ACT TWO SCENE TWO
Music. The same.
Towards midday. Jasper comes out of his shop, dressed for visiting.
Jasper (talking
to himself as he crosses over)
No doubt his
gleam-rich stash of doubtful gold
Is hidden well away
from prying fingers-
Most likely loot
that he has lifted from
Some ready fool who
fell for sly-spun words
Or else extracted by
some other means
Not open to right
law’s strict-searching sight.
Still, that’s no
matter to concern my mind.
The gabbling cheat
was green enough to pay
His four and twenty
coins a yard for cloth
That never will be
worth an honest twenty.
(Jasper knocks
at Vulpes's door- in mime at invisible wall.)
Jasper (loudly)
Hello there, master
Vulpes!
Marguerite
(appearing
at the "doorway")
By
heaven’s call,
Sweet patience lend
a softness to your tone.
If you've some
death-bed message to deliver
Let it be
lulling-low. He must be shrouded,
In his most troubled
and repentant time,
By restful weave of
hushed and soothing peace.
Jasper (still
full-voiced)
The mighty grace
above us save you, madam!
Marguerite
(firmly)
Good sir, I ask you
to diminish voice.
Jasper
(stepping forward)
By all that's good,
now what is going on?
Marguerite
(wringing
her hands)
Oh, please, good
sir; oh, please, please pity him!
Jasper
(pointing)
Just tell me this
one thing: is he within?
Marguerite
Where else?
Jasper (Jasper
starting to move towards door)
Good,
good. You see, I've come to see...
Marguerite
(blocking
him and interrupting with a fierce whisper)
That poves my point.
My poor dear man's within;
At home with me, at
home till his last moan.
Who else in this
uncaring world would care?
The wounded bear
bolts for his darkened cave.
The stricken fox
hides in his furtive den.
Poor soul, he's lain
here, wasting, six, long weeks,
Six weeks of
weakening and worry's burden,
So fragile-ill he
cannot even rise.
Jasper (stepping
back a little)
By all the great and
watching powers above...
Marguerite
Please widen ears,
sir, for I mustn't lift
My voice. The
luckless devil's all done for.
Past sins, like many
ghastly spectres rise
To haunt him, and
life's thread draws thin.
Indeed, he's but a
ghost himself, a pale
And willess wraith,
his wits deserting him-
A drifting relic of
his former self.
Jasper
Who's this? I mean,
whom do you mean?
Marguerite
Why
sir,
I mean, truth told,
my man, good master Vulpes,
That once-famed
lawyer, lost to fortune’s gaze,
Now broken by the
turn of time’s great wheel,
My own, my only one,
my dearest husband.
Jasper
Good master Vulpes,
your own dearest husband?
He just took seven
yards of cloth from me!
Marguerite (with
phoney wonder)
What's this you say?
My dearest dear?
Jasper (advancing
on her)
Yes,
yes,
I'm telling you, but
some short time ago.
By all the sacred
saints, this is too much!
He owes me for those
yards of finest weave.
Do not false-play
me! Seek not to deceive!
My money or my
cloth, good Mistress Mischief.
Marguerite
(throwing
up her hands)
What crazy-minded
stuff is this you’re talking?
Is this, perhaps,
some stupid prank you’re playing,
A tasteless, teasing
trick, a cruel game?
Jasper
Believe me, Madam,
oh, believe me now,
I’ve no intention,
not the mildest urge
To spin some silly
freak of foolery.
Marguerite
Then why appear and
burden my poor heart
With childish,
untrue tales about my dear?
Jasper
(impatiently)
Look, no more
joking!
Marguerite
What!
What! No more joking!
What fooling, fool,
do you imagine here?
Is this the time for
tossing wanton words?
Is this the day for
jibes and witless jesting?
Vulpes
(within,
rolling on the bed and groaning)
Ahhhh!
Marguerite
(advancing
on him)
Hear that! Hear
that! The poor dear's nearly done.
I doubt he'll live
to see another sun.
Yet you come here
and plague me with your lies!
Jasper (backing
off a little, then advancing)
No! No! This is dark
madness or deception:
The very demon of
absurdity.
By reason’s beams
that, sunlike, shine upon
What stands as real,
respond and pass to me
My money now or else
my precious cloth!
Marguerite
Your money or your
cloth? What words are these?
Such speech is wild
and whirling, without sense.
Go play your
childish pranks upon some fool
With time to humour
you, you chattering ratbag!
Jasper
(indignantly)
My words bear
perfect patterning- they witness
The simple evidence
of my own sense.
The good, high Lord
of Heaven strike me dead
If I'm not owed the
rightly-reckoned sum.
Vulpes (within)
Ahhhhh!
Marguerite
Be gone. I'm in no
mood for mindless banter.
Go on, be off, you
crow! Go flap your wings
And soar. Go caw at
someone else’s door.
Jasper (folding
his arms)
That's quite enough;
enough good Mistress Mayhem.
Please ask good
master Vulpes to appear.
I wish a present,
private word with him.
Vulpes
Ahhhhh!
Marguerite
The black fiend take
you! What! Disturb him now?
Jasper
Yet surely truth's
call calls you to admit
This is the very
dwelling place of Vulpes.
This here- his very
house, his very land!
Marguerite
Indeed. We're not
all sense-bereft like you.
So please, please
lower your proud, lofty bellow;
Please moderate your
mighty, ringing tone.
Jasper (advancing
towards the door)
The devil swallow
it! By all fair dealing,
I’ll speak here as
I feel that I should speak-
To place my point
each sentence rightly seeks
Full-needed sense
and sound. No more; no less!
Vulpes
Ahhhhh!
Marguerite
(taking
his arm and dragging him back)
May Heaven save us!
Soft, speak soft and low,
Or else your very
violence to the air
Will snap the
dwindling thread of wasting life.
Jasper (shaking
her off)
Soft? soft!? You
wish me whispering to you?
Or signalling in
silence with my hands?
Perhaps we'd have a
quieter conversation,
As you reveal all
things to be reversed,
If I stood on my
head to speak to you.
Marguerite
(throwing
up her hands)
You always were an
endless chatterbox.
Jasper
One of us, madam,
has lost the mind's clear light
And wanders, woeful,
in unreasoned night.
I'll quieten down
when you treat me to truth-
Your patient took my
yards of cloth for cure.
Marguerite
(indignantly)
I wish some wrathful
wind would carry off
All those whose
careless speaking so infests
The reaches of the
world-caressing breath.
You pompous
prattler! You accusing ape!
You jesting jackass!
He has lain, bed-bound,
Six weeks! Six sorry
weeks! Be off with you!
Leave us to lonely
worry… leave us be!
I’ve trouble here
enough without your fooling.
Jasper
(flinging up his hands)
You ask soft speech
from me, yet loudly beat
The very bounty of
the air yourself?
Marguerite
With you upon their
threshold, frothing mad,
And spewing forth
these false-lipped allegations,
Who would not feel
inflamed and briefly fall
Into a sudden bout
of thoughtless shouting?
Jasper
(attempting to advance again)
I'll go if you just
give what's due to me.
Marguerite
(raising
her fist)
I'll give to you
what rightly is your due!
Jasper (quickly)
If that's the case-
I think I'll take my coins.
Just place them in
my palm and we'll forget
All trouble over
this or that.
Marguerite
What
coins?
Do you believe we
should be billed for your
Fantastical and
fevered fantasies?
Do you suppose we
owe you gold to go;
That we should greet
your hand with gain to leave;
That we should pay
so you depart in peace?
Jasper
Well then, no gold-
I’ll take my cloth instead.
Marguerite
What cloth? You're
always speaking of this cloth!
The only cloth my
poor heart will be using
Will be his white
and tight-wrapped winding sheet.
Unplug your ears,
you blockhead! Understand!
Just see the simple
sense my words display.
The only way that he
will leave this house
Will be, that is my
certain fear, head first!
Jasper
(vehemently)
Yet I just met him
now this very morning;
This very morning
talked and sold him cloth!
He seemed as full of
heart and healthy spirit
As any man could
wish to be!
Marguerite
(finger
to lips)
Sssh!
Sssh!
Will you start
speaking softly? Yes or no?
Jasper
As I’ve remarked
already your denials
Sound louder on the
innocence of air.
Vulpes
(
within)
You wicked, sinful
woman, let in light!
Who are these black
and hooded people here?
Oh, mamacrama!
Mamamamacrama! (ah
as in father)
Away! Drive them
away! Away, I say!
Marguerite
Defy the crafty,
wicked one, my Vulpes.
Beat back the clever
demons of delusion.
Keep sharply gripped
to your own sanity!
Vulpes (within)
Oh, can't you see
what I can see? Look there!
A black, back monk
is winging through the air:
A bat-faced beast,
his robes are all outspread!
Marguerite (to
Jasper)
Now do you see? He's
gone again. I hope
This fills your
heart with happiness and joy.
Your crazy speech
has sparked his haunted spirit;
Delusion grips the
marrow of his mind.
Vulpes
(coming
out, wrapped in a sheet)
Who's there? Who's
there?
(Vulpes pretends
to take Jasper for the doctor)
Oh,
doctor, doctor, oh,
I have been ill; so
very, very ill,
So very, very, very
ill, dear doctor;
Oh, doctor, do not
make me swallow more
Of that black,
bitter, biting medicine!
Jasper
What's all of this
to me, my dear, old friend?
It's only four and
twenty coins a yard,
Just four and twenty
that I need from you.
Vulpes
I’ve got three
hard, black pieces here, good doctor.
You call them pills?
They nearly break my jaw!
Jasper
You've still to give
me twenty-four a yard.
Vulpes
(dancing
around)
Oh, twenty-four! Oh,
twenty-four no more!
Give me but
twenty-four to live: one day
With hours enough
now to repent my ways!
Marguerite
See! See now how
he's lost again! By all
Far, twinkling stars
that ring the night, they ought
To string up
interfering fiends like you!
Go on! Get going! Be
off with you, you devil!
Go! Lift those flat
and foolish feet of yours!
Jasper
(stubbornly)
By every beneficial
force that guards
The great unfolding
of our days, I won't.
I won't be off
without my cloth; my cloth
Or all the settled
coins I’m rightly owed.
Vulpes
(scrabbling
at Jasper, so that Jasper starts backing away)
Oh, doctor, doctor
dear, oh, dearest doctor,
I greatly fear I
have brought up so much
That I might simply
fade away, like smoke,
Dissolving off into
the endless distance,
The wide, wide,
living stretches of the sky.
Marguerite (to
Jasper)
Must you forever go
on mouthing madness
About your phantom
cloth, tormenting him
When he’s so
troubled, tried; so nearly gone?
Who dreams delusion
in a greater measure?
Who lives illusion
more now? You or he?
However, you are
sound enough while he
Walks in delirium,
approaching death.
He stands before its
dark, dark door. Oh, surely
It is enough to
leave him thus, caught in
The crushing coils
of serpent misery?
A thousand times I
say- he's been this way
For six long weeks
imprisoned in a bed.
Vulpes
A bed! O restful
bed! Where is my bed?
(Vulpes totters
off, back to bed)
Jasper (shaking
his head)
How's all this
happened since we met this morning?
For surely, surely
we did meet this morning
And made brave
bargain... or at least, I think...
Marguerite
(with sympathy)
Perhaps you fell
into some phantasy of sense.
You overwork and
weariness confuses thought.
Your mind is tired
and misconstrues plain truth
And takes to
dreaming through your open eyes.
Soon feebled vision
fails and so you find
You're spinning out
all sorts of spectred scenes.
Heed good advice- go
rest a little while.
Jasper
(uncertainly)
Yet I saw certain
sight, as certain as
The sun on high...
are you preparing goose?
Marguerite
(indignantly)
Bright stars above!
Oh, what a thing to ask?
Is that fit food for
feeble invalids!
Go cook a goose
yourself, sir, if you want one!
Vulpes
(from
within)
Ahhhhh!
Jasper
I beg you, please
don't think my visit vile;
I really
thought...and I still do, indeed...
Indeed I do...I
swear I'll find my cloth...
(Jasper moves
towards the door but changes his mind)
But if I'm wrong how
crass my part will sound.
How all the town
will point to me as he
Who like some madman
would demand the dying
Pay fee for his own
fevered fantasy.
This wretched wife
of his, with all her wailing,
Has muddled
morning's simple certainty.
I know he nabbed my
cloth- and yet it seems
He's tortured by
some terrible disease.
I wonder if it's
caught with ease? No, no;
I know short-past he
hailed me hale and whole...
That is, I think he
is...that is, this morning...
Can I, perhaps, be
dreaming some strange dream?
Where meaning means
not what it seems to mean?
It could be so, for
if awake would I
Give my good credit
to a dog like him!
Oh, hang me high for
lending him my trust;
For now I can’t
break through confusion’s wall-
I cannot clearly
catch this thing at all!
(Jasper
goes back to his shop, shaking his head and exits)
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