Clair de Lune Part 26

Your Majesty, this is the missive sealing officially my tale.

QUEEN

[_Reads the letter, her face played upon by expressions varying from incredulity to ironic joy. Turning to PHEDRO._]

There is no doubt about this?

PHEDRO [_turning a page_]

You note your Chancellor's signature.

QUEEN

[_Finishes the letter and stands looking intently ahead of her.

She suddenly speaks in a rather strange voice._]

I hate to be trite, but my inner laughter is far too loud to be tamed into wit; so I think I must use the stock phrase, and observe that truth is never so tedious as fiction. [_she pa.s.ses her hand over her brow_] Come, clown, you may go, or rather my lord, you have my earnest leave to exchange our presence for the open air, while we sit in judgment over these discoveries. You may take the young lady with you, who apparently cannot see [_with a bitter look at CHARLES_] the interest she evokes.

[_GWYMPLANE drags DEA out half fainting, but turns in the door, facing them all._]

GWYMPLANE

Take care. It is dangerous to be marionettes too long--even now your limbs may be turning into sawdust.

[_They exit without paying the QUEEN respect._]

QUEEN

[_Turning to PRINCE CHARLES and then to the d.u.c.h.eSS._]

How very uncomfortable he will make the House of Lords. Artists are terrible people, especially when they get out of their _metier_, and even if they were born gentlemen. [_she takes a hand of the d.u.c.h.eSS and of CHARLES_] I request you both to be in my cabinet tomorrow morning as early as you can manage to rouse yourselves after this rather full evening, and we shall see what it is fair to do in love [_she glances softly and rather whimsically at the PRINCE_] and war.

[_looking fixedly at JOSEPHINE_]

[_She throws both their hands away from her as if they had stung her. An equerry opens the door, and she exits abruptly._]

_PRINCE and the d.u.c.h.eSS [bowing low to her departing back and murmuring_]:

Your Majesty is obeyed.

_CURTAIN_

SCENE 2

[_It is night upon the deck of a small schooner, whose sails are outlined against leaden streaks, commencing to herald the dawn._

_DEA lies extended upon a low couch, beside the chair of URSUS.

In the dim light her form possesses the eternal majesty of sculpture. From afar the voices of sailors chanting some sad litany of the sea. URSUS leans back in his chair, looking up into the face of departing night. GWYMPLANE paces in and out, anguished with unrest._]

URSUS [_to GWYMPLANE, who hardly heeds him_]

Nothing follows us. It never occurred to them that a man should want to escape good fortune. They never think to bolt the door when they have gilded the walls. O, how profitably one can surprise these people who think the entire world reflects their contemplation of self.

GWYMPLANE

[_Who has not heard the preceding speech at all, comes in, halting abruptly._]

Life, life. It has suddenly burst its leash--torn in among us like a mad dog and wounded us, mortally, I think, [_glances at DEA_] O, the pain, the tragedy that can come out of nonsense. Will Dea live, can Dea live?

URSUS [_sighing heavily_]

Perhaps, perhaps. How quiet and smiling she looks. There is some great pathos about her peacefulness as if Heaven were restoring to her something cruelly lost in this world.

GWYMPLANE

[_Walking over to her couch and wringing his hands._]

My love, my little love.

[_URSUS rising and soothing his agonized posture with a gentle hand, which GWYMPLANE shakes off._]

GWYMPLANE

Oh, there seems no corner in myself into which I can creep, pull down the blinds, and shut out those horrible, jeering, grotesque, indecent processionals that I joined and made last night.

URSUS

My poor son! You threw your body to the jackals for an hour. You forgot there was a soul in your body to get mangled along with the rest.

GWYMPLANE

Oh, my soul was not in all that.

URSUS

Most people perish from thinking like you. [_earnestly_] Somewhere in you is a blinding, transfigured face, struggling up out of the sprawled, coiling limbs of infinite pasts, yet put it in certain conditions and it retains its fearful stamp of former b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. But during death, death the last condition we follow, what a likeness unto G.o.d appears upon the features of the worst of us.

GWYMPLANE [_who is too tortured to hear_]

Oh, how can I ever again catch at her lovely virginal hands? [_he lifts one very gently_] Her hands have the sudden beauty and strange fragrance of flowers that bloom among shadows. How can I ever press my lips against them again without bruising their dear shy softness by this weight of unworthiness I carry within me?

URSUS

Only through hope.

GWYMPLANE