Charles Di Tocca Part 20

CARDINAL: Fool! fool!

CHARLES: There are no wise men, O lord Cardinal.

CARDINAL: Heaven let Antonio's death under the sea Make every wave a tongue against your rest, And 'gainst the rock of this impenitence!

(_CHARLES listens as to something afar off._) No wind should blow that has not sting of it, No light stream that it stains not!

CHARLES (_sighing_): You have loosed Your robe, lord prelate--see.

CARDINAL: O stone! thou stone!

CHARLES: Have peace. A keener cry comes up to me Than frenzy can invoke: a vaster pain Than justice from Omnipotence may call.

CARDINAL: My lips shall learn it.

CHARLES: "Father" moans it. "Father!"---- It is my ears' inheritance forever.

_Enter FULVIA_

FULVIA: Lord Cardinal, one of your servants has In quarrel been struck, and mortally 'tis feared.

Quickly to him: then I may plead of you Escort to Rome.

CARDINAL: I do not understand.

FULVIA: But shall.

CARDINAL: To Rome?

FULVIA: Do not pause here to learn With the dear minutes of a dying man.

(_CARDINAL goes._

CHARLES: You baffle and bewilder.

FULVIA: Well.

CHARLES: You--?--Yes!

I am beat off by it.

FULVIA: Ten years of shelter Have you held over me.

CHARLES: Ten years----

FULVIA: Whose days, Whose every moment else had borne a torture.

CHARLES: Now----?

FULVIA: I, perhaps, must go.

CHARLES: Must?--Still I grope.

FULVIA: Must go! Though in this castle's aged calm And melancholy dusk no shadow is Or niche but may remember prayer for thee.

CHARLES: To Rome? You must?--I am under a spell.

FULVIA: We, thou and I, after the battle's foam Or chase's tired return, often have breathed The pa.s.sionate deep hours away in rest And sympathy.

CHARLES: Say on. Your voice--I marvel----

FULVIA: And at the dawn have looked and sighed, then slow With quiet clasp of fingers turned apart.

CHARLES: You go?--But, on!--your tone--in it I feel----

FULVIA: Have we not fast been friends?

CHARLES: What hath your voice?

FULVIA: Such friends have we not been as grow up from Eternity?

CHARLES: You say it, and I wake.

Fulvia: Such friends--till yesterday you----

CHARLES: Ah!

FULVIA: Changed sudden as the sea when cometh storm.

CHARLES: I had forgot--forgot!--the sun!--the sea!

The sea!--Antonio!--The cliff--the surf!

The shroud and funeral fury of the waves!

FULVIA: Be calm.

CHARLES (_rising excitedly_): I'll stay it! Cecco, our fleetest foot!

A rain of ducats if he shall outspeed This doom on us. More! more! a flood of them, If he----

FULVIA (_drawing him to his chair_): Be patient--calm.

CHARLES: I--I--remember, 'Tis night!

FULVIA: Yes, night.

CHARLES: The sun's no more! It hath Gone down beyond all mercy and recall.

FULVIA: Beyond?--Ah!

CHARLES (_quickly_): Fulvia?

FULVIA: 'Tis hard to think!