Limbo and Other Essays Part 10

(_after listening astonished at the_ d.u.c.h.eSS'S _unaltered tone of kindness_)

Your Grace will understand the matter as much as I can; and I cannot. He does not recognise me, Madam.

d.u.c.h.eSS

Not recognise you? What do you mean?

DIEGO

What the words signify: Not recognise.

d.u.c.h.eSS

Then----he does not know----he still believes you to be----a stranger?

DIEGO

So it seems, Madam.

d.u.c.h.eSS

And yet you have cured his melancholy by your presence. And in the past----tell me: had you ever sung to him?

DIEGO (_weeping silently_)

Daily, Madam.

d.u.c.h.eSS (_slowly_)

They say that Ferdinand is, thanks to you, once more in full possession of his mind. It cannot be. Something still lacks; he is not fully cured.

DIEGO

Alas, he is. The Duke remembers everything, save me.

d.u.c.h.eSS

There is some mystery in this. I do not understand such matters. But I know that Ferdinand could never be base towards you knowingly. And you, methinks, would never be base towards him. Diego, time will bring light into this darkness. Let us pray G.o.d together that He may make our eyes and souls able to bear it.

DIEGO

I cannot pray for light, most gracious Madam, because I fear it. Indeed I cannot pray at all, there remains nought to pray for. But, among the vain and worldly songs I have had to get by heart, there is, by chance, a kind of little hymn, a childish little verse, but a sincere one. And while you pray for me--for you promised to pray for me, Madam--I should like to sing it, with your Grace's leave.

DIEGO _opens a little movable organ in a corner, and strikes a few chords, remaining standing the while. The_ d.u.c.h.eSS _kneels down before the crucifix, turning her back upon him. While she is silently praying_, DIEGO, _still on his feet, sings very low to a kind of lullaby tune_.

Mother of G.o.d, We are thy weary children; Teach us, thou weeping Mother, To cry ourselves to sleep.

ACT III

_Three months later. Another part of the Palace of Mantua: the hanging gardens in the_ DUKE'S _apartments. It is the first warm night of Spring. The lemon trees have been brought out that day, and fill the air with fragrance. Terraces and flights of steps; in the background the dark ma.s.s of the palace, with its cupolas and fortified towers; here and there a lit window picking out the dark; and from above the princ.i.p.al yards, the flare of torches rising into the deep blue of the sky. In the course of the scene, the moon gradually emerges from behind a group of poplars on the opposite side of the lake into which the palace is built.

During the earlier part of the act, darkness. Great stillness, with, only occasionally, the plash of a fisherman's oar, or a very distant thrum of mandolines.--The_ DUKE _and_ DIEGO _are walking up and down the terrace_.

DUKE

Thou askedst me once, dear Diego, the meaning of that labyrinth which I have had carved, a shapeless pattern enough, but well suited, methinks, to blue and gold, upon the ceiling of my new music room. And wouldst have asked, I fancy, as many have done, the hidden meaning of the device surrounding it.--I left thee in the dark, dear lad, and treated thy curiosity in a peevish manner. Thou hast long forgiven and perhaps forgotten, deeming my lack of courtesy but another ailment of thy poor sick master; another of those odd ungracious moods with which, kindest of healing creatures, thou hast had such wise and cheerful patience. I have often wished to tell thee; but I could not. 'Tis only now, in some mysterious fas.h.i.+on, I seem myself once more,--able to do my judgment's bidding, and to dispose, in memory and words, of my own past. My strange sickness, which thou hast cured, melting its mists away with thy beneficent music even as the sun penetrates and sucks away the fogs of dawn from our lakes--my sickness, Diego, the sufferings of my flight from Barbary; the horror, perhaps, of that s.h.i.+pwreck which cast me (so they say, for I remember nothing) senseless on the Illyrian coast----these things, or Heaven's judgment on but a lukewarm Crusader,--had somehow played strange havoc with my will and recollections. I could not think; or thinking, not speak; or recollecting, feel that he whom I thought of in the past was this same man, myself.

_The_ DUKE _pauses, and leaning on the parapet, watches the long reflections of the big stars in the water_.

But now, and thanks to thee, Diego, I am another; I am myself.

DIEGO'S _face, invisible in the darkness, has undergone dreadful convulsions. His breast heaves, and he stops for breath before answering; but when he does so, controls his voice into its usual rather artificially cadenced tone_.

DIEGO

And now, dear Master, you can recollect----all?

DUKE

Recollect, sweet friend, and tell thee. For it is seemly that I should break through this churlish silence with thee. Thou didst cure the weltering distress of my poor darkened mind; I would have thee, now, know somewhat of the past of thy grateful patient. The maze, Diego, carved and gilded on that ceiling is but a symbol of my former life; and the device which, being interpreted, means "I seek straight ways," the expression of my wish and duty.

DIEGO

You loathed the maze, my Lord?

DUKE

Not so. I loved it then. And I still love it now. But I have issued from it--issued to recognise that the maze was good. Though it is good I left it. When I entered it, I was a raw youth, although in years a man; full of easy theory, and thinking all practice simple; unconscious of pa.s.sion; ready to govern the world with a few learned notions; moreover never having known either happiness or grief, never loved and wondered at a creature different from myself; acquainted, not with the straight roads which I now seek, but only with the rectangular walls of schoolrooms. The maze, and all the maze implied, made me a man.

DIEGO

(_who has listened with conflicting feelings, and now unable to conceal his joy_)

A man, dear Master; and the gentlest, most just of men. Then, that maze----But idle stories, interpreting all spiritual meaning as prosy fact, would have it, that this symbol was a reality. The legend of your captivity, my Lord, has turned the pattern on that ceiling into a real labyrinth, some cunningly built fortress or prison, where the Infidels kept you, and whose clue----you found, and with the clue, freedom, after five weary years.

DUKE

Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,--the clue meaning freedom, but also eternal parting--by the most faithful, intrepid, magnanimous, the most loving----and the most beloved of women!

_The_ Duke _has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn himself erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for_ Diego's _face in the darkness. But_ Diego, _unseen by the_ Duke, _has clutched the parapet and sunk on to a bench_.

DUKE

(_walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a pause_)

The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. The Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable suicide easier for her husband; Antigone, who buried her brother at the risk of death; and the Thracian Alkestis, who descended into the kingdom of Death in place of Admetus. But none, to my mind, comes up to _her_. For fancy is but thin and simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is closely knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain and joy. For note it, Diego--those antique women whom we read of were daughters of kings, or of Romans more than kings; bred of a race of heroes, and trained, while still playing with dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and look upon the wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; here was a creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned toy of brutal mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear contumely, or to s.n.a.t.c.h, unthinking, what scanty happiness lay along her difficult and despised path,--a wild creature, who had never heard such words as duty or virtue; and yet whose acts first taught me what they truly meant.