"As Lord Pevensey rode through the Strand this afternoon, on his way home, the Plague smote him. That is my sad news. I grieve to bring such news, for your cousin was a worthy gentleman and universally respected."
"Ah," Cynthia said, very quiet, "so Pevensey is dead. But the Plague kills quickly!"
"Yes, yes, that is a comfort, certainly. Yes, he turned quite black in the face, they report, and before his men could reach him had fallen from his horse. It was all over almost instantly. I saw him afterward, hardly a pleasant sight. I came to you as soon as I could. I was vexatiously detained--"
"So George Bulmer is dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon your sleeve?"
"But of course not! I told you I was vexatiously detained, almost at your gates. Yes, I had the ill luck to blunder into a disgusting business. The two rapscallions tumbled out of a doorway under my horse"s very nose, egad! It was a near thing I did not ride them down. So I stopped, naturally. I regretted stopping, afterward, for I was too late to be of help. It was at the Golden Hind, of course. Something really ought to be done about that place. Yes, and that rogue Marler bled all over a new doublet, as you see. And the Deptford constables held me with their foolish interrogatories--"
"So one of the fighting men was named Marlowe! Is he dead, too, dead in another gutter?"
"Marlowe or Marler, or something of the sort--wrote plays and sonnets and such stuff, they tell me. I do not know anything about him--though, I give you my word, now, those greasy constables treated me as though I were a noted frequenter of pot-houses. That sort of thing is most annoying. At all events, he was drunk as David"s sow, and squabbling over, saving your presence, a woman of the sort one looks to find in that abominable hole. And so, as I was saying, this other drunken rascal dug a knife into him--"
But now, to Captain Musgrave"s discomfort, Cynthia Allonby had begun to weep heartbrokenly.
So he cleared his throat, and he patted the back of her hand. "It is a great shock to you, naturally--oh, most naturally, and does you great credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone, as we must all go some day, and our tears cannot bring him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation and that sort of thing, my dear--"
"Oh, Ned, but people are so cruel! People will be saying that it was I who kept poor Cousin George in London this past two weeks, and that but for me he would have been in France long ago! And then the Queen, Ned!--why, that pig-headed old woman will be blaming it on me, that there is n.o.body to prevent that detestable French King from turning Catholic and dragging England into new wars, and I shall not be able to go to any of the Court dances! nor to the masques!" sobbed Cynthia, "nor anywhere!"
"Now you talk tender-hearted and angelic nonsense. It is n.o.ble of you to feel that way, of course. But Pevensey did not take proper care of himself, and that is all there is to it. Now I have remained in London since the Plague"s outbreak. I stayed with my regiment, naturally. We have had a few deaths, of course. People die everywhere. But the Plague has never bothered me. And why has it never bothered me? Simply because I was sensible, took the pains to consult an astrologer, and by his advice wear about my neck, night and day, a bag containing tablets of toads"
blood and a.r.s.enic. It is an infallible specific for men born in February.
No, not for a moment do I wish to speak harshly of the dead, but sensible persons cannot but consider Lord Pevensey"s death to have been caused by his own carelessness."
"Now, certainly that is true," the girl said, brightening. "It was really his own carelessness and his dear lovable rashness. And somebody could explain it to the Queen. Besides, I often think that wars are good for the public spirit of a nation, and bring out its true manhood. But then it upset me, too, a little, Ned, to hear about this Marlowe--for I must tell you that I knew the poor man, very slightly. So I happen to know that to-day he flung off in a rage, and began drinking, because somebody, almost by pure chance, had burned a packet of his verses--"
Thereupon Captain Musgrave raised heavy eyebrows, and guffawed so heartily that the candle flickered. "To think of the fellow"s putting it on that plea! when he could so easily have written some more verses. That is the trouble with these poets, if you ask me: they are not practical even in their ordinary everyday lying. No, no, the truth of it was that the rogue wanted a pretext for making a beast of himself, and seized the first that came to hand. Egad, my dear, it is a daily practise with these poets. They hardly draw a sober breath. Everybody knows that."
Cynthia was looking at him in the half-lit room with very flattering admiration.... Seen thus, with her scarlet lips a little parted--disclosing pearls,--and with her naive dark eyes aglow, she was quite incredibly pretty and caressable. She had almost forgotten until now that this stalwart soldier, too, was in love with her. But now her spirits were rising venturously, and she knew that she liked Ned Musgrave. He had sensible notions; he saw things as they really were, and with him there would never be any nonsense about toplofty ideas. Then, too, her dear old white-haired father would be pleased, because there was a very fair estate....
So Cynthia said: "I believe you are right, Ned. I often wonder how they can be so lacking in self-respect. Oh, I am certain you must be right, for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it. You will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it is always a great comfort for me to talk with really sensible persons. I do not wonder that you are not very eager to stay, though, for I am probably a fright, with my eyes red, and with my hair all tumbling down, like an old witch"s. Well, let us see what can be done about it, sir! There was a hand-mirror--"
And thus speaking, she tripped, with very much the reputed grace of a fairy, toward the far end of the room, and standing a-tiptoe, groped at the obscure shelves, with a resultant crash of falling china.
"Oh, but my lovely cups!" said Cynthia, in dismay. "I had forgotten they were up there: and now I have smashed both of them, in looking for my mirror, sir, and trying to prettify myself for you. And I had so fancied them, because they had not their like in England!"
She looked at the fragments, and then at Musgrave, with wide, innocent hurt eyes. She was really grieved by the loss of her quaint toys. But Musgrave, in his st.u.r.dy, common-sense way, only laughed at her seriousness over such kickshaws.
"I am for an honest earthenware tankard myself!" he said, jovially, as the two went in to supper.
1905-1919
_"Tell me where is fancy bred Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished?... Then let us all ring fancy"s knell."_
CHAPTER X
_The Envoi Called Semper Idem_
1. _Which Baulks at an Estranging Sea_
Here, then, let us end the lovers" comedy, after a good precedent, with supper as the denouement. _Chacun ira souper: la comedie ne peut pas mieux finir._
For epilogue, Cynthia Allonby was duly married to Edward Musgrave, and he made her a fair husband, as husbands go. That was the upshot of Pevensey"s death and Marlowe"s murder: as indeed, it was the outcome of all the earlier-recorded heart-burnings and endeavors and spoiled dreams.
Through generation by generation, traversing just three centuries, I have explained to you, my dear Mrs. Grundy, how divers weddings came about: and each marriage appears, upon the whole, to have resulted satisfactorily. Dame Melicent and Dame Adelaide, not Florian, touched the root of the matter as they talked together at Storisende: and the trio"s descendants could probe no deeper.
But now we reach the annals of the house of Musgrave: and further adventuring is blocked by R. V. Musgrave"s monumental work _The Musgraves of Matocton_. The critical may differ as to the plausibility of the family tradition (ably defended by Colonel Musgrave, pp. 33-41) that Mistress Cynthia Musgrave was the dark lady of Shakespeare"s Sonnets, and that this poet, also, in the end, absolved her of intentional malice.
There is none, at any event, but may find in this genealogical cla.s.sic a full record of the highly improbable happenings which led to the emigration of Captain Edward Musgrave, and later of Cynthia Musgrave, to the Colony of Virginia; and none but must admire Colonel Musgrave"s painstaking and accurate tracing of the American Musgraves who descended from this couple, down to the eve of the twentieth century.
It would be supererogatory, therefore, for me to tell you of the various Musgrave marriages, and to re-dish such data as is readily accessible on the reference shelves of the nearest public library, as well as in the archives of the Colonial Dames, of the Society of the Cincinnati, and of the Sons and Daughters of various wars. It suffices that from the marriage of Edward Musgrave and Cynthia Allonby sprang this well-known American family, prolific of brave gentlemen and gracious ladies who in due course, and in new lands, achieved their allotted portion of laughter and anguish and compromise, very much as their European fathers and mothers had done aforetime.
So I desist to follow the line of love across the Atlantic; and, for the while at least, make an end of these chronicles. My pen flags, my ink runs low, and (since Florian wedded twice) the Dizain of Marriages is completed.
2. _Which Defers to Various Illusions_
I have bound up my gleanings from the fields of old years into a modest sheaf; and if it be so fortunate as to please you, my dear Mrs.
Grundy,--if it so come about that your ladyship be moved in time to desire another sheaf such as this,--why, a.s.suredly, my surprise will be untempered with obduracy. The legends of Allonby have been but lightly touched upon: and apart from the _Aventures d"Adhelmar_, Nicolas de Caen is thus far represented in English only by the _Roi Atnaury_ (which, to be sure, is Nicolas" masterpiece) and the mutilated _Dizain des Reines_ and the fragmentary _Roman de Lusignan_.
But since you, madam, are not Schahriah, to give respite for the sake of an unnarrated tale, I must now without further peroration make an end.
Through the monstrous tapestry I have traced out for you the windings of a single thread, and I entreat you, dear lady, to accept it with a.s.surances of my most distinguished regard.
And if the offering be no great gift, this lack of greatness, believe me, is due to the errors and limitations of the transcriber alone.
For they loved greatly, these men and women of the past, in that rapt hour wherein Nature tricked them to n.o.ble ends, and lured them to skyey heights of adoration and sacrifice. At bottom they were, perhaps, no more heroical than you or I. Indeed, neither Florian nor Adhelmar was at strict pains to act as common-sense dictated, and Falstaff is scarcely describable as immaculate: Villon thieved, Kit Marlowe left a wake of emptied bottles, and Will Sommers was notoriously a fool; Matthiette was vain, and Adelais self-seeking, and the tenth Marquis of Falmouth, if you press me, rather a stupid and pompous a.s.s: and yet to each in turn it was granted to love greatly, to know at least one hour of magnanimity when each was young in the world"s annually recaptured youth.
And if that hour did not ever have its sequel in precisely the antic.i.p.ated life-long rapture, nor always in a wedding with the person preferred, yet since at any rate it resulted in a marriage that turned out well enough, in a world wherein people have to consider expediency, one may rationally a.s.sert that each of these romances ended happily.
Besides, there had been the hour.
Ah, yes, this love is an illusion, if you will. Wise men have protested that vehemently enough in all conscience. But there are two ends to every stickler for his opinion here. Whether you see, in this fleet hour"s abandonment to love, the man"s spark of divinity flaring in momentary splendor,--a tragic candle, with divinity guttering and half-choked among the drossier particles, and with momentary splendor lighting man"s similitude to Him in Whose likeness man was created,--or whether you, more modernly, detect as prompting this surrender coa.r.s.e-fibred Nature, in the Prince of Lycia"s role (with all mankind her Troiluses to be cajoled into perpetuation of mankind), you have, in either event, conceded that to live unbefooled by love is at best a shuffling and debt-dodging business, and you have granted this unreasoned, transitory surrender to be the most high and, indeed, the one requisite action which living affords.
Beyond that is silence. If you succeed in proving love a species of madness, you have but demonstrated that there is something more profoundly pivotal than sanity, and for the sanest logician this is a disastrous gambit: whereas if, in well-nigh obsolete fashion, you confess the universe to be a weightier matter than the contents of your skull, and your wits a somewhat slender instrument wherewith to plumb infinity,--why, then you will recall that it is written _G.o.d is love_, and this recollection, too, is conducive to a fine taciturnity.
EXPLICIT LINEA AMORIS