Clair de Lune Part 5

Well, I do not feel much elated at being here. An ambition gained is an ambition lost, and I am too old to have many ambitions.

DEA

It is wonderful to be in the park of the Queen--to think that the shade of these same trees darkens her jewels at midday, and that through them is cast over her a shawl of glittering ribbons upon moonlight nights.

URSUS [_patting her shoulder and smiling_]

Joy makes poets out of all of us. [_Half to himself_] But it is only a poet who can sing in the clutches of death and pain.

DEA [_very thoughtfully_]

Yet underneath all my joy I am thinking hard tonight of the beginning of things. I wonder, I wonder is it because I am nearing the end of things.

URSUS

Dea, dearest, you are not ill tonight? You have not again those flutterings in your heart?

DEA

Not more than I can bear. How good Gwymplane has been to me! I wish I had been old enough to see him on the night he got lost, and found me in the snow on my dead mother's breast, and G.o.d led us to you.

URSUS

I do not wish to think of that night. You were like a tiny, frozen rose-petal, and he--he was so small himself it didn't seem possible he could have carried you all the way and G.o.d----

[_URSUS covers his face with his hands and speaks in a low voice._]

When you were both under the lamp I asked him what he found to smile at. I asked him roughly to stop smiling.

DEA [_happily_]

Yes, Gwymplane always smiles, doesn't he? He must have a very contented spirit. I wish that I could see his smile. How it provokes other people to laugh!

[_URSUS looks at her pityingly, and pats her on the shoulder._]

I smile and weep a great deal lately over my love for Gwymplane, and I am frightened about one thing.

URSUS

What is that?

DEA

That someone is going to make him unhappy.

URSUS

Gwymplane wors.h.i.+ps you. While you are singing and smiling I do not think anything could make him unhappy.

DEA

I hope not. You know I feel that he has given his soul into my hands and that I must take care of it as I would a little child. Yes, I feel as if Gwymplane were my child, and yet something more than my child that makes my heart bound and my song tremble into silence.

[_A nightingale sings in the distance._]

URSUS

My Dea!

DEA

Tell me, Ursus, Gwymplane is so wonderful. He--he attracts everyone so. Does he never notice any especial person in the audience? Some one whom he attracts?

URSUS

No, Dea, and you need never worry about that. Gwymplane will never love or be beloved save by you.

DEA

Ah, how good it is to hear that! How beautiful tonight is! I would like to sit forever like this, very near to you and talking of Gwymplane.

[_A sudden voice almost at their elbow. Enter PHEDRO._]

PHEDRO

But everyone is talking of Gwymplane.

[_URSUS rising whispers to DEA to go._]

Why do you dismiss your beautiful daughter? Her pallor, her most haunting stare, have already sown chaos in the heart of a certain important personage.

URSUS

Leave me, Dea.

[_DEA silently exits._]

Who are you who visit us so abruptly?

PHEDRO [_whimsically_]

I think I am a cork upon very troubled waters.

URSUS

That does not answer me enough.

PHEDRO