No More Learning

He must have felt it then, known what it was,
And in such wise to rack her gentle heart
Had been a tenfold cruelty.


OSWALD Strange pleasures
Do we poor mortals cater for ourselves!
To see him thus provoke her tenderness
With tales of weakness and infirmity!
I'd wager on his life for twenty years.


MARMADUKE We will not waste an hour in such a cause.


OSWALD Why, this is noble! shake her off at once.


MARMADUKE Her virtues are his instruments. --A Man
Who has so practised on the world's cold sense,
May well deceive his Child--what! leave her thus,
A prey to a deceiver? --no--no--no--
'Tis but a word and then--


OSWALD Something is here
More than we see, or whence this strong aversion?
Marmaduke! I suspect unworthy tales
Have reached his ear--you have had enemies.


MARMADUKE Enemies! --of his own coinage.
OSWALD That may be,
But wherefore slight protection such as you
Have power to yield? perhaps he looks elsewhere. --
I am perplexed.


MARMADUKE What hast thou heard or seen?


OSWALD No--no--the thing stands clear of mystery;
(As you have said) he coins himself the slander
With which he taints her ear;--for a plain reason;
He dreads the presence of a virtuous man
Like you; he knows your eye would search his heart,
Your justice stamp upon his evil deeds
The punishment they merit. All is plain:
It cannot be--


MARMADUKE
What cannot be?


OSWALD Yet that a Father
Should in his love admit no rivalship,
And torture thus the heart of his own Child--


MARMADUKE Nay, you abuse my friendship!


OSWALD Heaven forbid! --
There was a circumstance, trifling indeed--
It struck me at the time--yet I believe
I never should have thought of it again
But for the scene which we by chance have witnessed.


MARMADUKE What is your meaning?


OSWALD Two days gone I saw,
Though at a distance and he was disguised,
Hovering round Herbert's door, a man whose figure
Resembled much that cold voluptuary,
The villain, Clifford. He hates you, and he knows
Where he can stab you deepest.


MARMADUKE Clifford never
Would stoop to skulk about a Cottage door--
It could not be.


OSWALD And yet I now remember,
That, when your praise was warm upon my tongue,
And the blind Man was told how you had rescued
A maiden from the ruffian violence
Of this same Clifford, he became impatient
And would not hear me.


MARMADUKE No--it cannot be--
I dare not trust myself with such a thought--
Yet whence this strange aversion? You are a man
Not used to rash conjectures--


OSWALD If you deem it
A thing worth further notice, we must act
With caution, sift the matter artfully.