Scene VI
Astraea, Arden
ASTRAEA: Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
ARDEN: I will not even think you barbarous.
ASTRAEA: I am. I am the object of the chase.
ARDEN: The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.
ASTRAEA: At any instant I am forced to run,Or turn in my defence: how can I beOther than barbarous? You are the cause.
ARDEN: No: heaven that made you beautiful’s the cause.
ASTRAEA: Say, earth, that gave you instincts. Bring me downTo instincts! When by chance I speak awhileWith our professor, you appear in haste,Full cry to sight again the missing hare.Away ideas! All that’s divinest flies!I have to bear in mind how young you are.
ARDEN: You have only to look up to me four years, Instead of forty!
ASTRAEA: Sir?
ARDEN There’s my misfortune!And worse that, young, I love as a young man.Could I but quench the fire, I might concealThe youthfulness offending you so much.
ASTRAEA: I wish you would. I wish it earnestly.
ARDEN: Impossible. I burn.
ASTRAEA: You should not burn.
ARDEN ’Tis more than I. ’Tis fire. It masters will.You would not say I should not’ if you knew fire.It seizes. It devours.
ASTRAEA: Dry wood.
ARDEN: Cold wit!How cold you can be! But be cold, for sweetYou must be. And your eyes are mine: with themI see myself: unworthy to usurpThe place I hold a moment. While I lookI have my happiness.
ASTRAEA: You should look higher.
ARDEN: Through you to the highest. Only through you!Through youThe mark I may attain is visible,And I have strength to dream of winning it.You are the bow that speeds the arrow: youThe glass that brings the distance nigh. My worldIs luminous through you, pure heavenly,But hangs upon the rose’s outer leaf,Not next her heart. Astraea! my own beloved!
ASTRAEA: We may be excellent friends. And I have faults.
ARDEN: Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
ASTRAEA: I waver very constantly: I haveNo fixity of feeling or of sight.I have no courage: I can often dreamOf daring: when I wake I am in dread.I am inconstant as a butterfly,And shallow as a brook with little fish!Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy’s net,But at a touch straight dive! I am any one’s,And no one’s! I am vain.Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.The lark reels up with it; the nightingaleSobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believeA poet, though he praised me to my face.
ARDEN: Never had poet so divine a fountTo drink of!
ASTRAEA: Have I given you more to love
ARDEN: More! You have given me your inner mind,Where conscience in the robes of Justice shootsLight so serenely keen that in such lightFair infants, I newly criminal of earth,’As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.Seraphs might! More to love? Oh! these dear faultsLead you to me like troops of laughing girlsWith garlands. All the fear is, that you trifle,Feigning them.
ASTRAEA: For what purpose?
ARDEN: Can I guess? ASTRAEA:
I think ’tis you who have the trifler’s note.My hearing is acute, and when you speak,Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.Your Osier quotation jars. Beware!Why were you absent from our meeting-placeThis morning?
ARDEN: I was on the way, and metYour uncle Homeware
ASTRAEA: Ah!
ARDEN: He loves you.
ASTRAEA: He loves me: he has never understood.He loves me as a creature of the flock;A little whiter than some others.Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.For him I am a woman and a widowOne of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.He said it!—You confess it! You have learntTo share his error, erring fatally.
ARDEN: By whose advice went I to him?
ASTRAEA: By whose?Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;It is too true I change. I could esteemYou better did you change. And had you heardThe noble words this morning from the mouthOf our professor, changed were you, or raisedAbove love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,High as eternal snows. What said he else,My uncle Homeware?
ARDEN: That you were not free:And that he counselled us to use our wits.
ASTRAEA: But I am free I free to be ever free!My freedom keeps me free! He counselled us?I am not one in a conspiracy.I scheme no discord with my present life.Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.Not free? You know me little. Were I chained,For liberty I would sell libertyTo him who helped me to an hour’s release.But having perfect freedom…
ARDEN: No.
ASTRAEA: Good sir,You check me?
ARDEN: Perfect freedom?
ASTRAEA: Perfect!
ARDEN: No!
ASTRAEA: Am I awake? What blinds me?
ARDEN: FilamentsThe slenderest ever woven about a brainFrom the brain’s mists, by the little sprite calledFancy.A breath would scatter them; but that one breathMust come of animation. When the heartIs as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
ASTRAEA: ’Tis very singular!I understand.You translate cleverly. I hear in verseMy uncle Homeware’s prose. He has these notions.Old men presume to read us.
ARDEN: Young men may.You gaze on an ideal reflecting youNeed I say beautiful? Yet it reflectsLess beauty than the lady whom I loveBreathes, radiates. Look on yourself in me.What harm in gazing? You are this flowerYou are that spirit. But the spirit fedWith substance of the flower takes all its bloom!And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
ASTRAEA: ’Tis very singular. You have a tone Quite changed.
ARDEN: You wished a change. To show you, how I read you…
ASTRAEA: Oh! no, no. It means dissection.I never heard of reading characterThat did not mean dissection. Spare me that.I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,A star-gazer, a riband in the wind…
ARDEN: A banner in the wind! and me you lead, And shall! At least, I follow till I win.
ASTRAEA: Forbear, I do beseech you.
ARDEN: I have hadYour hand in mine.
ASTRAEA: Once.
ARDEN: Once!Once! ’twas; once, was the heart alive,Leaping to break the ice. Oh! once, was ayeThat laughed at frosty May like spring’s return.Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.You like me; you might love me; but to dare,Tasks more than courage. Veneration, friends,Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,Bar the good way to you, and make a dreamA fortress and a prison.
ASTRAEA: Changed! you have changedIndeed. When you so boldly seized my handIt seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.I wondered at Professor Spiral’s choiceOf you for an example, and our hope.Now you grow dangerous. You must have thought,And some things true you speak-save ‘terrorized.’It may be flattering to sweet self-loveTo deem me terrorized.—’Tis my own soul,My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.Who terrorizes me? Who could? Friends? Never!The world? as little. Terrorized!
ARDEN: Forgive me.
ASTRAEA: I might reply, Respect me. If I loved,If I could be so faithless as to love,Think you I would not rather noise abroadMy shame for penitence than let friends dwellDeluded by an image of one vowedTo superhuman, who the common mockOf things too human has at heart become.
ARDEN: You would declare your love?
ASTRAEA: I said, my shame.The woman that’s the widow is ensnared,Caught in the toils! away with widows!—Oh!I hear men shouting it.
ARDEN: But shame there’s noneFor me in loving: therefore I may takeYour friends to witness? tell them that my prideIs in the love of you?
ASTRAEA: ‘Twill soon bringThe silence that should be between us two,And sooner give me peace.
ARDEN: And you consent?
ASTRAEA: For the sake of peace and silence I consent,You should be warned that you will cruellyDisturb them. But ’tis best. You should be warnedYour pleading will be hopeless. But ’tis best.You have my full consent. Weigh well your acts,You cannot rest where you have cast this boltLay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,Among them: they are estimable ladies,Warmest of friends; though you may think they soarToo loftily for your measure of strict sense(And as my uncle Homeware’s pupil, sir,In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:Once know them, and your banishment will fret.I would not run such risks. You will offend,Go near to outrage them; and perturbateAs they have not deserved of you. But I,Considering I am nothing in the scalesYou balance, quite and of necessityConsent. When you have weighed it, let me hear.My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.We have been talking long, and in full view!