University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

A dimly-lighted Corridor in the Palace. Conrad alone, waiting.
CONRAD
Will my sweet come? Listen! I think, I hear
The singing of her robe along the ground,
As the whisper of a far-off little wave
Crisping and trembling at the lip of land—
It rustles there! Alas, it comes no more;
The arras swings, and the old elms outside
Brush their harsh leaves together. The grey roofs
Pipe through their crannies to the floating moon.
Indoors, small breezes, like belated children
Of that large full-blown storm-blast in the air,
Roam, whining down deserted passages;
And seem to cry aloud upon their father,
Some giant in the moving mist, who rocks
The onward cloud,—howl out on him to feed them;
Who, eagle-like, in the havoc rides, and seeks
Some airy prey to bring his bantlings home—
I wait in vain. Fantastic images
Swarm on my soul's impatience. All is still;
Yet on the buzzing air I forge her footsteps,
And conjure the extremity of silence
Into the sound which Love's most hungry ear
Pines after, till it draws into itself
The echo of a nothing. Adelheid,
Come, or I perish! How the ticks of time
Swing on their slow and laggard pendulum
Dragging the hateful seconds out to years!
Will she come never? Ah, some chance of Hell
Has caged her in from coming. See, she beats,
Dove-like, in vain her little wings to come,
And strains her bright breast on the door of wire,
And wounds her throat against the flimsy grate
That holds her in from love and larger air!
O had my hand its rending! Come, O come,
I faint with asking God to send thee soon:
My lips burn with petition, and my eyes
Glaze with delay. It is thy very time:
And yet I hear no rustle, nor discern
Under the dim lamps, moving like the moon,
My queen in her great golden hair. All still!
Yet the blood maddens and races in my veins;
I can hear nothing; yet she must be near.
She will come.

[Adelheid enters.
ADELHEID
Conrad!

CONRAD
Darling!

ADELHEID
Look at me;
You bear no wound?

CONRAD
Not any.

ADELHEID
O, thank God!

CONRAD
I have no scratch of iron.

ADELHEID
I could weep
I am so blest. My soul is so surcharged
With benediction, that, as a wood-blossom
Whose cup is heavied with excess of dew—
She leans it over and spills some drops of it.

CONRAD
Thus will I brush aside this happy rain,
And never give you any time between
For tear-shedding. My love, with feet of down,
How could you creep to me and come unheard?
I found you at my side: you have coaxed silence
To strew your path with wool: I caught your footfall
No more than a bird's wing upon the air.

ADELHEID
The echo of the drums around your brain
Have beaten out my steps.

CONRAD
They did not so;
Thy step, thy voice, thy form, thy pictured eyes
Went out to battle with me; and endured,
Like presences of quiet heaven near one,
Who stumbles on the sulphur crust of Hell,
And beats the swooping demons from his head.
For the mid fight ran every way as foul,
When Mars on many thunders splashed and roared
Among a horrible coil of wounded limbs,
And maimed distortions: who, as severed worms
Drag ghastly bulks a few red inches on,
Crawled, and lay prone, and quivered, then were still.
There the unwholesome sun, like some vast star
With edges strangely blurred and copper face,
Melted meteorous on the side of heaven,
And from its rent and ragged under-rim
Seemed to drip foully out upon the clouds:
While on the verge an awful luminous haze
Thickened and sickened upwards from the field—
Like steam and breath of fighters, quick and dead—
Not very high this vapour swayed in flat
And heaving strands; turned like a heavy wave
Rolling and yellowed; as some river is
When flushed with loam at flood-tide from torn fields.
And in that lurid twilight wrought and raged
The fight with onset after onset, till
All its hoarse noises at a clap flared out
To sudden silence, dreadfuller than sound.
Then we drew breath; and, lifting up our eyes,
Searched the expanse of death from north to noon,
And saw its surface dotted with great forms
Shining; who, as they bent to wipe their swords,
Flashed fairly once or twice like golden stars:
But seemed mere scythemen cleaning scythes of dew
In a morning meadow peaceful. For it all
Looked most unreal, like an acted fight,
Or a dream movement, soon to snap and end.
Then went there out a whisper we had won.
Then some leant panting on their stainèd spears;
Some flung them down to sleep, some stared wide-eyed
Upon their fellows: one man gratingly laughed
For very shiver and sadness—such a laugh
In such a silence, pathos in it past
All pitch of groaning. Thus we drew long breaths.
Round us the battle lay like roods of plough,
Haze in their outskirts, in their furrows death.
And I arose to count their loss and ours,
And roamed from group to group, saying, ‘Well done.’
Till in my round I reached where they broke earth
In the easy sand of an old torrent bed,
And scooped two parallel wide ditches out
For the last service a man needs, who till
That brink be reached for much plagues men and God.
And here I found them, busy as black bees,
The white-cowled priests and waist-stripped grave-diggers,
These with the slain, these with the demi-dead,
Whispering, digging, praying, shovelling.
The gaping trench lay handy for its guests,
Half full already: thick within its sides
They lay pinned down, like dead sheep in a ditch,
With a snow of quick-lime on their brow and hands,
Till the next layer of death packed over these
Should mask them out of sight, and stamp them down,
Done with for ever. And for pity of them
Mine eyes began to glisten, and the soldiers
Began around to whisper, and I was shamed;
When it rose on me wave-like, all at once,
Thy thought, my darling; and I told my soul,
That could I change places with one poor knave,
Whom at that instant I saw shovelled in,
With wide lip and eyes earnest in their films,
Whose most enduring hatred twisted in
His long nails cat-like in a foeman's hair—
So that for want of time to free the twain
They shot them in together. ‘Ah!’ said I,
‘If hate out-last the rigour of the end,
Shall love be weaker? Let the wretch lie there,
Who would debase the eldest-born of heaven,
By such a blasphemy of unbelief.’
Nay, were I him, so rolled into my grave,
I know that my last thought which caught at time
Would steep itself wholly in Adelheid;
I know the last convulsion of my lips
Would make the name in moans out if I could,
As I slid down those brinks to my death-place
In the pit, my dark hot grave!

ADELHEID
Ah, Conrad, peace!
You slay me with such syllables: have done.

CONRAD
Ah! but indeed I thought so—

ADELHEID
God has laid
That woe behind us. You are surely come.
That is enough, you are safe: I hold you here.
I might have also died had you been slain.
I think, I must have shortly followed you,
Like a poor child who goes wild in the dark,
Losing the comfort of one candle flame
With whose companionship, it only dared
Sanely to face the circumambient gloom.

CONRAD
And were you then so anxious?

ADELHEID
Let that pass:
The sorrow of it is over and over well.
I have prayed and cried—so much.

CONRAD
The track of tears
Has worn the gracious colour from your face;
I note it somewhat wasted since I went.
You are gone pallid as the fleecy cloud
That cushions morning's star. In your regard
The echo of your lover's danger lives
Still written white in rose-loss.

ADELHEID
That comes back
On the wing of the blush which, now you kiss me, darling,
Repairs the past: see, am I altered now?
I shall spoil all and weep.

CONRAD
O eyes of rain,
Your dew-drenched rays are precious in my sight,
And you are more than lovely so bedimmed
With pity of my absence. Should I care
To hear my little bird had chirped as well
While I was gone away?

ADELHEID
In my cage here
I drooped and not a note came. Out a-field
O'er lengths of clover late incarnadine
Shivered a line of equal-mounted larks.
The jay dodged grating in and out the dells.
The mutinous republic of the rooks
Scolded the rising beam. Above the dome,
Thrice nearer heaven than its top pinnacle,
I saw a giant bird take northward wing,
And to my heart I said, he goes to Arnheim
Scenting the slain of the great battle there—
And that dread thought held me quite dumb all day.

CONRAD
He did not tinge his talons in this heart
Which is my darling's. Did you credit him
With such a dismal errand for his flight?
Nay, silly one, you did.

ADELHEID
It was so sudden:
You were here—you were gone—no leave-taking:
Then the suspense of sitting with clenched hands,
To count the limping seconds, till they told me
You were among the heroes or the dead.

CONRAD
I am returned, so kiss—

ADELHEID
What hast thou brought me?

CONRAD
Honour! Nothing but this. On that red field
No other morning flower had leave to grow.
Some of its leafage I have brought thee home;
See, dove, a wreath; if thou art caged here, hang it
Against thy wires. I think some men have died
In reaching after worse wreaths for their loves.

ADELHEID
I never bade thee go and gather such.

CONRAD
Are they not lovely when between our hands?

ADELHEID
The bloom is honey and the berry death.
So my nurse told me, when my child-lips craved
That pretty thing called shadow of the night.

CONRAD
Is glory such—my glory?

ADELHEID
God forefend!
I jested only, lest my happy eyes
Should over-brim their silly fountain brinks.
Is not thy Fame my fairest earthly good,
Except thy Love? One hems me round as air,
With subtle, soft, unseen investitude;
That is thy Love. Thy Fame works otherwise;
This, evident as the fire-fingered Sun,
Fans out each liquid branch of trembling gold
And bathes my temples with irradiate threads.
One makes me live, the other makes me sing!

CONRAD
Have I done well then? Of all maiden mouths
I wish those lips to kiss me with their praise.

ADELHEID
Hero and Love, in thy new glory hail!
How beautiful thou art in laurel leaves,
Returned most welcome.

CONRAD
Thou hast lifted me
On wings with thine approval.

ADELHEID
Shall I hide
My joy that thou art famous? Folks in the street
Are loud upon it. Noisy market-wives,
And sicklemen at swarming tavern-doors,
And hinds who rub down horses sibilant—
All toss thy name about; blind mendicants
Chatter about thee o'er their blinking dogs
Broiling upon the pavement, where the fountain
Cools the great square in vain. I do believe
Its stony nymphs and stucco triton soon
Will take the tale up and appraise thy deed;
Since with one throat the land says only ‘Conrad,’
And all lips meeting mould this common sound,
Except one lady's. She—she dare not breathe
That name, which in the casket of her heart
Long time lay guarded. No one knew the gem,
Or that it was a jewel, save herself,
Now all proclaim it for a princely pearl;
And yet she may not say, ‘So knew I always’;
And only midnight corridors shall hear
She cares to see thee great. For she must creep,
And whisper out love—as some wretch divulging
Crime in the ear of heaven's confessional,
With low short respiration, hurrying words,
And wild eyes turning sideways at the doors,
As though he feared their panels to unroll
And toss his victim in, bleeding and tied
White in its grave-clothes. With no braver heart
I watch here in the shadows and the sounds.
I am routed at the footsteps of the wind,
And, if a lamp-flame leaps, my blood stands fast.
By Heaven, this fearful wooing shames my race;
A milk-maid in this fashion should be won
At hide and seek between the twilight stacks.
But otherwise the heiress of a realm
Should render love in such a regal way,
As the Moon lays her halo on some cloud
In the grey heaven, regarded of all stars,
In a great modesty of shameless light
Bathing her cloud Endymion with bright dew
Of silver kisses; as the woods, and towns,
And crisping ocean inlets and round meres
Gaze up and give her worship as she burns.

CONRAD
Child of the many kings, I have presumed
Beyond my mean deservings. Who am I
To wrap the taint of my eclipsing baseness
Around the meteor sweetness of thy way?
All is amiss, and all the guilt is mine;
Reprove, reproach me, though thy chiding voice
Hurts in among my heart-chords like a blade,
And sprinkles on these weather-broken cheeks
Some girlish dew. Would the grim battle-God
Had made one swing at Arnheim with his net,
And dragged me to his silent river-shore,
Whereby he sits and sorts into his buckets
The gasping nations of the newly-dead;—
Ere I had lived to shame thee coming home
With these vile limbs unwounded. O my queen,
Who from the rabble of mean men, no more
Than they who scrape the earth-face for their bread,
Wouldst catch me up into the rosy clouds
With thy celestial preference, there to keep
State in their purple loved of gods and kings;—
I have repaid thee with a fair return
To drag thee down instead into my clay
And soil thee with vile secrecies. O sweet,
Let us take oath and hand somehow to mend
This flinty pathway of our shame-faced love,
Whereby he crawls dishonoured, with veiled head,
And brows afraid of morning.

ADELHEID
Mend it now,
Ere men forget to laud thee. Thine this hour:
Ask, as thou standest on its gleaming floor,
With such ripe honour bound about thy helm,
With such a blush of conquest on thy cheek,
With such a surging triumph at thy heels,
Such retinue of throats intoning praise,—
What suitor with such urgencies behind
Ever went home unanswered? Ask and win:
The dial of thy glory points at noon;
Ask, for the utmost burnish of the day
Endures a moment only. Never or now
Press to the audience chamber, boldly speak.
None dare refuse thee, who to-morrow may.
Ask with thy lips hot from the battle-breath,
And wed me in the sight of priest and king,
Hero of Arnheim, worthy to ascend
And sit beside me, husband, in bright robes,
Inheritor and partner of my power
In those dumb years which are not born, but shall be
As steeds to draw the chariot of our reign.

CONRAD
I will consider.

ADELHEID
O my love, beware!
For Gratitude no longer than the moon
Keeps full and fat, both soon grow shallow-breasted;
Yet wasting Luna can repair her outline,
And build her time-eroded circle up;
Not so poor shrunken Gratitude, she starves
For good and all. Her lean sides ne'er re-fill.

CONRAD
Then I will speak—

ADELHEID
And speaking you shall win;
I seal you thus for second victory.
[Kisses him.
Farewell, be brave, my darling, and prevail.

[Adelheid goes out.
CONRAD
Gone like the shadow of a rose petal,
When the great mother-flower dissolves in fragments
Her o'er-expanded beautiful great heart;
And all the garden-side is saturate
With the incense of her ruin. Gone, my rose,
Treasure of April, gone! Why then the air
Is subtle with thy presence. Let no hand
Move till the echo of thy richness dies.—
[A pause.
So she is gone; and I remain a fool
Fantastical with love, whose mouth drops over
With wreaths and rose-buds. Am I surely Conrad,
The mercenary Conrad, fierce at heart,
The scholar in the blood-school of the world,
Who hacks for any king, and laps up lives
As thirsty dogs will water? Must this wolf
Lick the pink sandal-tip of one meek child
And caper in her chains of daisies wound
To the pipe of the enchanter, call him Lust
Or Love, I care not, he has fooled me so,
I am not nice to name him nicely? Mars
Is not so fell, and brews of discord less
Than this mild cheat, mock god of whining girls;
His white fingers unclose like water-lilies
To beckon on ravenous ranks of spears,
Close as a pine-wood's boles or bulrush beds,
The heads of whose advancing shafts divide
Into a stream of stars the steady sun.
This is God Love, whose hand is weak as rain,
Whose touch is tender as a cowslip's cup;
Pitiful Love, at whose hest armies slay;
Who weeps and gives no quarter, whose least whim
Sprinkles dead faces in a wide grass land
Thick as the windfalls on an orchard floor.
Or as a newly-shaven meadow lies
With all its foolish speckled tulip-heads
Prone in the math. I cared no feather, none;
It mattered not one down of thistle beard
To me if Arnheim stood or Arnheim fell.
I heeded not whose ring was round her throat;
If, as our frontier watch-dog or the foe's,
She bayed and strained the tether of her chain.
I cared none either way: my trade is war.
Let old kings sleep, and famine open gates
And turn the virgin city prostitute;
I wail not over such a common chance.
It will be good for fighting and bring grist
To that great mill of onset which I turn,
Having no land: my sword is any man's:
They call me mercenary, hireling, here;
Let the name stick; I shall not alter it:
I smite down three while patriots push at one.
They lose their cities, I recapture them;
Such service is not readily forgiven.
They take revenge in—such an epithet!
Hireling indeed! What fighter for mere hire
Would tilt into this Arnheim, stuffed with foes,
With a few horsemen at his back? This ride
Savours of madness more than money greed.
I wear the livery of this king; I sign
Compact to carry arms against fair odds;
Doth that bring obligation to go out
And fight a legion single-handed? Nay.
Yet in the teeth of death, of my free will
I chose this venture. Why? O lame response!
Because a certain girl named Adelheid
Would think me a fine fellow if I won.