Five Plays Part 41

CALLER

Hark! She is playing the piano. It seems to me that she might be unhappy about it for years. I don't see much good in that.

POET

No. _I_ will comfort her.

CALLER

I'm d.a.m.ned if you do! Look here! I don't mind saying, I'm d.a.m.ned if you do.

POET

Calm yourself. Calm yourself. I do not mean in that way.

CALLER

Then what on earth do you mean?

POET

I will make songs about your beautiful death, glad songs and sad songs.

They shall be glad because they tell again the n.o.ble tradition of the troubadours, and sad because they tell of your sorrowful destiny and of your hopeless love.

I shall make legends also about your lonely bones, telling perhaps how some Arabian men, finding them in the desert by some oasis, memorable in war, wonder who loved them. And then as I read them to her, she weeps perhaps a little, and I read instead of the glory of the soldier, how it overtops our transitory--

CALLER

Look here, I'm not aware that you've ever been introduced to her.

POET

A trifle, a trifle.

CALLER

It seems to me that you're in rather an undue hurry for me to get a Jubu spear in me; but I'm going to get my hat first.

POET

I appeal to you. I appeal to you in the name of beautiful battles, high deeds, and lost causes; in the name of love-tales told to cruel maidens and told in vain. In the name of stricken hearts broken like beautiful harp-strings, I appeal to you.

I appeal in the ancient holy name of Romance: _do not ring that bell_.

[_Caller rings the bell._

POET (_sits down, abject_)

You will marry. You will sometimes take a ticket with your wife as far as Paris. Perhaps as far as Cannes. Then the family will come; a large sprawling family as far as the eye can see (I speak in hyperbole).

You'll earn money and feed it and be like all the rest. No monument will ever be set up to your memory but--

[_Servant answers bell. Caller says something inaudible. Exit through door._

POET (_rising, lifting hand_)

But let there be graven in bra.s.s upon this house: Romance was born again here out of due time and died young. (_He sits down_)

[_Enter Laborer and Clerk with Policeman. The music stops._

POLICEMAN

Anything wrong here?

POET

Everything's wrong. They're going to kill Romance.

POLICEMAN (_to Laborer_)

This gentleman doesn't seem quite right somehow.

LABORER

They're none of them quite right to-day.

[_Music starts again._

POET

My G.o.d! It is a duet.

POLICEMAN

He seems a bit wrong somehow.

LABORER

You should 'a seen the other one.

CURTAIN