“No truth?” he cried. “Then let me swallow lies faster than Churchmen can promulgate them. The world’s redeemed, they say—I see it not; we are the children of a beneficent Providence, they say—It will not even feed us, but sends the worm and storm to kill the grain It’s given. My figments are the types of what I see—passion, black malice, usury—selfishness unredeemed by God’s love, but tempered, brute-like, by His terror. An arrant orb of reptiles, worshipping through fear. And so I paint it—sober. Then—drink! Ah, it is my good angel, my better half, my sweet gentle mate that woos me to the larger temperance. I could show you things—but there! Not truth?—not sordid truth? Give me the noble lie, then, that transports me to Elysium, that lends me the wider vision, and I will rain benevolence on this crawling sphere. I am no pessimist in wine.”
His eyes were flaming, his breast heaved, some real emotion strung him.
The great lawyer smiled. “God forbid I should debar you Elysium,” he said, and throwing a gold angel on the table, he left the room.
For some moments after he was gone Marlowe, his passion slowly subsiding, stood eyeing the bright coin.
“A lackey’s vail,” he said at length, “yet the obolus to pay my passage to Elysium. And did I not earn it? Answer, old sack; answer, my rosy Thaïs of the leaping-house. Elysium, Elysium! O, it opens to me!”
A hand came past him like a snake and nipped the coin.
“The debt you ought me,” gulped Archer, with a pallid snigger. “We are quits at last, Christopher.”
With a snarl the playwright turned on the thief.
“Give me back mine own.”
“It is mine.” He hugged and cherished the piece convulsively. “You ought it me. I have the first claim—to Doll and your Elysium.”