Clair de Lune Part 33

QUEEN

So, Josephine, your second bridegroom has been seduced away from you by Destiny. Charles, your fortune, which was at any rate confiscate to your brother, now pa.s.ses to the Crown. I wonder just how you will manage.

[_CHARLES throws her a tender, confident look which she evades._]

But one thing at a time. Josephine, what occurs to you in this fitful moment?

d.u.c.h.eSS

Life nauseates me so at the moment that it is difficult to imagine any corner where I would not be too dizzy with hatred to stand. If you will permit me, I shall return to my rooms to think. There are some agreeable things scattered through my rooms that may possibly inspire direction.

QUEEN

Your sensations, Josephine, they have always been so much more acute than your emotions. I wonder if you could not turn with a certain surprising equanimity from regarding the marble forms of your Greeks to the Gothic saints of wood and ivory, then one would detect incense in the fold of your shroud instead of patchouli in the pleats of your cambric. You know, probably you could find in the distortions of religious mania a perfect _pendant_ to your taste for deformities in life.

d.u.c.h.eSS

You are cruel, and you are irreverent.

QUEEN

Ah, my dear, in that last epithet speaks your extreme desirability for the vocation, superst.i.tion, which is nothing more nor less than fear of reason, or possibly a certain instinct that the truth would make everything look rather second cla.s.s--if one is second cla.s.s one's self.

d.u.c.h.eSS

I suppose it is not inc.u.mbent upon me to stand here in order that my character inspire you with further Socratic comment.

QUEEN

Not at all, my dear sister; by all means seek your fauns and draperies and forgive me for prattling on quite regardless of sowing the tragic seed--_ennui_.

[_At this juncture it is only the intense refinement of the d.u.c.h.eSS which prevents her from falling into the unbecoming posture of powerless invective. PHEDRO, who has listened to the foregoing, presumes here to interrupt._]

PHEDRO

Your Majesty, have I your permission to retire?

QUEEN [_turning vaguely toward him_]

Certainly, certainly, Phedro. It must be extremely fatiguing to keep on hitting, one after another, so many peculiar facts.

PHEDRO [_bowing low_]

My position in your Majesty's service is far too exhilarating to permit of fatigue. To breathe is occasionally difficult [_his voice lowers to something resembling a hiss_], consequently to rest does not occur.

[_He glances about him as if at a group of neatly despatched marionettes--a glare of furtive hatred distorting his features, which is hastily veiled by his usual laconic humility._

_The QUEEN precipitates his departure with a wave of her hand, to which he instantly submits._]

[_Exit PHEDRO._]

d.u.c.h.eSS

[_Resuming in a voice of excessive boredom._]

Well, adieu, Charles, I suppose you will go on alternating between vice and sentimentality until the curtain drops. You know, one reason why you never attracted me?

PRINCE

Josephine, is this quite in taste?

d.u.c.h.eSS

Taste is something one uses on arranging one's rooms, not upon human beings.

QUEEN

Well hit, Josephine. You have at least the satisfaction of going out to the ringing of the bull's eye.

d.u.c.h.eSS

Possibly.

[_She exits after courtseying to the QUEEN, who returns it in proper measure. There is a silence. PRINCE looks tenderly at the QUEEN, who moves about in a rather staccato manner, disturbing perfectly placed bibelots and pieces of furniture._]

PRINCE

We are alone at last.

QUEEN

That word should sound like the fold of wings around one's exhausted body.

PRINCE [_archly_]

Subst.i.tute arms for wings, and could for should, if I may be permitted to correct----

QUEEN

Oh, Charles, don't woo me with this poetic verbosity to take the place of feeling. It is so exactly what you would say to the brewer's daughter, had you selected her to save your estate and pay your bills.

PRINCE

Ah, Anne, Anne, why will you be so ironic?

QUEEN

Once or twice I thought of not being ironic, of looking into some person's eyes, and not finding that I had to look away, of resting with someone in a long silence full of exchanged beauties.