SCENE III.—(A poorly furnished room. Margaret seated by a meagre fire nursing her sick child.)
Marg. O Gerbhert! Gerbhert! in what living stone
Are you entombed, dead to our sorrow now?
Ah, my poor Baby, fatherless, fatherless, now.
Dying! dying! Like a pallid candle,
I watch your little spark to less and less
Go slowly deathwards. Hark! I hear a step,
Hush your moans, my Babe. Was it your cry?
Or but the wind, the icy, winter wind,
The cruel midnight, eating with icy tooth
The hearts of mortals?
Enter Ariald.
Ar. Margaret, I have come!
Marg. Yea, so have Winter, Misery, Despair and Death,
Your kindlier brothers. Hunger may be gaunt,
But he is honest. Death be terrible,
But he hath mercy on the pinchéd cheek
And cruel, tortured heart; but who art thou?
Ar. Knowest me not, Margaret?
Marg. I know the Pope, who is a monster stone
That all the world like some poor maddened sea,
Might beat against and break and break in vain;
I know earth’s misery, its inhuman silence,
Where gaunt and shadowy eyes glare round and watch
The slow, brute process nearer, day by day
Of hunger gnawing at the walls of life;
But thee I know not, thou art far too dread
For my poor knowledge. When I see thy face
This earth doth seem a hell and God a devil.
Ar. Margaret, forswear this maddened mood.
Catherine, your mother killed herself,
By her own folly, hoping against hope.
Bethink you of your child. You murder it
In killing my poor hopes. Give me thy love,
And life to thy sweet babe, be not so cruel,
You forced me to this, I would not have stirred
One finger to molest you or your child,
Had you not by your beauty raised in me
A longing for to own you, call you mine.
Gerbhert never loved as I have loved,
It eats me like a wasting all these years.
Had I been Gerbhert, master of your love,
And this my child, I would have fought the world,
Ere I’d have left you, dared both Hell and Heaven,
Rather than let one furrow groove your cheek,
One sorrow rack your soul. O Margaret, Margaret,
Say but the word, that I may save thy child,
Give me the right to fan that poor flame back,
And thine old beauty to its former glow.
Marg. Blackness! blackness! I grope! I grope! I grope!
Forgive me, Heaven, forgive me! There is no Heaven!
There is no God! The universe one cave,
Where I, a blinded bat do beat my wings
In wounded darkness. O my child, my child!
Some one must save thee!
Ar. I am the only answer to thy prayer,
If there’s a God, he speaks to thee through me,
Margaret, Margaret, thou wilt come with me.
Marg. What shall I do? Is there no other voice?
Ar. Yea, thou wilt come. Thou wilt forget all this,
In future happiness. Come, my Margaret!
(Margaret rises to her feet as if to go with him, then stops.)
Ar. Nay, nay, I am thine answer, God saith yea, to this.
Marg. O God! O God! (To Ariald.) Thou hast thine answer now!
Ar. Margaret!
Marg. God sends thine answer now. My babe is dead!
(Falls heavily to the ground.) (Ariald steals out.)
Ar. Beaten, beaten, beaten at the last!
I almost believe me, even evil me,
There is a God!
[Curtain.