Act II

SCENE.--The Library

Enter LORD TRESHAM, hastily

TRESHAM. This way! In, Gerard, quick!
[As GERARD enters, TRESHAM secures the door.]
Now speak! or, wait--
I'll bid you speak directly.
[Seats himself.]
Now repeat
Firmly and circumstantially the tale
You just now told me; it eludes me; either
I did not listen, or the half is gone
Away from me. How long have you lived here?
Here in my house, your father kept our woods
Before you?

GERARD. --As his father did, my lord.
I have been eating, sixty years almost,
Your bread.

TRESHAM. Yes, yes. You ever were of all
The servants in my father's house, I know,
The trusted one. You'll speak the truth.

GERARD. I'll speak
God's truth. Night after night...

TRESHAM. Since when?

GERARD. At least
A month--each midnight has some man access
To Lady Mildred's chamber.

TRESHAM. Tush, "access"--
No wide words like "access" to me!

GERARD. He runs
Along the woodside, crosses to the South,
Takes the left tree that ends the avenue...

TRESHAM. The last great yew-tree?

GERARD. You might stand upon
The main boughs like a platform. Then he...

TRESHAM. Quick!

GERARD. Climbs up, and, where they lessen at the top,
--I cannot see distinctly, but he throws,
I think--for this I do not vouch--a line
That reaches to the lady's casement--

TRESHAM. --Which
He enters not! Gerard, some wretched fool
Dares pry into my sister's privacy!
When such are young, it seems a precious thing
To have approached,--to merely have approached,
Got sight of the abode of her they set
Their frantic thoughts upon. Ha does not enter?
Gerard?

GERARD. There is a lamp that's full i' the midst.
Under a red square in the painted glass
Of Lady Mildred's...

TRESHAM. Leave that name out! Well?
That lamp?

GERARD. Is moved at midnight higher up
To one pane--a small dark-blue pane; he waits
For that among the boughs: at sight of that,
I see him, plain as I see you, my lord,
Open the lady's casement, enter there...

TRESHAM. --And stay?

GERARD. An hour, two hours.

TRESHAM. And this you saw
Once?--twice?--quick!

GERARD. Twenty times.

TRESHAM. And what brings you
Under the yew-trees?

GERARD. The first night I left
My range so far, to track the stranger stag
That broke the pale, I saw the man.

TRESHAM. Yet sent
No cross-bow shaft through the marauder?

GERARD. But
He came, my lord, the first time he was seen,
In a great moonlight, light as any day,
FROM Lady Mildred's chamber.

TRESHAM [after a pause].