Don Juan
Page 11
Is it for this that General Count O’Reilly,
Who took Algiers, declares I used him vilely?
149
‘Did not the Italian Musico Cazzani
Sing at my heart six months at least in vain?
Did not his countryman, Count Corniani,
Call me the only virtuous wife in Spain?
Were there not also Russians, English, many?
The Count Strong strogan off I put in pain,
And Lord Mount Coffeehouse, the Irish peer,
Who killed himself for love (with wine) last year.
150
‘Have I not had two bishops at my feet?
The Duke of Ichar and Don Fernan Nunez,
And is it thus a faithful wife you treat?
I wonder in what quarter now the moon is.
I praise your vast forbearance not to beat
Me also, since the time so opportune is.
Oh valiant man, with sword drawn and cocked trigger,
Now tell me, don’t you cut a pretty figure?
151
‘Was it for this you took your sudden journey,
Under pretence of business indispensable
With that sublime of rascals, your attorney,
Whom I see standing there and looking sensible
Of having played the fool? Though both I spurn, he
Deserves the worst, his conduct’s less defensible,
Because no doubt’twas for his dirty fee,
And not from any love to you nor me.
152
‘If he comes here to take a deposition,
By all means let the gentleman proceed.
You’ve made the apartment in a fit condition.
There’s pen and ink for you, sir, when you need.
Let everything be noted with precision;
I would not you for nothing should be feed.
But as my maid’s undrest, pray turn your spies out.’
‘Oh,’ sobbed Antonia, ‘I could tear their eyes out.’
153
‘There is the closet, there the toilet, there
The antechamber, search them under, over.
There is the sofa, there the great armchair,
The chimney, which would really hold a lover.
I wish to sleep and beg you will take care
And make no further noise, till you discover
The secret cavern of this lurking treasure,
And when’tis found, let me too have that pleasure.
154
‘And now, Hidalgo, now that you have thrown
Doubt upon me, confusion over all,
Pray have the courtesy to make it known
Who is the man you search for? How d’ye call
Him? What’s his lineage? Let him but be shown.
I hope he’s young and handsome. Is he tall?
Tell me, and be assured that since you stain
My honour thus, it shall not be in vain.
155
‘At least perhaps he has not sixty years;
At that age he would be too old for slaughter,
Or for so young a husband’s jealous fears.
Antonia, let me have a glass of water.
I am ashamed of having shed these tears;
They are unworthy of my father’s daughter.
My mother dreamed not in my natal hour
That I should fall into a monster’s power.
156
‘Perhaps’tis of Antonia you are jealous;
You saw that she was sleeping by my side
When you broke in upon us with your fellows.
Look where you please; we’ve nothing, sir, to hide.
Only another time, I trust you’ll tell us,
Or for the sake of decency abide
A moment at the door that we may be
Drest to receive so much good company.
157
‘And now, sir, I have done and say no more.
The little I have said may serve to show
The guileless heart in silence may grieve o’er
The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow.
I leave you to your conscience as before;
’Twill one day ask you why you used me so?
God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!
Antonia, where’s my pocket-handkerchief?’
158
She ceased and turned upon her pillow. Pale
She lay, her dark eyes flashing through their tears,
Like skies that rain and lighten. As a veil,
Waved and o’ershading her wan cheek, appears
Her streaming hair. The black curls strive, but fail
To hide the glossy shoulder, which uprears
Its snow through all. Her soft lips lie apart,
And louder than her breathing beats her heart.
159
The Señor Don Alfonso stood confused.
Antonia bustled round the ransacked room
And turning up her nose, with looks abused
Her master and his myrmidons, of whom
Not one, except the attorney, was amused.
He, like Achates faithful to the tomb,
So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause,
Knowing they must be settled by the laws.
160
With prying snub-nose and small eyes, he stood,
Following Antonia’s motions here and there,
With much suspicion in his attitude.
For reputations he had little care,
So that a suit or action were made good.
Small pity had he for the young and fair
And ne’er believed in negatives, till these
Were proved by competent false witnesses.
161
But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks,
And truth to say he made a foolish figure.
When after searching in five hundred nooks
And treating a young wife with so much rigour,
He gained no point, except some self-rebukes,
Added to those his lady with such vigour
Had poured upon him for the last half-hour,
Quick, thick, and heavy as a thunder-shower.
162
At first he tried to hammer an excuse,
To which the sole reply were tears and sobs
And indications of hysterics, whose
Prologue is always certain throes and throbs,
Gasps and whatever else the owners choose.
Alfonso saw his wife and thought of Job’s.
He saw too in perspective her relations,
And then he tried to muster all his patience.
163
He stood in act to speak or rather stammer,
But sage Antonia cut him short before
The anvil of his speech received the hammer,
With ‘Pray sir, leave the room and say no more,
Or madam dies.’ Alfonso muttered, ‘Damn her,’
But nothing else. The time of words was o’er.
He cast a rueful look or two and did,
He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.
164
With him retired his posse comitatus,
The attorney last, who lingered near the door
Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as
Antonia let him, not a little sore
At this most strange and unexplained hiatus
In Don Alfonso’s facts, which just now wore
An awkward look. As he revolved the case,
The door was fastened in his legal face.
165
No sooner was it bolted than – oh shame,
Oh sin, oh sorrow, and oh womankind!
How can you do such things and keep your fame,
Unless this world and t’other too be blind?
Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name.
But to proceed, for there is more behind.
With much he
artfelt reluctance be it said,
Young Juan slipped, half-smothered, from the bed.
166
He had been hid – I don’t pretend to say
How nor can I indeed describe the where.
Young, slender, and packed easily, he lay
No doubt in little compass, round or square.
But pity him I neither must nor may
His suffocation by that pretty pair;
’Twere better sure to die so than be shut
With maudlin Clarence in his malmsey butt.
167
And secondly, I pity not, because
He had no business to commit a sin,
Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws.
At least’twas rather early to begin,
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years and draw the accounts of evil
And find a deuced balance with the devil.
168
Of his position I can give no notion.
’Tis written in the Hebrew chronicle
How the physicians, leaving pill and potion,
Prescribed by way of blister a young belle,
When old King David’s blood grew dull in motion,
And that the medicine answered very well.
Perhaps’twas in a different way applied,
For David lived, but Juan nearly died.
169
What’s to be done? Alfonso will be back
The moment he has sent his fools away.
Antonia’s skill was put upon the rack,
But no device could be brought into play.
And how to parry the renewed attack?
Besides it wanted but few hours of day.
Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,
But pressed her bloodless lip to Juan’s cheek.
170
He turned his lip to hers and with his hand
Called back the tangles of her wandering hair.
Even then their love they could not all command
And half forgot their danger and despair.
Antonia’s patience now was at a stand;
‘Come, come,’tis no time now for fooling there,’
She whispered in great wrath. ‘I must deposit
This pretty gentleman within the closet.
171
‘Pray keep your nonsense for some luckier night.
Who can have put my master in this mood?
What will become on’t? I’m in such a fright,
The devil’s in the urchin, and no good.
Is this a time for giggling? This a plight?
Why, don’t you know that it may end in blood?
You’ll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,
My mistress all, for that half-girlish face.
172
‘Had it but been for a stout cavalier
Of twenty-five or thirty (Come, make haste),
But for a child, what piece of work is here!
I really, madam, wonder at your taste
(Come sir, get in). My master must be near.
There for the present at the least he’s fast,
And if we can but till the morning keep
Our counsel (Juan, mind, you must not sleep).’
173
Now Don Alfonso entering, but alone,
Closed the oration of the trusty maid.
She loitered, and he told her to be gone,
An order somewhat sullenly obeyed.
However, present remedy was none,
And no great good seemed answered if she stayed.
Regarding both with slow and sidelong view,
She snuffed the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.
174
Alfonso paused a minute, then begun
Some strange excuses for his late proceeding.
He would not justify what he had done;
To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding,
But there were ample reasons for it, none
Of which he specified in this his pleading.
His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
Of rhetoric, which the learned call rigmarole.
175
Julia said nought, though all the while there rose
A ready answer, which at once enables
A matron who her husband’s foible knows,
By a few timely words to turn the tables,
Which if it does not silence still must pose,
Even if it should comprise a pack of fables:
’Tis to retort with firmness and when he
Suspects with one, do you reproach with three.
176
Julia in fact had tolerable grounds;
Alfonso’s loves with Inez were well known.
But whether’twas that one’s own guilt confounds,
But that can’t be; as has been often shown,
A lady with apologies abounds.
It might be that her silence sprang alone
From delicacy to Don Juan’s ear,
To whom she knew his mother’s fame was dear.
177
There might be one more motive, which makes two;
Alfonso ne’er to Juan had alluded,
Mentioned his jealousy, but never who
Had been the happy lover, he concluded,
Concealed amongst his premises.’Tis true,
His mind the more o’er this its mystery brooded.
To speak of Inez now were, one may say,
Like throwing Juan in Alfonso’s way.
178
A hint in tender cases is enough.
Silence is best; besides there is a tact
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)
Which keeps, when pushed by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact.
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There’s nothing so becoming to the face.
179
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
Have always done so.’Tis of no great use
In any case attempting a reply,
For then their eloquence grows quite profuse,
And when at length they’re out of breath, they sigh
And cast their languid eyes down and let loose
A tear or two, and then we make it up,
And then – and then – and then – sit down and sup.
180
Alfonso closed his speech and begged her pardon,
Which Julia half withheld and then half granted
And laid conditions, he thought, very hard on,
Denying several little things he wanted.
He stood like Adam lingering near his garden,
With useless penitence perplexed and haunted,
Beseeching she no further would refuse,
When lo! he stumbled o’er a pair of shoes.
181
A pair of shoes. What then? Not much, if they
Are such as fit with ladies’ feet, but these
(No one can tell how much I grieve to say)
Were masculine. To see them and to seize
Was but a moment’s act. Ah, well-a-day,
My teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze.
Alfonso first examined well their fashion
And then flew out into another passion.
182
He left the room for his relinquished sword,
And Julia instant to the closet flew.
‘Fly, Juan, fly! For heaven’s sake, not a word!
The door is open. You may yet slip through
The passage you so often have explored.
Here is the garden key. Fly – fly – adieu!
Haste – haste! I hear Alfonso’s hurrying feet.
Day has not broke, there’s no one in the street.’
183
> None can say that this was not good advice;
The only mischief was it came too late.
Of all experience ‘tis the usual price,
A sort of income tax laid on by fate.
Juan had reached the room door in a trice
And might have done so by the garden gate,
But met Alfonso in his dressing gown,
Who threatened death – so Juan knocked him down.
184
Dire was the scuffle and out went the light.
Antonia cried out ‘Rape!’ and Julia ‘Fire!’
But not a servant stirred to aid the fight.
Alfonso, pommelled to his heart’s desire,
Swore lustily he’d be revenged this night;
And Juan too blasphemed an octave higher.
His blood was up; though young, he was a Tartar
And not at all disposed to prove a martyr.
185
Alfonso’s sword had dropped ere he could draw it,
And they continued battling hand to hand,
For Juan very luckily ne’er saw it.
His temper not being under great command,
If at that moment he had chanced to claw it,
Alfonso’s days had not been in the land
Much longer. Think of husbands’, lovers’ lives,
And how ye may be doubly widows – wives!
186
Alfonso grappled to detain the foe,
And Juan throttled him to get away,
And blood (’twas from the nose) began to flow.
At last as they more faintly wrestling lay,
Juan contrived to give an awkward blow,
And then his only garment quite gave way.
He fled, like Joseph, leaving it, but there
I doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.
187
Lights came at length, and men and maids, who found
An awkward spectacle their eyes before.
Antonia in hysterics, Julia swooned,
Alfonso leaning breathless by the door,
Some half-torn drapery scattered on the ground,
Some blood and several footsteps, but no more.
Juan the gate gained, turned the key about,
And liking not the inside, locked the out.
188
Here ends this canto. Need I sing or say
How Juan naked, favoured by the night,
Who favours what she should not, found his way
And reached his home in an unseemly plight?
The pleasant scandal which arose next day,
The nine days’ wonder which was brought to light,
And how Alfonso sued for a divorce
Were in the English newspapers, of course.
189
If you would like to see the whole proceedings,
The depositions, and the cause at full,
The names of all the witnesses, the pleadings
Of counsel to nonsuit or to annul,
There’s more than one edition, and the readings
Are various, but they none of them are dull.