THE CALL OF THE CUCKOO
I stood looking through the window of my studio thinking.
The worst had happened, or the best, whichever it was. Viola had
become my mistress. She had resolutely refused to be my wife, and the
alternative had followed of necessity. The picture had brought us
together, it held us together. I could not separate from her without
sacrificing the picture, and so destroying her happiness, as she said,
and rendering useless all that she had done for me so far.
The picture forced us into an intimacy from which I could not escape
and which, now that the devastating clutch of passion had seized me, I
could not endure unless she became my own. Viola had seen this and
given me herself as unhesitatingly as she had at first given me her
beauty for the picture.
In her relations with me she seemed to reach the highest point of
unselfishness possible to the human character. For I felt that it was
to me and for me she had surrendered herself, not to her own passion
nor for her own pleasure.
She would have come day after day and sat to me, shewed me herself and
delighted in that self's-reproduction on the canvas, talked to me,
delighted in our common worship of beauty, accepted my caresses
and--for herself--wanted nothing more.
I had worked well in the past fortnight since the night of the
theatre, not so well perhaps as in that first clear period of
inspiration, of purely artistic life when Viola was to me nothing but
the beautiful Greek I was creating on my canvas, but still, well.
Some may think I naturally should from a sense of gratitude, a sense
of duty,--that I should be spurred to do my best, since avowedly Viola
had sacrificed all that the work should be good.
But ah, how little has the Will to do with Art!
How well has the German said, "The Will in morals is everything; in
Art, nothing. In Art, nothing avails but the being able."
The most intense desire, the most fervid wish, in Art, helps us
nothing. On the contrary, a great desire to do well in Art, more often
blinds the eye and clogs the brain and causes our hand to lose its
cunning. Unbidden, unasked for, unsought, often in our lightest, most
careless moments, the Divine Afflatus descends upon us.
We had arranged to have a week-end together out of town. Fate had
favoured us, for Viola's aunt had gone to visit her sister for a few
weeks, and the girl was left alone in the town house, mistress of all
her time and free to do as she pleased. The short interviews at the
studio, delightful as they were, seemed to fail to satisfy us any
longer. We craved for that deeper intimacy of "living together."
This is supposed to be fatal to passion in the end, but whether this
is so or not, it is what passion always demands and longs for in the
beginning.
So we had planned for four days together in the country, four days of
May, with a delicious sense of delight and secret joy and warm
heart-beatings.
I had dined at her house last night when all the final details had
been arranged in a palm-shaded corner by the piano, our conversation
covered by the chatter of the other guests. No one knew of our plan,
it was a dear secret between us, but it would not have mattered very
much if others had known that we were going into the country. I was
always supposed to be able to look after Viola, and everybody assumed
that it was only a question of time when we should marry each other.
We had grown up together, we were obviously very much attached to each
other, and we were cousins. And with that amazing inconsistency that
is the chief feature of the British public, while it would be shocked
at the idea of your marrying your sister, it always loves the idea of
your marrying your cousin, the person who in all the world is most
like your sister.
However, all we as hapless individuals of this idiotic community have
to do is to secretly evade its ridiculous conventions when they don't
suit us, and to make the most of them when they do.
And as I was more anxious to marry Viola than about anything else in
the world, I welcomed the convention that assigned her to me and made
the most of it.
For all that, we kept the matter of our four days to ourselves and
planned out its details with careful secrecy.
I was to meet her at Charing-Cross station, and we were going to take
an afternoon train down into Kent where Viola declared she knew of a
lovely village of the real romantic kind. I had thought we ought to
write or wire for rooms at a hotel beforehand, but Viola had been sure
she would find what she wanted when we arrived, and she wished to
choose a place herself.
So there was nothing more to do. My suit-case was packed, and when the
time came to a quarter past two I got into a hansom and drove to the
station.
Almost as soon as I got there, Viola drove up, punctual to the minute.
She knew her own value to men too well to try and enhance it by always
being late for an appointment as so many women do.
She looked fresh and lovely in palest grey, her rose-tinted face
radiant with excitement.
"I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" was her first exclamation after
our greeting.
"I had so much work to do for Aunt Mary all the morning, I thought I
should not have time to really get off myself."
"No, you haven't kept me waiting," I answered; "and, if you had, it
would not have mattered. You know I would wait all day for you."
She glanced up with a wonderful light-filled smile that set every cell
in my body singing with delight, and we went down the platform to
choose our carriage.
When the train started from Charing Cross the day was dull and
heavy-looking; warm, without sunshine. But after an hour's run from
town we got into an atmosphere of crystal and gold and the Kentish
fruit trees stretched round us a sea of pink and white foam under a
cloudless sky.
When we stepped out at our destination, a little sleepy country
station, the air seemed like nectar to us. It was the breath of May,
real merry, joyous English May at the height of her wayward, uncertain
beauty.
We left our light luggage at the station, and walked out from it,
choosing at random the first white, undulating road that opened before
us.
The little village clustered round the station, but Viola did not want
to lodge in the village.
"We can come back to it if we are obliged, but we shall be sure to
find a cottage or a wayside inn."
So we went on slowly in the transparent light of a perfect May
afternoon.
There are periods when England both in climate and landscape is
perfect, when her delicate, elusive loveliness can compare favourably
with the barbaric glory, the wild magnificence of other countries.
On this afternoon a sort of rapture fell upon us both as we went down
that winding road. The call of the cuckoo resounded from side to side,
clear and sonorous like a bell, it echoed and re-echoed across our
path under the luminous dome of the tranquil sky and over the hedges
of flowering thorn, snow-white and laden with fragrance.
Everywhere the fruit trees were in bloom: delicate masses of white and
pink rose against the smiling innocent blue of the sky.
"Now here is the very place," exclaimed Viola suddenly, and following
her eyes I saw behind the high, green hedge bordering the road on
which we were walking some red roofs rising, half hidden by the masses
of white cherry blossom which hung over them. A cottage was there
boasting a garden in front, a garden that was filled with lilac and
laburnum not yet in bloom; filled to overflowing, for the lilac bulged
all over the hedge in purple bunches and the laburnum poured its young
leaves down on it. A tiny lawn, rather long-grassed and not innocent
of daisies, took up the centre of the garden, and on to this two open
casements looked; above again, two open windows, half-lost in the
white clouds of cherry bloom.
"But how do you know they've any rooms?" I expostulated.
Viola looked at me with jesting scorn in her eyes.
"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out."
She put her hand unhesitatingly on the latch of this apparently sacred
domain of a private house, opened the gate, and passed in; I followed
her inwardly fearful of what our reception might be.
"Men have no moral courage," she remarked superbly as we reached the
porch and rang the bell.
A clean-looking woman came to the door after some seconds.
"Apartments? Yes, miss, we have a sitting-room and two bedrooms
vacant," she answered to Viola's query. "Shall I show them to you?"
We passed through a narrow, little hall smelling of new oilcloth into
a fair-sized room which possessed one of the casements we had seen
from outside and through which came the white glow and scent of the
cherry bloom and the song of a thrush.
"This will do," remarked Viola with a glance round; "and what bedrooms
have you? We only want a sitting-room and one bedroom now."
"Well, ma'am, the room over this is the drawing-room. That's let from
next Monday. Then I have a nice double-room, however, I could let with
this."
"We will go and see it," said Viola. And we went upstairs.
It seemed a long way up, and when we reached it and the door was
thrown open we saw a large room, it was true but the ceiling sloped
downwards at all sorts of unexpected angles like that of an attic, and
the casements were small, opening almost into the branches of the
cherry-tree.
"What do you want for these two?" Viola enquired.
"Five guineas a week, ma'am," returned the woman, placidly folding her
hands together in front of her.
I saw a momentary look of surprise flash across Viola's face. Even
she, the young person of independent wealth, and who commanded far
more by her talents, was taken aback at the figure.
"Surely that's a good deal," she said after a second.
"Well, ma'am, I had an artist here last summer and he had these two
rooms, and he said as he was leaving: 'Mrs. Jevons, you can't ask too
much for these rooms. The view from that window and the cherry-tree
alone is worth all the money.'"
We glanced through the window as she spoke. It was certainly very
lovely. A veil of star-like jasmine hung at one side, and without,
through the white bloom of the cherry, one caught glimpses of the
turquoise-blue of the sky. Beneath, the garden with the wandering
thrushes and its masses of lilac; beyond, the soft outline of the
winding country road leading to indefinite distance of low blue hills.
"We'll take them for the sake of the cherry-tree," Viola said smiling.
"Will you send to the station for our light luggage and let us have
some tea presently?"
The woman promised to do both at once and ambled out of the room,
leaving us there and closing the door behind her.
I looked round, a sense of delight, of spontaneous joy, filling slowly
every vein, welling up irresistibly all through my being.
For the first time I stood in a room with Viola which we were going to
share. No other form of possession, of intimacy, is quite the same as
this, nor speaks to a lover in quite the same way.
I looked at her. She stood in the centre of the rather poorly
furnished and bare-looking room, in her travelling dress of a soft
grey cloth. Her figure that always woke all my senses to rapture,
shewed well in the clear, simple lines of the dress. Over the perfect
bosom passed little silver cords, drawing the coat to meet.
Beneath her grey straw summer hat, wide-brimmed, a pink rose nestled
against the light masses of her hair. Her eyes looked out at me with a
curious, tender smile.
She threw herself into a low cane chair by the window, I crossed the
room suddenly and knelt beside it.
"Darling, you are pleased to be here with me, are you not?"
"Pleased! I am absolutely happy. I have the sensation that whatever
happened I could not possibly be more happy than I am."
She put one arm round my neck and went on softly in a meditative
voice:
"I can't think how some girls go on living year after year all through
their youth never knowing this sort of pleasure and happiness, for
which they are made, can you?"
"They don't dare to do the things, I suppose," I answered.
"Perhaps they wouldn't give them any pleasure, ... but it seems
extraordinary." Her voice died away. Her blue eyes fixed themselves on
me in a soft, dreaming gaze.
I locked both my arms round her waist and kissed her lips into
silence. A knock at the door made me spring to my feet. Viola remained
where she was, unmoved, and said, "Come in."
A trim-looking maid came in with rather round eyes fixed open to see
all she could. She had a can of hot water in her hand.
"Please, mum, I thought you'd like some hot water."
"Very much," returned Viola calmly. "Thank you."
The maid very slowly crossed the room to the washing-stand and set the
can in the basin, covering it with a towel with elaborate care and
deliberateness, looking at Viola out of the corners of her eyes as she
did so.
"Please, m'm, when your luggage comes shall I bring it up?"
"Yes, do please, bring it up at once," replied Viola, and the girl
slowly withdrew, shutting the door in the same lengthy manner after
her.
Viola got up and crossed to the glass. She took off her hat and
smoothed back her hair with her hand. Each time she did so, the light
rippled exquisitely over its shining waves.
"I wonder if I ought to wash my face?" she remarked, looking in the
glass; "does it look dusty?"
"Not in the least," I said, studying the pink and white reflection in
the glass over her shoulder.
"Don't waste the time washing your face. Come and look out of the
window."
We went over to the little casement, and leant our arms side by side
on the sill.
The glorious afternoon sunlight was ripening and deepening into
orange, a burnished sheen lay over everything, the blue hills were
changing into violet, the trees along the road stood motionless, soft,
and feathery-looking in the sleepy heat. As we looked out we saw a
light cart coming leisurely along and recognised our luggage in it.
Some fifteen minutes later the round-eyed maid reappeared, with a man
following her carrying our luggage.
"If you please, m'm, Mrs. Jevons says would the gentleman go down and
give what orders he likes for dinner for to-day and to-morrow as the
tradesmen are here now and would like to know."
"Do you mind going down, Trevor?" Viola asked me. "I want just to get
a few of my things out?"
"Certainly not," I answered, "I'll go." And I followed the maid out
and downstairs.
When I returned to the room about half-an-hour later, it was empty,
and as I looked round it seemed transformed, now that her possessions
were scattered about. I walked across it, a curious sense of pleasure
seeming to clasp my heart and rock it in a cradle of joy.
I glanced at the toilet table. On the white cloth lay now two
gold-backed brushes, a gold-backed mirror and a gold button-hook, a
little clock in silver and a framed photograph of me; over the chair
by the dressing-table was thrown what seemed a mass of mauve silk and
piles of lace. I lifted it very gently, fearing it would almost fall
to pieces, it seemed so fragile, and discovered it was her
dressing-gown. How the touch of its folds stirred me since it was
_hers_!
I replaced it carefully, wondering at the keen sensation of pleasure
that invaded me as the soft laces touched my hands.
I turned to my own suit-case, unstrapped it, opened it, and then
pulled out the top drawer of the chest, intending to lay my things in,
but I stopped short as I drew it out.
A sheet of tissue paper lay on the top, and underneath this was her
dinner-dress--a delicate white cloud of shimmering stuff told me it
was that--and at the end of the drawer I saw two little white shoes
and white silk stockings.
I paused, looking down at the contents of the drawer, wondering at the
wave of emotion they sent through me. Why, when I possessed the girl
herself, should these things of hers have any power to move me?
It was perhaps partly because this form of possession, of intimacy,
was so new to me, and partly because I was young and still keenly
sensitive to all the delights of life and not yet even on the edge of
satiety. I lifted one little shoe out and sat down with it in my hand,
gazing at its delicate, perfect shape, my heart beating quickly and
the blood mounting joyously to my brain.
What a wonderful thing it is, this life in youth when even the sight
of a girl's shoe can bring one such keen, passionate pleasure!
Yet what pain, what agony it would be if by chance I had come across
this shoe and held it in my hand as now, and there was no violet night
to follow, no white arms going to be stretched out through its deep
mauve-tinted shadows!
I was still sitting with the shoe in my hand when Viola reappeared,
her arms full of lilac.
"I went down to the garden to get some of this," she said. "It looked
so lovely. What are you doing, Trevor, sitting there? The woman has
made the tea, and it will be much too strong if you don't come down."
She came up behind me and I saw her flush and smile in the glass as
she caught sight of her shoe. I looked up, and she coloured still more
at my glance.
"I am thinking about this and other things," I said smiling up at her.
She bent over and kissed me and took the shoe out of my hand.
"I am glad you like my little shoe," she said gently with a tender
edge to her tone, replacing the shoe in the drawer.
"Now do come down."
She put all the lilac in a great mass in the jug and basin, and we
went downstairs.
After tea we went out to explore our new and temporarily acquired
territory, and found there was another flower garden at the side of
the house. This, like the one in front, was hedged round with lilac
laden with glorious blossom of all shades, from deepest purple through
all the degrees of mauve to white. Every here and there the line was
broken by a May-tree just bursting into bloom that thrust its pink or
white buds through the lilac. A narrow path paved with large, uneven,
moss-covered stone flags led down the centre and on through a little
wicket gate into the kitchen garden beyond, so that altogether there
was quite an extensive walk through the three gardens, all
flower-lined and sweetly fragrant. We passed slowly along the path
down to the extreme end of the kitchen garden where there was a seat
under a broad-leaved fig-tree. By the side of the seat stood an old
pump, handle and spout shaded by a vine that half trained and half of
its own will trailed and gambolled up the old red brick garden wall. A
flycatcher perched on the pump handle and thrilled out its gay
irresponsible song.
"I have just come over the sea and I am so glad to be here, so glad,
so glad," it seemed to be saying, and two swallows skimmed backwards
and forwards low down to the earth, gathering mud from a little pool
by the pump.
We sat down on the bench and looked out from under the fig-tree at the
pure tranquil sky, full of gold light and just tinted with the first
rosy flush of evening.
There was complete silence save for the clear, gay, rippling song of
the bird, and the deep peace of the scene seemed to fall upon us like
an enchanted spell.
Viola dropped her head on my shoulder with a sigh of contentment.
"I am so happy, so content. I feel as glad as that little flycatcher.
It has escaped from the sea and the storms and winds, and I've got
away from London, its tiresome dinners and hot rooms and all the
stupid men who want to marry one."
I laughed and watched her face as it lay against me, and I saw her
eyes half-closed as she gazed dreaming into the sunshine.
Faint pink clouds sailed across the sky at intervals like downy
feathers blown before a breeze; the flycatcher continued its
chattering song to us, some bees hummed with a warm summer-like sound
over the wall.
An hour slipped by and seemed only like one golden moment. We heard a
bell jangle from the direction of the house, and when I looked at my
watch I saw it was time to dress for dinner.
When we retraced our steps the whole garden was bathed in rosy light
and the lilac stood out in it curiously and poured forth a wonderful,
heavy fragrance as we passed.
The voice of spring, that beautiful low whisper with its promise of
summer and cloudless days was in all the air. Had we been married
several years I do not think either Viola or I would have found Mrs.
Jevons's cooking good nor praised the dinner that night; the
attendance also might have been condemned. But as it was we were in
that magic mirage of first days together and everything seemed
perfect.
When it was over we sought the outside again and sat watching the now
paling rose of the sky being replaced by clear, tender green. A
passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was
being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the
songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and
there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden.
Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white
night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I
drew her close to me and looked down upon her through the dusky
twilight.
"Let us go, too, dearest, it is quite late."
She looked up, the colour waving all over her face, and smiled back at
me, and we went in and upstairs.
When we reached our room, the window was wide open as we had left it
and the room seemed full of soft violet gloom, heavy with fragrance of
the lilac that shewed its pale mauve stars through the shadows.
It was so beautiful, the effect of the deep summer twilight, that I
told her not to light the candles.
"Shew yourself to me in this wonderful mysterious half-light, nothing
can be more beautiful."
I sat down on the foot of the bed watching her, my heart beating,
every pulse within me throbbing with delight.
Viola did not answer. She did not light the candles, but with the
rustle of falling silk and lace began her undressing.
That night I could not sleep. The window stood open, and the room was
filled with the soft mysterious twilight of the summer night with its
thousand wandering perfumes, its tiny sounds of bats and whirring
wings.
The cherry bloom thrust its long, white, scented arms into the room. I
lay looking towards the white square of the window wide-eyed and
thinking.
A strange elation possessed my brain. I felt happy with a clear
consciousness of feeling happy. One can be happy unconsciously or
consciously.
The first state is like the sensation one has when lying in hot water:
one is warm, but one hardly knows it, so accustomed to the embrace of
the water has the body become.
The other state of conscious happiness is like that of first entering
the bath, when the skin is violently keenly alive to the heat of the
water.
Viola lay beside me motionless, wrapped in a soundless sleep like the
sleep of exhaustion. Not the faintest sound of breathing came from her
closed lips.
The room was so light I could distinctly see the pale circle of her
face and all the undulating lines of her fair hair beside me on the
pillow.
I felt the strange delight of ownership borne in upon me as it had
never been yet.
We had not dared to pass a night together at the studio.
We had only had short afternoons and evenings, hours snatched here and
there, over-clouded by fears of hearing a knock at the door, a
footstep outside.
But this deep solitude, these hours of the night when she _slept_
beside me, all powers, all the armour of our intelligence that we wear
in our waking moments, laid aside, seemed to give her to me more
completely than she had ever given herself before.
And gazing upon her in serene unconsciousness, I felt the intense joy
of possession, a sort of madness of satisfaction vibrating through me,
stamping that hour on my memory for ever.
The next morning we came down late and enjoyed everything with that
keen poignant sense of pleasure that novelty alone can give. To us
coming from a stay of months in town the small sitting-room, the open
casement window, the simple breakfast-table, the loud noise of birds'
voices without, the green glow of the garden seemed delightful, almost
wonderful.
So curtains were really white! how strange it seemed. In town they are
always grey or brown, and the air was light and thin with a sweet
scent, and the sky was blue!!!
It was a fine day, the sun poured down riotously through the
snow-white bloom of the cherry-tree, two cuckoos were calling to each
other from opposite sides of the wood, and their note, so soft in the
distance, so powerful when near, resounded through the shining air
till it seemed full of the sound of a great clanging bell, musical and
beautiful.
Viola was delighted; her keen ear enjoyed the unusual sound.
"Oh, Trevor, that repeated note, how glorious it is! It reminds me of
a sustained note in Wagner's _Festpiel_. I do wish they'd go on."
She seated herself by the window listening with rapture in her eyes.
The woman of the house brought in our coffee, but I doubt if we should
have got any breakfast, only the cuckoos wanted theirs and fortunately
flew off to get it.
When the glorious musical bell rang out far on the other side of the
wood, dimmed by distance, Viola came reluctantly to the table.
"How delicious this is! this being in the country _just at first_.
Look at the table with its jonquils! isn't it pretty? Look at the
honey and cream!"
"I think you had better eat some of it," I answered; "or at least pour
out the coffee."
Viola laughed and did so, and we breakfasted joyously, full of the
curious gayety that belongs to novelty alone.
Then we went out, and the outside was equally entrancing. The scent of
the lilac seemed to hang like a canopy in the air under which we
walked. There was a fat thrush on the lawn, young and tailless. The
sight of him and the dappled marks on his white breast gave me a
strange pleasure.
We sat down on the turf finally where the cherry-tree cast a light
shade, a sort of white shadow in the sunlight, from its blossoms.
Viola thrust her hands down into the cool, green grass.
"How lovely this is," she said, looking up the tall tree above us.
"Look at its great tent of white blossoms against the blue sky; it's
like a picture of Japan!"
After a time, when we were tired of the garden, we went out and turned
down the white road to explore the country.
It was very hot, and the glare from the road excessive, but as it was
all new to us it all seemed delightful, even to the white dust that
coated our lips and got into our eyes whenever the breeze stirred.
After about a mile and a half of walking we came to an oak wood. The
road dipped suddenly between cool, green, mossy banks and lay in deep,
grateful shade from the arching oaks above. I climbed the bank on one
side and looked into the wood. It was very thick and wild, apparently
rarely penetrated. Through the close-growing stems of the undergrowth
I saw a bluebell carpet lying like inverted sky beneath the oaks.
"The wood looks very attractive," I said as I rejoined Viola; "but we
can't stay to go into it now. We haven't the time; it's half past
twelve already."
"I'm sorry," said Viola, looking wistfully at the green wood. "This is
the nicest part; but I suppose we can't disappoint that woman by not
getting back to luncheon."
So we walked back slowly through the noonday sun, admiring the double
pink May peeping out from the green hedges.
When we came in just before lunch, she took the easy chair facing the
window, and I sat down on one opposite and watched her. She was
wearing a white cambric dress that looked very simple and girlish; she
was smiling, and her face was delicately rose-coloured after the
walk.
A sense of responsibility came over me. She was my cousin, my own
blood relation. I must protect her, must think for her if she would
not think for herself.
"You know it's risky being down here like this. You had much better
come to some rustic church with me in another village and marry me
there."
"No. You know perfectly well I am not going to marry you," she said
softly, looking up at me with a smile in her eyes, great pools of blue
beneath their exquisitely arched lids.
"It is ridiculous to suppose that you, an artist of twenty-eight, will
want to keep faithful to one woman all the rest of your life--or her
life. It would be very bad for you, if you did. One can't go against
Nature, and Nature has not arranged things that way. Marriage is a
pleasure perhaps; but Nature never arranged, marriage, and a man
should not allow himself unnatural pleasures."
She was really laughing now, but I knew her resolve was perfectly
serious and I did not see how I could break it up.
"Well, but some men do keep to one woman all their life and are none
the worse for it; look at a country clergyman for instance."
Viola raised her eyebrows with a laugh.
"How can you be sure of the country clergyman? I expect he goes up to
town sometimes.... However, of course I admit he is fairly faithful,
but how about being none the worse for it? A country clergyman is
about the most undeveloped creature you could have, and a great artist
is the most developed, the nearest approach to a god of all human
beings."
I did not answer, but sat silent staring at her. She looked such a
sweet little Saxon schoolgirl in her white dress, but with such
tremendous character and power in those great shining eyes.
"But if we marry now," I said at last, "and anything should ... should
come between us, I don't see it would be any worse than...."
"Than if we were living together without marriage," she put in
quickly. "Yes, I think it would. Look here, if we marry now with a
great blaze and fuss, and invite all our friends to see the event,
which is great nonsense anyway, and then you see some other woman
later you covet, it seems to me there are only three ways open to us:
either you go without the woman and suffer very much in consequence
and always owe me a grudge for standing in your way; or you take her
and I have to profess to see nothing and look on quietly, which I
could never stand, it would send me mad; or we must have all the
trouble and worry and scandal of a divorce and call in the public to
witness our quarrel; and why _should_ we have the public to interfere
in our affairs?" she added, her eyes flashing. "What is it to them
whom I love or whom I live with, whom I leave or quarrel with? These
are all private matters."
"And if we live together and the same thing happens?" I pursued
quietly.
"Why, then we should separate, only without any trouble, any
publicity; we should fall apart naturally. If you preferred any one
else, you must go to her; I should slip away out of your life, and we
should each be free and untied."
"If it's so much better for the man to change," I said smiling, "it
must be the same for the woman."
"So it is," rejoined Viola quickly; "the more men a woman has the more
developed she is, the better for her morally, if there is no
conventional disgrace attaching to it. Amongst the Greeks, Aspasia and
all those women of her class were far more intellectual, more
developed than the wives who were kept at home to spin and rear
children."
"All these things ought to be optional. If a woman loves one man so
much she wants to stay with him for ever and ever, probably through
such a great passion she reaches her highest development; but until
she has found that man she ought to be allowed to go from one to
another without any disgrace attaching to it. And, of course, just the
same law holds good for the man."
"Outsiders like the world and the law ought never to be allowed to
interfere between a man and a woman. They never can know the right or
the wrong of their relations to each other well enough to enable them
to be judges. Nobody ever knows but the man and the woman themselves,
and they ought to be left alone; what they do, whether in quarrelling
or love, ought to be as private as the prayers one sends to Heaven."
She paused, and through the window came the gay, loud, triumphant call
of the cuckoo seeking its mate of an hour in the heart of the glad
green wood.
Viola listened with a look of delight.
"How happy they are!" she said. And the note came again, instinct with
love and joy.
"How well Nature arranged everything, and how Man has spoiled it all!
Fancy passion, the most subtle, evanescent, delicate, elusive
emotion--and yet one so strong--fancy that being bound down by crabbed
and crooked laws, being confined by wretched little conventions!"
"But, anyway, we shall have to say we are married here."
"Oh, say anything you like," rejoined Viola laughing; "saying doesn't
do any harm."
"Yes, but then we must fix some place where we've _been_ married and
all that, do you see; we'd better go somewhere further off I think and
stay away some time and come back married. I do feel very worried
about it, Viola. I think it would be much simpler to do it than to
lie about it."
Viola jumped up and came over to me.
"Dear Trevor, I am _so_ sorry you are worried, but really it will work
out all right. We will go abroad somewhere from here, we might go to
Rome, it's a lovely time of year, and then to Sicily, to Taormina, ...
and we'll stay away a year and you finish the picture and I'll write
an opera, and then we'll come back married to town in the season and
we'll have _been_ married before we leave England of course, and then
it will be a year ago, and I don't think anybody will bother about it
much."
I looked down upon her. She was so pretty and so dear to me: I must
keep her, and if those were the only terms upon which she would stay
with me I must accept them.
The landlady came into the room at this minute followed by the maid to
lay the luncheon; in the landlady's hand was a fat, black book which
she presented diffidently to Viola.
"It's the Visitors' book, ma'am," she said. "I thought you and the
gentleman would like to write your names in it in case of any
letters...."
"Yes, very much," returned Viola promptly, with a little side smile at
me, and sat down and wrote in it.
When she had done so, she closed the book, and as the maid was in and
out of the room during luncheon, it was not till it was finished and
cleared away and we were alone that I asked her what she had written.
"Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale; that's right, isn't it? I did not put Trevor
for I always think 'make your lies short' is a good rule."
"I thought you were such a truthful person," I said a little sadly.
"So I am--to you, for instance, so I should be to any one who has the
right to hear truth; but the world has no right, and I don't care what
lies I tell it, it's such an inquisitive old bore!"
I laughed. Viola always made you laugh when you felt you ought to be
angry with her.
"Come out now," I said, "let's enjoy this lovely afternoon. I should
like to paint you under that tree," I added musingly, looking out on
the tree in its white glory.
"In your usual style?" she returned laughing. "I don't think you could
here. Mrs. Jevons would turn me out as not being respectable; not even
being Mrs. Lonsdale would save me."
"You would make a lovely picture, even dressed," I returned, musing;
"but then of course it would not sell for half the price."
"Nothing is really snapped at but the nude. That lovely landscape I
painted when I was young and foolish,--it took me two years to work
it off, and the veriest little daub of an unclothed girl goes directly
at a hundred guineas."
"A great compliment to our natural charms," laughed Viola. "I am
delighted personally at anything that is a note of protest against the
tyranny of the dressmaker and fashion."
"What shall we do?" I queried; "it's beautifully hot," I added
persuasively.
"I'll tell you: we will go into the oak wood; the oaks grow low and
the ground and the land rise all round, no one can possibly see us
without coming quite close; on that blue carpet you shall paint me
lying asleep, we will call the picture 'The Soul of the Wood,' and you
shall sell it for a thousand. Come along."
So it was decided, and with one of her thick cloaks, that she could
throw round her instantly if surprised, and my artist's pack we
started for the wood.
It was a hot golden day, the one day we should get of really fine
weather in the whole English year, and when we reached the wood the
light under the oak boughs was magnificent, a soft mellow glory
falling down on the blue hyacinths which grew so closely together that
it was as if a sea of vivid colour had invaded the dell or a great
patch of the blue sky had fallen there.
We had difficulty in getting into the wood as the undergrowth of
young oak scrub made it almost impenetrable; it stood up straight, and
the great, swaying, huge, spreading boughs of the old oaks above came
down and rested on and amongst the young oaks, like a roof upon
pillars, and the leaves of both intermingled till they were like green
silk curtains hung from ceiling to floor. When we had finally pushed
through almost on our hands and knees to the centre of the wood, the
scrub grew less close, the carpet of blue was perfect, a circle of
green shut us in, we were in a magic chamber, through the roof of
which came floods of green and golden light.
Viola cast aside the "tyranny of the dressmaker" and shook out her
light hair. Then she threw herself on the hyacinth bed, looking
upwards to the low arching roof. At that moment the call of the
cuckoo, wild, entrancing, came overhead, and she raised her arms with
a look of rapture as the slim grey bird dashed through the upper oak
branches in pursuit of its mate. It was a perfect pose for the "Soul
of the Wood," and I begged her to keep it while I rapidly caught the
idea and sketched it in roughly in charcoal.
Those happy sunlit hours in the wood, how fast they slipped away! I
was absorbed in the work and completely happy in it, and Viola I
believe was equally happy in the delight she knew she was giving me.
We came back very hungry to our tea, and very pleased with ourselves,
the sketch, and our successful afternoon.
It was six o'clock, the light was mellowing, and a thrush singing with
all its own wonderful passion and rapture on the lawn. The scent of
the lilac, intensely sweet, came in at the window and filled the room.
In the evening we went out and sat under the cherry-tree, watching the
stars come out and gleam through its white bloom.
"Sing me the Abendstern," murmured Viola, leaning her head against me.
"I was a dutiful model all the afternoon, it's your turn to amuse me
now."
So I sang the Abendstern to her under the cherry-tree, and its white
shadow enveloped us both, making her face look very beautiful under
it; and when I had finished singing we kissed each other and agreed
that the world was a very delightful place as long as there was
Wagner's music in it, and cherry-trees to sit under, and white bloom
and stars and lips to kiss.
Between nine and ten, after a very countrified supper we went up to
bed in the slanting-roofed room under the thatch, full still of the
tender light of a spring evening.
The next day was delicious, too, and the next, but on the fourth we
were quite ready to go. We had drained the cup of joy which that
particular place held for us and it had no more to offer. The
cherry-tree pleased us still, but it did not give us the ecstatic
thrill of the first view of it. The lilac scent streamed in, but it
did not go to the head and intoxicate us as when we came straight from
the air of Waterloo; the thrush gurgled as passionately on the deep
green lawn, but the gurgle did not stir the blood. All was the same,
only the strange spell of novelty was gone.
Viola seemed so pleased to be leaving it quite hurt me. When I went
upstairs I found her packing her little handbag with alacrity and
singing.
"Are you glad to be going?" I asked.
"Yes," she said surprised; "are not you?"
"But you have been happy here?" I said with a tone of remonstrance.
"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed; "wildly, intensely happy! It's been four
days' enchantment, but then it's gone now; we can't get any _more_ out
of this place. We have enjoyed it so much we have drained it,
exhausted it; like the bees, we must move on to a fresh flower."
It was true that was all we could do, yet I looked round the bare
attic-like room with regret. Could ever another give me more than that
had done? Could there ever be a keener joy, a deeper delight than I
had known in the shadows of that first violet night?
PART THREE
THE BLACK NIGHT