Clair de Lune Part 27

Hope is for people who have not such keen noses as I. I can smell the decay in myself far too well to go near the person I love with it.

Only to sleep, to sleep, and not have to make my way any more, through these biting, malicious, stifling memories. How can a man's soul exist after he knows what sodden mora.s.ses the body can clamp him into!

URSUS

Stumbling may teach a man to hold his lantern nearer the ground.

GWYMPLANE

My arms are broken. They cannot hold anything except despair.

DEA [_stirring faintly_]

[_URSUS is immediately at her side and bends over her. GWYMPLANE stands looking down over the back of her couch._]

How fast we are going! What are we on that is moving so swiftly?

URSUS

We are sailing away, Dea, you, Gwymplane, and I, toward happiness and safety.

DEA

I have always been happy, until----

[_She puts her hand on her heart. GWYMPLANE winces._]

URSUS [_speaking gently_]

Let me put my hand across your forehead and smooth you back into dreams as I used to when you were a child. That will be best.

DEA

I wonder, have I not pa.s.sed what is best. You say that I am on a boat, but it seems to me I am going somewhere by myself, swiftly, eagerly, and that I am carrying my love for Gwymplane like a sheaf of lilies under my arm.

[_GWYMPLANE bends over, whispering her name out of the bursting anguish of his heart._]

Gwymplane, I feel your breath across my cheek. I feel your tears upon my face. Oh, why are you crying?

GWYMPLANE

My love, my dear love, there is too much beauty about you. You are an answer to the last wish of a man's heart that blows him over the gates of Paradise. Anyone would weep if the face of G.o.d were to s.h.i.+ne out suddenly through their prayers.

DEA

Oh, I understand all that. I have felt that so often about you.

[_She puts her hand tenderly on his. Suddenly she raises herself on her elbow._]

Gwymplane! Ursus! I think--I think I am about to see! There are bright stretches of colour beginning behind my eyes.

[_She lifts herself into a sitting position, stretching out her arms. There is a long pause._]

O, I do see, I see!

[_She is looking up into the sky, which is becoming radiant with streaks of dawn._]

I see a million pale ribbons fluttering through grey vapour. They are widening into rivers of colour, into vast dazzling s.p.a.ces and some divine form is s.h.i.+ning through now and sweeping all the darkness away off the world, with his golden wings.

GWYMPLANE [_turning ecstatically to URSUS_]

I believe she sees.

[_He suddenly cringes away from her, and speaks in a whisper to URSUS._]

Maybe she will see me at last.

URSUS

She sees the sky of heaven.

[_DEA drops back upon GWYMPLANE'S arm._]

GWYMPLANE [_with anguished apprehension_]

Oh, darling, do you still see? Do not stop speaking. Tell me more.

DEA

I cannot wait, I think, any longer.

GWYMPLANE

My love, then, if you are going before me, [_a strange look pa.s.ses over his face--he straightens himself_] just a little before me, will you let fall some bright flowers from your breast that will make a track of light for me to follow in, so that we may perhaps waken together? O, love, how remote your beautiful face is becoming. Do you even hear me, I wonder.

DEA [_very low_]

I do hear. Gwymplane, come nearer. That night I tried to understand, but I thought with so much pain that I could not seem to understand.

Now the pain is gone out of any thought and I understand now how little cause there was for pain.

GWYMPLANE

Beloved.

DEA

I know I am your beloved. Hold me close.

[_He wraps her frantically in his arms._]