CHAPTER III

She gave but little sign that she had seen the embrace. The bunch of

white roses she held in her right hand were raised slowly, as if she

wished to inhale their perfume, and beneath their shade her lips were

convulsed for just one moment. Then with even more than the old grace

she came near. Her skirt caught the gilded legs of a chair and drew

it for a short distance, but she took no heed. She began to smile

winningly.

‘Has Mary told you of the naughty trick I played?’ she said. ‘I wanted

to keep all the gratification to myself: it was so great a pleasure to

know something of you that nobody else knew. Of course I was selfish!

Now, my cousin, as you gave her a guerdon for waiting so patiently,

do not forget that I also waited. Not with patience, for I have

chafed terribly--but still, every awakening has been fraught with the

knowledge that a day nearer our meeting had come.’

And she held up her mouth, sweet and ruddy as the lilies on her breast.

I kissed her. Seeing that I made no motion to encircle her with my arms

as I had done to Mary, she clasped her hands at the back of my neck,

and again brought her lips to mine.

‘There is nothing wrong in my kissing you?’ she murmured inquiringly.

‘When women kiss it is mere passionless duty and affection; but when I

kiss you ... O Rafe, Rafe, Rafe! I cannot say it!’

I saw Mary’s reflection in a mirror. She was standing wan and

wretched-looking by the window. When she knew that I was watching her

she moved quietly from the room. Rachel laughed nervously as the door

closed.

‘It is well to be alone, Rafe! I never thought that I should feel the

presence of a third person such a restraint, but so it is! I cannot

breathe freely with you unless I have you entirely to myself. Now, I

wish to know what you have been doing away from me, or rather (for, of

course, I _do_ know all about it), I am dying to hear the words you

have to say to me.’

Not divining her meaning, I hesitated. ‘I do not understand you,’ I

said.

She laughed again, this time very sadly. Somehow I felt that she was

murdering her scruples. She raised her fan and struck me lightly on the

shoulder.

‘Dear Rafe,’ she said, ‘I know well that you are overcome with a kind

of reluctance to declare yourself. Why then should we temporise? You

have not known me for so short a time as not to see that--that--_I love

you with my whole heart and soul_.’

The last words came in a hoarse undertone. Then with her flushed face

downcast she left me, turning once at the door, to see if I followed.

But, being almost petrified with amazement, I did not move. I had never

thought sufficiently highly of myself as to believe that Rachel would

really love me. I knew that she might marry me to retain the estates,

but not for one instant had I imagined that I could stir her passion.

The knowledge filled me with dread. Although she charmed, nay, almost

magnetised me, my pulse beat none the quicker because of her presence,

and I felt blinded with excess of light. A desire came for the soothing

Mary’s voice alone could give, and I too left the room.

Old Stephen, stiff as the mailed figures in the hall, was pacing

outside the door. His eighty years of service had given him the freedom

of the house. He divined my intention. ‘Miss Mary is in the garden,’ he

said.

I went to the Stone Dragon, convinced that I should find her there. I

was not deceived: she was sitting on the sward beside the monster; her

head resting on his scaly back. At my approach her face lighted up, and

she rose to meet me.

‘Forgive me for being so weak,’ she murmured coyly. ‘I could not bear

to see you kissing Rachel. I am foolishly jealous and--it followed so

quickly after----’

‘Dear Mary,’ I said, ‘let us forget it all. To-night I would leave the

precincts of the house. Let us walk together to the moor. There is a

British camp somewhere near: it will be just the place for a solemn

vowing. Show me the way!’

She led me through the intricate maze to a door in a moss-covered wall,

which opened on a barren path. This crossed a mile of park, and then

reached a broad and hilly stretch of moorland. Here the track was

sunken between gravelly banks. At some distance rose a mound, on whose

top stood three cromlechs.

When we stood against the largest, I took her right hand.

‘I, Ralph Eyre, swear solemnly that all my life shall be devoted to

your happiness.’

Mary’s voice, soft and trembling, followed. ‘I, Mary Verelst, swear

solemnly that all my life shall be devoted----’

A harsh cry interrupted her. Turning sharply we saw Rachel herself,

covered with a long grey cloak, whose hood had fallen back. How she

had followed so silently I never knew: it may have been that she

had unwittingly chosen this as a night walk, but whether or no, her

presence here was the work of some evil genius. She was haggard, and

as the moonlight fell on her distorted face I saw that her eyes had

contracted so much as to be almost invisible. One hand was tearing the

flowers from her throat, the other moved automatically in front.

‘Rafe!’ she muttered, ‘Rafe!’

Mary came closer, and passed her arm around my waist. She was nearly

fainting, and required all my strength to support her, but I was

impotent as a new-born child, and could only grasp her elbow with

nerveless fingers.

‘Is this the end?’ Rachel asked. Her voice was dull and monotonous.

‘Answer me quickly--don’t you know what a woman’s heart is? Is this the

end of all I have prayed for--this refusal of my passion?’

I strove to speak: my teeth chattered.

‘I am not an heroic woman, noble enough to wear the willow in peace,

and to pass my prime in the doing of good deeds. God forgive me; my

nature is small--so small that you have consumed its virtue! If only my

love would change to hatred I could endure it better.’

With this she moved rapidly away. Some minutes passed in silence.

‘Let us go in at once,’ Mary said. ‘I am afraid.’

We returned to the castle. As we reached the postern door Rachel’s grey

figure rose before us again. Her attitude was threatening now, and her

voice clear and loud. She thrust out both hands to show that she had

donned the skin gloves.

‘Am I attired for tragedy?’ she cried, ‘or is it because of the devilry

in my soul that I desire evil things about me? See, they fit better

now--my fingers are swollen--with bitterness if you like!’

Nearer she came. Mary flung her arms around me, and despite my

endeavours and entreaties that she should move, leaned closely on my

breast.

‘She shall kill me first,’ she said quietly. ‘My body is yours.’

Rachel’s eyes were flaming sullenly. ‘I am denied,’ she said. ‘Had you

died before this moment I should have been a maid all my life; had you

vowed celibacy, I would have loved you still, though the world lay

between us. As it is----’

With one powerful effort I forced Mary aside and stood facing Rachel.

‘How can I control my affection?’ I cried. ‘I had not the creating of

it.’

She shook her head ominously. ‘Since you are lost to me as the

completion of myself,’ she murmured, ‘let us remain unwed, and choose

poverty for the future. Who knows but we may rise to greater riches

and state? I will be content with little--a pressure of the hand,

nay to breathe the same air will be enough for me. Only give me your

constancy! It is the thought that you will belong to another that hurts

so cruelly now!’

Strung to the highest tension, I replied, ‘_It cannot be_.’

Rachel’s hand toyed at her breast for an instant, then making a sudden

upward movement, curved in the air and came glittering towards my heart.

A moan of horror was the only sound. Afterwards something bore down at

my feet, and a fountain of hot blood gushed over the grass. Mary had

sprung before me and saved my life. Forgetful of all else, I knelt, and

lifting her in my arms, carried her to the house. Rachel was no longer

in sight. As soon as the blow had fallen she fled.

* * * * *

The bells rang from daybreak. It was a hot autumn morning, and the

after-math of honeysuckle was very rich. I had gathered great clusters

for my bride, and was in my lightest humour. That morning I was to wed

her whom I had watched so long winning her way back to health.

Together we walked to the damp old church: she in her simplest gown,

I in my ordinary clothes. Mary had ever a fond belief that her sister

would return to forgive her for her guiltless sin; and she would not

agree to our leaving Furnivaux for even one day.

So we were married. No wedding party accompanied us: the clerk gave

Mary away, and although money had been dispensed amongst the villagers,

there was no merry-making. A few girls cast roses on the path,--that

was all.

Home we went. Old Stephen was standing at the door. A senile resentment

was on his face: he looked as if he hated us.

‘She’s come back,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘Poor lass! poor lass!’

Mary ran forward, her face glowing with joy. She had never harboured an

ill-feeling against her sister.

‘Where is she?’ she asked. ‘Did you tell her, Stephen?’

‘No, Miss Mary, I didn’t. She knew about it, though, I’ll be bound!

Perhaps Mr. Eyre had best go alone to find her!’

But my true love clasped my arm. ‘Let me come too,’ she said. ‘Stephen,

tell us where she is.’

‘She’s sought you at th’ old stone dragon, where ye were always

a-sitting in th’ old time. Ye’ll find her there right enow.’

The man burst out sobbing as we hurried down the staircase. To me there

came a terrible fear, but Mary had a bride’s blitheness.

We reached the Italian garden. A travel-stained form lay beside the

dragon. The face was buried in the thick wild thyme, but a bright web

of red-golden hair was spread over the lichened stone.

Mary knelt and strove to turn her. ‘My darling,’ she said. ‘How much

I have missed you. It was tender of you to come to-day. Though I love

Rafe so, you were always most dear and wonderful to me!’

After much effort she raised Rachel’s head to her lap. The beautiful

features had sharpened strangely and the skin was ashen grey.

‘O my God! O Rafe!’ my wife shrieked. ‘She is cold; _she is dead_!’

THE MANUSCRIPT OF FRANCIS SHACKERLEY

(_Being a True Account of the Most Noble Lady, the Lady Millicent

Campion._)

Since that news has come this day of Sir Humphreville Campion--a death

strangely caused by the bursting of an alembic--there is naught to

hinder me from taking up my drowsy pen and writing a true history of

certain matters that caused no small wonder in their day. True it is

that I would liefer work in my garden amongst the simples and flowers,

for since the last affairs to be narrated in my history, all thought

has been painful to me, and the world a place rather to endure than to

dwell in. There is a quiet joy in the breeding of small cattle and the

growth of crops; but to one who has tasted of life’s sweetness such

pleasure is wondrously pitiable.

We met first in 1611. My father’s coach, as we were travelling to

Sherenesse Manor, where dwelt my aunt Bargrave, broke down outside the

village of Stratton--the left sling being over-chafed. How it came

about I know not, but in the scuffle, when my folks were hastening

back to the inn, I stole unnoticed across the road to a mossy wall,

and, filled with arrant mischief, leaped over and ran panting along

the sward. Monstrous elms, with contorted boles, stood about: it was

springtide and the leaves were freshly green; in the branches overhead

squirrels played and squeaked.

Soon I heard two sounds, cuckoo and a child mocking cuckoo; turning

abruptly past a high jetto, as thin in the lower part as a needle, but

towards the top breaking into mist which the sun made orange and purple

and blue, I reached a tennis-court, where a girl danced, an odd pretty

creature, with a pale face and ringlets so deeply hued that they might

have been washed in blood. She was all alone, tripping round and round

in a ring, first on one foot, then on the other, and singing to herself

in baby language. The cuckoo marked time: at every note little mistress

drew herself upright, clasped her hands, and cried _cookoo_, then

continued her dance. I stood by in silence, till, as she passed for the

third time, she lifted her eyes, showing how they were hazel and big.

‘Ah,’ she said in a proud fashion, ‘’tis not Humphreville! Day after

day have I thought to see him. They said last summer he had flown away

with the cuckoo, and I know that with the cuckoo he must return. It is

lonely here with no playmates. Who are you?’

‘Frank Shackerley. My father’s coach broke down, and I ran away.’

She held out a tapering brown hand, on whose marriage finger gleamed a

golden ring. ‘And I am the most noble lady, the Lady Millicent Campion,

wife to Sir Humphreville Campion.’

‘You tease me,’ I said vexedly. ‘You are not nearly as old as I, so you

cannot be a wife.’

The Lady Millicent came nearer, tears gathering in her eyes; she put

her arm around my neck. ‘Dear heart,’ she murmured, ‘’tis true. I know

not how it came, but in the summer Humphreville stayed here with his

parents, and I was wedded to him. At night when I was put to bed they

brought him to kiss me, and when I awoke in the morning he had gone

with the cuckoo. Why does not he stay with me and keep house like other

husbands?’

At this moment an elderly woman came through the yew archway: she

leaped almost off her feet with surprise. ‘Bless us!’ she cried, ‘an

elvling!’ And she caught little Millicent in her arms; but the child

laughed and patted her cheeks.

‘Nurse Granmodè,’ she said, ‘Master Shackerley hath stole away from

his friends to visit me. Put me down at once, for I must speak with

him. At once, I say! Dear nurse, do!’

The woman obeyed, and Millicent came again to my side. ‘Now let us

kiss, for you must go back to your people,’ she whispered. ‘’Tis very

good to meet you. I shall often think of you when you are gone.’

She brought her smooth lips to mine, and kissed with evident delight.

The nurse separated us. ‘Madam, your mother will be uneasy if we do not

return now,’ she said. ‘The bell has rung: we must go at once.’

Her charge took up the seams of her green skirt, and made a courtesy,

then with a strange grace walked quietly away. In some manner she made

me feel that I was utterly unpolished in comparison: her gait--her way

of speaking--might have been copied in courts.

When she had passed out of sight I hurried back to the coach, where I

found the men taking out the valuables. My parents and sisters had gone

back to Stratton, imagining that I had preceded them; so I hastened

along the road and soon reached the ‘Bull and Butcher,’ which we had

left only an hour before.

In the inn-yard a set of mountebanks was playing ‘The Merriments of

the Men of Gotham’; but though I loved these shows, I did not pause

till I entered the presence of my mother, who was in high unrest at

my absence. My father stood conversing with the innkeeper, a comely,

well-proportioned dame, who put me in mind of the portrait of Anne

Bullen at Amnest. ‘’Twas more than strange--’twas wicked,’ I heard him

say, ‘the lass to have no choice!’

Mistress Nappy-ale replied, ‘A sweet child if ever there was any!’

My mother’s curiosity conquered. I was sitting on her knee--all

fears were allayed. ‘Pray, husband, what is the purport of your long

conversation?’ He took her hand lightly. ‘A pitiful story, indeed!’ he

said. ‘Mistress here is telling me of Lord Dorel’s mad freak about his

daughter’s marriage. Will you not repeat it to my wife? Dorel’s Park

was where the sling broke.’

Our hostess then began an account of how the Earl of Dorel, who had

lost much of his fortune at the court of Elizabeth, had slightly

retrieved his position by selling his child as wife to Humphreville

Campion, a lad of thirteen: his father, Sir Withers Campion, being

desirous for him to interwed with one of the purest stock in England.

The Earl was old and profligate: he desired to shine amongst the

gallants of Scottish James. Lady Millicent was seven years old at the

time: her mother, a simple creature, so browbeaten that she dared not

oppose any wish of her lord. After the ceremony, which was performed

by the Bishop of Exeter, Sir Withers took Humphreville away to dwell at

Campion Court until both parties attained ripe years. The act had made

Lord Dorel very unpopular in the country, and since that day, now eight

months ago, he had not once appeared at Dorel’s Park.

This story made a deep impression on me. I remember that I was silent

about my meeting with the baby-wife, not even telling the truth to my

mother. When the coach was repaired and we went on to Aunt Bargrave’s,

my quietness was construed by my sisters into a sense of shame because

of my escapade. For some weeks I was dull and heavy: I desired a

companionship that was not attainable, and was regarded for a time as

wasting. Nature, however, took mistress-ship, and before midsummer the

subtle influence of Millicent seemed to have worn away.

Then intervened seventeen years, which, since they have little or

naught to do with the Lady Millicent, I may pass over without excess of

detail. I was educated at Salisbury Grammar School, and in 1617 became

gentleman commoner at Christchurch, where, in 1622, I took the degree

of Master of Arts. My father dying about this time, left me the estate

of Amnest. My three sisters were married, one to a French noble, the

others to men of position in our own county. Unaccustomed to the use

of money, I set to squandering my fortune, and, being drawn into the

vices of the court, kept wenches and horses both for myself and my

less endowed friends. Time came when I discovered that half my money

was dissipated: all my land mortgaged. I had some talent for writing:

at Oxford I had composed many satires; so, with some wild view of

retrieval, I wrote a play, which was often acted with great applause by

the High and Mighty Prince Charles’s servants, at the private house in

Salisbury Court. Three other comedies followed; then a tragedy, then

an epic of _Mars and Venus_, then _The Mother_, a tragi-comedy, on the

presentation of which, before the king and queen, at the ‘Red Bull’ in

Drury Lane, I first met Humphreville, now Sir Humphreville Campion.

His repute had often reached me, for he was accounted one of the

maddest men in England. In his youth he had spent some years on the

continent, and had there imbibed a love of occult things. ’Twas

even said that he discovered the philosopher’s stone. Darcy, my

schoolfellow, who was murdered in Italy on his first tour, wrote

once from Paris, where he had visited Sir Humphreville, who showed

him a richly-coloured water, which he declared would turn any metal

into gold. Then, doubtless by some sleight of hand, he performed an

experiment whereby two ounces of the great metal were found in a

crucible where lead had been before. Darcy had begged for a piece, but

had been denied on the plea that all was not perfected.

Seeing that I had often wondered about him, it will amaze none to find

that I examined him from top to toe. He was very tall--of at least six

feet; his frame was thin; his hands and feet were small, the former

exquisitely kept; his face was speckled like a toad’s belly; his eyes

deep brown--the left one with a slight cast; his hair black and crisp;

his lips ripe red, very full and voluptuous, and his teeth of dazzling

purity.

He seemed to favour notorieties. Hearing that I was the playwright he

came to me, and, on the next seat’s being left unoccupied, sat there

and watched. He dispersed a rich smell of violets--it was said that his

skin by some artificial means had been impregnated lastingly with their

odour. When the play was done I bade him to a supper I had made for

the actors; and there, though his language savoured of the empiric, he

discoursed most interestingly, particularly on antipathies: in France

he said he had kept a mistress who fainted at the sight of velvet; and

even if it were drawn over her face in sleep she would instantly fall

into convulsions. This, and such-like information, kept us together

till late in the morning. On parting he entreated me to visit him at

his house at Hampstead, where, he told me, the Lady Millicent was

lying. I kept my own counsel about our former meeting, thinking it

might give him some displeasure.

On the morrow I went, to find Sir Humphreville away from home, but

expected shortly. I was shown into his library, a spacious chamber,

lighted by a louvre of many-coloured glass, and lined with a collection

of books such as I had never seen before in the house of a private

gentleman. It consisted chiefly of modern poets and dramatists, memoirs

in divers foreign languages, works on witchcraft, chemistry, and

astrology: on the whole being of more pretence than worth.

As I took up a new copy of Michael Scott’s _Quaestio Curiosa de

Natura Solis et Lunae_, I heard the rustling of a woman’s gown, and

turning, saw Lady Millicent gazing at me with a mirthful face. She

was much changed. As a child she had seemed sad and fantastic, now at

twenty-four she had developed into a woman of heavenly beauty. Her

face was white as snow, an admirable oval; her grey eyes clearer than

crystal; her hair, which had not, as hair is wont, changed with the

passage of years, fell in heavy curls down her back and over her bosom,

held from her brow by an ornament of pearls.

‘So we meet again,’ she said. ‘You were my fairy prince. I almost

doubted that you had ever really existed. It is very sweet to find you

here. When they brought your name to me, years seemed to roll away. Ay

me, for those long past days at Dorel’s Park!’ she sighed.

Somehow her words brought back the hollowness of my manhood. Would

that we two were children again! That once more I might run through

the Park, where the jetto played and the squirrels squeaked, and the

stately little maid kissed me. Lady Millicent noted my depression.

‘Childhood is sweeter than barren knowledge,’ she said in a low tone.

‘For one year of unalloyed happiness I would sell all the rest of my

life.’

As she spoke a curtain swung back, and one entered in the guise of a

Saracen; turbaned and bedecked with many precious stones. He passed

round the room by the wall; not until he reached the further door did

I observe his face. It was the most terrible I had ever seen. Heavy

brows leaned over green and yellow eyes: the skin was puckered in

huge wrinkles: a few silver hairs swayed from his chin. His mouth was

loathsome; by some preternatural means the lips had been drawn almost

to the ears, and in the gulfed space lay a hedge of black teeth,

which being opened--the jaw hanging loosely on his breast--showed me

in that short space that the tongue was missing, and its place taken

by some white snake-like roots. At the door he made his obeisance,

accompanying it with a hoarse, frightful sound.

‘It is Sir Humphreville’s mute eunuch,’ she said frowning. ‘He has the

leave of the house. My lord bought him from the Soldan. He is reputed

to have stores of forbidden knowledge--Sir Humphreville sets a high

value on him: they work for hours in the laboratory together.’

When the creature had gone she laid her hand on my arm. ‘I have a fond

belief that yonder gelding pollutes the air. Let us sit in my own

chamber: there at least he is forbidden to enter.’

She accompanied me to a cabinet furnished in the richest, most

extravagant fashion. The walls, where not hung with white satin, were

of alabaster, fretted with moresks of finely-beaten gold; the ceiling,

also of white, but pierced with a crescent moon and stars that by some

arrangement of changing mirrors and lights glittered more brightly than

the real firmament. Tripods of silver with smouldering spills sent out

dainty clouds that massed beneath this mock sky and filtered through

its orifices.

There we sat and discoursed of our lives. She had heard of my fame;

had even seen one of my comedies at White Hall. She made no attempt

to glose, but begged for information as simply as a begging child.

When I had told her all, she began to relate her own history since

her marriage. Sir Humphreville (whom, as I had already noted, she

spoke of in a constrained fashion) had returned from the Continent

in her sixteenth year to take possession. The Earl of Dorel had died

meanwhile; and her husband, after a year of quiet life, had been

appointed ambassador to Naples. There she had passed three unhappy

years, the women of Italy not being companionable, and Sir Humphreville

overmuch engrossed in his philosophical researches. After that they

had resided in England; at divers seats of the Campions; and now, Sir

Humphreville being called to the Court, where he was in high favour

because of his proposal to turn all the copper of the kingdom into

gold, he had bought the house at Hampstead. Day by day, she said, he

worked with the king in the royal laboratory.

When she had done, the noise of a coach in the yard made her rise. ‘He

has arrived. We will go back to the library,’ she said timidly. So we

returned thither, and almost before I could kiss her hand she retired.

As I turned towards the window I caught sight of the mute, half hidden

behind a heavy crimson curtain, with his foul face drawn into one most

filthy grin. A curious fascination--as is felt of him that looks upon

a cockatrice--took possession of me; and I stared until Campion’s

appearing, who came forward with a wry smile of welcome. I heard

afterwards that some most precious liquid had been spilled that morning

by the king’s carelessness.

When we had conversed for a while on the matters of playwriting--he

himself was one of those discontented characters who aspire to

everything, and he would ask much of me concerning the general make

and conduct of a drama--the mute came forward, after sundry signs of

impatience, and speaking as it were with his fingers, imparted some

news to his master. From a motion of his head I understood that he was

telling of my encounter with Lady Millicent; and my fears proved too

well-founded; for Campion turned to me with a suspicious face, and,

immediately, though with courteous words, he brought our interview to

a conclusion, pleading that an important experiment would be destroyed

if it were not viewed at once. He expressed no desire to see me again,

whereat I was sorry; for my meeting with the woman whose memory I had

cherished so long had filled me with a hope of many exquisite hours.

But I went back to my house, and that same day gave Arbel Strype, my

mistress, a small farm in Dorsetshire, and liberty to marry: then

dismissed her, glad that it had lain in my power to make her becoming

provision.

In the evening I went again to the play, and, as before, I saw Sir

Humphreville Campion in attendance on the royal party. I saluted him;

but to my surprise had no acknowledgment. It seemed either that he had

forgotten me altogether, or that some jealous fear had so blinded him

that he could not force himself to be courteous. Next day the illness

of my mother, who was living on her dower at Amnest, called me to her

bedside, where I remained until the end, which took place a se’nnight

afterwards. The arrangements for her obsequies and the winding up of

her affairs so engaged me that I had little time to think of other

matters: indeed, I had half resolved to withdraw altogether from town

life when news came that Sir Humphreville Campion had been despatched

on a secret mission to the Court of Spain, and in the hope of meeting

his lady I repaired to my house in Gracious Street. Here, to my amaze,

I found an epistle, with the Campion crest of a dragon on the seal. It

was from Lady Millicent herself.

‘Sir,’ it read, ‘if it be true there are reasons why you should not

visit me, I pray you explain them. I am alone here: Campion at this

moment is in Madrid. I have little to tell except that every available

word of your writing I have perused, and won great pleasure therefrom;

that I would willingly play student to your better intelligence: there

are many things I would choose to learn from you. Write to me on your

return from the country, and tell me that we may meet, and that

shortly. All my old friends are alienated: you alone are left to remind

me of an innocent past. But of this no more.--MILLICENT CAMPION.’

I went: she received me in state. The old Dowager-Countess of Dorel,

blind and deaf by reason of her years, sat with us through the

interview, and we talked to our hearts’ content. A pretty fable Lady

Millicent told me; called by herself _The New Andromeda_, which she

had writ for a fancy of her own. ’Twas of a young child tied to a rock

for a warlock to devour--another Dragon of Wantley, forsooth. The

babe, innocent of her fate, plays and frolics; Perseus--or More of

More Hall, or what you will--comes by,--is too innocent to understand

the danger--and little mistress is left for the warlock. I could see

that she meant her own history: I was the useless hero--she, the

victim. Old madam nodded in her chair the while. When the time came

to depart Millicent said she was leaving London on the morrow by Sir

Humphreville’s command, to retire to a country seat in the Yorkshire

fells until her master’s return. Byland Grange was the place: if I

would honour it with a visit, she would herself show me the riches of

the hills and valleys. That there was little of the really happy in the

world she made no doubt: let each choose his own joy. When I took her

hand she said, ‘’Tis the same ring I wore at Dorel’s: as years passed

it chafed and was enlarged: now it chafes again.’

Three days afterwards I started to follow her, half in hopes to come up

with her equipage, but it seemed she had the advantage and ever kept

a day in front. I rode the two hundred and forty miles in four days,

and it was on a Sunday afternoon when I led my horse into the yard of

the Campion Arms, and bespoke a chamber. My man followed by post with

mails; but I did not wait for ceremony, and having eaten in haste, I

passed through the stately gates of the park. A spacious wilderness

lay before me, netted with undergrowth green in the spring’s triumph.

Rivulets leaped across the clean stoned path, and crags frowned, their

feet laved in clear pools, where strange waterfowl swam, their sides

almost hidden beneath mosses and tangles of dove’s-foot. Here and there

belvideres watched down vistas, terminated by fish-ponds or stairlike

ranges of peaks.

So great was the loveliness that I paused: in my most lively dreams I

had never imagined aught like so perfect. As I stood I heard the cry

of _cuckoo_, then from the distance the laughing mockery of a voice.

Years rolled away like a mist, I was a boy again, she a girl; vice and

dishonesty and sadness had all disappeared, and life was fresh and

sweet as in those days of old. I ran clapping my hands to a coppice of

firs, which, as firs are used, had caught about its trunks a golden

mist, and there I found Millicent, knee-deep in bracken.

There is a certain tremulous joy whose remembrance pains me almost too

much to describe. When I said before that we were boy and girl again I

spoke rashly, though children we were in a sense. But we were weaker

because of our age: children love for very joy of heart and innocence,

men and women love for love’s sake. There was no reticence in either,

we gave ourselves to each other with freedom and without shame. Neither

had lived so long as to be unconscious that true love--true passion--is

the completion of existence. She loitered at my side through the open

park, where stands a ruined abbey, and along glades to the terrace

of the house. Byland Grange is one of the strangest mansions in our

country, standing against an abruptly rising cliff which mountain ashes

and silver birches cover with greenery. The building is of red brick,

with two wings and a court garden, and so covered with ivy that from

the distance it seems like a cluster of rare trees with ruddy trunks

and branches. The sun had taken the windows, and the whole front was

chequered with glittering lights.

The great door stood open: we went into a hall where stood wooden

knights in complete panoply. At the end were two flights of stairs,

which joined to a corridor that pierced the house: in niches fountains

fell with pleasing music from satyrs’ heads and dolphins’ mouths. In a

chamber of faded colours we sat together on the same settee, silently,

heedless of the hours. Through the window we saw the moon disentangle

herself from the tree-tops, the stars twinkle out one by one. Not until

candles were brought did I take my leave, and then I entreated my

mistress to meet me early on the morrow.

At parting she looked at me long and earnestly. ‘We are carried away

by some hidden current,’ she said. ‘Passion has entrapped us; we must

be happy and we must suffer! Thus!’ And she stood tip-toe and kissed

me; her warm sweet tresses falling on my shoulder. At my inn I tossed

all night awake--a battlefield of hopes and fears; so that when I arose

in the morning I was haggard and languid. Of that I took no heed; but

hastily donning my clothes, I ate, and hurried to the meeting-place.

I had not waited a minute before she swept down, tired-looking and

big-eyed. She wore a royal gown, somewhat like one I had read of in

a description of the Princess Elizabeth’s wardrobe. It was of a pure

satin, in colour betwixt apple green and rose; once it shone the one,

again the other; and the skirt was embroidered with eyes of amethyst

and seed pearls.

In our talk we made no mention of Campion: ’twas as if each were in

a little world some genius forbade him to enter. But as time passed

we grew less and less masters of ourselves. This day our tongues were

loosened, but neither rhyme nor reason came, and we babbled like hoyden

and hobble-de-hoy. In a little arbour near the abbey she had ordered

a collation of fruit and wine to be placed, and at noon we ate and

drank together; then strolled on amongst the giant beeches. The heat

of the sun overpowered us, and we sat to rest; she unlaced her bodice

to breathe the freer, and, like me, weary for lack of sleep, let her

head sink back to the green grass. With the movement the kerchief

fell loosely from her throat, and showed me, lying upon her breast, a

curious miniature of myself, wrought by some unknown hand and framed

in rubies. My hand caught hers; I grew drowsier and drowsier until we

slept. We lay thus for three hours, when both were awakened rudely

by the sound of a thunder-clap. We sat up and beheld the skies of a

uniform blackness. Heavy drops of rain began to fall; almost ere we had

reached the open we felt water on our skin. But the sight of the storm

was so terrible and tragical that we took no care for ourselves. My

mistress was not frightened: the gods were holding a chariot race, she

said, and indeed the rumbling sounded as if it were so.

The forks leaped across the fells: when they passed over water, it

seemed to hiss; avenues of flame opened from one end of the park to

another. The strong wind caught the trees and made them kiss the

ground; the evening was pregnant with inquietude. We sheltered in an

archway of the abbey: in mortal peril there, for stones that steamed

with the uncooled heat were cast about our heads. It was well-nigh dark

before there came a lull; and Millicent was so outworn with the strife

of the elements that she could scarce move. So I took her in my arms

and stumbled across the wilderness to the Grange. There the servants,

who were old and careless, had not so much as taken note of their

lady’s absence.

She hastened to her chamber, and sent dry clothes to me; some

grandsire’s garments taken from an ancient press and heavy with the

odour of musk. I donned them, and saw myself a courtier of Henry’s

time in doublet and hose of slashed velvet. The storm did not abate;

and when I descended from the place where I had shifted to a parlour

on the ground floor, I had given to me a hasty note. ‘I am tired,’ it

ran, ‘to-night I cannot see you; a bedchamber is prepared; honour me by

spending the night here.’

My heart sank now at the thought of times apart from her; but I strove

to wile the hours with a lute I found; and I made verses on my lady’s

beauty, which I wrote on some tablets that lay in the window-seat. At

midnight I retired to bed, where, being still exhausted, I fell asleep

immediately--to dream that terrible and most sweet day all over again.

I woke in an hour. Outside the wind shrieked and howled: it shook the

mullions; strange things rattled across the panes. My candle, which I

had forgotten to blow out, was guttering in the socket.

Suddenly I heard a woman’s cry--it was repeated--it rang above the

noise of tempest: ‘_Francis, O Francis, help me! they are killing

me!--they are killing me!_’

I sprang from bed and ran into the corridor, my feet clapping loudly

on the plaster floor. At the further end was an open door, with a

brilliant gleam. All indoors was quiet: on the threshold I paused,

seeing a golden bedstead, hung with curtains of tissue, and the shape

of a woman beneath the covering.

Again came that frightful cry--fainter and fainter, ‘_Francis, my

Francis, help me!--help me!_’

Then I went to the bedside and tore aside the fabric; to behold my

mistress’s face all contorted as with fear and pain. Forgetful of all

save my desire to drive away her torturing fancies (for I saw that she

rode the wild mare), I leaped upon the pillow and caught her head to my

lap, where the grey eyes opened in wonderment, and a flush spread over

the cheeks. She gave one laughing sigh--a woman’s whinny; then thrust

out her arms and clasped my waist....

At that moment came the sounds of bolts undrawn and doors banging; then

followed a loud tumult in the hall below--then a quavering of voices

hushed by one sharp and loud. I would have drawn away for her sake; but

her hands were locked.

‘It is he,’ she whispered. ‘How he comes I know not. Stay with me to

the end.’

The clamping of shoes, the clinking of spurs moved along the gallery;

then Sir Humphreville and the mute came through the open door. Jealous

hatred flashed on us from the knight’s eyes; he held his sword before

him; I could see him tremble.

‘ADULTERESS!’ He spoke no more than the one word.

Lady Millicent smiled--still from my lap. ‘Think you so?’ she said.

At a motion from him the Saracen came forward, holding a knife. The

garments of both dropped water on the floor. The mute pricked those

white fingers till they unclasped, then dragged me away. I flung myself

upon him, naked as I was, but his long arms held me like serpents, so

that hardly might I breathe. Then Campion tore down one of the curtains

and bound me to a chair. He seemed to meditate. Millicent his wife gave

no sign of fear, but lay watching from her disordered pillow. At last

he locked the door and stood between us.

‘In all things I chose refinement,’ he said. ‘If I were a boor, both

of you should die--both be sent into lasting damnation together. But

as I hold that those who love meet in the next world, one of you shall

go, the other be left, so that such joy you may not have. For my own

easement, and the better that I may attend to my particular work, I

think best that you, Madam Whore, should be the one to bleed.’

She stepped from the bed. ‘Wonderful man, wonderful genius,’ she said

scornfully, ‘I am ready.’

Campion tore off her lawn smock, so that she stood before us in naked

beauty. ‘Fie upon you!’ she said, ‘to treat a woman thus.’

He drew her towards a large silver bath that lay in an alcove, there he

forced her to lie in the water. I began to struggle, but the gelding

tied a kerchief round my neck, and offered the point of his knife at my

heart. I tried to press forward on it, but he broke the skin, and then

withdrew it. Again and again I strove, ever without success.

Then Sir Humphreville took from his breast an emerald pencil, which,

being opened, revealed a tiny lancet. He knelt where Millicent lay,

and breathed a vein in her lovely arm. A fountain of blood pulsed out,

discolouring first the water around her shoulders, then circling in

clouds to her feet.

She turned and brought her eyes to mine, they were laughing still.

‘When we come together again, Frank,’ she said faintly, ‘’twill be in

God’s sight.’

Dimness overcame my eyes, and for a while I could scarce see, but on

my brain was printing the form of a naked woman lying on a mattress of

blood and silver....

‘How we met boy and girl! how I loved you in my heart of hearts! Speak

to me, Frank. Shall we ... shall we be young again some day?’

I sought to answer, but my tongue forsook its office; at my side the

mute made his horrid attempt at speech. Sir Humphreville drew himself

upright and folded his arms waiting for the end. From the bath a steam

began to rise, the smell of blood filled the room.

She made effort to turn on her side, but she could not. From her lips

came the word _cuckoo_--just as she had mocked the bird at Dorel’s....

Campion knelt again and clapped his hand over her mouth, thinking haply

she was jeering him in death. Moan came after moan: such a sound as a

weeping angel might make. There was a faint splashing, then silence.

... It is all told.

What spells and charms were worked on me, I cannot tell. When six

months after I found myself at Amnest, brought by means I knew nothing

of, all desire of vengeance as of life had gone. It seemed to me, while

Sir Humphreville lived, I could not publish this history to the world:

for--perhaps by some enchantment learned in his pursuit of hidden

knowledge--he had gained a great power over me. No will was left: I was

doomed to feebleness both of mind and body.

Yet this scripture must be done, for traduction hath been at work with

a most noble lady, and before I go to her I would fain have the world

to understand.

MIDSUMMER MADNESS

PART I

THE MARRIAGE EVE

She had never looked fairer, for the full moonlight fell on her bosom

and arms, and threw into her sweet face a statuesque quietness. For a

while the curious question of whether the garden were or not a fitting

background for her beauty puzzled me; but soon, with a self-pitying

smile, I gave my attention again to her whose inspirations governed

mine. She was leaning against a great vase, from whose margin toad’s

flax and creeping violets--flowers she loved--hung in clusters, with

odours floating about in almost tangible clouds.

We were to be married on the morrow, and I was excited and was scarce

myself. I dared not think of my courtship; for the knowledge that her

affection was too great a gift--that I was indeed unworthy to approach

that white, delicious creature whose subtle potency forced me against

my will to love her--this knowledge, I say, confounded me beyond belief.

Fate had thrown us together, ironically matching a woman whose story

was irredeemably sad with a man wounded in a thousand struggles, who

bore no other trophy to lay at her feet than a dead youth. She had

stooped with more than human tenderness, and had raised me to her

breast, and pressed my head there until the heated brow had cooled, and

the temple-throbbings ceased.

As time passed I essayed a question. Had it not been desecration I

would have leaned forward and pressed that bare shoulder with my lips.

As it was, the purity hindered me: I could as soon have kissed the

heavens.

‘Once more, Phyllida, for the last time in our unwedded life,’ I said,

‘tell me, with all your heart, if you love me?’

I looked for her simple assurance, accompanied by the fond chiding that

maddened me; and waited tremulously for answering. None such came, and

looking into her face I saw a strange air of abstraction. Wounded by

her indifference, I repeated my question.

She turned wearily. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said. ‘I have often said that

I love you. Let me be silent for awhile--not alone, (seeing that I was

hurt, and that I moved away)--‘your presence is enough for me: to know

that you are here, and that I may touch you when I will.’

Vainly enough, jealous perhaps of her thoughts, I now strove to compare

Phyllida with the splendour of her surroundings; and pained by her

apathetic humour, I fancied as my eyes glanced over the landscape that

her beauty suffered in comparison. Behind us lay the half-ruined gables

of Colmer Hall. Hebe’s urn in the terrace fountain was brimful of clear

water, and the mantle of scarlet moss that time had spread over the

statue seemed trebly luxuriant in the clare-obscure of the moonlight.

The windows of the morning-parlour were thrown open, and the lamplight

showed those quaint thread-embroideries of fabulous beast and fowl and

fish; one outcome of the over-exuberant fancy of Phyllida’s ancestress,

Margot Colmer.

In front lay the choked fish-ponds, with their pretentious water-stairs

and sleeping reeds. To the right the beech-planting with its vistaed

alleys sloped down to a brawling river. To the left, through great

elms, stretched the long barren view of fields and hills, chequered by

mortarless limestone walls.

Then I looked again at Phyllida. I cannot attempt to describe her

countenance in full. It did not approach any conventional type. White

and still and languid, with lips arched in the fashion old poets loved;

clear-cut brows and perfect in fancifulness; in the chin power and

voluptuous ease combined.

Hers was more than a woman’s height. Her gown was of snowy silk; one of

those ancient costumes of which there was such store in the presses;

the style was of the time of Anne. Gorgeous arabesques were woven in

metal thread on bodice and petticoat; pictures of woodbine-covered

lattices, idylls of cornfields, of spring flowers budding. Twisted

about one arm was a long string of glittering sapphires: clasped on the

other a Javan bracelet of rich filigrain inwrought with rubies.

I stood feasting greedily on the sight, whilst I scorned myself for

attempting to compare her to anything earthly. Her bosom had moved more

freely since she had discarded the bloodstone heart. I was glad of

its disappearance, for she would never disclose, although I had often

begged to hear it, the story of how it had become hers; and of late its

presence had angered me unreasonably.

At last she looked up, and stretched her right hand to fondle mine.

‘Mad genius,’ she said gravely, ‘can you burst into no wild ode about

me? You are in the humour for tragedy. Remote as my thoughts have been,

yet I have felt that you have wavered angrily and striven to drive me

into nothingness. But after all I am paramount.’

What could I do but lift her hand to my lips and press it until I was

lost in the ecstasy of touching her flesh so for the first time. She

withdrew it, seeing that I quivered from head to foot.

‘Come,’ she cried, with a mirth that I had never known her affect

before. ‘Come, let us return to the house. To-night, Rupert, of all

nights, I have something to tell: something concerning the past I must

make known.’

And she lifted her eyes to the moon, and held her hands fantastically

forward, as if she expected the orb to fall from its setting. When she

was wearied, she took my arm within hers and, leaning, walked to the

entrance of the hall.

There the moonlight fell on the armed figures. The damascene

breast-plates worn four centuries ago in French battles gleamed like

Phyllida’s gown. The bloody mort-cloth with the stained opals, that

hung dusty and tattered by the door, twisted as if a strong current of

air stirred behind. The lamp in the morning-room had burned so low that

the air was tainted.

Phyllida left me, whilst I gazed at Anne Killigrew’s portrait of James

the Second and his queen. Was ever picture more ludicrous? Each crease

of the royal draperies concealed a demon of dulness; in each feature

of the royal countenances was an excessive, wooden minuteness that

deprived the dark, ugly faces of the faintest suggestion of life. The

lacquer-framed tapestry to the left of the window offered as ever only

a conflicting relief, for the enigma of the aureoled woman, who bore

in her hand a bag of gold with the inscription _Holy Barbara bringeth

Help_, could never be unriddled.

Suddenly a cry of wonder burst from my lips. A bust modelled in red

clay had taken the place of the devotional book on the reading-table.

It was the head of a man in the early prime of life, suave, handsome,

and priestly: the brow was high and narrow, the mouth painfully

compressed, the tonsure of such curls as would have graced a bacchanal.

The crudeness of detail, and the luxuriance of fancy, showed me that

Phyllida was the modeller.

A fierce murmur, like a wounded animal’s, checked me as I laid my hand

on the forehead to gauge its lack of breadth.

‘Touch anything but that! Do not let your hands corrupt it! Profane!

profane!’

I turned aghast, to see Phyllida at my side. Her face was wan, her eyes

red and swollen with tears. She seemed a pious witness of some random

sacrilege.

‘What is wrong?’ I said. ‘What have I done? Am I so unworthy?’

Without heeding me she unfastened the bundle of papers she had brought,

and having extracted several, she laid them on the table. Then,

touching my arm, she motioned me to a chair, and in lamplight that

dimmed and dimmed as the moon prevailed she began to read:--

‘_Sensuous hopes trampled upon; visionary joys despised. There is no

future gladness. Destiny works. What are we more than a handful of

faded leaves, tossed by the early winter wind? Some speed--others are

checked and lie until corruption. I have reached a splendid goal;

you, poor flower--poor slug-a-bed!... Alas! why should I chide, I of

all men?_’

‘I do not understand,’ I interrupted. ‘Explain, Phyllida!’ She gave no

sign of hearing, but continued:--

‘_For our love had seemed impossibly great before. O heart of mine!

is it that passion is dying--leaping high before burning out? I

cannot breathe as I think of you--cannot sit, nor walk, nor lie, but

must everlastingly fall with my spirit ebbing from my lips._’

At this I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hand. What

talisman gave Phyllida power to evoke such mental agony. The very

fragmentariness of the selections maddened me. Each word seemed as if

it might have been forced from me, or from one of my impossible heroes.

‘_You are mine for ever. Strive as you will against the gossamer

network that I have flung over you; call on your God for assistance;

curse me until you hate, and yet there is no remedy._’

The voice that had grown so soft as to be almost a whisper ceased now,

and looking up I found that I was alone.

PART II

THE MARRIAGE MORNING

The roofless building where Phyllida had desired our marriage to be

solemnised lies in the outermost corner of the Colmer estate. I had

only seen it once before; on a spring twilight when, reckless with

undeclared passion, neither knowing nor caring whither I went, I had

stumbled into the enclosure, where the scent of withering snowdrops

filled the air.

Dreams that were beautified by traditions half understood before swept

through my brain in the short disturbed sleep of the marriage morning.

I saw Patrick Drassington killing the last wolf in England on the

Wyke Quicksand, saw him staggering homeward to the manor-house with

the monstrous head in his arms, and the wound in his side vomiting

life-blood. Legends I had gleaned from the Colmer records came on in

rapid succession:--I traced the histories of the Princess Ursula from

Ravenna, who married Elizabeth’s favourite, and slew herself so that

on her death-bed she might hear her husband declare his love revived;

of Margot Colmer, who laid down her life for Charles the Second; of

faithful Driden, the steward, who, like Catherine Douglas, strove to

save his master at the cost of his right arm. A thousand other pictures

followed. Indeed, I was just in the act of mounting a pillion to ride

before a woman in sea-green paduasoy when I woke to find the sun risen,

and the clock in the house-place striking four.

My wedding clothes lay beside the bed; I gazed at them for some time

ere I rose, scarcely believing my own happiness; then, when I sprang

to the floor, I drew aside the window curtain and looked down into the

orchard. The cherries had ripened in the night; they were large and

lush, with wasps a-grovel in the bursting sweetness of their sides.

Never before had I been so slow or so proud about my toilet. The

waistcoat my father had worn at his own nuptials was held up to the

light at least twelve times so that I might catch the scintillations

of the diamond buttons, and admire the white roses my mother had

embroidered. There was a shade of vanity in my eyes as I stood

before the mirror. After all, I was not ugly; for something in my

face relieved its grotesque outline, and the change that had come of

late--the flush that breathed in my cheeks, and the glad dilation of

the eyes--charmed me almost into egotism.

I had no friends to attend me to the chapel, for years ago I had

broken with all the country gentry, and had lived like a recluse in

Drassington Manor. Sometimes, but always vainly, I asked myself the

true cause of this isolation; for the charge of infidelity was not of

itself sufficient, and my writings, if they corrupted, corrupted out of

the reader’s wickedness. God knows that I wrote with a pure mind.

The world was glad, but drowsy withal; the songs of the birds were

deadened, the chirpings of the grasshoppers less shrill, and even the

shallow canal in the Pleasaunce (the canal I had planted with willows,

in imitation of the Dean’s work at Laracor) exhaled a sleepy odour.

The path lay across ripening cornfields. Poppies were full-blown. I

gathered a great bunch, for Phyllida loved them, and I fastened them in

my waistcoat, intending to weave them in her hair.

She met me at the east entrance of Colmer Park. I ran open-armed to

embrace her, but she drew back coldly.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking into my face.

‘How?’ I cried. ‘I am not late. I am here at the very moment!’

‘You know what I speak of,’ she replied coldly. ‘What do you mean by

_being_ at all? I was contented, happy even, before you came. The past

had died and you have revived it. I am going to break the most sacred

vows.’

‘Phyllida!’ I exclaimed in amazement. ‘What vows? I know that you have

a past. Let us forget all our unhappiness----’

At this she raised her arm swiftly, as though she would strike me, then

with a dull, heartless laugh she came nearer and caught my hand.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I am as mad as you. It is well to be mad: we

can suffer and enjoy a thousand times more keenly. Yes, Rupert, dear

Rupert, lover, husband, mournful already, I can tell of what you are

thinking. You are white now--there are red circles round your eyes.’

‘Hush!’ I faltered. ‘If you read me well you will be silent. This

morning I cannot endure at once to see your beauty and to hear your

words!’

If I were nearly mad before, the sight of Phyllida, as she stood filled

with conflicting emotions, was sufficient to blast for ever the few

shreds of reason left me. She no longer wore a virginal colour, but a

long rippling gown of flame-coloured silk, whose lowest hem was wrought

round with yellow tongues. Her face was more tender, her chin trembled,

and those eyes, into whose depths I had gazed for hours, and seen no

change in their coldness, were filled with warmth and light.

When I had feasted on the sight I leaned forward, and clasping her

neck and waist drew her to my bosom. There I held her until she cried

out; but even then my arms would not relax, and she was compelled to

extricate herself with a charming force. Being my first full embrace it

made me delirious. She began to laugh again, childishly, silverily, and

taking my hand she paced slowly at my side along the way that led to

Stony Mountgrace.

We reached the ruined doorway, and stood beneath its wealth of carved

foliage. The sound of boys’ singing came from within. Phyllida herself

had arranged everything with the old vicar of Drassington. How she

had conquered his scruples against reading the ritual in a roofless

building I never knew; but the place was still consecrated, and the

altar tomb of Elizabeth Colmer, which in past days had been used as the

holy table, still stood in the chancel under the east window, where the

stained glass of Saint Anthony, with the human-faced swine crawling up

his pastoral staff, cast subtle hues on the broken floor.

The words of the marriage hymn were indistinctly sung: the choristers’

voices sounded cold and sharp, and the vicar looked almost frenzied

with impatience.

‘How is this, madam?’ he said, with his bearded face drawn into the

severest lines. ‘You beg me to come here as a favour, and when, after

the considerations laid before me I agree, you keep me waiting until an

hour after the appointed time!’

‘An hour?’ I gasped, looking not at the vicar, but at Phyllida. ‘An

hour late! Why we met at the moment----’

Phyllida was triumphant. ‘Silence,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot explain,

unless that we have dreamed.’ She turned to the ascetic. ‘I am ready to

atone in any way for my fault,’ she said contritely. ‘Forgive me, sir,

it was unavoidable.’ And she made her eyes so pleading that he had been

no man had he not calmed instantly and forgiven her for her guiltless

offence.

‘Enter,’ he said. ‘It is almost too late. Had you been absent five more

minutes you would not have found me here.’

As we reached the apse the voices of the choristers swelled loudly,

before dying in a long sustained murmur, and the vicar, with his

tattered black-letter book held near his eyes, began to read the

marriage service. Not a word did I understand: I repeated automatically

when I was bidden to repeat, I forced the ring on Phyllida’s finger at

the ordained time. But all the while I thought of naught, or spiritual

or sensual, save her incarnate loveliness.

Phyllida was mine now! Phyllida was mine now! Daintily I lifted

her hand to my arm, and with the echo of the vicar’s shrewish

congratulations ringing in our ears we moved into the mid-day sunlight,

and began to walk towards Colmer.

‘You are my wife,’ I said. ‘Mistress Drassington, we are out of

everybody’s sight--these trees will hide us--you need have no shame in

kissing me here.’

She made no reply: I turned towards her, imagining that she was wrought

beyond speech. We had reached the Syne Marie Wood, where the great

conifers screened off the sun. But one dusky shaft crowned Phyllida,

and sliding from her head struck her fingers and danced there. Her face

was set, her eyelids had fallen.

‘Tell me, love,’ I murmured. ‘Let me help you: you know you are mine

now. One kiss, just one, my meed if I have ever given you an instant’s

happiness.’

Neither word nor movement responded. She was impenetrably silent: her

flame-coloured gown became a barrier of defence: I dared not touch her.

‘Phyllida,’ I entreated. ‘My wife!’

Those woebegone eyes were raised slowly. ‘Wife,’ she said, like one in

a dream, ‘I am no wife. I am true, true as Heaven itself. Do not write

again, I will be true.’

Suddenly her face changed terribly, and she drew herself to her full

height. ‘For God’s sake, Rupert Drassington!’ she cried, ‘for God’s

sake tell me that it is not so!’

‘What, dearest?’ I said.

‘My terror--that we are man and wife.’

‘I am yours and you are mine--my wife--my wife.’ And my tongue dwelt on

the words with delight.

But Phyllida left my side, and, sitting on the trunk of a newly-felled

tree, wept as her poor heart would break.

PART III

THE MARRIAGE NIGHT

A dull fear troubled me from the moment when Phyllida, with many

piteous words, begged me to leave her to herself until evening. Her

face was averted all the time, although I strove to make her look at

mine, in the belief that my agony at this phase might excite her pity

and compel the confidence she withheld.

Assured that she loved me with all her soul, I had no distrust of her.

Phyllida was the perfection of purity; in what I knew of her past she

had shone with a splendid chasteness, and not a breath had sullied

her repute. The curious letters she had read the night before told

of nothing but the holiest love, and the insinuation concerning an

influence that would prevail was nothing more than a poet’s fancy. I

had conceived many such: in my story of _Hope Deferred_ Michael strives

to bind Mary so, and despite her fears of being his bond-maid for ever,

at the dawn of a stronger passion, a stretching of the limbs, a higher

inspiration breaks lightly asunder the shrivelled withes, and Michael

becomes a memory and no more.

Thus, to a great extent, must it be with Phyllida. At the birth of her

love for me she had broken most of the bonds--broken them unwittingly:

for to-day she was unaware of her freedom, fancying that the past still

held her and that she had sinned against fidelity. I knew otherwise;

the few films of gossamer that remained would soon disappear and leave

her entirely mine.

Yet was I depressed; and when, after her entreaties had wrung the

promise from me, and she had begun to return to Colmer alone, I took

her seat and followed with my eyes, as with a step uncertain and often

lingering, she threaded the intricacies of the wood. When she had

disappeared I prepared for a disinterment of memories.

The aromatic scent of the resin, as it oozed from the heated bark,

overburdened the air. In a distant glade the light played so daintily

that I amused myself by picturing seraphim sliding down the beams.

I moved there and rested amongst sun-stricken trees, whose perfect

silhouettes fretted the ground. A ripe-berried mountain-ash grew

near--how it came in a fir-wood I cannot imagine--and a culver,

undisturbed by my silent presence flew to the key-twig and perched

there crooning, until the leaves shook, and then all the boughs, and

finally the trunk itself.

Had I been prophetic in my early writings? Had I suffered in the

anguish I felt when writing the last chapter of _Hope Deferred_

(in which Mary Blakesmoor loses her wifely love and becomes

self-concentrated) a foretaste of my own doom?... Moreover in

_Alnaschar’s Bride_ the fairest hopes were blasted....

But Phyllida was different--was stronger and purer than any of these

visioned heroines; and surely I had a firmer purpose than their lovers?

Nay, as much as she excelled the women in beauty, I excelled the men in

strength of will. I would not be thwarted. Who grapples with fortune

conquers, and I would conquer!

What folly ramping in my brain made me imagine that such puppets could

resemble my living wife! I began to accuse myself of faithlessness,

and grew desirous beyond endurance to touch her hands.

How slowly the afternoon faded! The day had been too fine for a

gorgeous sky, so the sun, contented with his work, descended quietly

into the tops of the distant trees, shook himself there for awhile, and

then sank out of sight, leaving the clouds stained bright yellow. Soon

after his departure a grey curtain crept up to the zenith, and blotted

out the few stars that had already appeared.

I rose, determined to return to Colmer at a snail’s pace. If I walked

speedily I should reach the house before the time Phyllida had

appointed: I might disturb her in the act of conquering her last few

remembrances, and cause the past to rise drossily. My sadness left me,

and I grew happy once more. As I loitered I drew one by one from my

vest the withered poppies, and detaching the petals, let one fall at

every step, giving to each flower a verse from some ancient ballad.

When all my poppies were destroyed I bethought myself of an image from

Spenser’s ‘Ruines of Time,’ and laughed again and again. It was of the

ivory harp with golden strings that the poet saw borne up to heaven.

Ah, my joy--_mine_!--was assured! No malicious intervention could hold

me from it now. In one short hour, in one short hour!

Twilight deepened into evening as I walked; soon large drops of rain

began to fall, and the parched vegetation cried aloud with joy, as its

fibres relaxed and its thirsty flowers drank their fill. There was a

numbness in the air that foretold a thunderstorm before morning.

Thrice a light blanched the heavens, showing me the distant avenue

that led to the garden. The lime-trees were in full bloom, and the

heavy shower beat the flowers to the ground. Scarce had my foot touched

the velvety grass ere from the distance came the sound of voices in

impetuous discussion. My wonder was great at any human creature’s

daring to walk in these weird precincts after nightfall.

The voices were those of a man and a woman; the one commanding, the

other pleading earnestly. They were coming rapidly towards me. Indeed I

could already distinguish something black moving beneath the limes.

A flood of bombast rushed to my lips. The desire for something

discordant almost overpowered me, forcing me to rack my brain for some

bizarre sarcasm wherewith to distract the love-making of these country

sweethearts. Soon their speech resolved into distinct words; it seemed

as if they lingered.

‘Nay, leave me! Take me no further! Was ever woman so tortured?’ one

cried loudly.

‘Was ever woman so false? was ever woman so unworthy?’ the other

replied.

‘But I swear, Cuthbert, I will not come. Oh, let me return! I love

him--this very moment he is waiting for me. My darling Rupert, my

husband. I _will_ return.’

At these words I felt my stature lengthen: then sight, speech,

everything left me save the quickened sense of hearing.

‘Do you remember the old promises? Fool! to think of contending against

my influence--to dream of setting that dullard’s power against mine!

You are mine, planned so by God, joined to my soul in implacable union.

Come, Phyllida.’

Silence followed.

Phyllida was false and I was wifeless. I leaned against the trunk of a

lime, waiting for the last sight of the woman who had betrayed me so

pitifully.

The footsteps approached nearer, and erelong a man passed. He was more

fragile than I, and his long form was shrouded in a black cloak. His

arms waved from side to side in magnetic rhythm, and his white face

and hands shone like those of a corpse. I watched him, spellbound; and

when he had gone a little way I heard the voices begin anew. It was

illusion--magic--anything but the terrible thing I had feared. The

relief made me fall, face downwards, to the sodden grass.

In less than half an hour I entered Colmer Hall. Hester, Phyllida’s old

nurse, came to me at the foot of the staircase, and laid her hand upon

my shoulder.

‘Madam--nay, pardon me--my lady, bade me say that she would be in the

morning-parlour. She has waited long.’

I turned the handle of the door, and was confronted by darkness. Yet

was I not appalled, for I could understand Phyllida’s delicacy in

wishing that our first meeting should be where her blushes might go

unseen. I stole to the window, and sat on the praying-stool, with my

eyes travelling through the gloom to her place. For the fourth time

the sky blanched, and I saw her beside the table, resting her head on

her hands, with her hair spread over shoulders and bosom in rippling

swathes.

At last, wounded by her indifference, I spoke, and destroyed a

delightful hope that she would bid me welcome.

‘Phyllida!’

The old silence. I knew that she must be in one of those wonderful

depths of feeling that she sometimes sounded, and felt proud of a

woman of such strange charms. But what had swayed in the mistress

troubled in the wife.

‘Are we not in perfect sympathy?’ I cried.

Afraid of I know not what (the air in the room seemed turbulently

struggling to pass through the closed windows), I opened the door and

took one of the candles from a sconce in the hall.

‘Phyllida! Phyllida! Phyllida!’ I whispered, holding the light above my

head. ‘I am here, sweet one, look at me!’

Still silence. Fiercely, perhaps, but still lovingly, I placed my hands

beneath her forehead, to make her look upwards. At my touch a bundle of

papers fell from her breast, and lay scattered on the floor. The clay

bust I had seen on my marriage eve stood near: I thrust out my right

hand angrily and broke it into fragments. The past was done with now! I

had conquered! My victory made me exultant. Phyllida’s gossamer bonds

were torn away for ever.

As I drew back the hair and let the candlelight fall softly on my

wife’s face she sighed heavily.

‘Dead love has slain my passion,’ she said.

THE LOST MISTRESS

PART I

THE AUTHOR’S STUDY

A half-dead _Spirëa Japonica_ stood on the writing-table; reared

against the pot was a miniature, which, as the only beautiful thing

in the room, and, moreover, as the work of John Ravil himself, merits

a full description. Not even the most ardent flatterer of the sex

would have sworn that the woman was less than eight-and-twenty. She

was reclining on a luxurious, shawl-covered chair, with a background

of pale roses and quaintly shapen mirrors. One hand held a frontal of

pearls just taken from the light-brown hair; the other a letter which

she was reading with some tenderness. Her face was fair, her eyes of

a rich blue. Firm and lustrous shoulders peeped through the smooth

white muslin of her gown. Mother Eve could not have peered her physical

charm.

John Ravil himself was grotesque even to ugliness. Of scarcely the

middle height, ill-shapen in body, and husky voiced, his peculiarities

were so marked that it was impossible for him to walk in the streets

without exciting unfavourable comment. His complexion was neither

light nor dark; and an odd look was given by a bushy copper-coloured

moustache, whose ends had never known training. An overhanging

forehead, with knitted brows and stiff white hair that stood on end,

completed the list of his most noticeable faults. Despite the marks

of age, however, he was as yet only in his twenty-third year, and

evidences of his youth were visible in his large brown eyes that seemed

at times to belong to a young child.

To-day those eyes were full of terrified perplexity. A change had come

into his life; the love that had sapped his fountain of inspiration,

and hindered him in his struggle for bread, had grown more and more

absorbing of late, and in proportion, the passion of the beloved one

had dwindled. Life had nothing for him save this woman: fame could

never come now, and in his unhappiness he felt himself degraded to the

verge of the commonplace.

After awhile he rose, with a heavy indraught of breath, and opening the

secret drawer of an old mahogany bureau took thence a small bundle

of letters, each enclosed in its gilt-edged envelope. A band of white

paper, whereon was inscribed ‘Flavia’s Correspondence,’ was tied round

all. This he loosened, and taking the topmost letter, reverentially

unfolded the sheet. It had been written soon after their first meeting.

Flavia’s hand was eccentrically masculine. ‘Forgive me,’ it ran, ‘for

being so obtuse last night in not divining the meaning of your words.

You stung me somehow when you laughed at my singing: it was not till

afterwards that I understood your laughter--strange and harsh as it

sounded--as a far greater compliment than any other man could bestow.

Truth to tell, I half resented the little speech that followed. _Why

should I sing only alone or only for one?_ Heaven knows that I have

not a beautiful voice, but still I believe (and I am not an egotist)

that I have the power of expressing the predominant sentiment of the

song. _Addio_, stay, I often visit that alley of firs you admire so--in

the afternoon of most fine days--and a voice sounds infinitely more

_spacious_ there. Shall I sing there alone?’

Here John Ravil bit his white lower lip until the blood oozed in

scarlet drops. O the midsummer noon-tide; the trembling air; the golden

dusk that clung around the fir trunks! Flavia had wafted towards him

from the eastern glade, clad in azure and seeming like a cloud-borne

cherub. Cherubs sing too, and she sang; but no cherub ever sang as she.

Only one song--

‘Oh turn, love, oh turn I pray

I prithee, love, turn to me.’

But such memories add to one’s agony.

The second letter, dated two months later, told of capitulation.

‘You did not come,--some scruple withheld you? If you had known how

utterly sick I grew as the hours passed you would have pitied me. At

every sound I gazed from my window, craving to see you on the terrace,

your head downcast as ever; your eyes waiting for the brightness that

my presence alone can bring. You are very cruel; I could not bear you

to suffer as I do. Even when absent you magnetise me. Nothing appeals

to me now--the gorgeous sunsets of late; the autumn foliage; the

knee-deep drifts of already fallen leaves. Come to-night, my lover,

my--I had almost blasphemed! Just to let my heart spring to yours, my

blood leap through my body, my beauty grow paramount.’

Ravil sat for a while with his hands covering his face. The blood

trickled down his chin and fell on the white sheet; he wiped it away,

replaced the letter in its envelope and took the next. The tide of love

was flowing yet.

‘Genius,’ it began, ‘poet-painter, genius of mine, I thank you for

your idealising of me. But I was never as lovely as the picture. I am

almost glad that you insisted on retaining it, for I should have become

jealous of its excellence, and perhaps destroyed it in some frenzy. How

lively must my image be to you in absence!

‘To other people you are grotesque (what you said was true): to me

you are the handsomest in the world. I and none other have seen that

wondrous lighting of countenance, have heard that quickening of the

voice. At this moment I could tear myself without a murmur from the

vain world, to dwell in some remote garden where conventionalism

triumphs not; where we should exist for each other, and let our lives

form one perfection. Come to-night: I will sit with your head cushioned

on my breast. Bring your story and let us cry together.’

Soon after this the woman’s passion had begun to fade. Ravil knew

what was in the other letters. She had wearied slowly of the genius.

Her feeling had been too fervent to endure. She was healthy and

full-blooded. Another, ‘a swart-haired Hercules,’ had taken her

fancy; and with the admission of this second love all the old worship

had grown lukewarm. In proportion, however, as she had become less

infatuated, he had descended almost to madness: had craved over humbly

that she would consider the wrong she was doing him; had sworn that if

she were false to him, life would hold naught of goodness more.

Men as highly strung and as unfortunate have little sustaining

strength. Fate, the evil godmother, bestows an excess of imaginative

power, and Nature, angry in the unwelcome gift, takes her spite out of

the unsinning god-child, and makes him timorous and unmanly.

Flavia’s last letter must have cost her an effort. Each word was as a

dart through his vitals.

‘My love, there is a certain proverb which I am not powerful enough to

disprove, that the constancy of women exists more in fiction than in

reality. You accuse me of no longer loving you? In a measure you are

wrong: your friendship will be more to me than anything in life. One

way I have failed. Forgive me if I tell you that you will ever appeal

to my spiritual part. We never could have married; in my cooler moments

I have often acknowledged myself too cowardly to cross the bridge

between our ranks. The homage of my kind is necessary after all. Let us

regard the past as a pleasant episode.

‘Apparently you have heard the rumour of my approaching marriage. Let

me beg of you one thing: in honour you are bound to return my letters;

yours are ready in exchange. I shall be much pained to part with what

has given me almost preternatural pleasure. Why should we not meet and

bid each other good-bye?’

PART II

THE LADY’S BOUDOIR

The chamber was softly radiant with mother-o’-pearl colours, all

so blended that by contrast a woman’s face might wear a heightened

charm. Plants with pale leaves and white flowers filled the oriel;

dusky mandarins leered in corners; chastened pictures hung on the

silk-covered walls. Before each window was drawn a gleaming tissue.

Flavia rose from the piano with a great sigh: tears were rolling down

her cheeks (evidently the song had suggested woe), and some fell on

the brown cover of a volume that lay on the table. It was John Ravil’s

_Venus’s Apple_, a romance which, he had once dreamed, was like to

bring him fame. Flavia took it up and held it over her breast until it

was warm. It should ever be the dearest book in the world! Although

love was dead, gratitude remained. For his short hour her lover had

been all-in-all; through him she had tasted of intellectual pleasures

unknown before their meeting.

‘He will bear it well enough in time,’ she sighed; ‘it will give

him strength for his work; he will use his Oriental richness no

longer,--will curb his luxuriance, and develop an epigrammatic style,

which, being coupled with that fine imaginativeness of his, must needs

fillip him into popularity.’

The thought gave consolation, and she became herself again in mentally

comparing the two lovers: the one saturnine, ugly, oppressive; the

other bright, laughing, and handsome--her ideal of manhood. Sure ’twas

only in an unwholesome dream that Ravil had been victor?

She raised the lid of her cedar desk and took his letters from their

nest amidst dried rose-leaves. Then she sank back to her favourite

chair, leaning almost in the same posture as in the miniature. The

collection was unfastened and placed in her lap, and soon, with a few

more sighs, she raised the sheets for a last reading.

Even for letters of passion they were extravagant: the weakness of

his nature, his need of a restraining power, was manifest in each.

They were almost hysterical: no man healthy in body and mind could

have written them. Yet Flavia’s face grew troubled, and her lips moved

pitifully.

‘Why did you look at me so,’ the first began, ‘look at our first

greeting as if I had been by your side all my life? You brought a

strange fluttering to my heart; you stopped my breath; the room

whirled round and round. You must have thought me a very fool in the

incoherent words I spoke. You may guess the cause; my oppressed brain

had never permitted me even to imagine such beauty as yours.

‘Only once before in my life have I known such a feeling: I had read a

story told of love and death under a southern sky. The hot malaria, the

aroma of lilies, the thick water, seemed to envelop me, and I swooned.

It was like rain on parched ground to find myself still in my own room,

nodding my head to the bunch of yellow-flags I had bought of a child at

the door.

‘But now I swoon again, and the awakening can only come at the

transition into the next world’s darkness.

‘I am in love’s wine-press, shrieking at the weight that must descend

and crush out new-born joy. Give me, in the name of God, one word of

tenderness, and forget that I ever dared to lift my eyes.’

As Flavia read she smiled, as women smile upon a baby thrusting out a

tiny fist with broken flowers. As free and natural a gift was Ravil’s

love. Her eyes grew tender: she looked at her shoulder just as if his

head were resting there.

‘Poor head, poor coarse hair!’ she said.

The next letter treated of some dereliction.

‘You have tortured me cruelly. When you rode past on the road, I

stamped in the dust till my folly was manifest, even to myself. _Who

is he? I insist on knowing._ When I saw him loose-mouthed and peering

right into your pupils all the tigerish part of me sprang up, and I

could have destroyed him for his temporary usurpation of my rights. How

dared he look at you so? All night I lay awake, calling upon your name,

praying for some miracle to bring you to my chamber.’

Flavia remembered her exultation when her fingers tore this sheet open:

how she had been so merry as to sing and run and play like a young

girl. She passed hastily over more, and came to that he had written

after she had yielded him her honour. Her own letters had feebly echoed

his at the time.

‘Sweetest and noblest,’ it ran, ‘life has changed. The dense veil

that shrouded my future has been withdrawn. To-day I feel infinitely

more inspired than ever I felt in my youth. A myriad rich ideas float

from my brain, and were it not for very impatience of the hour of our

meeting I would sit at my table and write some grand epic, or some

romance that would shake the centre of every heart. Love! love!’

Flavia’s eyes glittered now; but grew languid quickly as she fell to

picturing old scenes. The minutes passed and passed, ere she returned

to her task. The letter she took had signs of a lover’s doubts.

‘I awaken in madness; for the dread that grows in my companionless

nights deepens towards morning. Suppose that Flavia had never really

loved me;--suppose that I had been only her last dearly-paid-for

whim;--suppose,--nay, now I have written it my fears go in laughter.

Flavia is the paragon: I alone understand her mystery. Any man less

initiated in the secrets of her character might declare that to me

her outward demeanour was cold. But I glory in her apparent lack of

feeling, conscious that my position is impregnable, and that her

passion, though chastened, is still powerful.’

The white shoulders were shrugged, ‘How lacking in discrimination!’

Before he had written thus she had been absolutely discourteous, whilst

he had ever refused to understand. It was her remark, that change is

necessary to existence, which had evoked this strange protest. Besides,

she knew herself to be inconstant in thought. The hours spent in his

company, which at first were almost unearthly in their speed of flight,

were dull and wearisome now, and she had grown to hail the time of his

departure with something akin to pleasure.

Six more letters were passed unopened--much less unread. Then she

unfolded the last--his reply to her renunciation.

‘Flavia, it is hard to think that you of all the world should care

to jest with me. That your letter is anything more than a jest I am

struggling not to believe. After all your vows, breathed as you lay in

my arms, whispered in a tone that made me vibrate like a harp-string,

you should not play with my feelings. You know me, darling: it was

unkind.

‘O God in heaven, I dare not believe it! I will not! I cannot! My mind

is not large enough to take in so monstrous a truth!

‘We will meet to-morrow in the wood, and laugh together at the

frightened fool you have made of me! and in revenge I will be sardonic

and cruel.’

PART III

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Sloping fir alleys; bounded at one end by a darkly mantled fish-pond,

at the other by an open park, with grazing deer and cattle. Birds avoid

these fir-woods: this one was silent, save for a low boom of insects

and the dwarfish whistling of shrew-mice.

Ravil was first at the meeting-place. He rested in a cathedral-like

vista overarched with olive--the glade where Flavia had sung. The wiry

grass was hot with the sun, the air thick with fragrance.

He waited in gladness. As the time had drawn near much of his dread had

vanished, and although he still felt like a man who stands with his

back to a pit, on whose verge his heels are pressing, the light beating

on his brain so dazzled him that little save the maddest joy was left.

In the interval he conjured up visions of her beauty: his lips moved

as if to kiss. He reviewed for the thousandth time the history of

their passion. No false humility had ever troubled him; and despite

the worldly distinction between noble and plebeian, he saw himself her

equal at all points. In his egotistical belief, the highest patent of

nobility should be bestowed on those with unplumbed depths of feeling,

with superior capacities for suffering.

At last she came, not in azure this time, but in a gown of plain

russet, such as any of the cottagers’ wives on her land might have

worn. But something exquisite in her manner of wearing it showed the

gentle rounding of her breasts, the rise and fall of her breathing. A

flush spread over her face as he rose to greet her; at the sight the

old hunger came, and he bent his head to hers.

‘Once,’ she said very faintly.

There was a note of sublime renunciation in her voice. If she had loved

him with all her heart, and had discovered that his future required

the breaking of the unlawful bond, she could not have shown a nobler

pathos. He flung his arm about her neck, and half-savagely kissed her

ripe lips.

Soon she drew apart. ‘You hurt me,’ she said. ‘There is not much

time.... I must return soon ... there are people.... He....’

He fell back with contorted mouth, for the lash had agonised him with

its subtle poison. Pity filled her, and she soothed him with velvet

caresses, tried to flatter him with hopes of fame. ’Twould be best for

him; in after years they would meet, he jubilant with men’s praise, she

saddened and broken in by the legal bond. For his sake, all for his

sake.

When he had recovered somewhat he strove to discover the truth in her

eyes. It was a profitless task.

His chin began to tremble. ‘Here are the letters,’ he whispered

huskily. ‘Keep mine.... Leave me here.... Good-bye.’

Flavia went weeping away. Ere she had walked a mile a sudden thrill

shook her from head to foot, and she sank down to the grass. A

wonderful light shone from her face. Life’s greatness was upon her: her

lover’s child had stirred within her body.

Born of womanly ecstasy, born of the pain of parting, love that before

had been a sickly dwarf, sprang up a ruddy giant. O the bliss, the

ten-fold bliss of passion revived!

She hurried to the place where she had left him, wild to pant out her

secret on his breast. He was there still, but white and rigid, and with

a purple wound in his temple.

WITCH IN-GRAIN

Of late Michal had been much engrossed in the reading of the

black-letter books that Philosopher Bale brought from France. As you

know I am no Latinist--though one while she was earnest in her desire

to instruct me; but the open air had ever greater charms for me than

had the dry precincts of a library. So I grudged the time she spent

apart, and throughout the spring I would have been all day at her side,

talking such foolery as lovers use. But ever she must steal away and

hide herself amongst dead volumes.

Yestereven I crossed the Roods, and entered the garden, to find the

girl sitting under a yew-tree. Her face was haggard and her eyes

sunken: for the time it seemed as if many years had passed over her

head, but somehow the change had only added to her beauty. And I

marvelled greatly, but ere I could speak a huge bird, whose plumage

was as the brightest gold, fluttered out of her lap from under the

silken apron; and looking on her uncovered bosom I saw that his beak

had pierced her tender flesh. I cried aloud, and would have caught the

thing, but it rose slowly, laughing like a man, and, beating upwards,

passed out of sight in the quincunx. Then Michal drew long breaths,

and her youth came back in some measure. But she frowned, and said,

‘What is it, sweetheart? Why hast awakened me? I dreamed that I fed the

Dragon of the Hesperidean Garden.’ Meanwhile, her gaze set on the place

whither the bird had flown.

‘Thou hast chosen a filthy mammet,’ I said. ‘Tell me how came it

hither?’

She rose without reply, and kissed her hands to the gaudy wings, which

were nearing through the trees. Then, lifting up a great tome that had

lain at her feet, she turned towards the house. But ere she had reached

the end of the maze she stopped, and smiled with strange subtlety.

‘How camest _thou_ hither, O satyr?’ she cried. ‘Even when the Dragon

slept, and the fruit hung naked to my touch.... The gates fell to.’

Perplexed and sore adread, I followed to the hall; and found in the

herb garden the men struggling with an ancient woman--a foul crone,

brown and puckered as a rotten costard. At sight of Michal she thrust

out her hands, crying, ‘Save me, mistress!’ The girl cowered, and ran

up the perron and indoors. But for me, I questioned Simon, who stood

well out of reach of the wretch’s nails, as to the wherefore of this

hurly-burly.

His underlings bound the runnion with cords, and haled her to the

closet in the banqueting gallery. Then, her beldering being stilled,

Simon entreated me to compel Michal to prick her arm. So I went down

to the library, and found my sweetheart sitting by the window, tranced

with seeing that goblin fowl go tumbling on the lawn.

My heart was full of terror and anguish. ‘Dearest Michal,’ I prayed,

‘for the sake of our passion let me command. Here is a knife.’ I took a

poniard from Sir Roger’s stand of arms. ‘Come with me now; I will tell

you all.’

Her gaze still shed her heart upon the popinjay; and when I took her

hand and drew her from the room, she strove hard to escape. In the

gallery I pressed her fingers round the haft, and knowing that the

witch was bound, flung open the door so that they faced each other. But

Mother Benmusk’s eyes glared like fire, so that Michal was withered

up, and sank swooning into my arms. And a chuckle of disdain leaped

from the hag’s ragged lips. Simon and the others came hurrying, and

when Michal had found her life, we begged her to cut into one of those

knotted arms. Yet she would none of it, but turned her face and signed

no--no--she would not. And as we strove to prevail with her, word came

that one of the Bishop’s horses had cast a shoe in the village, and

that his lordship craved the hospitality of Ford, until the smith had

mended the mishap. Nigh at the heels of his message came the divine,

and having heard and pondered our tale, he would fain speak with her.

I took her to the withdrawing-room, where at the sight of him she burst

into such a loud fit of laughter that the old man rose in fear and went

away.

‘Surely it is an obsession,’ he cried; ‘nought can be done until the

witch takes back her spells!’

So I bade the servants carry Benmusk to the mere, and cast her in the

muddy part thereof where her head would lie above water. That was

fifteen hours ago, but methinks I still hear her screams clanging

through the stagnant air. Never was hag so fierce and full of strength!

All along the garden I saw a track of uprooted flowers. Amongst the

sedges the turmoil grew and grew till every heron fled. They threw

her in, and the whole mere seethed as if the floor of it were hell.

For full an hour she cursed us fearsomely: then, finding that every

time she neared the land the men thrust her back again, her spirit

waxed abject, and she fell to whimpering. Two hours before twelve she

cried that she would tell all she knew. So we landed her, and she was

loosened of her bonds and she mumbled in my ear: ‘I swear by Satan

that I am innocent of this harm! I ha’ none but pawtry secrets. Go at

midnight to the lows and watch Baldus’s tomb. There thou shalt find

all.’

The beldam tottered away, her bemired petticoats clapping her legs;

and I bade them let her rest in peace until I had certainly proved her

guilt. With this I returned to the house; but, finding that Michal had

retired for the night, I sat by the fire, waiting for the time to pass.

A clock struck the half before eleven, and I set out for King Baldus’s

grave, whither, had not such a great matter been at stake, I dared not

have ventured after dark. I stole from the garden and through the first

copse. The moon lay against a brazen curtain; little snail-like clouds

were crawling underneath, and the horns of them pricked her face.

As I neared the lane to the waste, a most unholy dawn broke behind

the fringe of pines, looping the boles with strings of grey-golden

light. Surely a figure moved there? I ran. A curious motley and a noisy

swarmed forth at me. Another moment, and I was in the midst of a host

of weasels and hares and such-like creatures, all flying from the

precincts of the tomb. I quaked with dread, and the hair of my flesh

stood upright. But I thrust on, and parted the thorn boughs, and looked

up at the mound.

On the summit thereof sat Michal, triumphing, invested with flames. And

the Shape approached, and wrapped her in his blackness.

THE NOBLE COURTESAN

_The Apology of the Noble Courtesan_ was fresh from the printers; the

smell of ink filled the antechamber. The volume was bound in white

parchment, richly gilt; on the front board was a scarlet shield graven

with a familiar coat-of-arms. Frambant turned the leaves hastily, and

found on the dedication page the following address:--

‘_To the Right Honourable Michael, Lord Frambant, Baron of Britton_

‘MY LORD,--It is not from desire of pandering to your position as one

who has served his country wisely and well that I presume to dedicate

to you the following Apology. A name so honoured, a character so

perfect, need no illuming. ’Tis as a Woman whose heart you have

stirred, into whose life you are bound to enter. For know, my Lord,

that women are paramount in this world. In the after-sphere we may

be Apes, but here we are the Controllers of Men’s fates, and so, in

the character of one whom you have stricken with love, I profess

myself, my Lord, your Lordship’s Most Obliged and Most Obedient

Humble Servant,

THE NOBLE COURTESAN.’

Frambant flung the book angrily across the room. What trull was this

who dared approach him so familiarly? His brows contracted; his grey

eyes shot fire; a warm dash of blood drove the wanness from his cheeks.

The very thought of strange women was hateful: it was scarce a year

since the wife he had won after so much striving had yielded up life in

childbed, and he had sworn to remain alone for the rest of his days.

Catching sight of his reflection in a mirror, he saw resentment and

disgust there.

But when he looked again at the book he found that a note had been

forced from its cover. Curiosity overcame, and he stooped and took

it in his hand. Like the dedication it was addressed to himself: he

unfolded it with some degree of fear.

‘You will infinitely oblige a distressed Lover,’ he read, ‘if you

meet her at Madam Horneck’s bagnio. Midnight’s the time. She will

wear a domino of green gauze, a white satin robe braided with golden

serpents.--CONSTANTIA.’

This communication fascinated him, and sitting down by the window

he began to read the wildest book that ever was written. It was a

fantastic history of the four intrigues of a fantastic woman. Her

first lover had been a foreign churchman (an avowed ascetic) who had

withstood her sieging for nearly a twelvemonth; her second, a poet

who had addressed a sequence of amorous sonnets to her under the name

of Amaryllis; her third a prince, or rather a king’s bastard; and her

fourth a simple country squire. Some years had elapsed between each

infatuation, and madam had utilised them in the study of the politer

arts. The volume teemed with quotations from the more elegant classic

writers, and the literature of the period was not ignored. The ending

ran thus:--

‘It has ever been my belief that love, nay, life itself, should

terminate at the moment of excess of bliss. I hold Secrets, use of

which teaches me that after a certain time passion may be tasted

with the same keen joy as when maidenhood is resigned. But, as the

lively L’Estrange declares, “the itch of knowing Secrets is naturally

accompanied with another itch of telling them,” I fling aside my pen in

fear.’

As he finished reading his brother Villiers entered the room. He was

ten years Frambant’s junior, and resembled him only in stature and

profile. His skin was olive, his eyes nut-brown, his forehead still

free from lines. He leaned over the chair and put a strong arm round

his brother’s neck.

‘What is this wondrous book, so quaintly bound?’ he said. ‘By Venus,

queen of love, a wagtail’s song!’

Frambant flushed again, and raising the _Apology_ flung it on the fire,

where it screamed aloud.

‘It is the work of an impudent woman,’ he replied. ‘To-morrow all town

will ring with it. She has dedicated it to me.’

‘Surely a sin to burn such a treasure! Let me recover it.’

Villiers took the tongs and strove to draw the swollen thing from the

flame, but it collapsed into a heap of blackness. The note, however,

which Frambant had replaced, lay uncurled in the hearth, and the lad

read its message.

At that moment one came with word that Sir Benjamin Mast, an old

country baronet whom Frambant held in high esteem, lay at the point

of death. ‘The water crept higher and higher, and my lady thought you

might choose to be with him at the last. The coach waited.’ Frambant

hurried downstairs, and was soon with the dying man. Sir Benjamin’s

hydropsy had swollen him to an immense size, but his uncowed soul

permitted him to laugh and jest with heart till the end. His wife, a

pious resigned woman of sixty, shared the vigil.

Darkness fell, and the chamber was lighted. Forgetful of all save his

friend’s departure he never remarked the passage of time, and not until

after midnight when Mast’s eyes were closed in death did his thoughts

recur to the _Apology_. He took his seat in the coach with a grim

feeling of satisfaction at the imaginary picture of the wanton waiting,

and waiting in vain.

After a time, being wearied with excitement and lulled by the motion

of the vehicle as it passed slowly along the narrow streets, he let

his head sink back on the cushion, and fell asleep almost instantly.

Five minutes could not have passed before he woke; but in the interval

a curious idea had entered his brain. He remembered Constantia’s

account of her lovers, and her belief that life should wither at the

moment of love’s height, and simultaneously there came upon him the

recollection of four tragedies which had stricken the land with horror.

So overwhelming was the connection that he could no longer endure the

tediousness of the journey, but dismissed his coach and walked down the

Strand.

The first case was that of the Cardinal of Castellamare, who had been

exiled from Italy, and who, after attending a court ball and mixing

freely with the dancers, had been found dead on his couch; his fingers

clutching the pearl handle of a stiletto, whose point was in his heart.

Then, in the same conditions, Meadowes the laureate, the Count de

Dijon, and Brooke Gurdom the Derbyshire landowner, had all been found

dead. No trace of the culprit had been found, but in every case was the

rumour of a woman’s visit.

He reached the old road where stood his house, and stumbled against

a weird sedan that waited in a recess by his gateway. An arching

hornbeam hid it from the moonlight. Two men stood beside it attired

in outlandish clothes. Frambant stopped to examine the equipage, and

at the same moment a link-boy approached. He called for the light,

and to his wonderment found that the bearers were blackamoors with

smooth-shaven heads and staring eyes.

The sedan was of green cypress embellished with silver; a perfume of

oriental herbs spread from its open windows. Frambant asked the owner’s

name, but the men with one accord began to jangle in so harsh a tongue

that he was fain to leave them and go indoors.

In the antechamber a great reluctance to pass further came upon

him, and he halloed for a serving-man. Frambant was merciful to his

underlings, keeping little show of state. Rowley, the butler, came

soon, half-dressed and sleepy. On his master’s inquiry if any visitor

had entered the house, he protested that he knew of none, though

he had waited in the hall till past midnight. So, at the word of

dismissal, he retired, leaving Frambant to enter his chamber alone.

He took a candle and went to the place where hung the portrait of his

wife. There he paused to gaze on the unearthly loveliness of face and

figure. His eyes dimmed, and he turned away and began to undress; but

he was wearied and troubled because of his friend’s death, and when his

vest was doffed he threw himself upon a settle.

Presently the ripple of a long sigh ran through the sleeping house.

Frambant sprang to his feet and went to the antechamber. There he

heard the sound again: it came from the west wing, which for the last

year had been reserved for Villiers’s use. He caught up the candle and

hurried along the cold passages. At his brother’s door he paused, for

through the chinks and keyhole came soft broken lights.

A woman was speaking in a voice full of agony:--

‘Infamous, cruel deceiver! I have loved another, and given myself to

thee!’

Again came that long sigh. Well-nigh petrified with fear, he fumbled at

the latch until the door swung open. A terrible sight met his eyes.

Villiers lay stark on the bed, a red stain spreading over his linen. On

the pillow was a mask that had been rent in twain. Beside him stood a

tall, shapely woman, covered from shoulder to foot with a loose web of

diaphanous silk. Her long hair (of a withered-bracken colour) hung far

below her knees; a veil of green gauze covered the upper part of her

face. She was swaying to and fro, as if in pain.

‘Dastard,’ she wailed. ‘Thou hast attained the promised bliss unjustly.

In my arms all innocently I slew thee, praying for thy soul to pass to

my own heaven.’

Frambant’s lips moved. ‘My brother! my brother!’

The woman turned, glided towards him, and sank to her knees. She

laughed, with the silver laughter of a child who after much lamentation

has found the lost toy.

‘It is thou,’ she murmured. ‘Let us forget the evil he hath wrought

against us--let us forget and--love.’

She put out her hand to grasp his, he lifted his arm and thrust her

away.

‘Touch me not!’ he cried.

She rose and faced him, supporting herself by grasping the bedpost.

‘He has wronged us foully,’ she said. ‘The last love--the flower of my

life--he would have cheated me of it!’

‘Murderess! murderess!’

Her breath came very quickly; its sweetness pierced her veil and

touched his cheek.

‘What evil thing have I done?’ she asked. ‘’Tis my creed to love and to

destroy.’

Frambant went to the further side of the bed, and felt at his brother’s

heart. It was still, the flesh was growing cold. He flung his arm over

the dead breast and wept, and Constantia stole nearer and knelt at his

side.

‘God,’ she prayed, holding her hands above her head, ‘pervert all my

former entreaties, let all the punishments of hell fall upon the dead

man! Sustain the strength that has never failed, that I may conquer him

who lives.’

Frambant staggered away; she locked her arms about his knees.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I loved thee from the first moment.... When we met

at the bagnio, he was disguised--not until I had killed him and looked

on his brow did I know the truth.’

He made no reply, but considered the corpse in stony horror. So she

released her hold and stood before him again.

‘O cold and sluggish man! Why should I faint now? Cleopatra bought as

hard a lover’s passion.’

With a sudden movement she undid her robe at the neck, so that it

whispered and slipped down, showing a form so beautiful that a mist

rose and cloaked it from his eyes,--such perfection being beyond nature.

He moved towards the door, but she interrupted him. ‘Is not this

enough?’ she cried. And she tore away the green veil and showed him a

face fit to match the rest. Only once before had he seen its wondrous

loveliness.

Again his eyes were drawn to Villiers. How he had loved the lad! Very

strange it was: but at the instant his mind went back to boyhood, when

he had made him hobby-horses.

‘You have killed my brother! you have killed my brother!’

Constantia laughed wearily. ‘Enough of that mixture of iron and clay.

What is the penalty?’

‘The law shall decide.’

She sprang forward and drew the knife from Villiers’s breast. Frambant,

however, forced it from her hand.

‘For love of the wife who died, who even now is pleading at God’s

throne for me?’

Frambant’s fingers relaxed. ‘Hush!’ he said.

‘If I must die let it be at thy hands.’

‘As you will: here ... write.’ He took a quill from the table and

dipped it in the pool of stiffening blood.

Then he dictated, whilst she wrote in a firm hand.

‘_I, Constantia, the Noble Courtesan, after slaying five men, meet

with a just punishment. Seek not to know further._’

She pressed close to him, smiling very tenderly. Her eyes were full of

passionate adoration. As he raised the knife to her breast she caught

his disengaged hand between her own....

Frambant wrapped her in the gauze. Then after pinning the paper at the

head, and covering all with the gown of white satin that was braided

with golden serpents, he carried her through the house and garden.

Dayspring was near, the light appalling.

He reached the cypress sedan and laid his burden inside. The two

blackamoors, who had gibbered sleepily the while, caught up the poles

and bore the Noble Courtesan away.

THE WRITINGS OF ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR

A portrait of Althea Swarthmoor hangs in the library of the House with

Eleven Staircases. She is depicted (by Kneller’s brush) as a tall, thin

woman of about thirty, somewhat sallow in the matter of complexion,

and with deerhound eyes. Her crisp black hair is drawn plainly from an

admirably arched brow, and there is a perplexed look about her lips.

Doctor Marston’s miniature hangs beside--the presentment of a

corpulent, thick-necked divine with a fair skin, pallid eyes, and a

sensuous mouth. Herrickian curls lie flat on the temples. A suave grace

is manifest in the dimpled chin and complacent cheeks.