Classic Poem

SCENE VI. — A Court before Barracks in Bristol .

M ICHAEL Zebra

Z EB Save you, Sirs, in Bristol! Here we be! After hunting us over those Welsh hills, here has that fellow Wold fairly fixed us at last. Ay, ay, the days of siege and of thin cakes are upon us. Cousin Mervyn's here, drawn hither to wait on her aunt, Lady Staines, who has been sick. The venerable Auntship hates Wold with all the old family hatred, wrinkled and envenomed by her own ninety years. Ours is she entire. Dunley might make something of that, but he can't be screwed up to the doing point. As for poor Richard, though he's at hand with twenty thousand men from Ireland, he'll melt away like a snail in the sun of Lancaster: He was not born to raise sieges. His style of reigning won't do: Everything's hollow — false — a Lie. The overblown bubble must burst; hence Revolution, which is just the crack of an exploded Lie. Were I Wold now (for he has been scurvily used), I'd away with this Kingship for ever: I'd have everything down to the old turnip-eating plainness of my own Roman grandfathers: No plaited folds of favour, crimped and goffered by Ceremony, should be left to hide minions and panders in: No curled, scented villain should live on the stark naked level of the iron shield to which I would bring down all things. But I must back to Dunley, and keep him up with hopes of the King. We must lacker our fronts with daring, and hold out.

Enter P HILIP DE V ALMA .

P HIL . Hanged like a dog! My brother!
Yonder old beggar now, crooked and palsied,
Shaking all o'er with tatters, filth, and vermin,
And blear with rheum, look at him how he jerks
His red, raw, ulcerous, mortified pin of an arm,
Out of its linen bandage, tetter-stained,
Into the faces of the passers-by,
Chiefly if pregnant women, to enforce
Alms by disgust and fear: why he, and such as he,
Why reptile things, the vilest and most loathed,
Should be let live, ay, should be living now;
And my poor brother should be done to death,
O he so beautiful, so brave, so good,
I see not why: can any tell me why?
But let me be a man: Where are we at?
Here I'm shut in, then; Thomas of Wold's without,
Out of my reach: ah me, should be escape me!
How oft I might have smote him! Nay, how oft
I've touched his naked sleeping throat, in token
I had him sure; and yet forbore, as if
I dallied in the luxury of my purpose!
Would I were near him now! I've been a fool.
What boots it that my mind still runs upon
The bloody footsteps of things done of old,
Back, and far back away,
Tracking them like a sleuth-hound, and I see
The grisly shadows of my ancestors
Waving me to revenge, and every night
My mother's pale and ineffectual ghost?
They've not yet stirred me up to do the deed.

Re-enter Zebra .

Z EB . De Valma here! Have you, by any chance,
Seen my Lord Dunley?
P HIL . Villain! Oh villain!
If 'twas you did it! If you knew o't, even!
Z EB . Are you drunk? mad? or both? You've drugged yourself
With some of your insane liquors, eh?
What would you, then? What mean you? Pray, don't gasp so,
Nor look so black i' the face. In Christian breath,
What is't?
P HIL . My brother! hanged!
Z EB . Soho! that's it?
Now then, stand off. What do you take me for?
Am I that villain, eh, damned beyond fire?
Here's my bare breast — strike, and strike home, De Valma,
If you would kill your friend!
P HIL . Who did it, then?
Z EB . Wold
P HIL . No: He loved the lad: He's forth to avenge him
Z EB . All very pretty! True, he strung him not
With his own hand — —
P HIL . Oh!
Z EB . I forbear. But mark: —
Wold in a cowardly way sent your poor brother
To brave the King, fearing to go himself:
What call you that? Granted, it was a set
O' the King's own grooms, time-serving, meddling varlets,
Who basely thinking it would please their master,
Followed and hanged Sir Hugh: That's not denied.
But who set on the mischief? Was't not Wold?
P HIL . I knew not this before.
Z EB . You know it now.
As for the King and Dunley, need I tell you
How much they're grieved at such a knight's mean death?
P HIL . I'll give him vengeance! O my treasured vengeance
Is doubly sacred now: 'Tis due to him,
As to the elder manes of our house.
Boy! boy! you made me laggard, but you're now
A scourge of knotted scorpions to whip up
My tarrying purpose. So! I'll have him yet!
Z EB . Whom? Ah! I see. Philip, you don't love Wold?
You meditate mischief there?
P HIL . How know you that?
Z EB . I've noted your strange eagerness around him
But why not strike at once? Strike, and be done:
Be a man even in that; and not Wold's weasel,
Hanging for ever at his jugular vein.
Look! in the waving of a midnight curtain,
I'd do it thus — 'tis done! But come now, tell me
Why you hate Wold. I hate him too. I'll help you.
P HIL . You shan't. He's all mine own.
Z EB . Ho, ho! you have
Monopoly there? Well, man, don't tremble so,
Don't look so eager jealous; I'll not touch
Your Wold, I swear.
P HIL . My fathers were of Ireland.
There warred and ruled the Boar of Wold — his sires
Had done't before him cruelly. He humbled
Our house of fame — Darconnell's ancient house.
My father, deepliest grieved to have led and lost
His folk in vain for freedom — for the Boar
Quelled them, and sunk their heads in blood and fire —
Perished, self-slain. The stranger got our lands.
My mother to her native Italy.
Fled with her boys, Hugh and myself; and there
Heart-broken died she. We assumed her name.
Up there we grew. In me revenge grew up
Against Wold's house. Its state I learned, I learned
How fought its son in France: to France I went,
Taking young Hugh, and joined the English camp
I need not tell you how we found you there,
Our fellow-townsman, strong in English favour;
Nor how, as my soul wished, good friends, through you,
Fixed me Wold's surgeon — near his helpless sleep!
For I was trained to healing. In his eye
My brother Hugh got a young soldier's post.
I might have smote Wold, might have drowned his heart
With lethargies, or simply touched his lips
With subtle drops — and let Death wipe his beard!
But somehow 'twas too easy. More than this,
Purely to kill him was not all I wished:
I wished his heart to bear and feel the load
Of retribution for ancestral crimes
Coming down heavy on his life and house,
With a long dark fall out of the times of old
My scheme was not full-shaped, when my poor Hugh
Began to puzzle me in't: He knew it not;
He knew not even the history of our house,
So knew no cause to hate the Lord of Wold:
I kept the matter hid from him; I took it
All on myself, keeping his young soul clear.
Upspringing like a pyramid of flame,
How towered that soul in war! With zeal, with power,
With prowess all unparalleled, he Wold's life
Saved from a crush of foes bearing him down,
When mortal help seemed vain: Wold loved him thus:
And high of courtesy, plenteous of wit,
Music, and poetry, my brother grew
Closer and closer to the grave man's heart.
So what must I do now? Perplexed was I.
'Twas there and then you left us, following Dunley
War ceased in France. To England came we. Hugh
Went with Lord Wold to Wold. Hither I turned
To see a noted sage; pleased with my zeal,
He let me to his furnace, to deep things.
War rose in England. Forth I went to join
Wold and my brother. Hugh was hanged! Back hither,
It seems, I came. Zebra, I'm stricken sore!
I knew it would be thus! Aye in mine ear
Were voices crying, " Sweep thy house, prepare,
Death is thy Guest! " He perished so — my brother!
And Wold, he was the cause — I see it now —
For he exposed him rashly. But my heart
And hands are now made clear, and I can do it!
I'll do it now! Quick, let me forth to do it!
Z EB . Think of thy father, man, and cut his throat.
'Twill serve me too
P HIL . You shall not have one jot
Of what I do: Round and entire, the thing
Belongs to our house alone.
Z EB . Well, see you do it,
And there an end. Come to me then, the King
Patron shall be to your Philosopher's Stone.
P HIL . Serve you the Court? I knew not this.
Z EB . How could you?
When not i' the stars, with dim-eyed bearded Magi;
Or not i' the molten pot; or not i' the bowl,
With transcendental wassailers sublime, —
Your down-weighed heart, like a deep-laden waggon,
Weighed down with old black things, moves groaning on,
Heavily, slowly, groaning on, i' the deep
And narrow ruts of your progenitors,
Ploughed up by their inveterate wheels of usage,
And never mended since. Do but use, man,
Thine eyes, and see what a brave world's around thee,
With men and women in't. But now, good Philip,
We must to work. I'll let thee out. Come on;
And as we go, I'll show thee how Wold stands
In Dunley's way, therefore in yours: So you
Must take him off: All our plans thus go well.
P HIL . He shall die childless, and his house die with him.