Clair de Lune. Michael Strange
Ursus
Dea, dearest, you are not ill tonight? You have not again those flutterings in your heart?
Dea
Not more than I can bear. How good Gwymplane has been to me! I wish I had been old enough to see him on the night he got lost, and found me in the snow on my dead mother's breast, and God led us to you.
Ursus
I do not wish to think of that night. You were like a tiny, frozen rose-petal, and he—he was so small himself it didn't seem possible he could have carried you all the way and God——
[Ursus covers his face with his hands and speaks in a low voice.]
When you were both under the lamp I asked him what he found to smile at. I asked him roughly to stop smiling.
Dea [happily]
Yes, Gwymplane always smiles, doesn't he? He must have a very contented spirit. I wish that I could see his smile. How it provokes other people to laugh!
[Ursus looks at her pityingly, and pats her on the shoulder.]
I smile and weep a great deal lately over my love for Gwymplane, and I am frightened about one thing.
Ursus
What is that?
Dea
That someone is going to make him unhappy.
Ursus
Gwymplane worships you. While you are singing and smiling I do not think anything could make him unhappy.
Dea
I hope not. You know I feel that he has given his soul into my hands and that I must take care of it as I would a little child. Yes, I feel as if Gwymplane were my child, and yet something more than my child that makes my heart bound and my song tremble into silence.
[A nightingale sings in the distance.]
Ursus
My Dea!
Dea
Tell me, Ursus, Gwymplane is so wonderful. He—he attracts everyone so. Does he never notice any especial person in the audience? Some one whom he attracts?
Ursus
No, Dea, and you need never worry about that. Gwymplane will never love or be beloved save by you.
Dea
Ah, how good it is to hear that! How beautiful tonight is! I would like to sit forever like this, very near to you and talking of Gwymplane.
[A sudden voice almost at their elbow. Enter Phedro.]
Phedro
But everyone is talking of Gwymplane.
[Ursus rising whispers to Dea to go.]
Why do you dismiss your beautiful daughter? Her pallor, her most haunting stare, have already sown chaos in the heart of a certain important personage.
Ursus
Leave me, Dea.
[Dea silently exits.]
Who are you who visit us so abruptly?
Phedro [whimsically]
I think I am a cork upon very troubled waters.
Ursus
That does not answer me enough.
Phedro
Then I am a web binding men and women while they sleep to unexpected things.
Ursus
Ah, you are a trouble maker?
Phedro
No—but I discover what is unusual in the senses of one person and in the circumstances of another person—Indeed, I have had a splendid training.
Ursus
Where?
Phedro
I have been—but I was almost showing you the colour of the water I rose from.
Ursus
Well, I have no curiosity.
Phedro
That is exactly why one wishes to talk to you. Curiosity in other people always makes me terribly suspicious. I remember suddenly the reasons that can make me curious. Now I can talk to you, for one feels you might not even listen, so you couldn't possibly care enough to repeat. I was a lackey once.
Ursus
A sordid position.
Phedro
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