives:
You did not make them, and you cannot mend;
You do your utmost—never man did more—
Be satisfied!

CYRIL
What, here?

[They look in silently for a little while.
CYRIL
I pray you, note
In this foul place the sacred light of grief.
Each little movement of the mother-hand
About the pillow of her dying babe
Speaks like a poem. We can see from this
Why God afflicts. There is no heart so dumb
But by divine compulsion of great woe
It utters transient music. I, who have
My conversation in the griefs of men,
Will take this for my passport.

[They enter, and Cyril goes up to the sick child. The men stare, and stop for a moment in their talk. One speaks with another.
MAN
Who is here?

ANOTHER MAN
O, the mad parson. Let him be. He'll go
When he has preached a little.

[They resume their uproar. Cyril lifts the child tenderly in his arms. The mother, who has been busy about it in a helpless bewildered way, looks up.
CYRIL
(gently)
He is restless—
There—he seems easier now.

WOMAN
My pretty boy!
Who says that he must die? O he's too young—
He has not even learnt to stand alone—
He cannot die yet. And I love him so
God would not have the heart to take him from me.
See—he grows white. Ah, hold him! If he dies
I'm sure there's nothing good that rules the world.
What has he done? What anger has he caused?
He has not sinned; I and his father sinned
Who have not even a finger-ache. Look now,
He lies quite still—the cruel savage pain
Hurts him no more—his head is on your breast
So quietly, I cannot hear him breathe,
(But you can)—you have children of your own
Who teach you mother-skill. I wish they did not
Shout so loud there by the fire. I want to hear
The pleading murmur of his baby-breath,
But their noise drowns it. You must hear it, sir,
Having his heart so close against your own.
Is he not sweet? No, do not give him to me;
I do not want to have him in my arms;
If I should feel him motionless and cold,
Though it is only sleep (I know he sleeps),
I am so foolish—do not laugh at me—
I should cry out for fear it might be death,
Which is impossible. O help me, help me,
And keep him for me!

CYRIL
God shall keep him for you
Better than I, poor mother.

ONE OF THE MEN
What's the noise?

ANOTHER
Now, parson, what's the matter with the child?

[The Woman utters a loud scream. One of the other women goes to her and begins caressing her. Cyril comes forward with the child still in his arms.
MARKHAM
What drives you to them with such eyes of fire?

CYRIL
Let me alone! I drive against their hearts. [He stands among them.

The child is dead. Brothers, the child is born!
Look on the beauty of this sleep! Come near—
This tender pureness is not terrible;
See the shut eyes which can shed no more tears,
What do they now behold? Touch the soft lips
Through which no sound of sorrow or of sin
Shall ever pass—be not afraid to touch them,
They cannot be defiled. O, what repose
Dwells with this everlasting Innocence!
Can this fair thing be Death? Look on each other,
From this face look to those—do you believe
You look from Death to Life? If it be so
Who would not choose this calm pathetic triumph
Instead of that dark struggle? Little child,
If you had lived you would have looked like these,
Having to live among them! Twenty years,
A time to ripen, what would you have been?
Familiar with all evil and no shame,
Hardened by trouble, enervate with sin,
Scarred with a thousand traces of despair,
With just a wordless murmur at your heart
Revealing that there was a far-off time
When you looked—thus! O brothers, think of it!
You have made life, God's greatest gift, a thing
So hideous, that the mother for her child,
Praying her best prayer for her dearest soul,
Could find no better cry to lift to God
Than this, ‘O snatch him from it!’ You yourselves
Know what you are—take but this one to-day
Out of your lives, and think its minutes through,
And turn to this pure face, and say with me
Praise God, for He hath slain another babe! [There is a sound of tears in the room. Cyril gives the child to the Woman, and comes into the midst of the men with outstretched arms.

Stand still, and let me talk to you of Christ!

III. PART III.—LOVE.

Scene I.—At Bertha's House.

Cyril—Bertha.
BERTHA
sings.

CYRIL
Was that the song?

BERTHA
Do you forget so soon?
I sang it when I saw you first, and you
So listened with the silence of your eyes
That I sang all for you. But now I find
You were afar, pursuing some swift thought,
And my poor music only fanned your ears,
Passing your busy heart.

CYRIL
You sang for me?
Through all the strain I only heard yourself
Sweeter than music's soul. I do not know
One note—I know the voice. Sung by another
It is another song.

BERTHA
Seems it so now?
Alas, I fear the dew has died from it,
The gem is but a grass-flower! Seems it so?

CYRIL
Look at me—are you Bertha?

BERTHA
Look at me!

CYRIL
I cannot see the half of all I love,
Dazed by its presence—I must glance aside
Like men who watch for mighty stars—or wait
Till some reflecting calm of memory
Makes contemplation possible.

BERTHA
You mock me
With such sonorous love, not like yourself.
I hate professions, poor as showers of gold
Flung in the lap are poor to her who waits
For one soft touch from one belovèd hand.

CYRIL
Dear, when you doubt, must I not needs profess?
We play with our untroubled certainties
Like children who, familiar with their tasks,
Pretend a coaxing ignorance, to catch
The smile of wonder when the words ring out.

BERTHA
Am I so certain?

CYRIL
You have vexed me now.

BERTHA
Nay, but that daily miracle, your love,
Amazes me. If I could find a cause
Why you should choose me, I were more content;
But in me there is only simpleness,
And such sufficiency of tender thoughts
As make me happy when I look at you
But give you nothing. When I see you mount
Like a swift angel up the steeps of fire,
My heart longs after you to call you back,
Fearing the pain; I know that pain is good,
And you are strong, and God is pitiful,
Grieved with our griefs; and yet I shrink for you
(I fancy I could bear it for myself);
And though I pray to cling about your feet,
Going up with you so, healing your wounds
With my weak hands, or by some special grace
Taking sometimes a hurt instead of you,
Yet is this common Earth so sweet to me
That if a flower dies I am sorrowful,
And all sea-moonlights, or processioned clouds,
Or flash and shadow blown about the grass,
Or depths of summer in the nested woods,
Motions of birds, and sounds of shaken leaves,
Perplex and satisfy me with delight;
Therefore I fear I am not made for you,
Not an helpmeet for you—it breaks my heart
To think that you will see me as I am
And turn away; yet, if I bring you down,
Or merely do not help you as I might,
As a wife should, as I should were I fit
To be your wife, then am I bound to wish
That you should drop me from you as you mount;
Then I am bound—O! tell me, am I bound
To take the task upon my faulty self
Who never should have held you, and set free
Your soul, to seek its throne?

CYRIL
Have you confessed?
Are these your sins? O, when I think of heaven
I see you with a lily in your hand
Walk softly through the gate, with robes unstained
And all the morning calmness on your cheeks.
I would not wound your tender soul with praise;
Hear only this, that when I yield you are
My strength, and when I conquer, my delight;
Hope when I faint, refreshment when I fail,
Day to my doubting footsteps everywhere,
Whether I die or live, my truest life.
Beside me that sweet current of your thoughts
Flows like a river by a toilsome road
Where weary feet and dust-bewildered eyes
Rest and are comforted. Were it not too bold
I'd say your soul was made for serving mine
Apt for its utmost needs; yet I were blest
If I could spend myself in serving you
Who need me not, for even these gracious tears
Which your quick conscience trembles at, are strength
To him who feels ‘what matter if I die?
There is no pain since Bertha weeps for me.’

BERTHA
Unkind to take your comfort from my tears!
Why do you talk of Death?

CYRIL
Death is Life's servant;
It follows us, close, faithful, vigilant;
Plucks out, if we receive such ministry,
At every step some thorn or stain of life;
Takes off the mask of Sin, that we may see
What 'tis that tempts us; and with ready breast
Pillows us when the warfare is complete,
When we want rest.

BERTHA
And parts us. Could we go
Together to that beautiful new world
Which we believe in, Death would seem to me
Like a soft call into some fairer room
Where we may look at wonders. But it parts us.
O, Cyril, can you bear it?

CYRIL
Let it pass:
I know not how we came to such a theme;
Press it no further.

BERTHA
Why do you clasp me so?
Why are you pale?

CYRIL
I cannot tell—a fear:
I saw Earth gaping darkly at your feet
For one fierce moment.

BERTHA
'Tis my turn to chide,
Myself, not you, for stirring such a fear.
O Cyril, how you love me! I have done
With doubts which grow from mine unworthiness:
Your love creates what it would find in me;
I have no power to lag behind your trust.
If you so fear to lose me, I am sure
I must be worthy keeping. I have heard
A maze of music from three notes unwound
And ever winding back to these three notes
Telling it's heart out so; even so I harp
On my sweet secret, ‘Cyril, how you love me!’
And ‘how you love me, Cyril!’ nothing else
Till all my life grows music and invests
With all its harmonies that central phrase.
I wonder—

[She stops suddenly.
CYRIL
What?

BERTHA
It is such foolishness
I am ashamed to say it; but I wonder
If when I walk abroad all men perceive
That glory which began upon my face
When you first said you loved me.

CYRIL
Never doubt
'Tis for that cause they turn to look at you
More than at women whom I do not love.
See, while we trifle, Time leaps on. At four
My mother comes.

[Holds up his watch.
BERTHA
'Tis kind. Alas, I wish
I had such state and practice in the world
As she desires! If she but pardons me
For stealing this her jewel from the hand
She meant it for, I'll so entangle her
With harmless guile that she must yield at last
And love me ere I let her go.

CYRIL
She comes
To love you. True, she questioned you, unseen;
She had a scheme which flourished like a flower,
And when she found it rootless, yours the blame;
But, knowing that my heart is fixed, she comes
To grace, not judge you—though to such as you
The stricter judgment brings the surer grace.
You must not fear her.

BERTHA
Nay, I fear her not.
How should I fear your mother? She must be
Tender and wise, with thoughts which cannot wound
A safe heart lying quietly in your hand.

CYRIL
That's bravely said. Yet dearest, yet, I see
An unfamiliar crimson in your cheek
Like a white rose at sunset; do not wrong
Yourself or her by one uneasy pang;
Make your whole heart a welcome.

BERTHA
So it is;
I fear myself a little, but not her;
Whence these unwarrantable blushes come
I know not. Would it were to-morrow!

CYRIL
Why
Hurry the gentle hours that are so fair?
I would keep each for ever, did I not see
The smile of the new-comer.

BERTHA
'Tis my way
To think remembrance sweeter than possession.
When you are by (nay look not grave, I am blest
When you are by), yet is my heart so full
That if I catch a pause between the beats,
I find I long for evening, for a time
To ponder all the meanings of your face,
And tell myself the tender things you looked,
And count the precious words which came like shocks
So that I could not hear how kind they were.
I tremble in the strong grasp of ‘To-day,’
Like a caught bird, which sings not in your hand,
But if you loose it, from the nearest tree
Pours down its vigorous gratitude.

CYRIL
A plea
So lovely, that it only seems to say,
‘Take me again! I am here!’

BERTHA
Take me again
And still again, for if you take me not,
Dumb, desolate, and free, I can but die
Without a home.

CYRIL
My bird, my child, my darling!
Why do you put such pathos in your face,
Making a mist of unaccustomed tears
Around the splendour of my happiness?
You say the very words I long to hear,
You touch me with the glory of your hand,
But those appealing eyes go through my heart,
Which shivers like a harpstring, fit to break
Ere it can answer.

BERTHA
Well, I am to blame;
Let me not move you—talk of something else;
It is my birthday and we should be gay.
See, your ring glitters!

CYRIL
For your birthday, love,
The sweetest gift is that new daughterhood
Which now begins.

BERTHA
I do desire it much.

Scene II.

Enter Markham.
CYRIL
Come in good time! I have a lady here
So timid, that two heroes like ourselves
Are scarce enough to cheer her.

BERTHA
Do not say so;
I shall be scorned.

MARKHAM
No tongue but yours would dare
To couple scorn with your sweet name. For that,
I hold you brave—and for the rest, your fears
Shall fly before a woman's gentle face
Ere you can show them. Two are on the way
To give you courage.

BERTHA
Two?

MARKHAM
With your new mother
(Such you shall find her) a new sister comes,
Eager to win you—nay, there's no escape,
At the first summons you must strike your flag
And take your fetters meekly.

CYRIL
You bring news.
Comes Blanche to grace the meeting? That is kind.

MARKHAM
(looking at Bertha)
Shall I be pardoned if I tell you bluntly
I never saw you look so well?

CYRIL
(looking at her)
I think
I like the lilies better.

MARKHAM
You can choose.
And thus he gives you valour!

BERTHA
O, believe
I do but feel such reasonable doubt
As must beset me, if I match myself
Against the love that chose me. I am forced
To speak of what I should not. Were I such
As in their kindly judgment I shall seem,
I might be surer, but I could not be
Happier than now.

MARKHAM
Be only as you are,
You cannot mend it. Shall I make you now
Confess a fault? You scorned my memory
A week ago, and now I wish you joy
On your remembered birthday!

BERTHA
Are you sure
You did not hear us talking as you came?

MARKHAM
Sceptic, behold the proof!

[Gives her a bracelet.
BERTHA
A miracle
Which I must kneel to. Cyril, look at it!
I cannot find a language for my thanks.

MARKHAM
(to Cyril)
Will you not clasp it?

[Cyril clasps the bracelet on Bertha's arm.
BERTHA
'Tis the perfect size.

MARKHAM
Do not sit here; the shadow touches you.
See, Cyril, when they cross the threshold there
We'll set her like a picture, jour à gauche,
And tell them where to stand.

BERTHA
You make me laugh.

CYRIL
That is his purpose. I commend him for it.

BERTHA
Defend me from these mockers! Two at once!

Scene III.

Enter Mrs. Vere and Lady Blanche.
Mrs. Vere—Lady Blanche—Cyril—Markham—Bertha.
CYRIL
(advances eagerly)
See, mother, we are ready! Not a word—
But take her, for she will not come to me
Unless you give her.

[He puts Bertha's hand into Mrs. Vere's.
MRS. VERE
(ceremoniously)
I am glad to see you,
And sorry that your father keeps his room.

BERTHA
It grieves him that he cannot welcome you.

MRS. VERE
You will not let us miss him. Here you have
A gracious landscape, and a kindly hearth—
Two things to make home charming. It is strange
To come upon this pretty calm, so near
The roar of our confusion. I have heard
You lived here always?

BERTHA
I have yet to learn
If there are other places in the world
As tender to my simpleness as this.

LADY BLANCHE
I'll help to teach you. Must I name myself
Or do you know me? Cyril, is it right
To make me seem so bold?

CYRIL
You blame me well.
I have lost all my manners, in the deep
Of this long-looked-for joy. If one by one
We reach the things we long for, there is time
To ponder them like reasons and be calm.
The man who sees one picture in a day
Takes it to bed among his gentlest thoughts
And in the night beholds it, and at morn
Beholds it still, and grows familiar with it,
Till, seen again, it greets him like a friend
Telling no news, but coming to his heart
With itself only. So my separate loves
Ruled me at leisure; but I go perplexed
About this gallery, scarce discerning yet
Which bright appeal should have its answer first,
Passing where I should pause, at every step
Turning so soothe some beautiful reproach
With tardy homage.

[He takes Blanche's hand.
MARKHAM
Your one picture has
Companions, but no rivals.

MRS. VERE
(perceiving him)
Are you here
To penetrate this poesy with facts?
O keep your friendly office! Cyril needs
A rein—we know it—ever scaling heights
And scorning valleys; covering half the world
For each neglected mile of beaten road.

CYRIL
Aye, mother, is my daily waste so great?
Yet are there rocks about my daily path
Which need a stronger blast than poesy!

MRS. VERE
You do not move them; there's the sorrow, Cyril;
Your cause lies crushed among them, even the cause
For which you flung away your noble life,
While you go harvesting the fruitless winds
Or triumphing over clouds.

CYRIL
Not from the dust
Come the great forces which compel the world;
We build them out of fire and air, because
He that would rule earth must first rise above it.
On our invisible banners stand the words
‘Life risen, and Life hidden.’

MRS. VERE
Mystical
As ever! Now, I wish a Seer would say
Why some draw changes from the years, and some
Carry their childhood always. He was yet [to Bertha

A slender sprite of ten, faced like a girl,
When, if you crossed him with a doubt, he straight
Would toss and tangle you in parables
Till you grew faint.

BERTHA
(to Cyril)
Were you so wise a child?

CYRIL
A pedant in that pre-historic age
Before the twilight of my beard.

MARKHAM
And still
A pedant (so your mother says), complete
With all primæval dragon-slaying arms,
Though now there be no dragons (and what tongue
Shall certify us of the time and place
When as the dogma struck, the dragon died?)
No matter! You can hurl your dogmas still
And hope for living dragons. Is it not strange [to Mrs. Vere

That all his growing glory of young days,
Which we stood by to watch, is rounded thus;
As if a great tree, breaking out in spring
With blossom-torrents, there should stay and cease,
And, in the harvest, like a giant flower
Wither unfruited?

MRS. VERE
If you speak of Cyril,
I should know more than you. I find no cause
To mourn such fruitless promise in his life.
I think you have not seen his work.

MARKHAM
Forgive me!
I meant to make you bless him unaware.

CYRIL
Mother and friend, I must beseech you, choose
A livelier theme. I am no more a child
Called to reluctant stand when strangers come
To test my growth, or show how like I am
To some half-uncle in another world
Whose shadow never touched my thoughts. I hate
To criticise my own biography,
Searching myself with hesitating eyes
To find which flaws are only in the glass,
Which in the face it mirrors. Let me rest
Like a dull book. If we should talk of Blanche
The topic has some grace.

LADY BLANCHE
I'll not allow it.
I could not trust my tender qualities
To such free handling.

MRS. VERE
We seem all adrift.
Shall we have music? (To Bertha.)
I believe you sing?

BERTHA
(looks at Cyril)
I must learn better ere I sing for you;
Must I not, Cyril?

MRS. VERE
Nay, I press you not:
Refuse me if you will. Dear Blanche, I think
Your voice is always ready. Let it flow
To smooth this ruffle of uneasy talk!

BERTHA
(distressed)
I did not mean—

LADY BLANCHE
(kindly)
I will but lead the way,
Use having made me bolder.
(Aside to Mrs. Vere)
Oh! be kind;
See how the tide of blushes ebbs and flows
At every word you speak! I am sorry for her.

MRS. VERE
(aside to Lady Blanche)
For him! For him! Why picked he from the ground
This shred of homespun? Links of virgin gold
Were ready for his neck.

LADY BLANCHE
(aside)
For shame!

MRS. VERE
Enough.
I will constrain myself to softer ways.

BERTHA
(aside to Cyril)
How childish was I not to sing at once!
How shall I please her now?

CYRIL
Sing afterwards!
Be brave—this voice is nothing beside yours.
A dancer's paces on the polished floor
To the airy poise and passage of a nymph
Across the woods!

BERTHA
You cannot make me think so,
But you may think so always if you will.

MRS. VERE
(aside)
Mark her appeals! That way she won him, Blanche!
O to divide this knot!

LADY BLANCHE
I will not hear you.
She preludes and sings.

CYRIL
A bitter song. Have you dropped many hearts
To whisper all their wrongs about your feet?
You should tread lightly.

LADY BLANCHE
'Tis a woman's song.
This kind of crime is only masculine.

CYRIL
Indeed!

MRS. VERE
(to Bertha)
You do not speak?

MARKHAM
Her face speaks for her,
Being full of praise and wonder.

BERTHA
I could listen
Hours into minutes. Will you sing again?

LADY BLANCHE
No, no—your turn is come.

MARKHAM
(to Bertha)
Then let me choose;
Do me so much of honour. Sing for me,
That—nay, I cannot name it—which you sang
In the last twilight, and which seemed to us
A murmur from one mourning in the woods
Ere she goes home; when the lamp came, we looked
To see who had not wept.

BERTHA
That little ballad?
Is't not too sad? Well—bear with it, and me!
BERTHA sings.

MRS. VERE
Sweet but untrained!

LADY BLANCHE
A voice like a wild rose.

CYRIL
O! what a pang of silence follows it!
Yet, Markham, yet, I cannot praise your taste.
Find you a charm in phantasies of pain
To soothe away the substance of your griefs?
I ever held that Art should stand by Truth
To draw the secret beauty out of it
And teach us all we miss; providing us
With havens and reposes, whence, refreshed,
We go back to our toil. Tears are not Rest;
I grudge them to my visions, being sure
My facts will need them.

MARKHAM
Reason goes with you;
But I, who shudder at the depths, can play
Among the shallows.

MRS. VERE
Time demands us now.
Come Blanche. (To Bertha.)
And you must visit me at home?
Have you a day to spare, or shall we fix
When we meet next?

CYRIL
Nay, mother, you forget
Her days are not as yours—she grows i' the shade.

MRS. VERE
I should be sorry if my summons crossed
A fairer project.

BERTHA
'Tis not possible.
I am your servant, if you send for me;
Your child, if you will love me! Let me hope
It shall be so—

MRS. VERE
I never had the skill
To set my pretty sentiments to words;
I know it is a fault. Shall we say Tuesday?
Nay, thank me not, I am content with ‘yes.’ [Gives her hand to Bertha.

'Tis settled. Cyril, do you come with us?

CYRIL
Aye, to the door.

MRS. VERE
No further? So you teach me
My future ere it comes.

[Exit Mrs. Vere.
LADY BLANCHE
She is not well; [To Bertha.

Think nothing of her haste. But you and I
Will learn our sistership at leisure. Take
This kiss as warrant.

[Kisses her, and exit, following Mrs. Vere.
CYRIL
(to Bertha)
Look not sad, my love.

BERTHA
You did not like my song.

CYRIL
Child, is that all? [Exit Markham.

That wound finds speedy healing. All the while
It seemed as if you sang about yourself,
And that soft wailing for the little one
Came back and back again to trouble me
Like some light haunting pain, the seed of death,
Till, angry with unreasonable fears,
I blamed the strain. But, for the rest, it was
Too precious, like a picture in the street
Which we would cover from the wind and dust,
Or chill of eyes neglectful. Are you healed?

BERTHA
Aye, with a word.

Re-enter Markham.
MARKHAM
Now thank me, for I did
Your office nobly and devised excuses
(At least a dozen) why you did it not.

BERTHA
Alas, I fear I am to blame for this!

MARKHAM
You were the sole excuse I did not name.
How have you fared? Come, tell us, will you call
Your terrors treason?

CYRIL
Do not press her now;
She is weary.

MARKHAM
Ah, you should be satisfied.
The lilies that you missed are here again.

BERTHA
Am I so pale?

CYRIL
White as a dream of angels.

BERTHA
I'll rest.

CYRIL
And so farewell. At evening time
I will return.

[Exeunt Cyril and Markham.
BERTHA
(alone)
O yes, at evening time!
But never since I knew of waning lights
Have I so longed for evening. When it comes,
I shall be happy. What a thankless soul!
Now will I set my joy before my soul
And so compel it into happiness.
First then, he loves me. Next—but no, there is
No second to that first, it covers all.
I'll think of it before I fall asleep
That all my dreams may be astir with hope
Of bright awakening. If his mother grieves
That he should look so low, I blame her not;
Yet am I sure of something in myself
Which answers and aspires to what he is;
And if on that sweet upward slope of Time
At which I gaze, she sees me by his side
Giving such comfort as a woman may
To him who loves her, she will pardon me.
But shall I walk beside him? I am tired
And all the Future seems too difficult;
Only at evening-time, when there is light
Shall the way soften and the distance shine.
Goodnight, my love. Come back at evening time.

[She lies down on a couch and sleeps. A pause.
Re-enter Cyril
CYRIL
[He perceives Bertha.
[Throws himself on the body.

Enter Markham.
MARKHAM
What a cry was there! [He starts back appalled.

O, Cyril, Cyril, has your God done this!

CYRIL
(rising from the body)
I think I have not seen your face before,
But you seem pitiful. Look here for me—
You weep and cannot! I am blind myself.
Will no man give a name to this cold sleep?
I want the truth. Friend, is there hope?

MARKHAM
No, No!
Alas, she's dead!

CYRIL
You must not touch her hand,
It's mine. And she—not she—but all I have
Instead of her—friend, for I know you now,
I was to-day the richest soul on earth—
You saw me so. What have I now—my world
Narrowed to this! An empty garment, friend.
I cannot, as some do, look calmly on it
And ask you if it is not beautiful;
I cannot cast it from me—there it lies—
My darkness and my poverty lie there—
What shall I do?

MARKHAM
It is too soon for comfort.

CYRIL
(to the body)
Dear, did you know we were to part so soon?
How could you bear me from you? You have robbed me
Of my last memories! Had I but been here,
O had mine eyes but watched this cruel sleep,
They had not suffered it to slip to death!

MARKHAM
Time lives, while all things die, and lives to soothe.

CYRIL
Time lives, and I must live again in Time;
The certainty is on me that I must;
I am afraid of it. There are the streets
Where I shall walk, the men that I shall meet,
The things that I shall do; but in the midst,
Or in the hollow times that look like rest,
Suddenly I shall feel her in my arms,
And all I see or hear shall fall from me
Like cold mists from a climber, leaving me
Alone upon the summit of my grief;
Then most alone, when I am most with her
Who was the sweetest company on earth.
O for an endless cloister!

MARKHAM
If my pity—
Nay, if my wrath could aid you, they are yours.
Why are we flung so helpless into life
To suffer what we would not? Either God
Rules not at all, and then He is not God,
Or if He rule the world He is not good
Because He makes it vile and miserable,
Vile to the vile, and dreadful to the good
Who serve Him to no purpose!

CYRIL
O, be dumb!
Her angel's here already and is grieved.
Henceforth I go to meet that touch of God
Which we call death; and when, upon my way
I faint, or shrink, or falter among men,
Suddenly I shall feel her in my arms
And all mean thoughts shall drop away from me,
The cloud shall pass, the trouble shall be calm,
The Future shall possess me (having lost
All else), till, mantled in that coming light
Which dwarfs and dims the distances of Earth,
Crowned with unconscious conquests, which she wins,
I reach the perfect Presence, where she waits!
This, this, is what my God has done for me:
I'll own it, though I die.

Enter Mrs. Vere hastily. She falls on Cyril's neck.
MRS. VERE
Oh, my dear son!
I know your loss is great.

CYRIL
Alas, my mother!
Yours is still greater. You missed loving her!

IV. PART IV.—THIRTY YEARS AFTERWARDS.

Scene I.

Seaford—Markham.
SEAFORD
Yes, now I see that old face in the new,
That strange, specific, personal difference
Which makes me name you. At first sight you seemed
Vague altogether; by degrees, the touch
Of some remembered thought fell softly on me,
Wakened and held me; then I found the place,
And then the family, and now the name;
You and no other. Did you light on me
By chance?

MARKHAM
Nay, Seaford, there is slighter change
In you than me; I knew you at a glance;
Just thus I dreamed you should be, when as boys
We talked about our future certainties
Making them what we would. Have you attained them?
Methinks you have—I am sure you must have felt
The cultivations of a tender home
To bring you to such smoothness. Are they yours,
The gentle wife, the pleasant competence,
The not too numerous brood of little ones
Making the garden gay, but leaving still
The study tranquil, gracing not disturbing
The leisure of your learning—

SEAFORD
Out upon you!
Comes nothing greater from these early visions?
Was I so tame i' the morning?

MARKHAM
Better grow
From soft beginnings, like a gradual flower,
Than like a star flash out to set in blackness
Nor leave a glimmer on the dismal sky!
How have you sped, in truth?

SEAFORD
Well, you shall see,
If, as I hope, you'll test me. But yourself—
Not only Time's deliberate restlessness
Has stamped your face; I find the mark of toil,
The scar of conquest—tell me—have you reached
Your young ambitions?

MARKHAM
I have done a little;
Less haply than I dreamed, since my slow fame
Knocked never at your door.

SEAFORD
'Tis my dull ear
That failed to note it. Was't in Africa—

MARKHAM
Tush! never mind. Tell me of all our friends—
Lives little Fortescue?

SEAFORD
Lives? I should think so!
Full twice as much as many a bigger man;
He goes about us like the general air,
Or like an evening gnat, in every place
Save where we want to catch him.

MARKHAM
Mark you now
How little change there comes in thirty years!
'Tis said the morrow differs from the day
For ever; count by decades, and you find
There's nothing but foreseen development
Or irresistible decay.

SEAFORD
No, no!
Not thirty years—you shall not say so much.

MARKHAM
There spoke the happy voyager, who sails
With ship so placid and with sea so kind
That the first glimpse of land disheartens him;
Still he looks back, and never thinks of those
Who hunger for the greensward and the streams.
Once more, what news of Grey?

SEAFORD
You throw a blank;
The first.

MARKHAM
What, dead? The youngest of us all,
And such a gentle heart!

SEAFORD
Even such he was.
The cruel wires brought home his fatal name
Two days before a letter, full of laughs,
Which charged his weeping wife to welcome him.

MARKHAM
I could almost weep too to think of it.
Well—I have left the best name to the last—
I know he lives, but tell me how he fares?

SEAFORD
Who?

MARKHAM
Shall I name him? When we dreamed together
Of coming days, and built our lives with words
Like Babels that should break and scatter us,
Was there not one whose face was to the hills,
Who chattered not, but climbed, and closed with Day
Among the shining summits, while we slept?

SEAFORD
I cannot guess his name, unless you speak
Of Cyril—

MARKHAM
But why drop your voice? I'm sure
He lives—you shall not tell me otherwise;
What—Cyril?

SEAFORD
Nay, be satisfied, he lives.
There are so many sorts of life, my friend;
This air that fans us, holds a mighty scale
From insect up to eagle, or some say
Up higher yet, to Angels, which, unseen,
Walk on its fluent waves and find no place
In our class-namings. Not to speak of these,
If I should talk to you of Cyril's life
'Twere just as though some chirper in the hedge
Should gossip about eagles.

MARKHAM
Say you so?
Hath he outsoared the wings of Speech? Come, come,
You tell me fables!

SEAFORD
Sir, I am a man
In my own compass, knowing right from wrong,
Familiarly, doing no hurt to any,
Keeping some general watch upon myself,
Trusting the Hope that shall make up for all,
Not aiming high, but not afraid of death,
And not ashamed of living comfortably;
But, for a minute, look you, for a minute
To see my days beside such days as his
Sends a pale shudder through my puzzled soul
As if I were the vilest thing that breathes;
That's nonsense—but I feel it.

MARKHAM
Well, I know
The world hath dreamers, and they have their place
In the world's work; to keep alive the light
Which others walk by. If he's one of these—

SEAFORD
O! spare your ‘If’—he labours like the sea
Without a pause—what looks afar like Rest
Is but the softer toil which moulds and smooths
After uprooting. He hath made a name;
The People know him. If a whirlwind drops
One of these trenchant ‘Whys’ which pierce the depths
And reach the shallows, so that lip to lip
Tosses amazing words, and all the world
Grows intimate with unsolved mysteries
And fights for things unknown, and builds its towers
To guard no vineyard, but a wilderness
(Our civilised religion hath such broils),
At such a season, men will ask each other
‘But what said Cyril?’ and the answer given
Be more conclusive than a victory;
In truth, a seed of Peace, which, being watered,
Becomes a mighty shelter.

MARKHAM
You surprise me!
I ever deemed his argument too fine
For common fingers; silver threads that slip
Without a knot.

SEAFORD
Nay, but the greatest men
Lay hands on all. They feed us, like the skies,
With light for rich and poor, unjust and just.
One uses it to build, and one to plant,
And one to hunt for farthings—still it shines.

MARKHAM
Tell me his haunts—I want to meet with him.
By all you say, this vigorous noon should hold
Sweet union with its unregretted morn.
I think I should be welcome.

SEAFORD
Doubt it not;
To me, who have but talked away my life,
He comes with such profound and gentle eyes
That I can feel them touch the Thing within,
And I am sure they find some good in it
Whereof I knew not. 'Tis a loving heart.

MARKHAM
Where can I find him?

SEAFORD
You shall come with me.
The Congress sits to-day.

MARKHAM
Translate your news
For unfamiliar ears, receiving not
These new-grown flowers of speech.

SEAFORD
Well then, the Congress
Is—an assemblage—

MARKHAM
So much I could guess.

SEAFORD
But hear the end! We gather and we talk
Of happened evil and imagined good
In all the realms of practice and belief,
Trusting that slow realities of good
Out of our talk shall spring, and fill our fields
Till the weeds find no room.

MARKHAM
A Parliament
That makes no laws. Speaks Cyril in the ranks?

SEAFORD
Aye, from the ranks he speaks, and as he speaks
The leaders change their tactics. Here's the door.
Shall we go in?

MARKHAM
I follow.

[They enter the House of Assembly.

Scene II.—Vestibule of the Hall in which the Congress is assembled.

[Great Archway of communication through which the Hall is seen with Bishop, Clergy, and Laity in full discussion. In the Vestibule, Markham and Seaford stand listening.
FIRST LAYMAN
So, for your patience, thanks. The sum of all
Is that we stand before our Age like men
Who in their book-rooms hang a classic map
And talk of Troy, but, being set to travel,
Hug their familiar Murray and depart
More wise than honest. But the time asks truth.
If they be facts, maintain your boundaries,
If not, efface them! Forth, and feel your way
And teach us more than you have learnt, for each
Hews his own path, and adds his Article
To the great ever-growing human creed
Which was, and is, and shall be, as the World.
Have done with that pale chart, which drowning men
Accuse, and say they have no right to die
Because it warned them not. Use all your wits,
Set all your sails, and when the haven holds you
Tell how you passed the rocks.

CYRIL
Your parable
Fails by its honesty.

FIRST LAYMAN
I pray you, how?

CYRIL
It offers much—but, in the last extreme,
The guardian angel which it substitutes
For our sure heritage, so sealed by deaths,
So manifest in lives, so crowned by Time,
Is only—one man's wits.

FIRST LAYMAN
You force the meaning.

CYRIL
Nay, but I show the fact.

FIRST LAYMAN
Yet speak more deeply;
We build no walls on these analogies;
I did but illustrate the one position.

CYRIL
And I, the other.

FIRST LAYMAN
Nicely parried, friends.
Let this be all your answer.

CYRIL
We are ready
For each new version of that old assault
Made first on Adam; there is nothing changed
Except the manner—‘Ye shall be as gods’
(For ever future) ‘knowing everything.’
Age after age it rises like the waves,
Always another shape, but always water,
To break against our everlasting Rock.
Your force is in the colour of your time
As clouds are fire at sunset, but in an hour
Merely grey drifting vapour. When God's hand
Has wound another turning of the skein
We shall have passed these knots, and men shall see
How doubtful were the reasons for the doubts
Which vexed their grandfathers, alas, devising
Doubts for themselves which shall not prick their sons.
So, to the last, we fail; so, to the last,
Among us all the Lord walks evermore
With eyes of patient power that mark their own!
Meantime we fight the fronting foe, and answer
That we confess our ignorance and faith
The very ground and limit of our being;
Not knowing God, nor man, nor life, nor death;
Well knowing how to live and how to die,
What we may hope and Whom we have believed;
And we are bold to say, you know no more.
Why do you talk of guidance? Where is yours?
Beyond your reason as beneath our trust
Impenetrable darkness spreads itself;
What can you show us in the abyss, where we
Go down to meet the Everlasting Arms?
Leave off your ceaseless negative, proclaim
The thing that is, let us behold your creed,
And give us something in the place of Christ.

MARKHAM
(in the vestibule)
How the voice rings, and summons as it rings
A long procession from the unceasing Past!
O, I am listening with my youth again,
And all that has been is about to be—
Take me away from this!

SEAFORD
You would not care
To tread the path anew?

MARKHAM
What man could bear
His Past to be his Future? I've not strayed
Further than others, but I hear him show
The straight path to the shining goal, as still
He showed it ere we started.—O, great God,
Undo my life and give it back to me!
It was all then, and it is nothing now;
A fragment at Thy foot.

SEAFORD
If it lie there
It shall be gathered.

MARKHAM
Who has taught you that?

SEAFORD
There's the old voice—I know you now—you seemed
Strange to my memories. In our early days
Your sympathies had been with Cyril's foe
And not with Cyril.

MARKHAM
Yes, I know it all.
I have fought that fight, and finished all that course,
And at the end, in my crowned weariness,
Have lifted empty hands and searching eyes,
But neither Heaven nor Earth has answered me:
How should they? Not for such as I the night
Breaks into Angel faces, with a shout
The Christ is born!

SEAFORD
You were not wont to feel
So keenly. I have heard you celebrate
The calms of Reason.

MARKHAM
I have lived in them
Till the storm came.

SEAFORD
And then?

MARKHAM
To die in them
Were easier. See, my friend, the ring is round
And men walk on for ever. There's content
For the strong Intellect, athirst for work,
And filled with it, and wanting nothing else;
Set him aside, he is but half a man,
Or lives with half his manhood, feeling not
That throbbing of the great wound of the world
Against his heart, in silences of night
And brief day-pauses, which being felt, may grow
Till it possesses night and day, and makes
Labour a pain and rest a sin. But they
Who in their powerless knowledge are complete
Like doctors who can analyse the death
That slays them, lo, they turn from side to side
Escaping not. One hugs the Thought and spurns
The Fact which gave it; one receives the Fact
But shapes it to his taste; one starts away
From some sharp truth which might have pierced his soul
And catches at another, soft to him
Not by its own but by his difference;
And all cry out because the Stars are pale,
Forgetting what the darkness were without them.
All weak alike, unhappy comforters,
Who scorn the lame man for his homely staff,
But cannot make him walk.

SEAFORD
I half perceive
Your meaning.

MARKHAM
Hark—he speaks to us again
Unknowing.

CYRIL
(in the hall)
Take it in a word—the man
Cries out for God; if he be perfected
He can have perfect answer—but if not
Why let him grasp the Hand that beckons him
And so grope onward till he find the Face.
Not mind, not heart, nothing but man himself,
The whole of him, with great capacities
Unfilled, and longing hopes unsatisfied;
With mighty loves, immeasurable fears;
Outsoaring joys that have no place to rest;
Eyes which Earth wearies, but which look for Heaven;
Ears which perceive all discords, and expect
Some deeper never-ceasing harmony;
Arms which relax their trembling hold on Death
And would embrace Eternity; and powers
In germ, which cannot ripen here—he, he,
Demands a creed. O, give him promises,
Glimpses of light, and mysteries of hope,
Whispers of fire that touch him everywhere,
Vast incomplete suggestions, oracles
Still undeclared, commands to be fulfilled
But not interpreted, that he may know
It is a God that speaks, that he may feel
Heaven's twilight on his face before the dawn;
But build no tabernacles for him here,
Where he is not to dwell; content him not
With fading noons of Earth, let Reason stand
Amazed, dissatisfied, submissive here;
For these confused beginnings of his life
Forestall not their clear end; he dimly sees
The depths that he shall enter, words plain now
Are not the language of another world,
And whatsoever things are fully known
Are false, for knowledge cannot compass Truth.

FIRST LAYMAN
How touches this the argument?

CYRIL
Why, even thus;
Faith is the only obstacle to faith,
The barrier is the threshold—we believe not
Because if we believe—we must believe!
Nothing but this, although the names be legion;
And, this refusal over, we may frame
For our uneasy hearts a thousand faiths
All without evidence; like one who draws
A magic circle round him and is safe
In fancy, girt by threatening images
And pressure of strange phantoms, while he thinks
If once he cross the ring, he perishes;
But let him cross it, lo, the blinding smoke
Melts from his eyes, the wide earth welcomes him,
He goes among the glorious distances
And feels the breezes and the lights of heaven!
‘Only not that,’ (so said he) ‘only not
The music of my childhood’—but it comes,
God grant it comes not late, and there is peace.

MARKHAM
(in the vestibule)
It has come now and peace shall follow it.

SEAFORD
You find him eloquent?

MARKHAM
It was his wont
To conquer all his foes by sympathy;
He sits at your heart, and so the strings must answer.
I wonder when he was a sceptic.

SEAFORD
Never.

MARKHAM
Well, I know that, yet even his anger reads
What it rejects; still he says ‘we’ not ‘you,’
And claims his brotherhood with all he hates.

SEAFORD
They touch on practice now.

MARKHAM
Let us attend.

SECOND LAYMAN
(in the hall)
But, how to stir this jelly-sort of man?
He sits among his reverend tentacles
Reaching for all the comforts, and is calm,
And tells us he is founded on a rock
(Which we believe, but want to move him from it).
Show him the sorest need, the plainest cure,
If it means work he'll say, ‘There would be risk,’
Or, ‘Nay, my friends, no zeal! Enthusiasm
Is ever digging pitfalls for the blind;
Let us be reasonable.’ You might think
That martyrs ran no risks before they died,
And saints achieved their crowns without a tear,
And great Apostles won a world for Christ
With no more toil than lilies of the field
Content with blooming. Say, what would you do
With such a placid leader?

THIRD LAYMAN
Let us have him;
The healing of some brief monotony
Is all we need—we'll make a fair exchange;
Our man's a Gladstone, breathing novelties
At every pore; under his restless hand
The sweet oldfashioned certainties are gone
And no man guesses when he goes to church
What strange device shall flout him from his prayers,
What grievous music shall afflict his ears,
What fancy-dresses mask the quiet walls
Or drape the ungainly shepherds—yet he works:
I grant him that. Would he were sooner tired!

FIRST CLERIC
O, if he works it shall be well with you;
Labour is life; still waters grow impure,
But air and action, winnowing the depths,
Maintain a healthful crystalline.

THIRD LAYMAN
Your rule
Holds strange conclusions. Work is life—or death;
But there's a trifling difference—as much,
Some might say, as between martyrdom and murder.
Is there no refuge from these working men
Who make the parish their laboratory,
The flock their corpus vile? What care we
If ten years hence, being fully educated,
He says reflectively, ‘How well I see
Where I went wrong, preferring small to great!’
We see it now, and are not satisfied
To be his matter for experiment.
I say, is there no refuge? Government
Is dying everywhere, and our rich laws
Are merely bars to action, having grown
To such luxuriance that they tangle us
Whichever way we step.

CYRIL
Our remedies
Lie ever at our feet—we tread them down
Rushing afar for help.

THIRD LAYMAN
If that were so
The body should be sounder.

CYRIL
So it should
If we were wiser, but each patient spurns
His proper cure. Systems are substitutes
(And sorry ones) for men. We want the men
For our white harvest fields—we want the men
Always and everywhere, from first to last,
The men, the multitudes that should be Christ's:
We speak not in a heathen world, like those
Who strewed the seed two thousand years ago;
The shadow of its growth should reach us all.
We stand among our brothers. All the people
Are priests and kings. What are we sent to do
For such a flock? To teach the ignorant,
Rebuke the sinful, call the wanderers home,
And minister the sacred gifts to all—
But for the men our brothers, who should know
From their youth up all that we come to teach,
Whose lives should stream to Christ, whose work should be
Not ours but one with ours, storming the breach
Beside us, if they can in front of us,
Where are they? Let the bitter disbelief,
The cold luxurious softness of the time,
Or its fierce daily labour, hardly sparing
Some scanty leisure for another world,
Answer! Nay brothers, pardon me, the sting
Pricks us no less—our scattered toilers miss
Not only strength but sympathy; the pulse
Which passing through a thousand hearts should swell
To a torrent, if it start but here and there
Is mere hysteric. 'Tis grotesque to see
The soldier at his exercise alone,
But the drilled Army is sublime. I would
A word could run along the ranks like fire
And make us, one and all, cast forth our lives
As Peter cast his net, without a hope!
That instantly, that only, that for once
Should sweep away these vapours! Nay, I am sure
That like a great wind cleansing all the air,
Our common work should purify itself
From trivial claims and foolish accidents;
The mere necessity of joining hands
Should smooth our steadfast march to victory

FOURTH LAYMAN
A goodly vision! Would the time were come!

CYRIL
We dig for ever at the roots of evil—
Plant but the good—it dies for want of room.

FOURTH LAYMAN
But how? I fix our faults upon no class;
I think all weak alike, myself among them;
I pity all the workers, and I feel
For all the loiterers, but remedy
Seems harder than disease.

CYRIL
There was a law
In wise old Athens, that in stormy times
The men who shut their doors and stayed at home
Were punished, so the calmer sort was driven
Among the fiercer, and the city throve.

FOURTH LAYMAN
How read you that for us?

CYRIL
Why thus: our critics
Should be our comrades; 'tis that element
Our blundering ardour needs. One certainty
Speaks through all contradictions, that the world
Wants mending; then, where'er the work begins,
If there be faults, and human hands we know
Do nothing perfectly, you that perceive them
Stand not aloof, but make the greater haste
To join and straighten them. When yesterday
We hurled our mission week across the land,
Who says there was not need? Some feeble voices
Talked of ‘confessing failure’—God in heaven,
Which of Thy servants thinks he has not failed?
Are all men honest? Are all women pure?
Is London as the New Jerusalem?
We fail, if one resist us to the last,
If one fall short, if one die comfortless;
O, if we have not failed, if this is all
The Cross can conquer, if with such a kingdom
Our Master is contented, eat and drink
And die to-morrow, for there is no life
Here or hereafter! Well then, having failed,
Take the child's rule and try another way,
Try all ways, and by any means save some!

THIRD LAYMAN
I hear and tremble. Wars on every side!
Contention seems the Church's atmosphere;
What chance of growth in such tempestuous seas?
Where is the ministry of peace? What hope
Is broad enough to build on?

CYRIL
Crossing threads
Make straight designs. Sages who search the skies
Find tumult in the Sun; noise of great gales
And unheard thunders round the birth of Day;
Can we believe such things? We live in them
And are amazed—but, as our world recedes
Into the quiet Future, not more dim
For us than we shall one day be for it,
These shall cease from us, while the Ages keep
The silence and the splendour which they fed,
Light, calm, beneficent, resistless Light.

ALL
Hear! hear! hear!

CYRIL
Bear with me still! I have it in my heart
To speak one word in great simplicity.
I have perceived an evil in the times
Which, if it grow, destroys us. 'Twas the fame
Of England to be truer than the world;
With this she justified her sterner ways,
For this we love her and would die for her
As for a mother, whose remembered face
Never deceived us once. But now, the work
Is hollow, and the name is not the thing,
The thought beside and not within the word,
And honesty means only not to steal,
And honour, which did once pervade us all,
Is hunted to the heights, where still she stands
Among the nobler sort, with tremulous wings
And feet that touch but rest not. Yet, believe me,
Truth holds the world back from perpetual death,
It is divine as Earth, from whose mere bosom
Grow seasons, and great trees and tender grass;
So grows the life of nations out of Truth.
Where men are false decay is natural
And certain as the very walk of Time,
Which halts not, though it linger. O my brothers,
Let us who have to mould the hearts of men
Be desperately true! No fence nor feint,
No seemly veil nor decent subterfuge,
But with our bare lives in our open palms
Let us confront the world with ‘This we are;
‘This mean and this believe; this teach and do;
‘And this, for we are human, leave undone,
‘Repenting and amending.’ So we hold
The crystal mirror straight, and keep it clean
That men may see themselves for what they are,
And feel dishonour in the least untruth
Done without speech, to compass some good end,
Never revealed. Methinks for very shame
We urge it not, being such a mere condition
Of all things good, but, if a nation's laws
Were writ in granite, and the language lost,
Should not her wise men walk through all the streets
Thundering the alphabet?

BISHOP
Here let us pause
Since the time warns us, and this final theme
Is food for meditation, not debate.
Let each man ponder in his homeward thoughts
That such a witness, whom we all revere.
Sees such a danger. Let each ask himself
If in his recent or confronting trouble
(Which all must have) there has been time or place
When any dimmer spot or blunter edge
On this first weapon in his armoury
Needed a cleansing hand, and if he find it
Let him be comforted, as having found
The root and remedy of all his evil;
And so take timely warning, one and all,
To keep our Christian honour sensitive!

[The Congress breaks up. Cyril comes out into the vestibule.

Scene III.

Cyril—Markham.
MARKHAM
Cyril!

CYRIL
Who calls me like the murmur of my youth
Under the roar of time?

MARKHAM
Come, will you know me?
Aye, spell my face—its whole vocabulary
Lies in your name; now your eyes warm to me,
They did but search before, and now I feel
Such closing of your grasp upon my hands
As might have forced the water to mine eyes
Were it not there before. What, Cyril, what,
Am I remembered?

CYRIL
Markham! Not remembered,
Possessed! I had you always—yesterday
We parted—nothing lies between but time
Wherein love grows. Why are you here? Whence come you?
But that's no matter since I have you here,
And I'll not ask if you come home with me
Because you must. I saw you just like this,
With just such sunburnt honours in your face,
As step by step I followed all you did
In the great gaps between your scanty words.
Ah, friend, you should have come before, you needed
A bath in sweet home-waters, to refresh
Such agonies of toil.

MARKHAM
The same as ever:
No man must work too hard except himself.
I stood here while you spoke.

CYRIL
You heard me speak?

MARKHAM
Aye, every word.

CYRIL
I spoke to the world's future
And mine own past. It lay not in my dreams
That you were judging. Come, friend, tell me truly
Has my speech mended as your judgment has
Since those hot days when you believed in me?

MARKHAM
No, not a jot.

CYRIL
You will not flatter me;
Have the years taught me nothing?

MARKHAM
O, you have learnt
Whole dictionaries, but the man who speaks
Is still the same; a little further up
The mountain way, but not too far for stretching
His hand down to the children. Let me see you!
These lines, these paler tints, this silver, seem
Completion not decay. Your life has been
As a long music, where the final bar
Grows from the first, and not a note is finished
Till all are heard.

CYRIL
I would not have it so;
My life should be a Prelude where each note
Suggests the coming strain which Death begins.
I have known such lives.

MARKHAM
Alas, in thirty years
How many of the lives we knew have ceased!
You kept your Mother long?

CYRIL
God cloistered her
In gentle limits ere He called her home:
To failing ears we speak no words but love;
Dim eyes perceive no darker shades, and life
Filtered by care and time and distance comes
To feeble lips without its bitterness:
So, on the pillow of her years she slept
Before she died.

MARKHAM
You watched her to the last;
And Lady Blanche?

CYRIL
She had a kindly whim
To make me godfather to all her babes.
I am pledged for nine.

MARKHAM
Protect me from my friends!

CYRIL
Loose not my hand—your eyes must tell me more;
Use grows so fast that ere a week is gone
We shall seem never sundered, and all question
Checked and entangled by those daily films
Which make life possible for ardent hearts
But keep them separate; now, for half an hour
We are soul to soul—

MARKHAM
I came from the far side
Of all the world to show my soul to you!
Beside me, through the tossed and roaming years
Which have been mine since last I talked with you
In work or rest, in toil or darkness, still
I had the vision of a perfect life:
It did not preach to me, it looked at me
And drew me evermore to look at it:
I had beheld it once, and there it was
For ever mine. It grew before mine eyes
Slow as a picture where each touch reveals
Forgotten facts, till Absence grows alive
With Memory's intolerable sweetness;
Each difference that I noted was a call
To likeness, and from every point there streamed
Such life as by mere contact masters death.
So was I won without an argument,
Convinced by contemplation, beaten down
By the soft presence of a thought, and here
I come to tell you—

CYRIL
Ah, she won you so!
How many trophies will that tender life,
Merely by being lived, bring with itself
At the last day! She will not know till then,
And she must learn it from the Master's lips,
Else she may enter Heaven incredulous
Like a child-queen before the retinue
She leads unconsciously.

MARKHAM
She, Cyril, she?
Is that fair memory still so much with you?
O, foolish man, I am no woman's work—
It was yourself.

CYRIL
I!

MARKHAM
Fighting all the day,
And so confounded with astonishment
At one small conquest!

CYRIL
'Twas the hyperbole
Wherein you hid me! O my friend, I know
He may use any weapon, but that this
Should be vouchsafed, that He should give me you,
Just the great wish, just the desponding prayer,
Just the impossible hope; and I so cold,
Weak, false, forgetful, while He worked for me:
This wonder, which He thrusts into my arms
As suddenly as though 'twere not a crown
To set on dying brows, that this should be,
Makes me a child that can but weep for joy
And stretch its hands, and grasp its precious things
Not knowing how they come.

MARKHAM
Thus have I given
The core of my large story. But for you,
You have said nothing yet. I find you thus,
After a life of labour, with no rest
In the grey heaving distances around,
But only toil and storm and scanty gain,
Monotonies of peril and fatigue
Without an issue—are you satisfied
With that which you have chosen?

CYRIL
Here I am!

MARKHAM
Will you reveal no more?

CYRIL
There is no more
To be revealed. I have no certainty
About myself, save that God set me here
With such a work to do, and here I am
Doing it very badly.

MARKHAM
Nay, my friend,
Be frank—

CYRIL
I speak the frankest honesty:
No thoughtful evening comes that does not show
Such gaps and blunders in the day's achieve
As fill the soul with resolute remorse
Which ought to triumph to-morrow. But I work
Heartily and am happy, overpaid
With love and honour which I never earned,
Watching the growths around me, sometimes sad
And often sanguine, so concerned with living
I have not leisure even for self-reproach—

MARKHAM
(interrupting)
Here, and alone, and happy—in a world
So full of all Christ died to save it from!
Working with such mean elements, assailed
By such base foes, busy in such small fields!
O, this is not the mountain of your youth
With its vast outlooks over heaven and earth—
This is not like my picture! Here in the press,
Here in the dusty tumult, foot to foot
With any straggler, not a star beheld,
Not a song audible—you that were once
Fed with grand airs and mighty visions, tell me
Where are they now?

CYRIL
O friend, in our beginnings
We set the life divine a league away
From the life human, and depart from one
When we would seek the other, but our work
Is to bring both together. Those are days
Of petty fear and causeless sacrifice,
Of ‘touch not, taste not, handle not’; perchance
Our weakness needs them; but it is our strength
To touch, taste, handle all that is not sin,
Finding God's work in all, and as for sin
To slay it with the brightness of His presence.
So we receive our banquet; for the body
Not only meats but wine, and for the lips
Not only speech but music, for the eyes
Vast pageants of unfathomable change
Prepared from everlasting, and for the soul
Not only prayer and labour, but all knowledge,
All wonder, and the garden-world of Art,
And all the forest-paths of Poetry,
Oceans of joy and fields of lovely rest;
Man lives in many ways, but on this diet
He grows to perfect health, takes without choice
His Master's gift—a cross, a sword, a flower;
Contemns no work, refuses no delight,
And goes rejoicing through the darkest ways
With nothing in his heart but ‘here I am!’
This feeds me in my solitude—and more—

MARKHAM
Your face is full of light; Cyril, what more?

CYRIL
There is the hope that I may die to-night!