Act 1 - Scene 1

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_ ACT I - SCENE I

[An old park with avenues of trees leading away in all directions. Directly in background of stage there is a sheet of water fringed by willow and poplar trees. On the right and left is a high box hedge formed in curves with the top clipped in grotesque shapes mostly of birds. A statue is placed in the centre of each hedge, and beneath the statues are seats.

When the curtain rises several courtiers are discovered wandering or sitting about. There is much laughing and whispering behind fans.]

2D COURTIER.
What an extraordinary evening! How calm the water is! It makes the swans look exactly like topaz clouds reflecting in a titanic mirror.

A LADY.
Yes. The sky is just as clear as the Queen's ear-rings of aquamarine. A storm could hardly blow up out of such blueness, so the masque is bound to be heavenly.

3D COURTIER
[approaching]

I hate to interrupt your celestial jargon with human speech, but does anybody know whether Phedro has been able to find the Prince and give him the Queen's command?

LADY
[answering with frigid distinction]

Probably not, but the Prince can never be found and is always forgiven. It is much to be loved in secret by a----

1ST COURTIER
[laying finger on his lips]

Hush!

2D COURTIER
[reprovingly]

At court one must try not to think aloud or one is perhaps overheard by
--[makes the motion of a blade across his throat].

2D LADY.
O nonsense! Why, Phedro confides in everybody, and so nobody ever believes him. Yet he is always quite right.

2D COURTIER.
He puts his nose into the dust that is swept out of great corners. Indeed he looks in unthinkable places, and finds the incredible.

1ST COURTIER.
Do you know what he told me lately?

LADY.
I am ailing with curiosity.

1ST COURTIER.
It was a fantastic tale about one of our own lot. Indeed about one wearing strawberry leaves and with two very young sons growing up, and she, apparently imagining the younger to be the living likeness, growing plainer every day, of a former indiscretion, gives directions to her favourite lackey to get rid of this wrong one and he, from spleen, gives the honest child away. The lady dies shortly after; the father never suspects anything. The bastard inherits, so the entire tragedy was in vain.

3D COURTIER
Fear is always absurd. You should be quite sure you are found out first; even then you have only to look rather sharply at anyone you fear in order to reduce Him. Indeed, the best of defences is presumption upon the brotherhood of sin.

A LADY.
O how true!

PHEDRO.
[A person of shifty, wizened visage enters. In a jocular tone.]

What is "O how true?"

[He glances about him.]
You are all looking very en rapport with the Almighty. In fact as if He had been telling you secrets. Did they concern me? I am always a prey to the desire of hearing what is said--just before and just after I am in a room.

1ST COURTIER.
[With much pomposity hiding his embarrassment.]

We were commanded to be in attendance on the Queen. Could you find Prince Charles? You were sent to find him, were you not?

PHEDRO
[nodding to the right]

I have achieved my significant purpose. The Prince is playing at croquet with the Duchess, and says when the Queen arrives to let him know.

1ST COURTIER.
He is very casual. How very indiscreet of him!--to show so plainly his passion for the Duchess.

PHEDRO.
Oh no! Mountains cannot knock one another down. They can only be blown up, from underneath
[smiles enigmatically]

1ST COURTIER.
You are difficult to follow.

PHEDRO.
My lord, I am speaking in metaphor. It is a dodge I learned from the poets.

3D COURTIER
I repeat, you are difficult and poetry is impossible to follow. However, poetry is no longer the fashion.

[Takes a pinch of snuff, and looks with agreeable enmity at 2D COURTIER.]

PHEDRO
[deprecatingly]

I merely try to match my words against your silks and laces, my lord. But--her Majesty is approaching.

[Enter the QUEEN, a sharp-featured, neurotic-looking woman. One of her Cabinet is speaking earnestly to her and she is paying him scant attention.]

MINISTER.
It is vitally necessary that we should discover upon what terms they would capitulate.

QUEEN.
Yes, and they must be heavily taxed for holding out so long. Imagine other people presuming to be patriotic. It simply draws everything out to such an absurd length. Ah, how irritable it makes me to think. Phedro, where is the Prince, where is Prince Charles?

[During the last of her speech she withdraws her arm from the Minister's, who, seeing there is no further hope of holding her attention, withdraws respectfully and quite unobserved.]

PHEDRO.
Attending impatiently the arrival of your Majesty upon the other side of the copse. I go to make him aware of your presence.

[He bows himself out, and the QUEEN looking anxiously in the direction of the vanishing PHEDRO espies PRINCE CHARLES and the DUCHESS upon a lawn.]

QUEEN.
[adjusting her lorgnette]

How silly people look playing croquet. The Duchess appears to me exactly like a bent hairpin.

2D COURTIER.
[Looking also in the direction of the DUCHESS and half admiringly.]

Indeed, Madame, her Grace is too tall to look well bending down.

QUEEN.
[turning upon him]

I hope you are not hiding a mud-sling in your silk swallow-tail. Perhaps you forget a courtier's principal duty should be the culture of tact, and tact is nothing whatever but helping me exaggerate my humours until I tire of them.

2D COURTIER.
Indeed, indeed, Madame, your Majesty's brilliance blinds my eyes with humility.

[Enter PRINCE CHARLES, a slender, exotic-looking gentleman.]

PRINCE.
Dear Cousin, how delicious you are looking--so royal and alert.

[He bends over her hand.]
Ah!

[His vitality seems suddenly to leave him at the thought.]
I have just been trying to lessen Josephine's habitual ennui by making her my victim at croquet.

QUEEN.
[With a slight lounge into sentimentality.]

I am sure she, like many others, is easily your victim--at croquet. But come, let us be alone, let us dismiss this chain of faces, they confine my thoughts. I would like to talk well, I would like to talk fantastically, that is, I wish you would think of something original for tonight's entertainment.

[She signals to the courtiers that they may leave.]

After all it is the prelude to your nuptials. Let us think of something to surprise Josephine.

PRINCE.
To surprise Josephine! But nothing could surprise Josephine.

QUEEN.
You are probably mistaken. I believe any reality would surprise her. All her life she has watched life passing in a mirror. She has never touched a thing--I think she has very curious hands. But let us----

[She perceives that some of the courtiers are still lingering about. Turns to them.]

I have several times intimated that you may disperse.

[Courtiers go out swiftly.]

[Looking at Prince wistfully.]
You can imagine that I am a little sad today. There is a mist between me and everything else, the gardens are dull, the flowers have lost their fragrance. A sirocco seems blowing up from the graves of all young people who have never been given a chance. Tell me, do you care much for Josephine?

CHARLES
[pompously]

My Cousin, my Sovereign, this marriage has been arranged, I presume in lieu of my lost brother, the Prince of Vaucluse, and apparently in order further to quilt your Majesty's exchequer.

QUEEN
[interrupting him]

Your poor brother; your poor brother; if it had been he, how much heartbreak I would have been spared.

PRINCE.
Which means, your Majesty?

QUEEN.
That I have been talking to myself, and you have been listening, which is ungallant, as if you were to let me put rouge on my nose instead of on my cheeks without stopping me.

PRINCE.
[Rather uneasily returning to a favourite subject.]

Well, your Majesty, now I have accustomed myself so long to the idea of my marriage that it gives me pleasure and calm to dwell on it, especially when I gaze upon Josephine's tapering regality--then I am most inclined to think your esteemed father, our former King, was wise in recommending it, and that Fate was not too unkind in disposing of my half-brother in her own mysterious way.

[He smiles rather unpleasantly.]

QUEEN.
[Who has not attended the last part of his speech.]

Yes. To provide at one clip for her--the child of his love, and for me, the result of his duty, proved him a parent, a statesman, and, tonight, I am a little inclined to think, a blackguard. However, you know this marriage has none of my command in it and there are many ways out.

[PHEDRO invisible to the QUEEN and the PRINCE slides into the shadow of a giant oak tree.]

PRINCE.
You mean if either of us----

QUEEN.
That if any charge of unworthiness could be brought by either of you against the other, then it would be my duty even at the last hour----

PRINCE
[suddenly]

Well, unfortunately, my various dissipations have only rendered me romantic in the eyes of your court, and as for Josephine----

QUEEN.
Ah, her appearance gives no clue to her mind
[with an attempted lightness],
save occasionally there is too much scent on her cambric.

PRINCE.
Why do you dislike Josephine?

QUEEN.
I do not dislike her, but she behaves unbecomingly. She is very arrogant. Arrogance does not become a bastard.

PRINCE
[in a teasing vein]

You do dislike her. You hate her, even though she is your half-sister, but I find her enchanting. I adore her cold, slender finger tips and the perfection of her contemptuous profile. She moves exactly like a swan.

QUEEN
[trying to control her emotion]

At last you are giving yourself entirely away. I am hearing what I know. Ugh! how doubly unpleasant!

PRINCE.
Why should I not give myself away to you, Cousin?

QUEEN.
You mean I am powerless to harm either of you.

PRINCE.
Why should you wish to harm us?

QUEEN.
There are many things you might not understand; for instance, there is a love that is half hatred. It is sprinkled into life in a rather strange manner--by wounds. However, I am becoming sentimental and I hate sentimentality. It reminds me of people with colds in their heads who have lost their pocket handkerchiefs.

PRINCE.
[in evident uneasiness]

Madame, your eloquence is remarkable, but to say that you are mysterious is all that I dare to say.

QUEEN.
You dare to say what you want to say
[bitterly].
You have courage enough to satisfy your curiosities like everybody else, but I have always noticed that when people are not curious their manners become extraordinary. However, we are forgetting about the fete. Let us call Phedro.

PRINCE
[bowing]

With pleasure.

[He calls. PHEDRO emerges after a few seconds at an entirely different angle from the place where he was concealed.]

PHEDRO.
Majesty.

QUEEN.
[Addressing him in a peremptory voice.]

It is my wish that you should think of something bizarre to be included in the festivities of tonight. The Prince and myself do not seem able to put our minds on it.

PHEDRO.
I think most certainly, Majesty, there should be something bizarre about these festivities, but Majesty----

[He makes her a low bow.]

QUEEN
[interrogatively]

Yes?

PHEDRO
[sliding up to her]

Could I beg a moment alone with your Majesty? For it would be my humble view that both fiances share the surprise.

QUEEN.
[Turning to the PRINCE with a gesture of dismissal.]

Go along, Charles. At any rate you have a sort of sleight-of-hand manner of looking at your watch that makes me rather nervous.

PRINCE.
[Taking her hand, and becoming mischievously eloquent with relief.]

Then, au revoir, my Cousin. When this garish day is drowned in the sapphire pool of night, and we are all like pallid flowers tossed upon moody currents of mysterious desire, perhaps--who knows? our petals may touch in that tender gloom of night and music.

[Bends tenderly, whimsically over her hand.]

QUEEN.
[Gazing after his exit enraptured, once more hopeful, then turning to PHEDRO.]

Ah, Phedro, what joy there is in being foolish!

PHEDRO.
Pleasure has two extremes, Madame. One is to have your lover in your arms, the other is to have him in your power.

QUEEN
[pacing up and down]

I must have one or the other. What can be done. Think for me, advise me. I am too unstrung to think for myself. When one wants a thing very much, everything blurs.

PHEDRO.
There are many voices whispering all together in my mind. In a little perhaps one will be louder than the rest--then we may plan.

QUEEN.
But the fete. We are continually forgetting about the fete.

PHEDRO.
[Thinking, with his finger against his lips.]

Out of one purpose often comes another perfected.

QUEEN.
You are talking in enigmas, and it is growing late. See how long and slender the poplar shadows are getting on the grass. When the wind and sun touch them they look a little like obelisks flashed over with strange writings.

PHEDRO.
Your Majesty is adding the accomplishment of a poet to the genius of a sovereign.

QUEEN
[shivering]

No, I would not like to be a poet. They are always dying of ennui or madness. But, Phedro, to the point.

PHEDRO
[suddenly]

Majesty, some mountebanks arrived at the park lodge last night. They crave to play before your Majesty.

QUEEN
[coming out of a reverie]

Are they dancers, or do they act plays?

PHEDRO.
Their performance I understand is peculiar. One of them is blind, the other is deformed in some way. With them is a doctor of philosophy, one who heals the scars of flesh or heart with powders or words befitting the case.

QUEEN
[wanly]

They do not sound original.

PHEDRO.
And yet from the effect they stir there must be something. It appears the clown causes those who are incurably sad to faint with laughter.

QUEEN.
It would be charming to laugh, to be unable to help laughing. Have them sent to my porter in the northern wing and I will interview them before the masque. Ah, here comes the Duchess leaning upon her Prince's arm. I must say she looks as if there might be something more amusing to lean upon.

[Enter JOSEPHINE and the PRINCE.]

QUEEN.
Well, Josephine.

DUCHESS.
Well, my sister.

[Sighs and stoops over a bed of heliotrope.]

QUEEN.
Why are you so melancholy, Josephine? You are standing in the portals of joy--I confess they do not appear very much to intrigue you.

DUCHESS.
Possibly I am melancholy because I am not curious.

QUEEN
[sarcastically]

No, rocks could hardly be curious about the waves or the wrecks washing against them. Come, Phedro.

[She goes. PRINCE bows after the QUEEN and then comes back to the DUCHESS.]

PRINCE.
Beauty like yours is a penance for other women to regard. You are very like an exquisite temple in which there is no god. Yet I would not put a god in your temple.

DUCHESS
[rather bored]

No? What would you put there?

PRINCE.
In the very centre of your temple I would place a faun with swift, strange limbs, crisp, serpentine hair, and the smile of a demon.

DUCHESS
[turning to him slowly]

The smile of a demon? I think that would be enchanting. Ah, how tired I am, I think I will go and rest. What in the world is one tired from? What does one rest for----

[She pauses in rather a lost manner.]

PRINCE.
Yes, do go and rest, for tomorrow you must be radiant as a new-blown flower in the first rays of the sun.

DUCHESS.
[Turning to him with a faint curiosity.]

I suppose that afterwards my appearance will please you, even if my spirits are never particularly high.

PRINCE.
I do not care about your spirits. I do not care about your soul. I love the pliant rippling motion of your pensive youth. I love your imperial beauty, for it throws open the last sealed chambers of my own fancy.

DUCHESS.
Fancy--fancy--I have fancied so many things.

[The sound of an approaching flute is heard together with the creaking of a carriage.]

A strange sound, what can it be?

[During the ensuing speeches the creaking and the flute come nearer.]

PRINCE.
Josephine, our life together will be exquisite. It will be as the lives of the Romans in Greece--a bacchanale of peculiar formalities. We will bury conscience in the poppy-haunted air of exhausting revelry. We will----

DUCHESS.
O Charles, you talk exactly like those men who design my dresses, but look----

[Her eyes are riveted upon a curious cavalcade crossing from right to left of stage, first a very small house on wheels drawn by a large wolf-dog; at its side, walking, an old man, his head bent in deep thought. He wears the cap and gown of a doctor of philosophy. After him, with dark hair falling almost to the ground about her pallid face, is walking a girl of extraordinary beauty. She is looking rigidly ahead of her and is being guided by a white ribbon suspended from the back of the cart. A few paces behind her comes a sinuous, coffee-skinned slave girl with that erect majesty of one who has worn crowns or carried water pitchers through generations. Behind the slave follows the flute player, a mountebank, horribly twisted in some manner not visible in the twilight. The PRINCE, who has permitted the carriage to go by him in a wonderment intensified by the beauty of the blind girl, walks over to the mountebank.]

PRINCE
[arrogantly]

Who are you all? What are you doing here?

[Instead of answering, the mountebank hastily puts his flute into his pocket and executes a handspring, the third taking him altogether behind the scene, while from the front of the cavalcade, comes a high, cracked voice in answer to the PRINCE'S question.]

A VOICE.
We are players, your Highness, mountebanks commanded for the pleasure of the Queen.

[The DUCHESS has grown very white and is standing with her hand pressing her heart.]

DUCHESS.
What was that tune he played upon his flute, and what dreadful thing was the matter with him?

PRINCE.
I do not know, but as she walked by her face was beautiful. It was like a prayer coming into the presence of God.

DUCHESS
[regarding the PRINCE sharply]

Really? What can be speaking in you? Surely not yourself?

[She laughs shrilly and exits. The flute continues to play. The PRINCE absorbed, unheeding her departure, stands looking after the mountebanks.]

CURTAIN _

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