 | A Romantic Farce |  |
94
ACT II
SCENE.—The Alley of Sighs.Enter Ringan Deane and Annie Smith.
Ringan.
What is the meaning of your face to-day?
Will you not speak? Then sit down here awhile.
[They sit. She gives him a daisy.
But Annie, speak. This flower is very well:
Now let me have some blossoms from your tongue.
What are these roses struggling in your cheeks,
And withering with your waxing, waning smile,
Which something means and yet is that thing's veil?
Is it love's sun that rises? Is it love
Beginning to embalm your heart's sweet flood,
And dyeing deep the roses that now die,
Now flourish in your cheeks?—If you'll not speak,
Then here's a thing to do. Read this aloud.
[Gives her a paper.
And read it in your softest, dreamiest tones;
Clothe with your voice my verses' skeletons.
Annie
[reading].
[I.]
Where have you been to-day, Annie Smith,
Where have you been to-day?
By the shore where the river becomes a frith?
Or up on the hills, away,
By purple heather and saffron broom
Like clouds at the sunset hour,
And all the well-kent flowers that bloom
In each breezy hillside bower?
Where have you been to-day?
By the shore where the river becomes a frith?
Or up on the hills, away,
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Like clouds at the sunset hour,
And all the well-kent flowers that bloom
In each breezy hillside bower?
Were you there, Annie Smith, that your face is so gay
And your eyes so laughing and blue?
Was it there that you spent the whole of the day?
Or, tell me, darling, were you
In the leafy wood where the grass grows thick
With the fairies at their play?
Did you flirt with Oberon, dance with Puck,
That your face, Annie Smith, is so gay?
And your eyes so laughing and blue?
Was it there that you spent the whole of the day?
Or, tell me, darling, were you
In the leafy wood where the grass grows thick
With the fairies at their play?
Did you flirt with Oberon, dance with Puck,
That your face, Annie Smith, is so gay?
Where have you been to-day, Annie Smith,
That you smile so gaily on me?
By the shore where the river becomes a frith?
Or were you upon the sea?
Did you sail in a pearly shell, Annie Smith,
With your hair flying free?
Do your laughing blue eyes tell, Annie Smith,
Such a happy tale of the sea?
Or were you down in the caves, Annie Smith,
With the mermaids under the sea?
Did the mermen beneath the waves, Annie Smith,
Try to catch and keep you from me?
Or did you fly through the air all the day?
Did you frolic with the wind?
Did you dine with the man in the moon, I pray,
That your face and your eyes are so laughing and gay?
Come, Annie, Annie, be quick and say
Where you have been the whole of the day,
In your body or in your mind?
That you smile so gaily on me?
By the shore where the river becomes a frith?
Or were you upon the sea?
Did you sail in a pearly shell, Annie Smith,
With your hair flying free?
Do your laughing blue eyes tell, Annie Smith,
Such a happy tale of the sea?
Or were you down in the caves, Annie Smith,
With the mermaids under the sea?
Did the mermen beneath the waves, Annie Smith,
Try to catch and keep you from me?
Or did you fly through the air all the day?
Did you frolic with the wind?
Did you dine with the man in the moon, I pray,
That your face and your eyes are so laughing and gay?
Come, Annie, Annie, be quick and say
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In your body or in your mind?
II.
Where have you been, Annie Smith, to-day,
That your face and your eyes are so calm?
Did you hear in the church the minister pray?
Did you join in the holy psalm?
Did he tell of the solemn joys of the blest,
That your face is so calm and serene,
That you seem to have ended each earthly quest?
In the church, Annie Smith, have you been?
That your face and your eyes are so calm?
Did you hear in the church the minister pray?
Did you join in the holy psalm?
Did he tell of the solemn joys of the blest,
That your face is so calm and serene,
That you seem to have ended each earthly quest?
In the church, Annie Smith, have you been?
Or did you stand on the shore, Annie Smith,
And gaze away to the west?
Did you stand where the river becomes a frith,
With your hands folded over your breast,
And gaze at the golden skyey gate
As the sun passed through sublime?
Did you get this shadowy light of fate
On your face at the sunset time?
And gaze away to the west?
Did you stand where the river becomes a frith,
With your hands folded over your breast,
And gaze at the golden skyey gate
As the sun passed through sublime?
Did you get this shadowy light of fate
On your face at the sunset time?
Or are you an angel, Annie Smith,
For a time from your blessedness riven,
To guide me over the cold, wan, frith
Of death to your happy heaven?
For a time from your blessedness riven,
To guide me over the cold, wan, frith
Of death to your happy heaven?
Ringan.
O, you might precept Mercury's elocution,
And teach the Muses and the Sirens singing.
Annie.
And do you love me, then?
Ringan.
You know I do.
Annie.
I love you—and I love you, Ringan Deane.
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O, what a curious-looking gentleman!
Clown.
A pretty pair, indeed!—And who are you?
Annie.
He is a poet, and I am his sweetheart.
Clown.
A poet is he, sweetheart! Lack-a-day!
Bid him go hang or drown without ado;
And in Elysium while you live, he'll pray
For showers of blessing to descend on you,
Whose high behest despatched him to that clime
Of peaceful pleasure and warm purple dusk,
Ere rained calamity and mouldering time
Could rot his spirit in its carnal husk.
Or if you needs must keep him, be prepared
For daily infidelity, my dear,
For you will find your part in him is shared
By every beauty he may see or hear;
Whether it be of seas, of flowers, of skies,
A wind, a woman, or a music note,
His hungry passion hugs it till it dies,
Leaving him happy with a new-born thought.
Annie.
He being a poet, must it be so with him?
Clown.
It is the poet's health and his disease,
His joy, his sorrow, his belief and whim,
His bane and blessing, and his itch and ease,
His night and day, his pestilence and breath,
His summer, winter, heaven, hell, life, and death,
This passion, shackled to its own desire,
Unchained, unchainable within that range,
Sateless, bateless, changing without change,
Consuming beauty after beauty, higher
To toss its blood-stained, heaven-scaling fire.
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Good-morrow, noble earl. What, you look pale!
By every gentle oath that is not stale
You are a votary of Cupid's throng,
And have been keeping vigil all night long
At some high window, or in some lone grove;
For it is still the doom of those in love—
O cruelty, most condign and refined!—
To watch with Dian and her nymphs unkind,
And, like chameleons, take the stars' wan hue,
The while their purple hearts love's fire burns through.
Last night you seemed unharmed of Venus' son.
What! has your cheeks' red radiance trickling gone
Out by a broach of last night's archery,
When Cupid volleyed shafts from many an eye?
Edmund.
Late hours, good clown, late hours: I swear
that's all.
Clown.
No; you are in love: I am sure of it. Now,
take a little advice from me. Do not addle your brain by
imagining that you love a particular lady. You are in love:
that's all, and that's enough. O these romancists! It is
womankind you love: and these wonderful ladies, if it were
not for novels and poetry and tradition—and heredity
perhaps—would never dream of bestowing their affections on
an individual. The world's a mere expansion of Adam and
Eve: I look upon it as one man and one woman—as manhood
and womanhood: and I believe, if you sounded the
thought of the world, you would find that is how it regards
itself.
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I know a lady who will never regard the world
in that light.
Clown.
O, unsophisticated youth!
Edmund.
A maid whose bosom is a nunnery chaste
Where spotless thoughts like votaresses dwell.
Clown.
There is not a maid, wife, or widow, whose fancy
any man, if he set himself to it, could not conquer; nor any
man whom any woman could not subdue if she chose.
Edmund.
One single fancy like an upright king
Sways her most constant loyalty: my love
Conceives not that there is in all the world
Another man save me; and I, no maid.
Clown.
I would undertake to make your saintly lady love
me, and forget you altogether.
Edmund.
O, rather would I have my lady hear
The hiss of serpents and the howl of hell,
Than have the rose-bud beauty of her ear
Sullied by such a tale as you would tell!
For though a pure portcullis' instant fall
Would cut your foul breath from her cloistered brain,
On the pink portal like a sooty pall,
I fear its filthiness might long remain.
If you dared ope your lips and let them hold
Most distant parley with a noisome theme,
Her eyes would lighten out their glance of gold,
And strike you dumb for ever. O, you dream!
Clown.
You talk, you talk. Honestly I admire your
youthful enthusiasm. But these clear-starched opinions,
which young men collar themselves with in the first moon
of manhood, will soon soil, and be washed and wrung to a
rag. But truly, I am in love myself.
100
With whom?
Clown.
She wears the habit of an amazon,
And flings her limbs as though they ne'er had moved
In Chinese steps within a frock's confine;
Whistles, lays hand on hip, laughs at her ease,
And seems to signify of two things, one—
Come, kiss me if you choose, or, if you dare.
Enter Antinous, Herminia, May Montgomery, Mary-Jane, and Bellona.
Edmund.
Good morning, and good morning, gentle friends.
Bellona.
And who are these?
Clown.
A sweetheart and her poet.
May
[to Annie.]
Tell me your name, and I will tell you mine.
[May and Annie talk apart.
Ringan
[to Mary-Jane].
O lady, summer's essence, centuries
Of sunlight from your eyes my being flood.
The sweetest damask of a season's bloom
Of roses dyes your cheeks, your tender breath
Is sweeter than their scent, and in your hair
There shines more gold than ever July spent
In gilding leagues of wheat.
Mary-Jane.
Ha, ha! good boy.
You'd better deem me dressed as winter, though.
Ringan.
O, were you in a snow-drift clad, and hung
With icicles about, a glance would tell
That you were summer masquerading. Lo!
You are the summer, and you could not hide,
No more than Venus with her girdle on
Could pass for Hecate. And I love you, lady.
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Now, you are foolish, sir.
[Crosses to Edmund.
Ringan.
I fear I am.
[Lies down under a tree.
Bellona.
Have you ever been in love?
Clown.
I am not such a fool.
Bellona.
Not such a man, you mean. You are all fools
till you be in love—great, lubberly, ill-bred, selfish clowns.
And when the selfish passion seizes you, then—then—O
then!
Clown.
Why, what then?
Bellona.
Then you become ten times great, lubberly, ill-bred,
selfish clowns. Men are all and always fools.—Earl
Edmund we are here. What then?
Edmund.
Impatient amazon, thus then it is:
This hour you must complete as best you can;
When it is sped, here gather all again,
And on the grass partake a sylvan feast:
There shall not want for music; if for song,
The blame be with yourselves. Be happy, all.—
Sweet May Montgomery will you walk with me?
[Edmund and May go out.
Bellona.
I'll walk alone.
[Ringan rushes forward.
Well, boy, you look distraught.
Ringan.
O incarnation of what nymph soe'er,
I knew not what it is to love till now;
For never have I seen in any maid
So much to love as in this heaven appears.
Some maidens are like night, and some like day,
But hear me swear, since day and night began
There has not overhung a thrilled, hushed world
A night so bossed with points of admiration,
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Studded with stars of love-enforcing power;
Nor has there shone a day so bounteous
Of every largesse to a thankful world,
But that the joyous motion you instil
Throughout my life transcends its benefice:
Wherefore, vouchsafe to hear me cry, I love you;
And frown not, for the night should never frown
Upon the humble flower that yields its scent,
Its sole ability of offering;
The day should never lower upon the lake
Exhaling tears, which is its grateful life.
O, be not angry that the life of love
Which you infuse in me, here at your feet,
For further inspiration or for blight,
Lies lowly, and the ground you tread on kisses.
[Falls on the ground.
Bellona.
But what of that fair girl, your sweetheart there?
Ringan.
Talk not of her. I never loved her. No!
I thought I did, for she was prettiest:
But having seen you I have seen the sun,
And never more will languish for a star.
Bellona.
You are a foolish boy.
Ringan.
What shall I do?
[Goes out.
Annie.
O, he has left me! O, my heart will break!
Herminia.
His haste forgot his love. You should not weep.
Annie.
It was not haste. These ladies! O, my heart!
Clown.
I told you what to look for.
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Out on you!—
Come, we'll devise a way to bring him back.
[Mary-Jane, Bellona, and Annie go out. Clown follows.
Antinous
[singing].
The bee sucks honey from the flower
Because the sweets are there:
I love a maiden in her bower,
Because the maiden's fair.
Because the sweets are there:
I love a maiden in her bower,
Because the maiden's fair.
The morning flower turns round his head
To greet the rising sun;
My love turns all to you, sweet maid,
And so my song is done.
To greet the rising sun;
My love turns all to you, sweet maid,
And so my song is done.
[Antinous and Herminia go out.
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