University of Virginia Library

ACT III.

Scene I.

The Terrace-Walk.
Enter Millicent.
Millicent.
I have not seen my terrace-walk two years.
Now that the rumour reaches me my husband
Is coming home, I have put by my rule,
And left the busy city for a day,
To see if the young sycamore he planted
Be grown, and all the bosky paths kept clear.
He used to love the garden. In my absence
There have been changes, the great storm has broken
That row of poplars that shut out the country;
We can see Hubert's lodge; the woody fringe
Is full of gaps. How fares the lady Cara?
[Enter Reuben at a distance.]
There's my old man to gossip with; but yet
It were more queenly to await events,
And give them quiet audience. [To Reuben.]
This ivy,—
Reuben, your master likes it clipped in March;
It overtops the wall.

Reuben.
Now what an eye!
There has not been the time, though I'm a rare one
For clipping; you can scarcely tell the nature
Of any of these trees, I've twisted them
So to my pattern. You, I recollect,
Were always for a garden a bit wild;
The weeds, you thought, were pretty on the walks
Where they could do no harm.

Millicent.
But the king likes
The even gravel; you can give me pleasure
Only as you content him.

Reuben.
That's the point.
I never saw a lady like yourself
So anxious; all would now be apple-pie,
If you had a fresh colour. When I wheeled you
I' my barrow down the walks, and made you wreaths
Of hen-and-chicken daisies every day,
Save Sunday, when you whimpered,—why, you were
A pretty one, and no mistake, with solid,
Round, rosy cheeks; you've fallen off in flesh,
And lost that placid look the master liked;—
Come now, I know he liked it, for one day,
When you were but a princess, he was standing
And looking toward your lattice, while I cursed
The bitter, grating wind: Ah, there's fair weather
For you, I doubt not, Sir, I said—bit riled
To see him staring so; but when I looked,
And saw you like a balsam at the pane,
I did not wonder.

Millicent.
Is his friend arrived,
The good lord Hubert? All our preparations
Are vain, if he be absent. For two summers
They have been kept apart by these long wars,
My husband in the north, and his dear captain
Striving to quell the western tribes. No rumour
Has reached you, Reuben, of the earl's return?

Reuben.

Not a word; but his lady must be missing
him. It's lonely for a woman when her child dies, and
she has to look after his burial. We can put the little
things in their coffins. It is not fit a mother should do
that,—she's too warm and tender.

Millicent.
A child, a child! And did you say a son?
But the babe's dead and blasted!

Reuben.
Well, I own
I never thought good luck would come of it
After the christening.—Seemed presumptuous
Of a young wench that might have been my daughter
To make her brat a namesake of the king.

Millicent.
The lady Cara had then a fair babe?
Would it had lived! Reuben, you misconstrue;
'Twas duteous of the mother to remember
Who raised her husband to nobility.
Most gladly had the king been god-father
To our dear Hubert's son.

Reuben.
But Almund, Almund!
To hear the common children shout his name!
For she would take the little fellow down
To paddle in the spring and sail the flowers;
And all the villagers were fond of her,
And the boy too. You must not take it ill;—
I think it right that you should know;—the women
All said he was the image of the king.
I went myself to have a look at him
One day, and it was wonderful—not like!—
Why, the blue larkspurs come up blue this year,
And last;—he'd got the lashes, and the eyes,
And the high forehead. It had been more decent
To call him Hubert. Taking all in all
I think it is as well he's with the Lord,
Where he can do no mischief with his looks,
Poor innocent!

Millicent.
O Reuben, you forget
His mother.

Reuben.
But if she'd no rights to him?
Lord, how you startle me with that hot face;
'Tis like the day of judgment,—flame of hell,
Before one gets a hearing.

Millicent.
You remember
Your master when he courted me,—his aspect
Might well seem god-like to a peasant girl.
One day, at hunt, grown thirsty in the wood,
He asked for drink: Lord Hubert loved the child
Who filled the cup, and, at the king's command,
She married him, but never has forgotten
Her bright, brief day of honour. Once a year
She offers tribute from the spring by which
She first obeyed her king. If her sweet son
Were like him, it is hard to think he died,
Being the only creature in the world
Who might have brought some comfort to your mistress.
Let the truth travel like a cleansing frost
Through all the country side. You promise me?

Reuben.

Why, lady, it's too much to remember, and
you knock it so into my head with your sharp, clanging
voice,—it bewilders me. But I take it you're satisfied
with the young master; leastways, whatever you think,
you won't have tongues wagging. I'll quiet 'em, I'll say
no man can tell the colour of a bloom before it opens.
It doesn't depend on the seed. And they won't contradict
me. So, good even.

[Exit.]
Millicent.
A barren wife, and the young boy born like him
Not his—so much dishonour and no sin;
All faithful to their vows!
[Looking towards Hubert's castle.]
The sun breaks out
After the gusty rain, and rims yon towers.
Ah, Hubert's wife can take him to a grave,
Where they can weep together.

[Buries her face in her hands.]
[Enter Almund.]
Almund.
Millicent.

Millicent.
You are not unexpected, though you come
More suddenly than looked for. All your fields
Are sown for harvest, and the river dammed
Just where you thought to stop the current's rush;
Old Reuben has been singing many a day
Over the rose-shoots and the trim arcade.
O husband, why so sudden a return?
I scarcely have prepared . . .

Almund.
You are too noble
For ghastly fooling, for this weary talk
Of preparation. Ready for my coming!
Yes, ready with your sobs.

Millicent.
A little weeping
That I was desolate.

Almund.
I have not heard
Ill news; I feel it in the air, and see it
Now in your face. Why did you weep? I thought
It was because you could not lift a son
To give that heart-deep greeting that a wife
No other way can utter. Tell me all:
The pulses of my heart are muffled bells
That toll and shiver:—give me utmost truth—
This pausing is unworthy.

[Grasping Millicent's arm.]
Millicent.
Hubert's wife
Bore him a son, a lovely boy that died
Just as he prattled Mother. He was nursed
Beside a forest-brook; the peasants say
He had your stamp on every lineament,
His eyes your very own—and I rejoice.

Almund.
Immeasurable faith! You hold my name
Unspotted by my people's vile suspicion;
You love the likeness that another wrought
In pure idolatry? I thought you cold,
Too cold to be a mother, and a softness,
A joy has crept into your face as though
You answered a babe's cry. We draw together;
My Millicent, weep on.

Millicent.
The little lad
Was christened Almund.

Almund.
But the mother lived?

Millicent.
She lives for you to comfort her.

Almund.
Not dead—

Millicent.
There is another remedy than death;
It shall be given her. This is a moment
When speech takes on its full reality,
And says the whole within us. You have loved
This cottage-girl as God would have a man
To love a woman; you fulfilled His dream.
I have upheld you in your covenant
To me, and made you break the holy law
Of perfect, human passion. O my king,
You were a noble boy, and year by year
The beauty goes from off you.

Almund.
Millicent—

Millicent.
We each have sinned; but I, because I love you,
'Scape inner ruin: you, my tortured husband,
Are cramped by loveless honour, straitened, spoiled,
Grown hard and bitter, though your conquering lips
Keep violent mastery o'er pain and want.

Almund.
O God, you can befriend my agony,
You suffer with my passion? Noble wife,
I, who can never love you, from henceforth
Worship with all my soul.

Millicent.
I have confessed,
My Almund, and committed to my voice
The silences of womanhood, that you
Might hear the love that you can never see,
Because I have no child. My lips present
A gift of such devotion as no travail
Hath ever brought to birth: a solemn gift
To hold forth to a husband. Take the vows,
Given in marriage, back again. How pale
You stand, as if misjudging me! I know
That you are pure as I in the fulfilment
Of our unblessèd bond.

Almund.
Oh, I could curse
My tongue that will not say what still I feel,
That troth should be for ever.

Millicent.
Would you keep me
The thing I am, a wife, and the eternal
Thou shalt not to a man's felicity,
That he perforce must hate?

Almund.
I do not, hating
Myself alone.

Millicent.
I will deliver you.
Your voice grates on me,—'tis a voice in irons.

Almund.
O fearful love! But you forget my Hubert
Has he no rights?

Millicent.
Almund, I do not think
Of Hubert; I will answer for no man
In such a coil as ours. What I have said
Lies between you and me; I loose the fetters
That make your home a prison. You shall speak
All in your writhing heart, renew its passions,
And fear no impious jealousy, no pride
Of injured claims. I pray you to entrust
Your pain, your deathless love for Hubert's wife,
To me, who, self-divorced from you, shall give
No mis-becoming comfort, no unchartered
Compassion and relief.

Almund.
Then be my friend,
Not the dishonoured wife whom I shall never
Forgive myself for wedding. Millicent,
As no young bridegroom dare, I lay my soul
Naked before your eyes. I thought I loved you;
Suddenly passion leapt in me,—pure fervours
Of life; I strove to quell them, and I could not,
But whelmed them in suppression, till my brain
Was mad with evil. O my woman-friend,
I know the deeps of sin as none can know
Who do ill acts, for I have spent my days
Looking down, down into the pit of hell,
Because my love lay drowning in the slime,
And I must watch, in agony that often
Pressed through my flesh as dew, yet dried the tears
For ever from my eyes.

Millicent.
You pause; my pity
Stretches beyond all horror.

Almund.
Then it is
For her, not me. The anguish of my guilt,
My holy love polluted, were as nothing
In misery beside the pressing thought
Of how she suffered,—such a child, and yet
All womanhood was waiting in her heart,
Till I should wed her. The first year I went,
And with her husband met her by the spring,
She looked at me until I only saw
Great, busy eyes that seemed to use my face
As yarn to fasten on a spinning-wheel.
I nearly died; upon my horse's neck
I fell unconscious.

Millicent.
You are trembling now.

Almund.
With weakness at the outrush of my secrets
From loneliness and burial: 'tis like
The passage of an earthquake.

Millicent.
Let me press
This burning forehead, for my hands are cold,
While the divulging torrent of your voice
Takes heed of nothing, but that I attend,
Too merciful to comfort.

Almund.
I am freed,
But all in ruins. Now you know the worst
And best of my despair—its lustful madness,
Its rooted love to her. As if I knelt
Beside Christ's mother I am not ashamed,
For your compassion, fouled by no reproach,
Stings not my blood.

Millicent.
And once again this brow
Is frank as in your boyhood, just as open,
Thank God!

Almund.
I like to feel your touch, it seems
To know me, and to soothe each painful throb
Close to its source. But, Millicent, to-day
According to my promise I should enter
The forest.

Millicent.
Yes, I know, and you must hasten;
The day wears on. Nay, do not start so wildly,
For if you are ungentle, you will scare
The little, childless mother, and may kill her
Who is your Hubert's wife.

Almund.
I will be tender.
Touch me again! Farewell, my great, new friend,
The guardian of my soul. I kiss these hands,
These saving hands. Your eyes—how beautiful!

Scene II.

The Wood, by the Spring.
Enter Cara.
Cara.
The little face
Grew hard, I dared not kiss it any more;
And now, unless he come—It is the day.
How the birds quarrel!—I must just return,
And dig the little grimy body up.
All night I listened close down on the turf
If he should call me; but he cannot call
With those hard, alien lips. He seems to hate me,
And I hate him,—I hate, I hate the dead,
I do not want to see them any more,
They are such changelings. When the neighbours came
And looked at the stone image, with no trace
Of want or feebleness, they called it like
The little, tender, playful, tottering lad
I stooped to steady. God could never mould
A baby's dimpling cheek;—it's tears, tears, tears!
He shapes the dead, and alters all the lines
O' the lids and mouth; one cannot find the old,
Sweet spots for kisses. Hubert will return
And pet me. I have seen a dog some stranger
Passes his hand across; it gives no pleasure,
The creature feels it's kind, and then walks off
More wretched. Ah, the baby did not know,
He never tried to comfort. There's no use
For Cara in the world: the old are useless,
But then they are half-dead. I cannot cry,
I know if once I sobbed that I should never
Catch the sweet air again. The leaves are budding,
These chestnut-leaves. Oh, they have woolly wraps,
They're young—quite little ones.

[Enter Almund.]
Almund.
A widowed creature,
With strange, snow-sprinkled hair, and empty eyes.
I dare not startle her,—she stands too nigh
The precipice of death for me to thrill her
With joyful news.

Cara
[turning and springing to him].
Why, he is grown a man!
O Almund, Almund. This is wonderful!
It hurts so at my heart. It must be years
Since it all happened. Do not let me loose;
If you will only stay a little while
'Twill be all over; you can settle then
Whether it's wrong or right. Pull down your curls
For me to play with. Silky, summer hair!
I made his fine like this. Oh, I am happy.
Don't speak, and change it.

Almund.
Cara, listen! Hush!
I am not married to the queen. I'm free.

Cara.
And I am Hubert's wife! It makes me laugh;
It is not true, and a wise king knows better
Than make believe. I had a little son;
God knew the truth; He built him step by step
Like you—a perfect miniature, and yet
With hair less auburn. I was glad to give him
Cara's own hazel threads. He's yours and mine.
You'll see him when you bury me; break open
The tiny coffin; let us lie together.

Almund.
I dare you speak of death; you shall not die
Till you are mine. What is your woman's hunger?
You faint with it; but when a man must fast
His appetite grows eager for revenge.
Now, Cara, you must pay to me the debt
Of love's long-rankling score. Come, cuddle close;
Each stir and change you make is chronicled
Through all my body, and the blessedness
Repeats that I have got you in my arms,
Till I can just believe it. These long years
My life has been a barren sea-shore washed
By surging floods of passion; nothing grew there,
Nothing took root, there was no food, no shelter.
Don't travel far away with those soft eyes!
You're thinking of the child; it maddens me.
Cara, I'm thirsty; give me of love's drink!
Have you forgotten?

Cara.
No, for I remember
A lady loves you. Almund, it is fearful . . .

Almund.
Call me the king.

Cara
[smiling].
I'm used not to the name.
I shouted to my little lad so often
On the brow of the big field where there's the echo,
Simply to hear the name. O Almund, Almund,
There must not be this misery again;
We women cannot bear it. Once I saw her;
She could not speak, but she just pressed my hand,
And kissed me. I will give you back to her,
If you will only stay a little while.
Now say it over to me like a hymn,
How you have always loved me. Do not promise
That you will not forget—I have no fear;
It's graven in your eyes. But those three years
You did not come—before too he was born;
I must not think of it. . . . It hurts again
Here at my heart. O Almund, Almund, Almund!
Something shrieks in me; I must call the child
Across the fields. . . .

[She shrieks and falls back dead.
Almund.
O God, she is a mother.
The small, bleak spirit shrills out in the air
A cry for love, and I am starving here:
'Tis death's strange irony; and once she stood
The red lips kissing me as fast as dew
Is shaken from a thorn. Oh, I shall find
All the great years of hell inadequate
To mourn this mighty error and defeat.—
To put such gift away, and youth and manhood
Stirring within me! I refused her love,
And must cohabit now with lust for ever.
She does not heed me. She is soft, maternal,
And full of heavenly cares. I cannot touch her,
I can but stand here damned and impotent,
Most bitterly aloof, and unremorseful
Of everything save virtue.
[Enter Hubert.]
Take her, Hubert;
Though whether she be yours or mine, I know not—
An ancient gift come back upon my hands
While you were at the wars. I gave her once;
You begged her of me: women are not chattels
To deal with as one's generosity
May prompt or straiten. . . .

Hubert.
Almund, she is dead!
Cara, my little wife,—oh, she has broken
Her tender heart with grieving for our boy.
No babe to fondle, no poor, clumsy Hubert
To light the piteous smile for,—so you asked
Grim death to take you where you might have rest,
You little, weary creature. Why, 'tis something
To see you lying, love, the pretty mouth
Freed from all struggle, and the hazel eyes
Fallen asleep,—they were the dearest eyes
In all the world,—but when they looked so dumb,
When nothing happened in them, and they grew
A prison for the tears, I could but pray
To fall in battle, and forget the pain;
Yet all this while you have been happy, sweet,
And singing with the child. You promised me
You would be happy when the babe was born.
This wavy hair! O Cara, we must smooth it;
You must remember, love, that you are dead,
And we must have some state; the king himself
Will lift you. Almund, I could never rid her
Of that poor, superstitious, fond belief
You loved her: it would please her now to think
You helped to bury her [looking up].
What have you done?
You have not murdered her? I thought you came
To comfort her, to drink the promised cup,
And found her lifeless: but some guilty deed
Is written on your brow.

Almund.
Death came between,
Or you had found me an adulterer.
Now, Hubert, judge me.

Hubert.
Hush, for there are devils
This sweet face must not wot of. You accuse her
To me, her husband, who am sure she loved you
Heart-brokenly as God would have a sinner
Yearn for His favour. Could you misinterpret?
You have fierce, flaming eyes. Oh, it is cruel
To think they fell on her.

Almund.
Yes, I have lusted;
Yet, Hubert, she died quiet in my arms.
I have not wronged you.

Hubert.
But your face is flint,
As when I trusted you to plead for me,
And found my Cara crouching and subdued,
And you a moody tyrant. You've no touch
For such fine natures. You have told her now—
Have you?—that she was wicked and unfaithful,
For loving you.

Almund.
It is irrational
To try to ope one's being to the dead;
And, Hubert, you have never known your friend.
You do not even call by their own names
My sins and my temptations. I must back,
Back to life's dreary offices. Farewell.

[Going.]
Hubert.
The straight, gaunt figures! And how sharp a look
He fixed on the poor outlines! Nay, I'll buy
One more last grace for her. Almund, come back,
And seal these eyes with kisses; they will purge you
Of every evil thought. You stumble.—Almund,
What secret are you hiding from your friend?
Could you not bear her importunity?
It was most innocent—such as the princess,
I mean the lady Millicent herself,
Had scarcely blamed.

Almund.
What, do you lead me to her?
Can she be mine now 'neath the coffin-lid,
And will you never touch her any more,
Nor look upon the face of her young son,
Who bears my features? Will you make a place
For me to lie beside her when I'm dead,
And never come between?—I am her lover.

Hubert.
O Almund, you look young—an exaltation,
A glory in your face; the past unfolds
In all its miracle,—for, ah, how dearly
If you have loved her, have you loved your friend.
Take the brown head to rest upon your knee,
For mine has simply been the nurse's part.
The little one bore piningly, and now
We've found where she belongs.

Almund
[folding Cara in his arms].
Oh, she had drink
For a man's deepest thirst.

Hubert.
Poor, broken trifle—
All that is left to offer to my friend
Amid this cursèd, senseless sacrifice.
How dared you keep your love from her?

Almund.
The princess,
My troth-plight; there were others.

Hubert.
I forgot,
My Almund, you are born that none can live
Without your love; there is no little weed
But will proclaim its birthright to the sun;
You hid from this sweet vetchling, and the leaves
Lost all their sturdy twine.—Ay, there were others.
This blessèd heart, she could not understand
That love can have no empery on earth,
There are so many others. 'Tis but little
That we can do for them, and yet to ease
Their pain there hath been all this tragedy.
I know not if 'tis well.

Almund.
She has the kisses
Of three long years ago; my Hubert knows
How dearly Almund rates him; Millicent
Will in deep-bosomed friendship be my own;
And things are settled on this blithe, green earth
Almost as it were heaven, where happy souls
Ne'er vex themselves with marriage. The young kingcups
Are sprouting lustily, and golden nature
Is full of her fresh joys. Oh, we must learn
To drink life's pleasures if we would be pure,
Deep, holy draughts, and the girl-cupbearer
Must not be set aside.