Scene 2
[It is night upon the deck of a small schooner, whose sails are outlined against leaden streaks, commencing to herald the dawn.
Dea lies extended upon a low couch, beside the chair of Ursus. In the dim light her form possesses the eternal majesty of sculpture. From afar the voices of sailors chanting some sad litany of the sea. Ursus leans back in his chair, looking up into the face of departing night. Gwymplane paces in and out, anguished with unrest.]
Ursus [to Gwymplane, who hardly heeds him]
Nothing follows us. It never occurred to them that a man should want to escape good fortune. They never think to bolt the door when they have gilded the walls. O, how profitably one can surprise these people who think the entire world reflects their contemplation of self.
Gwymplane
[Who has not heard the preceding speech at all, comes in, halting abruptly.]
Life, life. It has suddenly burst its leash—torn in among us like a mad dog and wounded us, mortally, I think, [glances at Dea] O, the pain, the tragedy that can come out of nonsense. Will Dea live, can Dea live?
Ursus [sighing heavily]
Perhaps, perhaps. How quiet and smiling she looks. There is some great pathos about her peacefulness as if Heaven were restoring to her something cruelly lost in this world.
Gwymplane
[Walking over to her couch and wringing his hands.]
My love, my little love.
[Ursus rising and soothing his agonized posture with a gentle hand, which Gwymplane shakes off.]
Gwymplane
Oh, there seems no corner in myself into which I can creep, pull down the blinds, and shut out those horrible, jeering, grotesque, indecent processionals that I joined and made last night.
Ursus
My poor son! You threw your body to the jackals for an hour. You forgot there was a soul in your body to get mangled along with the rest.
Gwymplane
Oh, my soul was not in all that.
Ursus
Most people perish from thinking like you. [earnestly] Somewhere in you is a blinding, transfigured face, struggling up out of the sprawled, coiling limbs of infinite pasts, yet put it in certain conditions and it retains its fearful stamp of former bestiality. But during death, death the last condition we follow, what a likeness unto God appears upon the features of the worst of us.
Gwymplane [who is too tortured to hear]
Oh, how can I ever again catch at her lovely virginal hands? [he lifts one very gently] Her hands have the sudden beauty and strange fragrance of flowers that bloom among shadows. How can I ever press my lips against them again without bruising their dear shy softness by this weight of unworthiness I carry within me?
Ursus
Only through hope.
Gwymplane
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 morasses 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 passed 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 God were to shine 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.]
[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 spaces and some divine form is shining 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 passes 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.]
I want the blessing of your arms to be the last thing in my life.
[Suddenly a look of recognition and joy floods her face, and her eyes seem to follow some divine approach. She murmurs]:
How beautiful! How right!
[And fluttering in Gwymplane's arms she is dead. He lays her gently back, lifts one of her hands, kisses it, looks at her as if the last agony had been drawn out of his soul, then passes his hand across his brow, tries to speak, and after a long pause:]
Gwymplane
It appears we have made good our escape.
Ursus [raising his head from his arms]
The tide is with us.
Gwymplane
We are bound—where?
Ursus
Westward.
Gwymplane [with tenderness]
Dear Ursus, you were leaving your country and going to face old age among customs, languages, peoples, strange to you, and to save us from the talons of a pack of cards.
Ursus
You and I are going now, Gwymplane.
Gwymplane
I think I have no more knack for wearing costumes and masks, and I could not ask human beings to accept me as I am, either inside or out. Any reality is like a row of knives and each minute drags me backward and forward across them.
[He seems to commune upon and decide something within himself. His voice breaks clearly over a long pause.]
Good-night, Ursus, I am going up into the prow to seek some fresher air.
[Ursus sits with his head on his arms, which are resting on Dea's coverlet. There is a faint shrill of sighing wind, with the voices of the sailors rising beneath it, and the ascending sun commences to throw red bars across the water.
Suddenly the singing voices cease abruptly and a sailor hurries in.]
Sailor
Sir, sir, a man has fallen into the sea!
Ursus
[Starting out of his lethargy and speaking in a strange, numb voice.]
Then put the ship about. We return.
Sailor
Shall we not lower boats and make search for this man—[he shudders and crosses himself] for this man who has fallen into the sea?
Ursus [half to himself]
Let a man rest where he has gone by his own will.
CURTAIN