Plays of Near & Far - novelonlinefull.com
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GREGORIUS PEDRO (_sadly_): No, no. I suppose not. Poor Antoninus.
LUCULLUS SEVERUS: Why could he not have waited?
GREGORIUS PEDRO: Waited? What? Three--three hundred years?
LUCULLUS SEVERUS: Or even five or ten. He is long past sixty.
GREGORIUS PEDRO: Yes, yes, it would have been better.
LUCULLUS SEVERUS: You saw how ashamed he was.
GREGORIUS PEDRO: Poor Antoninus. Yes, yes. Brother, I think if we had not been here he would have come and sat on this bench.
LUCULLUS SEVERUS: I think he would. But he was ashamed to come, looking, looking like that.
GREGORIUS PEDRO: Brother, let us go. It is the hour at which he loves to come and sit here, and read in the Little Book of Lesser Devices. Let us go so that he may come here and be alone.
LUCULLUS SEVERUS: As you will, brother; we must help him when we can.
[_They rise and go._
GREGORIUS PEDRO: Poor Antoninus.
LUCULLUS SEVERUS (_glancing_): I think he will come back now.
[_Exeunt. The bare, sandaled foot of_ ANTONINUS _appears as the last heel lifts in the other doorway._
[_Enter_ ANTONINUS _rather timidly. He goes to bench and sits. He sighs.
He shakes his head to loosen the halo, but in vain. He sighs. Then he opens his book and reads in silence. Silence gives way to mumbles, mumbles to words._[4]
ANTONINUS: ... and finally beat down Satan under our feet.
[_Enter_ SATAN. _He has the horns and long hair and beard of a he-goat.
His face and voice are such as could have been once in heaven._
ANTONINUS (_standing, lifting arm_): In the name of ...
SATAN: Banish me not.
ANTONINUS: In the name ...
SATAN: Say nothing you may regret, until I have spoken.
ANTONINUS: In the ...
SATAN: Hear me.
ANTONINUS: Well?
SATAN: There fell with me from heaven a rare, rare spirit, the light of whose limbs far outshone dawn and evening.
ANTONINUS: Well?
SATAN: We dwell in darkness.
ANTONINUS: What is that to me?
SATAN: For that rare spirit I would have the gaud you wear, that emblem, that bright ornament. In return I offer you----
ANTONINUS: Begone----
SATAN: I offer you----
ANTONINUS: Begone.
SATAN: I offer you--Youth.
ANTONINUS: I will not traffic with you in d.a.m.nation.
SATAN: I do not ask your soul, _only that shining gaud_.
ANTONINUS: Such things are not for h.e.l.l.
SATAN: I offer you Youth.
ANTONINUS: I do not need it. Life is a penance and ordained as a tribulation. I have come through by striving. Why should I care to strive again?
SATAN (_smiles_): Why?
ANTONINUS: Why should I?
SATAN (_laughs, looking through window_): It's spring, brother, is it not?
ANTONINUS: A time for meditation.
SATAN (_laughs_): There are girls coming over the hills, brother.
Through the green leaves and the May.
[ANTONINUS _draws his scourge from his robe._
ANTONINUS: Up! Let me scourge them from our holy place.
SATAN: Wait, brother, they are far off yet. But you would not scourge them, you would not scourge them, they are so ... Ah! one has torn her dress!
ANTONINUS: Ah, let me scourge her!
SATAN: No, no, brother. See, I can see her ankle through the rent. You would not scourge her. Your great scourge would break that little ankle.
