The Wagnerian Romances Part 15

The curtain rising shows the rich pavilion on s.h.i.+p-deck where Isolde hides her face from the light against the cus.h.i.+ons of a day-bed.

Her attendant, Brangaene, stands gazing over the s.h.i.+p-side. The voice of a young sailor is heard from the rigging out of sight.

Now, though the Cornish diplomats have comported themselves during their mission with delicacy, the crew accompanying them take less trouble to conceal the glee they feel over the humiliation of their former lords, signified in this present carrying off of Ireland's proudest jewel. Isolde, spite of all courteous forms, is regarded by them as, in a sense, a prize of war. Some hint of this appears in the song of the young seaman, who permits himself references to the "wild and lovely Irish maid," and asks whether they be her sighs which swell his sail. The words penetrate through Isolde's absorption; she starts up in sudden fury, crying: "Who dares to mock me?" and looks wildly around, as if she had been so engrossed in other scenes that she did not, on returning to the light of day, know for a moment where she was. Then she recognises Brangaene, and remembers, and inquires where they are. "Streaks of blue are rising up out of the West," Brangaene describes what she is watching, "softly and swiftly sails the s.h.i.+p; on a calm sea before evening we surely shall reach the land."--"What land?" Isolde asks unexpectedly. "The verdant coast of Cornwall."--"Nevermore!" bursts from the princess, "Not to-day! Not to-morrow!"

Brangaene hurries to her, alarmed and wondering at the hurricane of pa.s.sion she now lets loose,--calling upon the arts of magic to restore to her the lost power of commanding sea and storm, calling upon the winds and waves to wreck this insolent s.h.i.+p and drown everyone upon it! Brangaene stands aghast. What she had but dimly apprehended, then, was true. She clings to her mistress, endeavouring to calm her. "What, dear heart, have you so long been concealing from me? Not one tear did you shed at parting from father and mother.

Hardly a word of farewell did you speak to those remaining behind.

Coldly and dumbly you left the land of home; pale and silent you have been on the voyage, taking no food, taking no sleep, deeply troubled, rigid and wretched,--how am I to endure to see you thus, to be nothing to you, to stand before you as a stranger? Oh, tell me what troubles you! Tell me, make known to me what is torturing you! If she is to think herself in any measure dear to you, confide now in Brangaene!" The unhappy Isolde, suffocating, gasps for air: "Air!... Air!... My heart is smothering!... Open! Open wide!" Brangaene hurriedly draws apart the tapestries which form the wall of the apartment at the back. The deck of the s.h.i.+p is seen from mainmast to stern; sailors busy with ropes, groups of knights and their esquires lounging. Tristan stands apart from the rest, with folded arms, staring abstractedly over the water. His servant Kurwenal lies idly outstretched at his feet. Isolde's eyes at once find the half-averted figure; her absorption in it becomes equal to his in the unknown object of the thoughts engrossing him. She does not hear this time the sailor at the topmast singing over again the song she had before resented; "O Irish maid, where tarriest thou? Is it the force of thy sighs which fills my sails?" Slow, involuntary, words drop from her lips, her inmost thoughts speaking to herself, while her eyes brood gloomily upon the unconscious head. "Mine elected,--lost to me! Lofty and beautiful,--brave and craven! Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!" Starting awake at the ring of her own words, she laughs unpleasantly and, turning to Brangaene: "What do you think of the lackey yonder?" Brangaene's glance follows Isolde's. She does not understand. "Whom do you mean?"--"The hero over there who averts his glance from mine, who in shame and embara.s.sment gazes away from me. Tell me, how does he impress you?"--"Are you inquiring, my dear lady," Brangaene asks in wonder, "of Tristan, the marvel of all nations, the man of exalted renown, the hero without equal, honour's treasure and vaunt?" Isolde catches up her tone, to continue in scornful mimicry: "Who terrified at his own achievement flies to refuge wherever he can, having won for his master a corpse to bride?... Is my saying dark to you? Go then and ask himself, the presumably free man, whether he dare to venture near me? All forms of reverence and considerate service he forgets toward his sovereign mistress, the shrinking hero, that of all things her glance may not light on him.... Oh, he no doubt knows why!" Suddenly overmastered by an impulse of her too-long controlled rancour: "Go to the haughty one," she orders Brangaene, "bear to him this message from his lady: Let him come into my presence forthwith, prepared to do my command."--"Am I to bid him come and offer his duty?" Brangaene timidly interprets. "Nay," Isolde storms, "let the self-sufficient one be warned to fear the mistress! That do I bid him, I, Isolde!"

Fixedly she watches the attendant moving along the deck, past the sailors at their work, toward the solitary figure of the knight.

She watches the two fixedly while their interview lasts.

Kurwenal, catching sight of the woman approaching, tugs at his master's mantle: "Attention, Tristan! Message from Isolde!" Tristan's start suggests how complete his abstraction, and what the effect of that name unexpectedly p.r.o.nounced. _As Brangaene comes before him_, the stage-directions say, _he rapidly composes himself_.

Deferently he inquires of his lady's wishes. Bragaene tells him, barely, that her lady wishes to see him. Then begins the series of his evasions, courteous as possible, but determined as courteous.

"If she be weary of the long voyage, that is nigh ended. Before sunset we shall touch land. Whatsoever orders my lady have for me shall be faithfully carried out." Brangaene repeats the order: "Let Sir Tristan then go to her, such is our lady's will."--"Yonder where the green meadows are still coloured blue to the eye, my king awaits my lady. That I may escort her to him, soon will I approach the Bright One. To none would I yield the privilege."

The maid repeats, still patiently: "Tristan, my lord, listen and attend: My lady requests your service,--that you should betake yourself to the place where she awaits you."--"At what place soever I be found, faithfully do I serve her, to the greater honour of women. If I should forsake the helm at this moment, how could I safely guide the keel to King Mark's land?" Brangaene's temper flashes a faint reflection of Isolde's fire. "Tristan, my lord, are you mocking me? If the stupid handmaid cannot make her meaning clear to you, hear my mistress's own words. This she bade me say: Be warned, a self-sufficient one, to fear the mistress! That is her behest,--Isolde's!" Without giving Tristan time to hesitate, Kurwenal jumps up: "May I frame an answer?"--"What would your answer be?" Tristan asks, for the moment at a loss. And Kurwenal, very loud, that his words may not fail to reach Isolde's ears: "This say to Madam Isolde: That he who made over to the maid of Ireland the crown of Cornwall and the inheritance of England cannot be the chattel of that same maid, presented by himself to his uncle. A lord of the world,--Tristan, the hero! I cry it aloud and do you report my words, though they should bring upon me the wrath of a thousand Madam Isoldes!" Tristan has vainly tried to silence him.

As Brangaene indignantly hastens away, the irrepressible servant sings after her at the top of his voice a mocking fragment of ballad, popular no doubt in Cornwall: "Lord Morold came over the sea to Cornwall to collect tribute. An island floats in a lonely sea, there he now lies buried. His head, however, hangs in Ireland, the tribute paid by England. Hurrah for our lord Tristan! What a one is he to pay tribute!" Tristan drives the fellow off, orders him below. But the whole crew have taken up the last lines of the song and shout them with a will. Brangaene drags together the curtains, shutting from sight the cruel rabble. Isolde, who has with difficulty controlled herself, seems on the point of an outburst, but she quells it, and in the restored silence asks with forced composure: "But now, about Tristan?--I wish to be told exactly." Brangaene, at first unwilling, reports the interview. When she has finished, Isolde, whose anger has made room for a sorrowful intense dejection, reveals to her what explains the humour, to her so far inexplicable, of her mistress. Her deeply wounded feelings bleeding afresh at their exposure, Isolde makes the relation almost tearfully. "You have been a witness to my humiliation, hear now what brought it about. They sing to me derisive songs. I could reply if I would!

Of a boat I could tell which, small and mean, drew to the coast of Ireland. In it a sick and suffering man, in woful plight, at the point of death...." She tells the story of her recognition in this Tantris of Tristan; of her resolve to take immediate vengeance upon him; of the look which disarmed her, her dismissal of him, healed, that he "might go home and burden her no more with the look of his eyes!"--"Oh, wonder!" breathes Brangaene. "Where were my eyes? The guest whom I once helped to nurse...?"--"You heard his praise a moment ago! 'Hurrah for our lord Tristan!' He was that unhappy man. He swore a thousand oaths of eternal grat.i.tude to me, and truth. Now hear how a hero keeps his word. He whom I dismissed unknown as Tantris, as Tristan comes boldly back. On a proud tall s.h.i.+p he draws to land, and desires the heiress of Ireland in marriage for the worn King of Cornwall, for Mark, his uncle. In Morold's lifetime who had ventured to offer us such an affront? To sue for the crown of Ireland for the King of the tribute-owing Cornis.h.!.+... Oh, woe is me! It was I, I, who in secret prepared for myself this shame! Instead of smiting with the avenging sword, weak, I let it drop. Now I am the servant of my own va.s.sal!"

Brangaene, when all is told, does not apparently recognise in the situation cause for so much bitterness. "When peace, reconciliation, and friends.h.i.+p were sworn on all sides," she says wonderingly, "we all rejoiced to see the day. How could I suppose it was a source of affliction to you?" The point then appears of that bitterness, which would hardly in reality have been a point but for a sentiment not among those which Isolde confesses to her confidante. That what she kept silent the other should reveal! That what he could only know and live to report through the weakness of her woman's heart, he should publicly make use of, to his own glory and his relative's advantage! She paints his att.i.tude, as she imagines him, victory-flushed, hale and whole now, pointing at her and saying in loud, clear tones: "There were a treasure for you, my lord and uncle! What do you think of her as a wife? The pretty Irish-woman I will bring to you here. By roads and by-paths well known to me, give the sign, I fly to Ireland: Isolde is yours! I delight in the adventure!" The picture goads her to very madness, and, with a cry for its mingling of ferocity with anguish like the roar of a baited and wounded lioness, she breaks into maledictions upon his head, calling down vengeance upon him, death upon him, nay,--at the climax of her rage and insupportable pain,--death upon them both!

With impetuous tenderness Brangaene showers words of endearment on the exhausted friend, hushes her with caresses, heaps, as it were, smothering flowers upon her angry coals. She forces her gently to a seat, comforting her with word and touch. Then she holds up all in a different light, endeavours to make her see the thing reasonably, as it must appear to others. "What delusion is this?

What idle raving? How can you stultify yourself till you neither can see nor hear? Whatever debt of grat.i.tude Sir Tristan owes you, tell me, could he better repay it than with the most magnificent of crowns? Thus does he at the same time faithfully serve his n.o.ble uncle and bestow upon you the world's most enviable prize. He has renounced, generous and true-hearted, his own inheritance, and placed it at your feet, that he may call you Queen. And if through him you are to wed Mark, how should you find fault with the choice?

Can you fail to prize and honour the man? Of great lineage and gentle nature, where is his equal in power and splendour? Who would not wish to share his good fortune, as consort to tarry beside him, whom the greatest of heroes so devotedly serves?" Isolde, but half heeding, has fallen again to her miserable brooding.

Brangaene's last words find their way to her brain and produce an image there which she stares at with gloomy and tragic eyes. As before, unconscious in her perturbation that she is doing it, she voices her inmost thoughts audibly, like a somnambulist: "Unloved by him, to behold the unrivalled man ever near, how could I endure the torment?" Brangaene catches the words, and innocently supposes them applied to King Mark. She presses fondly against this unaccountably humble-minded mistress: "What are you dreaming, perverse one? Unloved?

Where does the man live who would not love you? Who could see Isolde and not blissfully dissolve in love for her? But, if so were that he who has been chosen for you should be of a nature to that degree cold, if so were that some evil magic drew him away from you, I should know how very soon to bind the unkind one to you, the power of love should work its spell upon him...." She draws so near to Isolde that she can speak without fear of being overheard. "Do you forget your mother's magic? Do you imagine that she, who ponders all things so sagely, has sent me void of counsel along with you to a strange land?"--"At the right moment I am reminded of my mother's counsel," Isolde murmurs thoughtfully before her; "Her art I prize and welcome its aid. Vengeance it affords for the betrayal, peace in the need of the heart. Bring the casket here to me."--"It contains what shall secure your happiness!" Brangaene joyfully hurries to fetch the small golden coffer, lifts the lid, fingers the phials.

"In this very order were they placed by your mother, the mighty magic potions. For hurts and wounds here is balm; here, for poison, is counterpoison...." She takes out and holds up before Isolde with a significant smile a small flask. "The sweetest draught of all I hold here!" Isolde pushes aside her hand and stretches her own to the casket. "You are mistaken. I know better which one that is. I marked it with a deep incision. Here is the draught which shall serve my turn!" Brangaene stares at the phial which Isolde has taken from among the rest. "The death-potion!" she gasps, recoiling.

A sing-song shout interrupts them, the voices of the sailors hauling at ropes, taking in sail,--a reminder to Isolde that the land, the terrible land, is near. Kurwenal hurries in: "Up, up, you ladies!

Briskly and cheerily! Quickly prepare to land! Ready at once, nimble and spry! And to Madam Isolde I was to say from Tristan, my master: the pennant of joy waves merrily from the mast, making her approach known in Mark's royal castle. Wherefore he begs Madam Isolde to haste and make ready, that he may escort her ash.o.r.e." Isolde, for a minute convulsed with a shuddering horror at her realization of the decisive moment so near, reconquers her composure, and replies with contrasting dignity and calm to Kurwenal's familiar and rude pressing of the high-born ladies to haste. "To Sir Tristan bear my greetings and report to him what I say. If he look to have me walk at his side and stand before King Mark, as custom and seemliness demand, let him know that this shall in no wise happen if he have not before sought pardon of me for an uncondoned offence. Let him therefore cast himself upon my clemency!" As Kurwenal by a gesture signifies his stiff-necked resistance to her command, she repeats it, more regally peremptory than before: "Take careful heed of what I say and carefully report it. I refuse to make ready to accompany him to land, I refuse to walk beside him and stand before King Mark, unless he have before, as is fit and becoming, sued for forgiveness and forgetfulness of an unexpiated fault. Let him hope these from my grace!"--"Be quite sure that I shall tell him!" the bluff serving-man replies, turning to go: "Now wait and see how he takes it!"

Isolde flings her arms around Brangaene: "Farewell, Brangaene!

Commend me to the world! Commend me to my father and mother!"--"What is it?" the handmaid asks, not understanding, yet half frightened; "What are you meditating? Are you planning flight? Whither must I follow you?"--"Nay, did you not hear? I shall remain where I am.

I intend to await Tristan. Follow faithfully my command. At once prepare the peace-draught,--you know the one I showed you."--"What draught do you mean?" Brangaene asks, not daring to understand.

Isolde takes it out of the coffer once more and holds it up for Brangaene to see well, the little deadly phial. "This draught!

Pour it into the golden goblet; it will contain the whole without br.i.m.m.i.n.g over.--Mind you are true to me!" she adds, forcing it into the maid's hand. "But this drink..." falters the appalled girl, "for whom?"--"For him who betrayed me!"--"Tristan?"--"Shall drink to our peace-making!" Brangaene falls at Isolde's feet, entreating her to spare her. "Do you spare me, disloyal girl!" Isolde pa.s.sionately chides. What was the purpose, she asks, of that provision made by her mother for their a.s.sistance in a strange land? For hurts and wounds she had given balm; for poison, antidote; for deepest woe, for utmost affliction, she had given the death-draught: thanks be rendered to her now--by death! Brangaene still resisting, Isolde imperiously presses her command. Their struggle is cut short by Kurwenal announcing Tristan. Brangaene staggers to the back. Isolde visibly summons up all her courage, all her strength, and with queenly self-possession bids Tristan approach.

The music introducing the following scene has the effect of lifting the story on to a plane of larger things. The proportions of the personages, in the light of the magnifying music, are seen to be heroic, their natures vast, their pa.s.sions, in their very tremendousness, august.

Tristan stops at the entrance and waits deferentially. Constraint makes him into a man of chill iron. There is a long moment of heavy-laden silence. He is first to speak: "Make known to me, lady, your wis.h.!.+" She comes to the point at once. "Do you not know my wish, when the dread of fulfilling it has kept you afar from my glance?"

He evades her, as he had before evaded Brangaene. "Reverence laid its compulsion upon me!"--"Small reverence have you shown me. With overt scorn you have refused obedience to my command."--"Obedience alone restrained me."--"Paltry cause should I have to thank your master, if his service required of you discourtesy to his own consort."--"Custom demands," he quietly meets this, "where I have lived, that the escort of the bride, while bringing her home, should keep afar from her presence."--"For what reason?"--Stiffly as he stands, his answer resembles a shrug. "Ask of custom!"--"Since you cherish so great a regard for custom, my lord Tristan," Isolde mocks, "let me remind you of what likewise is a custom: to make peace with the enemy, if he is to report you as his friend." "And what enemy?" he questions, unmoved. "Inquire of your terror!...

Blood-guiltiness stands between us!"--"That was made good!"--"Not between us!"--"In the open field, before the a.s.sembled people, a solemn oath was sworn to let vengeance rest."--"Not there was it, not in the open field, that I kept Tantris concealed, that Tristan lay at my mercy. In the open field he stood magnificent, hale and brave; the thing however which he swore, I fore bore to swear. I had learned to keep silence. When he lay languis.h.i.+ng in the hushed chamber, and I stood silent before him with the sword, though my mouth no made sound, though my hand refrained, yet the thing which I had sworn with hand and mouth I silently renewed my oath to perform.

I now intend to keep it."--"What did you swear, lady?" Tristan asks simply, without effect of defiance. "Vengeance for Morold!" she hurls at him. He seems to wonder. A sort of numbness has been creeping over him; an atmosphere of dream has closed around him; her neighbourhood, her voice, no matter what words she is saying, even these angry and cruel ones, have an effect of lulling, of making the real world seem unreal. "Are you concerned for that?" he asks, with the sincerity of that state of having lost grasp on things as it is agreed to pretend they are. "Dare you to mock me?" she rages, "He was affianced to me, the gallant Irish hero. I had consecrated his arms, for me he went into battle. When he fell, my honour fell with him. In the heaviness of my heart I swore an oath that if no man would take vengeance for his murder, I, a woman, would find the hardihood for it. Why, when sick and feeble you lay in my power, I did not strike, explain to yourself by easy interpretation: I cared for your wound, that a man in sound health should be struck down by the vengeful hand of him who won Isolde. Judge for yourself now what your doom shall be. Since the men are all your adherents, who is to smite Tristan?"

More than ever it seems like the atmosphere of a dream closing down upon him, a dream in which they move, projecting incredible things. But he has perfectly seized her meaning, and even in a dream a man acts in character. Pale and self-contained, he hands her his unsheathed sword, and his voice shows a first tinge of emotion as he speaks the name of Morold, whom, it would almost seem, she had loved. "If Marold was so dear to you, again take up the sword, and drive it surely and steadfastly, that it may not drop from your grasp!"

If she seemed somewhat like a lioness before, striding and chafing in her regal rage, she is again, it must be confessed, a little like one now, but presenting a different aspect of the great feline, a sort of cruelty, a need to torment before sacrificing. "What would King Mark say if I were to slay his best servant, the most faithful of his retainers, who won for him crown and land? Does it seem to you such a paltry matter, that for which he stands indebted to you, bringing home to him the Irish bride, that he would not chide, should I slay the envoy who so faithfully delivers into his hands the hostage of the peace-compact?... Put up your sword!

When upon a time I brandished it, my heart hot with desire for vengeance, at your gazing upon me with an eye that took my measure, to see if I would answer as a wife for King Mark"--(There, there is point of insufferable bitterness!)--"I let the sword sink. Let us drink now to our reconciliation!"

By a sign she orders Brangaene to bring the draught. The poor creature shrinks away shuddering. Isolde, by a gesture more peremptory still, repeats her command, and Brangaene is seen tremulously busying herself with the golden casket and the golden cup. Again the sing-song chorus is heard, of the sailors hauling in the topsail. The sound falls with a shock upon Tristan's ear. "Where are we?" he cries, in bewilderment. "Close to our destination!" Isolde replies significantly. They are so close indeed to the end of their voyage that anything there is to say must be said now, and she invites, with a first suspicion of softness, some expression from him of regret, some explanation before they die, some attempt at justification of his so unkind-seeming return to the woman who had nursed and saved him. "Tristan, shall I obtain amends? What have you to say to me?" But he is guarded now as earlier; the compulsion of honour is no less strong upon him than before. "The lady of silence," he replies darkly, "teaches me to be silent. I apprehend, mayhap, what she concealed.... I conceal what she does not apprehend!"--"I shall apprehend the reason of your silence," she exclaims angrily, "if you mean to elude me. Do you refuse to drink to our peace-making?"

Brangaene has brought the cup. Tristan gazes rigidly into Isolde's eyes as she approaches him bearing it. "The voyage nears its end.

In brief s.p.a.ce we shall stand," her lip curls with irony, "before King Mark! As you lead me to him, should you not deem it an apt speech to make: My lord and uncle, look at her well! A meeker woman you could never hope to win. I slew her affianced, I sent home to her his head; the wound made by his weapon she graciously healed.

My life lay in her power; the gentle maid made me a gift of it, and gave her consent to the dishonour and degradation of her country that she might become your wife. In kind acknowledgment of my good gifts to her, she mixed me a sweet peace-draught; of her grace she tendered this to me, to make all offences forgotten!" No, Tristan can hardly entertain a doubt of the cup's contents which the princess holds toward him with her ambiguous smile. But her right, aside from any other consideration, is recognised as indubitable to the life which she saved. We have from his own lips later what his emotions were in this moment so pregnant with fate. What we see is that he stands like a man in a dream. A voice is heard outside shouting orders to the sailors: "Up with the cable! Free the anchor!"

He starts awake--he rises as if with a spring to the height of the moment. "Anchor loose!" he cries wildly. "Helm to the stream!

Sails and mast to the wind!" Ay, let go all regards and restraints of life, since life itself is about to be tossed over. There is zest in doing it, and then rid at once forever of the puzzling world of duty and prudence and heart-starvation! He s.n.a.t.c.hes the goblet from Isolde's hand: "Well do I know Ireland's queen and the magic power of her arts. I made use of the balm which she proffered, I take the cup from her now, that I to-day may completely recover. And do you mark the pledge with which, grateful, I drink to our peace!" It is an answer, this enigmatic pledge, to her wistful question: "What have you to say to me?" He cannot pa.s.s into silence, and leave her forever with her unmingled contempt for him. By broken intimations he flashes light upon the thing which his lips are interdicted from revealing. Charged with emotion, the words chime slowly: "Tristan's honour,--highest truth!... Tristan's misery,--cruellest spite!...

Lure of the heart!... Dream-intuitions!... Sole comforter of an eternal woe, merciful draught of forgetfulness, unwaveringly I drink!" He sets the cup to his lips and is drinking as he said, when with the cry: "Defrauded here too! Mine, one half!" Isolde wrests the goblet from him: "Traitor, I drink to you!" and drains it, unwavering as he.

The empty cup drops from her hand. They stand in suspense, gazing at each other, as defiantly they await death. The searching potion in a moment begins to take effect; each sees in the eyes of the other a new thing dawning, strange and beautiful; a trembling seizes upon their limbs. They press their hands convulsively to their hearts, the seat of an incomprehensible trouble, then to their foreheads, within which the brain seems to have become subject to over-wild delusions. Their eyes meet again, and are averted in a confused terror; but, invincibly allured, again seek the other--and both gaze with increasing, at last unconquerable, yearning. With tremulous lips she speaks his name,--a complete confession in the one word so spoken. Pa.s.sionately he calls hers,--confession for confession.

She sinks overpowered on his breast. He clasps her ardently to him. Brangaene wrings her hands at sight of them locked in their long, mute embrace. Her work this, the work of her disobedient hands which, too weak for the stern task a.s.signed them, poured out the love-potion in place of the death-draught. "Woe, woe," she wails, "eternal, irredeemable woe, instead of brief death! Behold the pernicious work of a foolish fondness blossoming heavenward in lamentation!"

The two move apart for a moment in order better to gaze at each other. "What was I dreaming," he falters, "of Tristan's honour?"

"What was I dreaming," she wonderingly asks, "of indignities to Isolde?"--"You, lost to me?" Could man have imagined so wild a thing! "You repulsing me?" Probable, it seems, as he stretches to her those yearning arms! It has all been a malignant trick, then, of evil sorcery! Restored at length from that delusion, they yield themselves exultantly to the tide of pa.s.sion that has caught them away and shall carry them whither it will, scornful of the whole world, lost in each other, conscious of a sweetness in the surrender surpa.s.sing all that life had given them to suspect.

The peculiar action of the potion is detected from the above. It seems less to create pa.s.sion than to remove all that obscured and controlled it, dissolve the barriers which up to the moment of drinking stood so effectively between the two. Tristan's will crumbles under it, the will which had kept him loyal to Mark, which had made him, to the point of offence, shun the radius of her dangerous magnetism. Isolde's pride melts under it, which had enabled her to keep up with herself and him a fiction of hate for the man who had wronged her. All that keeps love within bounds being burned away, it towers in a sublime conflagration. Their sense of the change is that they have awakened from a dream; but the effect of the potion has been in truth rather more to plunge them into a state of dream, in which while one emotion is in the ascendant the others sleep,--reason sleeps, will sleeps, all other interests and considerations sleep, leaving love free to reach proportions and an intensity unknown during wakefulness.

They have not heard or heeded the cries of the crew: "Hail, hail, King Mark!" The curtains of the pavilion are suddenly drawn wide apart. The s.h.i.+p's company crowds the deck; all are gazing toward the land. Tristan and Isolde take account of nothing, their senses fast sealed to all but the contemplation of each other. Brangaene and other women place on Isolde's unconscious shoulders the royal mantle, and deck her, unaware of it, with jewels. Kurwenal comes running to his master: "Hail, Tristan, fortunate hero! King Mark, with rich rout of courtiers, approaches in a barge. Ha! He looks well pleased, coming to meet the bride!" Tristan asks, dazed: "Who approaches?"--"The King!"--"What king?"--Kurwenal points overboard.

Tristan stares landward, not comprehending. The men shout and wave their caps. "Hail, King Mark!"--"What is it?" Isolde inquires, reached in her trance by the clamour; "Brangaene, what cry is that?"--"Isolde, mistress," the distraught Brangaene implores, "self-control for this one day!"--"Where am I?" the bewildered lady asks helplessly. "Am I alive?..." What, the question asks itself, what is this still familiar surrounding scene, when they ought, by true working of the drug, to be dead? If any thought had accompanied the overmastering impulse which she had blindly followed, it had been that before death all disguises drop, that in dying one is sincere. But since death had not followed the drinking of the draught--"Ha! What draught was that?" she asks in consternation.

Brangaene gives the desperate truth. "The love-draught!" Isolde's eyes widen with horror, and turning from Brangaene fix themselves upon Tristan. The situation flashes before her for one shocked moment in its true colours; and as before her calling his name had revealed all love, it reveals now her sense of an unspeakable awfulness in what has happened to them. As he calls her name, too, it expresses, with his boundless tenderness, pity and a tragic recognition of the black ingredient in the cup which had lifted them to such heights of intoxication. "Must I live?" speaks the last glimmer of the old Isolde, provided normally with a moral nature; and overwhelmed by the greatness of the catastrophe she sinks fainting upon his breast. A last glimmer of the old Tristan groans aloud: "O rapture beset with snares! Bliss on betrayal built!"

Trumpets are heard. The eager expectancy of all indicates that the King's barge is close at hand. The curtain falls.

II

The introduction to the second act opens with the motif of the Day.

It is no tender dawn described, with tremulous lights among the clouds; it has little of the touching _Morgenpracht_ in Parsifal.

It is a startling announcement of a fateful fact, an obtruder feared and unloved; it is like a clash of cymbals or call of trumpets summoning to unwelcome tasks, away from delights and dreams. It is indeed the day as it appears to lovers when, dispelling the gentle night which united them, with cruel golden shafts it drives them apart. The musical rendering follows upon it of love's impatient heart-beats, love's ungovernable eagerness for the beloved's presence, love listening for the footsteps of the beloved. The curtain rises upon a garden under a cloudless summer night. Beside the door of Isolde's apartment a torch is burning. The sound is heard of hunting-horns gradually retreating. Brangaene stands on the castle-steps, listening to these. Isolde, all in a happy agitation, hurries forth to ask if they still be audible. She herself cannot hear them any more. But to Brangaene's ear the sound is still distinct.

Isolde listens again: No! Brangaene, she believes, is deceived by her over-great anxiety, deceived by the rustling of the leaves.

"You," Brangaene retorts, "are deceived by the impetuosity of your desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!"

she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to keep him away from me as if horns were still close at hand?"--"The one who is waiting for you--do but listen to my warning," Brangaene pleads, "there are spies in the night lying in wait for him! Because you are blind, do you believe the eyes of the world dulled to your actions and his?" Against Melot she warns her, Melot, who, when he came aboard the s.h.i.+p with King Mark to receive the bride,--and the kindly King was engrossed by anxiety for the condition of the pale and fainting princess,--with treacherous, suspicious eye, Brangaene had seen it, scrutinised the countenance of Tristan, to read in it what might thereafter serve his purpose. Often since then she has come upon him eavesdropping. Against Melot let Isolde be warned!... Melot? Isolde rejects the idea with light scorn. Is not he Tristan's dearest friend? When Tristan is forced to keep afar from her, with whom does he spend the time but Sir Melot?

"The thing which makes him suspicious to me, to you endears him!"

cries Brangaene, in despair at such wilful blindness. "From Tristan to Mark lies Melot's road. He there sows evil seed. This nocturnal hunting-party, so hurriedly concerted, has in view a n.o.bler quarry than your fancy deems!"--"Melot," Isolde persists in his defence, "invented the stratagem, out of compa.s.sion for his friend. And do you make it into a reproach to him? He cares for me better than do you. He opens to me that which you close. Oh, spare me the misery of hesitation! The signal, Brangaene, give the signal! Extinguish the light to its last flicker. Beckon to the Night, that she may completely bend over us. Already she has poured her silence upon grove and house. Already she has filled the heart with her happy trepidation. Quench the light! Smother its frightening glare! Throw open the way to my beloved!"--"Oh, let the torch of warning stand!"

Brangaene struggles with her still, "Let it stand to illumine your danger!" And she wrings her hands anew, lamenting over this which is the work of those unfaithful hands, in a single instance disobedient to the mistress's will. "Your work?" Isolde smiles, with that mortal lightness which is upon her to-night; "Oh, foolish girl! Do you not know the Lady of Love? Do you not know her power, her miracles?

Queen of high hearts, ruler of earth's destinies, life and death are subject to her. She weaves them out of pain and pleasure. She can change hate into love. Presumptuous, I took in hand the work of death. The Lady of Love wrested it from me. The death-devoted she took into her keeping, she seized the work in her own hands.

To whatever purpose she will to turn it, however she will to end it, whatever the doom she appoint me, I am become her own. Let me then show myself obedient to her!" Clearly, Isolde to-night is _fey_. A rapturous madness is upon her. Aphrodite, the Lady of Love, possesses her indeed, and no impression is to be made upon her great mood by anything Brangaene can say. The girl might talk more hopefully to a gust of summer wind. Poor-spirited and grey-hued she appears, with her anguish and forebodings, beside the glowing, rosily-smiling queen, in her secure expectation. Still she presses the prayer of her terror: Just this one night let Isolde listen to her pleading! Just this one night let her not put out the light! But the mad Queen declares bafflingly that _Frau Minne_, Madam Love, desires that it shall become night, that she herself may illumine the place whence Brangaene's torch banishes her. To the watch-turret with Brangaene, whence let her keep faithful look-out.

"The torch," Isolde cries, grasping it, "were it the light of my life, laughing, without a tremor, I would put it out!" She dashes it to the ground, where it slowly dies. The troubled Brangaene disappears with heavy step up the stairway to the battlements.

Then is heard the motif again of love's impatience, of love listening.

Isolde peers down the avenue of trees, strains her ear for the sound of footsteps. She waves her veil, which glimmers white in the darkness; she waves it, in her impatience, more and more quickly.

She has caught sight of him, as an ecstatic gesture betrays. She hurries to the top of the stairs, the better to see him from afar and wave welcome to him. She rushes at last to meet him and they are gathered in each other's arms. So over-great is their joy that neither can believe the witness of his senses; nothing so good could be true as that this verily which can be seen and clasped should be the so sorely desired one. They vent themselves in such childish, fond, incredulous exclamations as: Is it you yourself?

Are they your eyes? Are they your lips? Have I here your hand?

Have I here your heart? Is it I? Is it you? Do I hold you close?

Is it no fancy? Is it no dream? And, as if finally convinced, they burst forth in a hymn of thanksgiving and joy.

"The light! The light! Oh, that light!" the lover voices his grudge against it. "How long ere it went out! The sun sank, day departed, but the ill-will of the Day was still unsated. It lit a fearful danger-signal and fastened it at the beloved's door, to prevent me coming to her!"--"But the hand of the beloved extinguished the light," Isolde pacifies him; "What the handmaid refused, I feared not to do. At the command and under the protection of Great Love, I cried defiance to the Day!"--"The Day! The Day! the malignant Day!" he inveighs; "To that implacable enemy hate and reproach!

Oh, might I, even as you quenched the light, put out the torches of the insolent Day, in vengeance for all the sufferings of love!"

There is a great deal in the often fanciful, yet ever earnest, conversation between the lovers, about the Day and the Night; the Day being devoted to their hate, the Night to their wors.h.i.+p. It is not only, however, that the day divides them, and their trysts belong to the night. They make the image of Day to stand for falsehood and evil illusion, while Night represents truth. The reason of this is not far to seek. Their love is not like the love of other mortals. Inevitably in the latter many elements enter. Will controls it, at least to some extent; reason guides and bounds it; sense of humour even qualifies it. A thousand things besides love find room in the most enamoured human heart and brain: other persons, pursuits, interests,--what Rossetti calls "all life's confederate pleas, work, contest, fame." The many-sided nature of man is appealed to by myriad things. Only for brief moments do lovers stand on the high peaks of pure pa.s.sion where Tristan and Isolde perpetually reside. Love they never so truly, lovers who have not quaffed the magic potion love great part of the time almost unconsciously, in a divine under-current,--no otherwise indeed than Tristan before the potion, when, despite the Image in his heart, he devoted thought to his career, cherished dreams of ambition. But after the cup Tristan and Isolde are lovers, nothing more,--or less. All the furniture of the day which has nothing to do with their love is therefore an impertinence, an obtrusion; all day's pageants and activities are a vanity, and a pernicious vanity; a glaring mask hiding from sight the only true and beautiful. Everything that the garish daylight shows, which can never show them the depths of the other's heart, is a false show, an ugly delusion. The night, during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,--the night is fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves eternally floating in a state of ever-renewed joy in each other, ever fresh ardour, two and yet one. It is not in the least like Paradise. Paradise, with its interfering light and shows and other-souls-in-bliss, could be to them but another version of the Day. The Paradise of their desire is an eternal twilight, and nothing more asked for each than the heaven of the other.

Meanwhile they are talking together like commoner lovers, of the past, of their first meeting, the beginnings of their love. How, she asks him, very humanly, how could he do to her the thing he did, betray her as he had done, claim her for another, give her over to death? "It was the Day!" he explains. "The Day, s.h.i.+ning about me, which showed Isolde, where she stood sun-like, in the splendour of glory and greatness, infinitely far removed. That which so ravished my eye, weighted down my heart to the earth. How, in the brilliant light of the Day, how could Isolde be mine?"--"Was she not yours, whose elect you were? What falsehoods did the evil Day tell you, that you should betray the faithful one, who had preferred you?" The love of glory it had been, he avows, which moved him. That sun of the Day, worldly honour, with its idle and false rays had allured him. An Image all the while lay in the deepest shrine of his heart, an unsleeping Image which had impressed itself while he was hardly aware, and lived in the chaste night there, closely shut in. Till a ray of the Day had penetrated even so deep, and that which was so secret and sacred that his eyes scarcely trusted themselves to look at it, that Image, smitten by Daylight, lay brilliantly revealed. And, Day-deluded, he had vaunted before the whole army that which seemed to him so desirable and beautiful, the fairest King's-bride of all the earth; and to silence the envy and hatred which had begun to make his honours heavy to him, to maintain his glory, he had undertaken that boldest exploit, his quest to Ireland. "Vain slave of the Day!" Isolde calls him. She tells her part of the story, and we are enlightened concerning the mood in which she proffered to him the death-draught: how, deceived she too by the Day, tortured in her love for him, she had, while ardently loving him, hated him to the bottom of her heart. From the light of Day, which showed him an ingrate and a traitor, she had longed to flee, to draw him along with her into the night, where her heart foretold an end of the mistake, a dispelling of the apprehended delusion; to drink to him eternal love and enter death simultaneously with him.

We learn thereupon the mood in which he accepted the cup from her.

"When I recognised the sweet draught proffered by your hand, when intuition clearly and surely told me what it was the peace-drink promised me, there dawned in my bosom, mild and divine, the Night--my Day had reached its close!" In other words, when he had stood facing, as he knew, death, all the vain shows and disguises of the Day had melted away, he had seen for the first time clearly in his own heart. "O hail to the draught!" he exclaims, "Hail to its sublime magic! At the portal of death, where I quaffed it, it opened wide to me the region where I theretofore had wandered but in dream, the wonder-kingdom of the Night! From the Face in the innermost shrine of the heart it dispelled the deceiving glare of the Day, that my eyes, grown accustomed to the Night, might see it in its truth." But the Day, she carries on the conceit with gathering sadness, had its revenge! The Day entered into league with his sins, and that Face which the Night had vouchsafed him to see he had been forced to surrender to the royal power of the Day, and behold it s.h.i.+ning lonesomely afar, in barren magnificence. "How have I endured it?" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay, he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night.

The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly into the night of death, he to whom that Night has confided her deep secret, the lies of the Day, honour and glory, power and gain, lovely and s.h.i.+ning though they be, like idle star-dust he sees them float past. Amid the vain delusions of the Day he is possessed by a single longing, the longing for the holy Night, in which the one thing from all eternity true, Love with its rapture, awaits him!"