The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the name of Time, by Michael Field.

[catching his breath] I am sad.
[to Zacharias] I cannot speak with this petitioner
Trembling beside me: give him judgment first,
And then hear my complaint.

ZACHARIAS.

[sternly] No: let him hear—
What have you against God?

CARLOMAN.

I have not found Him.

ZACHARIAS.

You fast? You have been diligent in prayer?

CARLOMAN.

[more excitedly] I cannot pray—scarcely at Angelus—
The Sun so flares and changes ... in the cold
East clouds there is such witness to His strength
Ere he lay him down: the life, the passion
Arrest me and I weep.

ZACHARIAS.

You cannot pray!
But in the cloister....

CARLOMAN.

Oh, those other prayers
That I am set, I say them when I must,
I sing within the chapel, dig and plant.
And eat my portion; then there comes an hour,
For which my heart has saved itself all day,
When I can be alone—sole preparation
The spirit makes when she would be with God—
I turn from Time’s small dues of speech and habit
To serve Eternity, the joy is coming
That has no moment: and a noise is made,
A monk approaches me, and I am summoned
To visitors who seek me as a marvel
To gaze upon. O father, when they look
I reel with shame.

ZACHARIAS.

What would you? Such example
As yours confounds the foolish.

CARLOMAN.

Grant my prayer—
Our prayers, for Marcomir’s are joined to mine—
That we may leave Soracte and retire
To some far convent hidden in the hills.

ZACHARIAS.

Wisely you ask the natural medicine
Your state requires.
Good prior Damiani,
The brothers Carloman and Marcomir
Together with King Rachis join your rule.
Let them obey you, leading tranquil lives.
[apart to Damiani]
Firm discipline!

RACHIS.

[from the ground] O holy pontiff, grant
That I may change with Carloman—Soracte
For me, if you are merciful.

ZACHARIAS.

Not so.
This zealous son of ours has felt the poison
Of worldly visits trouble him.

MARCOMIR.

[sharply] Sin needs
A tomb in which to die.

RACHIS.

CARLOMAN.

We thank you, father, for we bound our hearts
And brains and bodies with the fearful oath
To live in God, and the great Tempter—Time—
Has thwarted us persistently with bondage
Of interruption. Claims and trifles hinder
Our worship of what passes not away;
[vehemently]
And I am chafed, my father.

ZACHARIAS.

There is something
Terribly painful in your eyes—pray much,
And think but seldom.

CARDINAL.

Saintly Boniface
Comes from the Frankish Court.

ZACHARIAS.

A triple blessing
On this most reverend head. You come from Pepin
Or Chilperic? Here is Carloman.

BONIFACE.

Beloved,
Why have you left Soracte?

CARLOMAN.

Visitors
Wasted my leisure: I became a sight,
Like some caged animal.

ZACHARIAS.

He leaves to-day
For Mount Casino.

BONIFACE.

[to Carloman] You are happy?

CARLOMAN.

Yes ...
Oh, no, not happy; it is different:
Not as you feel when you have won the goal,
But as you feel when racing.

BONIFACE.

Do you care
To ask no news of Pepin or ... of ...?

CARLOMAN.

No. [he turns away.]

ZACHARIAS.

What is your mission, good Archbishop?

BONIFACE.

Pepin
Sends me to ask your blessing and to pray
That you would place upon his head the crown
That Chilperic seems to wear, but which, in truth,
He, Pepin, owns unworn!

ZACHARIAS.

We have considered
This matter on our knees before our God,
And questioned what the power He lodged with us
Might in such case attempt: we have been taught
A glorious lesson—that as Samuel made
And unmade Kings, because God ruled in him,
So we can put away the fainéant,
Disgraceful Chilperic, and proclaim as King
Pepin, our doughty servant.

CARLOMAN.

[starting] Pepin—King!
[turning aside again]
Why should this news so knock to enter—why?
It seems to make me open a shut door:
I see the Rhone, I see my father’s roof,
The gay French faces!—Pepin, King!

BONIFACE.

I hear
Your will with joy. It is a deadly peril
To France that she is governed by a man
No better than an image, golden-haired
But lifeless as a stone. The very people
Laugh at the word, a King. But all will change
When Pepin’s bulk of character extends
The meaning of his office.

CARLOMAN.

Pepin, King!
O Marcomir, you have heard it?

MARCOMIR.

Yes, I heard ...
No matter! He has ruled so long, the title
Will fall on him as new years follow old.

ZACHARIAS.

[to Boniface.]
We bid you see he is proclaimed; ourself
Have hope to crown him when occasion brings
Either the Frank to us or us to him.
Although he want our oil, we give him grace
To exercise all sovereignty, immuring
Chilperic within the cloister where he dwells.

CARLOMAN.

[suddenly to Zacharias.]
Oh, you can act for God, and I must pray;
There is a distance from Him in my life
Since I can only pray: while there is nearness
Between your life and His creative Be!

ZACHARIAS.

[astonished] My son, what do you mean?

BONIFACE.

CARLOMAN.

Pardon. I spoke aloud a scudding thought
That filled my head one moment. So divine
It is to act God’s Counsel.

ZACHARIAS.

We can serve Him
Only if stable, for the life of life
Is calm as the untroubled sea and changeless.
Go, follow Damiani, dearest son!

BONIFACE.

Peace be to you, belovèd Carloman.
My prayers, though often offered on the earth
Of heathen lands, are yours at morn and night.
I never can forget you.

CARLOMAN.

Pepin, King!—
O Boniface, I think you said farewell.
You journey far and far; you see strange faces,
And woods where idols live in solitude,
Hamlets and forges, feasts, the glare of arms,
And great unpeopled plains so full of wind
It seems the owner, while the little trees
And grass are slaves: and thus you wander on
God’s messenger ... Ha, ha! The little trees
And grass!... Good-bye!

BONIFACE.

CARLOMAN.

[gently] Yes, Boniface?

BONIFACE.

Nothing. I can but bless you. Go, in peace.

MARCOMIR.

BONIFACE.

Ask not; he has not asked.

ACT III

No guilt! You have not heard
I caught him flushed with triumph at the news
That Astolph in defiance of the Pope
Is laying siege to Rome. Good Rachis wept
As well he might, but Carloman blasphemed
Would I were with your brother! and for this
I had him shut in darkness fourteen days.
The term is over, and to change your sullen,
Ascetic mood—it is a festival—
You shall restore your friend to liberty.
You err through over-discipline, a fault,
But one that brings us honour; stubbornness
Like his disgraces the whole brotherhood.
Admonish him! If he is quite subdued
He shall be suffered to resume his rank
Among his fellows: for yourself, remember
Humility is satisfied with penance
The Church inflicts. No private luxury!
Do not offend again.

MARCOMIR.

Not use the rod!
Not use it when I feel incitements rapid
As points of fire awake me to the knowledge
That all my flesh is burning! Every flint
Becomes a new temptation. How confess
To him I love his wife, and guiltily!
O Geneviva, do the swans still crowd
Round you to feed them? Are you mistress still
In the old palace? Can there be a doubt?
If Pepin dare insult you—O this frock,
This girdle, not a sword belt! And your husband
Who brought you to such peril with his dreams,
Let the light wake him!

CARLOMAN.

What has struck my eyes?
Is it the air, the sun, an open door?
Oh, it is dark with brightness, and half-blinds,
So rushing in! I would have been with God
When the light broke in answer to His cry;
I would have seen it pushing its broad leaves
Through Chaos as it travelled!—

MARCOMIR.

[advancing] I am come
To give you freedom.

CARLOMAN.

[seizing his hand like a boy]
Are the throstles fledged
I left within the orchard?

MARCOMIR.

They are gone ...
Besides, we must not wander—recollect!

CARLOMAN.

I do; I was a goatherd on those hills
Before my punishment [pointing to the prison].
How sad you look! Come with me; I will show you
The flock of goats leaping from crag to crag—
And have you ever drunk their milk? It foams;
Its thousand little bubbles seem themselves
Full of an airy life, and in the smack
Of the warm draught something exhilarates
And carries one along. Come to the hills!

MARCOMIR.

CARLOMAN.

These cloisters are so dull
Where you sit brooding morn and eve; beyond
One sees the clouds laying their restless fingers
Across the scaurs.

MARCOMIR.

But is that meditation,
And does one so find peace?

CARLOMAN.

The dew is there
In the green hollows; when I see those steeped
And shining fields, my heart fills to the brim,
And, though I yearn, my yearning satisfies.
Come with me: fast as I attain, with you
I share the secret.

MARCOMIR.

But you strike me dumb.
You have forgotten, we are bound by vows,
By our obedience.

CARLOMAN.

Are we bound by hopes,
By yesterday’s lost hopes?

MARCOMIR.

CARLOMAN.

I promised to be God’s, ah yes, I promised,
As two on earth agree to be together
For evermore, vowed lovers. Is the marriage
In the companionship or in the vow?
Why, Geneviva is still vowed my wife.

MARCOMIR.

But we must keep our troth.

CARLOMAN.

We must escape
From anything that is become a bond,
No matter who has forged the chain,—ourselves,
An enemy, a friend: and this escape,
This readjustment is the penitence,
The sole that I will practise.
[looking more narrowly at Marcomir] But your eyes
Are witheringly remorseful. One would say
That you had been some sunshines in the dark,
You, and not I. Open your heart to me.

MARCOMIR.

CARLOMAN.

Hate me, why? For heresy?

MARCOMIR.

No, for your blindness: think what you have done,
Think of ... at least, think of your only child
Mewed within convent walls.

CARLOMAN.

MARCOMIR.

CARLOMAN.

[clenching his hand] Per Baccho, but my son
Shall never wear a tonsure.

MARCOMIR.

Time will prove!
You stand so free and noble in the light
Yet it is you who brought me to despair.
One cannot be a fool, one of God’s fools,
Unconscious of the ill in others’ hearts,
And not breed deadly mischief.

CARLOMAN.

I entreated
You would not come with me.

MARCOMIR.

You drew me on;
You cannot help it, you make life so royal
Men follow you and think they will be Kings,
And then—

CARLOMAN.

MARCOMIR.

Have you watched the lepers?
Waiting outside the churches to be blest?—
They pray, they linger, they receive their God,
And yet depart uncleansed.
Do not continue
To question me, but listen. Bend your eyes
Full on me! I have never told the Prior,
I cannot; and I would not breathe it now
But for her sake. The lady Geneviva
Is spotless; but my thoughts have been defiled.
I love her, I have never won her love,
Must never strive to win it. It is hell
To think of her.

CARLOMAN.

You never won her love?

MARCOMIR.

CARLOMAN.

She had so many favourites,
Poor boy! and you were thwarted.

MARCOMIR.

But her bond,
My deep disloyalty!

CARLOMAN.

MARCOMIR.

If I were in the world, it is to her
I should return.

CARLOMAN.

The doors are strongly barred:
There is no other hindrance.

MARCOMIR.

They are come
The brethren and the prior: you must kneel
And then be reinstated. I forgot.

DAMIANI.

Brother, we have great joy in your release,
And hasten to embrace you. Own your fault
Submissively, then rise and take your place
In our rejoicing band.

CARLOMAN.

DAMIANI.

CARLOMAN.

But there is no such thing—
A vow! as well respect the case that sheathes
The chrysalis, when the live creature stirs!
We make these fetters for ourselves, and then
We grow and burst them. It is clear no man
Can so forecast the changes of his course
That he can promise so I will remain,
Such, and no other. Words like these are straws
The current plays with as it moves along.

DAMIANI.

My brethren, do not listen; he is mad.

CARLOMAN.

No, you are mad; you cannot see that Time
Is God’s own movement, all that He can do
Between the day a man is born and dies.
Listen a little: is there one of you
Who looks upon the sunlight and the buds
That moss the vines in March, and does not feel
Now I am living with these changeful things;
The instant is so golden for us all,
And this is life? Think what the vines would be
If they were glued forever, and one month
Gave them a law—the richness that would cease,
The flower, the shade, the ripening. We are men,
With fourscore years for season, and we alter
So exquisitely often on our way
To harvest and the end. It must be so.

DAMIANI.

Is this what darkness and strict punishment
Have wrought in the corruption of your mind?

CARLOMAN.

I lay as seeds lie in the prison-house,
Dying and living—living evermore,
Pushed by a spark of time to join the hours,
To go along with them.

But, brother, this
Is overwhelming.

MARCOMIR.

Sin, can that be dropped?

CARLOMAN.

Never, there is no need. Life seizes all
Its own vile refuse, hurries it along
To something different; religion makes
The master-change, turning our black to white;
But so, as from earth’s foulness, the stem drains
Corruption upward, and the cleanly flower
Waves like a flame at last.

MARCOMIR.

O Carloman,
My brother, I am saved!

CARLOMAN.

But all of you
Be saved, and on the instant! Yes, the prior,
You all of you, do not believe me mad.
It is your misery, I think, that more,
More than the urgent torment of my soul
Has brought me to the truth, the healing truth
That we must give our natures to the air,
To light and liberty, suppressing nothing,
Freeing each passion: we have slaves within,
So many slaves, and I have learnt that saints
Have dungeons that they dare not look into,
The horror is so deadly. Force the locks,
Let the fierce captives ravage. Better far
Murder and rapine in the city-streets,
Than lust and hatred’s unfulfilled desires!
Be saved; strike free into the world—come out!
Oh, you can do it—I have spoken truth,
I see that by your faces.

OLD MONK.

[touching Damiani’s shoulder] Surely, prior,
We must arrest this traitor.

DAMIANI.

[in a whisper] Half the brethren
Are in the chapel: I will bring them down
In mass on these insurgent novices.
[aloud] Children, I leave you: wrestle with temptation;
I now can only aid you with my prayers.
When you have heard him through, decide; and either
Lead him in chains to me; or if his lies
Prevail with you, then put me in your prisons,
And let the devil rule.
[to Carloman] Now do your worst
With your blaspheming tongue.