St. J. Oh now I see into the depths of it!
Sir T. When our last child had died and she and I
Were raw with grief, unhinged by wild despair,
A fount and flame of lust arose in both,
As though we had eaten of some forbidden fruit,
Or swallowed magic earth, or been bewitched,
Or drenched with aphrodisiac. At the time
My fame was in the nadir, and our lives'
Duration insignificant to us:
So every night with poison in a vial
Beneath our pillow to end it when we chose,
A letch that never seemed to sate itself
Drained us of all humanity; but I,
Refined and tempered in the heat and cold,
Desire and languor, languor and desire,
The rhythm of this, by natural sorcery
Became at last an artist: think of it!
I found myself the master of the mood,
Enchanting folk and playing on their nerves
As though an audience were a zither; made
A name far-sounding; and, by your goodwill, too
Am now—Heaven save the mark, the banal end!—
Am now, Sir Tristram Sumner, nominal,
As well as actual theatrocrat.
St. J. Do I speak now?
Sir T. Not yet. A jealousy
More sombre than my hate—a thing to note,
That love is never jealous of the past—
A sombre jealousy begot by hate
Began to whisper "Strike her; wound her; kill."
St. J. Your wife and I are cousins.
Sir T. Therefore I speak.
She has no kin but you to help her now.
Shall I go on?
St. J. Go on.
Sir T. My first of friends Was Warwick Groom. Upon my marriage-morning This letter came:—"Do you know that Warwick "Groom and Martha Sackville were lovers? She "visited him every night in his dressing-room at the "Parthenon when he played Romeo; and the reason "why he insisted on beginning the fourth act with "the fifth scene of the third act was the reason you "guess at once: it gave them time. But that was "not the only place in the play where they performed "their private intermede. How this was managed? "Ask old Odham, Groom's dresser."
St. J. Malicious, were it not so impotent.
Sir T. Perhaps so; but I kept it.