 | A Romantic Farce |  |
ACT IV
SCENE.—A Wood.Enter Edmund and May.
May.
Where is your bubbling mirth that overflowed
In fresh, fantastic volume yester-eve?
If doleful thoughts should shadow any face,
My past might countenance such mirroring,
And see, I laugh; yea, by all merry things
Light-hearted am I! 'Tis the sun, I think.
Why are you sad? If you still raise your brows,
And stare so, like a spaniel, and unslack
The pressure of your lips, I'll think, indeed,
You mean to mimic my lost love, and steal
With stolen looks my heart.
Edmund.
Am I like him?
May.
When you look sad you are, and when you laugh,
I think he would have laughed so if he could.
Edmund.
You think him dead.
May.
Sometimes, and sometimes not.
Edmund.
Say you were certain of his death, what then?
May.
In weeds that widows wear I'd hide myself
In some far lonely land, and mourn for him
Among the hills and streams; and read his book;
And, feeding seld and spare, woo fickle death,
For one cold kiss to take my soul to him.
Edmund.
There is no man that's worthy of such love.
May.
I think not of his worth or want of worth;
I love him. But if gentle manliness,
Beauty, and honour, and unsounded passion
Deserve a maid's devotion, my poor love
Is but a scanty tribute to his worth;
And—woe, alas!—its date of payment past,
And the robbed creditor far hence or dead,
Its garnered hoard weighs heavy on my heart.
Edmund.
Fear not, fear not. There's something whispers me
Your love will be rewarded, in so far
As to possess your sweetheart can amend
The lengthy woe you suffer for his sake.—
Now, here's a thing to do to make you glad.
Suppose that I'm the true and true-loved earl:
I'll go into that grove, and suddenly
Emerging, light on you; and you will know me,
Or I will know you, or we'll know each other,
Or let our unthought act the instant mould.
May.
O, in his story there's a scene like that!
I'm sitting reading in my sweetheart's book
A passage where he finds me reading it.
Edmund.
A curious notion!
May.
Shall we act that scene?
Edmund.
Yes, if you please. But have you got the book?
May.
Yes; here it is. Now hide; and I will change
To suit the place the passage.
Edmund.
Very well.
[Goes out.
[reading].
“Now it chanced that May Montgomery
was resident in this town at the very time of
Edmund's arrival. One afternoon the love-sick girl took
her book to the glen, and sitting down in the shadow of
a tree endeavoured to alleviate her passion by reading aloud
the scene wherein her lover had represented her in just
such a situation, and so engaged. She had read over the
description of herself lying on her mossy couch, and her
cheek was flushed with the anticipation of the interview
about to ensue in the narrative between her lover and
herself, when the branches rustled behind her and a
voice—”
Edmund
[within].
May Montgomery!
May.
O Heaven! Deceitful ears! “—and a voice
whispered ‘May Montgomery.’ She accused her fancy of
cheating her, and proceeded with her reading—”
Edmund
[within].
May Montgomery!
May.
O me! this voice is agonising! Fancy, you will
make me mad! “—when the voice again whispered her
name. She exclaimed on fancy for torturing her so, and
laying the book upon the ground, was about to stretch herself,
leaning on her elbows with her fingers in her ears, when
a shadow came—”
There is a shadow! Oh!
Re-enter Edmund.
Edmund.
Turn not away.
Your hands late held my book. Take now the hand
That wrote the book.
May.
Are you a ghost, a ghoul,
In killing him with scorn whose form you bear?
I beg no mercy, for the doom is just.
But no; you are an angel; it must be:
No spirit foul could harbour in your shade:
And you have come to tell me I'm forgiven.
Edmund.
I'm neither ghost, nor ghoul, nor angel, May:
I am your lover in carnation true,
A bodiment much better than of yore,
Edmund, with health restored and joy complete,
Since it is crowned with what he never hoped,
The freely-given diadem of your love.
May.
I think you surely are the devil, sir.
This acting is too good: you're like him too.
Edmund.
Him!—whom?—the devil?
May.
O, no! Earl Edmund.—Love, I know you now.
[He offers to embrace her.
No, sir; I will go to the grave unkissed by any man, if I do
not find the true Earl Edmund. I think I must begin and
search for him. I wait and wait, and time is all that comes
and goes. When I think that on every hour I bestow a
treasure of hope, and that some day I may have entertained
so many hours as to have spent all my fortune in that kind;
and when I remember that all this expense may be waste,
for my love may be in heaven; and when I think that if he
be alive every hour removes my memory further from him;
that he may love another, that he may be married, then I
cling to the skirts of every parting hour, and sigh at the
knell that tolls its departure and the advent of the next.—
But let us act again.—
But can you then forgive me for my scorn?
Edmund.
Forgive—forgive? There's nothing to forgive.
May.
O, I was very foolish, very young!
I did not know how great a thing love is:
That woman's love is like the spacious sea,
And man's love like the mirroring of the sky.
O, I knew nothing! Yet, I should have known.
Now, I know all; your book has been my school,
My manual, my cyclopædia:
It tells me of the all in all of love,
And teaches that its soul cannot be told,
That action is its highest eloquence.
Edmund.
The silence of your lips, my gentle love,
Is richer, rosier, than the ruddiest gold;
The diamonds and the rubies of your speech
Become them well.
May.
You act too warmly, sir.
Edmund.
I do not act at all; I am myself.
May.
Nay, then, I think you are beside yourself.
Be moderate, sir.—You uttered only words;
And words are breath; and then, a lover's breath!
Hot, gasping, poisonous air!
Edmund.
O no, my May!
Love's breath is hot and healthy as the breeze
That floats the summer from the sunny south,
With merry crews of nightingales and swallows,
As sweet and swift as are the words of love.
May.
O words and songs and sounds are merely stones,
When love is as an empty hungry gulf.
Edmund.
Ay, but when love is certain of a feast,
Then words and songs and sounds are spicy whets.
Yes, yes; dear love, dear love. Speak on, speak on.
Edmund.
Say after me what I will say to you,
The words that are the sweetest in the world,
And are an act when all a soul is in them.
You are the cause that makes me whisper them,
And, being said, from you claim like effect.
If what I say be of such worth to you,
As, said by you, 'twill hold in my esteem,
Then this will be a changing gold for gold:
I love you.
May.
I love you.
Edmund.
The only words
Worth learning, speaking, writing, singing, graving.
The middle word, the linking word, the ‘love’
Is like eternal space; and ‘I’ and ‘you’
Mark out a sky and earth, and gather in
Time, heaven, and hell.
May.
O, happiness alone!
We hedge about an Eden, I and you.
Edmund.
Eden, indeed! Adam I envy not
His grand originality; for when
I say to you, ‘Sweet May Montgomery,
I love you,’ I speak words I seem to make.
As sweet and strange they are as when first said
By Adam when he first beheld his Eve.
I feel within, about me, and above
The freshness of creation. Everything
Is new, and every word a white-hot poem:
I am a poet, too, as great as Adam;
To speak, as in his time, is to invent.
‘I,’ ‘you’—O, these are words new-forged and bright!
I love, not Eve, but May Montgomery.
May.
O me! I would that I could find my love!
You are in love, too, for your speech betrays you.
Pray, tell me of your love; I told you mine.
Edmund.
Not now; the hour is past. Come; we must run.
How they will mock us!
May.
We've been happy, though.
[They go out, running.
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