No More Learning

BEGGAR Nay, I dare not speak;
He is a man, if it should come to his ears
I never shall be heard of more.

OSWALD Lord Clifford?


BEGGAR What can I do? believe me, gentle Sirs,
I love her, though I dare not call her daughter.


OSWALD Lord Clifford--did you see him talk with Herbert?


BEGGAR Yes, to my sorrow--under the great oak
At Herbert's door--and when he stood beside
The blind Man--at the silent Girl he looked
With such a look--it makes me tremble, Sir,
To think of it.


OSWALD Enough! you may depart.


MARMADUKE (to himself)
Father! --to God himself we cannot give
A holier name; and, under such a mask,
To lead a Spirit, spotless as the blessed,
To that abhorred den of brutish vice! --
Oswald, the firm foundation of my life
Is going from under me; these strange discoveries--
Looked at from every point of fear or hope,
Duty, or love--involve, I feel, my ruin.




ACT II

SCENE--A Chamber in the Hostel--OSWALD alone, rising from a Table on
which he had been writing.


OSWALD They chose _him_ for their Chief! --what covert part
He, in the preference, modest Youth, might take,
I neither know nor care. The insult bred
More of contempt than hatred; both are flown;
That either e'er existed is my shame:
'Twas a dull spark--a most unnatural fire
That died the moment the air breathed upon it.
--These fools of feeling are mere birds of winter
That haunt some barren island of the north,
Where, if a famishing man stretch forth his hand,
They think it is to feed them. I have left him
To solitary meditation;--now
For a few swelling phrases, and a flash
Of truth, enough to dazzle and to blind,
And he is mine for ever--here he comes.


[Enter MARMADUKE. ]


MARMADUKE These ten years she has moved her lips all day
And never speaks!


OSWALD Who is it?


MARMADUKE I have seen her.


OSWALD Oh! the poor tenant of that ragged homestead,
Her whom the Monster, Clifford, drove to madness.


MARMADUKE I met a peasant near the spot; he told me,
These ten years she had sate all day alone
Within those empty walls.


OSWALD I too have seen her;
Chancing to pass this way some six months gone,
At midnight, I betook me to the Churchyard:
The moon shone clear, the air was still, so still
The trees were silent as the graves beneath them.
Long did I watch, and saw her pacing round
Upon the self-same spot, still round and round,
Her lips for ever moving.


MARMADUKE At her door
Rooted I stood; for, looking at the woman,
I thought I saw the skeleton of Idonea.


OSWALD But the pretended Father--


MARMADUKE Earthly law
Measures not crimes like his.


OSWALD _We_ rank not, happily,
With those who take the spirit of their rule
From that soft class of devotees who feel
Reverence for life so deeply, that they spare
The verminous brood, and cherish what they spare
While feeding on their bodies. Would that Idonea
Were present, to the end that we might hear
What she can urge in his defence; she loves him.


MARMADUKE Yes, loves him; 'tis a truth that multiplies
His guilt a thousand-fold.