Pevensey. "It was one of her New Year's gifts, from Robert Cecil. Hers
is, I believe, not quite so fine as either of yours; but then, they tell
me, there is not the like of this pair in England, nor indeed on the
hither side of Cataia."
He set the two pieces of Chinese pottery upon the shelves in the south
corner of the room. These cups were of that sea-green tint called
céladon, with a very wonderful glow and radiance. Such oddities were the
last vogue at court in this year of grace 1593: and Cynthia could not
but speculate as to what monstrous sum Lord Pevensey had paid for this
his last gift to her.
Now he turned, smiling, a really superb creature in his blue and gold.
"I had another message from the Queen--"
"George," Cynthia said, with fond concern, "it frightens me to see you
thus foolhardy, in tempting alike the Queen's anger and the Plague."
"Eh, as goes the Plague, it spares nine out of ten," he answered,
lightly. "The Queen, I grant you, is another pair of sleeves, for an
irritated Tudor spares nobody."
But Cynthia Allonby kept silence, and did not exactly smile, while she
appraised her famous young kinsman. She was flattered by, and a little
afraid of, the gay self-confidence which led anybody to take such
chances. Two weeks ago it was that the painted terrible old Queen had
named Lord Pevensey to go straightway into France, where rumour had it,
King Henri was preparing to renounce the Reformed Religion, and making
his peace with the Pope: and for two weeks Pevensey had lingered, on one
pretence or another, at his house in London, with the Plague creeping
about the city like an invisible incalculable flame, and the Queen
asking questions at Windsor. Of all the monarchs that had ever reigned
in England, Elizabeth was the least used to having her orders
disregarded. Meanwhile Lord Pevensey came every day to the Marquis of
Falmouth's lodgings at Deptford; and every day Lord Pevensey pointed out
to the marquis's daughter that Pevensey, whose wife had died in
childbirth a year back, did not intend to go into France, for nobody
could foretell how long a stay, as a widower. Certainly it was all very
flattering ...
"Yes, and you would be an excellent match," said Cynthia, aloud, "if
that were all. And yet, what must I reasonably expect in marrying, sir,
the famous Earl of Pevensey?"
"A great deal of love and petting, my dear. And if there were anything
else to which you had a fancy, I would get it for you."
Her glance went to those lovely cups and lingered fondly. "Yes, dear
Master Generosity, if it could be purchased or manufactured, you would
get it for me--"
"If it exists I will get it for you," he declared.
"I think that it exists. But I am not learned enough to know what it is.
George, if I married you I would have money and fine clothes and soft
hours and many lackeys to wait on me, and honour from all men. And you
would be kind to me, I know when you returned from the day's work at
Windsor--or Holyrood or the Louvre. But do you not see that I would
always be to you only a rather costly luxury, like those cups, which the
Queen's minister could afford to keep for his hours of leisure?"
He answered: "You are all in all to me. You know it. Oh, very well do
you know and abuse your power, you adorable and lovely baggage, who have
kept me dancing attendance for a fortnight, without ever giving me an
honest yes or no." He gesticulated. "Well, but life is very dull in
Deptford village, and it amuses you to twist a Queen's adviser around
your finger! I see it plainly, you minx, and I acquiesce because, it
delights me to give you pleasure, even at the cost of some dignity. Yet
I may no longer shirk the Queen's business,--no, not even to amuse you,
my dear."
"You said you had heard from her--again?"
"I had this morning my orders, under Glorianna's own fair hand, either
to depart to-morrow into France or else to come to-morrow to Windsor. I
need not say that in the circumstances I consider France the more
wholesome."
Now the girl's voice was hurt and wistful. "So, for the thousandth time,
is it proven the Queen's business means more to you than I do. Yes,
certainly it is just as I said, George."
He observed, unruffled: "My dear, I scent unreason. This is a high
matter. If the French King compounds with Rome, it means war for
Protestant England. Even you must see that."
She replied, sadly: "Yes, even I! oh, certainly, my lord, even a
half-witted child of seventeen can perceive as much as that."
"I was not speaking of half-witted persons, as I remember. Well, it
chances that I am honoured by the friendship of our gallant Béarnais,
and am supposed to have some claim upon him, thanks to my good fortune
last year in saving his life from the assassin Barrière. It chances that
I may perhaps become, under providence, the instrument of preserving my
fellow countrymen from much grief and trumpet-sounding and
throat-cutting. Instead of pursuing that chance, two weeks ago--as was
my duty--I have dangled at your apron-strings, in the vain hope of
softening the most variable and hardest heart in the world. Now,
clearly, I have not the right to do that any longer."
She admired the ennobled, the slightly rapt look which, she knew,
denoted that George Bulmer was doing his duty as he saw it, even in her
disappointment. "No, you have not the right. You are wedded to your
state-craft, to your patriotism, to your self-advancement, or christen
it what you will. You are wedded, at all events, to your man's business.
You have not time for such trifles as giving a maid that foolish and
lovely sort of wooing to which every maid looks forward in her heart of
hearts. Indeed, when you married the first time it was a kind of
infidelity; and I am certain that poor dear mouse-like Mary must have
felt that often and over again. Why, do you not see, George, even now,
that your wife will always come second to your real love?"
"In my heart, dear sophist, you will always come first. But it is not
permitted that any loyal gentleman devote every hour of his life to
sighing and making sonnets, and to the general solacing of a maid's
loneliness in this dull little Deptford. Nor would you, I am sure,
desire me to do so."
"I hardly know what I desire," she told him ruefully. "But I know that
when you talk of your man's business I am lonely and chilled and far
away from you. And I know that I cannot understand more than half your
fine high notions about duty and patriotism and serving England and so
on," the girl declared: and she flung wide her lovely little hands, in a
despairing gesture. "I admire you, sir, when you talk of England. It
makes you handsomer--yes, even handsomer!--somehow. But all the while I
am remembering that England is just an ordinary island inhabited by a
number of ordinary persons, for the most of whom I have no particular
feeling one way or the other.".
Pevensey looked at her for a while with queer tenderness. Then he
smiled. "No, I could not quite make you understand, my dear. But, ah,
why fuddle that quaint little brain by trying to understand such matters
as lie without your realm? For a woman's kingdom is the home, my dear,
and her throne is in the heart of her husband--"
"All this is but another way of saying your lordship would have us cups
upon a shelf," she pointed out--"in readiness for your leisure."
He shrugged, said "Nonsense!" and began more lightly to talk of other
matters. Thus and thus he would do in France, such and such trinkets he
would fetch back--"as toys for the most whimsical, the loveliest and the
most obstinate child in all the world," he phrased it. And they would be
married, Pevensey declared, in September: nor (he gaily said) did he
propose to have any further argument about it. Children should be
seen--the proverb was dusty, but it particularly applied to pretty
children.
Cynthia let him talk. She was just a little afraid of his self
confidence, and of this tall nobleman's habit of getting what he wanted,
in the end: but she dispiritedly felt that Pevensey had failed her. He
treated her as a silly infant: and his want of her, even in that
capacity, was a secondary matter: he was going into France, for all his
petting talk, and was leaving her to shift as she best might, until he
could spare the time to resume his love-making....
II
WHAT COMES OF SCRIBBLING
Now when Pevensey had gone the room seemed darkened by the withdrawal of
so much magnificence. Cynthia watched from the window as the tall earl
rode away, with three handsomely clad retainers. Yes, George was very
fine and admirable, no doubt of it: even so, there was relief in the
reflection that for a month or two she was rid of him.
Turning, she faced a lean dishevelled man who stood by the Magdalen
tapestry scratching his chin. He had unquiet bright eyes, this
out-at-elbows poet whom a marquis's daughter was pleased to patronize,
and his red hair to-day was unpardonably puzzled. Nor were his manners
beyond reproach, for now, without saying anything, he too went to the
window. He dragged one foot a little as he walked.
"So my lord Pevensey departs! Look how he rides in triumph! like lame
Tamburlaine, with Techelles and Usumcasane and Theridamas to attend him,
and with the sunset turning the dust raised by their horses' hoofs into
a sort of golden haze about them. It is a beautiful world. And truly,
Mistress Cyn," the poet said, reflectively, "that Pevensey is a very
splendid ephemera. If not a king himself, at least he goes magnificently
to settle the affairs of kings. Were modesty not my failing Mistress
Cyn, I would acclaim you as strangely lucky, in being beloved by two
fine fellows that have not their like in England."
"Truly you are not always thus modest, Kit Marlowe--"
"But, Lord, how seriously Pevensey takes it all! and himself in
particular! Why, there departs from us, in befitting state, a personage
whose opinion as to every topic in the world is written legibly in the
carriage of those fine shoulders, even when seen from behind and from so
considerable a distance. And in not one syllable do any of these
opinions differ from the opinions of his great-great-grandfathers. Oho,
and hark to Deptford! now all the oafs in the Corn-market are cheering
this bulwark of Protestant England, this rising young hero of a people
with no nonsense about them. Yes, it is a very quaint and rather
splendid ephemera."
A marquis's daughter could not quite approve of the way in which this
shoemaker's son, however talented, railed at his betters. "Pevensey will
be the greatest man in these kingdoms some day. Indeed, Kit Marlowe,
there are those who say he is that much already."
"Oh very probably! Still, I am puzzled by human greatness. A century
hence what will he matter, this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension
will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have
given place to other foolish battles and treaties and oblivion will have
swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately
ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island,
whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what
does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the
subject of a drama? Hah, softly though! for does even that very greatly
matter? Who really cares to-day about what scratches were made upon wax
by that old Euripides, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy to
unloose? No, not quite worthy, as yet!"
And thereupon the shabby fellow sat down in the tall leather-covered
chair which Pevensey had just vacated: and this Marlowe nodded his
flaming head portentously. "Hoh, look you, I am displeased, Mistress
Cyn, I cannot lend my approval to this over-greedy oblivion that gapes
for all. No, it is not a satisfying arrangement that I should teeter
insecurely through the void on a gob of mud, and be expected bye and bye
to relinquish even that crazy foothold. Even for Kit Marlowe death lies
in wait! and it may be, not anything more after death, not even any
lovely words to play with. Yes, and this Marlowe may amount to nothing,
after all: and his one chance of amounting to that which he intends may
be taken away from him at any moment!"
He touched the breast of a weather-beaten doublet. He gave her that
queer twisted sort of smile which the girl could not but find
attractive, somehow. He said: "Why but this heart thumping here inside
me may stop any moment like a broken clock. Here is Euripides writing
better than I: and here in my body, under my hand, is the mechanism upon
which depend all those masterpieces that are to blot the Athenian from
the reckoning, and I have no control of it!"
"Indeed, I fear that you control few things," she told him, "and that
least of all do you control your taste for taverns and bad women. Oh, I
hear tales of you!" And Cynthia raised a reproving fore-finger.
"True tales, no doubt." He shrugged. "Lacking the moon he vainly cried
for, the child learns to content himself with a penny whistle."
"Ah, but the moon is far away," the girl said, smiling--"too far to hear
the sound of human crying: and besides, the moon, as I remember it, was
never a very amorous goddess--"
"Just so," he answered: "also she was called Cynthia, and she, too, was
beautiful."
"Yet is it the heart that cries to me, my poet?" she asked him, softly,
"or just the lips?"
"Oh, both of them, most beautiful and inaccessible of goddesses." Then
Marlowe leaned toward her, laughing and shaking that disreputable red
head. "Still you are very foolish, in your latest incarnation, to be
wasting your rays upon carpet earls who will not outwear a century. Were
modesty not my failing, I repeat, I could name somebody who will last
longer. Yes, and--if, but I lacked that plaguey virtue--I would advise
you to go a-gypsying with that nameless somebody, so that two manikins
might snatch their little share of the big things that are eternal, just
as the butterfly fares intrepidly and joyously, with the sun for his
torch-boy, through a universe wherein thought cannot estimate the
unimportance of a butterfly, and wherein not even the chaste moon is
very important. Yes, certainly I would advise you to have done with this
vanity of courts and masques, of satins and fans and fiddles, this
dallying with tinsels and bright vapours; and very movingly I would
exhort you to seek out Arcadia, travelling hand in hand with that still
nameless somebody." And of a sudden the restless man began to sing.
Sang Kit Marlowe:
"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods or sleepy mountain yields.
"And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals--"
But the girl shook her small, wise head decisively. "That is all very
fine, but, as it happens, there is no such place as this Arcadia, where
people can frolic in perpetual sunlight the year round, and find their
food and clothing miraculously provided. No, nor can you, I am afraid,
give me what all maids really, in their heart of hearts, desire far
more than any sugar-candy Arcadia. Oh, as I have so often told you, Kit,
I think you love no woman. You love words. And your seraglio is tenanted
by very beautiful words, I grant you, thought there is no longer any
Sestos builded of agate and crystal, either, Kit Marlowe. For, as you
may perceive, sir, I have read all that lovely poem you left with me
last Thursday--"
She saw how interested he was, saw how he almost smirked. "Aha, so you
think it not quite bad, eh, the conclusion of my 'Hero and Leander'?"
"It is your best. And your middlemost, my poet, is better than aught
else in English," she said, politely, and knowing how much he delighted
to hear such remarks.
"Come, I retract my charge of foolishness, for you are plainly a wench
of rare discrimination. And yet you say I do not love you! Cynthia, you
are beautiful, you are perfect in all things. You are that heavenly
Helen of whom I wrote, some persons say, acceptably enough--How strange
it was I did not know that Helen was dark-haired and pale! for certainly
yours is that immortal loveliness which must be served by poets in life
and death."
"And I wonder how much of these ardours," she thought, "is kindled by my
praise of his verses?" She bit her lip, and she regarded him with a hint
of sadness. She said, aloud: "But I did not, after all, speak to Lord
Pevensey concerning the printing of your poem. Instead, I burned your
'Hero and Leander'."
She saw him jump, as under a whip-lash. Then he smiled again, in that
wry fashion of his. "I lament the loss to letters, for it was my only
copy. But you knew that."
"Yes, Kit, I knew it was your only copy."
"Oho! and for what reason did you burn it, may one ask?"
"I thought you loved it more than you loved me. It was my rival, I
thought--" The girl was conscious of remorse, and yet it was remorse
commingled with a mounting joy.
"And so you thought a jingle scribbled upon a bit of paper could be
your rival with me!"
Then Cynthia no longer doubted, but gave a joyous little sobbing laugh,
for the love of her disreputable dear poet was sustaining the stringent
testing she had devised. She touched his freckled hand caressingly, and
her face was as no man had ever seen it, and her voice, too, caressed
him.
"Ah, you have made me the happiest of women, Kit! Kit, I am almost
disappointed in you, though, that you do not grieve more for the loss of
that beautiful poem."
His smiling did not waver; yet the lean, red-haired man stayed
motionless. "Do I appear perturbed?" he said. "Why, but see how lightly
I take the destruction of my life-work in this, my masterpiece! For I
can assure you it was a masterpiece, the fruit of two years' toil and of
much loving repolishment--"
"Ah, but you love me better than such matters, do you not?" she asked
him, tenderly. "Kit Marlowe, I adore you! Sweetheart, do you not
understand that a woman wants to be loved utterly and entirely? She
wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of
poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have
been half envious, dear, of your Heros and your Helens, and your other
good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I
will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy; and my
poet shall write me some more lovely poems, so he shall--"
He said "You fool!"
And she drew away from him, for this man was no longer smiling.
"You burned my 'Hero and Leander'! You! you big-eyed fool! You lisping
idiot! you wriggling, cuddling worm! you silken bag of guts! had not
even you the wit to perceive it was immortal beauty which would have
lived long after you and I were stinking dirt? And you, a half-witted
animal, a shining, chattering parrot, lay claws to it!" Marlowe had
risen in a sort of seizure, in a condition which was really quite
unreasonable when you considered that only a poem was at stake, even a
rather long poem.
And Cynthia began to smile, with tremulous hurt-looking young lips. "So
my poet's love is very much the same as Pevensey's love! And I was
right, after all."
"Oh, oh!" said Marlowe, "that ever a poet should love a woman! What
jokes does the lewd flesh contrive!" Of a sudden he was calmer: and then
rage fell from him like a dropped cloak and he viewed her as with
respectful wonder. "Why, but you sitting there, with goggling innocent
bright eyes, are an allegory of all that is most droll and tragic. Yes,
and indeed there is no reason to blame you. It is not your fault that
every now and then is born a man who serves an idea which is to him the
most important thing in the world. It is not your fault that this man
perforce inhabits a body to which the most important thing in the world
is a woman. Certainly it is not your fault that this compost makes yet
another jumble of his two desires, and persuades himself that the two
are somehow allied. The woman inspires, the woman uplifts, the woman
strengthens him for his high work, saith he! Well, well, perhaps there
are such women, but by land and sea I have encountered none of them."
All this was said while Marlowe shuffled about the room, with bent
shoulders, and nodding his tousled red head, and limping as he walked.
Now Marlowe turned, futile and shabby-looking, just where Pevensey had
loomed resplendent a while since. Again she saw the poet's queer,
twisted, jeering smile.
"What do you care for my ideals? What do you care for the ideals of that
tall earl whom you have held from his proper business for a fortnight?
or for the ideals of any man alive? Why, not one thread of that dark
hair, not one snap of those white little fingers, except when ideals
irritate you by distracting a man's attention from Cynthia Allonby.
Otherwise, he is welcome enough to play with his incomprehensible toys."
He jerked a thumb toward the shelves behind him.
"Oho, you virtuous pretty ladies! what all you value is such matters as
those cups: they please the eye, they are worth sound money, and people
envy you the possession of them. So you cherish your shiny mud cups, and
you burn my 'Hero and Leander': and I declaim all this dull nonsense,
over the ashes of my ruined dreams, thinking at bottom of how pretty you
are, and of how much I would like to kiss you. That is the real tragedy,
the immortal tragedy, that I should still hanker after you, my
Cynthia--"
His voice dwelt tenderly upon her name. His fever-haunted eyes were
tender, too, for just a moment. Then he grimaced.
"No, I am wrong--the tragedy strikes deeper. The root of it is that
there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do
harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the
whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and
delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve
ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even
having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. You
are, when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg
whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures
whom poets--oh, and in youth all men are poets!--whom poets, now and
always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. No,
I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever
suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless. So in logic I must
retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint or reproach,
endeavour to bid you a somewhat more civil farewell."
She had regarded him, throughout this preposterous and uncalled-for
harangue, with sad composure, with a forgiving pity. Now she asked him,
very quietly, "Where are you going, Kit?"
"To the Golden Hind, O gentle, patient and unjustly persecuted virgin
martyr!" he answered, with an exaggerated how--"since that is the part
in which you now elect to posture."
"Not to that low, vile place again!"
"But certainly I intend in that tavern to get tipsy as quickly as
possible: for then the first woman I see will for the time become the
woman whom I desire and who exists nowhere." And with that the
red-haired man departed, limping and singing as he went to look for a
trull in a pot-house.
Sang Kit Marlowe:
"And I will make her beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
"A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold--"
III
ECONOMICS OF EGERIA
She sat quite still when Marlowe had gone.
"He will get drunk again," she thought despondently. "Well, and why
should it matter to me if he does, after all that outrageous ranting? He
has been unforgivably insulting--Oh, but none the less, I do not want to
have him babbling of the roses and gold of that impossible fairy world
which the poor, frantic child really believes in, to some painted woman
of the town who will laugh at him. I loathe the thought of her laughing
at him--and kissing him! His notions are wild foolishness; but I at
least wish that they were not foolishness, and that hateful woman will
not care one way or the other."