University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

An Apartment in Benducar's House.
Zelinda and Leonora are discovered with Attendants.
ZELINDA.
It was the clash of swords. There's murder done,
And in the garden where my father walk'd.
Keep off! 'tis cruel thus to bar my way,
When, with a hunter's fury, I should drive
Through bush and brake.—

LEONORA.
Are there not others gone
In search of him?—Confused and agonised,
Hopest thou to find him out?

ZELINDA.
Him, or despair!

LEONORA.
Behold! they come who sought him.—Now—'tis now
The time to call on Heaven.

ZELINDA.
First, let them speak:
Then, if I can, I'll pray.

Enter Messengers.
LEONORA.
What news?—They're silent!
Yet there's a fearful haste within their eyes
That would have utterance, but for something still
More fearful that prevents their tongues.

FIRST MESSENGER.
Alas!—

ZELINDA.
Does horror bring you here, and do you pause
For language to express your mission?—What
Can happen here so bad, as what you've look'd on,
Though I dropp'd dead at mention of your tale,
If what you saw was murder?

FIRST MESSENGER.
We must e'en
Confess the truth—your father is no more!

ZELINDA.
I thought so; yet I cannot hear it now
And keep my senses:—shew me where he lies;
Oh! Heaven, my father dead!—Did you say dead?
So good, so kind, so merciful—and dead!

FIRST MESSENGER.
'Tis hard to say it, but we found him with
His sword beside him, drawn as in defence,—
The point was bloodless, but the handle stain'd.

ZELINDA.
And no life gone but his, and no wretch living
But me!

LEONORA.
There must be one more wretched still,
While the assassin breathes.

ZELINDA.
Let him be found!
If all our forms are not a mockery—
Our grave tribunals springes set to catch
The light offenders, who will pick and steal,
And are not worth revenge, but useless, when
The heavy tread of some enormous wrong
Shakes the community, and snaps the law
Beneath it—find him out, and punish him.
If murder 'scapes, make laws for kites and crows—
But not for men: the name of law is weakness.

MESSENGER.
We hope to seize the monster soon. This ring,
[Shewing a ring.
Which lying next the body we espied,
May haply yet discover him to justice.

ZELINDA.
A ring!—ha! let me see—'Twere better rave,
And, from the cup of madness, pledge the moon,
Than look on this with reason.—

LEONORA.
What dire secret
Hath started from that token?

ZELINDA.
'Twas my mother's:
She put it on my hand.—O Heaven! and I—
I gave it—

LEONORA.
Speak—to whom?

ZELINDA.
To him—Durazzo;
The murderer!—my father's murderer!

LEONORA.
Down on him fall, thou bitter penalty
Of conscience!

ZELINDA.
No; the rack, which strains the limbs
And tears the joints, can better minister
To my substantial fury. Once I loved him;
But now my hate—Oh! save me from that hate;
Lest, with my woman's voice, I shock the ear
Of blessedness, and grow a fiend with cursing.

FIRST MESSENGER.
There is no time to lose. Let us away
And seek this same Durazzo.

[Exeunt Messengers.
ZELINDA.
Are they gone?

LEONORA.
You see they are.

ZELINDA.
And sure to make him captive?

LEONORA.
The next to certain.

ZELINDA.
He was born to be
My ruin and his own. But when he's dead,
And the offending arm is level with
The common dust, 'twill be no crime, I hope,
To lay him in the earth, and cover him,
And give one shriek back at the memory
Of what he was.

LEONORA.
Nay, think of him no more.

ZELINDA.
Oh, father! father! has my grief no voice
To reach thee, in thy distance, cold and far
As being changed? What lights are those?—ha! torches!—
What need of such to make the church-yard gay;
To gild with pomp the cities of the dead;
Those bare republics? Come! we'll follow close;—
It is my father's funeral!—come on!
He was a hero, and I know him by
The plumes, that wave in victory, and wave
In death, as flaunting as in victory.

[Exeunt.