University of Virginia Library

4. PART THE FOURTH.

THE FUGITIVES.
A Wood, apart from a Field of Battle.
Enter, as from the combat, Edric and Cornwall.
CORNWALL.
Now must we fly—

EDRIC.
Whither?—to heaven—or hell!
It matters not—all 's over!—Cornwall, farewell!
It is the end—my book of life is shut.

CORNWALL.
My lord, King Edmund yet makes head.

EDRIC.
If I
Had join'd my ranks to his, we might have thriven.
What then?—Care I who rules? Canute, to my ear,
Knells with a sound not more disastrously
Than Edmund. Why what fool am I to parley
Thus with my fate! then let it come! a soldier's
Should be most welcome on a battle-field.

CORNWALL.
Though reckless of your own fate, think of those
Whose thread is knit with yours.

EDRIC.
What would you have?

CORNWALL.
We are enveloped by the double glooms
Of night and heavy fortune, yet may hope
T' elude the hunter's foot by speed or cunning.
We know, by late report, King Edmund rests,
Scarce fifty miles hence, in the mountain den
Of the dead fox, Northumberland: perhaps,
We, with some friends, may yet find refuge there.

EDRIC
(bitterly).
Scant retinue, methinks!

CORNWALL.
Scant let it be—
We will not sum our strength by counting helms,
Or measure hope with fear's arithmetic.
The rock we found on is our tameless will.
A singleness of aim shall animate
One hardy sword to foil a troop of spears.
The very unity of our despair
Belts us in proof against an armament!
How strict soe'er the toils, trust me, like boars
We shall break through; and scatter all would bar us,
As rotten brush-wood in a pathless wild.—
Courage!

EDRIC.
Ha! think'st thou that I need thy clamour
To nerve a craven heart? I tell thee, lord,
Thus on the slippery edge of fate, I fear not
Man in his craft or power, nor the wood idols
To which he kneels, nor death. I vibrate only
Between the fates that proffer; weighing slowly
Which choice most shrewdly recommends itself.
Be silent. I would think. Well—to King Edmund
March we—so be 't. Apprize such friends, as yet
Th'insatiate jaws of battle have not crush'd,
That we, ere twice the hopeful sun hath set,
Stoop our repentant banner at the foot
Of valiant Ironside. If once the beam
Of fortune, 'twixt these rivals, shall be balanced,
Once more the umpire weapon may command.

[Exeunt.
The open Country.
Enter Bulloign, Frithegist, Morcar, and other Officers of King Edmund.
BULLOIGN.
Who, that remembers Ashdown, could have hoped
To see an eve like this? Here stand we, sirs,
Triumphant in the midst of our foe's wreck,
Like a proud navy, when the storm is hush'd,
Riding the surges 'mid their shatter'd prizes.

MORCAR.
The brave king will sleep well to-night.

FRITHEGIST.
Your pardon.
To morrow being his bridal, he will have
A mind too busy even for dreams.

MORCAR.
How like
A tiger sprung he on Norwegian Harold,
Smote him to earth, and slew him at a blow!

FRITHEGIST.
Now will he claim a kiss for every blow
He gave or took in this same field to-day.
'Tis your true soldier's solace.

MORCAR.
Nay, for me
A brimming mead-cup, not a pouting lip,
Hath most refreshment after toils like ours.

FRITHEGIST.
He is a model for brave men. How nobly
He shapes himself to ev'ry hap of fortune!
With what a grace he wears a victory!
But a lost battle makes him terrible.

MORCAR.
Ay; when he 'scaped at Ashdown, never stag
Toss'd the bay'd dogs more gallantly in air.

FRITHEGIST.
Then with what skill his scatter'd troop he rallied;
And, lavish of himself, stood faced to death,
When the hot foe our fainting squadrons charged.
And how devotedly our toils he shared!
Upon the sentinel's rude couch he slept—
(The mountain heather canopied with clouds)—
Fed on the soldier's coarse and scanty fare—
While cheerful thoughts were ever on his tongue;
Blithe jests of fellowship for common men,
A martial descant for your stalwart captains;
And, for sage chieftains, such a range of mind
As seems to hold even victory in its grasp.

BULLOIGN.
Just, though enthusiastic, is your praise;
And thus the roughest trooper's thought should be.
But men are selfish, and the world ungrateful.
Why—there are murmurers here, because, forsooth,
The king 's a man and loves a woman: yet
The hours he dedicates to her are all
Stol'n from his needful rest, and none from duty.
Enough of this. Now let us coolly scan
Our fortunes: for Duke Edric's overthrow
(Though his revolt was timely from Canute,
And gave the foe divided to our onset,
As this day's glorious vantage well has proved)—
Edric's defeat, I say, will give the Dane
Space to collect his shatter'd force, and speed
Defiance to our teeth.

MORCAR.
Let him chafe on:
He never shall escape; we now o'ermatch him.

BULLOIGN.
Doubtless we shall achieve what brave men can:
But he is brave too; and, a wiser leader,
With firmer soldiers, in a stronger post,
Trust me, may not be found. True, he is lost
If there defeated; and, without a battle,
Retreat would be a desperate course: yet we
Must combat in Canute a man whose conduct
May not by common rules be circumscribed.

MORCAR.
All shall be well!

BULLOIGN.
Brethren in arms! our bearing
Should make that hope assurance. Let us gaze, then,
Upon chance danger with an open eye—
And, circumspect as bold, act as befits
Approved good soldiers, on whose conduct rests
Their country's fate, when all is hazarded.

[Exeunt.
The Gate of Northumberland's Castle.
Enter Edric, disguised.
EDRIC.
With more than mortal strength of heart and limb,
Through fen and forest, since my late defeat,
Have I escaped the bloodhounds of my foe.
And now, ye towers of dead Northumberland!
I come a friendless wanderer to your gates,
To seek the hated footstool of a man
Whom, beyond pardon, I have wrong'd, and therefore
Hate not the less. What, should he greet me—thus?
“Sir, as a brother, you have rent all ties
“Of brotherly allegiance from your heart,
“And pluck'd the root-stone from your household wall;
“Sir, as a subject, you have stoop'd to the dust
“The glorious brow of an anointed king;
“And made the sceptre as an osier twig,
“That scares a schoolboy.” Ay, these dread reproaches
Should he not utter, still his heart must feel.
Yet must I now, with penitence in eye,
And crouching knees, and sorrow-bending neck,
Submit me to this hero's clemency;
Who knows that stern necessity, not love,
Compels me to his mercy. I have, indeed,
No other hope. Unconquerable Edmund!
Well, with thine iron limbs, and heart of fire,
Well hast thou stood a bulwark on the breach,
From whence the shafts of war have glanced like hail,
And Treason, foil'd of half his aim, retired.
So end my plots, and here I stand at last,
A wretch for every idiot lip to rail at—
A knave, o'ermatch'd and spurn'd—a woman's fool!
Oh woman! what wert thou, that I should trust thee?
And I—that woman should undo me thus?

Enter Bulloign.
BULLOIGN.
Whom have we here?

EDRIC.
A man of penitence!

BULLOIGN.
What! Edric Streon?—in these beggar weeds!—
Ay, this is retribution!

EDRIC.
Good my lord,
Where may I seek the king?—my weary knees
Yearn to bend down in supplication.

BULLOIGN.
What would'st thou hope?

EDRIC.
From mercy much—and much
From a wise mind renouncing vengeance. Still
May I redeem (it shall be shown) my fault.
You pause—let me but see the king: I ask
No more.

BULLOIGN.
Nay, God forbid that I should deem
Pardon impossible—or penitence
An unavailing plea! It is a moment
Most prosperous for a suitor. Yester eve
Our royal warrior stoop'd his neck to fetters,
Light as e'er Hymen laid on lover's limbs.

EDRIC.
Now Heaven be praised!

BULLOIGN.
He is in happy humour;
And well may be.—Fair Algitha! I saw her,
All radiant from the nuptial couch, and cover'd
With all her spousal blushes, as a veil;
Modestly shrinking from admiring eyes:
Even as the glowing harvest moon, when stealing
Her earliest glances through the eastern grove,
Winning all hearts with beauty.

EDRIC.
Well you speak
Her praises, and have pictured forth a bride
Such as beseems a youthful conqueror.

BULLOIGN.
I speak the truth.

EDRIC.
Oh! these are precious moments;
Pray you excuse that, with most eager haste,
I would improve them.

BULLOIGN.
Soft. Wait here—'twere well
That I precede you. He is now within,
And, with his gentle lady, culls the flowers,
The fairest and the best this life can yield.—
I shall but step into yon garden, where
They range another paradise. Believe me,
It would not be the office of a friend
Here to intrude, unwelcome visitants
Upon his cherish'd hour, too suddenly.

[Exeunt.
The Castle Garden.
Edmund and Algitha.
ALGITHA.
Nay, now, dear love! I may not list to thee:
My cheek—you shall not see it—burns with blushes.
Suffice it, that I love thee—oh, how well!
And, with this hand, have giv'n the tend'rest proof.

EDMUND.
Speak!—let me hear that voice of melody!
In its sweet music, like the summer air,
Chiding, with almost inarticulate breath,
The saucy flowers, that will not cease to load
Her wings with incense, till, o'ercome and faint,
She flutters o'er the perfumed flattery,
And dies amid a wilderness of sweets.
Speak on.

ALGITHA.
I will not: yet methinks, I will;
To prove to thee how inharmoniously
The voice of love may jar on love. Was 't not
Upon the dreaming breast of Silence first,
The cherub Love was hush'd in infancy?

EDMUND.
I must be silent now: I can but gaze,
Till my sight dims with rapture.

ALGITHA.
Tell me not
In words that I am loved; call me not fair;
Oh sully not the mirror, purity,
With Flattery's warm breath. Believe it, love,
The lips are ever false interpreters,
And feebly speak the language of the heart.
But, would'st thou descant on the sweetest theme
That e'er shed roses on the cheek of youth,
Then be thine eloquence not of the tongue,
But couch thine argument within the eye:
There let the spirit of love stand radiant—
A seraph steep'd in light.

EDMUND.
Oh, how I love thee!

ALGITHA.
Nay, now that you look thus, it doth repent me
That I so lightly talk'd of this eye-language.
Oh, then I must fly from thee—

EDMUND.
Thus I detain thee—
And thus—(nay, on thy hand then) fix love's seal,
That shall avail to fetter thee. My beautiful,
My delicate, pure-thoughted Algitha!
Within this paradise of flowers thou dwellest
As one whose spirit owns a kindred being
With all those subtle perfumes that exhale
From Nature's loneliest treasury of sweets.

ALGITHA.
Nay, this is flattery—all flattery.

EDMUND.
Say, then,
How shall I woo thee?—how acquit my love?
Give me that hand, so soft, so small, so fair,
So rounded in its tinted palm, so taper'd
In every rose-tipp'd finger. Let me kiss
The azure tracery, thus interlaced
Upon its ivory surface. Now you smile.

ALGITHA.
In quiet joy. What would you with my hand?

EDMUND.
Thou delicate, fair palm!
Let me peruse thy mystic characters.
Why, what a maze is here of vagrant lines,
Sketch'd lightly o'er the silken skin, as on
A fossil rock the impress of a leaf.
Behold the mystic characters! My love!
I 'm grown a very seer in palmistry,
And read a smiling fortune in this hand.
Does not my skill claim some reward?—a kiss?—

ALGITHA.
Fond fool, begone!

EDMUND.
Well, I am gone—

ALGITHA.
No, stay.

EDMUND.
Oh, then, I must be bribed.

ALGITHA.
Thou venal wretch!
What would'st thou have?

EDMUND.
A kiss—a smile—a sigh—
A pressure of the hand—a look of love.
Nay, there is not an accent of that tongue,
A motion of those lips, a transient glance
Of those soft eyes, but win upon my heart
With some new witchery. 'Tis very strange,
But, when I see thee, hear thee, think upon thee.
Stern manhood softens to a woman's mood,
And I become the very slave of tears.

ALGITHA.
The tears of joy are sweeter than her smiles.

EDMUND.
Bountiful Heaven! with benignant hand,
How thou dost temper all our woes with mercy—
Till the good triumph o'er our evil days!
My Algitha, in mystery I found thee,
In levity pursued, in madness loved thee!
'Mid thronging perils with true service woo'd thee,
And, in the height of all my wrongs and sorrows,
When all but life seem'd lost, by pity won thee.

ALGITHA.
A happy captive, cherishing her chains.

EDMUND.
And now, in these wild times, thou look'st upon me
As a warm sunbeam, breaking through the clouds,
In freshen'd glory lighting up a landscape,
Seen by tired traveller from some shelter'd seat.
Oh, sweet is hope in youth's untroubled dawn,
And pleasant memory to the night of age!
But when a truant joy beams through the gloom
Of days like ours, it is philosophy
To snatch the noontide hours of happiness,
And crowd an age into one precious span.

ALGITHA.
Nay, my philosophy is better worth.
The present has to me a keener zest
In its connexion with the past and future.
Since I 've known thee, my dearest bliss is hope.
Trust me, the summer of our life shall wear
A less tempestuous aspect than its spring;
And, in our autumn, such sweet thoughts shall cheer us,
As shall make smooth our wintry path to Heaven.
Life may have now a keener relish; but,
As years creep on, the heart grows tenderer,
And tranquil thoughts steal gradually round us,
As the young ivy to the age-gnarl'd trunk
More firmly clings, than to the smoothest sapling.
Thus men seem knit to home, in middle age,
By fonder ties than in their prime of days;
And thus it is that, in the eve of life,
The grandsire is the playmate of the child.

Enter a groupe of Masquers, Dancers, Musicians, &c. with a Poet. They pass in procession.
EDMUND.
How now!—what mean these mummers?

POET.
We come, my lord, to greet your grace and bride
With quaint shows and devices.

EDMUND.
What are you, sir?
Lord of Misrule, I take it; and these masquers
The subjects of so grave a potentate.

POET.
I am, may 't please your grace, a poet; and
You see, herewith, the poor machinery
By which I eke out my conceits, as 't were
A palpable imagery. May I proceed
T' unfold to this fair lady our device?

EDMUND.
What says my Algitha?

ALGITHA.
Most willingly.
The show will be a brave one.

POET.
I would explain.
These dancers, in their figured maze, will shadow
(Unworthy though they be) some mysteries.

EDMUND.
Nay, sir, we shall be well content to admire
The text uncommented.

POET.
Minstrels, strike up!
And touch your instruments with skill divinest.
When, having solaced with harmonious sound
The royal ear, incontinent will I
Recite some well-concerted compliments,
Learn'd descants, and poetic rhapsodies,
Which, I presume to hope, somewhat may please.
A Masque, emblematical of Bridal Ceremonies, with Music and Dancing, &c.; in the course of which is introduced the following

EDMUND.
Poet, thou hast acquitted thee full well,
And shalt receive the poet's laurel meed,
Placed on thy brow by hands most beautiful.
Thou shalt have gold too: get thee gone—no thanks.
[Exit Poet, &c.
Enter Bulloign.
Ha! Eustace! Thou art welcome—even here.

BULLOIGN.
I come, sir, on the part o' the sinfullest man
(Haply most penitent) that ever craved
The boon of mercy from offended majesty—
Edric of Mercia.

EDMUND.
Why would'st thou speak a name
So odious to my soul: and here—and now?

BULLOIGN.
My liege, it is the bane of sovereignty
That leisure is a word whose gentle sound
May not survive within its stormy sphere.

EDMUND.
Truly thou speak'st. A king's ear should be open
To the faint sighing of his meanest subject
As to the courtly influence of the great.
Nor let us harshly judge an irksome task:
For duty done contains its own reward;
As the red iron sears and heals together.
Speak then—of Edric Streon.

BULLOIGN.
He is a man
Most hateful to my heart; yet now so lost
In fortune, so abased in spirit, wretched,
Not simply in his sense of guilt, but guilt
O'ermatch'd and beggar'd by its own inventions,
That I could almost trust his abject grief—

EDMUND.
To be again betray'd!

ALGITHA.
Nay, love, to me
It seems that in the human heart there dwells
A spirit of conscience, that from second guilt
Avails to shield repentant vice.

EDMUND.
Such should be—
And policy might come in aid of virtue,
To teach how well prosperity on earth
May be combined with Heaven. Grieved I look
On a lost creature, finely gifted, such
As this most wretched man; who once appear'd
Of better clay than common mortal men.
I loved him—I have trusted him—and he
Hath paid me with ingratitude, hate, treason.
These could I pardon; but—

ALGITHA.
Dearest, remember,
He now is but the crime-gall'd, helpless slave—
Cast on thy mercy, voluntarily cast—
Without one hope but pity: and, save penitence,
(That may indeed subdue) all weaponless.

EDMUND.
He 's arm'd with an inexorable heart—
In which no spring of human kindness waits
The holy stroke, even of a Moses' wand.
I trusted all to him!

ALGITHA.
I do adjure thee,
Spare his repentance—spare him in his crimes—
Leave him to conscience, and forgiving Heaven!

EDMUND.
Angel of pity! thou hast pleaded well—
I trust for all—he lives.

ALGITHA.
Ah, this is glory!
Thus round a hero's neck I wind my arms
With a far nobler joy than as a bride.

EDMUND.
My love! my life! God be my witness! not
For private, but for public wrong, I pause.
Were I but man, and not a prince (alas!
For royalty, that these are not as one!)
I could fling out my arms and take him back
Even with a dagger in his belt: but now
I must assert my kingdom's weal. He lives!
But, as a stranger to his household hearth.
I will not even banish him this soil,
(For that were worse than death indeed) but he
Must dwell as aliens do in foreign lands.

BULLOIGN.
He charged me urge how he may yet redeem
His guilt by precious service.

EDMUND.
I despise,
And would reject, his aid; though it could seat me
Upon a Cæsar's throne. Come, Algitha,
We will discourse, as we proceed, how best
The tenor of our will may be enforced.

[Exeunt.