[He tears off his gloves and attacks Cashel with his bare knuckles.
THE CROWD. Unfair! The rules!
CETEWAYO. The joy of battle surges boiling up
And bids me join the mellay. Isandhlana
And Victory! [He falls on the bystanders.
THE CHIEFS. Victory and Isandhlana!
[They run amok. General panic and stampede. The ring is swept away.
LUCIAN. Forbear these most irregular proceedings.
Police! Police!
[He engages Cetewayo his umbrella. The balcony
comes down with a crash. Screams from its
occupants. Indescribable confusion.
CASHEL [dragging Lydia from the struggling heap].
My love, my love, art hurt?
LYDIA. No, no; but save my sore o’ermatchéd cousin.
A POLICEMAN. Give us a lead, sir. Save the English flag.
Africa tramples on it.
CASHEL. Africa!
Not all the continents whose mighty shoulders
The dancing diamonds of the seas bedeck
Shall trample on the blue with spots of white.
Now, Lydia, mark thy lover. [He charges the Zulus.
LYDIA. Hercules
Cannot withstand him. See: the king is down;
The tallest chief is up, heels over head,
Tossed corklike o’er my Cashel’s sinewy back;
And his lieutenant all deflated gasps
For breath upon the sand. The others fly
In vain: his fist o’er magic distances
Like a chameleon’s tongue shoots to its mark;
And the last African upon his knees
Sues piteously for quarter. [Rushing into Cashel’s arms.] Oh, my hero:
Thou’st saved us all this day.
CASHEL. ’Twas all for thee.
CETEWAYO. [trying to rise]. Have I been struck by lightning?
LUCIAN. Sir, your conduct
Can only be described as most ungentlemanly.
POLICEMAN. One of the prone is white.
CASHEL. ’Tis Paradise.
POLICEMAN. He’s choking: he has something in his mouth.
LYDIA [to Cashel]. Oh Heaven! there is blood upon your hip.
You’re hurt.
CASHEL. The morsel in yon wretch’s mouth
Was bitten out of me.
[Sensation. Lydia screams and swoons in Cashel’s arms.
ACT IV
Wiltstoken. A room in the Warren Lodge
Lydia at her writing table
LYDIA. O Past and Present, how ye do conflict
As here I sit writing my father’s life!
The autumn woodland woos me from without
With whispering of leaves and dainty airs
To leave this fruitless haunting of the past.
My father was a very learnéd man.
I sometimes think I shall oldmaided be
Ere I unlearn the things he taught to me.
Enter Policeman
POLICEMAN. Asking your ladyship to pardon me
For this intrusion, might I be so bold
As ask a question of your people here
Concerning the Queen’s peace?
LYDIA. My people here
Are but a footman and a simple maid;
And both have craved a holiday to join
Some local festival. But, sir, your helmet
Proclaims the Metropolitan Police.
POLICEMAN. Madam, it does; and I may now inform you
That what you term a local festival
Is a most hideous outrage ‘gainst the law,
Which we to quell from London have come down:
In short, a prizefight. My sole purpose here
Is to inquire whether your ladyship
Any bad characters this afternoon
Has noted in the neighborhood.
LYDIA. No, none, sir.
I had not let my maid go forth to-day
Thought I the roads unsafe.
POLICEMAN. Fear nothing, madam:
The force protects the fair. My mission here
Is to wreak ultion for the broken law.
I wish your ladyship good afternoon.
LYDIA. Good afternoon. [Exit Policeman.
A prizefight! O my heart!
Cashel: hast thou deceived me? Can it be
Thou hast backslidden to the hateful calling
I asked thee to eschew?
O wretched maid,
Why didst thou flee from London to this place
To write thy father’s life, whenas in town
Thou might’st have kept a guardian eye on him —
What’s that? A flying footstep —
Enter Cashel
CASHEL. Sanctuary!
The law is on my track. What! Lydia here!
LYDIA. Ay: Lydia here. Hast thou done murder, then,
That in so horrible a guise thou comest?
CASHEL. Murder! I would I had. Yon cannibal
Hath forty thousand lives; and I have ta’en
But thousands thirty-nine. I tell thee, Lydia,
On the impenetrable sarcolobe
That holds his seedling brain these fists have pounded
By Shrewsb’ry clock an hour. This bruiséd grass
And cakéd mud adhering to my form
I have acquired in rolling on the sod
Clinched in his grip. This scanty reefer coat
For decency snatched up as fast I fled
When the police arrived, belongs to Mellish.
’Tis all too short; hence my display of rib
And forearm mother-naked. Be not wroth
Because I seem to wink at you: by Heaven,
’Twas Paradise that plugged me in the eye
Which I perforce keep closing. Pity me,
My training wasted and my blows unpaid,
Sans stakes, sans victory, sans everything
I had hoped to win. Oh,