I held it up before her, saying:

"Shall I teach you to read it? If I did, how would you repay me, you

Clodagh?"

She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I

pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me.

The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush,

flickered upon her face, though every cranny was closed.

"Perhaps, then," I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little

derelict of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you

come to the palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If

there be danger, I will kill you: assuredly--without fail. And let me

begin with a lesson now: say after me: 'White.'"

I took her hand, and got her to understand that I wanted her to repeat

after me.

"White," said I.

"Hwhite," said she.

'Power,' said I.

'Pow-wer,' said she.

'White Power,' said I.

'Hwhite Pow-wer,' said she.

'Shall not,' said I.

'Sall not,' said she.

'White Power shall not,' said I.

'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not,' said she.

'Prevail,' said I.

'Fffail,' said she, pronouncing the 'v' with a long fluttering

'f'-sound.

'Pre-vail,' said I.

'Pe-vvvail,' said she.

'White Power shall not prevail,' said I.

'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not--fffail,' said she.

A thunder which roared as she said it seemed to me to go laughing

through the universe, and a minute I looked upon her face with positive

shrinking fear; till, starting up, I thrust her with violence from my

path, and dashed forth to re-seek the palace and my bed.

Such was the ingratitude and fatality which my first attempt, four

nights since, to teach her met with. It remains to be seen whether my

pity for her dumbness, or some servile tendency toward fellowship in

myself, will result in any further lesson. Certainly, I think not: for

though I have given my word, the most solemnly-pledged word may be

broken.

Surely, surely, her presence in the world with me--for I suppose it is

that--has wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now

apparently are those turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I

flaunted my monarchy in the face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed

blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking my body in a lewd dance; or was

off to fire some vast city and revel in redness and the chucklings of

Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was mere frenzy!--I see

it now--it was 'not good,' 'not good.' And it rather looks as if it were

past--or almost. I have clipped my beard and hair, removed the earrings,

and thought of modifying my attire. I will just watch to see whether she

comes loitering down there about the gate of the lake.

* * * * *

Her progress is like....

* * * * *

It is nine months since I have written, on these sheets, those words,

'Her progress is like....' being the beginning of some narrative in

which something interrupted me: and since then I have had no impulse to

write.

But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of

my memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here. I have lately

been trying to recall the name of a sister of mine--some perfectly

simple name, I know--and the name of my old home in England: and they

have completely passed out of my cognizance, though she was my only

sister, and we grew up closely together: some quite simple name, I

forget it now. Yet I can't say that my memory is bad: there are

things--quite unexpected, unimportant things--which come up in my mind

with considerable clearness. For instance, I remember to have met in

Paris (I think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of

the colour of weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds

me. He wore his hair short like a convict's, so that one could spy the

fish-white flesh beneath, and delighted to play solitary about the

stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the white balloon-dress of a Pierrot.

I have the impression now that he must have had very large ears. Clever

as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as it were by nature,

without having any suspicion that that was at all extraordinary. She has

that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, and easy way of

life. It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, and

already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and

perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter 'r');

she has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write,

draw, and play the harp. And all she does without effort: rather with

the flighty naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing.

What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months

or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in

hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was

looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst

into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she

is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever

breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design

upon my honour, it would be ill for her.

I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a

very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of

the moon, though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket

for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has

pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while

I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours

of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to

noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the

portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the

lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. _Why_

she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much

she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning

myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning.

That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I

cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is

among the most patent of facts.

* * * * *

I have thought that a certain _Western-ness_--a growing modernity of

tone--may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with

me? I do not know....

* * * * *

There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from

the palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach,

etc., so in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli

Fatmeh-bazaar, and got four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line,

quill-floats, a few yards of silk-worm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and

8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; and since red-worms, maggots and

gentles are common on the island, I felt sure of a great many more fish

than the number I wanted, which was none at all. However, for the mere

amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in a patch of

long-grass over-waved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, and

the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me,

questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently

I said I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the

palace for another rod and tackle.

That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and

put the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to

chop up for ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when

this was done it was dinner-time, and I sent her home, for by then I was

giving the reading-lessons in the morning.

The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding

for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the

rod. So I said to her:

'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with

nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt

wine.'

'Yes!' says she.

'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?'

'I was not closs,' says she.

'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said

I.

'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was

_this_ world, but another where he lived.'

'He who?'

'He who spoke with me.'

'Who was that?'

'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly.

I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her

how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be

nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her

palm, murmuring her fond coo.

She re-baited, and we lay again. I said:

'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope--'

'Plenty of _hope_!' says she.

'Good Heavens! hope of what?'

'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under,

or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I

should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.'

'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty

years seem _long_?'

'No--at least sometimes--not often. I was always so occupied.'

'Occupied in doing what?'

'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.'

'Talking to your_self_?'

'Not myself.'

'To whom, then?'

'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy

my hunger.'

'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any

fish. The maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"--'

'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely

landed a good-sized bream.

'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was

re-settled.

'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she--'I did not know why. But if

that was "sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I

clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he

would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.'

'He who?'

'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the

thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.'

'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you

never at all afraid?'

'Aflaid! _I_! of what?'

'Of the unknown.'

'I do not understand you. How could I be _aflaid_? The known was the

very opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and

wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and

sleep: there was nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less

tellible than the known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening

outside the cellar. I do not understand--'

'Ah, yes,' said I, 'you are a clever little being: but your continual

fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn't it in your nature to

keep still a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the

cellar--?'

'_Another!_' she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And

that afternoon she caught seven, and I none.

* * * * *

Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the

village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught

her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver

alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils,

and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar,

bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the _Speranza_, and

the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And

she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless

officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some

dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we

ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose,

tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable.

The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out

to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later,

she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish

containing a mess of gorgeous colours--a boiled fish under red peppers,

bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away,

and would have none of her, or her dish.

* * * * *

About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the

deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated

internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and

portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently

descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with

long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a

large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been

either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings

graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought

some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_;

and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim

lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well,

before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and

revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening

I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with

that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at

which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide:

but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she

understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last

I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.'

She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and

after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how

to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took

her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the

revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and

sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss.

However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her

miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black.

That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty

per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear

that this creature is the _protégée_ of someone, and favouritism is in

the world.

* * * * *

Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon,

I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure

sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I

always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old

Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store.

Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid,

I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her,

meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and

came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without

the yashmak.

We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to

Abel?'

'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms,

with the double object of teaching and perplexing her.

'Over what?' says she.

'Over his heels,' said I.

'I do not complehend!'

'He killed him, then.'

'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be

_killed_?'

'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of

your mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers

will become mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones

which you see around you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom

we often speak: and the same thing happened to them which happens to a

fish or a butterfly when you catch them, and they lie all still.'

'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?'

'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a

nonsense-dream.'

'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I

should not mind dying.'

'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die

a great deal sooner than you think.'

'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?'

'Because they were all such shocking cowards.'

'Oh, not all! not all!'

(This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself

up against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is

at it.)

'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid--'

'There was Isaac,' says she: 'when Ablaham laid him on the wood to kill

him, he did not jump up and lun to hide.'

'Isaac was a great exception,' said I: 'in the Bible and such books, you

understand, you read of only the best sorts of people; but there were

millions and millions of others--especially about the time of the

poison-cloud--on a very much lower level--putrid wretches--covetous,

false, murderous, mean, selfish, debased, hideous, diseased, making the

earth a very charnel of festering vices and crimes.'

This, for several minutes, she did not answer, sitting with her back

half toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with the

ball of her outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I saw

her fez and corals reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. She

turned and drank some wine from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I had

brought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it.

Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she:

'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these

climes and vices?'

'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--'

'But what made them _do_ them?'

'Their evil nature--their base souls.'

'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live here

together, and we do no vices and climes.'

Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does

her simple wit seem to pierce!

'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_.

There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to

eat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is

rather the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they were

very numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.'

'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?'

'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a

vast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose,

naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.'

'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices

and climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain

that if there had been no such question, there would have been no vices

and climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and

climes here, where there is no such question.'

The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her

effort of argument.

'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question

of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where

millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.'

'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at

all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all.

If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom,

science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an

allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more

than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a

nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!'

'It arose before--it would arise again.'

'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the

sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely

much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to

make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of

carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness

must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam

which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more

and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. I

see it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, they

would be taught--'

'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!'

'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The

tlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the

glound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walking

all among the tlees of the folests.'

As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she

is near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked

at me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it

suddenly struck me what a noble temple of a brow the creature has,

almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like a

bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon she

shakes backward with her head.

'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called you

Clodagh?'

'No? Tell me?'

'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called

Clodagh: and she was a....'

'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's

wife, flom all the others?'

'Well, by their faces....'

'But there must have been many faces--all alike--'

'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.'

'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive

any face, except yours and mine.'

'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.'

'What was a goose like?'

'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes

always spread out, with a skin stretched between.'

'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you saying

that your lover, Clodagh, was?'

'She was a Poisoner.'

'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?'

'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should become

my--lover, too.'

'I am your lover already: for I love you.'

'What, girl?'

'Do I not love you, who are mine?'

'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a

_poisoner_....'

'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?'

'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.'

'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked

things, but were done by the others, too?'

'By the others chiefly.'

'Then I see how it was!'

'How was it?'

'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must have

begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing

vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rotten

olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but

originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a

little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could

spling now--'

'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You

understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long

process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually

developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen

again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now.

So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do not

understand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-day

in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath,

meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it

is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go,

therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.'

She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned,

incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home

to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of

all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals

to the Hesperian realms of her rest.

So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I.

* * * * *

That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros!

I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clear

evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I

have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of

an old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she

had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but

kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of

amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, I

had called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'--and she, with suddenly

pushed under-lip, had walked off.

Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of

the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island

was bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her,

and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which she

had gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling,

picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and

the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing

whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and

sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms,

crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to

my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could

see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the

awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I

staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way

down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and

the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of

a thousand bells into the heaving lake.

Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten

minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later

standing among the ruins of her little yali.

* * * * *

Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been

destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew

into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no

trace remains, except a mound of gold stones emerging above the lake to

the south. Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a

practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the

_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily

picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into

a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in

the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail

match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the

street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the

inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all

right, and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in

every sort of green and brown seaweed, the old _Speranza_. Her steps

were there, and by a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up

hand-over-hand, till I got foothold; this I did at ten the same night

when the sea-water had mostly drained back from the land, leaving

everything very swampy, however; she there with me, and soon following

me upon the ship. I found most things cracked into tiny fragments,

twisted, disfigured out of likeness, the house-walls themselves

displaced a little at the nip, the bow of the cedar skiff smashed in to

her middle against the aft starboard corner of the galley; and were it

not for the fact that the air-pinnace had not broken from her heavy

ropings, and one of the compasses still whole, I do not know what I

should have done: for the four old water-logged boats in the cove have

utterly disappeared.

I made her sleep on the cabin-floor amid the _débris_ of berth and

everything, and I myself slept high up in the wood to the west. I am

writing now lying in the long-grass the morning after, the sun rising,

though I cannot see him. My plan for to-day is to cut three or four logs

with the saw, lay them on the ground by the ship, lower the pinnace upon

them, so get her gradually down into the water, and by evening bid a

long farewell to Imbros, which drives me out in this way. Still, I look

forward with pleasure to our hour's run to the Mainland, when I shall

teach her to steer by the compass, and manipulate liquid-air, as I have

taught her to dress, to talk, to cook, to write, to think, to live. For

she is my creation, this creature: as it were, a 'rib from my side.'

But what is the design of this expulsion? And what was it that she

called it last night?--'this new going out flom Halan'! 'Haran,' I

believe, being the place from which Abraham went out, when 'called' by

God.

* * * * *

We apparently felt only the tail of the earthquake at Imbros: for it has

ravaged Turkey! And we two poor helpless creatures put down here in the

theatre of all these infinite violences: it is too bad, too bad. For the

rages of Nature at present are perfectly astonishing, and what it may

come to I do not know. When we came to the Macedonian coast in good

moonlight, we sailed along it, and up the Dardanelles, looking out for

village, yali, or any habitation where we might put up: but everything

has apparently been wrecked. We saw Kilid-Bahr, Chanak-Kaleh, Gallipoli,

Lapsaki in ruins; at the last place I landed, leaving her in the boat,

and walked a little way, but soon went back with the news that there was

not even a bazaar-arch left standing whole, in most parts even the line

of the streets being obliterated, for the place had fallen like a house

of dice, and had then been shaken up and jumbled. Finally we slept in a

forest on the other side of the strait, beyond Gallipoli, taking our few

provisions, and having to wade at some points through morass a foot deep

before we reached dry woodland.

Here, the next morning, I sat alone--for we had slept separated by at

least half a mile--thinking out the question of whither I should go: my

choice would have been to remain either in the region where I was, or to

go Eastward: but the region where I was offered no dwelling that I could

see; and to go any distance Eastward, I needed a ship. Of ships I had

seen during the night only wrecks, nor did I know where to find one in

all these latitudes. I was thus, like her 'Ablaham,' urged Westward.

In order, then, to go Westward, I first went a little further Eastward,

once more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched

Seraglio steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the

wickedness of Nature had destroyed, and the few houses which I had left

standing round the upper part of Pera I now saw low as the rest; also

the house near the Suleimanieh, where we had lived our first days, to

which I went as to a home, I found without a pillar standing; and that

night she slept under the half-roof of a little funeral-kiosk in the

scorched cypress-wood of Eyoub, and I a mile away, at the edge of the

forest where first I saw her.

The next morning, having met, as agreed, at the site of the Prophet's

mosque, we traversed together the valley and cemetery of Kassim by the

quagmires up to Pera, all the landscape having to me a rather twisted

unfamiliar aspect. We had determined to spend the morning in searching

for supplies among the earthquake-ruins of Pera; and as I had decided to

collect sufficient in one day to save us further pains for some time, we

passed a good many hours in this task, I confining myself to the great

white house in the park overlooking Kassim, where I had once slept,

losing myself in the huge obliquities of its floors, roofs and

wall-fragments, she going to the old Mussulman quarter of Djianghir

near, on the heights of Taxim, where were many shops, and thence round

the brow of the hill to the great French Embassy-house, overlooking

Foundoucli and the sea, both of us having large Persian carpet-bags, and

all in the air of that wilderness of ruin that morning a sweet, strong,

permanent odour of maple-blossom.

We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not

let her carry it, but abandoned my day's labour, which was lighter, and

took hers, which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all

the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and

nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken

funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub.

There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I

was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I

might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said

to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a

stone:

'Good-night, Clodagh.'

She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a

protest against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came

from the darkness, saying:

'I am _not_ a Poisoner!'

'Well,' said I, 'all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call

you, and henceforth I will call you that.'

'Call me Eve,' says she.

'Well, no,' said I, 'not Eve, anything but that: for _my_ name is Adam,

and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want

to be ridiculous in each other's eyes. But I will call you anything else

that you like.'

'Call me Leda,' says she.

'And why Leda?' said I.

'Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,' says she, 'and you are

al-leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in

a book, and liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly

hollible!'

'Well, then,' said I, 'Leda it shall be, and I shan't forget, for I like

it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with

an "L." Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.'

'And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,' says

she; and I went.

And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head

on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could

see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes

were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced

and woke me: for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman

who had borne twins. In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek

word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have

heard of _v's_, and _b's_, and _d's_ interchanging about in this way,

and if _Di_, meaning God, or Light, and _Bi_, meaning Life, and Io_v_e,

and Iho_v_ah and Go_d_, meaning much the same, are all one, that would

be nothing astonishing to me, as wi_d_ow, and veu_v_e, are one: and

where it says, 'truly the Light is Good (_tob, b_on),' this is as if it

said, 'truly the Di is Di.' Such, at any rate, is the fatality that

attends me, even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek

Leda, had twins.

* * * * *

Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar

across the triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied

portal, and made our way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to

the foot of the Old Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway.

And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia,

Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times,

but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of rich

happiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vast

impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heights

and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck poet's fantasy,

everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, and

slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesse

everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, a

savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and

remote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and

glaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in

all that amplitude, yet moving always through it.

We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and

I found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at

my hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted,

and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run some

hundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done in

that way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for what

we were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for four

days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge type

peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerable

sound stretches, and took heart.

I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking

altitude-observations: for the _Speranza_ instruments, except one

compass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the

town of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins

of a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there

found several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings

later, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and a

stream near; I had a goat-skin of almond-oil in the bag, and found the

machinery serviceable after an hour's careful inspection, having

examined the boiler with a candle through the manhole, and removed the

autoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and the shaft of the

connecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one moment I was

very dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage at

the tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well;

at a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travelled

nearly a hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-head

block on the line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continued

another seven miles a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which I

had had to leave at Imbros, and hoping at every townlet to find a whole

one, but in vain.

* * * * *

It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth,

already invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking the

continuity of pure Nature, the town now as much the country as the

country, and that which is not-Man becoming all in all with a certain

_furore_ of vigour. A whole day in the southern gorges of the Balkan

Mountains the slow train went tearing its way through many a mile of

bind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming with large flowers,

but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather resembling jungles of

Ceylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the single car

behind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar Bazardjik,

continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and crooning

low, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and over

again, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming,

just audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine;

till I was drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet as

life, and a dolour that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothed

like kisses, so sweet, so sweet, that all that world of wood and gloom

lost locality and realness for me, and became nothing but a charmed and

pensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby in; and from between my

fingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that I could keep on

mourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near to break.

The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and

flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop

in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and

crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went,

stopped too. Down she jumped, calling out:

'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am so

glad, for I was tired!'

Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down,

took the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we went

pioneering to the left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stones

that looked black with moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet of

impenetrable leafage overhead, and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusion

of dim ferneries, dishevelled maidenhairs mixed with a large-leaved

mimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a smell of cedar, and a soft

rushing of perpetual waters that charmed the gloaming. The way led

slightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after some windings,

and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet obviously

natural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, with

far overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind a

curtain which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like a

Japanese bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening the

wines, fruits, vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order with

the gold plate, and lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: for

here it was quite dark. Near us behind the curtain of tendrils was a

small green cave in the rock, and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, a

black and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a little

rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a finger

long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be still

in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and

then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and

went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host

of the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the

end of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and many

things that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar,

counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts of

her.

She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to

sleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made

my simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept.

But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so,

gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the

cave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very

deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the

splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it

sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no

longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I

arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding

silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as

I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I

touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow,

a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the

suspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made

the silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the

dripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and

heard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hair

with my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as if

in sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it,

Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, and

I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead to

be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, little

Leda--'

I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with

passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in

her breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back

to the cave I stole in haste.

And the next morning when we met I thought--but am not now sure--that

she smiled singularly: I thought so. She may, she _may_, have heard--But

I cannot tell.

* * * * *

Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-tree

obstructions right across the line, which, do what I might, I could not

move, and these were the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; and

at least thirty times I changed from engine to engine, when other trains

blocked. As for the extent of the earthquake, it is pretty certain that

it was universal over the Peninsula, and at many points exhibited

extreme violence, for up to the time that we entered upon Servian

territory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the lines so

dislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during the

whole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, where

the way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals and

made the engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when I

always succeeded in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, for

not everywhere, nor every day, could I get a nautical observation, and

having at all times to go at low pressures for fear of tube and boiler

weakness, crawling through tunnels, and stopping when total darkness

came on, we did not go fast, nor much cared to. Once, moreover, for

three days, and once for four, we were overtaken by hurricanes of such

vast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our heads, our

only care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and darkly as

possible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly devastated,

once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the earthquake:

and I made haste to leave that place behind me.

Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of the

earthquake, having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in the

Venice lagoon, in the early morning of the 10th September, the lateen

sail and stone anchor of a Maltese _speronare_, which I had found, and

partially cleaned, at Trieste; and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in a

gondola. For I said to Leda: 'In Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.'

But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still further

Westward was I driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place are

now mere miasmas of pestilence: and within two days I was rolling with

fever in the Old Procurazie Palace, she standing in pale wonderment at

my bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this was

my first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when I

had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I could

not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses,

and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which to

choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a

sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear

me, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury in

travelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no

twisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many good

petrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage.

I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other

neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I

had, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France,

where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like

those old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place till

we came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house opposite

mine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing by

train into the valley of the Isère, and then into that of the Western

Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very great

mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lake

which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like the

moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creature

under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of

Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had

brought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to

reach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so

to go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux

route, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to this

hour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road,

which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountain

tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a

windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance

drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for château,

chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway

lines; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon

the shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless

obscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again.

About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a large

pile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid,

for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicated

white little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, and

oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like a

fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing

and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the

lake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a

small wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of

thick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small open

portal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter,

everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the rather

queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores of

the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenly

possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day it

turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five

long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us.

* * * * *

The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last meal

together--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a

lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table

pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high

backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the

walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock:

it is at about the middle of the château, and contains two small, but

deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white

stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge

of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny

island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore

of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be

the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be

Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St.

Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just

completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo,

snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the best

and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak

floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really

common ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The

papers on the desk told that it had been the _bureau_ of one R.E. Gaud,

'_Grand Bailli_,' whose residence the place no doubt had been.

She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I

would see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the

house, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At

both ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy,

furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there

are separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so

we decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of the

lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I should

have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge,

shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at one

point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided,

I took her hand in mine, and I said:

'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof--for the first time.

Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so

that it _may_ mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly

dangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact,

believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false.

Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you must

never on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I come

near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we have

been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing of

the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all--but things are so. We

must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really,

nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all--a

mere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you

will procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded

with mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for

myself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I want

another, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up a

boat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so that

you may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: you

cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks in

climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...'

I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care

whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at

Venice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear

darling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will

turn out trumps.'

* * * * *

Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in

which are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into

the wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground

around it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained

there; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made me

remember that a poet of that name had written something about this

place, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of the

poet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English,

near the Grand Bailli's _bureau_: and in one I read the poem, which is

called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and the

description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the

'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish

gloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor

or blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror

of man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined

that she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book,

and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she was

doing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number of

prints called _La Mode_, and _débris_ of snipped cloth, and medley.

When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself,

'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her

down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with

revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some official

or cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon,

the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of

cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard

with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow.

'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face

at the same time reddened with indignation.

'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if

monsters were cruel.'

And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a

new-born smile.

'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she.

'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--'

'That was good of them,' says she.

'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.'

'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'if

those who set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, what

would they have been at a time when all the lest were kind? They would

have been just like Angels....!'

* * * * *

At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, both

for her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passed

which did not find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon,

Ouchy, Vevay, Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages,

townlets, or towns, that crowd the shores, all very pretty places, each

with its charm, and mostly I went on foot, though the railway runs right

round the forty odd miles of the lake's length. One noon-day I was

walking through the main-street of Vevay going on to the Cully-road when

I had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in front of me to the right I

heard a sound--an unmistakable indication of life--as of clattering

metals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was conscious of

becoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I stole

up to the open door--peeped in--and it was she standing on the counter

of a jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over a

tray of jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. I

went _'Hoh!'_ for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, we

were very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walking

together by vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she just

like a creature crazy that day with the bliss of living, rolling in

grasses and perilous flowery declines, stamping her foot defiantly at

me, arrogant queen that she is, and then running like mad for me to

catch her, with laughter, _abandon_, carolling railleries, and the

levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flung

hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passage

through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flaming

darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner

secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of

white-hot honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much for

me, and made me sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deep

world of things? And at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silently

motioned her from me, for I was dumb, and weak, and I left her there:

and all that long night her power was upon me, for she is stronger than

gravitation, which may be evaded, and than all the forces of life

combined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are nothing compared

with her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in the air, or

like a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me to

breathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay on

that grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night,

like a man sore wounded, biting the grass.

What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes since

coming to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herself

made some of her dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a number

of coloured fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or she

may have been only modifying finished things from the shops, for her

Western dressing is not quite like what I remember of the modern female

style, but is really, I should say, quite her own, rather resembling the

Greek, or the eighteenth century. At any rate, the airs and graces are

as natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she has changes like the

moon; never twice the same, and always transcending her last phase and

revelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom _taste_ was

a faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like smelling

or sight--more like _smelling_: for it is the faculty, half Reason, half

Imagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suit

exquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received the

impression of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: the

special quality of works of Art being to produce the momentary

conviction that anything else whatever could not possibly be so good.

Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the

drawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably,

training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller than

before. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation between

us more complete than it might have been; and especially after that day

between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more I

saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself like

sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with gold

fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed

European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God

knows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and

groaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner

of life and thought might once more now have been called modern and

Western.

All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day

it seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate

within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to

menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and

her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her

'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great

a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--a

versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in my

fiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers.

Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west

of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian

field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Château one day in

the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a

corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air

above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed:

for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see

nothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came to

the conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almost

certainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the string

in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail'

of old.

* * * * *

But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly

lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_,

she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux

pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and

varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers

rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no

uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a

seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and

all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorous

and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight,

a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its

transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the

goat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was made

very ill by a two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in her

skiff, I being at the Château, and she did not come back; and while she

was away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean,

and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant

days of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set out

upon a wild-goose quest, of her--of all the hopeless things the most

hopeless, for the world is great--and I sought and did not find her; and

after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to search the

infinite, and coming near the Château, I saw her wave her handkerchief

from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and

she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to

me, the Biblical simpleton?--'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she

had adventures to lisp, with all the _r_'s liquefied into _l_'s, and I

was with her all that day again.

Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I

mostly kept locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed,

highly-spiced red trout or grayling, which I had not the heart to

refuse, and exquisitely she does them, all hot and spiced, applying

apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress;

and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with

the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old

fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming

now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon,

of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should

say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly

from the two islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did

not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to

every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with

three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing

with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping

with blue-bottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in

which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old

and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth.

* * * * *

On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent

health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I

forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long

beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any

count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a

day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by

my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and

tackle--I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to

be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a

most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers.

I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in

rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with

wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the

ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her

face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her

feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale

pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she

smelled like heaven, God knows.

I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and

pallid:

'It is the day!'

'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that.

I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my

manner.

'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another

silence.

'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could

not suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate.

Perhaps--but--'

'Tell Leda?'

'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....'

'O luck!' she went softly.

I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness:

but I could not at all help it.

I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat

lay; I threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle,

and then the stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went,

she steering, I in the bows, with every possible inch of space between

us, receiving delicious intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris,

frangipane, or some blending of perfumes, the morning being bright and

hot, with very little breeze on the water, which looked mottled, like

colourless water imperfectly mixed with indigo-wash, we making little

headway; so it was some time before I moved nearer her to get the par

for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was going to trail for

salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we spoke not a word

together.

Afterwards I said:

'Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays

are of any importance?'

'I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,' says she:

'and perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought

spices to the young Jesus.'

This _naïveté_ was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is

to be saved: and I laughed right out, saying:

'But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You

should read the quite modern books.'

'I have tlied,' says she: 'but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The

whole world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.'

'Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,' said

I.

'Yes, and no,' says she: 'they had got so _spoiled_, that is all.

Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted--the plainest tluths

they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them

in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor,

must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties

withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough

it, and quite blind on the other side.'

'Ah,' said I, 'I do not think they even _wanted_ to see on the other

side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among

them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing

one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could

greatly better themselves: but they heard with listless ears: I don't

know that they ever made any considerable effort. For they had become

more or less unconscious of their misery, so miserable were they: like

the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," who, when his deliverers came,

was quite indifferent, for he says:

"It was at length the same to me

Fettered or fetterless to be:

I had learned to love Despair."'

'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And

it is tlue, it seems tlue:--they had learned to love Despair, to be even

ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel _sure_ flom what I have lead,

flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to

live light, but without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is

so pletty of them all! that they meant well--everly one. But they were

too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all.

Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I

can't desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so

lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.'

'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very

beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was

great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....'

'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some

_cause!_ We can be quite _sure_ that it was not natulal, because you and

I are men, and our hearts are not evil.'

This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she

found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said:

'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing,

Leda.'

The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain

moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel,

very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered:

'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the

very least: and I know yours, too.'

'You know _mine!_' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise.

'Quite well,' says she.

I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but

going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line,

which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows.

After a ten-minutes I spoke again:

'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me

what is in it!'

Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said,

speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear:

'I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think

good, but is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to

climb upward, nor over-flowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its

fated channel just wherever it is led, then it will finally leach the

sea--the mighty ocean--and lose itself in fulness.'

'Ah,' said I, 'but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers

used to call "yielding to Destiny," and "following Nature." And Destiny

and Nature, I give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong--'

'Or _seemed_ to,' says she--'for a time: as when a stleam flows north a

little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the

time, and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be

judged, for it is not finished: and our lace should follow blindly

whither it points, sure that thlough many curves it leads the world to

our God.'

'Our God indeed!' I cried, getting very excited: 'girl! you talk

speciously, but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of

yours? Girl! you talk of "our race"! But there are only two of us left?

Are you talking _at_ me, Leda? Do not _I_ follow Destiny?'

'You?' she sighed, with down-bent face: 'ah, poor me!'

'What should I do if I followed it?' said I, with a crazy curiosity.

Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said:

'You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where

you are. You would be always and for ever near me....'

My good God! I felt my face redden.

'Oh, I could not _tell_ you...!' I cried: 'you talk the most disastrous...!

you lack all responsibility...! Never, never...!'

Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller:

and bitingly she said, with a touch of venom:

'I could _make_ you come--_now_, if I chose: but I will not: I will wait

upon my God....'

'_Make_ me!' I cried: 'Leda! How make me?'

'I could cly before you, as I cly often and often ... in seclet ... for

my childlen....'

'_You_ cry in secret? This is news--'

'Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and

the work I have to do _vely, vely_ gleat? And often and often I cly in

seclet, thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love

your little girl so much, that you could not lesist me one minute....'

Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little

under-lip, boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was

altogether beyond control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found

myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to

me.

Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested

me: 'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but _sideward_ there may be a

way!' And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in

the water swimming.

The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I

swam, rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look

behind me.

* * * * *

Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out,

lying in the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside

my bed, where it was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and

what things I suffered that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what

prayers I prayed, God knows. What infinitely complicated the awful

problem was this thought in my head: that to kill her would be far more

merciful to her than to leave her alone, having killed myself: and,

Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at all caring for

myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that

was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of

Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three

of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony,

groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking

sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her

live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer,

for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own

hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was

perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in

my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could

make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between

us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it

seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something:

and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal,

chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs,

lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge,

walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found

its action accurate, and started back. When I came to the Castle, I

walked along the island to the outer end, and looked up: there were her

pretty cream Valenciennes, put up by herself, waving inward before the

light lake-breeze at one open oriel; and I knew that she was in the

Castle, for I felt it: and always, always, when she was within, I knew,

for I felt her with me; and always when she was away, I knew, I felt,

for the air had a dreadful drought, and a barrenness, in it. And I

looked up for a time to see if she would come to the window, and then I

called, and she appeared. And I said to her: 'Come down here.'

* * * * *

Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the

water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards

long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the

rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my

boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that

familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should

never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and

from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish

matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain

end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger

joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible:

and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and

Rhadamanthus.

She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And

'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going

straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you

guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very

sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone

... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be

done.'

Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was

already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of

room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record

also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which

painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little

turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence.

She did not say anything: so I went on.

'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan--a plan which

cannot be effective without _your_ consent and co-operation: and the

plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some

unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I

get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going

different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want

to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.'

She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not

long in coming.

'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but

where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently

wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.'

'That means that you refuse to do what I say?'

'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity.

'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman

now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I

left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I

should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely

refuse to part with me?'

The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm:

'Yes; I lefuse.'