University of Virginia Library

Scene I:

—A corridor in the Royal Palace. Prounice and Aurelian whispering together at a window.
Prounice.
What can I do? She loves this antichrist.

Aurelian.
But is not married yet?

Prounice.
Not married?—No.

Aurelian.
Not married! No!—Is it a thing in doubt?

Prounice.
It is as certain she is not a wife,
As undeniably she should be one.

Aurelian.
She should be one! Will you speak plainly, Prounice?

Prounice.
For these seven nights the king has slept with her.

Aurelian.
King Mammon—with the princess! I am recalled,
And on my scrupulous oath adjured to bring
The princess with me. Prounice, you are known
A woman of great counsel: help me here.

Prounice.
I cannot; for she loves; her own delight
Intoxicates her.

Aurelian.
Let me speak with her.

Prounice.
You never will persuade her.

Aurelian.
Let me try.

Prounice.
O, you may try! She passes presently.

Aurelian.
I'll take her home; for she was ravished, Prounice:
Unwed, the princess never had consented.

Prounice.
O, she was ravished! She is ravished now:
You never saw a being so wonderful
With happiness. She has conceived, she thinks.

Aurelian.
Conceived! and happy! Has God forgotten her?

Prounice.
Has she forgotten God!

Aurelian.
What? and the Isles?

Prounice.
Her past is past: the censorship of love
Obliterates memory.

Aurelian.
Is she crazed?

Prounice.
O, no!
But suddenly the dark distrustful bud
Has thrown its petals wide and bared its breast.
The princess is as like the maid she was
As a spread passion-flower, that bursts at once
With purple hue and honey fragrance, seems
The covert urn that held such pageantry.
I talk and talk who never talked before,
So absolute is love, so strong its spell
On all who come within its radiant power.

Guendolen enters.
Aurelian.
Not as ambassador, I come: as man
To woman. Hear me!

Guendolen.
Why so passionate,
Aurelian?—I listen since I meet you.—
Prounice!

Aurelian.
Not by her means; I bought a way.

Guendolen.
Say what you have to say, then.

Aurelian.
Circumstance
Dismantles state and all ostent of things,
The bare fact standing only. Shall I show
Your father suddenly the ugly truth,
And say, when he demands his daughter, “Sir,
The princess is an atheist's concubine;
She has forgotten—”

Guendolen.
Atheist and concubine!

Aurelian.
The judgment of religion and the world.—
Now that I see you, Princess, I am dumb.
I thought to overwhelm you, melt your heart
With memories of the Isles, your sea-girt home,
Your childhood, and your father's portrait drawn
In tears and heart's blood. Vanity of mine!—
An old man from the top of honour's stair
Flung headlong, hoping to remount in one
Compendious step. When I without you, Princess,
Before your father stand, the most disgraced
In presence of the saddest man on earth,
What can be said, what clement language tell—

Guendolen.
That I am Mammon's wife and Queen of Thule?
Not that sweet epithet of concubine
That came so unctuously: my heart and brain
Are in that swarthy sound dyed deep like fair
And wholesome flesh in wounded blood, all black
With bruises and with stripes; and in the name
You throw at him, the most contemptuous word
In Christian censure, atheist. But as I speak,
The menace and the stain, phantasmal both,
Undone and faded, cease their dull abuse:
I have come out of Christendom; no scorn
Can hurt me. To my dearest father say
I love him with a new ethereal love;
And when we meet I hope to take his hand,
And lead him with me through the Universe.

Aurelian.
Come out of Christendom! It maddens me:
Considerate, old, a courtier as I am,
This maddens me. Come out of Christendom?
Come out of day and night, come out of thought,
Come out of speech, come out of flesh and blood.
The western world is Christian; and Christendom
In God's good time will comprehend the earth.
Your very atheist is a Christian, since
Denial warrants that which is denied.
No Christian can come out of Christendom!

Guendolen.
Indeed it seems, and is, a miracle:
One step in utter darkness, utter fear,
And Christendom is not. It never was,
But as an aberration or a dream.
We can be neither Christian nor Antichristian,
Theist nor atheist, nor any name,
Mohammedan or Buddhist: we are earth
And air, carbon and phosphorus and sulphur,
The lightning, and the ether—like the stars.
We are the whole great universe itself
Become intelligent and capable.
The Universe in love!—that's what I am:
And you, poor Christian friend!—what did you say?—
An atheist's concubine. No need have I
To talk forgiveness: while you live and move
In Christendom you must impute all evil,
Being nothing till you come among the stars.
Then will you see all that was ever meant
By God and spirit, heaven, hell and other world
Drop off the Universe like a little scab
From a healed scratch upon a baby's cheek.
Good-bye, Aurelian. Add that I am happy,
When my great father asks you how I take
The tossing world.

Aurelian.
Good-bye. I shall report
Your happiness.

Guendolen
[gives Aurelian a ring].
And keep this to remind you
That Guendolen loves her friends however true.

Aurelian.
The barb is honeyed. Though I spoke what seemed
The truth, I wonder now, and doubt and muse,
And think there must be more than theory lodged
Within the husk of your material world.

Guendolen.
Come out of Christendom! One little step!

Aurelian.
A leap to me who am no athlete now.—
Good-bye again, Princess, and Queen of Thule.

Guendolen.
Good-bye, Aurelian.—Prounice, I want you now.

[They go out, Aurelian one way, and Guendolen and Prounice another.