 | The Race of Leaves |  |
xlviii
ACT III.
An Ante-room of the Regia: to the right the Imperial Bedchamber, to the left the Bathroom. Gladiatorial weapons lie about in confusion. A statue of Janus, wreathed, stands in the midst. It is the last day of the old year 192. Eclectus, Sagana, & Folia.SAGANA.
We wait to arm the Emperor; it is dull
To wait so long, to wait so anxiously,
To shake one's bracelets or re-bind one's tresses
Hour after hour.
FOLIA.
I tremble in each limb
At thought of his approach.
SAGANA.
And yet that fan
Of peacock-plumes, that loveliest veil of Cos,
Like water round your bosom!
FOLIA.
What are they?
If you had suffered ridicule and insult
Cruel as I have borne, your plumes and gauzes
Would hang as on a pyre.
ECLECTUS.
This lady carries
Her hoops of pearl with spirit.
SAGANA.
I have learnt
My lesson from our queen of concubines,
The royal Marcia: for to daunt our lover,
Grown fatal since he shed his sister's blood,
She meets him in the kirtle and the arms
Of a defying Amazon. He yields
On the instant to the freshness of her challenge;
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His thralled belief. She might have been a mime,
She acts with such free grace the part she chooses;
Not Pylades himself can rival her.
Some say he taught the new Hippolyta
The carriage of her shield, her doughty motions,
The port of her scant tunic.
ECLECTUS.
It is false.
A most injurious falsehood! She herself
Dared all to cow the fiction-loving temper
Of Commodus, and gloriously prevailed.
SAGANA.
Nude from the knee!
ECLECTUS.
Her face—the floating hair
Soft round the helmet-cap; the face in arms.
SAGANA.
Then you admire her aspect, and the fiction
Gains on your faith.
ECLECTUS.
We need some ancient stories
To help us to live on.
FOLIA.
I cannot feign.
I can but pray “O Janus, close the past.”
ECLECTUS.
And I would pray
“Make open vista for another year!”
Life passes like a ship, O Lord of Time,
Before thy twofold office.
FOLIA.
Hark, at last
The Emperor quits the bath; I hear his feet
Splash on the marble. I am cold, so cold!
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(Enter Marcia as an Amazon & her servant Jallia.)
MARCIA.
The Emperor is within?
Eclectus, greeting! I have bought my gifts
Against to-morrow: and a flood of sun
Has filled the shops, has lighted up the coins
Of Janus, made the sweetmeats jewel-bright,
And purchasing a holiday employ
That wasted hours. I scarcely found a moment
To don my armour and disguise myself;
Yet Jallia would not help.
ECLECTUS.
The child looks pale,
Your little servant.
MARCIA.
Winter-pallor, nothing
But discontent with one who is beloved.
Heigh-ho! The shops were gay, and as a bride
I trafficked everywhere and laughed, such gladness,
Strong as a panic, rocked my heart. This sun!
Your ancient god of light is god of change:
What would he do for me, even me? Remember
How I was born to these divinities,
And with my father and my mother worshipped
Our Janus, this dear symbol of a truth,
Time's image, that divine Eternity
Hath dispossessed of worship. Jallia shakes
Her solemn head, and you, Eclectus, fix
Your eyes on me as on the midnight stars.
I am a Christian, and to me at last
Old things are new; but Jallia hates the old.
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(In a sweet undertone.)
As false, abhorred, forbidden.
MARCIA.
Child, not so;
Their power is in them always, and the passage
Of old year into new for ever shows
The countenance of Janus, and for ever
Will stir the worship of our time-born race.
ECLECTUS.
The Emperor!
(Enter Commodus from the Bathroom; he is dressed as an Amazon, exactly like Marcia.)
COMMODUS.
What, my Amazon, fresh-travelled
From Thermodon! Before you could arrive
I hoped to meet you worthily. Ha, ha!
I can but laugh, the cymbals in me clash
To hail your gallant fairness.
MARCIA.
I am merry
This morning as if Caucasus had fed me
With gustful breezes. And how fares my lord?
Fetch me the wine-cup, Sagana.
COMMODUS.
I slept
Unconscionably late, a dreadful sleep
Against my will, with none to waken me,
And faces round me on the walls of doom.
Wine, wine!
(Marcia fills the bowl Sagana presents.)
Bold cup-bearer, my day begins,
My sun first rises with the flush of wine:
All other dawn is wan, improvident.
You usher-in existence!
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To his love,
My Amazon, your Amazonius drinks.
I am entirely yours. You see my shoulder
Is bare like this to which I press my mouth,
As Mavors feeds his love on Venus' beauty.
Your moon-shaped shield between us! Ha, defence!
My queen, my queen, I must submit. To-day
I front the world your representative
In war and conquest, bidden by a dream,
That crossed the mournful horrors of my slumber,
To wear your garment, swing your moon-shaped shield,
Lace on your buskins, press my shorter curls
With Amazonian casque, and let the world
See me become the woman I adore,
As Hercules became. I strive to-day
In the gladiators' school, equipped as you,
Hippolyta's giant image, sworn to prove
How men excel as Amazons the sweet,
Long-haired, pearl-tinctured fighters. You grow white?
Must a Gargarean in your armour seem
So monstrous to your eyes? Hippolyta!
You swoon, faint-heart!
MARCIA.
No, loose me! By the girdle
Of Mars, I warn you from such insult: none
But women can display the moon-shaped shield.
COMMODUS.
Who was it, tell me, robbed Hippolyta
Of Mavors' belt? Great Hercules, my god,
My genius and my heavenly prototype.
You make a vain appeal, O warrior-love!
An insult: when the Emperor of the world
Wears in the world's eye everything that decks you
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His singleness of worship by the choice
Of your attire for clothing; when he stands
Like some high peak in snow and steely ice,
A masquerading granite. Folia, there,
If you would 'scape a spear-prick for your sloth,
Search out the moon-shaped shield I bade you borrow
From the Lady Marcia's armoury.
(Exit Folia.)
MARCIA.
My lord,
You ever have been noble, and with honour,
All undeserved, have crowned me in the sight
Of Rome and of the empire. See, 'tis I,
No Amazon, implores you to accord
Still that same honour to your handmaid, still
That deep-endearing courtesy. This garb
Is but disguise, an actor's make-belief
To give you private pleasure: such disguise
As Love for lovers puts on trustfully.
The Amazon is Amazon to you,
Not to the world, the gladiators' gaze,
Or the arena's laughter.
COMMODUS.
You are thankless,
Most dangerous to yourself in words like these;
A thing to be distrusted and abased.
Presumptuous woman, I have honoured you
By giving you the purple that I wear,
Hanging you with the jewels I have warmed
In triumphs and solemnities; no touch
Of royalty that gilds me but on you
It has been laid: and now when I assume
Your raiment, your short tunic, crescent-shield,
And manly cap of steel, you round your lips
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Of valour with my compeers of the sword
I seek to make your dress invincible,
And in your guise receive the plaudits due
To mastery, you, whom I raise to heaven,
Cringe and implore retirement and neglect,
Or with indifference mock my love, allowing
The charm with which you sway it is a lie.
If you are not Hippolyta indeed,
As I am Hercules on current coin,
In everlasting marble; if your mind
Can make no truth of life's vacuity,
Basing its shadows on the strength of dream,
And filling them voluptuously with life-blood
Of riotous belief, then . . . .
But your face
Is dazzlingly an Amazon's.
(Folia brings him the armour.)
The shield,
The cap! I am the champion of this rage.
You fire me to exceed it. Arms, to arms!
That all may see you triumph. Amazon,
Your Amazonius!
Nay, you will not kiss!
A combat must be won, then lips shall clash;
You scorn unwarlike softness.
ECLECTUS.
Sire, I ask,
As from an oracle, will Rome revere
An Emperor turned a woman?
COMMODUS.
Hercules
Sits with the gods; he dressed as Omphale.
ECLECTUS.
The theatres gibe him.
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Women laugh at him.
COMMODUS.
They laugh—you say it! And to honour you
I took your male caparison, for love
Of your enchanting image, for the pastime
Of making it death-dealing. It is found
A feminine disguise, a harlot's prank,
Proud Marcia playing pantomime.
You laugh,
You, from your womanhood; but I will drag
This dress of yours across such infamy
As you will recognise. What women dare
In secret, and their lovers hide shame-faced,
I will expose. My Amazon grows grave:
At least no laughter from these lips! Ho, girls,
Unmask your mistress, set her in your midst
In veils and scarves, a flaunting concubine.
(Exit.)
(Marcia fixes her eyes on Eclectus, meeting his. The women do not move.)
MARCIA.
Go, Folia, fetch me from the Emperor's chamber
His purple toga.
(She sinks down on a couch.)
FOLIA.
Oh, I dare not, queen,
I dare not enter.
JALLIA.
I will fetch the cloak!
(Exit.)
MARCIA.
(As Sagana & Folia withdraw.)
The others slink away.
Eclectus!
ECLECTUS.
Love!
You rise as to a call.
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(She comes to him.)
You can forgive
Even this disguise?
ECLECTUS.
Even this.
(Jallia returns.)
MARCIA.
Brave Jallia, thanks.
Sweep it around me, sweep it round my knees,
Across my breast and shoulder. Let me kiss you,
That you refused even once to touch these weapons,
This fooling tunic.
JALLIA.
It was wickedness
To wear such garments, vile, idolatrous,
Displeasing to our God.
(Enter Pylades.)
MARCIA.
Oh, gently, child!
You should be gentle—happy, safe and tethered
In the green pasture.
Pylades!
PYLADES.
You start?
Empress, it is the hour you promised me
An hour ago; you said you needed practice
In the carriage of your spear; you would be ready,
Clad as Hippolyta. These trailing robes—
MARCIA.
I count my best possession. Come no more.
PYLADES.
In what have I offended?
MARCIA.
Go, my mood
Is bitter and unjust.
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You banish me!
But if you snatch from me each day's one hour,
If you will never come, nor lend a glow
To the story of my feet, nor sometimes laugh
As when you made me happy . . .
MARCIA.
Hush, you know
I love your dancing.
PYLADES.
But you shared it, queen;
It sprang from your white feet like flaming fire,
It wreathed your limbs, it made you in yourself
Free as the pliant stars and musical
As they in their continuance. One by one,
You were all highest goddesses that dance:
Hera the Queen, Demeter noble-browed,
Athena with severest cadence moving,
And heavenly Aphrodite, soft as ocean
In step, with windy sweep of golden Loves
Round every measure.
All that I record
Is what you flashed or wove across my eyes.
I cannot dream a goddess or a nymph,
Or any woman; you have made a pyre
Of dim imaginations, you who are
The fearful, bright and whole reality.
ECLECTUS.
(To Marcia.)
You scared your women; you are softness now
To the sly slave who drew you to his mimes:
You love his dancing—ay, and to Infernus
Would follow him, clear-hearted, jig on jig!
(To Pylades.)
Begone!
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You know me of the Emperor's train,
Chosen to attend him.
ECLECTUS.
Where? To the arena,
To bathe his wounds if he exceed his godhead,
And angry swordsmen mutiny! Begone.
PYLADES.
Then to the Emperor's rooms, where, chamberlain,
You know you cannot flout me. But not there,
Unless—
(To Marcia.)
It is your pleasure.
MARCIA.
Bid farewell.
PYLADES.
Some mocking cloud is on me from the gods,
Not my true patroness. I never bid
Farewell to any shape of loveliness
In vision or on earth: there, I am free.
(He takes up Marcia's spear & shield.)
Your shield, your spear! Now you are left defenceless;
You will not conquer, woman with no arts,
And so no armour! Vale!
(Exit into the imperial bedchamber.)
ECLECTUS.
Insolence!
How vile! He treats you—but it is no matter
For my concern,
Except that by that madman, that Secutor,
That Hercules to match your Amazon,
I am (with a laugh)
not trusted, but the single creature
He would not err in trusting;—chamberlain,
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To court that wretched pantomime no more.
Burn up the clothes, take off that brutal casque.
No vestige of him!
MARCIA.
For the Emperor's sake
I put this armour on: some make-believe
Must be where women strive. I strive no more.
I am defenceless; I shall cast away
The tunic, all the legend. (She gives her helmet to Jallia and dismisses hêr.)
O Eclectus,
Put off your jealous anger, put it off,
For it may ruin, and it severs us.
ECLECTUS.
Are we not severed?
MARCIA.
But if destiny
Grants us no further blessing, if the answer
To our dark prayers be this, I am content
To breathe with you, to share the mystery
Of fate, to part my thought with you as bread,
To lie in the dark of human ignorance,
Warm in the wraps of love. When souls are bound
In such inextricable unity
Death fumbles at the knot.
ECLECTUS.
Oh, hush! My dumbness
Cannot break through at once. My love, my secret,
I think you have been with me in each barque
My soul has steered through Time; yet, agony!
I never may possess you.
MARCIA.
But the joy
Is mine of living to you as the grape
Lives to the sun, not to the gatherer.
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LAETUS.
(Within.)
The deed will cost your life.
(Re-enter Commodus with Laetus.)
COMMODUS.
Eclectus, send
The furniture of the imperial bed,
The bed and all an emperor's state requires
To the gladiators' school: for I will seal
The year's commencement with a wondrous vision
To hold men's lids apart, while Rome herself
Shall quake from Capitol to Vale, beholding
Her lord ride forth from those forbidden portals,
As Hercules climbed up from Hell's own door.
ECLECTUS.
You will be slain. If once the crowd admits
An insult it is unrelinquishing
Till the offender perish. Have you thought,
O Emperor, what your deed would violate:
The omens of the year, the holiness,
The honour of your office, of the world,
Yea, of the gods.
LAETUS.
For you would show yourself
As if you lived in infamy among
The ever-infamous, the dregs and scum
Of serfdom and captivity.
COMMODUS.
O fools,
What am I to my people? Magistrate?
The first Augustus laughs. Or general?
Vespasian, Hadrian and Titus wink
Across their armies. If I claimed a crown
As poet, dancer, singer, I must stoop
To Nero's coronation. There and there
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But each togated soul that claps the games,
And every swordsman from the fiercest stress
Of battle, every artist rich in lust
To feel the clang of metal start his brain,
Holds me supreme in the arena, perfect,
Miraculous, invincible.
MARCIA.
He raves
Dark-sighted, god-bedazzled! Commodus,
I do not doubt you; I would spur you on
To brave Hyrcanian tigers. All you will
Is yours: in this the gods do not oppose you;
That is so terrible! In their contempt
The gods do not oppose. You will go down
And face the Senate; Janus will be there,
And tremble at his office to present
To Time this masking figure of a Power
So awful. . . .
(Turning to Eclectus.)
What were Egypt's mummied kings,
Their statues and their tombs to the quick Cæsar,
Who passes to Olympus' feasts as simply
As an invited guest. I see you fall,
And stoop and stain your majesty. You shall not.
I do not kneel, I do not flatter you;
I am your empress in my urgency,
I am your empress, for I love your honour
Far dearer than my life. You shall not go.
(She guards the portal. Commodus lays his hand on his Amazon spear; Laetus & Eclectus range themselves by Marcia to protect her.)
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You shall not go! By heaven, I am no god
To you . . . You are no Amazon to me;
A servant tricked out in her master's robes,
A mere false-seeming, a deception, lost
To poetry and the truth persuasion rears
Among the blossoms of the rose to forge us
Belief as stout as mail. How women kill!
Cool things, damp airs! No banquetings of men,
No festivals of gods, no marriages
Of god and mortal but a woman's coldness
Can freeze blank-dead.
No Amazon to me!
All dreams are at an end; the world, that farce
Of dancing leaves, that fancied atellan
Is breaking into nothing. Fertile Powers,
That picture forth the universe, I share
Your aim—to plant the void; but I alone
Of all the tribe of earth can neighbour you
In palpable ambition.
Triple band
Of enemies, Eclectus, Laetus, you,
My empress and my Omphale, my love,
The mistress of her master and the tyrant
Of the world's bosom . . hence! You are as vain
As fraudulent as all things, and as worthy
Destruction at my hand. Ha, ha! Begone!
You disobey . . .
Fear to withstand my actual demon. Go!
MARCIA.
(Moving from the portal.)
Nay, pass my lord, pass to your destiny:
I stand aside.
COMMODUS.
These are your apprehensions,
You hollow wanton! So you give your blood
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These shadows wear as garments! Now I see
From hill-top into valley of your fraud.
Traitress, conspirator with him and him,
The concubine of both for all I know,
For all I care. No protest!
(To Eclectus.)
Take your serpent,
And hide her from the eagle of the world,
And the rushing of his feathers.
ECLECTUS.
He is mad!
Marcia, this moment I command you, come!
(Laetus covers their exit.)
LAETUS.
Your will shall be accomplished in all points,
Your chamber furnished at the school, your horses
Led down, your fatal body-guard prepared.
All that your anxious ministers can do
To keep you sacred from the touch of harm
Shall zealously be done with many prayers.
COMMODUS.
Ha, ha! With many prayers!
(Laetus, with a reverence, goes out.)
Are you within,
My hyacinth-blossom, Philocommodus?
I hear your feet.
(Re-enter Pylades.)
PYLADES.
My Emperor.
COMMODUS.
Fetch the tablet
I laid beside my couch.
(Exit Pylades within.)
O treacherous spawn!
Marcia the chief, as she held foremost place
When I was mad, who now am mad no longer,
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Next, her protector, the rose-red Egyptian,
Who stood so ornamental in white robes,
I made him dear to me, and then that oily,
Most Roman Laetus . . .
(Re-enter Pylades, as he gives the scroll Commodus kisses him.)
Ah, the linden-bark.
(He writes, then turns suddenly to Pylades.)
Pigeon, you know the slave that yesterday
Heated my bath too hot?
PYLADES.
Diodotus.
COMMODUS.
(Writing again.)
But you are white and trembling. Pass within!
Yet first a word, my Philocommodus.
If your remembrance hold a thought of him
Who called you Pylades, I reckon you
My Anteros, and on the wheel or cross,
Or by long, undeforming punishments,
Shall teach you love by hate. Go, smoothe my pillow.
(Exit Pylades within.)
All old-year shadows, all should end like days,
Like hours, like moments that are stale and crumble
In urns or men's oblivion. Marcia, Marcia!
But, when my sister failed, I was a fool
To build myself upon a concubine.
A fool, I am a fool, a sight for gods
To thunder at with gross hilarity.
I am no son of heavenly Jupiter!
See, see! O mirror of myself!
(He faces a gold mirror that reflects at the same time a head of Marcus Aurelius.)
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The jest, ye Plautus-powers, mirth-makers! See,
The statue of my father, our two faces,
Our bland and indistinguishable faces,
Set cheek by jowl—in marble one, in flesh
The other, yet self-same—our curls, our lids,
Smooth skin, caressing beards, and fatuous,
Tired smile at all that is not vanity.
O husband of Faustina and the father
Of Commodus! O good philosopher,
To whom the generations were as leaves,
And all that he begot and all his fame,
And all he loved and hated leaves of spring
Consigned in birth to autumn! Such is he.
Now rate his son, his double, from the womb
Of the famed harlot, whom in appetence
He set his eyes and heart on thirty years;
His son, the hated of the world, the hater
Of every vain allurement that his lust
Takes without relish, Commodus the sceptic
Of every faculty but sense alone,
Its truth of touch, sight, hearing, and their orgies
Of blood and lewdness! Judgment! Shouting Heavens,
The verdict of your laughter!
Is there substance
In what we each call void—fame, propagation,
Toil, common joys? Is there in hollowness
Some jet of sap we heard not? No, to-day
Marcia has put suspicion of a virtue
In anything to shame. If I should die
She has so wrought I should be simply dead.
Tiber flows insignificant, yon fig-tree
Stands dark upon the cliff: all's outer show,
And there is nothing I can own or covet,
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In this once copious universe. Ye twain
Athwart the gold, what desert in your eyes,
And ignorance how mortal! Worshippers
Of harlots, son and father, so disgust
Crashes farewell to both. A parricide,
Self-murderer too!
(He dashes the gold mirror to the ground.)
And now for rest, for wine,
The blood of sleep, and Lethe, that is sleep's
White flesh, forgetfulness. My linden-scroll,
Companion of my pillow!
(He lays his cheek on it.)
Sleep, sleep, sleep!
(He staggers into the bed-chamber.)
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