Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 277
Deserve that? Utter to your soul, what mine
Long since, Beloved, has grown used to hear,
Like a death-knell, so much regarded once,
And so familiar now; this will not be!
MERTOUN.
Oh, Mildred, have I met your brother’s face?
Compelled myself — if not to speak untruth,
Yet to disguise, to shun, to put aside
The truth, as — what had e’er prevailed on me
Save you to venture? Have I gained at last
Your brother, the one scarer of your dreams,
And waking thoughts’ sole apprehension too?
Does a new life, like a young sunrise, break
On the strange unrest of our night, confused
With rain and stormy flaw — and will you see
No dripping blossoms, no fire-tinted drops
On each live spray, no vapour steaming up,
And no expressless glory in the East?
When I am by you, to be ever by you,
When I have won you and may worship you,
Oh, Mildred, can you say “this will not be”?
MILDRED.
Sin has surprised us, so will punishment.
MERTOUN.
No — me alone, who sinned alone!
MILDRED.
The night
You likened our past life to — was it storm
Throughout to you then, Henry?
MERTOUN.
Of your life
I spoke — what am I, what my life, to waste
A thought about when you are by me? — you
It was, I said my folly called the storm
And pulled the night upon. ‘Twas day with me —
Perpetual dawn with me.
MILDRED.
Come what, come will,
You have been happy: take my hand!
MERTOUN [after a pause].
How good
Your brother is! I figured him a cold —
Shall I say, haughty man?
MILDRED.
They told me all.
I know all.
MERTOUN.
It will soon be over.
MILDRED.
Over?
Oh, what is over? what must I live through
And say, “‘tis over”? Is our meeting over?
Have I received in presence of them all
The partner of my guilty love — with brow
Trying to seem a maiden’s brow — with lips
Which make believe that when they strive to form
Replies to you and tremble as they strive,
It is the nearest ever they approached
A stranger’s . . . Henry, yours that stranger’s . . . lip —
With cheek that looks a virgin’s, and that is . . .
Ah God, some prodigy of thine will stop
This planned piece of deliberate wickedness
In its birth even! some fierce leprous spot
Will mar the brow’s dissimulating! I
Shall murmur no smooth speeches got by heart,
But, frenzied, pour forth all our woeful story,
The love, the shame, and the despair — with them
Round me aghast as round some cursed fount
That should spirt water, and spouts blood. I’ll not
. . . Henry, you do not wish that I should draw
This vengeance down? I’ll not affect a grace
That’s gone from me — gone once, and gone for ever!
MERTOUN.
Mildred, my honour is your own. I’ll share
Disgrace I cannot suffer by myself.
A word informs your brother I retract
This morning’s offer; time will yet bring forth
Some better way of saving both of us.
MILDRED.
I’ll meet their faces, Henry!
MERTOUN.
When? to-morrow!
Get done with it!
MILDRED.
Oh, Henry, not to-morrow!
Next day! I never shall prepare my words
And looks and gestures sooner. — How you must
Despise me!
MERTOUN.
Mildred, break it if you choose,
A heart the love of you uplifted — still
Uplifts, thro’ this protracted agony,
To heaven! but Mildred, answer me, — first pace
The chamber with me — once again — now, say
Calmly the part, the . . . what it is of me
You see contempt (for you did say contempt)
— Contempt for you in! I would pluck it off
And cast it from me! — but no — no, you’ll not
Repeat that? — will you, Mildred, repeat that?
MILDRED.
Dear Henry!
MERTOUN.
I was scarce a boy — e’en now
What am I more? And you were infantine
When first I met you; why, your hair fell loose
On either side! My fool’s-cheek reddens now
Only in the recalling how it burned
That morn to see the shape of many a dream
— You know we boys are prodigal of charms
To her we dream of — I had heard of one,
Had dreamed of her, and I was close to her,
Might speak to her, might live and die her own,
Who knew? I spoke. Oh, Mildred, feel you not
That now, while I remember every glance
Of yours, each word of yours, with power to test
And weigh them in the diamond scales of pride,
Resolved the treasure of a first and last
Heart’s love shall have been bartered at its worth,
— That now I think upon your purity
And utter ignorance of guilt — your own
Or other’s guilt — the girlish undisguised
Delight at a strange novel prize — (I talk
A silly language, but interpret, you!)
If I, with fancy at its full, and reason
Scarce in its germ, enjoined you secrecy,
If you had pity on my passion, pity
On my protested sickness of the soul
To sit beside you, hear you breathe, and watch
Your eyelids and the eyes beneath — if you
Accorded gifts and knew not they were gifts —
If I grew mad at last with enterprise
And must behold my beauty in her bower
Or perish — (I was ignorant of even
My own desires — what then were you?) if sorrow —
Sin — if the end came — must I now renounce
My reason, blind myself to light, say truth
Is false and lie to God and my own soul?
Contempt were all of this!
MILDRED.
Do you believe . . .
Or, Henry, I’ll not wrong you — you believe
That I was ignorant. I scarce grieve o’er
The past. We’ll love on; you will love me still.
MERTOUN.
Oh, to love less what one has injured! Dove,
Whose pinion I have rashly hurt, my breast —
Shall my heart’s warmth not nurse thee into strength?
Flower I have crushed, shall I not care for thee?
Bloom o’er my crest, my fight-mark and device!
Mildred, I love you and you love me.
MILDRED.
Go!
Be that your last word. I shall sleep to-night.
MERTOUN.
This is not our last meeting?
MILDRED.
One night more.
MERTOUN.
And then — think, then!
MILDRED.
Then, no sweet courtship-days,
No dawning consciousness of love for us,
No strange and palpitating births of sense
From words and looks, no innocent fears and hopes,
Reserves
and confidences: morning’s over!
MERTOUN.
How else should love’s perfected noontide follow?
All the dawn promised shall the day perform.
MILDRED.
So may it be! but —
You are cautious, Love?
Are sure that unobserved you scaled the walls?
MERTOUN.
Oh, trust me! Then our final meeting’s fixed
To-morrow night?
MILDRED.
Farewell! stay, Henry . . . wherefore?
His foot is on the yew-tree bough; the turf
Receives him: now the moonlight as he runs
Embraces him — but he must go — is gone.
Ah, once again he turns — thanks, thanks, my Love!
He’s gone. Oh, I’ll believe him every word!
I was so young, I loved him so, I had
No mother, God forgot me, and I fell.
There may be pardon yet: all’s doubt beyond!
Surely the bitterness of death is past.
Act II
Scene I
The Library
Enter LORD TRESHAM, hastily
TRESHAM.
This way! In, Gerard, quick!
[As GERARD enters, TRESHAM secures the door.]
Now speak! or, wait —
I’ll bid you speak directly.
[Seats himself.]
Now repeat
Firmly and circumstantially the tale
You just now told me; it eludes me; either
I did not listen, or the half is gone
Away from me. How long have you lived here?
Here in my house, your father kept our woods
Before you?
GERARD.
— As his father did, my lord.
I have been eating, sixty years almost,
Your bread.
TRESHAM.
Yes, yes. You ever were of all
The servants in my father’s house, I know,
The trusted one. You’ll speak the truth.
GERARD.
I’ll speak
God’s truth. Night after night . . .
TRESHAM.
Since when?
GERARD.
At least
A month — each midnight has some man access
To Lady Mildred’s chamber.
TRESHAM.
Tush, “access” —
No wide words like “access” to me!
GERARD.
He runs
Along the woodside, crosses to the South,
Takes the left tree that ends the avenue . . .
TRESHAM.
The last great yew-tree?
GERARD.
You might stand upon
The main boughs like a platform. Then he . . .
TRESHAM.
Quick!
GERARD.
Climbs up, and, where they lessen at the top,
— I cannot see distinctly, but he throws,
I think — for this I do not vouch — a line
That reaches to the lady’s casement —
TRESHAM.
— Which
He enters not! Gerard, some wretched fool
Dares pry into my sister’s privacy!
When such are young, it seems a precious thing
To have approached, — to merely have approached,
Got sight of the abode of her they set
Their frantic thoughts upon. Ha does not enter?
Gerard?
GERARD.
There is a lamp that’s full i’ the midst.
Under a red square in the painted glass
Of Lady Mildred’s . . .
TRESHAM.
Leave that name out! Well?
That lamp?
GERARD.
Is moved at midnight higher up
To one pane — a small dark-blue pane; he waits
For that among the boughs: at sight of that,
I see him, plain as I see you, my lord,
Open the lady’s casement, enter there . . .
TRESHAM.
— And stay?
GERARD.
An hour, two hours.
TRESHAM.
And this you saw
Once? — twice? — quick!
GERARD.
Twenty times.
TRESHAM.
And what brings you
Under the yew-trees?
GERARD.
The first night I left
My range so far, to track the stranger stag
That broke the pale, I saw the man.
TRESHAM.
Yet sent
No cross-bow shaft through the marauder?
GERARD.
But
He came, my lord, the first time he was seen,
In a great moonlight, light as any day,
From Lady Mildred’s chamber.
TRESHAM [after a pause].
You have no cause
— Who could have cause to do my sister wrong?
GERARD.
Oh, my lord, only once — let me this once
Speak what is on my mind! Since first I noted
All this, I’ve groaned as if a fiery net
Plucked me this way and that — fire if I turned
To her, fire if I turned to you, and fire
If down I flung myself and strove to die.
The lady could not have been seven years old
When I was trusted to conduct her safe
Through the deer-herd to stroke the snow-white fawn
I brought to eat bread from her tiny hand
Within a month. She ever had a smile
To greet me with — she . . . if it could undo
What’s done, to lop each limb from off this trunk . . .
All that is foolish talk, not fit for you —
I mean, I could not speak and bring her hurt
For Heaven’s compelling. But when I was fixed
To hold my peace, each morsel of your food
Eaten beneath your roof, my birth-place too,
Choked me. I wish I had grown mad in doubts
What it behoved me do. This morn it seemed
Either I must confess to you or die:
Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm
That crawls, to have betrayed my lady.
TRESHAM.
No —
No, Gerard!
GERARD.
Let me go!
TRESHAM.
A man, you say:
What man? Young? Not a vulgar hind? What dress?
GERARD.
A slouched hat and a large dark foreign cloak
Wraps his whole form; even his face is hid;
But I should judge him young: no hind, be sure!
TRESHAM.
Why?
GERARD.
He is ever armed: his sword projects
Beneath the cloak.
TRESHAM.
Gerard, — I will not say
No word, no breath of this!
GERARD.
Thank, thanks, my lord!
[Goes.
TRESHAM [paces the room. After a pause].
Oh, thoughts absurd! — as with some monstrous fact
Which, when ill thoughts beset us, seems to give
Merciful God that made the sun and stars,
The waters and the green delights of earth,
The lie! I apprehend the monstrous fact —
Yet know the maker of all worlds is good,
And yield my reason up, inadequate
To reconcile what yet I do behold —
Blasting my sense! There’s cheerful day outside:
This is my library, and this the chair
My father used to sit in carelessly
After his soldier-fashion, while I stood
Between his knees to question him: and here
Gerard our grey retainer, — as he says,
Fed with our food, from s
ire to son, an age, —
Has told a story — I am to believe!
That Mildred . . . oh, no, no! both tales are true,
Her pure cheek’s story and the forester’s!
Would she, or could she, err — much less, confound
All guilts of treachery, of craft, of . . . Heaven
Keep me within its hand! — I will sit here
Until thought settle and I see my course.
Avert, oh God, only this woe from me!
[As he sinks his head between his arms on the table, GUENDOLEN’S voice is heard at the door.]
Lord Tresham! [She knocks.] Is Lord Tresham there?
[TRESHAM, hastily turning, pulls down the first book above him and opens it.]
TRESHAM.
Come in! [She enters.] Ha, Guendolen! — good morning.
GUENDOLEN.
Nothing more?
TRESHAM.
What should I say more?
GUENDOLEN.
Pleasant question! more?
This more. Did I besiege poor Mildred’s brain
Last night till close on morning with “the Earl,”
“The Earl” — whose worth did I asseverate
Till I am very fain to hope that . . . Thorold,
What is all this? You are not well!
TRESHAM.
Who, I?
You laugh at me.
GUENDOLEN.
Has what I’m fain to hope,
Arrived then? Does that huge tome show some blot
In the Earl’s ‘scutcheon come no longer back
Than Arthur’s time?
TRESHAM.
When left you Mildred’s chamber?
GUENDOLEN.
Oh, late enough, I told you! The main thing
To ask is, how I left her chamber, — sure,
Content yourself, she’ll grant this paragon
Of Earls no such ungracious . . .
TRESHAM.
Send her here!
GUENDOLEN.
Thorold?
TRESHAM.
I mean — acquaint her, Guendolen,
— But mildly!
GUENDOLEN.
Mildly?
TRESHAM.
Ah, you guessed aright!
I am not well: there is no hiding it.
But tell her I would see her at her leisure —
That is, at once! here in the library!
The passage in that old Italian book
We hunted for so long is found, say, found —
And if I let it slip again . . . you see,
That she must come — and instantly!
GUENDOLEN.
I’ll die
Piecemeal, record that, if there have not gloomed
Some blot i’ the ‘scutcheon!
TRESHAM.
Go! or, Guendolen,
Be you at call, — With Austin, if you choose, —
In the adjoining gallery! There go!
[Guendolen goes.
Another lesson to me! You might bid
A child disguise his heart’s sore, and conduct
Some sly investigation point by point
With a smooth brow, as well as bid me catch
The inquisitorial cleverness some praise.