II

The introduction to the second act opens with the motif of the Day.

It is no tender dawn described, with tremulous lights among the

clouds; it has little of the touching _Morgenpracht_ in Parsifal.

It is a startling announcement of a fateful fact, an obtruder feared

and unloved; it is like a clash of cymbals or call of trumpets

summoning to unwelcome tasks, away from delights and dreams. It

is indeed the day as it appears to lovers when, dispelling the

gentle night which united them, with cruel golden shafts it drives

them apart. The musical rendering follows upon it of love's impatient

heart-beats, love's ungovernable eagerness for the beloved's presence,

love listening for the footsteps of the beloved. The curtain rises

upon a garden under a cloudless summer night. Beside the door of

Isolde's apartment a torch is burning. The sound is heard of

hunting-horns gradually retreating. Brangaene stands on the

castle-steps, listening to these. Isolde, all in a happy agitation,

hurries forth to ask if they still be audible. She herself cannot hear

them any more. But to Brangaene's ear the sound is still distinct.

Isolde listens again: No! Brangaene, she believes, is deceived by

her over-great anxiety, deceived by the rustling of the leaves.

"You," Brangaene retorts, "are deceived by the impetuosity of your

desire! I hear the sound of the horns." Isolde again listens. "No!"

she discourses in her over-running tender exhilaration, "the sound

of horns was never so pleasing as that! It is the soft purling of

the fountain whose music comes so sweetly borne to us; how could

I hear it, if hunting-horns were still blaring near by? In the

silence, all I hear is the murmured laughter of the fountain. The

one who is waiting for me in the hushed night, are you determined to

keep him away from me as if horns were still close at hand?"--"The

one who is waiting for you--do but listen to my warning," Brangaene

pleads, "there are spies in the night lying in wait for him! Because

you are blind, do you believe the eyes of the world dulled to your

actions and his?" Against Melot she warns her, Melot, who, when

he came aboard the ship with King Mark to receive the bride,--and

the kindly King was engrossed by anxiety for the condition of the

pale and fainting princess,--with treacherous, suspicious eye,

Brangaene had seen it, scrutinised the countenance of Tristan, to

read in it what might thereafter serve his purpose. Often since

then she has come upon him eavesdropping. Against Melot let Isolde

be warned!... Melot? Isolde rejects the idea with light scorn. Is

not he Tristan's dearest friend? When Tristan is forced to keep

afar from her, with whom does he spend the time but Sir Melot?

"The thing which makes him suspicious to me, to you endears him!"

cries Brangaene, in despair at such wilful blindness. "From Tristan

to Mark lies Melot's road. He there sows evil seed. This nocturnal

hunting-party, so hurriedly concerted, has in view a nobler quarry

than your fancy deems!"--"Melot," Isolde persists in his defence,

"invented the stratagem, out of compassion for his friend. And do

you make it into a reproach to him? He cares for me better than do

you. He opens to me that which you close. Oh, spare me the misery

of hesitation! The signal, Brangaene, give the signal! Extinguish

the light to its last flicker. Beckon to the Night, that she may

completely bend over us. Already she has poured her silence upon

grove and house. Already she has filled the heart with her happy

trepidation. Quench the light! Smother its frightening glare! Throw

open the way to my beloved!"--"Oh, let the torch of warning stand!"

Brangaene struggles with her still, "Let it stand to illumine your

danger!" And she wrings her hands anew, lamenting over this which is

the work of those unfaithful hands, in a single instance disobedient

to the mistress's will. "Your work?" Isolde smiles, with that mortal

lightness which is upon her to-night; "Oh, foolish girl! Do you not

know the Lady of Love? Do you not know her power, her miracles?

Queen of high hearts, ruler of earth's destinies, life and death

are subject to her. She weaves them out of pain and pleasure. She

can change hate into love. Presumptuous, I took in hand the work

of death. The Lady of Love wrested it from me. The death-devoted

she took into her keeping, she seized the work in her own hands.

To whatever purpose she will to turn it, however she will to end

it, whatever the doom she appoint me, I am become her own. Let

me then show myself obedient to her!" Clearly, Isolde to-night

is _fey_. A rapturous madness is upon her. Aphrodite, the Lady

of Love, possesses her indeed, and no impression is to be made

upon her great mood by anything Brangaene can say. The girl might

talk more hopefully to a gust of summer wind. Poor-spirited and

grey-hued she appears, with her anguish and forebodings, beside

the glowing, rosily-smiling queen, in her secure expectation. Still

she presses the prayer of her terror: Just this one night let Isolde

listen to her pleading! Just this one night let her not put out the

light! But the mad Queen declares bafflingly that _Frau Minne_,

Madam Love, desires that it shall become night, that she herself may

illumine the place whence Brangaene's torch banishes her. To the

watch-turret with Brangaene, whence let her keep faithful look-out.

"The torch," Isolde cries, grasping it, "were it the light of my

life, laughing, without a tremor, I would put it out!" She dashes

it to the ground, where it slowly dies. The troubled Brangaene

disappears with heavy step up the stairway to the battlements.

Then is heard the motif again of love's impatience, of love listening.

Isolde peers down the avenue of trees, strains her ear for the

sound of footsteps. She waves her veil, which glimmers white in the

darkness; she waves it, in her impatience, more and more quickly.

She has caught sight of him, as an ecstatic gesture betrays. She

hurries to the top of the stairs, the better to see him from afar

and wave welcome to him. She rushes at last to meet him and they

are gathered in each other's arms. So over-great is their joy that

neither can believe the witness of his senses; nothing so good

could be true as that this verily which can be seen and clasped

should be the so sorely desired one. They vent themselves in such

childish, fond, incredulous exclamations as: Is it you yourself?

Are they your eyes? Are they your lips? Have I here your hand?

Have I here your heart? Is it I? Is it you? Do I hold you close?

Is it no fancy? Is it no dream? And, as if finally convinced, they

burst forth in a hymn of thanksgiving and joy.

"The light! The light! Oh, that light!" the lover voices his grudge

against it. "How long ere it went out! The sun sank, day departed,

but the ill-will of the Day was still unsated. It lit a fearful

danger-signal and fastened it at the beloved's door, to prevent

me coming to her!"--"But the hand of the beloved extinguished the

light," Isolde pacifies him; "What the handmaid refused, I feared

not to do. At the command and under the protection of Great Love,

I cried defiance to the Day!"--"The Day! The Day! the malignant

Day!" he inveighs; "To that implacable enemy hate and reproach!

Oh, might I, even as you quenched the light, put out the torches

of the insolent Day, in vengeance for all the sufferings of love!"

There is a great deal in the often fanciful, yet ever earnest,

conversation between the lovers, about the Day and the Night; the

Day being devoted to their hate, the Night to their worship. It

is not only, however, that the day divides them, and their trysts

belong to the night. They make the image of Day to stand for falsehood

and evil illusion, while Night represents truth. The reason of

this is not far to seek. Their love is not like the love of other

mortals. Inevitably in the latter many elements enter. Will controls

it, at least to some extent; reason guides and bounds it; sense

of humour even qualifies it. A thousand things besides love find

room in the most enamoured human heart and brain: other persons,

pursuits, interests,--what Rossetti calls "all life's confederate

pleas, work, contest, fame." The many-sided nature of man is appealed

to by myriad things. Only for brief moments do lovers stand on the

high peaks of pure passion where Tristan and Isolde perpetually

reside. Love they never so truly, lovers who have not quaffed the

magic potion love great part of the time almost unconsciously, in

a divine under-current,--no otherwise indeed than Tristan before

the potion, when, despite the Image in his heart, he devoted thought

to his career, cherished dreams of ambition. But after the cup

Tristan and Isolde are lovers, nothing more,--or less. All the

furniture of the day which has nothing to do with their love is

therefore an impertinence, an obtrusion; all day's pageants and

activities are a vanity, and a pernicious vanity; a glaring mask

hiding from sight the only true and beautiful. Everything that

the garish daylight shows, which can never show them the depths of

the other's heart, is a false show, an ugly delusion. The night,

during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day

are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving

it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,--the night is

fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for

it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who

have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly

life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we

hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves

eternally floating in a state of ever-renewed joy in each other,

ever fresh ardour, two and yet one. It is not in the least like

Paradise. Paradise, with its interfering light and shows and

other-souls-in-bliss, could be to them but another version of the

Day. The Paradise of their desire is an eternal twilight, and nothing

more asked for each than the heaven of the other.

Meanwhile they are talking together like commoner lovers, of the

past, of their first meeting, the beginnings of their love. How,

she asks him, very humanly, how could he do to her the thing he

did, betray her as he had done, claim her for another, give her

over to death? "It was the Day!" he explains. "The Day, shining

about me, which showed Isolde, where she stood sun-like, in the

splendour of glory and greatness, infinitely far removed. That

which so ravished my eye, weighted down my heart to the earth. How,

in the brilliant light of the Day, how could Isolde be mine?"--"Was

she not yours, whose elect you were? What falsehoods did the evil

Day tell you, that you should betray the faithful one, who had

preferred you?" The love of glory it had been, he avows, which

moved him. That sun of the Day, worldly honour, with its idle and

false rays had allured him. An Image all the while lay in the deepest

shrine of his heart, an unsleeping Image which had impressed itself

while he was hardly aware, and lived in the chaste night there,

closely shut in. Till a ray of the Day had penetrated even so deep,

and that which was so secret and sacred that his eyes scarcely

trusted themselves to look at it, that Image, smitten by Daylight,

lay brilliantly revealed. And, Day-deluded, he had vaunted before

the whole army that which seemed to him so desirable and beautiful,

the fairest King's-bride of all the earth; and to silence the envy

and hatred which had begun to make his honours heavy to him, to

maintain his glory, he had undertaken that boldest exploit, his

quest to Ireland. "Vain slave of the Day!" Isolde calls him. She

tells her part of the story, and we are enlightened concerning

the mood in which she proffered to him the death-draught: how,

deceived she too by the Day, tortured in her love for him, she

had, while ardently loving him, hated him to the bottom of her

heart. From the light of Day, which showed him an ingrate and a

traitor, she had longed to flee, to draw him along with her into the

night, where her heart foretold an end of the mistake, a dispelling

of the apprehended delusion; to drink to him eternal love and enter

death simultaneously with him.

We learn thereupon the mood in which he accepted the cup from her.

"When I recognised the sweet draught proffered by your hand, when

intuition clearly and surely told me what it was the peace-drink

promised me, there dawned in my bosom, mild and divine, the Night--my

Day had reached its close!" In other words, when he had stood facing,

as he knew, death, all the vain shows and disguises of the Day had

melted away, he had seen for the first time clearly in his own

heart. "O hail to the draught!" he exclaims, "Hail to its sublime

magic! At the portal of death, where I quaffed it, it opened wide

to me the region where I theretofore had wandered but in dream,

the wonder-kingdom of the Night! From the Face in the innermost

shrine of the heart it dispelled the deceiving glare of the Day,

that my eyes, grown accustomed to the Night, might see it in its

truth." But the Day, she carries on the conceit with gathering

sadness, had its revenge! The Day entered into league with his

sins, and that Face which the Night had vouchsafed him to see he

had been forced to surrender to the royal power of the Day, and

behold it shining lonesomely afar, in barren magnificence. "How

have I endured it?" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay,

he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night.

The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive

us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's

idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of

his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly

into the night of death, he to whom that Night has confided her

deep secret, the lies of the Day, honour and glory, power and gain,

lovely and shining though they be, like idle star-dust he sees them

float past. Amid the vain delusions of the Day he is possessed by

a single longing, the longing for the holy Night, in which the one

thing from all eternity true, Love with its rapture, awaits him!"

He draws her gently to a flowery bank, sinks kneeling before her

and lays his head within her arm. And they breathe forth together,

with an equal dreamy devoutness, their invocation to the Night.

"Oh, close around us, night of love! Give forgetfuless of life!

Gather us up in your arms, release us from the world!..." Quenched

is the last torch, quenched all thought, all memory. In a sacred

twilight full of wondrous divinations, the dread illusions of the

world melt away, leaving free the spirit. And the sun in the breast

having set, softly shine forth the stars of joy. And when, heart

upon heart, lip against lip, breathing one breath, the lovers'

eyes are blinded with joy, the world with its dazzling deceits

fades from sight, the world which the Day had flashed before their

eyes for their delusion, and they themselves are the world, and

the world is life, is love, is joy, is a beautiful wish come true,

from which there shall be no awakening....

Reaching completely the state they describe, of forgetfulness of

the world and the Day, each the whole world to the other, they

sink back side by side, cheek to cheek, among the flowers.

From the turret comes the lonely voice of Brangaene, warning the

lovers to have a care, have a care, the night is nearly over! There

is a leisurely moment. Isolde stirs: "Hark, beloved!" But Tristan,

too deeply steeped in the languor of night and dreams, replies with

a sigh: "Let me die!" Isolde raises herself a little: "Oh, envious

sentinel!" Tristan remains reclining: "Never to waken!"--"But the

Day must rouse Tristan?" she softly exhorts. "Let the Day yield

unto death!" She considers this quietly: "Day and death then with

a simultaneous stroke shall overtake our love?" He comes a little

more awake to protest that death cannot destroy such love as theirs,

that love is stronger than death, is eternally living, that all

that could die in death would be the disturbing things which now

prevent him from being always with her, whereas were they to

die,--inseparable,--to all eternity one,--nevermore to awake,--nevermore

to know fear,--nameless, close enfolded in love,--belonging singly

to themselves,--they should live wholly for love!... She says the

words after him, dreamily, charmed, allured by the vista they open

before her. And when Brangaene's voice is heard again from her

turret warning them to have a care, have a care, day is at hand,

and Tristan bends over her smiling to ask: "Shall I heed?" she

sighs, as he had done before: "Let me die!"--"Shall I awake?" he

very gently teases. "Never to wake again!"--"Must the Day rouse

Tristan?"--"Let the Day yield unto death!"--"We will brave then

the threats of the Day?" With increasing earnestness she cries:

"To be rid of his malice forever!"--"Day-break shall never more

frighten us apart?"--"Eternal shall be our night!"

This is really but a lovers' device for clinging together a little

longer; one does not feel that they have seriously determined to

remain where they are till they shall have been discovered and

sacrificed on the altar of a husband's honour. They plainly are

in the state they have described: quenched is thought, is memory;

they are intoxicated with the _Liebes-wonne_ they celebrate, and

so while day is whitening overhead, feeling really, as far as they

are capable of thought, besottedly secure,--Frau Minne will

protect!--they caress, clasped in each other's arms, the thought of

the eternal night lying beyond the death they would die for love,

where far from the sun, far from the lamentation of Day-decreed

partings, delivered from fear, delivered from all ill, they shall

dream, in exquisite solitude and in unbounded space, a super-adorable

dream. He shall be Isolde, she Tristan,--but no, there shall be

no more Tristan, no more Isolde, but undivided, inexpressible,

they shall move to ever-new recognitions, new ardours, possessed

in everlasting of a single consciousness--Ineffable joy of love!

Their voices soar with these flights of fancy.... Of a sudden, as

if with a crash, the sweet harmonies turn to discord. A shriek is

heard from Brangaene. Kurwenal rushes in with drawn sword, crying:

"Save yourself, Tristan!"

Hard upon his heels come Mark, Melot, and a flock of courtiers

in hunting-attire. They stop in consternation before the lovers,

who have seen nothing, heard nothing, and stand quietly lost in

each other's embrace. It is only when Brangaene seizes her that

Isolde becomes aware of the spectators. With a natural impulse of

womanly shame she averts her face from all those eyes and hides

it against the flowery bank. Tristan with one arm holds his mantle

wide outspread so that it screens her from sight, and for long

moments continues so, motionless, gazing rigidly at the motionless

men who return his gaze in silence. In the pale first glimmer of

dawn, he might well think them unreal, creations of a bad dream.

The spell of silence is broken by the cry bursting from his lips:

"The desolate Day--for the last time!" Melot steps forward and

points at him: "You shall now tell me," he speaks to Mark, "whether

I rightfully accused him? Whether I am to retain my head which I

placed at stake? I have shown him to you in the very act. I have

faithfully preserved your name and honour from stain."

The King is deeply shaken. No anger is in his unsteady voice, but

utter sorrow. Something deeper has been reached than his pride in

his honour, and that is not his love for Isolde, but his faith

in Tristan. "Have you really?" he bitterly takes up Melot's last

assurance and his boast of fidelity. "Do you imagine it? Behold

him there, the most loyal among the loyal! Look upon him, the

friendliest of friends! The most generous act of his devotion he

has used to stab my heart with deadliest perfidy. If Tristan then

has betrayed me, am I to hope that my honour, which his treason

has struck at, has been loyally defended by Melot?"

These are strange words for Tristan the knight to hear. Applied

to himself, such words as perfidy, treason.... He brushes his arm

wildly across his eyes: "Phantoms of the Day! Morning-dreams! empty

and lying,--vanish, disperse!" The heart-broken King, with a gentleness

more effectual in punishing than the angriest objurgations, goes on

to sear the false friend's conscience by holding up before him,

simply, what he has done; comparing the image of him as he has in

fact proved with the image of him which Mark had cherished. The

reproach is intolerable in view of what Mark himself is: noble,

gentle, great-hearted, and toward Tristan so full of affection!

"To me--this? This, Tristan, to me? Where now shall one look for

truth, since Tristan has deceived me? Where look for honour and

uprightness, since the pattern of all honour, Tristan, has lost

them? Whither has virtue fled, since she is gone from Tristan,

who had made her into his shield and defence, yet has now betrayed

me?"

Tristan's eyes, which had been fixed steadily upon Mark, slowly

sink to the ground; a wondering sadness overspreads his countenance,

heavier and heavier as the royal master proceeds with his arraignment.

Why Tristan's innumerable services, the greatness he had won for his

King, if they were to be paid with the receiver's dishonour? Was

it too small a reward that the King had made him his heir? So dearly

he had loved him that, having lost his wife, and being childless, he

had resolved for his sake not to wed again. He had been obdurate

to the prayers of his people, to Tristan's own entreaties, until

Tristan had threatened to leave the kingdom unless he were himself

despatched to bring home a bride for the King. And his courage had

won for Mark this woman, lovely to a wonder, whom who could know,

who behold, who proudly call his own, without accounting himself

blessed? This one, to whom he, Mark, would never have presumed to

aspire, Tristan, braving enemies and danger, had brought home to

him. And now that through such a possession his heart had become

more vulnerable to pain than before, wherefore wound him in the

very spot where it was tenderest?--destroy his faith in his friend,

fill his frank heart with distrust, bring him to the degradation

of dogging his friend by night and listening covertly? "Wherefore

to me this hell which no heaven can deliver me from? Wherefore to

me this indignity which no suffering can wash out? The dreadful,

deep, undiscoverable, thrice-mysterious reason,--who will reveal

it to the world?"

Tristan's eyes, as, thus questioned, he lifts them at last again to

Mark's, express boundless compassion. "Oh! King, I cannot answer;

and that which you ask you never can learn!" No, for it is as strange,

as full of black mystery, to Tristan as to Mark. It is the very

impossible which has happened, the never to be accounted for. Tristan,

the soul of honour, has betrayed his friend, and with all those

circumstances of aggravation which the friend has just counted

off. Nothing can explain it. It is surely like a dream, a curious

dream, the worst of the Day's lies. But in a dream also, as we

remarked before, there is a right thing to do, for a man of heart.

Tristan is not long deciding upon his course. But before acting

he turns to Isolde, where she sits with eyes of undiminished love

raised toward the companion in shame and agony. In following the

call of honour he has no mind to forsake her. "Whither Tristan

now departs, will you, Isolde, follow him? The country Tristan

means no beam of the sun illumines. It is the dim nocturnal land

from which my mother sent me forth, when dying she gave to the

light a dead man's child. The refuge to which, having borne me,

she carried her love, the wonder-kingdom of the night from which of

old I woke. That is what Tristan offers. Thither he goes before. If

she will follow, kind and true, let now Isolde say!" With touching

more-than-readiness Isolde, trustful and unashamed, declares: "When

once before the friend bade her to a strange land, Isolde, kind

and true, must follow the unkind one. But now you lead to your

own dominions, to show me your heritage. How should I avoid the

realm which lies about the whole world? Where Tristan's house and

home, there let Isolde take her abode. That she may follow, kind

and true, let him now show Isolde the way!" Again for a moment

so lost in her that it is no else than as if they were alone in

all the world, he slowly bends over her and kisses her forehead. A

cry of indignation breaks from Melot. "Traitor! Ha, King, revenge!

Shall you endure this outrage?" But Tristan has suddenly cast off

the inertia of dreams, bared his sword, and turned about. "Who will

match his life against mine?" He gazes full into Melot's face.

"He was my friend. He loved me, he held me high. He, more than any,

was concerned for my honour, my fame. He made proud my heart to

arrogance. He headed the band of those who urged me on to augment

my glory and renown by wedding you to the King. Your eye, Isolde,

has dazzled him too. From envy he betrayed me to the King--whom I

betrayed!" With a feint of attack he springs toward Melot. "Defend

yourself, Melot!" Melot quickly thrusts with his sword. Tristan

who has not parried, who has let the sword drop from his hand,

sinks back wounded in Kurwenal's arms. Isolde casts herself upon

his breast. The music makes a brief sorrowful comment--and the

curtain falls.