University of Virginia Library

ACT II

SCENE as in Act I
(Margery. Donald)
MARGERY
I would you were not going, yet I would
Not have you stay behind! Full well I know
What is man's part in this resisting world:
To breast aside a sea of opposites,
Wave after wave, then, buoyed upon their crest,
Be borne to whatsoever end he will.
And yet, and yet, my dream of happiness—
But this is not the fitting hour for dreams,
And so I will be silent.

DONALD
Nay, but tell me.
No dream of yours will e'er untimely be
To my attentive ear.

MARGERY
It is that you
Should fare to none save happy, peaceful fields,
And I should go with you where'er you went:
To watch the seed-corn dropped into the drill,
Or leaning oat-stooks dotted o'er the stubble,
Like weathered tents, a bivouac of peace;
Or, best of all, when comfortable Winter
Brings the long evenings and the blazing hearth,
To sit together by our own fireside.

DONALD
All this shall be when transitory War
Hath, like the hurtling hurricane, spent its force,
Or rolled elsewhere.

MARGERY
Pray Heaven that it be soon!
Ah me! weak women have the harder part
In this unequal world: to wait in dread,
Having no power to shape or ward the issue,
On which depends their doom.

DONALD
Heaven's equity
Will otherwhere the balance readjust.
If nobleness the greatest greatness be,
As is my deepest Creed, then woman is
Greater, aye, even stronger, than is man.
So, of your goodness help me with your prayers
Your hopeful trust!

MARGERY
Take, then, this talisman,
Brought by Crusader from Jerusalem,
My Mother's gift; then this one, last of all,
[Embraces him.]
To bring you home unscathed!

[Exeunt.]
[Enter Lady Heron.]
LADY HERON
Slave that I am!
And doomed to slavery by Love's feebleness!
Yet where's the woman would not rather be
Enslaved to such a lord, than ramble free
In quest of such another! For it is
The yearning of us all to be enslaved;
And O, how many in servitude there be,
Captive to conquerors weaker than themselves!
Chain like to that would I break, aye, and have broken.
Fettered to fool or fondling? Never, never!
It is their business to subdue, and ours
To be right willing subjects.
If only James do come, and I can stay
His going till the battle hath begun,
There's not a wile in woman's armoury
I will not use to keep him!
[Enter Margery.]
Did you see Surrey?

MARGERY
He burst upon the Tower
While I was straining all my gaze to scan
If he were nigh.

LADY HERON
And on me, unaware,
As I was waiting for your warning, broke,
And stayed with me awhile. But you—but you—
What did you when his apparition streamed,
Like to the Royal Standard in the wind,
From topmost turret?

MARGERY
I stood mute for awe,
For dread, for—nay, in sooth I know not what,
And then craved leave to go. He bade me stay,
And serve him with my clear young eyes, he said,
For wider seeing. Then, with lordly thanks
And courtly majesty he sent me here.
I would not be an hour with him alone,
For all my vaunted moated maidenhood.

LADY HERON
And never be it! For he roams the earth
With tender strength, bewitching not bewitched,
And that's the King for women, Margery!
Now you know more, indulge me in my sin,
As God, who made him what he is and us
Such as we are, sure will when comes the day
Of frailty's stern arraignment; for we are
Finely poised vanes for men's imperious gusts
To veer at will. It oft is called caprice.
'Tis they who are capricious, and not we.
We—we—have too much Spring sap in our blood,
Too much of madcap April, which oft shows
E'en in our slow-decaying autumn days,
That leave our vanished loveliness and lures
Winter's lone retrospect and barren tears.

MARGERY
Is it true King James has had as many loves
As rumour says?

LADY HERON
Likely enough, and more;
And so the more to count and reckon with,
When his frail Kingship comes again one's way.

MARGERY
They say that paramours are the privilege
Of Princes and of Poets.

LADY HERON
A vulgar fancy!
They are not the privilege of any man,
But, from far-off dead patriarchal days,
Common to Kings, and poets, and common folk.
But, happier these perchance, obscurity,
None care to penetrate, leaves dark their weakness.

MARGERY
I do not understand these roaming loves,
But only one long love, one, one, one always,
Such as I give to Donald, and he to me.

LADY HERON
Well, maybe, Margery, 'tis the only one;
And that is why men never love at all,
And we by love are never satisfied,
Since it deserves, in them, another name.
But, as I heard a gallant once in France
Say, men are dispositioned so, they deem
Their first love is their last, their last their first.

[A sound of voices outside.]
LADY HERON
What is that stir without? Go, child, and learn!

[Exit Margery, and forthwith returns.]
MARGERY
A wandering minstrel in the court without
Claims audience, and will suffer no denial.

LADY HERON
(to MARGERY)
'Tis the King!
Be sure of that, obedient to my bidding.
Conduct him hither, saying 'tis my will.
Then leave us, Margery. ... O well-set snare!

[Exit Margery.]
[Enter King James in the disguise of a minstrel, which he at once discards.]
[Lady Heron makes obeisance.]
KING
Rise! I would rather welcomed be by you,
Than knelt to by all subjects in the world.

LADY HERON
I feared that you were in the battle-field,
Protecting Scotland!

KING
And so I am, or was,
And shortly shall be once again. But now,
I come to win—nay, the word 'scaped me—woo,
A fairer and yet more protected Realm.

LADY HERON
Do not a scattered band of scouts and spies
Watch all the ways?

KING
Not the long wayless way
Whereby I came; for Surrey holds the South,
My host the North, half-circle each! Beside,
There is a rude but ready-witted man,
Threaded me here, who can play many parts,
Cutpurse or beggar, whining now for alms,
Now flinging them abroad; and this disguise
Enforcing with his own. Fear not for me!

LADY HERON
But what of Surrey and his English host?

KING
Nigh face to face with mine by Flodden Field,
Where I have all my dispositions made,
The Cheviots in my rear, the Till afront,
Huntley and Home commanding on the left,
Argyll and Lennox on the right, myself
Reserved to lead the centre. But enough,
Enough of war's rough issues. How is she,
The camp of my affections, utmost range
Of my heart's conflict?

LADY HERON
As you see!

KING
How fair!
Fairer no gift could make you. Yet I have
Brought jewels to this jewel, pearls to pearl
Whiter than all the whiteness of the foam
The far-off seas have petrified to pearl
To round the throat and curl among the curls,
And meekly pray you wear these for the sake,
Not of their loveliness, but of your own,
Till men shall think them lovelier because
Of that from which they shine.

LADY HERON
Nay, you misjudge.
'Tis not for gaze of men fair women wear
Necklace, tiara, clasp, and stomacher,
But to outshine, o'ershadow, other women.

KING
You need no jewels of the sea or mine,
Sapphire, or pearl, or diamond, to do that.
Bejewelled by your beauty, you outgleam
The beauties of all Courts in Christendom.
But, your devoted servitor, I have
Another and a far more precious gift
Provided for your pleasure, self forgot
And self's less generous thoughts.

LADY HERON
What may that be?

KING
Your husband.

LADY HERON
He!

KING
A prisoner in my hands,
For—nay, what matters it for what, well known
To you no less than me and all the world,—
Withal your husband, I in vain besought
That you would visit at my Court, he bound,
On parole, as a formidable foe
Along this wavering Border, not to fly
And join my enemies, I have set free,
Without condition.

LADY HERON
(anxiously)
When will he be here?

KING
Not yet, not yet, save homeward track there be
Unknown to folk familiar less with hills,
Gorges, and torrents, of this much-scarred land,
Than native lords whose life hath dwelt within it.
Shall I recite the latest song I made,—
One makes so many,—on the endless theme
I see before me now?

LADY HERON
I pray you, Sir!

KING

LADY HERON
Which of the ladies at King James's Court
Inspired that amorous lilting roundelay?

KING
The one sole lady at the one sole Court
Whereat he pays his homage.

[Kisses her hand.]
LADY HERON
Deftly answered,
Following so well on lay so dexterous.
When Provence was the realm of Chivalry,
You would have been the Prince of Troubadours.
'Tis said that Surrey never turns a stave.

KING
He is to-day then much behind the fashion.

LADY HERON
He wakes to thought of war and statesmanship,
And sleeps to dream of statesmanship and war.
There is a towering terror in his gaze,
A menace in his very quietness.
Were I a man, his friend I fain would be,
Never his enemy.

KING
But, being a woman, how
Do such stern elements affect your heart?

LADY HERON
My heart? Good Sir, they leave it as it was,
In awe, the natural attitude of woman.
It is the mind he dominates, such mind
As the heart leaves scant room for in us women.

KING
But he? Has he no room for love and joy,
Even in the throng of statesmanship and war?

LADY HERON
Surmising if I answer, I should say
Love is with him a flitting interlude,
A trivial, restful, and refreshing sport,
From weightier business. He is nought but Soldier,
No poet-lover.

KING
May not a man be both?
Kings, soldiers, poets, all are flesh and blood.

LADY HERON
And all as changeable! with flesh as quick
As the sere ling to any trivial flame,
And blood as quick to rise and fall as spate,
And slackening water, in our Border Tweed.

KING
They say that womenkind are like to that.

LADY HERON
They say! They say! It is you poets say it,
Because that you have got the saying of't;
The being of it sooth to both being common,
And, with your leave, to Kings. Were't otherwise,
It were a dull and stationary world,
I would as lief be out of. At the best,
'Tis somewhat drear.

KING
Till love enliven it,
Then life becomes a cheerful road enough,
Save that the milestones pass too rapidly.

LADY HERON
It may be so for Kings, but not for Queens.
I would not be King James's Queen for all
The titles and the robes in Christendom.
But, ever since men sate upon a throne,
Queens have too often but a sighing time.

KING
Unless they be fair queens by courtesy,
Then are they more besought than any King,
Having yet more to give.

LADY HERON
And when they give it,
Are straight dethroned.

KING
To sit on yet some other,
If that be so. But men there are, dear lady,
Who do not tire of such fair Queens as you,
And, by the Saints of Scotland, I am one.

LADY HERON
What is this love we prate about so much,
Honouring the most inconstant thing on earth
With specious character of constancy,
And singing and re-singing of it as if
It by us still abided, though it be
Itself as transitory as any song?
A mother's or a foster-mother's love
For peevish babe; a sister's for a brother,
He all unworthy; soldiers for some cause,
Or good or bad, or right or wrong, deemed good,
Imagined right, for thinking it will serve;
Aye, even a ripened woman's for ripening man,
Who never ripens,—these, an you will, deserve
The title and the dignity of Love;
But not the fawnings of ferocious men,
Quick promises, more quick forgetfulness.
One might as well deck with the name of love
Fierce forays on our Border for sleek kine,
Or poise of hovering hawk before it swoop
Down on fear-fascinated dove that should
Fly when it crouches, tears its entrails out,
Casting its foolish feathers to the wind,
Then wings its satiated lust aloft
In quest of further victims! But I rave,
And you smile mockingly.

KING
Nay, who can tell
The meaning of a smile? There are so many;
The smile of innocence, the smile of guilt;
Of sympathy, disdain, I know not what,
The backward-pondering, forward-looking smile,
And what some call the philosophic smile,
And finally, wae's me! the smile of death.

LADY HERON
Nay, that's the last and wisest smile of all.

KING
You are much too wise to-day. But, as for me,
I never have but one same smile for you,
The smile of love and longing.

LADY HERON
You forget
There is the smile of cloistered holiness,
And chaste seclusion. I have a little maid.
And she hath that, and dearly do I love her,
Because I have it not.

KING
Well, in little maids.
But women who worship holiness disdain
The man that hath it.

LADY HERON
Since he thus disdains us.
In man we worship manhood, valour, strength,
Aye, waywardness, if it but honour us.
Is that not why?

KING
You are askew to-day;
I cannot set you straight. Now must I go,
And in the hurly-burly of the fight
With Surrey and his Southrons half forget
Fair Ford and fairer chatelaine.

LADY HERON
Go not yet!
You seem but just to have come. How you lack patience
And fail to mark that what I feel to-day
I may not feel to-morrow, what I felt
But yesterday, to-day I feel no more.
We are but dancing bubbles on the stream,
And man the forceful current.

KING
So you say,
But, when I am anear you, then meseems
You are the current, and the bubble I.

LADY HERON
Recite to me once more; for poesy is
The drug that brings the mind oblivion,
Wherein we drowse 'twixt two opposing worlds,
Sleeping and waking, heedless which is which,
If either, both, or neither, life or death,
And know not which were sweeter.

KING

LADY HERON
That is a deeper and diviner strain,
And so too large to fit my littleness;
Withal I do commend the mind that made it;
Yet see how language' self becomes a cheat,
And very pandar, when employed by love.
Love signifies a hundred different things,
And with its better meaning veils its worse.
That is the truth of it.

KING
Now, go I must,
Or shall be late.

LADY HERON
More reason you should stay,
To prove you love me.

KING
Doth not my coming—Hark!
Methought I heard a far-off clarion shrill.

LADY HERON
We hear that which we listen for, and see
The thing expected, though are neither there.
Shall we ascend the Tower, and thence descry
What you would know?

KING
'Tis better that I went.

LADY HERON
What! all this wooing, and not one embrace!

[Tenders him her cheek, which he kisses, as she affects to hold him. While she is doing so, door is thrown open, and enter her husband. Seeing James and Lady Heron's attitude, he halts, and looks from one to the other.]
LADY HERON
(with perfect composure)
His Majesty, King James!

SIR WILLIAM
I did not think
So soon again to see the Scottish King.
Under my roof-tree, too, and patent 'tis
No stranger there. In war no less than peace,
In camp as at his Court, so it would seem,
He needs must have his light-o'-loves to ease
The weight of Kingship and the load of State.
He had done better and more royally
To keep his prisoner than betray him thus,
Or be more timely in his treachery.
But, Madam, it is you, you first of all,
I ask to what, long absent from my home,
I this dishonourable honour owe
From the seductive semblance of a King,
Who on the eve of battle leisure finds
To play the royal cuckoo. Now, the truth!
For I will suffer nothing but the truth,
Have I to pluck it forcibly from both.

LADY HERON
Then you shall hear the truth, and so shall he!
He came to woo me, and he came in vain,
As, if he came a thousand times, he would.
Think you I know not of the loves at home,
The loves abroad,—the two are truly one,—
Of his most amorous Northern Majesty,
Or that I have not heard of Lady Scrope,
His latest leman! I am merely one,
Or was to have been, could he have had his way,
Of the frail puppets of his gracious favour.
But you, my lord, perhaps will answer me,
If that your wife be fashioned like to that,
And if I bear a rival near my throne?

KING
Great Heaven! Who is it, then, that brought me here?

LADY HERON
'Twas I! 'Twas I, exultant to have done it.
Hie to that embrasure, and gaze beyond,
And see where now your army lies encamped,
With back to England, road to Scotland barred;
Your hosts disadvantageously swung round
By English skill! You whining all the while
Here at my feet, and, like an honest man,
Whining, confess, in vain! I lured you here,
For England's sake, for sake of English Throne,
Her King, Her Cause!

SIR WILLIAM
Pray Heaven the tale be true.
I will return anon, when this strange guest
Hath ta'en his leave, whom here I leave to be
Dismissed or stayed by you, as seems you best.

[Exit Sir William.]
KING
Magnificently acted!

LADY HERON
Duped again!
I heard the trumpets riding on the wind,
Here while you knelt and simpered of your love.
You will be late, and I it was who kept you!
O, I am dead aweary of your sighs
And songful sueing. See you never, man,
The world's a woman, waiting to be subdued,
Not wooed, but won. Keep back your tenderness,
Until they have surrendered. Crush them! Outrage them!
And awe them into love's submissiveness!
Then leave them to their languishing, and go,
Stronger for that imperative embrace,
And hew your way to whatso throne you will.

KING
Can it be true? Tell me it is not true.
I cannot think so fair a thing as you
Can be so false.

LADY HERON
Or man so fatuous.
Doubt it, believe it, doubt it then again,
Nor ever know if truth, or doubt, be true.
But 'twould mis-seem me to forget to thank
Your Majesty for liberating thus
My loving lord, so timely in return,
So welcome here at any time. Now go!
Or you will be too late for your defeat,
As now you are for victory!

KING
Spake then
The Apparition at Linlithgow true,
And do these warnings from a bodyless world
Forbode our Fate? “Go not to war with England!
Or, if the hotness of your blood demand
That sanguinary ordeal, beware,
Beware of woman's glamour, woman's wiles.”
Farewell! with whom none ever can fare well,
As fair as Heaven, yet more false than Hell!

[Exit.]
LADY HERON
Farewell! Not fair, though false. Come to me, Surrey,
And I will yield you all I have to give,
My love, my lord, my conqueror, my King!
My merciless Commander!