Читать книгу The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 166
SCENE I
ОглавлениеA wild and mountainous country. ORDONIO and ISIDORE are discovered,
supposed at a little distance from ISIDORE’S house.
Ordonio. Here we may stop: your house distinct in view,
Yet we secured from listeners.
Isidore. Now indeed
My house! and it looks cheerful as the clusters
Basking in sunshine on yon vine-clad rock,
That overbrows it! Patron! Friend! Preserver! 5
Thrice have you saved my life. Once in the battle
You gave it me: next rescued me from suicide
When for my follies I was made to wander,
With mouths to feed, and not a morsel for them:
Now but for you, a dungeon’s slimy stones 10
Had been my bed and pillow.
Ordonio. Good Isidore!
Why this to me? It is enough, you know it.
Isidore. A common trick of gratitude, my lord,
Seeking to ease her own full heart ——
Ordonio. Enough!
A debt repaid ceases to be a debt. 15
You have it in your power to serve me greatly.
Isidore. And how, my lord? I pray you to name the thing.
I would climb up an ice-glazed precipice
To pluck a weed you fancied!
Ordonio. Why — that — Lady —
Isidore. ‘Tis now three years, my lord, since last I saw you: 20
Have you a son, my lord?
Ordonio. O miserable — [Aside.
Isidore! you are a man, and know mankind.
I told you what I wished — now for the truth —
She loved the man you kill’d.
Isidore. You jest, my lord?
Ordonio. And till his death is proved she will not wed me. 25
Isidore. You sport with me, my lord?
Ordonio. Come, come! this foolery
Lives only in thy looks, thy heart disowns it!
Isidore. I can bear this, and any thing more grievous
From you, my lord — but how can I serve you here?
Ordonio. Why, you can utter with a solemn gesture 30
Oracular sentences of deep no-meaning,
Wear a quaint garment, make mysterious antics —
Isidore. I am dull, my lord! I do not comprehend you.
Ordonio. In blunt terms, you can play the sorcerer.
She hath no faith in Holy Church, ‘tis true: 35
Her lover schooled her in some newer nonsense!
Yet still a tale of spirits works upon her.
She is a lone enthusiast, sensitive,
Shivers, and can not keep the tears in her eye:
And such do love the marvellous too well 40
Not to believe it. We will wind up her fancy
With a strange music, that she knows not of —
With fumes of frankincense, and mummery,
Then leave, as one sure token of his death,
That portrait, which from off the dead man’s neck 45
I bade thee take, the trophy of thy conquest.
Isidore. Will that be a sure sign?
Ordonio. Beyond suspicion.
Fondly caressing him, her favour’d lover,
(By some base spell he had bewitched her senses)
She whispered such dark fears of me forsooth, 50
As made this heart pour gall into my veins.
And as she coyly bound it round his neck
She made him promise silence; and now holds
The secret of the existence of this portrait
Known only to her lover and herself. 55
But I had traced her, stolen unnotic’d on them,
And unsuspected saw and heard the whole.
Isidore. But now I should have cursed the man who told me
You could ask aught, my lord, and I refuse —
But this I can not do.
Ordonio. Where lies your scruple? 60
Isidore. Why — why, my lord!
You know you told me that the lady lov’d you,
Had loved you with incautious tenderness;
That if the young man, her betrothéd husband,
Returned, yourself, and she, and the honour of both 65
Must perish. Now though with no tenderer scruples
Than those which being native to the heart,
Than those, my lord, which merely being a man —
Ordonio. This fellow is a Man — he killed for hire
One whom he knew not, yet has tender scruples! 70
[Then turning to ISIDORE.
These doubts, these fears, thy whine, thy stammering —
Pish, fool! thou blunder’st through the book of guilt,
Spelling thy villainy.
Isidore. My lord — my lord,
I can bear much — yes, very much from you!
But there’s a point where sufferance is meanness: 75
I am no villain — never kill’d for hire —
My gratitude ——
Ordonio. O aye — your gratitude!
‘Twas a well-sounding word — what have you done with it?
Isidore. Who proffers his past favours for my virtue —
Ordonio. Virtue ——
Isidore. Tries to o’erreach me — is a very sharper, 80
And should not speak of gratitude, my lord.
I knew not ‘twas your brother!
Ordonio. And who told you?
Isidore. He himself told me.
Ordonio. Ha! you talk’d with him!
And those, the two Morescoes who were with you?
Isidore. Both fell in a night brawl at Malaga. 85
Ordonio (in a low voice). My brother —
Isidore. Yes, my lord, I could not
tell you!
I thrust away the thought — it drove me wild.
But listen to me now — I pray you listen ——
Ordonio. Villain! no more. I’ll hear no more of it.
Isidore. My lord, it much imports your future safety 90
That you should hear it.
Ordonio (turning off from Isidore). Am not I a man!
‘Tis as it should be! tut — the deed itself
Was idle, and these after-pangs still idler!
Isidore. We met him in the very place you mentioned.
Hard by a grove of firs —
Ordonio. Enough — enough — 95
Isidore. He fought us valiantly, and wounded all;
In fine, compelled a parley.
Ordonio. Alvar! brother!
Isidore. He offered me his purse —
Ordonio. Yes?
Isidore. Yes — I spurned it. —
He promised us I know not what — in vain!
Then with a look and voice that overawed me, 100
He said, What mean you, friends? My life is dear:
I have a brother and a promised wife,
Who make life dear to me — and if I fall,
That brother will roam earth and hell for vengeance.
There was a likeness in his face to yours; 105
I asked his brother’s name: he said — Ordonio,
Son of Lord Valdez! I had well nigh fainted.
At length I said (if that indeed I said it,
And that no Spirit made my tongue its organ,)
That woman is dishonoured by that brother, 110
And he the man who sent us to destroy you.
He drove a thrust at me in rage. I told him
He wore her portrait round his neck. He look’d
As he had been made of the rock that propt his back —
Aye, just as you look now — only less ghastly! 115
At length recovering from his trance, he threw
His sword away, and bade us take his life,
It was not worth his keeping.
Ordonio. And you kill’d him?
Oh blood hounds! may eternal wrath flame round you!
He was his Maker’s Image undefac’d! 120
It seizes me — by Hell I will go on!
What — would’st thou stop, man? thy pale looks won’t save thee!
Oh cold — cold — cold! shot through with icy cold!
Isidore (aside). Were he alive he had returned ere now.
The consequence the same — dead through his plotting! 125
Ordonio. O this unutterable dying away — here —
This sickness of the heart!
What if I went
And liv’d in a hollow tomb, and fed on weeds?
Aye! that’s the road to heaven! O fool! fool! fool!
What have I done but that which nature destined, 130
Or the blind elements stirred up within me?
If good were meant, why were we made these beings?
And if not meant —
Isidore. You are disturbed, my lord!
Ordonio (starts). A gust of the soul! i’faith it overset me.
O ‘twas all folly — all! idle as laughter! 135
Now, Isidore! I swear that thou shalt aid me.
Isidore (in a low voice). I’ll perish first!
Ordonio. What dost thou
mutter of?
Isidore. Some of your servants know me, I am certain.
Ordonio. There’s some sense in that scruple; but we’ll mask you.
Isidore. They’ll know my gait: but stay! last night I watched 140
A stranger near the ruin in the wood,
Who as it seemed was gathering herbs and wild flowers.
I had followed him at distance, seen him scale
Its western wall, and by an easier entrance
Stole after him unnoticed. There I marked, 145
That mid the chequer work of light and shade
With curious choice he plucked no other flowers,
But those on which the moonlight fell: and once
I heard him muttering o’er the plant. A wizard —
Some gaunt slave prowling here for dark employment. 150
Ordonio. Doubtless you question’d him?
Isidore. ‘Twas my intention,
Having first traced him homeward to his haunt.
But lo! the stern Dominican, whose spies
Lurk every where, already (as it seemed)
Had given commission to his apt familiar 155
To seek and sound the Moor; who now returning,
Was by this trusty agent stopped midway.
I, dreading fresh suspicion if found near him
In that lone place, again concealed myself:
Yet within hearing. So the Moor was question’d, 160
And in your name, as lord of this domain,
Proudly he answered, ‘Say to the Lord Ordonio,
He that can bring the dead to life again!’
Ordonio. A strange reply!
Isidore. Aye, all of him is strange.
He called himself a Christian, yet he wears 165
The Moorish robes, as if he courted death.
Ordonio. Where does this wizard live?
Isidore (pointing to the distance). You see that brooklet?
Trace its course backward: through a narrow opening
It leads you to the place.
Ordonio. How shall I know it?
Isidore. You cannot err. It is a small green dell 170
Built all around with high off-sloping hills,
And from its shape our peasants aptly call it
The Giant’s Cradle. There’s a lake in the midst,
And round its banks tall wood that branches over,
And makes a kind of faery forest grow 175
Down in the water. At the further end
A puny cataract falls on the lake;
And there, a curious sight! you see its shadow
For ever curling, like a wreath of smoke,
Up through the foliage of those faery trees. 180
His cot stands opposite. You cannot miss it.
Ordonio (in retiring stops suddenly at the edge of the scene, and
then turning round to Isidore). Ha! — Who lurks there! Have we
been overheard?
There where the smooth high wall of slate-rock glitters ——
Isidore. ‘Neath those tall stones, which propping each the other,
Form a mock portal with their pointed arch? 185
Pardon my smiles! ‘Tis a poor idiot boy,
Who sits in the sun, and twirls a bough about,
His weak eyes seeth’d in most unmeaning tears.
And so he sits, swaying his cone-like head,
And staring at his bough from morn to sun-set, 190
See-saws his voice in inarticulate noises.
Ordonio. ‘Tis well, and now for this same wizard’s lair.
Isidore. Some three strides up the hill, a mountain ash
Stretches its lower boughs and scarlet clusters
O’er the old thatch.
Ordonio. I shall not fail to find it. 195
[Exeunt ORDONIO and ISIDORE.
1829.
third person). Editions 1, 2, 3, 1829.
[After 120] [A pause. Editions 1, 2, 3, 1829.
[After 122] [A pause. Editions 2, 3, 1829.
This sickness of the heart [A pause.
Editions 1, 2, 3, 1829, &c.
[After 129] [A pause. Editions 1, 2, 3, 1829.
[Before 134] Ordonio (starts, looking at him wildly; then, after a
pause, during which his features are forced into a smile). Editions 1,
2, 3, 1829.
[After 181]
Some three yards up the hill a mountain ash
Stretches its lower boughs and scarlet clusters
O’er the old thatch.
Ord. I shall not fail to find it. [Exit ORDONIO. ISIDORE goes
into his Cottage.
Edition 1.
