University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.

—An Apartment in a Convent near St. Conon's Shrine.
Eudocia and Anna Comnena.
Eudocia.
I never knew but all of us were brave.
In tears! I'll not believe you of our race.

Anna.
Oh! were I not I were not weeping now.
Heaven knows it is not for myself.

Eudocia.
Why there!
That were the least unreasonable cause.
Is it my brother that you weep for? He
Is nothing new to dangers nor to life.
His thirty years on him have nigh told double,
Being doubly laden with the unlightsome stuff
That life is made of. I have often thought
How Nature cheats this world in keeping count:
Some men shall pass for old who never lived;
These monks, to wit; they count the time, not spend it;
They reckon moments by the tick of beads
And ring the hours with psalmody—clocks, clocks;
If one of these had gone a century
I would not say he'd lived. My brother's age
Hath spanned the matter of too many lives;
He's full of years, though young: ne'er weep for him.

Anna.
He looks not tired of life.

Eudocia.
Not when with you.
There is a sort of youth comes back on men
By sight of childhood. It is so with him;
At least by sight of you.

Anna.
But others, too,
Call him a cheerful man.

Eudocia.
They know him not.
You knew him not in earlier youth; and I
Can scarce believe that it was he I knew.
The false vivacity of fevered blood
Under the press and spur of times like these
Deceives not me; nor yet the power he hath
Of holding off the burthen of his mind
Till the time come that leaves him to himself.
Disquieting thought hath wasted him within.
Weep for Alexius, if weep you must;
His seems a life worth saving; he is now
Much what some ten years past his brother was,
Yet may be what he is. Let Fate alone;
There's many a man is best cut off betimes.
Date not their destinies.

Anna.
You love them not,
Though you're their sister, as their cousin loves them.

Eudocia.
I would not have them walk in the dusk like thieves,
Nor crouch like chidden slaves, nor dig them holes
And hide like Troglodytes. I'd have them live
Even as their sires of old, linked each with each;
Careless of kingdoms so they might live free;
If not, I'd have them Kings.

Anna.
Alas! and I
Would count it no mischance that sent us back
To our Propontic island, where we all
Were born and bred in peace, who now are strewn
Like a wrecked convoy on a savage coast.

Eudocia.
Hush! Prophetess of woe; the ships sail well,
Though they be deep in the water.
Enter Comnenus.
Here are we,
Obedient to your summons; both in doubt,
And one in dread, of what may be the cause.
Why have you sent us hither?

Comnenus.
Need I say,
Eudocia, that it never was my wont
To clip and pare ill tidings for your ear.
The city is no longer safe for you:
Therefore I sent you hither.

Anna.
And yourself?

Comnenus.
My safety will be cared for in due course.

Anna.
And stay you with us, then?

Eudocia.
No! by my faith;
That question I can answer. We seek here,
If I misjudge not, the good neighbourhood
Of Mother Church's sanctuary.

Anna.
And he?

Eudocia.
Think you the sanctuary's a place for him?

Comnenus.
I have a safer refuge. Mother Church
Hath no such holy precinct that my blood
Would not redeem all sin and sacrilege
Of slaughter therewithin. But there's a spot
Within the circle my good sword describes
Which by God's grace is sanctified for me.

Eudocia.
Yet do not be so rash to walk the streets
Without a guard.

Anna.
Are not the riots quelled?

Comnenus.
They are not: they increase and will increase
Until the cause be quelled.

Anna.
What is the cause?

Comnenus.
There are, if truth were known, some three or four;
But one is named.

Eudocia.
And what may be its name?

Comnenus.
Truly they call it by my name, Comnenus.

Eudocia.
Then they miscall it.

Comnenus.
No, not altogether.
When things of evil aspect are to do
The first cause is not named, but commonly
Some slight, remote, co-operative cause,
Whereto the people knit them soul and body
Unknowing that which stirs them up to act,
Which is the mover's cause, not multitude's.
The mover finds them reasons, they him hands.

Eudocia.
Whence hath he then these reasons?

Comnenus.
Oh! they grow wild.
He is an arrant bungler in his work,
Whate'er it be, who is not stored with reasons.
Reasons! there's nought in life so plentiful!
They are the most besetting snares of men
Who ought to act by instinct, did they but know
How far their nature, when not tampered with,
Their prostituted reason would transcend.

Eudocia.
But how are you the cause?

Comnenus.
The multitude
Were ready for a cause—and there was I.
There's much sedition in the gastric juice
Gnawing the empty coats of poor men's stomachs.

Eudocia.
This tells me nothing: prithee to the point.

Comnenus.
What would you have?

Eudocia.
I'd have you signify
What is our hope, what ought to be our aim,
What's to be feared, what to be done . . . .

Comnenus.
Ay—true;
I never knew a woman placed in peril
But must be doing; if not dead despair,
Then fever'd action:—Muse, Eudocia,
Muse, meditate, and moralize like me.
That which I crave of you is quietness.
You would intrust me with your safety, Anna?

Anna.
Truly I would not trust you with your own,
So I could find you a more careful guard;
But as for mine I'd trust it with a foe.

Comnenus.
Where would you find one?

Anna.
Oh! it were easy, that;
Foes are as plentiful as lukewarm friends.

Eudocia.
Why, Anna, can your tongue too play the censor!

Comnenus.
My cousin, may you ne'er have cause to prove
The fervour of your friends.—Hark! there's the bell:
Is it for vespers?

Anna.
It is evensong.

Comnenus.
And you attend it?—tell the Abbess then
That I detain my sister—has she leave?

Eudocia.
Ay, say so, cousin.

[Exit Anna.
Comnenus.
My time is short; but something must be told
Which 'twere as well she heard not. Why it is
I know not (for the thing must come to her
As to all else in time), but I would not
Disclose to her—no, not a thousandth part—
The knowledge which to me, though loth to learn,
My dealings with this treacherous world have taught.

Eudocia.
And what has happened now?

Comnenus.
A summons came
From Theodora: I attended her,
And found her ready to betray her father.

Eudocia.
She is more passionate than politic,
Yet lacks not cunning: she has then despaired
Of winning you by fairer means?

Comnenus.
And these
Have failed her likewise: I refused her suit.

Eudocia.
But not her tidings?

Comnenus.
I refused them too.
It went against my nature to accept them.
I am prepared for whatsoe'er befalls,
Or shall be on the morn. Provision's made
Where it may be adventured here within.
To-morrow night, so that his purpose hold,
Alexius may be looked for. You, from hence,
Can, at a word of warning, reach the shrine;
There wait in safety the result: if ill,
To you, Eudocia, I need not say
How ruin should be met.

Eudocia.
If it be well,
Then no instructor will my brother need
How he should wear the diadem.

Comnenus.
Enough.
That's as it may fall out. My brows, in sooth,
Would rather bare them to the breath of heaven
Than be so gold-encircled: yet 'tis true,
I shall need no instructor. It grows late.
I think I have said all. Farewell, farewell.
Should it be long ere we two meet again,
Yet is it not for us to chide the Fates,
Or make long partings.

Eudocia.
One word more, but one;—
Last night I heard strange stories of a feast
To which you bade your friends: it is not true?

Comnenus.
It makes for me that it should pass for true.
'Twas a Damoclean feast and we sat down
In flowing robes with corslets underneath;
And I may say I ne'er saw graver guests
Met to carouse, save at the royal board,
Where memory evocates imperial deeds
Such as betrayed Britannicus of old.
Another such has waited me too long.
Be strong of heart—be like yourself.—Farewell.

[Exit.
Eudocia.
And I could say to you “Be strong of heart,”
But that were needless; and “Be like yourself”
Were an injunction I would qualify.