DUCHESS
I did it all for you;
You dare not leave me now: nay, Guido, listen.
Get horses ready, we will fly tonight.
The past is a bad dream, we will forget it:
Before us lies the future: shall we not have
Sweet days of love beneath our vines and laugh? -
No, no, we will not laugh, but, when we weep,
Well, we will weep together; I will serve you;
I will be very meek and very gentle:
You do not know me.
GUIDO
Nay, I know you now;
Get hence, I say, out of my sight.
DUCHESS
[pacing up and down]
O God,
How I have loved this man!
GUIDO
You never loved me.
Had it been so, Love would have stayed your hand.
How could we sit together at Love’s table?
You have poured poison in the sacred wine,
And Murder dips his fingers in the sop.
DUCHESS
[throws herself on her knees]
Then slay me now! I have spilt blood tonight,
You shall spill more, so we go hand in hand
To heaven or to hell. Draw your sword, Guido.
Quick, let your soul go chambering in my heart,
It will but find its master’s image there.
Nay, if you will not slay me with your sword,
Bid me to fall upon this reeking knife,
And I will do it.
GUIDO
[wresting knife from her]
Give it to me, I say.
O God, your very hands are wet with blood!
This place is Hell, I cannot tarry here.
I pray you let me see your face no more.
DUCHESS
Better for me I had not seen your face.
[GUIDO recoils: she seizes his hands as she kneels.]
Nay, Guido, listen for a while:
Until you came to Padua I lived
Wretched indeed, but with no murderous thought,
Very submissive to a cruel Lord,
Very obedient to unjust commands,
As pure I think as any gentle girl
Who now would turn in horror from my hands -
[Stands up.]
You came: ah! Guido, the first kindly words
I ever heard since I had come from France
Were from your lips: well, well, that is no matter.
You came, and in the passion of your eyes
I read love’s meaning; everything you said
Touched my dumb soul to music, so I loved you.
And yet I did not tell you of my love.
‘Twas you who sought me out, knelt at my feet
As I kneel now at yours, and with sweet vows,
[Kneels.]
Whose music seems to linger in my ears,
Swore that you loved me, and I trusted you.
I think there are many women in the world
Who would have tempted you to kill the man.
I did not.
Yet I know that had I done so,
I had not been thus humbled in the dust,
[Stands up.]
But you had loved me very faithfully.
[After a pause approaches him timidly.]
I do not think you understand me, Guido:
It was for your sake that I wrought this deed
Whose horror now chills my young blood to ice,
For your sake only. [Stretching out her arm.]
Will you not speak to me?
Love me a little: in my girlish life
I have been starved for love, and kindliness
Has passed me by.
GUIDO
I dare not look at you:
You come to me with too pronounced a favour;
Get to your tirewomen.
DUCHESS
Ay, there it is!
There speaks the man! yet had you come to me
With any heavy sin upon your soul,
Some murder done for hire, not for love,
Why, I had sat and watched at your bedside
All through the night-time, lest Remorse might come
And pour his poisons in your ear, and so
Keep you from sleeping! Sure it is the guilty,
Who, being very wretched, need love most.
GUIDO
There is no love where there is any guilt.
DUCHESS
No love where there is any guilt! O God,
How differently do we love from men!
There is many a woman here in Padua,
Some workman’s wife, or ruder artisan’s,
Whose husband spends the wages of the week
In a coarse revel, or a tavern brawl,
And reeling home late on the Saturday night,
Finds his wife sitting by a fireless hearth,
Trying to hush the child who cries for hunger,
And then sets to and beats his wife because
The child is hungry, and the fire black.
Yet the wife loves him! and will rise next day
With some red bruise across a careworn face,
And sweep the house, and do the common service,
And try and smile, and only be too glad
If he does not beat her a second time
Before her child! - that is how women love.
[A pause: GUIDO says nothing.]
I think you will not drive me from your side.
Where have I got to go if you reject me? -
You for whose sake this hand has murdered life,
You for whose sake my soul has wrecked itself
Beyond all hope of pardon.
GUIDO
Get thee gone:
The dead man is a ghost, and our love too,
Flits like a ghost about its desolate tomb,
And wanders through this charnel house, and weeps
That when you slew your lord you slew it also.
Do you not see?