Clair de Lune Part 19

You are so beautiful, Madame. Your loneliness only makes you more so.

It lends the quality of a G.o.ddess to what is already earthly majesty.

[_He is about to press his strange lips to her hands, when suddenly he remembers and resists._]

d.u.c.h.eSS

Ah, you were going to kiss my hand. Why didn't you kiss it? [_She stretches it out close to his mouth._] See--here--here it is, most soft and white.

[_GWYMPLANE draws away, pa.s.sing his hand across his brow. The d.u.c.h.eSS leans toward him, almost over him._]

I am very lonely, Gwymplane. Give me a few moments of forgetfulness.

O, tell me about your life--tell me about what has happened to you.

[_She lays her hand upon his shoulder. GWYMPLANE takes it, kisses it, and looks up at her with flaming eyes and chalk-pale face._]

Ah, that is nice! The touch of your lips chills, burns me with forgetfulness. The touch of your lips is like a tide hushing, sucking my wakefulness down into depths of terrible oblivion. O, listen, you are grotesque--your limbs are like the coils of nightmare. I love you because you are so grotesque--because upon your face is stamped the contorted beauty of your mind--your mind that is surely as amazing as your face. O, Gwymplane, tell me of what you have thought, tell me of what you are thinking.

GWYMPLANE

[_Who is led into rapture by her words, kneels and suddenly kisses her feet._]

I am kissing your little white feet. It is like brushing my face amongst sprays of silken flowers.

d.u.c.h.eSS

Ah, do not talk beautifully to me, Gwymplane.

GWYMPLANE

But you are beauty! What other language would you understand?

d.u.c.h.eSS

Do not talk to me beautifully, Gwymplane. Talk to me with the savage pulsating words of your clown language. Talk to me as if you held a whip in your hand. [_She catches at his hand_] What marvellous hands you have! Deceitful hands--for they look unlike the things they do--the things they must do.

GWYMPLANE

[_Sitting upon her couch and bending over her lips._]

I think you are something I have stolen out of a temple--a wonderful winged crowned figure that I have stolen out of a temple and profaned.

I feel as if we were in a black barge upon a scarlet sea, as if in a moment it would dip over the horizon line and we should be lost forever together. O, I feel as if all the light in the world were flowing from behind the chalice of your pale face. I love you, I love you.

d.u.c.h.eSS

[_Drawing away from his straining arms and lips._]

You love me, you love me! But you do not talk to me as if you were a clown. You do not speak to me with those curiously pungent words that are flung between men and women in the thickets near the booths.

[_almost pettishly_] You do not talk at all like a clown, Gwymplane.

GWYMPLANE

[_His eyes slowly travelling over her body._]

I do not understand--I cannot understand why you permit my hands to touch you. Does not the flame from my hands burn you as they tremble and hover nearer, nearer to your scorching loveliness? But I think you are ivory, ivory dyed in hues of dawn and sunset.

d.u.c.h.eSS

Ah, I wish you would not speak to me beautifully. I tell you beauty is not so dear to me as ugliness. O, Gwymplane [_with a rather coa.r.s.e gesture nudging his arm_], O, Gwymplane, tell me of love as I want to hear of it, and I will love you better than all the rest!

GWYMPLANE

The rest? [_he presses his hand to his temple_] There are no rest.

There was one--O G.o.d! I am lost! Nothing matters now [_in a shrill voice_]. I--I have found out what I can be!

d.u.c.h.eSS

[_Stretching herself and smiling upon him._]

How happy I am with you, my distorted lover! Only I wish you had not taken the white paint from your face. I wish your lips were fantastically scarlet as when you danced. I wish you were in your clown's dress and that the circus dwarfs could be here, playing their evil music while we talked. Kiss me.

GWYMPLANE

[_Drawing away and gazing at her in rapture._]

But my heart is here, underneath your slender foot. O, my heart has no will of its own but is only a reckless fever leaping, shivering after crumbs of your favour.

[_He is about to kiss her, when suddenly the d.u.c.h.eSS turns aside--an odd numbness creeping over her features._]

d.u.c.h.eSS

Something is wrong--terribly wrong. You do not speak to me like a clown. You are not like a clown. Who are you--what are you really?

GWYMPLANE

My love [_he turns to kiss her shoulder_], I am your lover. What does any other reality matter tonight?

[_There is a knock at the door on stage left. GWYMPLANE starts to his feet, flinging upon the d.u.c.h.eSS a look of terror._]

d.u.c.h.eSS [_biting her lip--calls out_]

Who dares to disturb my rest?

VOICE OF PRINCE CHARLES

It is I.

d.u.c.h.eSS