Two Mothers

Rouse the Praetorians! Bid a triple line

Too late! Too late! The power
Of Nero Caesar can not stay the sun!
The stars have marched against me—it is done!
And all Rome’s legions could not rout this swarm
Of venom-footed moments!
—She was warm
One little lost eternity ago.

(With awakening resolution.)

‘Twas not my deed! I did not wish it so!
Some demon, aping Caesar, gave the word
While Lucius Aenobarbus’ eyes were blurred
With too much beauty!
Oh, it shall be done!
Ere these unmothered eyes behold the sun,
She shall have vengeance, and that gift is mine!

(To First Soldier.)

Be flung about the palace!

(To Second Soldier.)

Send me wine—

Strong wine to nerve a resolution!

(To Third Soldier.)

You—

Summon Poppaea!

(The Soldiers go out.)

This deed I mean to do
Unties the snarl, but broken is the thread.
Would that the haughty blood these hands will shed
Might warm my mother! that the breath I crush—
So—(clutching air) from that throat of sorceries, might rush
Into the breast that loved and nurtured me!
The heart of Nero shivers in the sea,
And Rome is lorn of pity!
Could the world
And all her crawling spawn this night be hurled
Into one woman’s form, with eyes to shed
Rivers of scalding woe, her towering head
Jeweled with realms aflare, with locks of smoke,
Huge nerves to suffer, and a neck to choke—
That woman were Poppaea! I would rear
About the timeless sea, my mother’s bier,
A sky-roofed desolation groined with awe,
Where, nightly drifting in the stream of law,
The vestal stars should tend their fires, and weep
To hear upon the melancholy deep
That shipless wind, her ghost, amid the hush!
Alas! I have but one white throat to crush
With these world-hungry fingers!

(From behind Nero, enter Page—a little boy—bearing a goblet of wine on a salver. Nero turns, startled.)

Ah!—You!—You!

Page

I bring wine, mighty Caesar.

(Nero passes his hand across his face, and the expression of fright leaves.)

So you do—
I saw—the boy Brittanicus!—One sees—
Things—does one not?—such eerie nights as these?

Page

(With eager boyish earnestness.)

With woozy heads?

Again to look like—anyone! Beware!

(Irritably.)

The wine!

(The Page, startled, presents the salver, from which Nero takes the goblet with unsteady hand. Page is in the act of fleeing.)

Stay!

(Page stops and turns tremblingly.)

Never dare

(Page’s head shakes a timid negative. Nero stares into goblet and muses.)

Blood’s red too. Ah, a woman is the grape
Ripe for the vintage, from whose flesh agape
Glad feet tonight shall stamp the hated ooze!
It boils!—See!—like some witch’s pot that brews
Venomous ichor!—Nay—some angry ghost
Hurls bloody breakers on a bleeding coast!—
’Tis poisoned!—Out, Locusta’s brat!

(Hurls goblet at Page, who flees precipitately.)

‘Twas she!
The hand that flung my mother to the sea
Now pours me death!
Alas, great Hercules
Too long has plied the distaff at the knees
Of Omphale, spinning a thread of woe!
Was ever king of story driven so
By unrelenting Fate? Lo, round on round
The slow coils grip and choke—a mother drowned,
Her wrathful spirit rising from the dead—
A gentle wife outcast, discredited,
With sighs to wake the dread Eumenides!
Some thunder-hearted, vaster Sophocles,
His aeon-beating blood the stellar stream,
Has flung on me the mantle of his dream,
And Nero grapples Fate! O wondrous play!
With smoking brand aloft, the haggard Day
Gropes for the world! Pursued by subtle foes,
Superbly tragic ‘mid a storm of woes,
The fury-hunted Caesar takes the cue!
One time-outstaring deed remains to do,
Then let the pit howl—Caesar sings no more!
Go ask the battered wreckage on the shore
Who sought his mother in a sudden sleep,
To be with her forever on the deep
A twin ship-hating tempest!

(Enter Anicetus excitedly.)

Lost! We’re lost!
The Roman ship yaws rock-ward tempest-tossed
And Nero is but Lucius in the wreck!

Croak on! Each croak’s a dagger in that neck,
You vulture with the hideous dripping beak,
The clutching tearing talons that now reek
With what dear sacred veins!

O Caesar, hear!
So keen the news I bear you, that I fear
To loose it like the arrow it must be.
I know not why such wrath you heap on me;
I know what peril deepens ‘round my lord;
How, riven by the lightning of the sword,
The doom-voiced blackness labors round his head!

Say what I know, that my poor mother’s dead—

So shall your life be briefer!

Would ‘t were so!

(A light coming into his face.)

She lives?

Yea, lives—and lives to overthrow!

Not perished?

—And her living is our death!

She moves and breathes?

—And potent is her breath

To blow rebellion up!

(Rubbing his eyes.)

Still do I sleep?
Is this a taunting dream that I may weep
More bitterly? Or some new foul intrigue?

‘Tis bitter fact to her who swam a league,
And bitter fact to Nero shall it be!
At Bauli now, still dripping from the sea,
She crouches snarling!

What sight thus makes your face a pool of gloom?

(In an outburst of joy.)

Oh, you shall not die,
My best-loved Anicetus! Though you lie,
Sweeter these words are than profoundest truth!
They breathe the fresh, white morning of my youth
Upon the lampless night that smothered me!
O more than human Sea
That spared my mother that her son might live!
What bounty can I give?
I—Caesar—falter beggared at this gift
Of living words that lift
My mother from the regions of the dead!
Ah—I shall set a crown upon your head,
Snip you a kingdom from Rome’s flowing robe!
I’ll temple you in splendors! Yea, I’ll probe
Your secret heart to know what wishes pant
In wingless yearning there, that I may grant!

(Pause, while Anicetus regards Nero with gloomy face.)

The ghost of Nero crying from his tomb!

(Startled.)

Eh?—Nero’s ghost—mine?

Even so I said.
The doomed to perish are already dead
Who woo not Fate with swift unerring deeds!
That breathless moment when the tigress bleeds
Is ours to strike in, ere the tigress spring!
What could it boot your servant to be king
While any moment may the trumpets cry,
Hailing the certain hour when we shall die—
Caesar, the deaf, and his untrusted slave?
Peer deep, peer deep into this yawning grave
And tell me who shall fill it!—Wind and fire,
Harnessed with thrice the ghost of her dead sire,
Your mother is tonight! She knows, she knows
How galleys founder when no tempest blows
And moonlight slumbers on a glassy deep!
The beast our wound has wakened shall not sleep
Till it be gorged with slaughter, or be slain!
Lull not your heart, O Caesar! It is vain
To dream this cub-lorn tigress will not turn.
Lo, flaring through the dawn I see her burn,
A torch of revolution! Hear her raise
The legions with a voice of other days,
Worded with pangs to fret their ancient scars!
And every sword-wound of her father’s wars
Will shriek aloud with pity!

You heard it?—Did you hear a trumpet blare?

(During Anicetus’ speech he has shown growing fear.)

Listen!—There!

‘Tis but the shadow of a sound to be

One rushing hour away!

(In panic.)

Where shall I flee?—
I, the sad poet whom she made a king!
At last we flesh the ghost of what we sing—
We bards!—I sang Orestes.

(His face softens with a gentler thought.)

Ah—I’ll go
To my poor heartsick mother. Tears shall flow,
The tears of Lucius, not imperial tears.
I’ll heap on her the vast, too vast arrears
Of filial love. The Senate shall proclaim
My mother regnant with me—write her name
Beside Augustus with the demigods!
Yea, lictors shall attend her with the rods,
And massed Praetorians tramp the rabble down
Whene’er her chariot flashes through the town!
One should be kind to mothers.

Yea, and be
Kind to the senseless fury of the sea,
Fondle the tempest in a rotten boat!

What would you, Anicetus?

Cut her throat!

(Nero gasps and shrinks from Anicetus.)

No, no!—her ghost!—one can not stab so deep—
One can not kill these tortures spawned of sleep!
No, no—one can not kill them with a sword!

Faugh! One good thrust—the rest is air, my lord!

(Enter Page timorously. Nero turns upon him.)

Page

(Frightened.)

Spare me, good Caesar!—Agerinus—

What breath from what damned throat tonight shall hiss!

Go!

Bid Agerinus enter!

(Page flees. Nero to Anicetus menacingly.)

We shall know

(Enter Agerinus, bowing low.)

Agerinus

My mistress sends fond greetings and a kiss
To her most noble son, and bids me say,
She rests and would not see him until day.
The royal galley, through unhappy chance,
Struck rock and foundered; but no circumstance
So meagre might deprive a son so dear
Of his beloved mother! Have no fear,
The long swim leaves her weary, but quite well.
She knows what tender love her son would tell
And yearns for dawn to bring him to her side.

The loving message you bear back from me!

(To Anicetus.)

So! Spell your doom from that! You lied! You lied!
I’ll lance that hateful fester in your throat!
Yea, we shall prove who rides the rotten boat
And supplicates the tempest!

(With a rapid motion, Nero draws Agerinus’ sword from its sheath. Anicetus shrinks back. Nero cries to Agerinus.)

Wait to see

(Nero brandishing the sword, makes at Anicetus. As he is about to deliver the stroke, enter Poppaea from behind. She has evidently been quite leisurely about her toilet, being dressed gorgeously; and wearing her accustomed half-veil. Her manner is stately and composed. She approaches slowly. Nero stops suddenly in the act to strike Anicetus, and stares upon the beautiful apparition. Anger leaves his face, which changes as though he had seen a great light.)

Poppaea

(Languidly.)

My Nero longed for me?

(Nero with his free hand brushes his eyes in perplexity.)

What—‘twas—I wished—I wished—

I—can not—tell—

Poppaea

(Haughtily.)

Ah, very well.

(She walks slowly on across the stage. Nero stares blankly after her. The sword drops from his hand. As Poppaea disappears, he rouses suddenly as from a stupor.)

There—seize that wretch who came to kill Imperial Caesar!

Ho! Guards!

(Three soldiers enter. Nero points to Agerinus.)

(Agerinus is seized. Nero turns to Anicetus.)

Hasten! Do your will!

(Nero turns, and with an eager expression on his face, goes doddering after Poppaea.)

III

(The same night. Agrippina’s private chamber in her villa at Bauli near Baiae. There is one lamp in the room. At the center back is a broad door closed with heavy hangings. At the right is an open window through which the moonlight falls. Agrippina is discovered lying on a couch. One maid, Nina, is in attendance and is arranging Agrippina’s hair.)

He was so tender—what should kindness mean?

(The maid seems not to hear.)

I spoke!—you heard me speak?

I heard, my Queen.

And deemed my voice some ghostly summer wind
Fit for autumnal hushes? He was kind!
Was ever breath in utterance better spent?

Your slave could scarcely fancy whom you meant,

There are so many tender to the great.

When all the world is one sky-circled state,
Pray, who shall fill it as the sun the sky?
The mother of that mighty one am I—
And he caressed me!
I shall feel no pain
Forever now. So, drenched with winter rain,
The friendless marshland knows the boyish South
And shivers into color!
On the mouth
He kissed me, as before that other came—
That Helen of the stews, that corpse aflame
With lust for life, that—
Ah, he maidened me!
What dying wind could sway so tall a tree
With such proud music? I shall be again
That darkling whirlwind down the fields of men,
That dart unloosed, barbed keenly for his sake,
That living sword for him to wield or break,
But never sheathe!

(Lifts herself on elbow.)

O Nina, let me be
Robed as the Queen I am in verity!
Robed as a victrix home from splendid wars,
Whom, ‘mid the rumble of spoil-laden cars
Trundled by harnessed kings, the trumpets hail!
Let quiet garments be for those who fail,
Mourning a world ill-lost with meek surrenders!
I would flare bright ‘mid Death’s unhuman splendors,
Dazzle the moony hollows of the dead!
Ah no—

(Arising and going to window.)

I shall not die yet.

(Parts the curtains and gazes out.)

‘Tis the dread
Still clinging from the clutches of the sea,
That living, writhing horror! Ugh! O’er me
Almost I feel the liquid terror crawl!
Through glassy worlds of tortured sleep to fall,
Where winds blow not, nor mornings ever blush,
But green, cold, ghastly light-wraiths wander—

(Turning from window with nervous anger.)

Hush!

(Turns again to window; after pause, continues musingly.)

She battles in a surf of spectral fire.
No—like some queen upon a funeral pyre,
Gasping, she withers in a fever swoon.
Had she a son too?

(Approaching the window.)

Who, O Queen?

The moon!
See, she is strangled in a noose of pearl!
What tell-tale scars she has!
—Look yonder, girl—
Your eyes are younger—by the winding sea
Where Baiae glooms and blanches; it may be
Old eyes betray not, but some horsemen take
The white road winding hither by the lake.

The way lies plain—I see no moving thing.

Why thus is Agerinus loitering?

For he was ever true.

(Joyously.)

Ah foolish head!
My heart knows how my son shall come instead,
My little Lucius! Even now he leaps
Into the saddle and the dull way creeps
Beneath the spurred impatience of his horse,
He longs so for me!

(Pause—She scans the moonlit country.)

Shrouded like a corse,
Hoarding a mother’s secret, lies the sea;
And Capri, like a giant Niobe,
Outgazes Fate!
O sweet, too gentle lies
And kisses sword-like! Would the sun might rise
No more on Baiae! Would that earth might burst
Spewing blear doom upon this world accursed
With truth too big for hiding!
See! He sleeps
Beside her, and the shame-dimmed lamp-light creeps
Across her wine-stained mouth—so red—so red—
Like mother blood!—See! hissing round her head
Foul hate-fanged vipers that he calls her hair!
Ah no—beyond all speaking is she fair!
Sweet as a sword-wound in a gasping foe
Her mouth is; and too well, too well I know
Her face is dazzling as a funeral flame
Battened on queen’s flesh!

(Turning angrily from window.)

Oh the blatant shame!
The bungling drunkard’s plot!—Tonight, tonight
I shall swoop down upon them by the light
Of naked steel! Faugh! Had it come to that?
Had Rome no sword, that like a drowning rat
The mother of a king should meet her end?
What Gallic legion would not call me friend?
Did they not love Germanicus, my sire?
Oh, I will rouse the cohorts, scattering fire
Till all Rome blaze rebellion!

(She has advanced to a place beside the couch, stands in a defiant attitude for a moment, then covers her face with her hands and sinks to the couch.)

No, no, no—
It could not be, I would not have it so!
Not mine to burn the tower my hands have built!
And somewhere ‘mid the shadows of his guilt
My son is good.

(Lifts herself on elbow.)

Look, Nina, toward the roofs
Of sleeping Baiae. Say that eager hoofs
Beat a white dust-cloud moonward.

(Nina goes to window and peers out.)