No More Learning

OSWALD (as if to himself, yet speaking aloud)
The truth is hideous, but how stifle it?
[Turning to MARMADUKE. ]
Give me your sword--nay, here are stones and fragments,
The least of which would beat out a man's brains;
Or you might drive your head against that wall.
No! this is not the place to hear the tale:
It should be told you pinioned in your bed,
Or on some vast and solitary plain
Blown to you from a trumpet.


MARMADUKE Why talk thus?
Whate'er the monster brooding in your breast
I care not: fear I have none, and cannot fear--
[The sound of a horn is heard. ]
That horn again--'Tis some one of our Troop;
What do they here? Listen!


OSWALD What! dogged like thieves!


[Enter WALLACE and LACY, etc. ]


LACY You are found at last, thanks to the vagrant Troop
For not misleading us.


OSWALD (looking at WALLACE)
That subtle Greybeard--
I'd rather see my father's ghost.


LACY (to MARMADUKE)
My Captain,
We come by order of the Band.
Belike
You have not heard that Henry has at last
Dissolved the Barons' League, and sent abroad
His Sheriffs with fit force to reinstate
The genuine owners of such Lands and Baronies
As, in these long commotions, have been seized.
His Power is this way tending. It befits us
To stand upon our guard, and with our swords
Defend the innocent.


MARMADUKE Lacy! we look
But at the surfaces of things; we hear
Of towns in flames, fields ravaged, young and old
Driven out in troops to want and nakedness;
Then grasp our swords and rush upon a cure
That flatters us, because it asks not thought:
The deeper malady is better hid;
The world is poisoned at the heart.


LACY What mean you?


WALLACE (whose eye has been fixed suspiciously upon OSWALD)
Ay, what is it you mean?


MARMADUKE Hark'ee, my Friends;--
[Appearing gay. ]
Were there a Man who, being weak and helpless
And most forlorn, should bribe a Mother, pressed
By penury, to yield him up her Daughter,
A little Infant, and instruct the Babe,
Prattling upon his knee, to call him Father--


LACY Why, if his heart be tender, that offence
I could forgive him.


MARMADUKE (going on)
And should he make the Child
An instrument of falsehood, should he teach her
To stretch her arms, and dim the gladsome light
Of infant playfulness with piteous looks
Of misery that was not--

LACY
Troth, 'tis hard--
But in a world like ours--


MARMADUKE (changing his tone)
This self-same Man--
Even while he printed kisses on the cheek
Of this poor Babe, and taught its innocent tongue
To lisp the name of Father--could he look
To the unnatural harvest of that time
When he should give her up, a Woman grown,
To him who bid the highest in the market
Of foul pollution--


LACY The whole visible world
Contains not such a Monster!


MARMADUKE For this purpose
Should he resolve to taint her Soul by means
Which bathe the limbs in sweat to think of them;
Should he, by tales which would draw tears from iron,
Work on her nature, and so turn compassion
And gratitude to ministers of vice,
And make the spotless spirit of filial love
Prime mover in a plot to damn his Victim
Both soul and body--


WALLACE 'Tis too horrible;
Oswald, what say you to it?


LACY Hew him down,
And fling him to the ravens.


MARMADUKE But his aspect
It is so meek, his countenance so venerable.


WALLACE (with an appearance of mistrust)
But how, what say you, Oswald?


LACY (at the same moment)
Stab him, were it
Before the Altar.


MARMADUKE What, if he were sick,
Tottering upon the very verge of life,
And old, and blind--


LACY Blind, say you?