The Saint's Tragedy

SCENE II

A street.  Elizabeth and Guta at the door of a Convent.  Monks in the porch.

 
Eliz.  You are afraid to shelter me—afraid.
And so you thrust me forth, to starve and freeze.
Soon said.  Why palter o’er these mean excuses,
Which tempt me to despise you?
 
 
Monks.  Ah! my lady,
We know your kindness—but we poor religious
Are bound to obey God’s ordinance, and submit
Unto the powers that be, who have forbidden
All men, alas! to give you food or shelter.
 
 
Eliz.  Silence!  I’ll go.  Better in God’s hand than man’s.
He shall kill us, if we die.  This bitter blast
Warping the leafless willows, yon white snow-storms,
Whose wings, like vengeful angels, cope the vault,
They are God’s,—We’ll trust to them.
 

[Monks go in.]

 
Guta.  Mean-spirited!
Fair frocks hide foul hearts.  Why, their altar now
Is blazing with your gifts.
 
 
Eliz.  How long their altar?
To God I gave—and God shall pay me back.
Fool! to have put my trust in living man,
And fancied that I bought God’s love, by buying
The greedy thanks of these His earthly tools!
Well—here’s one lesson learnt!  I thank thee, Lord!
Henceforth I’ll straight to Thee, and to Thy poor.
What?  Isentrudis not returned?  Alas!
Where are those children?
They will not have the heart to keep them from me—
Oh! have the traitors harmed them?
 
 
Guta.  Do not think it.
The dowager has a woman’s heart.
 
 
Eliz.  Ay, ay—
But she’s a mother—and mothers will dare all things—
Oh!  Love can make us fiends, as well as angels.
My babies!  Weeping?  Oh, have mercy, Lord!
On me heap all thy wrath—I understand it:
What can blind senseless terror do for them?
 
 
Guta.  Plead, plead your penances!  Great God, consider
All she has done and suffered, and forbear
To smite her like a worldling!
 
 
Eliz.  Silence, girl!
I’d plead my deeds, if mine own character,
My strength of will had fathered them: but no—
They are His, who worked them in me, in despite
Of mine own selfish and luxurious will—
Shall I bribe Him with His own?  For pain, I tell thee
I need more pain than mine own will inflicts,
Pain which shall break that will.—Yet spare them, Lord!
Go to—I am a fool to wish them life—
And greater fool to miscall life, this headache—
This nightmare of our gross and crude digestion—
This fog which steams up from our freezing clay—
While waking heaven’s beyond.  No! slay them, traitors!
Cut through the channels of those innocent breaths
Whose music charmed my lone nights, ere they learn
To love the world, and hate the wretch who bore them!
 

[Weeps.]

 
Guta.  This storm will blind us both: come here, and shield you
Behind this buttress.
 
 
Eliz.  What’s a wind to me?
I can see up the street here, if they come—
They do not come!—Oh! my poor weanling lambs—
Struck dead by carrion ravens!
What then, I have borne worse.  But yesterday
I thought I had a husband—and now—now!
Guta!  He called a holy man before he died?
 
 
Guta.  The Bishop of Jerusalem, ’tis said,
With holy oil, and with the blessed body
Of Him for whom he died, did speed him duly
Upon his heavenward flight.
 
 
Eliz.  O happy bishop!
Where are those children?  If I had but seen him!
I could have borne all then.  One word—one kiss!
Hark!  What’s that rushing?  White doves—one—two—three—
Fleeing before the gale.  My children’s spirits!
Stay, babies—stay for me!  What!  Not a moment?
And I so nearly ready to be gone?
 
 
Guta.  Still on your children?
 
 
Eliz.  Oh! this grief is light
And floats a-top—well, well; it hides a while
That gulf too black for speech—My husband’s dead!
I dare not think on’t.
A small bird dead in the snow!  Alas! poor minstrel!
A week ago, before this very window,
He warbled, may be, to the slanting sunlight;
And housewives blest him for a merry singer:
And now he freezes at their doors, like me.
Poor foolish brother! didst thou look for payment?
 
 
Guta.  But thou hast light in darkness: he has none—
The bird’s the sport of time, while our life’s floor
Is laid upon eternity; no crack in it
But shows the underlying heaven.
 
 
Eliz.  Art sure?
Does this look like it, girl?  No—I’ll trust yet—
Some have gone mad for less; but why should I?
Who live in time, and not eternity.
’Twill end, girl, end; no cloud across the sun
But passes at the last, and gives us back
The face of God once more.
 
 
Guta.  See here they come,
Dame Isentrudis and your children, all
Safe down the cliff path, through the whirling snow-drifts.
 
 
Eliz.  O Lord, my Lord!  I thank thee!
Loving and merciful, and tender-hearted,
And even in fiercest wrath remembering mercy.
Lo! here’s my ancient foe.  What want you, Sir?
 

[Hugo enters.]

 
Hugo.  Want?  Faith, ’tis you who want, not I, my Lady—
I hear, you are gone a begging through the town;
So, for your husband’s sake, I’ll take you in;
For though I can’t forget your scurvy usage,
He was a very honest sort of fellow,
Though mad as a March hare; so come you in.
 
 
Eliz.  But know you, Sir, that all my husband’s vassals
Are bidden bar their doors to me?
 
 
Hugo.  I know it:
And therefore come you in; my house is mine:
No upstarts shall lay down the law to me;
Not they, mass: but mind you, no canting here—
No psalm-singing; all candles out at eight:
Beggars must not be choosers.  Come along!
 
 
Eliz.  I thank you, Sir; and for my children’s sake
I do accept your bounty. [aside]  Down, proud heart—
Bend lower—lower ever: thus God deals with thee.
Go, Guta, send the children after me.  [Exeunt severally.]
 

[Two Peasants enter.]

1st Peas.  Here’s Father January taken a lease of March month, and put in Jack Frost for bailiff.  What be I to do for spring-feed if the weather holds,—and my ryelands as bare as the back of my hand?

2d Peas.  That’s your luck.  Freeze on, say I, and may Mary Mother send us snow a yard deep.  I have ten ton of hay yet to sell—ten ton, man—there’s my luck: every man for himself, and—Why here comes that handsome canting girl, used to be about the Princess.

[Guta enters.]

 
Guta.  Well met, fair sirs!  I know you kind and loyal,
And bound by many a favour to my mistress:
Say, will you bear this letter for her sake
Unto her aunt, the rich and holy lady
Who rules the nuns of Kitzingen?
 
 
2d Peas.  If I do, pickle me in a barrel among cabbage.
She told me once, God’s curse would overtake me,
For grinding of the poor: her turn’s come now.
 
 
Guta.  Will you, then, help her?  She will pay you richly.
 
 
1st Peas.  Ay?  How, dame?  How?  Where will the money come from?
 
 
Guta.  God knows—
 
 
1st Peas.  And you do not.
 
 
Guta.  Why, but last winter,
When all your stacks were fired, she lent you gold.
 
 
1st Peas.  Well—I’ll be generous: as the times are hard,
Say, if I take your letter, will you promise
To marry me yourself?
 
 
Guta.  Ay, marry you,
Or anything, if you’ll but go to-day:
At once, mind.  [Giving him the letter.]
 
 
1st Peas.  Ay, I’ll go.  Now, you’ll remember?
 
 
Guta.  Straight to her ladyship at Kitzingen.
God and His saints deal with you, as you deal
With us this day.  [Exit.]
 
 
2d Peas.  What! art thou fallen in love promiscuously?
 
 
1st Peas.  Why, see, now, man; she has her mistress’ ear;
And if I marry her, no doubt they’ll make me
Bailiff, or land-steward; and there’s noble pickings
In that same line.
 
 
2d Peas.  Thou hast bought a pig in a poke:
Her priest will shrive her off from such a bargain.
 
 
1st Peas.  Dost think?  Well—I’ll not fret myself about it.
See, now, before I start, I must get home
Those pigs from off the forest; chop some furze;
And then to get my supper, and my horse’s:
And then a man will need to sit a while,
And take his snack of brandy for digestion;
And then to fettle up my sword and buckler;
And then, bid ’em all good-bye: and by that time
’Twill be ’most nightfall—I’ll just go to-morrow.
Off—here she comes again.  [Exeunt.]
 

[Isentrudis and Guta enter, with the children.]

 
Guta.  I warned you of it; I knew she would not stay
An hour, thus treated like a slave—an idiot.
 
 
Isen.  Well, ’twas past bearing: so we are thrust forth
To starve again.  Are all your jewels gone?
 
 
Guta.  All pawned and eaten—and for her, you know,
She never bore the worth of one day’s meal
About her dress.  We can but die—No foe
Can ban us from that rest.
 
 
Isen.  Ay, but these children!—Well—if it must be,
Here, Guta, pull off this old withered hand
My wedding-ring; the man who gave it me
Should be in heaven—and there he’ll know my heart.
Take it, girl, take it.  Where’s the Princess now?
She stopped before a crucifix to pray;
But why so long?
 
 
Guta.  Oh! prayer, to her rapt soul,
Is like the drunkenness of the autumn bee,
Who, scent-enchanted, on the latest flower,
Heedless of cold, will linger listless on,
And freeze in odorous dreams.
 
 
Isen.  Ah! here she comes.
 
 
Guta.  Dripping from head to foot with wet and mire!
How’s this?
 

[Elizabeth entering.]

 
Eliz.  How?  Oh, my fortune rises to full flood:
I met a friend just now, who told me truths
Wholesome and stern, of my deceitful heart—
Would God I had known them earlier!—and enforced
Her lesson so, as I shall ne’er forget it
In body or in mind.
 
 
Isen.  What means all this?
 
 
Eliz.  You know the stepping-stones across the ford.
There as I passed, a certain aged crone,
Whom I had fed, and nursed, year after year,
Met me mid-stream—thrust past me stoutly on—
And rolled me headlong in the freezing mire.
There as I lay and weltered,—‘Take that, Madam,
For all your selfish hypocritic pride
Which thought it such a vast humility
To wash us poor folk’s feet, and use our bodies
For staves to build withal your Jacob’s-ladder.
What! you would mount to heaven upon our backs?
The ass has thrown his rider.’  She crept on—
I washed my garments in the brook hard by—
And came here, all the wiser.
 
 
Guta.  Miscreant hag!
 
 
Isen.  Alas, you’ll freeze.
 
 
Guta.  Who could have dreamt the witch
Could harbour such a spite?
 
 
Eliz.  Nay, who could dream
She would have guessed my heart so well?  Dull boors
See deeper than we think, and hide within
Those leathern hulls unfathomable truths,
Which we amid thought’s glittering mazes lose.
They grind among the iron facts of life,
And have no time for self-deception.
 
 
Isen.  Come—
Put on my cloak—stand here, behind the wall.
Oh! is it come to this?  She’ll die of cold.
 
 
Guta.  Ungrateful fiend!
 
 
Eliz.  Let be—we must not think on’t.
The scoff was true—I thank her—I thank God—
This too I needed.  I had built myself
A Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven,
Of poor men’s praise and prayers, and subtle pride
At mine own alms.  ’Tis crumbled into dust!
Oh!  I have leant upon an arm of flesh—
And here’s its strength!  I’ll walk by faith—by faith
And rest my weary heart on Christ alone—
On him, the all-sufficient!
Shame on me! dreaming thus about myself,
While you stand shivering here.  [To her little Son.]
Art cold, young knight?
Knights must not cry—Go slide, and warm thyself.
Where shall we lodge to-night?
 
 
Isen.  There’s no place open,
But that foul tavern, where we lay last night.
 
 
Elizabeth’s Son [clinging to her].  O mother, mother! go not to that house—
Among those fierce lank men, who laughed, and scowled,
And showed their knives, and sang strange ugly songs
Of you and us.  O mother! let us be!
 
 
Eliz.  Hark! look!  His father’s voice!—his very eye—
Opening so slow and sad, then sinking down
In luscious rest again!
 
 
Isen.  Bethink you, child—
 
 
Eliz.  Oh yes—I’ll think—we’ll to our tavern friends;
If they be brutes, ’twas my sin left them so.
 
 
Guta.  ’Tis but for a night or two: three days will bring
The Abbess hither.
 
 
Isen.  And then to Bamberg straight
For knights and men-at-arms!  Your uncle’s wrath—
 
 
Guta [aside].  Hush! hush! you’ll fret her, if you talk of vengeance.
 
 
Isen.  Come to our shelter.
 
 
Children.  Oh stay here, stay here!
Behind these walls.
 
 
Eliz.  Ay—stay a while in peace.  The storms are still.
Beneath her eider robe the patient earth
Watches in silence for the sun: we’ll sit
And gaze up with her at the changeless heaven,
Until this tyranny be overpast.
Come. [aside]  Lost!  Lost!  Lost!
 

[They enter a neighbouring ruin.]

SCENE III

A Chamber in the Bishop’s Palace at Bamberg.  Elizabeth and Guta.

 
Guta.  You have determined?
 
 
Eliz.  Yes—to go with him.
I have kept my oath too long to break it now.
I will to Marpurg, and there waste away
In meditation and in pious deeds,
Till God shall set me free.
 
 
Guta.  How if your uncle
Will have you marry?  Day and night, they say,
He talks of nothing else.
 
 
Eliz.  Never, girl, never!
Save me from that at least, O God!
 
 
Guta.  He spoke
Of giving us, your maidens, to his knights
In carnal wedlock: but I fear him not:
For God’s own word is pledged to keep me pure—
I am a maid.
 
 
Eliz.  And I, alas! am none!
O Guta! dost thou mock my widowed love?
I was a wife—’tis true: I was not worthy—
But there was meaning in that first wild fancy;
’Twas but the innocent springing of the sap—
The witless yearning of an homeless heart—
Do I not know that God has pardoned me?
But now—to rouse and turn of mine own will,
In cool and full foreknowledge, this worn soul
Again to that, which, when God thrust it on me,
Bred but one shame of ever-gnawing doubt,
Were—No, my burning cheeks!  We’ll say no more.
Ah! loved and lost!  Though God’s chaste grace should fail me,
My weak idolatry of thee would give
Strength that should keep me true: with mine own hands
I’d mar this tear-worn face, till petulant man
Should loathe its scarred and shapeless ugliness.
 
 
Guta.  But your poor children?  What becomes of them?
 
 
Eliz.  Oh! she who was not worthy of a husband
Does not deserve his children.  What are they, darlings,
But snares to keep me from my heavenly spouse
By picturing the spouse I must forget?
Well—’tis blank horror.  Yet if grief’s good for me,
Let me down into grief’s blackest pit,
And follow out God’s cure by mine own deed.
 
 
Guta.  What will your kinsfolk think?
 
 
Eliz.  What will they think!
What pleases them.  That argument’s a staff
Which breaks whene’er you lean on’t.  Trust me, girl,
That fear of man sucks out love’s soaring ether,
Baffles faith’s heavenward eyes, and drops us down,
To float, like plumeless birds, on any stream.
Have I not proved it?
There was a time with me, when every eye
Did scorch like flame: if one looked cold on me,
I straight accused myself of mortal sins:
Each fopling was my master: I have lied
From very fear of mine own serving-maids.—
That’s past, thank God’s good grace!
 
 
Guta.  And now you leap
To the other end of the line.
 
 
Eliz.  In self-defence.
I am too weak to live by half my conscience;
I have no wit to weigh and choose the mean;
Life is too short for logic; what I do
I must do simply; God alone must judge—
For God alone shall guide, and God’s elect—
I shrink from earth’s chill frosts too much to crawl—
I have snapped opinion’s chains, and now I’ll soar
Up to the blazing sunlight, and be free.
 

[The bishop of Bamberg enters.  Conrad following.]

Bishop.  The Devil plagued St. Antony in the likeness of a lean friar!  Between mad monks and mad women, bedlam’s broke loose, I think.

Con.  When the Spirit first descended on the elect, seculars then, too, said mocking, ‘These men are full of new wine.’

Bishop.  Seculars, truly!  If I had not in my secularity picked up a spice of chivalry to the ladies, I should long ago have turned out you and your regulars, to cant elsewhere.  Plague on this gout—I must sit.

 
Eliz.  Let me settle your cushion, uncle.
 

Bishop.  So! girl!  I sent for you from Botenstain.  I had a mind, now, to have kept you there until your wits returned, and you would say Yes to some young noble suitor.  As if I had not had trouble enough about your dower!—If I had had to fight for it, I should not have minded:—but these palavers and conferences have fretted me into the gout: and now you would throw all away again, tired with your toy, I suppose.  What shall I say to the Counts, Varila, and the Cupbearer, and all the noble knights who will hazard their lands and lives in trying to right you with that traitor?  I am ashamed to look them in the face!  To give all up to the villain!—To pay him for his treason!

Eliz.  Uncle, I give but what to me is worthless.  He loves these baubles—let him keep them, then: I have my dower.

Bishop.  To squander on nuns and beggars, at this rogue’s bidding?  Why not marry some honest man?  You may have your choice of kings and princes; and if you have been happy with one gentleman, Mass! say I, why can’t you be happy with another?  What saith the Scripture?  ‘I will that the younger widows marry, bear children,’—not run after monks, and what not—What’s good for the filly, is good for the mare, say I.

 
Eliz.  Uncle, I soar now at a higher pitch—
To be henceforth the bride of Christ alone.
 

Bishop.  Ahem!—a pious notion—in moderation.  We must be moderate, my child, moderate: I hate overdoing anything—especially religion.

 
Con.  Madam, between your uncle and myself
This question in your absence were best mooted.
 

[Exit Elizabeth.]

 
Bishop.  How, priest? do you order her about like a servant-maid?
 
 
Con.  The saints forbid!  Now—ere I lose a moment—
 

[Kneeling.]

 
[Aside] All things to all men be—and so save some—
[Aloud] Forgive, your grace, forgive me,
If mine unmannered speech in aught have clashed
With your more tempered and melodious judgment:
Your courage will forgive an honest warmth.
God knows, I serve no private interests.
 
 
Bishop.  Your order’s, hey? to wit?
 
 
Con.  My lord, my lord,
There may be higher aims: but what I said,
I said but for our Church, and our cloth’s honour.
Ladies’ religion, like their love, we know,
Requires a gloss of verbal exaltation,
Lest the sweet souls should understand themselves;
And clergymen must talk up to the mark.
 
 
Bishop.  We all know, Gospel preached in the mother-tongue
Sounds too like common sense.
 
 
Con.  Or too unlike it:
You know the world, your grace; you know the sex—
 
 
Bishop.  Ahem!  As a spectator.
 
 
Con.  Philosophicè—
Just so—You know their rage for shaven crowns—
How they’ll deny their God—but not their priest—
Flirts—scandal-mongers—in default of both come
Platonic love—worship of art and genius—
Idols which make them dream of heaven, as girls
Dream of their sweethearts, when they sleep on bridecake.
It saves from worse—we are not all Abelards.
 
 
Bishop [aside].  Some of us have his tongue, if not his face.
 
 
Con.  There lies her fancy; do but balk her of it—
She’ll bolt to cloisters, like a rabbit scared.
Head her from that—she’ll wed some pink-faced boy—
The more low-bred and penniless, the likelier.
Send her to Marpurg, and her brain will cool.
Tug at the kite, ’twill only soar the higher:
Give it but line, my lord, ’twill drop like slate.
Use but that eagle’s glance, whose daring foresight
In chapter, camp, and council, wins the wonder
Of timid trucklers—Scan results and outcomes—
The scale is heavy in your grace’s favour.
 
 
Bishop.  Bah! priest!  What can this Marpurg-madness do for me?
 
 
Con.  Leave you the tutelage of all her children.
 
 
Bishop.  Thank you—to play the dry-nurse to three starving brats.
 
 
Con.  The minor’s guardian guards the minor’s lands.
 
 
Bishop.  Unless they are pitched away in building hospitals.
 
 
Con.  Instead of fattening in your wisdom’s keeping.
 
 
Bishop.  Well, well,—but what gross scandal to the family!
 
 
Con.  The family, my lord, would gain a saint.
 
 
Bishop.  Ah! monk, that canonisation costs a frightful sum.
 
 
Con.  These fees, just now, would gladly be remitted.
 
 
Bishop.  These are the last days, faith, when Rome’s too rich to take!
 
 
Con.  The Saints forbid, my lord, the fisher’s see
Were so o’ercursed by Mammon!  But you grieve,
I know, to see foul weeds of heresy
Of late o’errun your diocese.
 
 
Bishop.  Ay, curse them!
I’ve hanged some dozens.
 
 
Con.  Worthy of yourself!
But yet the faith needs here some mighty triumph—
Some bright example, whose resplendent blaze
May tempt that fluttering tribe within the pale
Of Holy Church again—
 
 
Bishop.  To singe their wings?
 
 
Con.  They’ll not come near enough.  Again—there are
Who dare arraign your prowess, and assert
A churchman’s energies were better spent
In pulpits than the tented field.  Now mark—
Mark, what a door is opened.  Give but scope
To this her huge capacity for sainthood—
Set her, a burning and a shining light
To all your people—Such a sacrifice,
Such loan to God of your own flesh and blood,
Will silence envious tongues, and prove you wise
For the next world as for this; will clear your name
From calumnies which argue worldliness;
Buy of itself the joys of paradise;
And clench your lordship’s interest with the pontiff.
 
 
Bishop.  Well, well, we’ll think on’t.
 
 
Con.  Sir, I doubt you not.
 

[Re-enter Elizabeth.]

 
Eliz.  Uncle, I am determined.
 
 
Bishop.  So am I.
You shall to Marpurg with this holy man.
 
 
Eliz.  Ah, there you speak again like my own uncle.
I’ll go—to rest [aside] and die.  I only wait
To see the bones of my beloved laid
In some fit resting-place.  A messenger
Proclaims them near.  O God!
 
 
Bishop.  We’ll go, my child,
And meeting them with all due honour, show
In our own worship, honourable minds.
 

[Exit Elizabeth.]

 
A messenger!  How far off are they, then?
 
 
Serv.  Some two days’ journey, sir.
 

Bishop.  Two days’ journey, and nought prepared?

Here, chaplain—Brother Hippodamas!  Chaplain, I say!  [Hippodamas enters.]  Call the apparitor—ride off with him, right and left—Don’t wait even to take your hawk—Tell my knights to be with me, with all their men-at-arms, at noon on the second day.  Let all be of the best, say—the brightest of arms and the newest of garments.  Mass! we must show our smartest before these crusaders—they’ll be full of new fashions, I warrant ’em—the monkeys that have seen the world.  And here, boy [to a page], set me a stoup of wine in the oriel-room, and another for this good monk.

 
Con.  Pardon me, blessedness—but holy rule—
 

Bishop.  Oh!  I forgot.—A pail of water and a peck of beans for the holy man!—Order up my equerry, and bid my armourer—vestryman, I mean—look out my newest robes.—Plague on this gout.

[Exeunt, following the Bishop.]