_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 comédie 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 classic 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, assuredly, 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
assurances 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 noble 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 ass: 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
anticipated 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 assert 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 coarse-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 _God is love_,
and this recollection, too, is conducive to a fine taciturnity.
EXPLICIT LINEA AMORIS