Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/584
DECIMA: The Queen cannot play at all, but I could play so well. I could bow with my whole body down to my ankles and could be stern when hard looks were in season. Oh, I would know how to put all summer in a look and after that all winter in a voice.
NONA: Low comedy is what you are fit for.
DECIMA: I understood all this in a wink of the eye, and then just when I am saying to myself that I was born to sit up there with soldiers and courtiers, you come shaking in front of me that mask and that dress. I am not to eat my breakfast unless I play an old peaky-chinned, drop-nosed harridan that a foul husband beats with a stick because she won't clamber among the other brutes into his cattle-boat. (She makes a dart at the lobster.)
NONA: No, no, not a drop, not a mouthful till you have put these on. Remember that if there is no play Septimus must go to prison.
DECIMA: Would they give him dry bread to eat?
NONA: They would.
DECIMA: And water to drink and nothing in the water?
NONA: They would.
DECIMA: And a straw bed?
NONA: They would, and only a little straw maybe.
DECIMA: And iron chains that clanked?
NONA: They would.
DECIMA: And keep him there for a whole week?
NONA: A month maybe.
DECIMA: And he would say to the turnkey, "I am here because of my beautiful cruel wife, my beautiful flighty wife."
NONA: He might not, he'd be sober.
DECIMA: But he'd think it, and every time he was hungry, every time he was thirsty, every time he felt the hardness of the stone floor, every time he heard the chains clank, he would think it, and every time he thought it I would become more beautiful in his eyes.
NONA: No, he would hate you.
DECIMA: Little do you know what the love of man is. If that Holy Image of the Church where you put all those candles at Easter was pleasant and affable, why did you come home with the skin worn off your two knees?
NONA (in tears): I understand—you cruel bad woman—you won't play the part at all, and all that Septimus may go to prison and he a great genius that can't take care of himself. (Seeing Nona distracted with tears, Decima makes a dart and almost gets the lobster.) No, no! Not a mouthful, not a drop. I will break the bottle if you go near it. There is not another woman in the world would treat a man like that and you were sworn to him in Church—yes, you were, there is no good denying it. (Decima makes another dart, but Nona, who is still in tears, puts the lobster in her pocket.) Leave the food alone, not one mouthful will you get. I have never sworn to a man in Church, but if I did swear I would not treat him like a tinker's donkey—before God I would not—I was properly brought up, my mother always told me it was no light thing to take a man in Church.
DECIMA: You are in love with my husband.
NONA: Because I don't want to see him jailed you say I am in love with him. Only a woman with no heart would think one can't be sorry for a man without being in love with him. A woman who has never been sorry for