University of Virginia Library

SCENE III.

A chamber in the castle of Count Nello della Pietra. Window in centre, opening on a balcony. Lamp burning on a table, at which Count Nello is discovered seated; Flavio standing near him. Count Nello takes papers from table, and hands them to Flavio.
Nello.
These for Visconti; for the Balbi these!
Away to horse! Ride as for life and death,
And meet me with their answers ere the dawn
In Florence!

Fla.
I am gone.

(Going.)
Nello.
A word! You gave
My orders, none should have admittance here?

Fla.
I did, my lord; and can rely on all
To obey them to the letter—

Nello.
Good!

Fla.
Save one—
An' I might be so bold?

Nello.
Well, speak, man, speak!

Fla.
That Jacomo—he grows rebellious.

Nello.
He!
Nay, fear him not. A rough and gnarled bark,
But honest at the core. The very love
He bears the Lady Pia, she for him,
Is voucher for his loyalty and truth.
I'll trust him. Now, away!
(Exit Flavio. Count Nello rises and comes forward.)
No, Flavio, no!
If I do set this guard upon my house,
It is not that I doubt my lady's faith.
I know her love as pure and free from taint,
As the white vestments of a saint in bliss.
It is myself, not her, that I distrust.
Churl that I am, I cannot spare one glance
Of the endearing kindness of her eyes;
Forego one smile, or share the tones that come
Like a caress upon the wondering ear.
Oh, bane of love, that in its own excess
Is racked even by the charms on which it doats,
And dreads to lose what most it knows its own!
My own! My own! Dear words! They haunt my lips,
Yet still hang doubt and tremor at my heart.
How have I won her? Are there no regrets,
No lookings back on happy days gone by,
No contrast of my harsh and wayward moods
With the smooth homage of some sprightlier tongue?
Who's he she spoke of once, but would not name?
Why does his shadow ever cross my thoughts?
Why do I pry and peer in every face
That kindles—whose does not?—beneath her glance,
To find if there a smouldering passion burns?
Who loved her once, loves ever! How, if she
Should nurse some lingering tenderness for him?
I will not think it. Like an open book
She lays her heart before me. Mine it is,
And I'll so fence and hedge it round with love,
So interweave her being with my own,
That, knowing thus my priceless gem secure,
Covet who may, my heart shall be at peace.
(Goes up to window at back, and looks out.)
The moon already up! That's well! 'Twill lend
Her light to speed me on my way to-night.
There may be danger stirring. Well bethought!
A score or so of spears were not amiss.
Ho, Flavio! Tush, he must ere this be gone!
Ottavio! No! I'll look to this myself.
(Exit.)

As he goes off, enter on the other side Jac.
His moody lordship gone! That's quite as well.
To greet him ever goes against my grain.
Now, there's a chance I may have speech, beside,
With my dear lady mistress. Here she comes!

Enter Pia. She does not at first observe Jacomo. Goes up to the table and raises the papers on which Count Nello has been engaged.
Pia.
Not here? His message, too, so urgent! Strange!
Some new disquietude! Ah, me! these wars
Make cruel havoc of the life of home!
These scrolls, in each I see fresh lines of care
Upon my Nello's brow,—hours when his heart
Is barred to me, and all that mine would speak.
Hard! When a world of things are yet to say,
Would draw our spirits closer, lift the cloud
Of dark distrust, that sometimes veils his mind,
And bathe it in the sunshine of content!
(Observes Jacomo.)
Ah, Jacomo, good even! Best of friends!
I feared you had forgot me.

Jac.
(presents her with flowers).
I! Forget!
What has the old man to remember else,
But how to pleasure you? 'Tis like old times
When I can see you smile.

Pia.
The dear old times.

Jac.
Ah, they were times indeed! Dear heart! I miss
The old faces sometimes, the old hearty ways,
The old kind voices!

Pia.
'Tis too hard a task
I've laid upon you, to attend me here,
Where all are strangers round you. You must leave me.

Jac.
Strangers! the greater need for me to stay.
Leave you! While life is left me, leave you—never!
Heed not the old man's grumbling. I had news
From the old house, that set me longing.

Pia.
News?
What news?

Jac.
The young Count Guido has come back.

Pia.
Guido! My cousin Guido!

Jac.
I so long
To see his bright and handsome face again,
His gallant air! “To think I had some hand
“In training him into the man he is!
“She heeds me not. Dear lady?”

Pia.
Guido returned?

Jac.
I have a message for you from him (looking round)
. Ay,
A letter! Here!
(Gives letter. She takes it, opens it hastily, and reads it.)
(Aside.)
Heaven send, Count Nello comes not!
There's trouble in that letter! It was like!
How pale she grows! Fool that I was to give it!
(Aloud.)
I trust this letter bears no evil news.

Pia.
Oh, nothing, nothing. (Aside.)
Oh, disastrous chance!
(Aloud.)
How came you by this?

Jac.
Scarce an hour ago,
'Twas given me by Count Guido's equerry.

Pia.
Sad! Sad!

Jac.
She is deeply troubled. It were best
I should be gone, before the Count returns.
Lady, good night!

Pia
(abstractedly).
Good night, dear Jacomo!

Jac.
There's mischief brooding. If Count Nello should!—
'Tis very like, he may, and then, Heaven knows,
What might ensue. I'll be upon the watch.

(Exit.)
Pia.
He knew not of my marriage, then; and all
The hopes whereon I had begun to build
Were quicksands merely!
(Reads from letter.)
‘See you. From your lips,
‘Yours only, take the assurance of my doom,
‘And claim,—it is my right,—a last farewell!’
It must not be! I feel my every step
Is marked and followed by no friendly eyes!
And were Count Nello to encounter him,
'Twould fire the slumbering jealousy, that waits
But for a spark to kindle into flame,
How to be quenched appals me even to think!
No, if I've done my cousin Guido wrong,—
And yet I know not how—not on his head,
Nor yet on my dear lord's, that wronged him not,
The penalty must fall! I hear his step.
He must not find me thus. This too! Lie there!
(Places the letter in her bosom.)
So near my heart like treason seems to him
Who is its master;—yet what refuge else?
(Enter Nello.)
I came upon your bidding, dear my lord,
But you were gone, ere I—

Nello.
Your pardon, love!
I had to put some matters in despatch,
Of sudden urgency.

Pia.
Is aught amiss?
Ah, I can read new trouble in your eyes!

Nello.
No trouble, but my heart's impatience, sweet,
That I must leave you for some little space!
They summon me to conference at Florence.
I must away to-night.

Pia.
How! Go from me
Again so soon?

Nello.
The sooner to return.
I will be back ere you have time to miss me.

Pia.
Ah, Nello, no! 'Tis very lonely here,
When you're away.

Nello.
Lonely? You'd flatter me!

Pia.
Why should you think I flatter? Did I flatter,
When Nello sued, and Pia heard his suit,
When Nello vowed his absence from her side
But for one little hour was wretchedness,
And she believed him, happy in her faith?
“Say, was it flattery then, or the heart's voice,
“That recognised its mate, and said, I come?
“Then, dearest, can you think I should be aught
“But lonely, reft of that society,
“Which is my soul's sole comfort, and its joy?

Nello.
“The subtlest flattery of all is that
“Which makes the lover feel he is beloved,
“Yet not in words avows it.” Oh, dear Pia,
You make even absence sweet to me, assured,
Your thoughts are with me still, as mine with you.
Yet why should you be sad, when I am gone.
Here be your flowers, your birds, your broidery,
Your poets and romancers; what need more
To make the hours run swiftly?

Pia.
And you think
The heart demands no more?

Nello.
What would it have?

Pia.
Freedom! Free air, free intercourse with those
It loves!

Nello.
It loves? A wife should have no love
But for her husband.

Pia.
You would have me, then,
Forget my father, my dear aunt—the years,
When they were all in all to me?

Nello.
Not all.
There was another. I have not forgot
That pretty tale you told, yet told but half,
Hiding its hero. Freedom? Yes! Free speech,
Free intercourse with him?

Pia.
Oh, unworthy!
This is your guerdon for my maiden trust!
This your requital for the frankness, laid
Its heart's sole secret open to your hand!
I deemed you worthy of such confidence,
You teach me I was wrong.

Nello.
Why do you hide
His name from me?

Pia.
My secret has been told:
You have no right to his.

Nello.
You love him, Pia?

Pia.
If I had loved him, you had never owned
The right to question me. Go, sir! You make
Your absence welcome.

Nello
(kneeling).
Pardon, Pia, pardon!
Forget what I have said. My words were mad.
This once forgive. I live but on your love,
And grudge the very air, which fans your cheek,
The sweetness that it rifles. Mine, mine all,
I'd have you, heart, soul, sense. Your very dreams
Should all be mine. Your girlhood's memories
I would rase out, and all your life gone by,
That mingled not with mine. There should not live
The man could say, I knew this Pia once,
And from her smiles drew sunshine. Look on me!
Turn not in anger from me, or I die.
(She turns towards him.)
Oh, thanks! And when this frenzy mads my brain,
I'll think of thee, as I behold thee now,
And be at peace. I must away awhile,
To see my force prepared. You pardon me?

Pia.
I do. (Exit Nello.)
Ay, pardon, pity—you, myself,
For this offence but preludes many more,
To crave new pardon, putting to fresh strain
The chords of love should bind us each to each,
Till we shall wake some day and find them rent.
And this is man's devotion! Yielding us
Now homage as we were enshrinèd saints,
Anon arraigning us as blurred and foul
With falsehood most abhorred! And he could doubt me—
Does doubt me now! Ay, though he stooped so low
For my forgiveness, he distrusts me still.
Yes, Pia, shrink not from the fatal truth.
His faith is gone—and, nurse it how you may,
That flower once snapped revives not evermore.

(Guido is seen to cross the balustrade of the balcony, and appears at the window.)
Guido.
'Tis she! Alone!

Pia
(seating herself on a couch).
How little dreamt the bride,
Who entered here but three short months ago,
How close the clouds were gathering on the verge
Of her fair heaven of new-enkindled hopes!
But this is girlish weakness! Nello loves me.
And it may be his very love—perchance,
Some doubt, too, of his worthiness—excites
These jealous moods that change him to a thing
His better self despises. Shall I, then,
Not bear with them, till in my life he reads
Such confutation of his fears, shall make
His faith in me as absolute, as I
Am well assured his love is?

Guido
(advancing).
Pia!

Pia.
Ha,
Who spoke?

Guido
(kneels to her).
One Guido whom you knew.

Pia.
Great heavens!
How came you here? What madness prompted you?

Guido.
Ay, call it madness! I do think I'm mad.
Thought, reason, gone, oh, would that memory, too,
Were dead!—One burning impulse only left,
To find you, look upon your face once more,
And turn my heart to stone by gazing there!

Pia.
And thus you seek me? Oh, 'tis bravely done,
To steal thus on my privacy! Away!
If you must seek me, seek me openly.
Each word you speak is outrage to myself,
And treason to my lord.

Guido.
Treason to him!
If I have sought you thus, who made me? He!
This lord, that holds you prisoned from all eyes,
Sets spies upon your motions, makes these walls
The barrier 'twixt yourself and all mankind—

Pia.
Hold, sir!

Guido.
Nay, thrusts your father from his gates—

Pia.
Oh, calumny most foul!

Guido.
Oh, truth most foul!
This very day he was denied admittance.

Pia.
Oh no, 'tis false!

Guido.
Then is your father false,
Whose cry of broken anguish echoes still
Upon mine ears, lamenting for his child,
Shut by a jealous tyrant from his arms.
His lordship's lackeys spurned him from your gates,
'Twas like, then, I should have his leave to come.
I tarried not to ask it. He was gone
From home, they said. I leapt the garden walls,
And found my way here.

Pia.
(aside).
Shut my father from me!
Is this his love for me? (Aloud.)
You must away,
He left me even now—should he return—

Guido.
Let him return. I care not. He and I
Have a dread reckoning to make together;
It matters not how soon.

Pia.
You shall not stay.

Guido.
Who shall prevent me?

Pia.
I will. Are you a man
Sworn by the sword you wear to do the right,
To guard the weak from wrong, yet would compel
A helpless woman to endure your presence,
Taint her with holding secret conference,
Blast her repute with foul surmise, and bring
Disgrace upon the Tolommei's name?
You linger still?

Guido.
What message to your father?
That you approve your lord's commands, content
To sacrifice all other ties to him?

Pia.
My father needs no message to assure him
His daughter knows her duty, and will do it.
Sir, you abuse his name to press me thus,
And cloak the wilful madness brought you here!
Must I again command?

Guido.
I will be gone.
Thus meet we, and thus part. Thus is the star
I steered my course by, quenched. I had a dream
Of Paradise—I turned, and lo, the hand,
That held love's sparkling chalice to my lips,
Spurned me aside, and gave it to another.

Pia.
Is this my cousin Guido?

Guido.
Oh, well feigned,—
Well as the love you cheated me withal,
When last we stood together!

Pia.
Love! Well feigned!

Guido.
Oh, tell me you were ignorant I loved you,
Nor ever looked approval of my love;
Say that I never vowed my heart to you,
Say that you never took the offering,
Say that our parting words, words burnt in flame
Upon my heart, were but an idler's dream,
Say anything to vindicate the wrong,
Has laid my soul in ruins!

Pia.
Hear me, Guido.
I never loved you, save in such a sort
As sister may the brother of her youth.
So have I loved you ever. Never act
Of mine gave warrant of a different faith;
Or if it did, at least I knew it not.

Guido.
'Twas nothing, then, to listen to my suit,
To send me forth, without one word to wake
A doubt of its acceptance, fired with hopes,
That were the very life-blood of my heart!

Pia.
Alas, and was it thus, then, that you read
My silence in that hurried parting hour?
'Twas all so strange, so sudden!

Guido.
Sudden! Strange!
The voice of a life's devotion! A true heart
Had found as sudden answer—truth for truth
At least had given! A word had done't.

Pia.
Forgive me,
That I have wronged you thus unwittingly.
'Tis pain enough, that I have done you wrong;
You must not hold me guilty of deceit.
Let the plain truth be still between us, Guido,
As it was ever in the olden days.
You never spoke to me of love but then,
And your words filled me with a strange surprise,
For I had dreamt not of the love they told,
Had you but stayed, I should have told you this—

Guido.
Oh carsèd hour, that took me from Sienna!

Pia.
When from that dream I woke, and found you gone,
I feared, a false hope might have filled your heart;
But your long silence lulled my fears, and I
Began to think, believe, that in the stir
Of other scenes, the wound, if wound it were,
Had found a balm, which left your heart unscarred.

Guido.
Look on me now, and say, if love like mine
Is like to find a balm for hopes betrayed.
It was my life—fed every hope, thought, dream;
The growth of years, its fibres in my heart,
'Tis rooted there, and there it needs must live,
Till that heart cease to beat. But you, so soon
You could forget me!

Pia.
I did not forget.
Be just to me. You love,—know what love is,
And to that love you bear I make appeal.
Love comes,—how, when we know not,—does not lie
Within our wills, will not be bought by love.
The heart a wife should bring, I never could
Have brought to you. But what you ever were,
That you are now to me, and ever shall be,—
As dear to me, as may comport with due
Allegiance to my lord.

Guido.
You love him, then?
I would believe it from your lips alone.
All's said! So ends the story of my love,
The glory of my life.

Pia.
Oh, say not so!
Life is for other ends than but to love;
Nor always in fulfilment of its wish
Finds love content. Heaven sends its lessonings
To one through triumph, through failure to another,
Trial to all. 'Tis by the blows of fate
The spirit's strength is welded; only hearts
Of vulgar temper shiver 'neath their shock.
Say you have lost your love, all is not lost.
Shall you for this forego the noble strife
For honour, and the power to compass good
And glory for our country? No! In that
Brave strife forget the past—at least, its pain.
And if at times, perchance, its shadows rest
Too darkly on your path, think there is one,
Whose eye is on your progress,—one, whose heart
Will triumph in your triumph, proud to know,
That for her sake you wrestled with your grief,
And overthrew it.

Guido.
My best teacher ever!
I will approve me worthy to have loved
A being all so noble. When you hear
Of me hereafter, you shall know it is
Your spirit lives within me. “Life has lost
“Not all its sweetness, while it offers still
“An aim so fair, a memory so endeared.”
Forgive my hasty words! Forgive this rash
Intrusion on your presence! Now, adieu!
And Heaven rain all sweet blessings on your path,
And comfort you with sunshine to its close!

Pia.
Adieu! My loving greeting to my father!
Assure him I am well, and well at ease.
You'll be a son to him?

Guido.
Be sure I will.
He shall not lack an arm to help or guide,
While Guido lives. Adieu!

Pia.
Heaven's peace go with you!

(As Guido is retiring across the balcony, enter Nello, who hears the last words. Pia turns, and observing Nello, starts, but immediately recovers her composure, while he rushes forward and seizing her by the wrist points to the window.)
Nello.
This is the freedom that you pine for! This
Your heart's free intercourse with those it loves!