SCENE V

Ismenia's antechamber.

ISMENIA waiting

It is too dark. I can see nothing. Hark!

Surely it was the door that fastened then.

My heart, control thyself! Thou beat'st too quickly

And wilt break in the arms of happiness.

Brigida.

BRIGIDA

Here. Enter, my lord, and take her.

ANTONIO

Ismenia!

ISMENIA

Antonio! Oh Antonio!

ANTONIO

My heart's dearest!

BRIGIDA

Bring your wit this way. Sir.
It is not needed.

Exit with Basil.

ISMENIA

O not thus! You shame me.
This is my place, dear, at your feet; and then
Higher than is my right.

ANTONIO

I cannot suffer
Blasphemy to touch my heaven, though your lips

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Have hallowed it. Highest were low for you.
You are a goddess and adorable.

ISMENIA

Alas, Antonio, this is not the way.

I fear you do not love me, you despise me.

Come, do you not despise me?

ANTONIO

The leaf might then
Despise the moonbeam that has come to kiss it.
I love and reverence.

ISMENIA

Then you must take me,
As I have given myself to you, your servant,
Yours wholly, not to be prayed to and hymned
As a divinity but to be commanded
As a dear handmaid. You must rule me, sweet,
Or I shall spoil with liberty and lose you.

ANTONIO

Must I ? I will then. Yet you are so queenly,
I needs must smile when I attempt it. Come,
Shall I command you?

ISMENIA

Do, sweet.

ANTONIO

Lay your head
Upon my shoulder so and do not dare
To lift it till I give you leave.

ISMENIA

Alas,
I fear you'll be a tyrant. And I meant  

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To bear at most a limited monarchy.

ANTONIO

No murmuring. Answer my questions.

ISMENIA

Well,

That's easy and I will.

ANTONIO

And truly.

ISMENIA

Oh,

But that's almost impossible. I'll try.

ANTONIO

Come, when did you first love me ?

ISMENIA

Dear, today.

ANTONIO

When will you marry me?

ISMENIA

Tomorrow, dear.

ANTONIO

Here is a mutinous kingdom to my hands.
Now truly.

ISMENIA

Truly then, seven days ago,
No more than seven, at the court I saw you,
And with the sight my life was troubled; heard you
And your voice tore my heart out. O Antonio,  

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I was an empty thing until today.

I saw you daily, but because I feared

What now I know, you were Lord Beltran's son

I dared not ask your name, nay shut my ears

To knowledge. O my love, I am afraid

Your father seems a hard vindictive man.

What will you do with me, Antonio ?

ANTONIO

Fasten
My jewel safe from separating hands
Holily on my bosom. My father ? He
Shall know not of our love, till we are sure
From rude disunion. Though he will be angry
I am his eldest and beloved son,
And when he feels your sweetness and your charm
He will repent and thank me for a daughter.

ISMENIA

When 'tis your voice that tells me, I believe
Impossibilities. Well, let me know —
You've made me blush, Antonio, and I wish
I could retaliate — were you not amazed
At my mad forwardness, to woo you first,
A youth unknown ?

ANTONIO

Yes, even as Adam was
When he first saw the sunrise over Eden.
It was unsunlike to uplift the glory
Of those life-giving rays, unwooed, uncourted.

ISMENIA

Alas, you flatter. Did you love me, Antonio ?

ANTONIO

Three days before I had the bliss to win

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The wonder of your eyes.

ISMENIA

Three days! Oh me,
Three days, Antonio ? Three whole days before
I loved you ?

ANTONIO

Three days, dearest.

ISMENIA

Oh,

You're made me jealous. I am angry. Three
Whole days! How could it happen ?

ANTONIO

I will make
You compensation, dear; for in revenge
I'll love you three whole days, when you have ceased
To love me.

ISMENIA

O not even in jest, Antonio,
Speak of such separation. Sooner shall
The sun divorce his light than we two sunder.
But you have given me a spur. I must
Love you too much, I must, Antonio, more
Than you love me, or the account's not even.
A noise ?

ANTONIO

One passes in the street.

ISMENIA

We are
Too near the window and too heedless, love.
Come this way; here 'tis safe; I fear your danger.

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Exeunt. After a while enter Brigida.

BRIGIDA

No sound ? Señor! Ismenia! Surely they cannot have embraced each other into invisibility. No, Cupid has flown away with them. It cannot have been the devil, for I smell no brimstone. Well, if they are so tedious I will not mortify myself with solitude either. I have set Don Cerberus on the stairs out of respect for the mythology. There he stands with his sword at point like the picture of a sentinel and protects us against a surprise of rats from the cellar; for what other wild beasts there may be to menace us, I know not. Don Mario snores hard and Donna Clara plays the violin to his bassoon. I have heard them three rooms off. These men! these men! and yet they call themselves our masters. I would I could find a man fit to measure tongues with me. I begin to feel lonely in the Alpine elevation of my own wit. The meditations of Matterhorn come home to me and I feel a sister to Monte Rosa. Certainly this woman's fever is catching, and spreads a most calamitous infection. I have over- heard myself sighing; it is a symptom incubatory. Heighho! when turtles pair, I never heard that the magpie lives lonely. I have at this moment a kindly thought for all suffering animals. I begin to pity Cerberus even. I will relieve him from guard. Hist! Señor! Don Basil!

Enter Basil.

Is all quiet?

BASIL

Not a mouse stirring!

BRIGIDA

Put up your sword, pray you; I think there is no danger, and if one comes, you may draw again in time to cut its tail off.  BASIL

At your service, Señorita. If it were not treason to my wit, I begin to feel this strip of a girl is making an ass of me. I am transformed;  

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I feel it. I shall hear myself bray presently. But I will defy enchantment, I will handle her. A plague! Must I continually be stale-mated by a will-o'-the-wisp, all sparkle and nowhere? Courage, Basil.

BRIGIDA  

You meditate, Señor? If it be to allay the warmth you have brought from the stairs, with the coolness of reflection, I would not hinder you.

BASIL

In bare truth, Señorita, I am so chilled that I was even about to beg of you a most sweet and warming cordial.

BRIGIDA

For a small matter like that, I would be loth to deny you. You  shall have it immediately.

BASIL

With your permission, then.

BRIGIDA

Ah, Señor, beware. Living coals are dangerous; they burn, Señor.

BASIL

I am proof.

BRIGIDA

As the man said when he was bitten by the dog they thought mad;  but it was the dog that died. Pray, Sir, have a care. You will
put the fire out.  

BASIL

Come, I have you. I will take ten kisses for the one you refused me this forenoon.  

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BRIGIDA

That is too compound an interest. I do entreat you. Sir, have a care. This usury is punishable by the law.

BASIL

I have the rich man's trick for that. With the very coin I have unlawfully gathered, I will stop her mouth.

BRIGIDA

O Sir, you are as wasteful an accountant of kisses as of words. I foresee you will go bankrupt. No more, Señor, what noise was that on the stair ? Good, now you have your distance. I will even trouble you to keep it. No nearer, I tell you. You do not observe the laws of the duello. You take advantages.

BASIL

With me? Pooh, you grow ambitious. Because I knew that to stop your mouth was to stop your life, therefore in pity I have refused your encounter.

BRIGIDA

Was it, truly ? Alas, I could weep to think of the violence you have done yourself for my sake. Pray, sir, do not torture your-self so. To see how goodness is misunderstood in this world! Out of pity? And made me take you for a fool!

BASIL

Well.

BRIGIDA

O no, Señor, it is not well, indeed it is not well. You shall not do this again. If I must die, I must die. You are scatheless. Pray now, disburden your intellect of all the brilliant things it has so painfully kept to itself. Plethora is unwholesome and I would not have you perish of an apoplexy of wit. Pour it out on me, conceit, epigram, irony, satire, vituperation; flout and invective, tuquoque   

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and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it.

BASIL

St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate.

BRIGIDA

Pray, do not be afraid. I do not indeed press you to throw yourself at my head, but for a small matter like your wit, I will bear up against it.

BASIL

This girl has a devil.

BRIGIDA

Why are you silent, Señor ? Are you angry with me ? I have given you no cause. This is cruel. Don Basil, I have heard you cited everywhere for absolutely the most free and witty speaker of the age. They told me that if none other offer, you will jest with the statues in the Plaza Mayor and so wittily they cannot answer a word to you. What have I done that with me alone you are dumb? 

BASIL

I am bewitched certainly.

BRIGIDA

Señor, is it still pity? But why on me alone? O Sir, have pity on the whole world and be always silent. Well I see your benevolence is unconquerable. With your leave, we will pass from unprofitable talk; I would be glad to recall the sound of your voice. You may come nearer, since you decline the duello. 

BASIL

I thank you, Señorita. Whose sheep baaed then?  

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BRIGIDA

Don Basil, shall we talk soberly?

BASIL

At your pleasure. Madam.

BRIGIDA

No Madam, Señor, but a poor companion. You go to Count Beltran's house tomorrow?

BASIL

It is so intended.

BRIGIDA

O the masque, who play it?

BASIL

Masquers, Señorita.

BRIGIDA

O Sir, is this your pity? I told you, you would burst if you kept in your wit too long. But who are they by condition ? Goddesses are the characters and by rule modern they should be live goddesses who play them. 

BASIL

They are so.

BRIGIDA

Are they indeed so lovely?

BASIL

Euphrosyne, Christofir's daughter, is simply the most exquisite beauty of the kingdom.

BRIGIDA

You speak very absolutely, Señor. Fairer than Ismenia?  

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BASIL

I speak it with unwillingness, but honestly the Lady Ismenia, rarely lovely as she is, could not stand beside this miller's daughter.

BRIGIDA

I think I have seen her and I do not remember so outshining a beauty.

BASIL

Then cannot you have seen her, for the wonders she eclipses, themselves speak to their disgrace, even when they are women.

BRIGIDA

Pardon me if I take you to speak in the pitch of a lover's eulogy.

BASIL

Were it so, her beauty and gentleness deserve it; I have seen none worthier.

BRIGIDA

I wish you joy of her. I pray you for permission to leave you, Señor.

BASIL

Save one indeed.

BRIGIDA

Ah! and who was she?

BASIL

You will pardon me.

BRIGIDA

I will not press you. Sir, I do not know her, do I?

BASIL

O 'tis not so much as that either. 'Twas only an orange-girl I  

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saw once at Cadiz.

BRIGIDA

Oh!

BASIL

Ha! she is galled, positively. This is as sweet to me as honey.

BRIGIDA

Well, Señor, your taste is as undeniable as your wit. Flour is the staff of life and oranges are good for a season. What does this paragon play?

BASIL

Venus; and in the after-scene, Helen.

BRIGIDA

So? May I know the others? You may find one of them to be a poor cousin of mine.

BASIL

Catriona, the bailly's daughter to Count Conrad, and Sofronia, the student Geronimo's sister; she too is of the Count's house-hold.

BRIGIDA

It is not then difficult to act in a masque.

BASIL

A masque demands little, Señorita. A taking figure, a flowing step, a good voice, a quick memory — but for that a speaking memory hard by in a box will do much at an emergency.

BRIGIDA

True, for such long parts must be a heavy tax on the quickest.

BASIL

There are but two such, Venus-Helen and Paris. The rest are

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only a Zephyr's dance in, a speech and a song to help the situation and out again with a scurry.

BRIGIDA

God be with you. You have a learned conversation and a sober, and for such I will always report you. But here comes a colon to it. We will keep the full stop for tomorrow.

Enter Antonio and Ismenia.

ISMENIA

I think the dawn moves in the east, Brigida.
Pray you, unlock the door, but noiselessly.

BRIGIDA

Teach me not. Though the wild torrent of this gentleman's conversation have swept away half my wit, I have at a desperate peril saved the other half for your service. Come, Sir, I have need of you to frighten the mice away.

BASIL

St. Iago!

Exit Brigida with Basil.

ISMENIA

Dear, we must part. I would have you my necklace
That I might feel you round my neck for ever,
Or life be night and all men sleep that we
Need never part: but we must part, Antonio.
Will you forget me ?

ANTONIO

When I cease to feel.

ISMENIA

I know you cannot, but I am so happy.

I love to play with my own happiness

And ask it questions. Dear, we shall meet soon.  

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I'll make a compact with you, sweet. You shall
Do all my will and make no question, till
We're married; then you know, I am your servant.
Will you, till then?

ANTONIO

Till then and after.

ISMENIA

Go now,
Love, I must drive you out or you'll not go.

ANTONIO

One kiss.

ISMENIA

You've had one thousand. Well, one more,
One only or I shall never let you part.

Enter Brigida.

BRIGIDA

Are you both distracted? Is this, I pray you, a time for lingering and near dawn over the east? Out with you, Señor, or I will set your own Cerberus upon you, and I wager he bites well, though I think poorly of his bark. 

Exit -with Antonio.

ISMENIA

O I have given all myself and kept

Nothing to live with when he's gone from me.

My life's his moon and I'm all dark and sad

Without him. Yesterday I was Ismenia,

Strong in myself, an individual woman.

Today I'm but the body of another,

No longer separate reality.

Well, if I gain him, let me lose myself,

And I'm still happy. The door shuts. He's gone.

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Re-enter Brigida.

Ah, Brigida.

BRIGIDA

Come, get in, get in. Snatch a little sleep, for I promise you, you shall have none tomorrow.

ISMENIA

How do you mean by that ? Or is it jest merely ?

BRIGIDA

Leave me alone. I have a whole drama in my head, a play in a play and yet no play. I have only to rearrange the parts a little and tomorrow's sunlight shall see it staged, scened, enacted and concluded. To bed with you.

Exeunt. 

Curtain

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