together! We may yield up our souls perhaps at godliness, in almost the best of us, often is austere, the same hour. often uncompliant and rigid, proner to reprove than to pardon, to drag back or thrust aside than to invite and help onward. Lady Lisle. Is mine so pure? Have I bemoaned, as I should have done, the faults I have committed? Have my sighs arisen for the unmerited mercies of my God? and not rather for him, the beloved of my heart, the adviser and sustainer I have lost! Open, O gates of Death! Smile on me, approve my last action in this world, O virtuous husband! O saint and martyr! my brave, compassionate, and loving Lisle ! Poor man! I never knew him before: I can not tell how he shall endure his self-reproach, or whether it will bring him to calmer thoughts | hereafter. Lady Lisle. I am not a busy idler in curiosity; nor, if I were, is there time enough left me for indulging in it; yet gladly would I learn the his- | tory of events, at the first appearance so resembling those in mine. Elizabeth Gaunt. And can not you too smile, sweet lady? are not you with him even now? Doth Elizabeth Gaunt. The person's name I never body, doth clay, doth air, separate and estrange | may disclose; which would be the worst thing I free spirits? Bethink you of his gladness, of his could betray of the trust he placed in me. He glory; and begin to partake them. took refuge in my humble dwelling, imploring me in the name of Christ to harbour him for a season. Food and raiment were afforded him unsparingly; yet his fears made him shiver through them. Whatever I could urge of prayer and exhortation was not wanting: still, although he prayed, he was disquieted. Soon came to my ears the de O! how could an Englishman, how could twelve, condemn to death, condemn to so great an evil as they thought it and may find it, this innocent and helpless widow ! Lady Lisle. Blame not that jury ! blame not the jury which brought against me the verdict of guilty. I was so I received in my house a wan-claration of the king, that his majesty would rather derer who had fought under the rash and giddy Monmouth. He was hungry and thirsty, and I took him in. My Saviour had commanded, my king had forbidden it. Yet the twelve would not have delivered me over to death, unless the judge had threatened them with an accusation of treason in default of it. Terror made them unanimous: they redeemed their properties and lives at the stated price. Elizabeth Gaunt. I hope at least the unfortunate man, whom you received in the hour of danger, may avoid his penalty. Lady Lisle. Let us hope it. Elizabeth Gaunt. I too am imprisoned for the same offence; and I have little expectation that he who was concealed by me hath any chance of happiness, although he hath escaped. Could I find the means of conveying to him a small pittance, I should leave the world the more comfortably. Lady Lisle. Trust in God; not in one thing or another, but in all. Resign the care of this wanderer to his guidance. Elizabeth Gaunt. He abandoned that guidance. Lady Lisle. Unfortunate! how can money then avail him! Elizabeth Gaunt. It might save him from distress and from despair, from the taunts of the hard-hearted and from the inclemency of the godly. Lady Lisle. In godliness, O my friend! there can not be inclemency. Elizabeth Gaunt. You are thinking of perfection, my dear lady; and I marvel not at it; for what else hath ever occupied your thoughts! But pardon a rebel than the concealer of a rebel. The hope was a faint one: but it was a hope; and I gave it him. His thanksgivings were now more ardent, his prayers more humble, and oftener repeated. They did not strengthen his heart: it was unpurified and unprepared for them. Poor creature! he consented with it to betray me; and ¦ I am condemned to be burnt alive. Can we believe, can we encourage the hope, that in his weary way through life he will find those only who will conceal from him the knowledge of this execution? Heavily, too heavily, must it weigh on so irreso lute and infirm a breast. Let it not move you to weeping. Lady Lisle. It does not: oh! it does not. Elizabeth Gaunt. No, no: abstain! abstain! It was I who grieved: it was I who doubted. Let us now be firmer: we have both the same rock to rest upon. See! I shed no tears. I saved his life, an unprofitable and (I fear) a joyless one: he, by God's grace, has thrown open to me, and at an earlier hour than ever I ventured to expect it, the avenue to eternal bliss. Lady Lisle. O my good angel! that bestrewest with fresh flowers a path already smooth and pleasant to me, may those timorous men who have betrayed, and those misguided ones who have prosecuted us, be conscious on their deathbeds that we have entered it! And they too will at last find rest. ODYSSEUS, TERSITZA, ACRIVE, AND TRELAWNY. Tersitza. Brother! what have I done that the stranger should liken me to the idols of antiquity? And he looks so earnest and generous all the while! He must in his heart be very spiteful and deceitful. Odysseus. Child! strangers do not talk as we do: be not offended or surprised: he wished to please thee, as young men have desired to please from time immemorial, by calling thee like a goddess. Tersitza. That is the thing so strange and rude in him. Forgive me, O Englishman! these expressions: we Greeks begin to talk Greek again, and speak our minds. How have I offended you? Tersitza. O yes, I have: and now I can tell in what. Odysseus. Speak it then; and I will obtain my friend's pardon for it. Tersitza. He ought to know well enough that it was not my duty to look at him on the road; and that it became me to turn away my face from him when he looked at me. I did, and always will. Odysseus. Thou art more in the wrong then, my dear Tersitza, than he was. Girls should accustom themselves to be looked at, that the faces of men may not terrify them like ghosts, nor draw them forward like magicians; and that by degrees they may observe with calmness the diversity of our natures, and discern at leisure where to place their trust. Tersitza. He has nothing at all about him like a ghost or a magician; though indeed ghosts whisper and magicians rhyme. Trelawny. For the love of God!... Tersitza. Ghosts never say that, nor magicians neither. Odysseus. What was it? Tersitza. He repeated a Kleptic song. Trelawny. Tell anything rather than that! Tersitza. That is the very thing my brother asked of me. Odysseus. Canst thou remember it? Tersitza. Every line. What nonsense! what childish babble! Half the expressions quite wrong. Odysseus. Ho! ho! thou didst then listen to them! Tersitza. I was obliged to listen, he spoke so low.. and.. and.. Odysseus. Try to repeat them. Say but you do not hate me as you fice; One word bears up the heartless to his lot. Tersitza. Are you punished now, vain man? Trelawny. I should be, if I could acknowledge the justice of the last remark. | Odysseus. No mutiny! Now upon thy honour, Trelawny, didst not thou notice how she began with something of derision; and how blank this derision grew at 'heartless;' and how 'the winds' seemed to have puffed it away; and into what fragments fell the final verse, and how difficult to put together in any good marching time! Again to thyself. Candidly I declare it, Klepts sometimes are better poets. Trelawny. And poets usually better Klepts, although I had a thousand times more to steal from than ever Parnassus gave before. Odysseus. Trelawny! if in generous hearts these sentiments did not excite to higher and firmer, I should discountenance and reprove them. Tersitza. Pray, do, brother! for I am sure I can not. But perhaps it would be better not to do it, if you think they will make him firmer. As for higher: O the proud creature!.. he knows it.. the old men seem to have no other son since he has been among us; and, instead of a jingle and clatter such as we used to hear, the earth every day shakes under us with the grounding of arms when he passes. Stop him! stop him! I will not hear him. Odysseus. I must then reply for him, it seems. On thy representation of the matter, which I can bring no witness to disprove, a look from him would, with other young persons, be somewhat more than pardonable. Tersitza. Perhaps the custom is different in his country. Trelawny. Different indeed it is, O ingenuous Tersitza! and you reprove me, it seems, for a fault I committed, and may happen to commit again; but never without checking myself if it displeases you; never without remembering that I am the guest, and you the sister, of the bravest among men. Odysseus. And dost thou take me too for a goddess or a girl! If there are none others as brave, we are lost. Trelawny. If there were many, not Greece alone, but the whole world, were safe. Tersitza. Brother! let me come up closer to you.. not on this side. . on the other. I could kiss the two eyes of that brave and just young man. Odysseus. Hush! silly girl! Tersitza. He did not hear me: I never in my whole life took such pains to speak low. Odysseus. Take some to say nothing. Tersitza. Oh! oh! what is it? I can not think. I have only a few words more to say; but then they are so requisite, I could not sleep until they passed my lips. Odysseus. Has anything been confided to thee by the shepherdesses and wanderers on the road, about what they may have noticed or heard in remoter parts as they fled, or in the vicinity as they tarried. Tersitza. Nothing of that: but I am so desirous not to be thought like an idol. Trelawny. I said "a goddess," full of life and spirit and grace and loveliness. Tersitza. Gods and goddesses, in all times and places, have been excessively bad people for the most-part, so far as ever I could hear or read of them; and the goddess of beauty, the same you mentioned, who ought to be better than the rest, was one of the worst, I think; although I am told I have never yet learnt the thousandth part of what she did. Odysseus. O thou little prattler! the beautiful may often be unwise. Tersitza. Yes, but not bad. Odysseus. Why not that too? : Tersitza. Because they know their beauty. White doves are always very white indeed and those great water-birds, to which the angels by God's order have given the same pure appearance, feel a pleasure in possessing it, look at it upon them, curve their necks over it, and lay their heads now along it and now under it, as if it solaced and supported and refreshed them. Odysseus. Hast thou lived fourteen years and knowest not yet these birds? Tersitza. I know them very well; though I never saw but two; and you remember where. Odysseus. Not I indeed, child! Tersitza. Have you, who are so many years older, so bad a memory? It is strange you should have forgotten those tall noble beautiful creatures: particularly one of them: think again. Odysseus. Where was it? and when? Tersitza. Oh, that now, dear brother, that is quite impossible: all pretence and dissembling! You might perhaps not know exactly where: but when Indeed, indeed now, that is quite impossible. Odysseus. Remind me a little; give me an idea of it; a circumstance belonging to it. Tersitza. It was in the beginning of spring, only five months ago, while we were sitting, several of us together, on a stone engraven round with goats'-heads, in the ruins of Cheronea. Now can not you recollect. Tersitza. You must be very tired with the ride, or heavy with the sunshine, or thinking of other things, or uncommonly dull and fit to think of nothing. Why it was only four days before our guest joined us. Ho! now you begin to come to yourself again. Well may you smile at having so short a memory. I recollect it the better, because you were angry with me for being sorry I could not go to church, there being none to go to; and for saying it was a pity to waste so sweet a morning in the open air, instead of thanking God for it, and singing to him, and adoring him. Odysseus. I never am angry with thee, my sweet little sister, and I am sure I could not be for that expression. Well; did not the stranger go to church with us the next Sunday, at Athens? And did not I tell you I was quite as happy as if I had been there the Sunday before? Odysseus. Nonsense! nonsense! what has that to do with two swans! Tersitza. Now then you can think about them, can you! I knew it was only deceit in you: I have found you out. Odysseus. The swans appear to have made a deep impression on your imagination. Tersitza. The nobler one came sailing up from the lake as swiftly and steadily as if some wind had blown him, though there was not a breath upon the water, and looked as if the place were his own far and wide, and we were there by his gracious permission. It was only when he rowed among the grass and flowers, covered with cups white and yellow, as though a feast had been prepared for his reception, that I perceived he had anything underneath to move with. We then heard some low and hoarse voices; and presently came out his mate, slenderer and less beautiful, arranged her plumage, went down a little way, returned again, sate motionless opposite us, and seemed courting us not to hurt or disturb him. Agatha said they had their nest there, under the bank that their voices are not always low and hoarse that when they are about to die they sing delightfully. I was glad the poor creatures had many years to live, for they certainly had made no progress in their singing. But there are birds perhaps as bad as we are; birds that will learn nothing from those they do not like. Odysseus. Come on, come on, my beloved little Tersitza! thou too hast some things to learn ; haply some painful ones; and we are near the school-room. Tersitza. The cavern? Odysseus. Ay, there are caverns where the water itself ceases to drop, and is liquid no longer. Thou also must grow somewhat harder in this solitary and inaccessible one of ours, my sister! Tersitza. I am sure I can not; everything is so beautiful about it; and my dear brother too will be always nigh me. The waters that petrify must meet (as old men tell us) with something hard in their way: I find nothing but pleasure. I Odysseus. Pleasure itself hardens some hearts. Tersitza. How is that? I think I can guess: think I have discovered it. Greyhounds are very good, and look gentler than lambs; no animal upon earth is more beautiful; yet they always grow obdurate by the pleasure they take | in coursing the hare and antelope. If they would run after nothing, and be contented to stand quiet and be caressed, they would be much better. I am certain they must be happier when they have no other creatures to pursue; and I wish it pleased God to give them sense enough to know it. Have you never seen how they pant! how their hearts beat in their deep breasts? how inTersitza. No, you never are angry with me; but different and insensible they appear to their best when I am sorry, you sometimes say you shall be. | friends, who love them most and who would call them away? They forget their own nature, and even their own names, their cruelty so deafens them. Odysseus. Now, Tersitza, stop! Now, Trelawny, look before thee! Dost thou discern the cleft there? Trelawny. Distinctly. Odysseus. There is the mansion of thy entertainment! Trelawny. There is no path to it. Odysseus. Welcome and thanks, Trelawny! Tersitza. I said thanks too but he did not hear me. How could he, when you caught me and threw me up into the air? Trelawny. Thanks to the generous Odysseus, to the gracious Tersitza! Health and respect, joy and long life, to both! Odysseus. Ho! Leonidas! what art thou about? Why didst not thou wait on the other side until thy sister had passed, and until some one could Odysseus. For enemies none; for friends one have led thee? rough and dangerous. Tersitza. How shall I ever reach it? Odysseus. Dismount. Tersitza. Alas! would you leave me behind? would you send me back? The road grows evener just now we have passed the worst of it. Trelawny. Sir! although I discover not yet by what way above ground or below to enter the cavern, still, if you will pardon the request of so high and unearned a favour, may my first service be, under your direction, to conduct your sister into it? Odysseus. One alone can pass at a time. Trelawny. Point out to me but the path let me explore and clear it. Tersitza. May I follow? Odysseus. I must go first. : Tersitza. Are there no murderers? Do not go first, my brother! you have many enemies. They would not hurt me, nor a stranger so youthful and so.. so disposed to say something kind and obliging to them. O Heaven! who are all those other people that laughed when you did? Odysseus. To those who laugh heartily the echo alone returns a laugh as hearty. Now, silence! be grave, be steady: follow me, but mind yourselves. Do not trust the bark upon the two larches: for, though sufficiently rough in appearance to secure the footing, the rain and sun and wind may have loosened it. Step rather on the bars and hurdles nailed across. Well done! bravely done! Tersitza. I can go now by myself. Odysseus. Better hold the sash yet. Is it quite tight around thee, Trelawny? Trelawny. It should be; for it holds two lives. Odysseus. Trelawny! do not glance back! She marches firmly she looks upon the trees, and chooses her steps. Gently! gently! gently! Come to me! come to me! let me clasp thee! let me hug thee, and lift thee up, and nestle thee in my beard and on my head, my young daring eaglet! Leonidas. For fear some one should have led me, or what is worse, and what they wanted to do, should have carried me in their arms. * Odysseus. And at last thou mindest thy antelope more than these dangerous rocks and precipices. Leonidas. I love my antelope: I do not care about rocks and precipices. Look, brother Odysseus! how she twinkles her large beautiful eyes at the brightness of the snow, catching it through the tops of the trees, and knowing it is not the sky as well as we do. She was never so near it before she can never have seen any till now. I wish I might pick for her a few berries of that mountain-ash it is only a little way from the larches we crossed, the two over the chasm : would it bear me? I should stop its waving if I leaped on it. Odysseus. Leonidas! thou art so brave a boy, from this hour forward thou art a soldier. And now, being a soldier, thou canst do nothing without orders or leave. Leonidas. Not gather berries? Leonidas. But am I really a soldier? Leonidas. Ah! this is worth an antelope. I could let her be hungry an hour together and hardly mind it. Tersitza. For shame, Leonidas! Leonidas. That is, if she did not cry after me, letting me know she expected something at my hands. Odysseus. Give her to me, and I will hold her up while she browzes a little on the birch. Leonidas. Where is there one? Odysseus. There; that old stump, from which so many slender boughs are waving over the cavern. Leonidas. I had turned my back upon it. At first sight it seems a part of the rock, it has such deep crevices and chinks in it, and so much gray moss, hard as itself, about it. With all its twistings and writhings it can not keep its ragged coat right around it; but one patch gapes here, another there, and much has fallen in tatters at These few paces have given thee more colour its feet. Wonderful then it should have the than all the ride. I Tersitza. I was not frightened in the least. will directly walk back, just in the same manner I came, and then return hither, if you think I was. Odysseus. I did not say it. prettiest leaves and branches in the world, with a motion as graceful as a peacock's. Odysseus. We must never judge of powers and * Leonidas was some years younger than Tersitza. He lost his life a short time afterward, by pursuing an ante Tersitza. You seem to think it though: you lope in company with his sister: he fell over a precipice on looked doubtingly. Parnassus. capacities from appearances and situations. There are men who would make thee wonder more, if thou couldst ever see and know them. There are those who are not worth a twentieth part of that old stump, those whose brains and whose hearts are dryer than the bark of it, and yet on whose breath there may be healing or there may be pestilence for Greece. Acrite. Where is Argyropylos? where may the man be sought? Can he have run away? It was hardly worth his while. Odysseus. Whither should he run, and how? He was lamed for life by the last shot he received. Wouldst thou anything with him, my dear grandmother? Acrive. I gave into his keeping the two dogs for our best fire. A cruel keen winter it will be, child Odysseus! What a sight of berries, high and low, all the way up, red, yellow, green, orange, black, purple, every sort and size. Tersitza. Grandmama, shall I run and look for Argyropylos? Acrive. Good girl! let me kiss thee first. Prythee of what use are these frightful pines and beeches, and the elders and hollies we left below, without the two dogs! The larches indeed, when their long sprays are dry and yellow, will look like matting upon the floor, and keep the feet (Tersitza goes out.) I would not hurt her, Christ love her! but things must be in their places, and girls must learn to put 'em there. Son guest! they have no heads now-a-days: we must set ours upon 'em to make 'em worth anything. Alas! she is one of the best, I do believe. Trelawny. To me, the lady Tersitza, child as she is, or nearly so, appears the most amiable and the most prudent of her sex. Acrice. Yea, yea, son guest! I will make her prudent and amiable: leave her to me. I must say it, I have never seen any young thing like her. But prythee forbear to tell her such a tale: she might believe thee, and all would go wrong again. One breath of a stranger makes a dimple, where a whole day's breeze of a familiar makes none. Even grandmothers ere now have been unminded by their own grandchildren, or postponed to another. Trelawny. Prodigious! Acrive. True, as I live! Trelawny. Then the world must have grown very bad. Acrive. In these parts, and God knows how much further, it has not been as it should be for a number of seasons. Trelawny. Too surely everyone complains of it. Acrive. Ay, son guest! thou art wise I see beyond thy few years, and hast listened all thy lifetime (no doubt) to those who could look back on many. A Klept sang to me one day what I would sing again to thee... Trelawny. How delightful it will be to hear it in the long winter nights! Acrive. Just now... Trelawny. The lady Tersitza would run back immediately on hearing it, and would forget her dogs and Argyropylos. Acrive. Just now indeed I could not sing it in perfection; for, although my voice is as good as ever, my teeth do not second it, being that some twenty of the principal ones have failed me, at the time I want 'em most. But the substance of the song is that the Seasons used formerly to follow one another in right order; that one day they took it into their heads to dance together; that Jupiter and Juno (thou hast heard of them probably) were angry at their doing it without their permission, and forced them to dance together ever since, whether they will or no. This has a meaning in it which my child Odysseus can explain to thee. The chief signification is, that we are colder now than formerly. What a power of snow hath been lying these seventy last summers, or more may-hap, on the top of our Parnassus! We have songs written by old Klepts in my youth, or rather before, about men and women by the dozen, that dwelt upon the highest parts of it, singing and harping day and night, without a faggot of furze here or there, or brazier or earthen pot between the legs of the daintiest. Trelawny. How could they stand it? Trelawny. Is the fact quite certain? Acrice. Sure as gospel. All poets and songsters agree upon it, even the young ones. Now if anyone of this gentry could pick a hole in the coat of another, he would make it large enough to put his head and grin through. Trelawny. But what has become of the singers and harpers? Acrive. Our people call them Muses. These harpers and singers, pipers and trumpeters, have been called upon by name, and have never answered. I believe the hard seasons have carried them all off; and there was nobody who cared to tend them, while any good could be done. Trelawny. I am of the same opinion. Acrice. Let us hope to fare better in the cavern. Trelawny. Our enemies can not so easily assail us. Acrive. Grandson Odysseus then hath chosen prudently. |