Chapter XII: Act II

SCENE I.--Lochmaben. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Lamberton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, Edward and Nigel Bruce, the two Setons, Sir Thomas Randolf, and other Lords and Gentlemen.

Lamberton. My lords and gentlemen, this is no time For ceremony, which, when lazy peace Has rusted o'er the world's slack businesses, Oils easily the motion of affairs; For now events impel each other on, And higher powers than beadles usher them. I am commissioned by the noble Bruce To greet you heartily and wish you well While you remain within Lochmaben's walls. By my advice he begs you to excuse His absence, while I speak. When you have heard I doubt not that you will. He has confessed The sacrilegious crime of yesterday, Contritely and with simple truthfulness. No exculpation, no defence at all, Such as we know there is, he offered me. Some of us here may hold that Bruce's act Should rather be extolled than stigmatised. We know for certain now what was the wrong That Comyn, having wrought, denied on oath, And all our sympathy goes out to Bruce. But such the old deceitfulness of sin That feelings of the sweetest comfort oft Mislead us to embrace iniquity. Man's worst of deeds God turns to good account: A penance, which I hope will work God's will, I have enjoined on the humiliate earl. I mean to crown him, Robert, King of Scots: His task will be to make that title good. Now I have said a word that stirs your blood, Begetting hope and courage, valiant twins. And yet it is not I that speak, but God: Surely God speaks. The sequence of events, Of which this conference is the latest bud, Appears to me a heavenly oracle, As evident as Aaron's sprouting rod, Commanding Robert Bruce to be the king. He would have placed the crown on Comyn's head Had Comyn wished, that Scotland might be one; But Comyn thought to get the crown by guile, And like an impious fool betrayed his friend, Setting between him and the English king A gulf of enmity impassable. Edward will judge him out of church and law; But in our Scotch communion he is safe: And being out of law, there is no way, Except to be our king, above the law. Needs must, my lords; and is not need God's will? Edward Bruce. It is the will of God. All. Bruce shall be king.

Enter Bruce.

Long live the King! Long live King Robert Bruce! Bruce. You hail me by a name that may be mine In more than word, but not without your aid. There are not many Scots besides yourselves Who will acknowledge me their King. Think well Before you pledge your faith to one outlawed; For so I am, if law depend on power. Scotland, the Isles, and England are my foes: My friends are individual; on my hands They may be counted. Lennox, Athole, Cairns, Fleming, the Hayes, the Frasers, Sommerville, Glasgow, and Moray, sum the list with you: These only are the Scots whom I may rule. Sir Christopher Seton. Then only these deserve the name of Scot. Lamberton. Right, Seton! Randolf. We are Scots, the rest are slaves! Freeman and Scot have ever meant the same. Lamberton. Carrick or King? Bruce. King, by God's will and yours. Lamberton. Sometimes we please ourselves with images Of deeds heroic. The unstabled thought, Enfranchised by rough-riding passion, winds A haughty course and laughs at depth and height: But the blood tires; and lo! our thought, a steed, That from his rider ever takes the mood, Pants, droops, turns tail, and hobbles home to stall. Look in yourselves, and see if vain conceit Or lofty daring, lord it o'er your minds. This thing is sure: reason must be constrained: You must be hot, believing, fanatic; You must be wrathful, patriotic, rash; Forethought abandon o'er to providence; Let prudence lag behind you, like a snail, Bearing its house with care upon its back; Take counsel only of the circumstance That shapes itself in doing of the deed; Be happy, scornful, death-defiant: strong You will be then matchless, invincible. What! shall we go to Scone, and crown Bruce king? Randolf. At once, Lord Archbishop. Sir John Seton. To Glasgow, first, To take our friends there with us. Lamberton. That is best. Is it your will to be crowned king at Scone? Bruce. Most reverend father, and my noble friends, If language were to me in place of thought, I could pour grateful speeches in your ears; But words are wanting. I am helpless, dumb; I would be lonely; I would think awhile. Lamberton. Think worthy thoughts, that only second are To worthy deeds; yet their begetters too. We'll leave you till our little troop's arrayed. Bruce. You are very kind, my lords. [All go out except Bruce. I'm not a man Much given to meditate. When pending thoughts Hurtle each other in the intellect, Darkening that firmament like thunder-clouds, To let them lighten forth in utterance Clears up the sky, confused with swaying rack. My life begins a new departure here; And like one dying all my time appears Even on the instant, in eternal light. Ambition struck the hours that measured it. My pact with Comyn was half-hearted. What! The passion that laid hold upon my soul When he was killed--When he was killed? I think I'm to myself too merciful; but yet I seemed to do some bidding:--were there not Alloys of gladness that the bond was loosed, Of jealousy that Comyn barred my way, Mixed in the blow that paid the traitor's wage? There are two voices whispering in my ear: This is the bane of self-communion. Now, Right in thy teeth, or in thy toothless chaps, I swear, antiquity, first thoughts are best: Their treble notes I still shall hearken to, And let no second, murmuring soft, seduce Their clear and forthright meaning. It is gone, The flash of revelation: dallying does With intuition as with other chance. I would to God that I might ever hear The trump of doom pealing along the sky, And know that every common neighbour day Is the last day, and so live on and fight In presence of the judgment. Wishing this Have I not broached the very heart of truth? Each unmarked moment is an end of time, And this begins the future.

Enter Isabella.

Isabella! Isabella. What in this time of doleful accidents Could move the joyful shouts I heard just now? Bruce. My dearest, what would make you shout for joy? Isabella. I have not shouted since I was a girl; But now, I think, if any happy thing Should spring into my life, I would cry out, I have been so unhappy, and so long. Tell me you'll never leave me any more; Then will I cry, and weep, for very joy. Bruce. Heaven grant it may be so! Isabella. If there is hope!-- Did I not shout now?--I will nurse it warm, And pet it like a darling, till it come To be what I imagine in the fact, Or in the fancy; for I will go mad: I'll bend myself to lose all faculty, All thought, remembrance, all intelligence, So to be capable of company With your phantasm, more real then than life; And be a wild mad woman, if those fears, Those weary absences, those partings pale, And fevered expectations, which have filled The summer of our life with storm and cold, Determine not in peace and halcyon days. You do not love me as I love you; no; Else you would never leave me. Love of power And love of me hold tourney in your breast. Let Will throw down the baton, and declare The love of me the winner, and I'll be Your queen of love; and beautiful as love For man can make a woman. I am proud: When love transfigures me I can conceive How beautiful I am. Stay with me, then, That holy, sweet, and confident desire May light me up a pleasant bower for you: I am, when you are gone, a house forlorn, Cold, desolate, and hasting to decay: Stay, tenant me, preserve me in repair; Only sweet uses keep sweet beauty fair. Bruce. I love you, Isabella, by high heaven, More than the highest power that can be mine. Isabella. Why then pursue this power so ardently? Bruce. I stayed pursuit; but it would follow me. My countrymen have asked me to be king. Isabella. King!--But you murdered Comyn. All his friends-- Forgive me, love. I would not for the world Reproach you; but---- Bruce. I know your gentle heart. My thought of you is not the morning bride; Nor even the rose that oped its balmy breast And gave its nectar sweetly. In my mind This memory of you crowds out the rest: The woman who with tender arms embraced The bloody murderer. I know your heart. Isabella. Hush! Bruce. Friends are few; but if my title's good? Hopeless the cause; but if the cause be just? I'm glad my hand that did my passion's hest Has made my mind up for me. Isabella. You'll be king? Bruce. Will I be hunted like a common knave Who stabs his comrade in a drunken brawl For some rude jest or ruder courtesan, And, being an outlaw, dies by any hand? I'd rather be the king; and though I die The meanest death, be held in memory As one who, having entered on a course Of righteous warfare by a gate of shame, Pursued it with his might, and made amends For starting false--so far as lay in him; For out of him his sin is, 'stablished, past, And by a life's atonement unredeemed. I do not brood on this. Before you came I had better thoughts. Isabella. O, I am sad at that! Bruce. I love you: not from you those worse thoughts sprang. Isabella. Perhaps they did: for I have sometimes found, When I have spent an hour in decking me, But thinking more to please you in my life Than in my dress, that, coming then to you, Brimming with tenderness, some thoughtless word, Or even a look from you, has changed my mood, And made me deem the world a wilderness; While this cross glance, or inauspicious tone, Was but a feint of yours, whose strength of love Withheld itself, afraid it should undo Its purpose by endeavouring too much: And we have parted, discontented both. But we'll not part now. Say, we shall not part. Bruce. Not now. We will be crowned together, queen. Isabella. 'But then' succeeds 'not now'; I hope, far off. Bruce. We must prepare to go. Isabella. So soon! Bruce. Our friends Await us, chafing doubtless at delay. Isabella. Then I will make a proverb lie for once, And be on horseback sooner than my lord. [They go out.

SCENE II.--A Road in Dumfriesshire.

Enter Bruce, Isabella, and a Squire.

Bruce. Look to our horses while we rest. [Squire goes out. Isabella. How far Are we before our friends? Bruce. See, they appear. Isabella. That little puff of dust? Bruce. Our company, Three miles away I think. The road is straight, And slopes to us. I hear a hoof--this side. Isabella. It is a solitary knight, but one Who need not fear to ride afar, alone, If I may trust a woman's hasty eye. He is dismounting; he unhelms, he bows; He seems to know you, and salute you king!

Enter Sir James Douglas.

Bruce. Douglas! I thought that Paris would retain For years to come the service of your youth. Douglas. You speak as one whom some transcending hap Has shown the high and secret worth of life; And such am I, or else discourtesy Alone had greeted me in what you said. Not with shrunk purse, drained veins, and heart dried-up; Will--broken-winded; pith-brains; sinews--straw, From Paris, which unstiffens many a one, Come I to Scotland, where is need of strength. A love of noble things--a kind of faith-- A hope, a wish, a thought above the world, Has swayed me from the mire; and yet I know It is a miracle I'm not more soiled. Bruce. I spoke unworthily of this reply, And gladly now unsay my hinted charge, Which, with less thought than commonplace, I made; Though I should utter nothing now but thought, For as you judged I see a soul in life. And what in Scotland do you think to do? Douglas. Retrieve my lands, avenge my father's death, And drive the English from its borders. Here I offer Scotland's king my lance, and here I vow to be his lady's loyal knight. You are amazed. They say, ill news spreads fast: He whom the tidings then will halcyon Knows of his weal as soon as he his woe. Is the news good to you that Bruce is king? Bruce. The news is good: best, that he's king of you. I wonder most at that. I stood in arms Against your father, and but yesterday I seemed the friend of England. Douglas. Yesterday Was once the date of every lasting change. While you are faithful to the land that's yours, I swear to serve you faithfully till death. Bruce. Another trusty friend when friends are few-- And such a friend! Welcome, a thousand times! Isabella. A happy handselling of our enterprise! What is the news from England? Have you heard If Wallace has been judged? Douglas. Not yet; but soon In Westminster he will be doomed to death; For victory, which oft ennobles kings, Debases Edward. Since he has not grace, The gracious-hearted world with one outcry Should claim the life of Wallace for its own, As the most noble life lived in this age, And not to be cut off by one man's hate. Bruce. The thought of Wallace troubles me. The truth That great men seldom in their times are known; And this that little men are eminent In midst of their thin lives and loud affairs, Assert how perilous election is By peers all bound and circumstanced alike. If he were solely moved by noble thoughts, And is the signal hero you give out-- Nothing I say, and nothing I deny-- Then were the nobles who deserted him Unworthy cowards, beggars, churls, knaves, hounds. Shall I condemn my order so? or think That Wallace hoped to aggrandise himself, And lost those friends who had no need to fight For mere existence when the restive hoof Of personal ambition kicked aside The patriot's caparison? You wince: But with the time I drift, and cannot find A mooring for my judgment. Pardon me. This I believe: there is no warrior Before the world, who could, even with those means Of formal power that Wallace mostly lacked, Have wrought the tithe of his accomplishment: His name will be an ensign; and his acts The inspiration of his countrymen. Douglas. You yet will know his magnanimity Which girdled round the ample continent Of his performance like the boundless sea. Bruce. I'm glad to think--to know the best of him. Shall we turn back and meet our friends? Isabella. Yes; come. And, Douglas, tell us more of Wallace, pray. [They go out.

SCENE III.--A room in the Earl op Buchan's Castle.

Enter the Earl and the Countess of Buchan, and the Earl of Fife.

Countess of Buchan. Once more, I beg you, brother, on my knees, To undertake the duty of your race. Now, while I plead, they may be crowning him, And no Macduff to gird his curling hair. Eleven kings from Malcolm Canmore's time Our ancestors have perfected with gold, Laying the ruddy chaplet on their brows Like magic dawn that tops the day with light. It is a custom that has come to mean The thing it garnished; and he cannot be The King of Scots, however just his claim, However consecrated, sceptred, throned, Who is not crowned by you. Fife. I am the friend Of England, of your husband; finally Be answered I beseech you. If you plead Again with such hot vehemence, I'll think Your husband is a fool to slight the word That birds have carried of the Bruce and you. Countess of Buchan. If I were richer than to need your help, I'd let you know that brother's quality Who dares to doubt his mother's daughter. Shame! But I am passionate, and so are you: You meant no wrong. You'll do this, will you not? Fife. Why! here's a woman!--What a woman! Well! I tell you I am England's friend, which means The foe of any upstart such as Bruce; And I am Buchan's friend, which means the foe Of Buchan's mortal foe, the outlaw Bruce. I tell you this, and yet you beg of me To do for Bruce the service needed most To make him mighty in his enmity. Countess of Buchan. If you were armed to fight a champion, And he had lost his helm before you met, You would not do despite to chivalry, And take advantage of his naked head, But find him in a morion, or unclasp Your own, and equally defended, charge. Be chivalrous to Bruce; make him a king That Edward may be vantageless in that. Then fight for Edward--with your puissance, fight. Fife. I think you're mad. This pertinacity, Which you intend shall urge me to comply-- Which you conceive no doubt a sign of strength, But which I judge a sign of vanity-- Is one of women's weapons, well-approved, With which she jags to death a stronger will. But my resolve is harnessed, and your dart Turns off it blunt--and spent I hope. Buchan. You hear; I said you could not move him.--Come away-- I'm sorry you have set your mind on this. [Fife and Buchan go out. Countess of Buchan. To toss my hair, to weep, to rate my maid, Are small reliefs I ne'er resorted to; And now I must do something notable. What if I went and crowned the Bruce myself? Ah! here's a thought that's like a draught of wine! My brother whose the office is, resiles: Mine--mine it is!--But how?--but if I did? Their tongues, their tongues! their foul imaginings! Is the world wicked as its thought is? Love? There's no one would believe me if I vowed Upon my deathbed, between heaven and earth, I understand no meaning in the word. Maidens have lovers, and they sigh and wake; Wives love their husbands, and they wake and weep: But never, never have I loved a man As I see women love--with bursting hearts, With fire and snow at variance in their cheeks, With arching smiles, the heraldry of joy, Whose rainbow shadows shine on hot, hard tears; With cruel passion, dying ecstasy, With rapture of the resurrection morn. I have not loved. It may be to my shame, But justly to the world's, condemning me For deeds no cause could work me to commit. If I take horse to Scone, farewell my fame, Which halts yet at the threshold. Who's this?

Enter James Crombe.

Crombe, Do you remember in my father's house Your life once stood in danger for a crime-- Which I'll not name--when mercy at my plea Was meted you in place of punishment? Crombe. Well I remember. Countess of Buchan. You were thankful then, And held your life at my command. The time---- Crombe. My lady, if some service you require Perilling my life, I'll do it willingly; But had you urged my love, my duteous love, And not my debt, I had been happier. Countess of Buchan. I beg your pardon, sir. Indeed, I think The service I require may cost your life, But surely something dearer. I am whirled From thought to thought: my mind lacks breath. Good Crombe, You owe me nothing. Will you, if I bid, Procure me black dishonour, and yourself A name of loathing? Crombe. No, my lady. Countess of Buchan. How? Crombe. If I beheld you hurrying to your shame, I'd keep your honour holy with my sword, And send it hot to heaven. Countess of Buchan. Well.--You're a Scot? I mean, you long for Scotland's freedom. Crombe. Yes. Countess of Buchan. Are you acquainted with the news? Crombe. Of Bruce? I've heard they mean to crown him king to-day; But since my lord of Fife is England's friend---- Countess of Buchan. Yes, yes! But are you glad? Crombe. Most heartily. I think of joining Bruce. Countess of Buchan. My timorous heart, Fie, fie!--I knew you were a noble man. You will put no construction but the right On what I mean to do. Both you and I Must be dishonoured in the world's regard: I, an unfaithful wife; you, go-between. Saddle two horses; lead them secretly A mile beyond the castle. There I'll mount And ride with you to Scone. Go, instantly. I, Isobel Macduff, will crown Bruce king. Crombe. But, noble lady--not for fear, but safety-- What of pursuit? Countess of Buchan. Pursuit? I am a mint, And coin ideas. Come--come out! It's gold! My husband's horses must be aired to-day. You'll see it done. Some of the grooms we'll bribe, And some will come unbought, and some we'll force Either to follow us, or quit their steeds: Leave nothing in the stables that can run. My lords--ha! ha!--are nowhere in the chase. Crombe. Captain, and countess, mistress, service-worthy, Be confident in me, as I in you, And the deed's done. [Goes out. Countess of Buchan. Now, world, wag, wag your tongues! I sacrifice my fame to make a king: And he will raise this nation's head again That lies so low; and they will honour him; And afterwards, perhaps, they'll honour me. Or if they slight me and my modest work, I shall be dead: I have enough to bear Of disrespect and slander here to-day, Without forecasting railing epitaphs. But some--nay, many of the worthiest, And many simple judgments too, will see The sunlight on my deed. This, I make sure: No Scot's allegiance can be held from Bruce Because he was not crowned by a Macduff.-- And if I love him, what is that to him? That's a good saying. So is this, I make: If I do love him, what is that to me! [Goes out.