Charles Di Tocca.
by Cale Young Rice.
ACT ONE
_Scene._--_The Island Leucadia. A ruined temple of Apollo near the town of Pharo. Broken columns and stones are strewn, or stand desolately about. It is night--the moon rising. ANTONIO, who has been waiting impatiently, seats himself on a stone. By a road near the ruins FULVIA enters, cloaked._
ANTONIO (_turning_): Helen----!
FULVIA: A comely name, my lord.
ANTONIO: Ah, you?
My father"s unforgetting Fulvia?
FULVIA: At least not Helena, whoe"er she be.
ANTONIO: And did I call you so?
FULVIA: Unless it is These stones have tongue and pa.s.sion.
ANTONIO: Then the night Recalling dreams of dim antiquity"s Heroic bloom worked on me.--But whence are Your steps, so late, alone?
FULVIA: From the Cardinal, Who has but come.
ANTONIO: What comfort there?
FULVIA: With doom The moody bolt of Rome broods over us.
ANTONIO: My father will not bind his heresy?
FULVIA: You with him walked to-day. What said he?
ANTONIO: I?
With him to-day? Ah, true. What may be done?
FULVIA: He has been strange of late and silent, laughs, Seeing the Cross, but softly and almost As it were some sweet thing he loved.
ANTONIO (_absently_): As if "Twere some sweet thing--he laughs--is strange--you say?
FULVIA: Stranger than is Antonio his son, Who but for some expectancy is vacant.
(_She makes to go._)
ANTONIO: Stay, Fulvia, though I am not in poise.
Last night I dreamed of you: in vain you hovered To reach me from the coil of swift Charybdis.
(_A low cry, ANTONIO starts._)
Fulvia: A woman"s voice!
(_Looking down the road._) And hasting here!
ANTONIO: Alone?
FULVIA: No, with another!
ANTONIO: Go, then, Fulvia.
"Tis one would speak with me.
FULVIA: Ah? (_She goes._)
_Enter HELENA frightedly with PAULA._
HELENA: Antonio!
ANTONIO: My Helena, what is it? You are wan And tremble as a blossom quick with fear Of shattering. What is it? Speak.
HELENA: Not true!
O, "tis not true!
ANTONIO: What have you chanced upon?
HELENA: Say no to me, say no, and no again!
ANTONIO: Say no, and no?
HELENA: Yes; I am reeling, wrung, With one glance o"er the precipice of ill!
Say his incanted prophecies spring from No power that"s more than frenzied fantasy!
ANTONIO: Who prophesies? Who now upon this isle More than visible and present day Can gather to his eye? Tell me.
HELENA: The monk-- Ah, chide me not!--mad Agabus, who can Unsphere dark spirits from their evil airs And show all things of love or death, seized me As. .h.i.ther I stole to thee. With wild looks And wilder lips he vented on my ear Boding more wild than both. "Sappho!" he cried, "Sappho! Sappho!" and probed my eyes as if Destiny moved dark-visaged in their deeps.
Then tore his rags and moaned, "So young, to cease!"
Gazed then out into awful vacancy; And whispered hotly, following his gaze, "The Shadow! Shadow!"
ANTONIO: This is but a whim, A sudden gloomy surge of superst.i.tion.
Put it from you, my Helena.
HELENA: But he Has often cleft the future with his ken, Seen through it to some lurking misery And mar of love: or the dim knell of death Heard and revealed.
ANTONIO: A witless monk who thinks G.o.d lives but to fulfil his prophecies!
HELENA: You know him not. "Tis told in youth he loved One treacherous, and in avenge made fierce Treaty with h.e.l.l that lends him sight of all Ills that arise from it to mated hearts!
Yet look not so, my lord! I"ll trust thine eyes That tell me love is master of all times, And thou of all love master!
ANTONIO: And of thee?
Then will the winds return unto the night And flute us lover songs of happiness!