The Grace-Note

A Minor Melody of Love Played, Probably, in the Garden of Proserpine

MARGARET CASE

SCENE:A garden, at the hour of twilight. Perhaps it is the garden of Mrs. WinthropW in t hr op's villa at Newport, perhaps it is a French garden on the Riviera . . . perhaps it is the wan and fragrant Garden of Proserpine. White blossoms flutter, like small pate sighs, against the lilac, dusk, and beyond the calm leaves of the poplar branches a thin moon sheds its lonely tear upon the sky.

Through unseen and half-open doors an orchestra is heard playing "La Ghana." The music drifts slowly upon the garden, like a white swan upon a lake.

Denise is sitting on a low wall, throwing magnolia-petals into the air in a silly little shower. She is as slender, as unexpected as a candle flame, and there is a kind of thoughtfillness in the way she flicks the fairy petals neatly at the nose of Albert, who winces under the rain of them in the shadows at her feet. Albert is a tall young man, thin and faintly lemon-colored with despair.

DENISE: (With that slight over-fluency of speech which marks the end of a horrid pause) Oh, Albert! Do you think I might have that star: Give it to me, please . . . the cream-colored one, and 1 will put it in my hair and we will be King and Queen of the garden, and burst large balloons together, one after another with glad cries.

ALBERT: (Bitterly) You don't have to talk as fast as all that. Never fear that I'll annoy you again.

DENISE: Those acid proclamations, out of the mouths of babes, don't impress me very much. Nevertheless, I can sec bv your cold blue eye that you arc firm, and, Albert, I have a curious faith in you. If 1 hadn't I shouldn't be here.

ALBERT: NO?

DENISE: Gracious, no! I should go in and eat olives with my hat on the back of my head. It's the most settling thing I know.

ALBERT:(A shrewd fellow) But you have no hat.

DENISE: I should get a hat. Or else, I should wear a paper cap with birdies on it and a red feather sticking out at the top. It is a problem that could conceivably be solved; oh, Albert—

ALBERT: (Eagerly) Denise! (He is a seasoned optimist, and believes that every woman is always on the point of becoming reasonable.)

DENISE: I have made every possible excuse for you in my mind, but that was such an unpardonablv compact kiss you gave me, Albert. So sound, so thorough. And you had such Hues in your face about it. And then, that music from the Casino pouring over us all the time, like—like syrup, Albert. (She makes a funny, futile gesture of despair) Oh, my dear boy, and 1 had just finished telling you how very, very tired I was of being made love to at the wrong moment . . .

ALBERT:(Outraged) The wrong moment! A garden . . .

DENISE: Exactly. A garden.

ALBERT: With a moon . . .

DENISE: With a moon. And oh, so thin a moon. A bored moon, Albert. A moon drifting, like us, in a sea of ennui.

Albert: (Protesting) Ennui! I am not drifting in a sea of ennui. I am aroused! I am passionate! Denise . . . (His voice descends to a thrilling note whose tenderness surprises and fills him with alarm) . . . Denise, I love you!

DENISE: Yes, that's where you make your great mistake. I am still romantic enough, Albert, to be a little bored by love.

(The rising moon casts its frosted radiance upon them. Albert flings desperate, manicured hands skyward. The moonlight is like cold steel in his heart.)

ALBERT: I couldn't help it! That music went to my head!

DENISE: I know. I saw that. Great, roaring, opulent music that took you by the shoulders and bullied you into romance. But it was a too-mortal melody, Albert, made by mortal hands for mortal cars to hear; it was too palpable. And your sense of fitness—courteously presuming that you have a sense of fitness— should have told you that a kiss, on top of all that music, was too rich—like eating too many marrons on top of a chocolate mousse. Albert . . . (She leans toward him in a shocked whisper) . . . Albert, I felt ill.

ALBERT: (Who feels his love profaned) Ill! Well, 1 don't know what you want, then.

DENISE: (Pensively winding a magnolia petal around her finger) If you had waited, Albert ... if the music had been a little more gracious, perhaps—not quite so—so solid . . .

(The orchestra, as though at a signal, breaks into a Dance Tzigane, the notes curling swift/y into the garden and scattering, like wraiths, upon the summer air. Denise's pale hand curves itself around two of them.)

DENISE: You see? Oh, listen, Albert, to those tiny, coupled notes—each with a brightness of its own, yet melting like quick raindrops into one . . . the grace-note! Albert, Albert, if it had been on such a grace-note that you had kissed me! . . . For I promised myself long ago that I would never fall in love except with a man who would kiss me on the breath of a grace-note. Isn't it absurd? I don't know what it will be, but I know that when I feel it, and when I hear the grace-note like a small, bright bell, deep in my own heart, then I shall be in love, whoever the man may be or wherever I may find him. Because, you sec Albert, it's the note of grace . . . like the cherry on top of a strawberry par fait, or the star at the end of the moon.

(Albert makes a sturdy attempt to rectify his mistake, but it is too late. Denise jumps down from the wall.)

DENISE : No, Albert, Romance has had its day, and now we must go in and blow smoke into little green balloons, and you will make them go "pop!" with your cigarette. (She sighs, and pauses) I feel that it will be a kind of comfort to me to hear a green balloon go "pop!" again. But remember always, dear friend—and let it explain much about me—that I might have loved you if you had kissed me then.

THEY walk slowly toward the Casino. A warm wind blows over the garden, fragrant, unquiet, tormented by a hundred ghosts. Denise lifts a white face to the sky. She too seems restless, eager . . . listening, as though to a sound far beyond the stillness of the night. The wind stirs her hair, her gown a little, then, swiftly from the deepening shadows a tall figure, muffled in a dark cape moves toward her with silent and incredible fleetness over the grass. His face is hidden, and, suspended from one shoulder in slender outline, he carries the semblance of a guitar. He pauses before Denise. Then, with a halflaughing glance at Albert, and a suggestion of triumph upon the faint crescent of white visible beneath his mask, he silently enfolds Denise in his black cape, kisses her once, and is gone, as swift and noiseless as the night wind.)

DENISE:(Rushing a little way dozen after him) Don't go! Oh, where are you? (She stops—curious fingers against her lips.) He did it! He did it! He kissed me superbly on the very breath of a grace-note. I heard the note, Albert, in my heart and in my mind; as clear as a silver bell.

(She stands quite still, a small, pale figure in beseeching chiffons; her fingers still curious against her Ups, her eyes shadowed with stars. Albert stoops and picks a blade of grass, twirling it thoughtfully. Then he speaks.)

ALBERT: He kissed you? A grace-note? But we are alone. And the orchestra stopped playing five minutes ago.

(CURTAIN)