Part 42 (1/2)
Otherwise, he is welcome enough to play with his incomprehensible toys.”
He jerked a thumb toward the shelves behind him.
”Oho, you virtuous pretty ladies! what all you value is such matters as those cups: they please the eye, they are worth sound money, and people envy you the possession of them. So you cherish your s.h.i.+ny mud cups, and you burn my 'Hero and Leander': and I declaim all this dull nonsense, over the ashes of my ruined dreams, thinking at bottom of how pretty you are, and of how much I would like to kiss you. That is the real tragedy, the immortal tragedy, that I should still hanker after you, my Cynthia--”
His voice dwelt tenderly upon her name. His fever-haunted eyes were tender, too, for just a moment. Then he grimaced.
”No, I am wrong--the tragedy strikes deeper. The root of it is that there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. You are, when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures whom poets--oh, and in youth all men are poets!--whom poets, now and always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. No, I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless. So in logic I must retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint or reproach, endeavour to bid you a somewhat more civil farewell.”
She had regarded him, throughout this preposterous and uncalled-for harangue, with sad composure, with a forgiving pity. Now she asked him, very quietly, ”Where are you going, Kit?”
”To the Golden Hind, O gentle, patient and unjustly persecuted virgin martyr!” he answered, with an exaggerated how--”since that is the part in which you now elect to posture.”
”Not to that low, vile place again!”
”But certainly I intend in that tavern to get tipsy as quickly as possible: for then the first woman I see will for the time become the woman whom I desire and who exists nowhere.” And with that the red-haired man departed, limping and singing as he went to look for a trull in a pot-house.
Sang Kit Marlowe:
”And I will make her beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
”A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair-lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold--”
III
ECONOMICS OF EGERIA
She sat quite still when Marlowe had gone.
”He will get drunk again,” she thought despondently. ”Well, and why should it matter to me if he does, after all that outrageous ranting? He has been unforgivably insulting--Oh, but none the less, I do not want to have him babbling of the roses and gold of that impossible fairy world which the poor, frantic child really believes in, to some painted woman of the town who will laugh at him. I loathe the thought of her laughing at him--and kissing him! His notions are wild foolishness; but I at least wish that they were not foolishness, and that hateful woman will not care one way or the other.”
So Cynthia sighed, and to comfort her forlorn condition fetched a hand-mirror from the shelves whereon glowed her green cups. She touched each cup caressingly in pa.s.sing; and that which she found in the mirror, too, she regarded not unappreciatively, from varying angles.... Yes after all, dark hair and a pale skin had their advantages at a court where pink and yellow women were so much the fas.h.i.+on as to be common.
Men remembered you more distinctively. Though n.o.body cared for men, in view of their unreasonable behaviour, and their absolute self-centeredness.... Oh, it was pitiable, it was grotesque, she reflected sadly, how Pevensey and Kitt Marlowe had both failed her, after so many pretty speeches.
Still, there was a queer pleasure in being wooed by Kit: his insane notions went to one's head like wine. She would send Meg for him again to-morrow. And Pevensey was, of course, the best match imaginable....
No, it would be too heartless to dismiss George Bulmer outright. It was unreasonable of him to desert her because a Gascon threatened to go to ma.s.s; but, after all, she would probably marry George in the end. He was really almost unendurably silly, though, about England and freedom and religion, and right and wrong things like that. Yes, it would be tedious to have a husband who often talked to you as though he were addressing a public meeting.... However, he was very handsome, particularly in his highflown and most tedious moments; that year-old son of his was sickly and would probably die soon, the sweet, forlorn little pet, and not be a bother to anybody: and her dear old father would be profoundly delighted by the marriage of his daughter to a man whose wife could have at will a dozen celadon cups, and anything else she chose to ask for....
But now the sun had set, and the room was growing quite dark. So Cynthia stood a-tiptoe, and replaced the mirror upon the shelves, setting it upright behind those wonderful green cups which had anew reminded her of Pevensey's wealth and generosity. She smiled a little, to think of what fun it had been to hold George back, for two whole weeks, from discharging that horrible old queen's stupid errands.
IV
TREATS PHILOSOPHICALLY OF BREAKAGE
The door opened. Stalwart young Captain Edward Musgrave came with a lighted candle, which he placed carefully upon the table in the room's centre.
He said: ”They told me you were here. I come from London. I bring news for you.”
”You bring no pleasant tidings, I fear--”