Cale Young Rice

“ Nay, quiver not! 'tis but a passing mist,
And this that runs in us is worthless dread!
Helena: But ah, the shroud! the shroud!
Antonio: We'll weave no shroud,
But wedding robes and wreaths and pageantry! [ 16 ]
And you shall be my Sappho—but through joys
Such as shall legend ecstasy about
Our knitted names when distant lovers dream.
Helena: I'll fear no more, then——
Antonio: Yet?
Helena: My lord, let us
Unloose this strangling secrecy and be
Open in love. My brother, Hæmon, let
Our hearts betrothed exchange and hope be told
Him and thy father! ”

“ Basil: O, had I been born a heathen!
Zoe: He told me, Basil, I should live, a great lady, at his castle. And they should kiss my hand and courtesy to me. He meant but jest—I feared.—I feared! But—I loved him!
Basil: Now, my damsel—!
Zoe (sings) :
The god was the great god Jove,
Two notes would the bent reed blow,
The one was sorrow, the other love
Enwove with a woman's woe.
Basil: Songs and snakes! Give me instead a Dominican's funeral! I'd as lief crawl bare-kneed to Rome and mouth the Pope's heel. O blessed Turks with their remorseless harems!—Zoe! ”

“ Behind him blows a horror!
(Stops in fascinated awe before Helena.)
Ah, on her head!
His touch! his earthless finger!—and she rots
To dust! to dust!
Antonio: Ill monk! are there no men
That you must wring a woman so with fear?
Agabus: Ha, men? Christ save all men but lovers! all! (Crosses himself.)
Charles: Antonio, how speaks he?
Antonio: Sir, most mad
With the pestilence of evil prophecy.
(To guards.) Forth with him!
Charles: Stay.
Antonio: Let him not, for he will
Beguile you to some ravening belief. ”

“ Helena: 'Tis sadly put, my lord.
Antonio: Ah, sadly, loathly; but, my Helena—
Helena: I would not sink from it, the simple sun—
Fade to a tomb! What dirging hast thou heard
To mind thee of it?
Antonio: Love is a bliss too bright
To rest on earth. With it God should give us
Ever to soar above mortality. ”

“ Enter Bardas deprecatingly, followed by Antonio.
Bardas: Antonio! not in the sea? You live?
Antonio: I say, where is she?
Bardas: You are mortal?
Antonio (groaning with impatience) : O
This utter superstition! (Pricking his arm.) Is it not blood?
Bardas: You live! and live? but let her think your death!
You let her! still devising for yourself
Safety and preservation!
Antonio: She's not safe?
Bardas: O, safe—if she had shrift!
Charles (hoarsely) : The dead are so!
Bardas: Ay, so. ”

“ Antonio: My father?
Bardas: O, well feigned.
Be sure none will suspect he is too old
For knightly feat like this—and that he has
A son!
Antonio: To Helena! my father! sealed!
Hæmon: Bardas, you bring the truth?—And so, my lord,
You stab me through another—you, my friend?
Antonio (to Bardas) : Do you mean that——?
Bardas: Until this hour I held
The race of Charles di Tocca bold, or other
But empty of all lies in deed or speech,
It grows—a little low?
Antonio: Why you are mad! ”

“ Fulvia: You will——?
Charles: Yes—yes! About her brow shall curl
The coronet! Her wishes shall be sceptres
Waving a swift fulfilment to her feet!
Her pity shall leave ready graves unfilled,
Her anger open earth for all who offend!
She shall——
Fulvia: Ah cease, infatuate man! Will you
Build kingdoms on the wind, and empires on
A girl's ungiven heart?
Charles (slowly) : Unto such love
As mine all things are given.
Fulvia: All things but love.
Charles: Stood she not as in pleading? ”

“ Helena: Not all, I think.
Antonio: Two for so small a gloom?
(Kisses her again.)
Helena: So small!
Antonio: And still you sigh?
Helena: The vainest glooms
To-night seem ominous—as cloud-flakes flung [ 12 ]
Upward before the heaving of the west.
(In fright) Oh!
Antonio: Helena!
Helena: See, see! 'tis Agabus!
Enter Agabus unkempt and distracted.
Agabus: O—lovers! lovers! Lord have none of them!
Antonio: Good monk——
Agabus: O—yes, yes, yes. You'd give me gold
To pray for your two souls. (Crossing himself.) Not I! Not I!
Know you not love is brewed of lust and fire? ”

“ Fulvia: It stains too as a shroud
The morrow's face?
Helena: You look at me—I think
You look at me, as if——?
Fulvia: No child.
Helena: Why am
I in this place? You fear for me?
Fulvia: Fear?
[ 41 ]
Helena: Yes!
A dumb dread trembles from you sufferingly.
Fulvia: It is not fear. Or—no!—has vanished quite,
Ashamed of its too naked idleness.
Helena (shuddering) : He cannot, will not!—Yet you feared!
Fulvia: Be calm:
Beauty is better so.
Helena: Ah, you are cold! ”

“ Again this monk? this dog of death?—and now?
Agabus: My trusty Shadow (Laughs madly.) Ha, he has been here!
My king o' the worms and all corruption!—
(Approaching Charles.) Lovers, and lovers! O she leapt as 'twere
To Christ and not sin's Pit! And he is gone
To follow her! The devil's nine wits are
Too many!
(Wanders about.)
[ 138 ]
Fulvia: My lord! Your limbs are frozen,
And bloodlessly you stand! Move, rouse, O breathe!
It is not truth but madness that he speaks.
(A cry and clanking of armor are heard in the Hall. A Soldier bursts into the chamber.)
Soldier: O duke! O duke! ”

“ Antonio: Go, then, Fulvia.
'Tis one would speak with me.
Fulvia: Ah? (She goes.)
Enter Helena frightedly with Paula.
[ 6 ]
Helena: Antonio!
Antonio: My Helena, what is it? You are wan
And tremble as a blossom quick with fear
Of shattering. What is it? Speak.
Helena: Not true!
O, 'tis not true!
Antonio: What have you chanced upon?
Helena: Say no to me, say no, and no again!
Antonio: Say no, and no?
Helena: Yes; I am reeling, wrung,
With one glance o'er the precipice of ill!
Say his incanted prophecies spring from
No power that's more than frenzied fantasy! ”

“ Peril that has a passion to leap forth!
[ 62 ]
Hæmon: Antonio, speak! Where's innocence and where
Begins deceit?
Fulvia (to Hæmon aside) : Ask it not, or you step
On waiting hazard and calamity.
Charles: New fret? and new confusion? In the blind
Power and passing of this night is there
Conspiracy?—plot of some here? or of
That One whose necromancy wields the world?
I care not!—I care not! We must have mirth!
Have mirth! though it be laughter at damned souls.
Hæmon: And I must wake it? I with laugh and lay,
Doting upon dishonor?
Charles: What means he? ”

“ Fulvia (low to Antonio) : Listen. No word
Of Helena!
Charles: Now! is it secrets?
Fulvia: Sir,
He scorns to spill a drop of confidence
On my too thirsty questions.
[ 51 ]
Charles: Does he so
Tightly seal up his spirits?
Fulvia: Put the rogue
To prison on stale bread, my lord: I half
Believe he's full of treasons.
Charles (laughing) : Do you hear!
Because you are the son and scout our foes
Justice is not impossible upon you!
The guests enter, among them Hæmon and Bardas, following the Cardinal Julian and his suite, and last Helena, whom Fulvia leads aside. ”

“ Fair Helena!' Pluck me, wench, but the lord Antonio knows sound nuts! And sly! Why hear you now! he gets the duke to seize on the maid! The fox! The rat! Have I not heard him in his chamber these [ 30 ] thirty nights puff her name out his window with as many honeyed drawls of passion as—as—as—June has buds? 'Sweet Helena!'—la! 'Fair Helena!'—O! 'Dear Helena! my rose! my queen! my sun and moon and stars! Thy kiss is still at my lips, thy breast beats still on mine! my Helena!'—Um! Oh, 'tmust be a rare damsel. I'll make a sluice between her purse and mine, wench; do you hear?"
Hæmon: Well—well? ”

“ Despair, as old as pain! (To Hæmon, who has entered.) Your sister——
Bardas: Hæmon——!
Cardinal: Hold him not in this anguish.
Fulvia: She and our
Antonio have left us to our tears.
(Hæmon stands motionless.)
Charles: Let no one groan. I say let no one groan—
Fury on him that groans! (He blindly rocks to and fro.)
Fulvia: My lord!
Charles (taking her hand) : Well—come.
(As in a trance.)
There's much to do. We will think of the dead. ”

“ Cecco: Sir—she—the maid craves audience with the duke.
Antonio: Fetch her, and quickly.
(Cecco goes.
Fulvia: Reason, Antonio.
She will but whimper, tell what overmuch
Of grief her mistress makes for you: of tears
Your sunny coming will dry in her.
Antonio (putting her aside) : These
Hours come not of any good, but are
Infected with resolved adversity.
This dread!——
Fulvia: They ever dread who have but quit
The shadow of some doom and the dismay.
Re-enter Cecco, with Paula weeping.
Antonio: Girl! girl! Thy mistress?
Paula (shrinking) : O!——
Antonio: I am no ghost. ”

“ Should blossom; only weeds whose withering
Can hurt no heart!
Bardas: These tears should seal fierce oaths
Against him!
Hæmon: And they shall! until God wrecks
Him in the tempest raised of his outrage!
Bardas: Then may I be the rock on which he breaks!
But hear; who comes? (Revellers are heard approaching.)
We must aside until
This mirth is past. (They conceal themselves.)
Enter revellers dressed as bacchanals and bacchantes, dancing and singing.
[ 32 ]
Bacchus, hey! ”

“ Paula: But 'tis not twelve, else would we hear the band
Of holy Basil from their convent peace
Dreamily chant.
Helena: Nay, hearts may hear beyond
The hark of ears! Listen! to me his step
Thrills thro' the earth.
(Antonio approaches and enters the postern.)
'Tis he! Go Paula, go:
But sleep not.
(Paula hastens out.)
(Going to him.) My Antonio, I breathe,
Now no betiding fell athwart thy path
To stay thee from me!
Antonio: Stronger than all betiding
This hour has reached and drawn me yearning to thee! (Takes her in his arms.)
[ 75 ]
Helena: And may all hours!
Antonio: All! ”

“ Antonio: More? more? [ 135 ]
Bardas: "Is 't not enough," she pled to me, "Enough
That I must wander the cold way of death
Unto his arms? Go hence! There is no rest.
I will go down and clasp him, drift with him
To some unhabited gray ocean vale
God hath forgot. There will we dwell away
From destiny and weeping, from despair!"
Charles: You left her?
Bardas: As I held her piteous hand
Came revellers who saw us—jested her
Of taking a new love. She broke my grasp——
Antonio: And leapt?—down the wide air?
Bardas: Swifter than all
Prevention.
Antonio: Helena! O Helena! ”

“ Not whispered death about him as a pest?
He—he, my friend? and you?—And I on him
Should lean, and flatter——?
Antonio: Cease: though he has stains
The times are tyrannous and men like beasts
Find mercy preservation's enemy. [ 24 ]
You're heated with suspicion and old wrong,
But take my hand as pledge——
Hæmon (refusing it) : That you'll be false?
Enter Bardas.
Bardas: I've sought you, Hæmon. Antonio? ”

“ Charles: And so steal an Antony?
We'll frame a law on thieving of men's heart's!
2d Lady: Then, vainly! 'tis a theft men like the most.
Charles: When in its stead the thief has left her own—
But shall we woo no boon of mirth save dance?
A lute! a lute! (One is gone for.) Some new lay, Hæmon, come! ”

“ Oh, how strange. Is it
So sweet to love, my lady? I have heard
Men die and women for it weep themselves
Into the grave—yet gladly.
Helena: Sweet? Ah, yes,
[ 73 ] To terror! for the edge of fate cares not
How quick it severs.
Paula: On my simple hills
They told of one who slew herself on her
Dead lover's breast. Would you do so?
Would you, my lady?
Helena: There's no twain in love.
My heart is in my lord Antonio's
To beat, Paula, or cease with it.
Paula: But died
He far away?
Helena: Far sunders flesh not souls.
Across all lands the hush of death on him
Would sound to me ”

“ The sea!—Antonio!—The cliff—the surf!
The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!
Fulvia: Be calm.
Charles (rising excitedly) : I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!
A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed
This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them,
If he——
Fulvia (drawing him to his chair) : Be patient—calm.
Charles: I—I—remember,
'Tis night!
Fulvia: Yes, night. [ 125 ]
Charles: The sun's no more! It hath
Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.
Fulvia: Beyond?—Ah!
Charles (quickly) : Fulvia?
Fulvia: 'Tis hard to think!
Charles: You utter and he seemeth still of life. ”

“ But you mustn't scorn a man's blood when it's afire.
[ 34 ]
Re-enter Revellers singing
Bacchus, hey! was a god, hei-yo! etc.
(After which all go, except Zoe and Basil.
Zoe: O! O! O! but 'tis brave! Wine, Basil! Wine, my knight, my Bacchus! Ho! ho! my god! you wheeze like a cross-bow. Is it years, my wooer, years?—Ah! (She sighs.)
Basil: Sighs—sighs! Now look for showers.
Zoe: Basil—you were my first lover—except the duke Charles. Ah, did you see how that Helena looked when they gave her the duke's command? I was like that once. (Hæmon starts forward.)
Basil: Fiends, nymphs and saints! ”

“ Captain: Our duty's with the duke. But then
Antonio has our love.
Soldier: That has he! Ah,
That has he!
Captain: Well, be close. None must escape,
Remember, none be hurt. As for the princess,
We'll hear the chink of ducats with her thanks.
Soldier: Madonna save her!—The Judas of a father
Who robs her rest!
Captain (looking down the hall) : 'Tis she who comes this way. ”