 | Armageddon |  |
43
Scene II.
An English Orchard. Sunset. Enter the widowed Lady Carteret and Ethel Millard. The widow leans on the arm of the girl as they slowly pass towards a garden-seat beneath an apple-tree. Here they sit.Lady Carteret.
How the days linger on, and still no news
Of him, my boy!
Ethel.
Of him, who is my love.
Lady Carteret.
Yes, yes, too often, Ethel, I forget
In my deep yearning for the son I love,
That for a lover you are trembling too.
Ethel.
And on one life two women's hearts are fixed.
44
At times, I think, perhaps too much of self
Is in the thought, that ours the harder task is;
The task of women in war-time to wait.
Ethel.
And we would do so much, yet we must wait.
Oh, how one envies now that maid of France,
Who, riding all in steel, led armies on.
After such glory did she feel the flame!
Lady Carteret.
But then she had no child.
Ethel.
Nor any lover.
Lady Carteret.
Oh, who would grudge the triumph of brave men?
Ethel.
How glorious the onward rush, the cheer!
Lady Carteret.
Splendid to stand against the leaden hail!
Ethel.
Or in the mowed war-line to give no inch.
Lady Carteret.
How fine the grapple in the very heaven!
45
Or go back for a friend through gaping death!
Lady Carteret.
And yet, and yet—to wait is harder still.
There one forgets, the blood leaps in the vein!
They charge—retreat; they charge—or headlong fall.
What time in all the roaring for a thought?
Death beckons, yet with what a royal hand!
The fury and the peril, that is theirs;
The stillness and the safety, that is ours.
Yet He, who reads the heart, knows which is worse.
Ethel.
The dull expectancy that finds no vent.
Lady Carteret.
The dread by night, to stifle through the day.
Ethel.
The uncertainty that's worse than any truth!
Lady Carteret.
To go about the house, as though at ease.
46
The deep alarm, not outwardly betrayed.
Lady Carteret.
She is a hero too who checks the tear!
Ethel.
Her victory is dumb, but victory still!
Lady Carteret.
Yet, how serene the October evening shines!
How well these apples ripen to the fall;
Leisurely flushing perfect.
Ethel.
And yet, some, see
Strewn by the gale o'ernight, untimely fallen!
[Enter Charles Rowland, who slowly approaches the garden-seat, bare-headed.
Rowland.
Ladies, I bring you news, which I
know you will hear with the courage which is
asked of all of us in such a time as this. I thought
you would rather hear it from me than see it by
chance. I was your boy's tutor and afterwards
his greatest friend.
47
Is he wounded?
Rowland.
He was wounded, Lady Carteret—
Lady Carteret.
You mean—
Rowland.
That he has met with a splendid
death; that he is to be envied by all of us who are
compelled to stay behind. As soon as I hear
more I will come and tell you. There can be
nothing but what is glorious. I will not intrude
on you any longer. Please send for me if you
care to, I will come at once.
Lady Carteret.
Thank you.
[Exit Rowland. Ethel is shaking with sobs which she in vain tries to suppress. Lady Carteret remains dry-eyed.
Let the tears come, child, they will bring relief;
To me they will not come.
Ethel.
Ah, but forgive me
I should be helping you to bear and not
Myself give way; and yet the future dashed
48
From day to day, at least I never knew;
Each dawn brought in for me a deeper dawn;
Each sunrise was a lighting of my life.
Soft fires would hover round me in the air.
The year waned, but the spring was in my soul;
I could not see the burning of my leaves.
I stood tiptoe upon youth's primrose-bank;
I blew warm kisses o'er the sea of time.
The very fear, the fierce uncertainty,
Heaven help me! gave an edge to happiness!
Now all the colour has gone out of the world,
And now there is no reason in existing—
The Why is out of life and all is flat.
Lady Carteret.
You, you, a child that has but played about,
And lost a favourite toy, to whom the Earth
Is still a nursery, what should you know
Of grief that is too deep for those slight tears?
Your sorrow is the future, mine the past;
You can but fret, while I for ever pine.
49
I knew the boy ere he was in the flesh;
Even then we were companions through long nights.
He was a thought, a hope—and now a dream.
To you he was but as a summer dawn;
What is your dawn beside my red sunset?
Oh, I have laboured on that growing soul
As patient as a sculptor on his marble;
And for that holy childhood I made light
Of all the distance between me and God.
His young flaws and his frailties would strike fear
Deep into me; how wistfully I watched him,
Turning his lightest word this way and that!
His father dead, my love was not divided,
But full on him and sheer it spent itself.
You—have you prayed for him, or if you prayed,
Was there no difference in your prayer and mine?
The sigh of a girl and a woman's agony!
50
Bursts on the rock, with what a moan at last
On melancholy shingles it recedes!
[Ethel buries her face in her hands.
Ah, but forgive me; we are both so struck;
Both women, and perhaps you understand,
As women can at times, not having felt;
Strangely our knowledge comes, our sympathy,
And we are touched by that we never touched.
Give me your arm; we'll go into the house
And lose a little in the general grief
Our sharp, particular pain, help and console—
How many must there be, wretched as we are,
Mothers and wives and daughters through the land;
One in a palace hurt, one in a cot.
You are my daughter now!
Ethel.
Lean on me, mother!
[They go into the house.
| Armageddon | |