 | The Lost Son |  |
Scene IX.
—A Chamber upstairs. Olive sleeping; Annabella standing at a Window.An.
I 'll think of that no more: I 'll cast away
The horror, the bewilderment, the shame—
Shame for another, worse than for ourselves—
And triumph in his happiness and mine!
Oh, how the inventive genius of my heart
Shall wake, each day, eager to exercise
Its happy art, in multiplied devices
Of consolation and of tenderness,
And find the day too short for half of them!
Such bliss is only possible on earth,
Nor heaven itself were such a heaven as that!
So let the lightning of that luminous smile,
Which for one moment over his sad face
Flashed such a glory, then went out again
In tremblings of emotion, be my star
Of happy omen till we meet once more.—
Oh, my poor child! She is sobbing in her sleep!
That is not sleep, but pain.
[Goes up to Olive.
293
[waking].
Why, Ella! is it
So very late? Have I slept so long?
An.
Nay, dear,
'T is early yet; one by one all the birds
Have waked, but they are scarcely yet in chorus.
But you were sleeping in such troubled fashion,
I am glad you have wakened from it.
Ol.
Oh, I know
What I was dreaming of. But am I, tell me,
Wicked . . . would Bernard think me wicked, Ella,
For pitying—him? I cannot, cannot help it!
So changed, so shamed, so fallen as he went . . .
And we all turning from him! Ella—Ella!
I shall remember it to my dying day.
But how you shudder! Do you hate me!
An.
Ah!
To pity wretchedness for you is easier
Than to realise crime. And pity is
The keenest pain I think the heart can feel. . . .
For martyrs and for heroes it may swell
With what transcends all pity . . . but—
Ol.
To see
That which we honoured brought to infamy!
An.
Oh, think of Bernard, rather!
Ol.
But, perhaps,
There may be, if we only knew . . . let me
Say only this, and then I 'll say no more. . . .
There may be—oh, I do not mean excuse—
But something not so fiendlike as it seems.
If I can 't think so, I must go half-mad!
I did so honour, so believe in him!
294
Alas! so did we all.—Now sleep again.
There 's yet an hour or two of rest for you.
I 'll watch beside you, for I could not sleep.
| The Lost Son | |