Act II - Page 2

You have no cause
--Who could have cause to do my sister wrong?

GERARD. Oh, my lord, only once--let me this once
Speak what is on my mind! Since first I noted
All this, I've groaned as if a fiery net
Plucked me this way and that--fire if I turned
To her, fire if I turned to you, and fire
If down I flung myself and strove to die.
The lady could not have been seven years old
When I was trusted to conduct her safe
Through the deer-herd to stroke the snow-white fawn
I brought to eat bread from her tiny hand
Within a month. She ever had a smile
To greet me with--she... if it could undo
What's done, to lop each limb from off this trunk...
All that is foolish talk, not fit for you--
I mean, I could not speak and bring her hurt
For Heaven's compelling. But when I was fixed
To hold my peace, each morsel of your food
Eaten beneath your roof, my birth-place too,
Choked me. I wish I had grown mad in doubts
What it behoved me do. This morn it seemed
Either I must confess to you or die:
Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm
That crawls, to have betrayed my lady.

TRESHAM. No--
No, Gerard!

GERARD. Let me go!

TRESHAM. A man, you say:
What man? Young? Not a vulgar hind? What dress?

GERARD. A slouched hat and a large dark foreign cloak
Wraps his whole form; even his face is hid;
But I should judge him young: no hind, be sure!

TRESHAM. Why?

GERARD. He is ever armed: his sword projects
Beneath the cloak.

TRESHAM. Gerard,--I will not say
No word, no breath of this!

GERARD. Thank, thanks, my lord!
[Goes.]

TRESHAM [paces the room. After a pause].
Oh, thoughts absurd!--as with some monstrous fact
Which, when ill thoughts beset us, seems to give
Merciful God that made the sun and stars,
The waters and the green delights of earth,
The lie! I apprehend the monstrous fact--
Yet know the maker of all worlds is good,
And yield my reason up, inadequate
To reconcile what yet I do behold--
Blasting my sense! There's cheerful day outside:
This is my library, and this the chair
My father used to sit in carelessly
After his soldier-fashion, while I stood
Between his knees to question him: and here
Gerard our grey retainer,--as he says,
Fed with our food, from sire to son, an age,--
Has told a story--I am to believe!
That Mildred... oh, no, no! both tales are true,
Her pure cheek's story and the forester's!
Would she, or could she, err--much less, confound
All guilts of treachery, of craft, of... Heaven
Keep me within its hand!--I will sit here
Until thought settle and I see my course.
Avert, oh God, only this woe from me!
[As he sinks his head between his