The Line of Love; Dizain des Mariages

by James Branch Cabell

  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, withsupper as the denouement. _Chacun ira souper: la comedie ne peut pasmieux finir._

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

  But now we reach the annals of the house of Musgrave: and furtheradventuring is blocked by R. V. Musgrave's monumental work _The Musgravesof Matocton_. The critical may differ as to the plausibility of thefamily tradition (ably defended by Colonel Musgrave, pp. 33-41) thatMistress Cynthia Musgrave was the dark lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets, andthat this poet, also, in the end, absolved her of intentional malice.There is none, at any event, but may find in this genealogical classic afull record of the highly improbable happenings which led to theemigration of Captain Edward Musgrave, and later of Cynthia Musgrave, tothe Colony of Virginia; and none but must admire Colonel Musgrave'spainstaking and accurate tracing of the American Musgraves who descendedfrom this couple, down to the eve of the twentieth century.

  It would be supererogatory, therefore, for me to tell you of the variousMusgrave marriages, and to re-dish such data as is readily accessible onthe reference shelves of the nearest public library, as well as in thearchives of the Colonial Dames, of the Society of the Cincinnati, and ofthe Sons and Daughters of various wars. It suffices that from themarriage of Edward Musgrave and Cynthia Allonby sprang this well-knownAmerican family, prolific of brave gentlemen and gracious ladies who indue course, and in new lands, achieved their allotted portion of laughterand anguish and compromise, very much as their European fathers andmothers had done aforetime.

  So I desist to follow the line of love across the Atlantic; and, for thewhile at least, make an end of these chronicles. My pen flags, my inkruns low, and (since Florian wedded twice) the Dizain of Marriages iscompleted.

  2. _Which Defers to Various Illusions_

  I have bound up my gleanings from the fields of old years into a modestsheaf; and if it be so fortunate as to please you, my dear Mrs.Grundy,--if it so come about that your ladyship be moved in time todesire another sheaf such as this,--why, assuredly, my surprise will beuntempered with obduracy. The legends of Allonby have been but lightlytouched upon: and apart from the _Aventures d'Adhelmar_, Nicolas de Caenis thus far represented in English only by the _Roi Atnaury_ (which, tobe sure, is Nicolas' masterpiece) and the mutilated _Dizain des Reines_and the fragmentary _Roman de Lusignan_.

  But since you, madam, are not Schahriah, to give respite for the sake ofan unnarrated tale, I must now without further peroration make an end.Through the monstrous tapestry I have traced out for you the windings ofa single thread, and I entreat you, dear lady, to accept it withassurances of my most distinguished regard.

  And if the offering be no great gift, this lack of greatness, believe me,is due to the errors and limitations of the transcriber alone.

  For they loved greatly, these men and women of the past, in that rapthour wherein Nature tricked them to noble ends, and lured them to skyeyheights of adoration and sacrifice. At bottom they were, perhaps, no moreheroical than you or I. Indeed, neither Florian nor Adhelmar was atstrict pains to act as common-sense dictated, and Falstaff is scarcelydescribable as immaculate: Villon thieved, Kit Marlowe left a wake ofemptied bottles, and Will Sommers was notoriously a fool; Matthiette wasvain, and Adelais self-seeking, and the tenth Marquis of Falmouth, if youpress me, rather a stupid and pompous ass: and yet to each in turn it wasgranted to love greatly, to know at least one hour of magnanimity wheneach was young in the world's annually recaptured youth.

  And if that hour did not ever have its sequel in precisely theanticipated life-long rapture, nor always in a wedding with the personpreferred, yet since at any rate it resulted in a marriage that turnedout well enough, in a world wherein people have to consider expediency,one may rationally assert that each of these romances ended happily.Besides, there had been the hour.

  Ah, yes, this love is an illusion, if you will. Wise men have protestedthat vehemently enough in all conscience. But there are two ends to everystickler for his opinion here. Whether you see, in this fleet hour'sabandonment to love, the man's spark of divinity flaring in momentarysplendor,--a tragic candle, with divinity guttering and half-choked amongthe drossier particles, and with momentary splendor lighting man'ssimilitude to Him in Whose likeness man was created,--or whether you,more modernly, detect as prompting this surrender coarse-fibred Nature,in the Prince of Lycia's role (with all mankind her Troiluses to becajoled into perpetuation of mankind), you have, in either event,conceded that to live unbefooled by love is at best a shuffling anddebt-dodging business, and you have granted this unreasoned, transitorysurrender to be the most high and, indeed, the one requisite action whichliving affords.

  Beyond that is silence. If you succeed in proving love a species ofmadness, you have but demonstrated that there is something moreprofoundly pivotal than sanity, and for the sanest logician this is adisastrous gambit: whereas if, in well-nigh obsolete fashion, you confessthe universe to be a weightier matter than the contents of your skull,and your wits a somewhat slender instrument wherewith to plumbinfinity,--why, then you will recall that it is written _God is love_,and this recollection, too, is conducive to a fine taciturnity.

  EXPLICIT LINEA AMORIS