The Mortal Gods and Other Plays Part 7

_LeV._ [_Plunging toward Megario_] Murderer!

_Cha._ [_Grasping LeVal_] Come! At once!

_Meg._ Your pardon, prince.

I must delay you. I feared your sympathy Would gird itself 'gainst justice, and took care To balk escape. [_To officer who appears behind him_]

Be off with him. You know Your road. No stop this side Peonia's border.

_Cha._ Outlawry this! Stop, sir! You will not dare Kidnap him on this soil!

_Meg._ [_Laughs_] Where Hudibrand Is king?

[_Exit officer with LeVal, lower right_]

_Her._ This strains your privilege, my lord.

_Cha._ His privilege? My G.o.d! Did you....

_Her._ I did.

_Meg._ No third voice here is cordant. I will leave you.

My thousand times most gracious lady, thanks!

Again I bid you happiest good-night! [_Exit_]

_Her._ I am no adder, though your bitter eyes Give me that name.

_Cha._ Not bitter. In my heart, That wrapped you as the South its dearest bud, There's nothing left to warm the thought of you Even with my hate. You are the crown, the peak, The unmeaning top of all to which I'm most Indifferent. [_Turns away_]

_Her._ Look at me!

_Cha._ I look, and know My eyes till now were cankered, look and see The whole fair lie you are.

_Her._ Nay, Chartrien!

_Cha._ The book is open. There the brow yet s.h.i.+nes As G.o.d o'erlilied it,--an altar urn Stuffed with profane decay. Those are the eyes Like springs within a wood where no road leads With murking pilgrim dust, yet Innocence There paused looks up no more. That is the hand That as a comrade angel's took my friend's,-- Reached out as though it parted Heaven's veil To draw his grief within, then clapped him down To h.e.l.l.

_Her._ The place for traitors. Let him go.

This moment is for us. 'Tis true your eyes Were cankered, and I thought by surgeon means To give them health, but deeper than the eyes This trouble's seat. Deep as your changed soul, That forfeits its divinity to link With an infection. Here you stood and heard Those poured-out profanations with no move Or sound of protest. That was left for me.

_Cha._ What truth may pierce such ignorance, fatuous, thick!

That man,--Megario,--with whom you've struck Alliant palm, twisted a lawless law To his deformed desire, and took the lands-- The priceless valley lands of Cana Ru-- From gentle dwellers there, whose t.i.tles bore The rooted claim of dear ancestral graves Nine generations deep,--and when they stood The guardians of their doors, faced them with guns, Dragged them to his bribed courts, weighed them with fines, And sent them to his burning maguey fields To slave and rot.

_Her._ No--don't----

_Cha._ The lands were sold To Hudibrand----

_Her._ It can not be!

_Cha._ Not be?

That cry is stale as ignorance, as old As wrong. I've heard it till my ears refuse To register its emptiness. LeVal, It was, rose first against Megario,-- Stood up and urged men to be Man,--and this, That makes archangels in the ranks of Heaven, Was treason upon earth. He lived--escaped-- But not his wife. Anointed woman, such As centuries with conjoined virtues breed Once and no more! She was condemned, enslaved, And toiling in the steaming fields, fell down, Was flogged, and died.

_Her._ No! no! no! no!

_Cha._ So she Is free. But now LeVal goes back. My friend!

O, giant heart! I see you stagger, drop, As feverous as the smitten earth----

_Her._ Who could Believe such things? You're wrong! You must--you shall Be wrong! He was a traitor, bitter-souled.

Undoing my father's work!

_Cha._ Farewell!

_Her._ Oh, Chartrien, I did it for the best!

_Cha._ The woman's cry.

She'd wreck a world, and from that earthquake piled Look up to say she did it for the best.

_Her._ You will not go? You loved me one hour past.

I am not changed. I'm Hernda still.

_Cha._ The same.

And yet I loved you. But no blush need burn The soul escaped enchantment. 'Twas a charm Enringed me with its bale till helpless there, And feeble as a babe in ba.s.sinet, I cooed away my manhood,--emptied time With infant fingering toward your protean hair!

_Her._ You _loved_ me!

_Cha._ More than ever could be laid To madness' charge, or G.o.d that pa.s.sion whelms With mortal longing till his skies become His prison, and dark earth Elysian ground Beneath the feet he loves!

_Her._ [_With arms beseeching_] Here, Chartrien, here!

_Cha._ Even when my eyes--so late--were wide to wrong That binds the race to pain's dread Caucasus, My mad imagination laid the gift Of seers.h.i.+p on you, dreamed that you would go To meet the gleam of the delivering days,----

_Her._ With you!

_Cha._ Sail any sea of venture, beat Through any storm to make the prophet's port,-- White priestess va.s.sal to the truth that leads The planet into light!

_Her._ Together, Chartrien!

_Cha._ That was my dream. Then coming to your side.

There was no life but yours,--no world that bled And felt the vulture feeding. Groans of men Grew still, or like the unavailing hum Of far-off, aimless bees, scarce reached my ears That heard, more near, as music from new earth, Your children call me father. Ay, 'twas but The storming undersea of pa.s.sioning s.e.x That breaking to the sky o'erlaid my stars And wore the mask of Heaven! That ebbless power, That sp.a.w.ning tide of Nature, by whose might She took primordial forts and made Life hers!

Still does it tear belated, una.s.suaged, In wreck about the Mind's aspiring fanes.

And shakes the nesting Spirit from her towers, Her heavenly brood unfledged!

_Her._ Oh! Oh!

_Cha._ Here--now-- I beat it back, and go my way unmated Till beauty fair as yours has bred a soul And signals me! [_Exit_]

_Her._ Stay, Chartrien! Oh, my love!

[_Falls. Curtain_]