Collected Novels and Plays (63 page)

JOHN:

That kind of cheating is very innocent, by comparison.

JULIE:

By comparison with what?

JOHN:

All right, we’ll go to Ravenna.

JULIE:

By comparison with what?

JOHN:

Julie, I love you. Help me to love you. Be honest with yourself.

JULIE:

Go on. Tell me more about my dishonesty. You asked if I was bored. Far from it, I’m fascinated!

JOHN:

I don’t ask you for absolute honesty. There is a need for delicacy between people. I daresay only you know what to tell me and what not to tell me. But when from yourself you disguise things—

JULIE:

For instance?

JOHN:

What you told me today. It’s not for myself I want to know, but for
you.
I don’t ask for an explanation. What matters is that you be able to explain it to yourself.

JULIE:

Explain what?

JOHN:

Why you left Charles.

JULIE:

There are times when you remind me forcibly of him. I foresaw that we should resume the topic before long.

CHARLES (
to himself
):

Did Gilbert mean that she will leave me? Wait and see, he said.

JULIE:

O John, you are such a reproach to me. I can hear the excuses you are making for me. You are saying “I must bear with her because she is suffering.”

JOHN:

Not at all. I don’t feel that you
are
suffering.

JULIE:

You’re right. I’m not suffering.

CHARLES (
to himself
):

She has arranged it so that there is nothing I can do. I can’t talk to her.

JULIE:

Does one like, however, to feel that one has done something arbitrary and ungenerous, and isn’t even capable of shedding an honest tear over it?

CHARLES (
to himself
):

But if she leaves me I shall be able to write to her. She will have to understand eventually. She will want to come back.

JULIE:

That’s why I can’t read his letters. They shame me.

JOHN:

They don’t shame Gilbert? No. Gilbert is possessed of a remarkable integrity.

JULIE:

And I am not?

JOHN:

It’s all to your credit I guess. But you have tried to blame him.

JULIE:

He
was
to blame. He taunted Charles until it happened.

JOHN:

And what happened made you leave Charles? Isn’t that a fantastic pretext, unless—

JULIE:

Yes?

JOHN:

Unless you had been waiting for an excuse to leave him, and ever since have used yourself up pretending it was not your responsibility.

JULIE:

No! You mustn’t talk to me this way!

JOHN:

Ah you’re selfish, Julie!

JULIE:

I know. I ask everything.

JOHN:

You’ve talked to me all day of this thing, less, I think, for my enlightenment than your own pleasure. I am not even allowed to comment upon what you have said.

CHARLES (
to himself
):

But if she shouldn’t come back, what then? She might fall in love with somebody else.

JULIE:

I’ll say no more then.

JOHN:

That’s not what I mean!

CHARLES:

How strange! I can already feel sorry for him, the next one to love her.

JULIE:

O why are we quarreling? I have tried only to describe the one inexplicable action of my life. If you love me—

JOHN:

Julie, Julie …

JULIE:

The one who loves isn’t the loser. Charles

Isn’t the loser. By hurting him I have

Empowered him to unveil within my mind

As in a public square

An image tasteless and cheap, which is my own.

Not even a tourist would stop to look at it

All thickened as if by dreadful squatting birds.

But Charles—my dear, I even dream of him.

I see him continue to act in honest concern

According to what he feels. I see his face

Turn beautiful under the pumice of disappointment.

One could almost pretend I had made him a gift of it.

JOHN:

And to me what gift do you make?

JULIE:

I have been happy with you here.

One is encompassed by things so rich and rare

They can’t be hurt by the conscience one brings to them.

We stand in the center of this glimmering square

As we might stand in my own mind, at its most charitable.

Tomorrow we shall stand in Ravenna, I suppose

Quite as if standing in the mind of God.

Much constellated gold, dolphin and seraphim

Shall blind us with the blessing

Of something fully expressed, the sense of having

Ourselves somehow become expressive there.

The very prospect is unburdening. Kiss me.

JOHN:

They say it is not the ornament but the architecture

That is meant to move one most at Ravenna.

JULIE:

John, you are sublime, so solemn and sweet.

Isn’t it strange how little difference

It makes, whatever we say or do or are?

CHARLES (
to himself
):

I have observed

That people do not ask that question

Unless they know the answer.

JOHN (
to himself
):

Now for the first time it is strangely myself I feel

Endangered. The lover may not be the loser.

I should not care to win at her expense.

CHARLES (
to himself
):

No matter what the lines were baited with,

The prize was that the fishermen could spare

Themselves the knowledge I am weighted with.

JULIE:

There is such lightness in the midnight air,

Do you imagine even an insect capable

Of resting on your wrist? The orange peel

Floats by, but on a tide of air. Kiss me.

JOHN:

What is this beauty that perpetually

Ignores its consequences, like a flare

Lighting the field where innocent men hide?

JULIE:

All that I’ve said today, let it go by.

Kiss me. The weightless air

Has taken my words up into its high gauzes

Before the first of them could reach your ear.

JOHN (
to himself
):

No it is not the danger or the hurt I fear

But vagueness, secrecy, the shapeless sky,

The iridescent sea, whatever causes

Us, when all is said and done, to die

Lightly, not knowing …

JULIE:

Do not think, my dear,

That
we
contrive this lightness. No.

JOHN (
to himself
):

How to endure? O God, must I

Feel the next kiss I give her disappear

As music melts into its pauses?

JULIE:

Something makes light of
us.
Kiss me. Come here.

I could rise up into the night like a dancer!

JOHN:

How to endure?

JULIE:

Kiss me. Kiss me.

CHARLES (
to himself
):

I know the answer.

MRS. MALLOW:

You’re standing in my light, dear. It’s hard enough to see as it is.

Why you should care to watch us at our dismal task, I can’t imagine.

Is that trunk full now, Jeannie?

MAID:

Yes, Mrs. Mallow. I’ll call John, shall I?

MRS. MALLOW:

Wait. This one can go in on top. I’m nearly done.

MAID:

She’s a fortunate young lady who’ll be getting these lovely clothes.

TITHONUS:

Go on, go on! It’s the natural thing, to discuss it.

MRS. MALLOW (
handing the dress to the MAID
):

Here you are, Jeannie dear.

TITHONUS:

And it will be natural for Cousin Aggie to feel grateful—

MRS. MALLOW:

What else wants mending?

TITHONUS:

—and natural, she being such a plain young woman, for the clothes to be wasted upon her.

MRS. MALLOW:

Now hush, Tithonus, it was your mother’s wish.

MAID (
showing a dress
):

There’s a tiny tear right here in the hem.

MRS. MALLOW (
taking it
):

That won’t take a minute.

MAID:

Do you know, this is the fifth day of steady rain? John’s all upset. He says the rain will wash away the soil from the roots. Rain’s not at all good in such quantities, John says.

MRS. MALLOW:

Well, John should know, shouldn’t he?

TITHONUS:

Rain is like sorrow. It exposes our roots.

MRS. MALLOW:

And nourishes them.

MAID:

I can’t recall the mistress ever wearing that dress.

MRS. MALLOW:

Oh, this was one of her favorite dresses. A wonder it still holds together. She’d wear it on carriage rides, in midsummer—before you came to us, five, six years ago. After that, she grew so thin, poor soul, she said to me, “Mrs. Mallow,”—when I’d already taken in the seams once or twice—“let’s put away that dress, and not try to alter it any more.” Now is that trunk firmly shut?