From Camelot to Cameliard
The way by bright pavilions starred,
In arms and armor all unmarred,
To Guinevere rode Lancelot to claim for Arthur
his reward.
Down from her window look't the maid
To see her bridegroom, half afraid--
In him saw kingliness arrayed:
And summoned by the herald Love to yield, her woman's
heart obeyed.
From Cameliard to Camelot
Rode Guinevere and Lancelot--
Ye bright pavilions, babble not!
The king she took, she keeps for king, in spite of
shame, in spite of blot!
--_From Cameliard to Camelot_.
It is a disagreeable duty (one, however, which you and I, madam,
discharge with a conscientiousness which the unthinking are sometimes
unable to distinguish from zeal) to criticize one's friends. The task
is doubly hard when the animadversion is committed to paper, with a
more or less definite idea of ultimate publication. I trust, beloved,
that we may call Mr. Florian Amidon a friend. He is an honest fellow
as the world goes, in spite of the testimony of Simeon Woolaver
regarding the steers; and he wishes to do the right thing. In a matter
of business, now, or on any question of films, plates or lenses, we
should find him full of decision, just and prompt in action. But (and
the disagreeable duty of censure comes in here) there he stands like a
Stoughton-bottle in a most abject state of woe, because, forsooth, he
possesses the love of that budding Juno over there by the grate, and
knows not what to do with it! What if he _doesn't_ feel as if he had
the slightest personal acquaintance with her? What if the image of
another, and the thought----? But look with me, for a moment, at the
situation.
There she sits, so attentive to her book (is it the _Rubaiyat_? Yes!)
that his entrance has not attracted her notice--not at all! One
shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy
silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender
ankle, and a glimpse of black above the leather. The desire for
exactness alone compels a reference to the fact that the boundary lines
of this silhouetted black area diverge perceptibly as they recede from
the shoe. It is only a detail, but even Florian notices it, and thinks
about it afterward. Her face is turned toward the shadows up there
by the window, her eyes looking at space, as if in quest of Iram and
his Rose, or Jamshyd and his Sev'n-ring'd Cup, or the solution of
the Master-knot of Human Fate. The unconscious pose showing the
incurved spine, and the arms and shoulders glimpsing through falls
of lace at sleeve and corsage, would make the fortune of the
photographer-in-ordinary to a professional beauty. And yet that man
Amidon stands there like a graven image, and fears to rush in where an
angel has folded her wings for him and rests!
[Illustration: There she sits so attentive to her book that his
entrance has not attracted her notice]
He knows that he is expected to claim some of the privileges of the
long-absent lover. He has some information as to their nature. His
eyes ought to apprise him (as they do us, my boy!) of their
preciousness. He is not without knowledge concerning past conduct of
that type which, beginning in hard-won privileges, ripens into
priceless duties, not to discharge which is insult all the more bitter
because it is not to be mentioned. It is not to be denied that the
tableau appeals to him; and because another woman has lately touched
him in a similar way, he stands there and condemns himself for that!
There is small excuse for him, I admit, sir. Her first token of his
presence should have been a kiss on the snowy shoulder. You suggest
the hair? Well, the hair, then, though for my part, I have always
felt---- But never mind! Had it been you or I in his place----
Yes, my dear, this digression is becoming tedious. Let us proceed with
the story.
Elizabeth rose with a little start of surprise, a little flutter of the
bosom, and came forward with extended hands. He took them with a
trembling grasp which might well have passed as evidence of fervor.
"Ah, Eugene," said she, holding him away, "it has seemed an age!"
"Yes," said he truthfully, "an eternity, almost."
"Sit down by the fire," said she, in that low voice which means so
much. "You are cold."
"I am a little cold," he replied. "I must have remained outside too
long."
"Y-e-s?" she returned; and after a long pause: "It doesn't seem to take
long--sometimes. And the wind is in the east."
Now, when a bride-elect begins to deal in double meanings of this sort
with her fiance, the course of true love is likely to be entering on a
piece of rough road-bed.
"How did you find Estelle when you called?"
Estelle? Estelle? Estelle! Nothing in Blodgett and Blatherwick's
notes about Estelle. "A whole directory of names," as Judge Blodgett
had said, but no Estelle. The world full of useless people--a billion
and a half of them--and not an Estelle at poor Amidon's call in this
time of need. Hence this long hiatus in the conversation.
"Really, Miss--er--a--my dear, I haven't had time to call on any one."
"It will be a little hard to explain," said she after a silence, "to my
prospective bridesmaid and dearest friend, that you were so long in New
York and could not call. It is not quite like you, Eugene."
He was sitting where he could see her well, and because she looked into
the fire a good deal, he found himself gazing fixedly at her. Her
manifold perfections filled him with the same feeling of astonishment
experienced by that beggar who awoke in the prince's chamber, clothed
in splendor, and with a royal domain in fee.
(Personally, I regard the domain which spread itself before Amidon, as
imperial.)
As she pronounced her gentle reproof, her eyes turned to his, and he
started guiltily.
"No," he confessed, "it was not the right thing. You must forgive me,
won't you?"
"I hope," said she, smiling, "I may be able to do more than that: maybe
I shall be so fortunate as to get you Estelle's forgiveness."
"Thank you," he said; and then seeking for safer ground: "Haven't you
something for us to look over--some plans or something?"
"'Or something'!" she repeated with a ripple of laughter.
It was the first time he had heard this laugh; and Marot's lines ran
through his mind:
"Good God! 'twould make the very streets and ways
Through which she passes, burst into a pleasure!
* * * * * *
No spell were wanting from the dead to raise me,
But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me!"
"'Or something!'" she repeated, I say; "it might just as well be the
profiles of a new pipe-line survey, for all the interest you take in
it. I oughtn't to look at them with you; but come, they're over here
on the table."
Somehow, this lady's air required the deferential offer of his arm; and
somehow, the deference seemed to please her. So he felt that the
tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints. Moreover, in
matters of architecture he felt at home--if he could only steer clear
of any discussion of the grounds. He had no idea of the location of
these.
Soon their heads were close together over the plans. A dozen times her
hair brushed his lips, two or three times his fingers touched the satin
skin of her arms and shoulders, and all the time he felt himself within
the magic atmosphere which enwraps so divine a maiden, as odorous
breezes clothe the shores of Ceylon. Her breath, the faint sweet
perfume in her hair, the soft frou-frou of her skirts, the appealing
lowness of her voice--all these wrought strongly on Florian; and when
she leaned lightly upon him as she reached past him for one of the
sheets, he felt (I record it to his credit) as if he must take her to
his arms, and complete the embrace she had involuntarily half begun.
But the feeling that she was, after all, a strange young girl, and was
revealing herself to him altogether under a mistake as to his identity,
restrained him.
[Illustration: Soon their heads were close together over the plans]
She did not lean against him any more. There were some little
improvements in the plans which had occurred to Elizabeth, especially
in the arrangement of kitchen, pantry and laundry.
"I'll have the architect come and see you about these," said Amidon.
"What!" said she, in apparent astonishment--"from Boston?"
"Ah--well," he stammered, "I didn't know--that is---- Yes, from
Boston! We want these matters as you want them, you know, if it were
from Paris or Calcutta. And I think there should be some provision for
prism-glass to light up the library. It could be cut in right there on
that north exposure; don't you think so?"
"Oh, yes, and what an improvement it will be!" she replied. "And may I
have all the editions of Browning I want, even if I couldn't explain
what _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came_ means?"
"Oh, does that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the
allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle. "Then you
have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's _Scottish
Ballads_. You get the story there, of Childe Roland following up the
quest for his sister, shut up by enchantment in the Dark Tower, in
searching for which his brothers--Cuthbert and Giles, you remember, and
the rest of 'The Band'--had been lost. He must blow a certain horn
before it, in a certain way--you know how it goes, 'Dauntless the
slug-horn to my lips I set!' It's quite obvious when you know the
story, and not a bit of an enigma. The line in _Lear_ shows that the
verses must have been commonly sung in Shakespeare's time----"
The girl was looking at him with something like amazement; but her
answer referred to the matter of his discourse.
"Yes," said she, "I can see now how the 'Dark Tower' lightens up. I
must read it again in the light of this explanation of yours. Shall we
read it together, soon?"
"Oh, by all means!" said he. "Only I warn you I never tire when I find
any one who will study Browning with me. I tried to read _The Ring and
the Book_ with a dear friend once, and reading my favorite part,
'Giuseppe Caponsacchi,' as I raised my eyes after that heartbreaking
finale, 'O, great, just, good God! Miserable me!' I saw she was
dozing. Since then, I read Browning with his lovers only----"
"Yes, you are right in that. But, Eugene," she exclaimed, "you said to
me many times that his verse was rot, that Nordau ought to have
included him in his gallery of degenerates, that he is muddy, and that
there isn't a line of poetry in his works so far as you have been able
to dig into them. And you cited _Childe Roland_ as proof of all of
this! And you never would listen to any of Browning, even when we
almost quarreled about it! Now, if that was because---- Why, it
was----!"
She paused as if afraid she might say too much. Florian, who had
rallied in his literary enthusiasm, collapsed into his chronic state of
terror. Even in so impersonal a thing as Browning, the man who does
not know what his habits are takes every step at his peril.
"Oh, _that_ that I said!" he stammered. "Yes--yes. Well, there _are_
obscurities, you know. Even Mr. Birrell admits that. But on the
whole, don't you agree with me?"
"Quite," said she dryly; "if I understand you."
There was an implied doubt as to her understanding of his position, and
the only thing made clear was that the drawbridge was up again. So
Florian began talking of the plans. He grew eloquent on ventilators,
bath-rooms, and plumbing. He drew fine and learned distinctions
between styles.
"The colonial," said he, "is not good unless indulged in in great
moderation. Now, what I like about this is the way in which
ultra-colonialism is held in check, and modified in the direction of
the Greek ideal. Those columns, supporting the broad portico, hark
back to the Parthenon, don't they? I like that taste and flavor of the
classic."
She listened in much the same wondering way in which she had regarded
him at the beginning of his outburst on Browning. Was it possible
that, after all, this lover of hers, whose antecedents were so little
known, but whose five years of successful life in Bellevale had won for
him that confidence of his townsmen in which she had partaken, was,
after all, possessed of some of those tastes in art and literature, the
absence of which had been the one thing lacking in his character, as it
appeared to her? It would seem so. And yet, why had he concealed
these things from her, who so passionately longed for intellectual
companionship? Somehow, resentment crept into her heart as she looked
at him, and there was something in his attitude which was not frank and
bold, as she liked to see a man--but this would not do. He was so
lovely in his provision for the future, and surely his conversation
disclosed that he had those tastes and that knowledge!
"I think the moon must be letting me look at its other side to-night,"
said she. "Have you been saving up the artist and poet in you, to show
them to me now?"
"Oh, no," said he, "not at all--why, any one knows these little things.
Now let's go through the arrangement of the chambers; shall we?"
"Not to-night, if you please. Let us sit by the fire again. It will
be a grand house, dear. Sometimes I think, too grand for Bellevale;
and quite often I feel, too grand, too elegant--for me."
"Who then," answered Florian, who saw his conversational duty, a
dead-sure thing, and went for it there and then, "who then could have
such a house, or ought to have it, if not you?"
The girl looked questioningly, pathetically at him, as if she missed
something of the convincing in his words.
"To deny that you feel so--felt so about it when you gave orders for
the building, would be foolish," said she at last. "And it was very
dear of you to do it. But once a man, having a little gem which he
thought of perfect water, placed it in a setting so large and so
cunningly wrought that nobody ever saw the little stone, unless it was
pointed out to them."
"He saw it," said Florian, "whenever he wanted to--and no setting can
be too beautiful for a moon-stone."
He felt that he was rallying nobly.
"Really," he thought, "I am getting quite ardent. And under different
circumstances, I could be so in the utmost good faith; for I know she's
as good and true as she is queenly and beautiful. But after all, it is
duty, only, and----"
"In such a house," she went on, "people may live a little closer than
acquaintances, or not quite so close, as the case may be, with their
lives diluted by their many possessions."
"Yes?" said he expectantly.
"Before it comes to that," she burst forth, her eyes wide and her hands
clasped in her lap, "I want to die! I could gather the fagots for the
fire, and cuddle down by it on a heap of straw by the roadside, with
the man I love; and if I knew he loved me, he might beat me, and I
would bear it, and be happy in his strength--far happier than in those
chambers you spoke of a moment ago, with an acquaintance who merely
happened to be called a husband! I would rather walk the streets than
that!"
Now, a lovers' quarrel requires lovers on both sides. Had Amidon
really been one, this crisis would have passed naturally on to
protestation, counter-protestation, tears, kisses, embraces,
reconciliation. But all these things take place through the interplay
of instincts, none of which was awakened in Florian. So he sat
forlorn, and said nothing.
"I am going to let you go home, now," said she, rising. "I gave out
the date of the wedding, as you requested, the day after you went away.
If it were not for that, I should ask you to wait a while--until the
house is finished--or even longer. As it is, you mustn't be surprised
if I say something surprising to you soon."
"I--I assure you----" began Amidon. "Good night, my----"
He had schooled himself for this farewell, and remembering what Madame
le Claire had told him, had decided on a course of action. The two had
walked out into the hall and he had put on his top-coat. Now he went
bravely up to her and stooped to kiss her.
She raised her face to his, and again the feeling that this man was
only a mere acquaintance passed into her being, as she looked into his
eyes. She turned her lips away. But Florian, as the feeling of
strangeness impressed her, lost it himself in the contemplation, brief
but irresistible, of the upturned lips with their momentary invitation
so soon withdrawn. The primal man in him awoke. His arm tightened
about the lissome waist; the divine form in the creamy silk, on which
he had only now almost feared to look, he drew to him so tightly as
almost to crush her; and with one palm he raised the averted face to
his, and made deliberate conquest of the lips of vivid red. Once,
twice, three times--and then she put her hands against his shoulders
and pushed him away. Her face flamed.
"Eugene!" she exclaimed, "how----"
"Good night!" he answered, "my dearest, my darling, good night!"
And he ran down the street, in such a conflict of emotions that he
hardly knew whither he went.