Charles Di Tocca: A Tragedy

ACT FOUR

Scene. – A chamber in the Castle, opening on the right to a hall, curtained on the left from another chamber. In the rear is a window through which may be seen silvery hills of olive resting under the late afternoon sun: by it a shrine. Enter the Captain of the Guard and a Soldier from the Hall.

Soldier: There is no more?Captain: Not if you understand.Soldier: That do I – every link of it! I've servedUnder the bold de Montreal, and heFor stratagems – well, Italy knows him!Captain: You must be quick and secret.Soldier: As the endOf the world!Captain: Our duty's with the duke. But thenAntonio 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 fatherWho robs her rest!Captain (looking down the hall): 'Tis she who comes this way.So go, and haste. But fail not.Soldier: If I do,Bury me with a pagan, next a Turk!(Goes. Enter FulviaCaptain: Princess —Fulvia: Our plans grow to fulfilment – areNo way misplanted?Captain: Lady, all seems nowSeasonable for their expected fruit.Fulvia: No accident appears to threat and thwart them?Captain: Doubt not a fullest harvest of your hope.The duke himself shall for this deed at lastHave benediction.Fulvia: May it be! He's quick,Though quicker in forgetting. I will moveHim as I may.Captain: The kind and wise assaultsYour words shall make must move him, gracious lady. Enter HæmonHæmon: I seek the duke.Fulvia (dismissing Captain with a gesture):You would seek penitenceWere you less far in folly.Hæmon (as going): O – if he'sNot here, then —Fulvia: Sorrow too would strain your lips,Not cold defiance.Hæmon: Pardon: if you know,Where is he?Fulvia: Was it easy to o'erwhelmUnder the ruin of her dreams a sister?Hæmon: Better beneath her dreams than under shame.Fulvia: Your rashness cloaks itself in that excuse,Your ruth, and your suspicion that has doomedOne innocent.Hæmon: One innocent! His thoughtHad but betrayal for her!Fulvia: 'Tis the GreekIn you avows it, no true voice.Hæmon: Then 'tisMy father murdered whose last moan I hearDriven about me in this castle's grayCold spaces. And the dead speak not to lie.Fulvia: No, no. You cannot brave your action withThe spur of that belief.Hæmon: What want you of me?Fulvia: This: ache and restlessness are on you.Hæmon (impatiently): No.Fulvia: And doubt begins in you that as a wolfWill scent the wounded quarry of your conscience.Hæmon: After he lured and wooed her under nightAnd secrecy?Fulvia: Not running there will youEscape its dread pursuit.Hæmon: He frauded – dupedHis father's trust!Fulvia: Or there! But one refugeHave you against its bitter ceaseless tooth,And that above the wilds of self-deceit.Hæmon: Why do you wind so sinuously about me?No refuge can be from an hour that's done.Shall we invert the glass or tilt the dialTo bring it back?Fulvia: But if there were?Hæmon: Where isThe duke – I will not bauble.Fulvia: If there were?Hæmon: I will no longer listen to the worm,You set to feed upon me – torturing!The sun melts to an end, and with the nightAntonio will not be.Fulvia: Yet there is time.Hæmon: The duke is fixed.Fulvia: No matter: 'gainst the swellAnd power of this peril you must lean.Hæmon: I – ?Fulvia: Yes.Hæmon: You have a plan?Fulvia: One that is sure. (Steps are heard.)But through those curtains, quick. For more seek outThe Captain of the guard. The duke comes hither.

(Hæmon goes through the curtains.

Charles enters, worn, dishevelled, and followed by Cecco. He sees Fulvia and pausesFulvia: I come to plead.Charles: (turning away): Ah! Nature should have pledWith her your mother, 'gainst conception.Fulvia: Your trust is causelessly withdrawn. Yet forA breath again I beg it – for a moment!Charles: A moment were too much – or not enough.Is trust a flower of sudden birth we mayBid bloom with a command?Fulvia: Ah, that it were,Or bloomed as amaranth in those we love,Beyond all drought and withering of ill!But hear me – !Charles: Leave these words.Fulvia: Will you not turnOut of this rage?Charles: Leave them, I say, and cease!Still down the vortex of this destinyI would not farther have you drawn.Fulvia: Then fromIt draw yourself!Charles: Myself am but a hulkWhose treasures have already been engulfed.Fulvia: Yet shrink from it!Charles: A son, a friend, a – No,She was not mine! – I will not turn.Fulvia: It isYour fury that distorts us into guilt.Although he will not render up his heart,But flings you stony and unfilial speech,Fearing for her —Charles: Leave!Fulvia: We —Charles: Thrice have I said it!Fulvia: Yet must I not until your will is wasted.Charles (angrily): Ah!

(Fulvia sighs then goes slowly.)

Charles: Cecco!Cecco: My lord?Charles: The hour?Cecco (going to window): It leans to sunset.Charles: The sky – the sky?Cecco: A murk moves slowly up.Charles (wearily): There should be storm – gloating of wind and grindOf hopeless thunders. Lightnings should laugh outAs tongues of fiends. There should be storm.(His head sinks on his breast.)(Suddenly.) Yet! – yet! —Cecco: My lord?Charles: The glow and glory of her seemDead in me!Cecco: Of – the Greek?Charles: And yearning hasGrown impotent – as 'twere a moment's folly,A left and quickly quenched desire of youthKindled in me! – To youth alone love's sudden.Cecco: Sir, dare I speak?Charles: Speak.Cecco: When Antonio —Charles: Cease: but a whisper of his name and IAm frenzy – frenzy – though the stillness burnsAnd bursts with it!

(Cecco steps back. A pause.)

Charles: The sun, how hangs it now?Cecco (going to window): Above the bloody waving of the sea,Eager to dip.Charles (staggering up): Ah, I was in a foam —Bitten by hounds of fury and despair!Did you not, Fulvia, pleading for them sayThey quailed but would not flee and leave me waste?Cecco: She is not here, my liege.Charles: Antonio!Ah, boy! thou ever wast to me as waftsOf light, of song, of summer on the hills!Soft now I feel thy baby arms about me,And all the burgeon of thy youth, ere proudAnd cruel years grew in me, comes againOn wings and stealing winds of memory!Cecco: O, then, sir —Charles: Yes. Fly, fly! and stay the guard!He must not – Ah! – down fearful fathoms, downInto the roar!

(Cecco starts. He stops him.)

Yet he has flung me fromImmeasurable peaks, and I have sunkForevermore beneath hope's horizon.Who falls so close the grave can rise no more.Cecco: This your despair would wound him more than death.Forget the girl.Charles: She? Ah, my sullen, wild,And gloomy pulse beat with a rightful scornAgainst the hours that sieged it. Stony wasIts solitude and fierce, bastioned againstAll danger of quick blisses – till, with furyFor that mute tenderness which women's loveLays on the desolation of the world,She ravished it! – Yet now 'tis still and cold.Cecco: But 'twas unknowingly.Charles: A woman's smileNever was luring, never, but she knew it,As hawk the cruel rapture of his wings.Cecco: She though is young, and youth —Charles: Must pay with moanThe shriving! – Ah, the sun – the sun – where burns it?Cecco: Upon a cloud whence it must spring to night.Charles: So low?Cecco: Sir, yes.Charles: Ah, 'tis? so low?Cecco: Red nowIt rushes forth.Charles: A breathing of the world,And then! – Antonio!Cecco: Again a cloudWithholds.Charles: Antonio!Cecco: It dips, my lord.Charles (frenzied): O, will great Christ upon it lay no fear!Let it swoon down as if its sinking sentNo signal unto Death – and plunge, plunge thee,Antonio, forever from the day!Has He no miracle will seize it yet!Nor will lend now His thunder to cry hold,His lightning to flame off the hands that grasp,Bidden to hurl thee o'er!Cecco: 'Tis sunk!Charles (rushing to window): Yes! – Yes! (Starting back horrified.) The vision of it! Ah, – see you not, see!They lift him, swing him – Now! down, down, down, down!The rocks! the lash! the foam!

(Sinks exhausted in his chair. Cecco pours out wine.)

Enter hurriedly, a SoldierSoldier: Great lord!Cecco: What now!It is ill-timed!Soldier: Great lord, there's mutiny!Cecco: And where?Soldier: Hear me, great sir, there's mutiny!Cecco: The town? the town?Charles (rousing): Ay – ?Soldier: Mutiny! your haste!Charles: O, mutiny.Soldier: Sir, yes!Charles: And do the ranksOf hell roar up at me? – It is not strange.Soldier (confused): The ranks of – pardon, lord.Charles: Do the skies rage – ?They were else dead to madness.Soldier: Sir, it isYour guard beyond the gates.Charles: 'Tis every throatOf earth and realm unearthly has a cryAgainst me and against!Soldier: No, but a few —Charles: You doubt it? – Are my eyes not bloody? Say!Soldier: Sir! sir!Charles: My lips then are not pale with murderBitterly done?Soldier: Pale – no.Charles: Yet have I killed;Spoke death with them – not reasonless – yet death.And all the lost have echoes of it: hearYou not a spirit clamor on the air?Ploughing as storms of pain it passes through me.Mutiny? Go. I could call chaos fair,And fawn on infinite ruin – fawn and praise.(Soldier goes.Yet will not yield! (To Cecco.) My robes and coronet!(Cecco goes to obey.I'll sit in them and mock at greatness thatA passion may unthrone. If we weep notCalamity will leave to torture us,And fate for want of tears will thirst to death! Enter CardinalAh, priestly sir.Cardinal: Infuriate man!Charles: Speak so.I lust for bitterness.Cardinal: What have you done!Charles (shuddering, then smiling): Watched the sun set. Did it not, think you, bleedUnwontedly along the waves?Cardinal: O horror!Horrible when a father slays and smiles!Charles: Not so, lord Cardinal, not so! – but whenHe slays and smileth not.Cardinal: Beyond all mercy!Charles: Therefore I smile. Men should not mid the triteEnchanting and vain trickery of earthTill they no longer hope of it, or want.Smiles should be kept for life's unbearable.Cardinal: Murderer!Charles: Ah!Cardinal: Heretic!Charles: Well.

(Goes to shrine and casts it out the window.)

Cardinal: Fool! fool!Charles: There are no wise men, O lord Cardinal.Cardinal: Heaven let Antonio's death under the seaMake every wave a tongue against your rest,And 'gainst the rock of this impenitence!(Charles listens as to something afar off.)No wind should blow that has not sting of it,No light stream that it stains not!Charles (sighing): You have loosedYour robe, lord prelate – see.Cardinal: O stone! thou stone!Charles: Have peace. A keener cry comes up to meThan frenzy can invoke: a vaster painThan justice from Omnipotence may call.Cardinal: My lips shall learn it.Charles: "Father" moans it. "Father!" —It is my ears' inheritance forever. Enter FulviaFulvia: Lord Cardinal, one of your servants hasIn quarrel been struck, and mortally 'tis feared.Quickly to him: then I may plead of youEscort to Rome.Cardinal: I do not understand.Fulvia: But shall.Cardinal: To Rome?Fulvia: Do not pause here to learnWith the dear minutes of a dying man.(Cardinal goes.Charles: You baffle and bewilder.Fulvia: Well.Charles: You – ? – Yes!I am beat off by it.Fulvia: Ten years of shelterHave you held over me.Charles: Ten years —Fulvia: Whose days,Whose every moment else had borne a torture.Charles: Now – ?Fulvia: I, perhaps, must go.Charles: Must? – Still I grope.Fulvia: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calmAnd melancholy dusk no shadow isOr niche but may remember prayer for thee.Charles: To Rome? You must? – I am under a spell.Fulvia: We, thou and I, after the battle's foamOr chase's tired return, often have breathedThe passionate deep hours away in restAnd sympathy.Charles: Say on. Your voice – I marvel —Fulvia: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slowWith quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.Charles: You go? – But, on! – your tone – in it I feel —Fulvia: Have we not fast been friends?Charles: What hath your voice?Fulvia: Such friends have we not been as grow up fromEternity?Charles: You say it, and I wake.Fulvia: Such friends – till yesterday you —Charles: Ah!Fulvia: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.Charles: I had forgot – forgot! – the sun! – the sea!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 outspeedThis 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.Charles: The sun's no more! It hathGone 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.Fulvia: He was a child in mimic mail clad outWhen first this threshold poured its welcome to me.Charles: Softly you muse it, and call to your eyesNo quailing nor a flame of execration!You do not burst out on me? from me doNot shrink as from an executioner?Fulvia: I am a woman who in tears came toYour strength, in tears depart.Charles: And will not judge?But fear me – fear, and flee? – You shall not go!Fulvia: PerhapsCharles: Again "perhaps" – this calm "perhaps!" —To Rome? – I say you shall not.Fulvia: Yet should he,Antonio, from those curtains come —Charles: Should – should?You speak not reasonably. Why do you say"If he should come?"Fulvia: Because —Charles: You've touchedAnd led me trembling from reality!Those curtains? – those? – just those? – You shall not go.Fulvia: I will not then.Charles: But something breaks from you,And as an air of resurrection stirs.Speak; on your words I wait unutterably.Fulvia: Did not a soldier lately come, my lord,Breathless with eager speech of mutiny – ?Charles: Well – well – ?Fulvia: Within your guard?Charles: My guard? No – yes —What do I see yet cannot in your words?Fulvia: The mutiny was roused at my command.Charles: Say it – say all!Fulvia: To save you the mad blotOf a son's blood.Charles: Antonio – ?Fulvia: Lives!Charles: Low – low —Joy come too furious has piercing peril.He lives? – You have done this? With these soft hands,These little hands, held off the shears of Fate?Have dared? and have not feared?Fulvia: Your danger wasMy fear – that, and no more.Charles: He lives? – I haveNo worth, no gratitude, no gift that mayAnswer this deed – no glow, no eloquenceBut would ring poor in rarest words of earth.He lives? – Years yet are mine. Too brief they'll beTo muse with love of this!Fulvia: No, no, my lord.Charles: But where is he? Belief, tho' risen, strainsIn me as if 'twere fast in cerementsThat seeing must unbind.Fulvia: Turn then, and see.

(Antonio steps from the curtains.)

Charles: Antonio! – boy! boy!Antonio: My father! (They embrace.) Re-enter CardinalCardinal: Princess,If your decision and desire are still —

(Sees Antonio.)

Fulvia: Your eyes look upon flesh, lord Cardinal.(A cry is heard, then weeping.)Antonio (startled): Whose pain is this? – strangely it hurts me – strangely! Enter Cecco hastily, bearing robe and coronetCecco: My lord, the lady Helen's little maid —

(Sees Antonio. Shrinks from him.)

Antonio: What of her? Are you horrified to stone!Her maid? – There are than risen dead worse thingsAnd worse to dread! – her maid?Cecco: Sir —Antonio: Forth with it!She direness of her mistress brings? some taleThat earth elsewhere abyssless gaped her up?That butterfly or bud turn asp to bite her?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 overmuchOf grief her mistress makes for you: of tearsYour sunny coming will dry in her.Antonio (putting her aside): TheseHours come not of any good, but areInfected with resolved adversity.This dread! —Fulvia: They ever dread who have but quitThe shadow of some doom and the dismay. Re-enter Cecco, with Paula weepingAntonio: Girl! girl! Thy mistress?Paula (shrinking): O! —Antonio: I am no ghost.Thy mistress?Paula: Mary, Mother! (Sinks praying.)Antonio (lifting her up): Look on me. See!I have not been down in the grave, nor ev'nA moment beyond earth. Do you not hear!Paula (looking at him): Sir!Antonio: Tell me.Paula (hysterically): Go to her, O, go to her.Antonio: But, child – ?Paula: She, O! – go seek her, O, she is —Antonio: Where, Paula?Paula: Blind all day she moaned and wept.Antonio: My Helena!Paula: And when the sun was gone,Came quiet, kissed me – O, go seek her, sir!Antonio: Kissed you – ?Paula: Then to me gave these jewels. O!And darkly cloaked stole out into the night.Charles: Alone?Antonio: Whither, quick, whither?Paula: Ah, I doNot know: but she —Antonio: Pray, pray, tell out your dread.Paula: Last night she said, "My heart is in my lordAntonio's to beat or cease with it."I learned her words – they seemed so pretty.Charles (gasping): Ah!Antonio: Why do you gasp? – Paula —Charles: If she – the cliff!Antonio: The cliff! The – ?(Staggers dizzily, then rushes out.Charles: Let one go with him – bringUs what hath passed – hath passed.(A Soldier goes.Paula (with uncontrollable terror): My lady!Charles: Child,I cannot bear thy voice upon my heart!It hath a tone – a clutch – no more, no more!I cannot bear it! We must wait. No hapHas been – no hap, I think – surely no hap. Enter Bardas deprecatingly, followed by AntonioBardas: Antonio! not in the sea? You live?Antonio: I say, where is she?Bardas: You are mortal?Antonio (groaning with impatience): OThis 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 yourselfSafety and preservation!Antonio: She's not safe?Bardas: O, safe – if she had shrift!Charles (hoarsely): The dead are so!Bardas: Ay, so.Antonio: And none above the grave? – no answer?Bardas: She came unto the cliff amid her tears —Her being all into one want was fused,You down the wave to follow.Antonio: But you grasped – ?You held her?Bardas: Yes —Antonio: Then – well?Bardas: She had a phial.Antonio: God! God!Bardas: Out of her breast she drew it swift,And instant of it drank.Antonio: Drank? and she fell?No? – no? – Ah but you dashed it from her lips?She did but taste? —Bardas: Only: and then —Antonio: More? more?Bardas: "Is 't not enough," she pled to me, "EnoughThat I must wander the cold way of deathUnto his arms? Go hence! There is no rest.I will go down and clasp him, drift with himTo some unhabited gray ocean valeGod hath forgot. There will we dwell awayFrom destiny and weeping, from despair!"Charles: You left her?Bardas: As I held her piteous handCame revellers who saw us – jested herOf taking a new love. She broke my grasp —Antonio: And leapt? – down the wide air?Bardas: Swifter than allPrevention.Antonio: Helena! O Helena!That all thy loveliness should fare to this,Thy glory go in dark calamity!Bardas: I saw her as she leapt and until deathShall see no more.Antonio (drawing): Blot it from you! Her face,Her sorrow and her fairness shall not standImprisoned in your eye, tho' 'twere to cryRelentlessly your crime. – But no – but no!

(Sheathing his sword, he pauses, then staggers suddenly out.)

Paula: Let me go to my lady!Charles: Still her! SheForever hath a fluttering, a cry,Undurably. It presses the lone airWith sensitive and aching agony.Paula (witlessly, in tears): I know thy song, my lady, I know, I know!'Twas pretty and 'twas strange, but now I know.(Sings.) Sappho! Sappho!In maiden woe(Let alone love, it spurns and burns!)Wept – wept, and leapt —O love is so!(Let alone love, it burns!)My lady! O my lady! my sweet lady!

(She is led out.)

Fulvia: This is most sad – most sad, and pitiful.Charles: I cannot bear her voice upon my heart Enter Agabus gazing into the airAgain 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 'twereTo Christ and not sin's Pit! And he is goneTo follow her! The devil's nine wits areToo many!

(Wanders about.)

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! (Sinks to his knee.)Charles: (gazes at him, struggling to speak): Rise – go – and, if thou canst —To pray.Soldier: O sir – !Charles: You have no tidings.Soldier: Sir —Charles (desperately): None, fool! but come to say what silence groans,What earth numb and in deadness raves to me.To tell Antonio hath gone out and o'erA precipice hath stepped for sake of love.This is not tidings – hath it not on meBeen fixed forever? It is older thanDespair, as old as pain! (To Hæmon, who has entered.) Your sister —Bardas: Hæmon – !Cardinal: Hold him not in this anguish.Fulvia: She and ourAntonio 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.Perchance 'twill keep them near us: speak to them,And they may answer while we wait, may floatDim words on moonbeams to us. O for oneThat shall sound of forgiveness and of rest!(More wildly.)O I have started on the mountain's browA tremor that has loosed the avalanche;And penitence too late – too late – too late —Was powerless as flowers along its path!

(He sinks back into his chair and stares hopelessly before him.)

Curtain