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SCENE V
Ismenia’s antechamber.
ISMENIA waiting It is too dark. I can see nothing. Hark! Surely it was the door that fastened then. My heart, control thyself! Thou beat’st too quickly And wilt break in the arms of happiness. Brigida.
BRIGIDA Here. Enter, my lord, and take her.
ANTONIO Ismenia!
ISMENIA Antonio! Oh Antonio!
ANTONIO My heart’s dearest!
BRIGIDA
Bring your wit this way. Sir. Exit with Basil.
ISMENIA
O not thus! You shame me.
ANTONIO
I cannot suffer Page – 865
Have hallowed it. Highest were low for you.
ISMENIA Alas, Antonio, this is not the way. I fear you do not love me, you despise me. Come, do you not despise me?
ANTONIO
The leaf might then
ISMENIA
Then you must take me,
ANTONIO
Must I ? I will then. Yet you are so queenly,
ISMENIA Do, sweet.
ANTONIO
Lay your head
ISMENIA
Alas, Page – 866 To bear at most a limited monarchy.
ANTONIO No murmuring. Answer my questions.
ISMENIA Well, That’s easy and I will.
ANTONIO And truly.
ISMENIA Oh, But that’s almost impossible. I’ll try.
ANTONIO Come, when did you first love me ?
ISMENIA Dear, today.
ANTONIO When will you marry me?
ISMENIA Tomorrow, dear.
ANTONIO
Here is a mutinous kingdom to my hands.
ISMENIA
Truly then, seven days ago, Page – 867 I was an empty thing until today. I saw you daily, but because I feared What now I know, you were Lord Beltran’s son I dared not ask your name, nay shut my ears To knowledge. O my love, I am afraid Your father seems a hard vindictive man. What will you do with me, Antonio ?
ANTONIO
Fasten
ISMENIA
When ’tis your voice that tells me, I believe
ANTONIO
Yes, even as Adam was
ISMENIA Alas, you flatter. Did you love me, Antonio ?
ANTONIO Three days before I had the bliss to win Page – 868 The wonder of your eyes.
ISMENIA
Three days! Oh me,
ANTONIO Three days, dearest. ISMENIA Oh,
You’re made me jealous. I am angry. Three
ANTONIO
I will make
ISMENIA
O not even in jest, Antonio,
ANTONIO One passes in the street.
ISMENIA
We are
Page – 869 Exeunt. After a while enter Brigida.
BRIGIDA No sound ? Señor! Ismenia! Surely they cannot have embraced each other into invisibility. No, Cupid has flown away with them. It cannot have been the devil, for I smell no brimstone. Well, if they are so tedious I will not mortify myself with solitude either. I have set Don Cerberus on the stairs out of respect for the mythology. There he stands with his sword at point like the picture of a sentinel and protects us against a surprise of rats from the cellar; for what other wild beasts there may be to menace us, I know not. Don Mario snores hard and Donna Clara plays the violin to his bassoon. I have heard them three rooms off. These men! these men! and yet they call themselves our masters. I would I could find a man fit to measure tongues with me. I begin to feel lonely in the Alpine elevation of my own wit. The meditations of Matterhorn come home to me and I feel a sister to Monte Rosa. Certainly this woman’s fever is catching, and spreads a most calamitous infection. I have over- heard myself sighing; it is a symptom incubatory. Heighho! when turtles pair, I never heard that the magpie lives lonely. I have at this moment a kindly thought for all suffering animals. I begin to pity Cerberus even. I will relieve him from guard. Hist! Señor! Don Basil! Enter Basil. Is all quiet?
BASIL Not a mouse stirring!
BRIGIDA Put up your sword, pray you; I think there is no danger, and if one comes, you may draw again in time to cut its tail off. BASIL At your service, Señorita. If it were not treason to my wit, I begin to feel this strip of a girl is making an ass of me. I am transformed;
Page – 870 I feel it. I shall hear myself bray presently. But I will defy enchantment, I will handle her. A plague! Must I continually be stale-mated by a will-o’-the-wisp, all sparkle and nowhere? Courage, Basil.
BRIGIDA You meditate, Señor? If it be to allay the warmth you have brought from the stairs, with the coolness of reflection, I would not hinder you.
BASIL In bare truth, Señorita, I am so chilled that I was even about to beg of you a most sweet and warming cordial.
BRIGIDA For a small matter like that, I would be loth to deny you. You shall have it immediately.
BASIL With your permission, then.
BRIGIDA Ah, Señor, beware. Living coals are dangerous; they burn, Señor.
BASIL I am proof.
BRIGIDA
As the man said when he was bitten by the dog they thought mad;
but it was the dog that died. Pray, Sir, have a care. You will
BASIL Come, I have you. I will take ten kisses for the one you refused me this forenoon. Page – 871
BRIGIDA That is too compound an interest. I do entreat you. Sir, have a care. This usury is punishable by the law.
BASIL I have the rich man’s trick for that. With the very coin I have unlawfully gathered, I will stop her mouth.
BRIGIDA O Sir, you are as wasteful an accountant of kisses as of words. I foresee you will go bankrupt. No more, Señor, what noise was that on the stair ? Good, now you have your distance. I will even trouble you to keep it. No nearer, I tell you. You do not observe the laws of the duello. You take advantages.
BASIL With me? Pooh, you grow ambitious. Because I knew that to stop your mouth was to stop your life, therefore in pity I have refused your encounter.
BRIGIDA Was it, truly ? Alas, I could weep to think of the violence you have done yourself for my sake. Pray, sir, do not torture your-self so. To see how goodness is misunderstood in this world! Out of pity? And made me take you for a fool!
BASIL Well.
BRIGIDA O no, Señor, it is not well, indeed it is not well. You shall not do this again. If I must die, I must die. You are scatheless. Pray now, disburden your intellect of all the brilliant things it has so painfully kept to itself. Plethora is unwholesome and I would not have you perish of an apoplexy of wit. Pour it out on me, conceit, epigram, irony, satire, vituperation; flout and invective, tuquoque Page – 872 and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it.
BASIL St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate.
BRIGIDA Pray, do not be afraid. I do not indeed press you to throw yourself at my head, but for a small matter like your wit, I will bear up against it.
BASIL This girl has a devil.
BRIGIDA Why are you silent, Señor ? Are you angry with me ? I have given you no cause. This is cruel. Don Basil, I have heard you cited everywhere for absolutely the most free and witty speaker of the age. They told me that if none other offer, you will jest with the statues in the Plaza Mayor and so wittily they cannot answer a word to you. What have I done that with me alone you are dumb?
BASIL I am bewitched certainly.
BRIGIDA Señor, is it still pity? But why on me alone? O Sir, have pity on the whole world and be always silent. Well I see your benevolence is unconquerable. With your leave, we will pass from unprofitable talk; I would be glad to recall the sound of your voice. You may come nearer, since you decline the duello.
BASIL I thank you, Señorita. Whose sheep baaed then? Page – 873
BRIGIDA Don Basil, shall we talk soberly?
BASIL At your pleasure. Madam.
BRIGIDA No Madam, Señor, but a poor companion. You go to Count Beltran’s house tomorrow?
BASIL It is so intended.
BRIGIDA O the masque, who play it?
BASIL Masquers, Señorita.
BRIGIDA O Sir, is this your pity? I told you, you would burst if you kept in your wit too long. But who are they by condition ? Goddesses are the characters and by rule modern they should be live goddesses who play them.
BASIL They are so.
BRIGIDA Are they indeed so lovely?
BASIL Euphrosyne, Christofir’s daughter, is simply the most exquisite beauty of the kingdom.
BRIGIDA You speak very absolutely, Señor. Fairer than Ismenia? Page – 874
BASIL I speak it with unwillingness, but honestly the Lady Ismenia, rarely lovely as she is, could not stand beside this miller’s daughter.
BRIGIDA I think I have seen her and I do not remember so outshining a beauty.
BASIL Then cannot you have seen her, for the wonders she eclipses, themselves speak to their disgrace, even when they are women.
BRIGIDA Pardon me if I take you to speak in the pitch of a lover’s eulogy.
BASIL Were it so, her beauty and gentleness deserve it; I have seen none worthier.
BRIGIDA I wish you joy of her. I pray you for permission to leave you, Señor.
BASIL Save one indeed.
BRIGIDA Ah! and who was she?
BASIL You will pardon me.
BRIGIDA I will not press you. Sir, I do not know her, do I?
BASIL O ’tis not so much as that either. ‘Twas only an orange-girl I Page – 875 saw once at Cadiz.
BRIGIDA Oh!
BASIL Ha! she is galled, positively. This is as sweet to me as honey.
BRIGIDA Well, Señor, your taste is as undeniable as your wit. Flour is the staff of life and oranges are good for a season. What does this paragon play?
BASIL
Venus; and in the after-scene, Helen.
BRIGIDA So? May I know the others? You may find one of them to be a poor cousin of mine.
BASIL Catriona, the bailly’s daughter to Count Conrad, and Sofronia, the student Geronimo’s sister; she too is of the Count’s house-hold.
BRIGIDA It is not then difficult to act in a masque.
BASIL A masque demands little, Señorita. A taking figure, a flowing step, a good voice, a quick memory — but for that a speaking memory hard by in a box will do much at an emergency.
BRIGIDA True, for such long parts must be a heavy tax on the quickest.
BASIL There are but two such, Venus-Helen and Paris. The rest are Page – 876 only a Zephyr’s dance in, a speech and a song to help the situation and out again with a scurry.
BRIGIDA God be with you. You have a learned conversation and a sober, and for such I will always report you. But here comes a colon to it. We will keep the full stop for tomorrow. Enter Antonio and Ismenia.
ISMENIA
I think the dawn moves in the east, Brigida.
BRIGIDA Teach me not. Though the wild torrent of this gentleman’s conversation have swept away half my wit, I have at a desperate peril saved the other half for your service. Come, Sir, I have need of you to frighten the mice away.
BASIL
St. Iago! Exit Brigida with Basil.
ISMENIA
Dear, we must part. I would have you my necklace
ANTONIO When I cease to feel.
ISMENIA I know you cannot, but I am so happy. I love to play with my own happiness And ask it questions. Dear, we shall meet soon. Page – 877
I’ll make a compact with you, sweet. You shall
ANTONIO Till then and after.
ISMENIA
Go now,
ANTONIO One kiss.
ISMENIA
You’ve had one thousand. Well, one more, Enter Brigida.
BRIGIDA Are you both distracted? Is this, I pray you, a time for lingering and near dawn over the east? Out with you, Señor, or I will set your own Cerberus upon you, and I wager he bites well, though I think poorly of his bark. Exit -with Antonio.
ISMENIA O I have given all myself and kept Nothing to live with when he’s gone from me. My life’s his moon and I’m all dark and sad Without him. Yesterday I was Ismenia, Strong in myself, an individual woman. Today I’m but the body of another, No longer separate reality. Well, if I gain him, let me lose myself, And I’m still happy. The door shuts. He’s gone. Page – 878 Re-enter Brigida. Ah, Brigida.
BRIGIDA Come, get in, get in. Snatch a little sleep, for I promise you, you shall have none tomorrow.
ISMENIA How do you mean by that ? Or is it jest merely ?
BRIGIDA Leave me alone. I have a whole drama in my head, a play in a play and yet no play. I have only to rearrange the parts a little and tomorrow’s sunlight shall see it staged, scened, enacted and concluded. To bed with you. Exeunt. Curtain Page – 879 |