University of Virginia Library

ACT IV.

Scene I.

—The Hall.
Enter Ulric and Olive.
Ol.
We seem forsaken of all things on earth.
If only she would wake to life again,
And be as one of us! Oh! I do hope,
Now the unearthly horror of the winds
Through those three miserable, endless days,
Is over, and the sea moans itself still,
She will no more sit gazing from the window,
And seeing nothing as she gazes. If
I speak to her, she rests her large eyes on me
Wildly and answers not, and if I kiss her
She does not heed . . . yet it was worse than all
When, like a frenzied angel, she would roll
Those awful organ peals into the rain
And thunder—

Enter Annabella.
An.
Did you see him? He is here!
He is come back!

Ul.
Come back! Where, where? How know you?

An.
In the yew-walk . . . I saw him . . . he is there!

[Exit.
Ol.
It is her fancy, Ulric! He would never
Have hidden from us!—how could he be there?

Ul.
We 'll follow her and see.

Ol.
Ah me; she looked
So wildly happy—her two eyes like stars!

Ul.
Olive, they say that light has shone each night,
Since Bernard left us.

Ol.
I should have laughed at that
Once . . . but we are so miserable now,
It gives me a heart-chill.

Ul.
Oh, 't is all folly.
Come to the yew-walk.

Ol.
Let me first go to her.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

—The-Yew-Walk.
Enter Annabella. Bernard approaches from the other end.
An.
Is Heaven so merciful? Bernard!

Bern.
I come
My promise to redeem.

An.
Oh, love, what promise?
Why do you shrink from me? Why do you look
So strangely . . . so unlike yourself? Oh, Bernard!
You will stay now—you will stay now?

Bern.
I must not.
From the deep sea I have come back to you,
Because I love you, but I cannot stay.
All 's over now, and all at peace with me.

An.
What means that? . . . all is over?

Bern.
Annabel,
He who now speaks to you on earth is nothing.
You see a phantom, but I love you still.
And he I died for will be here to-day—
Tell him what now I am. Farewell.

[Vanishes.
An.
Why—Bernard!
Where are you?

Enter Olive.
Ol.
Ella! How you look!
What was it? Who has been here? Was it you
Cried out just now?

An.
Where is he?

Ol.
Who, dear Ella?
We have seen no one.

An.
Now I know he is dead.
I have seen him, talked with him—and he is dead.

Ol.
Oh, if you love me, do not talk so!

An.
Olive,
My child, I love you, and will live for you.
But he is gone for ever.

Enter Ulric hastily.
Ul.
There is come
A foreign stranger here . . . he looks so wild,
And gaunt and awful! First I thought him crazed,
Until I saw that misery and hardship
Had made him look so strange—he asked my name,
In his slow, stiff-toned English—gazed all round him—
Spoke of you, Annabella.—Here he is!

Enter Doria.
An.
[advancing to meet him.]
I knew that you would come.

Dor.
What, does your heart
Own nature's ties already? Or how else
Do you know who I am? For, who you are,
I knew not till I reached these shores to-day.

An.
I know not who you are—I only know
He told me you would come.

Dor.
He? Where is he?

An.
In the deep sea.

Dor.
[looking round.]
What does this mean?

An.
He has perished
To keep his faith to you. I know no more—
But this I know—he will not come again.

Dor.
You cannot know it. Let me look at you,
For I do see a horror in your eyes.
My friend has been here—tell me where he is.

An.
Twice has he been here—once, a living man,
To be, methought, the joy of all our hearts,
But left his happy home to die for you.
And once again he has come—

Dor.
Quickly! Speak on.

An.
It was his ghost.

Dor.
By this strange shivering,
Methinks some awful thing is near me. What
Was it you saw?

An.
I met him walking here,
Pale from the battling storm, and calm and sad
As from the eternal parting with this life.
I saw him plainly as I see you now,
And with his own voice, plain as I hear yours,
He told his death and told me you would come;
Then even as I looked, where he had stood
Was empty space. He is dead as certainly
As if he lay, where he will never lie,
In yonder churchyard.

Ol.
Ulric . . . the ghost light!

Ul.
Do not speak of that, Olive . . . 't is too terrible.

Dor.
Where am I? . . . I can only understand
A voice from the other world has come to tell me
I am too late! [lifting up his hands]
And I have lived for this!
My friend! my friend! The noblest, and the best
That ever lived in this black world of fiends,
Has died for me! Why should I live at all?
Not you, not even you, can comfort me—
Though you are my own sister.

An.
If you loved him,
You are my brother.

Dor.
If I loved him!—Oh,
If all that 's strong and tender in a man—
The strength that toils and bears, nor wavers through
Racking solicitudes and ghastly perils,
Through chains and torments, and a weight of woe—
Tenderness such as brushes the least fly
From the pale sleep of pain, and yields the drop
Of priceless water to another's thirst,
When heaven seems in the cup—Almighty God!
If I forget to love him for these things,
For these, and more an hundredfold than these—
Devils remember me, and devils only!

An.
Speak on . . . you have tones like his.

Dor.
I speak the tongue
He taught me . . . painfully, as a precious thing . . .
But cannot repeat him, nor copy the least
Touch that was part of him and of none other—
E'en to the grave and unexpected jest,
Born of quaint fancy and the sensitive heart . . .
And have I come a stranger to his land,
Only to meet a message from the dead,
Mysterious as his life was and his death?
Yet bless the merciful storm that saved him from
The living death he went to! Faithful heart!
When the time comes I will tell what you were.
And the strange story of our misery . . .
How shall I tell it? Can such things be told?

An.
Tell all.

Dor.
I see you—oh, I see you now,
Rushing out to me, radiant as of old,
From one of nature's secret haunts of beauty,
With eyes that seem to have discovered heaven—
And if a heaven there be, you have found it now!
And, as I 've seen you, too, so oft, asleep
And dreaming, deep in the bright dews of dawn,
Your arms thrown back above your head, your brows
Knit nobly in a frown, not stern, but sad—
E'en thus I know you look, where now you lie!

An.
Ah me! a magic mirror are your words.

Dor.
You call me back to earth—to his own England.
Why have I come here? How I have escaped
From demons and from uttermost despair—
Through toils that might have won a world—held firm
On danger's dizzy brink, by the vain hope
To reach and save him—is not now worth telling:
So let that pass. I look on you, and see
A monument of broken-hearted love
As beautiful as the sad cypress-tree—
You, whom I last saw in your rainbow days
Of infant smiles and tears—and yet I see,
And know again my sister. Proofs I have,
As sun-clear as that rosary you wear,
Which links, by an invisible chain of prayers,
Us two to generations of the past;
But I will ask you first whether your heart
Denies me, or has memories that own
Its birth-place where the green and golden groves,
Which are to these, as sunshine is to shade,
Paint a gay border on the tideless blue?
If it believes not you are Annabella,
My sister, and I Doria—and we two
Named with one name, still great in Genoa?
Ask of your heart, then speak.

An.
It is too broken
To doubt, and nothing now seems wonderful.
That he has loved you is worth more to me
Than the attestings of an emperor's seal
Stamped on historic parchment. Be my brother,
And be the brother of this pair as well.
They are all that 's left me.

Dor.
They are mine.

An.
Oh, brother,
Your words seem distant, and the world swims round me.

[Faints.
Dor.
Follow me, children, whilst I bear her in.
There will be time hereafter for us four
To weave our two sad stories into one.