No More Learning

OSWALD I am thunderstruck.


MARMADUKE Where is she--holla!
[Calling to the Beggar, who returns; he looks at her stedfastly. ]
You are Idonea's Mother? --
Nay, be not terrified--it does me good
To look upon you.


OSWALD (interrupting)
In a peasant's dress
You saw, who was it?


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.