Chapter 13

_Enter LORD THESHAM, LORD MERTOUN, AUSTIN, and GUENDOLEN._

_Tresham._ I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet once more, To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name --Noble among the noblest in itself, Yet taking in your person, fame avers, New price and lustre,--(as that gem you wear, Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts, Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord, Seems to re-kindle at the core)--your name Would win you welcome!--

_Mertoun._ Thanks!

_Tresham._ --But add to that, The worthiness and grace and dignity Of your proposal for uniting both Our Houses even closer than respect Unites them now--add these, and you must grant One favor more, nor that the least,--to think The welcome I should give;--'tis given! My lord, My only brother, Austin: he's the king's. Our cousin, Lady Guendolen--betrothed To Austin: all are yours.

_Mertoun._ I thank you--less For the expressed commendings which your seal, And only that, authenticates--forbids My putting from me ... to my heart I take Your praise ... but praise less claims my gratitude, Than the indulgent insight it implies Of what must needs be uppermost with one Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to ask, In weighed and measured unimpassioned words, A gift, which, if as calmly 'tis denied, He must withdraw, content upon his cheek, Despair within his soul. That I dare ask Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord Tresham, I love your sister--as you'd have one love That lady ... oh more, more I love her! Wealth, Rank, all the world thinks me, they're yours, you know, To hold or part with, at your choice--but grant My true self, me without a rood of land, A piece of gold, a name of yesterday, Grant me that lady, and you ... Death or life?

_Guendolen_ [_apart to AUSTIN_]. Why, this is loving, Austin!

_Austin._ He's so young!

_Guendolen._ Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise He never had obtained an entrance here, Were all this fear and trembling needed.

_Austin._ Hush! He reddens.

_Guendolen._ Mark him, Austin; that's true love! Ours must begin again.

_Tresham._ We'll sit, my lord. Ever with best desert goes diffidence. I may speak plainly nor be misconceived. That I am wholly satisfied with you On this occasion, when a falcon's eye Were dull compared with mine to search out faults, Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give Or to refuse.

_Mertoun._ But you, you grant my suit? I have your word if hers?

_Tresham._ My best of words If hers encourage you. I trust it will. Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?

_Mertoun._ I ... I ... our two demesnes, remember, touch; I have been used to wander carelessly After my stricken game: the heron roused Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,--or else Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight And lured me after her from tree to tree, I marked not whither. I have come upon The lady's wondrous beauty unaware, And--and then ... I have seen her.

_Guendolen_ [_aside to AUSTIN_]. Note that mode Of faltering out that, when a lady passed, He, having eyes, did see her! You had said-- "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot; Observed a red, where red should not have been, Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk Be lessoned for the future!

_Tresham._ What's to say May be said briefly. She has never known A mother's care; I stand for father too. Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems-- You cannot know the good and tender heart, Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy, How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind, How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free As light where friends are--how imbued with lore The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet The ... one might know I talked of Mildred--thus We brothers talk!

_Mertoun._ I thank you.

_Tresham._ In a word, Control's not for this lady; but her wish To please me outstrips in its subtlety My power of being pleased: herself creates The want she means to satisfy. My heart Prefers your suit to her as 'twere its own. Can I say more?

_Mertoun._ No more--thanks, thanks--no more!

_Tresham._ This matter then discussed....

_Mertoun._ --We'll waste no breath On aught less precious. I'm beneath the roof Which holds her: while I thought of that, my speech To you would wander--as it must not do, Since as you favor me I stand or fall. I pray you suffer that I take my leave!

_Tresham._ With less regret 't is suffered, that again We meet, I hope, so shortly.

_Mertoun._ We? again?-- Ah yes, forgive me--when shall ... you will crown Your goodness by forthwith apprising me When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day For me to wait on you--and her.

_Tresham._ So soon As I am made acquainted with her thoughts On your proposal--howsoe'er they lean-- A messenger shall bring you the result.

_Mertoun._ You cannot bind me more to you, my lord. Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew A converse ne'er to disunite again.

_Tresham._ So may it prove!

_Mertoun._ You, lady, you, sir, take My humble salutation!

_Guendolen and Austin._ Thanks!

_Tresham._ Within there!

[_+Servants+ enter. TRESHAM conducts MERTOUN to the door. Meantime AUSTIN remarks_,

Here I have an advantage of the Earl, Confess now! I'd not think that all was safe Because my lady's brother stood my friend! Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say, yes"-- "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside? I should have prayed the brother, "speak this speech, For Heaven's sake urge this on her--put in this-- Forget not, as you'd save me, t'other thing,-- Then set down what she says, and how she looks, And if she smiles, and" (in an under breath) "Only let her accept me, and do you And all the world refuse me, if you dare!"

_Guendolen._ That way you'd take, friend Austin? What a shame I was your cousin, tamely from the first Your bride, and all this fervor's run to waste! Do you know you speak sensibly to-day? The Earl's a fool.

_Austin._ Here's Thorold. Tell him so!

_Tresham_ [_returning_]. Now, voices, voices! 'St! the lady's first! How seems he?--seems he not ... come, faith give fraud The mercy-stroke whenever they engage! Down with fraud, up with faith! How seems the Earl? A name! a blazon! if you knew their worth, As you will never! come--the Earl?

_Guendolen._ He's young.

_Tresham._ What's she? an infant save in heart and brain. Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark! And you ... Austin, how old is she?

_Guendolen._ There's tact for you! I meant that being young was good excuse If one should tax him....

_Tresham._ Well?

_Guendolen._ --With lacking wit.

_Tresham._ He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so please you?

_Guendolen._ In standing straighter than the steward's rod And making you the tiresomest harangue, Instead of slipping over to my side And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady, Your cousin there will do me detriment He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see, In my old name and fame--be sure he'll leave My Mildred, when his best account of me Is ended, in full confidence I wear My grandsire's periwig down either cheek. I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"....

_Tresham._ ... "To give a best of best accounts, yourself, Of me and my demerits." You are right! He should have said what now I say for him. Yon golden creature, will you help us all? Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you --You are ... what Austin only knows! Come up, All three of us: she's in the library No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!

_Guendolen._ Austin, how we must--!

_Tresham._ Must what? Must speak truth, Malignant tongue! Detect one fault in him! I challenge you!

_Guendolen._ Witchcraft's a fault in him, For you're bewitched.

_Tresham._ What's urgent we obtain Is, that she soon receive him--say, to-morrow-- Next day at furthest.

_Guendolen._ Ne'er instruct me!

_Tresham._ Come! --He's out of your good graces, since forsooth, He stood not as he'd carry us by storm With his perfections! You're for the composed Manly assured becoming confidence! --Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you ... I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!

The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun is the universally human one, and belongs to no one country or no one period of civilization more than another, but the attitude of all the actors in the tragedy belongs distinctively to the phase of moral culture which we saw illustrated in the youth of Sir Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English ways of thinking whenever their moral force comes uppermost, as for example in the Puritan thought of the Cromwellian era.

The play is in a sense a problem play, though to most modern readers the tragedy of its ending is all too horrible a consequence of the sin. Dramatically and psychically, however, the tragedy is much more inevitable than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love one naturally thinks of in the same connection. The catastrophe in the Shakespeare play is almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion through mere external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly where Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day dawns upon them.

The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves and has his being is that of pride of birth, with honor and chastity as its watchwords. At the same time the idol of his life is his sister Mildred, over whom he has watched with a father's and mother's care. When the blow to his ideal comes at the hands of this much cherished sister, it is not to be wondered at that his reason almost deserts him. The greatest agony possible to the human soul is to have its ideals, the very food which has been the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The ideal may be a wrong one, or an impartial one, and through the wrack and ruin may dawn larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously developed one the storm that breaks when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.

It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and as young English girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned,--only those would acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin flourishes only when insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it.

One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act, however, illustrates the English poise already referred to; Tresham regains his equilibrium with enlarged vision, his salvation is accomplished, his soul awakened.