The Line of Love. Dizain des Mariages

'Ah,' Cynthia said, very quiet, 'so Pevensey is dead. But the Plague kills quickly!'

'Yes, yes, that is a comfort, certainly. Yes, he turned quite black in the face, they report, and before his men could reach him had fallen from his horse. It was all over almost instantly. I saw him afterward, hardly a pleasant sight. I came to you as soon as I could. I was vexatiously detained—'

'So George Bulmer is dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon your sleeve?'

'But of course not! I told you I was vexatiously detained, almost at your gates. Yes, I had the ill luck to blunder into a disgusting business. The two rapscallions tumbled out of a doorway under my horse's very nose, egad! It was a near thing I did not ride them down. So I stopped, naturally. I regretted stopping, afterward, for I was too late to be of help. It was at the Golden Hind, of course. Something really ought to be done about that place. Yes, and that rogue Marler bled all over a new doublet, as you see. And the Deptford constables held me with their foolish interrogatories—'

'So one of the fighting men was named Marlowe! Is he dead, too, dead in another gutter?'

'Marlowe or Marler, or something of the sort—wrote plays and sonnets and such stuff, they tell me. I do not know anything about him—though, I give you my word, now, those greasy constables treated me as though I were a noted frequenter of pot-houses. That sort of thing is most annoying. At all events, he was drunk as David's sow, and squabbling over, saving your presence, a woman of the sort one looks to find in that abominable hole. And so, as I was saying, this other drunken rascal dug a knife into him—'

But now, to Captain Musgrave's discomfort, Cynthia Allonby had begun to weep heartbrokenly.

So he cleared his throat, and he patted the back of her hand. 'It is a great shock to you, naturally—oh, most naturally, and does you great credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone, as we must all go some day, and our tears cannot bring him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation and that sort of thing, my dear—'

'Oh, Ned, but people are so cruel! People will be saying that it was I who kept poor Cousin George in London this past two weeks, and that but for me he would have been in France long ago! And then the Queen, Ned!—why, that pig-headed old woman will be blaming it on me, that there is nobody to prevent that detestable French King from turning Catholic and dragging England into new wars, and I shall not be able to go to any of the Court dances! nor to the masques!' sobbed Cynthia, 'nor anywhere!'

'Now you talk tender-hearted and angelic nonsense. It is noble of you to feel that way, of course. But Pevensey did not take proper care of himself, and that is all there is to it. Now I have remained in London since the Plague's outbreak. I stayed with my regiment, naturally. We have had a few deaths, of course. People die everywhere. But the Plague has never bothered me. And why has it never bothered me? Simply because I was sensible, took the pains to consult an astrologer, and by his advice wear about my neck, night and day, a bag containing tablets of toads' blood and arsenic. It is an infallible specific for men born in February. No, not for a moment do I wish to speak harshly of the dead, but sensible persons cannot but consider Lord Pevensey's death to have been caused by his own carelessness.'

'Now, certainly that is true,' the girl said, brightening. 'It was really his own carelessness and his dear lovable rashness. And somebody could explain it to the Queen. Besides, I often think that wars are good for the public spirit of a nation, and bring out its true manhood. But then it upset me, too, a little, Ned, to hear about this Marlowe—for I must tell you that I knew the poor man, very slightly. So I happen to know that to-day he flung off in a rage, and began drinking, because somebody, almost by pure chance, had burned a packet of his verses—'

Thereupon Captain Musgrave raised heavy eyebrows, and guffawed so heartily that the candle flickered. 'To think of the fellow's putting it on that plea! when he could so easily have written some more verses. That is the trouble with these poets, if you ask me: they are not practical even in their ordinary everyday lying. No, no, the truth of it was that the rogue wanted a pretext for making a beast of himself, and seized the first that came to hand. Egad, my dear, it is a daily practise with these poets. They hardly draw a sober breath. Everybody knows that.'

Cynthia was looking at him in the half-lit room with very flattering admiration…. Seen thus, with her scarlet lips a little parted—disclosing pearls,—and with her naive dark eyes aglow, she was quite incredibly pretty and caressable. She had almost forgotten until now that this stalwart soldier, too, was in love with her. But now her spirits were rising venturously, and she knew that she liked Ned Musgrave. He had sensible notions; he saw things as they really were, and with him there would never be any nonsense about toplofty ideas. Then, too, her dear old white-haired father would be pleased, because there was a very fair estate….

So Cynthia said: 'I believe you are right, Ned. I often wonder how they can be so lacking in self-respect. Oh, I am certain you must be right, for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it. You will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it is always a great comfort for me to talk with really sensible persons. I do not wonder that you are not very eager to stay, though, for I am probably a fright, with my eyes red, and with my hair all tumbling down, like an old witch's. Well, let us see what can be done about it, sir! There was a hand-mirror—'

And thus speaking, she tripped, with very much the reputed grace of a fairy, toward the far end of the room, and standing a-tiptoe, groped at the obscure shelves, with a resultant crash of falling china.

'Oh, but my lovely cups!' said Cynthia, in dismay. 'I had forgotten they were up there: and now I have smashed both of them, in looking for my mirror, sir, and trying to prettify myself for you. And I had so fancied them, because they had not their like in England!'

She looked at the fragments, and then at Musgrave, with wide, innocent hurt eyes. She was really grieved by the loss of her quaint toys. But Musgrave, in his sturdy, common-sense way, only laughed at her seriousness over such kickshaws.

'I am for an honest earthenware tankard myself!' he said, jovially, as the two went in to supper.

* * * * *

1905-1919

'Tell me where is fancy bred Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished?… Then let us all ring fancy's knell.'

CHAPTER X The Envoi Called Semper Idem

1. Which Baulks at an Estranging Sea

Here, then, let us end the lovers' comedy, after a good precedent, with supper as the denouement. Chacun ira souper: la comedie ne peut pas mieux finir.

For epilogue, Cynthia Allonby was duly married to Edward Musgrave, and he made her a fair husband, as husbands go. That was the upshot of Pevensey's death and Marlowe's murder: as indeed, it was the outcome of all the earlier-recorded heart-burnings and endeavors and spoiled dreams. Through generation by generation, traversing just three centuries, I have explained to you, my dear Mrs. Grundy, how divers weddings came about: and each marriage appears, upon the whole, to have resulted satisfactorily. Dame Melicent and Dame Adelaide, not Florian, touched the root of the matter as they talked together at Storisende: and the trio's descendants could probe no deeper.

But now we reach the annals of the house of Musgrave: and further adventuring is blocked by R. V. Musgrave's monumental work The Musgraves of Matocton. The critical may differ as to the plausibility of the family tradition (ably defended by Colonel Musgrave, pp. 33-41) that Mistress Cynthia