upon his mind, so that he lost the standard of remembered things. For
it was no longer merely a particular adventure; it seemed a habit
and a natural joy resumed. It was not new. He knew the momentum of
an accustomed happiness, mislaid, it may be, but certainly familiar.
They sped across the gravel paths that intersected the well-groomed
lawn, they leaped the flower-beds, so laboriously shaped in mockery,
they clambered over the ornamental iron railings, scorning the easier
five-barred gate into the park. The longer grass then shook the dew
in soaking showers against his knees. He stooped, as though in some
foolish effort to turn up something, then realised that his legs, of
course, were bare. _Her_ garment was already high and free, for she,
too, was barelegged like himself. He saw her little ankles, wet and
shining in the moonlight, and flinging himself down, he kissed them
happily, plunging his face into the dripping, perfumed grass. Her
ringing laughter mingled with his own, as she stooped beside him the
same instant; her hair hung in a silver cloud; her eyes gleamed through
its curtain into his; then, suddenly, she soaked her hands in the heavy
dew and passed them over his face with a softness that was like the
touch of some scented southern wind.
"Now you are anointed with the Night," she cried. "No one will know
you. You are forgotten of the world. Kiss me!"
"We'll play for ever and ever," he cried, "the eternal game that was
old when the world was yet young," and lifting her in his arms he
kissed her eyes and lips. There was some natural bliss of song and
dance and laughter in his heart, an elemental bliss that caught them
together as wind and sunlight catch the branches of a tree. She leaped
from the ground to meet his swinging arms. He ran with her, then tossed
her off and caught her neatly as she fell. Evading a second capture,
she danced ahead, holding out one shining arm that he might follow.
Hand in hand they raced on together through the clean summer moonlight.
Yet there remained a smooth softness as of fur against his neck and
shoulders, and he saw then that she wore skins of tawny colour that
clung to her body closely, that he wore them too, and that her skin,
like his own, was of a sweet dusky brown.
Then, pulling her towards him, he stared into her face. She suffered
the close gaze a second, but no longer, for with a burst of sparkling
laughter again she leaped into his arms, and before he shook her free
she had pulled and tweaked the two small horns that hid in the thick
curly hair behind, and just above, the ears.
And that wilful tweaking turned him wild and reckless. That touch ran
down him deep into the mothering earth. He leaped and ran and sang with
a great laughing sound. The wine of eternal youth flushed all his veins
with joy, and the old, old world was young again with every impulse of
natural happiness intensified with the Earth's own foaming tide of life.
From head to foot he tingled with the delight of Spring, prodigal with
creative power. Of course he could fly the bushes and fling wild across
the open! Of course the wind and moonlight fitted close and soft about
him like a skin! Of course he had youth and beauty for playmates, with
dancing, laughter, singing, and a thousand kisses! For he and she were
natural once again. They were free together of those long-forgotten
days when "Pan leaped through the roses in the month of June...!"
With the girl swaying this way and that upon his shoulders, tweaking
his horns with mischief and desire, hanging her flying hair before
his eyes, then bending swiftly over again to lift it, he danced to
join the rest of their companions in the little moonlit grove of pines
beyond....
3
They rose somewhat pointed, perhaps, against the moonlight, those
English pines--more with the shape of cypresses, some might have
thought. A stream gushed down between their roots, there were mossy
ferns, and rough grey boulders with lichen on them. But there was
no dimness, for the silver of the moon sprinkled freely through the
branches like the faint sunlight that it really was, and the air ran
out to meet them with a heady fragrance that was wiser far than wine.
The girl, in an instant, was whirled from her perch on his shoulders
and caught by a dozen arms that bore her into the heart of the jolly,
careless throng. Whisht! Whew! Whir! She was gone, but another, fairer
still, was in her place, with skins as soft and knees that clung as
tightly. Her eyes were liquid amber, grapes hung between her little
breasts, her arms entwined about him, smoother than marble, and as
cool. She had a crystal laugh.
But he flung her off, so that she fell plump among a group of bigger
figures lolling against a twisted root and roaring with a jollity that
boomed like wind through the chorus of a song. They seized her, kissed
her, then sent her flying. They were happier with their glad singing.
They held stone goblets, red and foaming, in their broad-palmed hands.
"The mountains lie behind us!" cried a figure dancing past. "We are
come at last into our valley of delight. Grapes, breasts, and rich red
lips! Ho! Ho! It is time to press them that the juice of life may run!"
He waved a cluster of ferns across the air and vanished amid a cloud of
song and laughter.
"It is ours. Use it!" answered a deep, ringing voice. "The valleys are
our own. No climbing now!" And a wind of echoing cries gave answer from
all sides. "Life! Life! Life! Abundant, flowing over--use it, use it!"
A troop of nymphs rushed forth, escaped from clustering arms and lips
they yet openly desired. He chased them in and out among the waving
branches, while she who had brought him ever followed, and sped past
him and away again. He caught three gleaming soft brown bodies, then
fell beneath them, smothered, bubbling with joyous laughter--next freed
himself and, while they sought to drag him captive again, escaped and
raced with a leap upon a slimmer, sweeter outline that swung up--only
just in time--upon a lower bough, whence she leaned down above him with
hanging net of hair and merry eyes. A few feet beyond his reach, she
laughed and teased him--the one who had brought him in, the one he ever
sought, and who for ever sought him too....
It became a riotous glory of wild children who romped and played with
an impassioned glee beneath the moon. For the world was young and they,
her happy offspring, glowed with the life she poured so freely into
them. All intermingled, the laughing voices rose into a foam of song
that broke against the stars. The difficult mountains had been climbed
and were forgotten. Good! Then, enjoy the luxuriant, fruitful valley
and be glad! And glad they were, brimful with spontaneous energy,
natural as birds and animals that obeyed the big, deep rhythm of a
simpler age--natural as wind and innocent as sunshine.
Yet, for all the untamed riot, there was a lift of beauty pulsing
underneath. Even when the wildest abandon approached the heat of orgy,
when the recklessness appeared excess--there hid that marvellous touch
of loveliness which makes the natural sacred. There was coherence,
purpose, the fulfilling of an exquisite law: there was worship. The
form it took, haply, was strange as well as riotous, yet in its
strangeness dreamed innocence and purity, and in its very riot flamed
that spirit which is divine.
For he found himself at length beside her once again; breathless and
panting, her sweet brown limbs aglow from the excitement of escape
denied; eyes shining like a blaze of stars, and pulses beating with
tumultuous life--helpless and yielding against the strength that pinned
her down between the roots. His eyes put mastery on her own. She looked
up into his face, obedient, happy, soft with love, surrendered with the
same delicious abandon that had swept her for a moment into other arms.
"You caught me in the end," she sighed. "I only played awhile."
"I hold you for ever," he replied, half wondering at the rough power in
his voice.
It was here the hush of worship stole upon her little face, into her
obedient eyes, about her parted lips. She ceased her wilful struggling.
"Listen!" she whispered. "I hear a step upon the glades beyond. The
iris and the lily open; the earth is ready, waiting; we must be ready
too! _He_ is coming!"
He released her and sprang up; the entire company rose too. All stood,
all bowed the head. There was an instant's subtle panic, but it was
the panic of reverent awe that preludes a descent of deity. For a wind
passed through the branches with a sound that is the oldest in the
world and so the youngest. Above it there rose the shrill, faint piping
of a little reed. Only the first, true sounds were audible--wind and
water--the tinkling of the dewdrops as they fell, the murmur of the
trees against the air. This was the piping that they heard. And in the
hush the stars bent down to hear, the riot paused, the orgy passed and
died. The figures waited, kneeling then with one accord. They listened
with--the Earth.
"He comes.... He comes ..." the valley breathed about them.
There was a footfall from far away, treading across a world unruined
and unstained. It fell with the wind and water, sweetening the valley
into life as it approached. Across the rivers and forests it came
gently, tenderly, but swiftly and with a power that knew majesty.
"He comes.... He comes...!" rose with the murmur of the wind and
water from the host of lowered heads.
The footfall came nearer, treading a world grown soft with worship.
It reached the grove. It entered. There was a sense of intolerable
loveliness, of brimming life, of rapture. The thousand faces lifted
like a cloud. They heard the piping close. And so He came.
But He came with blessing. With the stupendous Presence there was joy,
the joy of abundant, natural life, pure as the sunlight and the wind.
He passed among them. There was great movement--as of a forest shaking,
as of deep water falling, as of a cornfield swaying to the wind, yet
gentle as of a harebell shedding its burden of dew that it has held
too long because of love. He passed among them, touching every head.
The great hand swept with tenderness each face, lingered a moment on
each beating heart. There was sweetness, peace, and loveliness; but
above all, there was--life. He sanctioned every natural joy in them and
blessed each passion with his power of creation.... Yet each one saw
him differently: some as a wife or maiden desired with fire, some as
a youth or stalwart husband, others as a figure veiled with stars or
cloaked in luminous mist, hardly attainable; others, again--the fewest
these, not more than two or three--as that mysterious wonder which
tempts the heart away from known familiar sweetness into a wilderness
of undecipherable magic without flesh and blood....
To two, in particular, He came so near that they could feel his breath
of hills and fields upon their eyes. He touched them with both mighty
hands. He stroked the marble breasts, He felt the little hidden horns
... and, as they bent lower so that their lips met together for an
instant, He took her arms and twined them about the curved, brown neck
that she might hold him closer still....
Again a footfall sounded far away upon an unruined world ... and He was
gone--back into the wind and water whence He came. The thousand faces
lifted; all stood up; the hush of worship still among them. There was a
quiet as of the dawn. The piping floated over woods and fields, fading
into silence. All looked at one another.... And then once more the
laughter and the play broke loose.
4
"We'll go," she cried, "and peep upon that other world where life
hangs like a prison on their eyes!" And, in a moment, they were across
the soaking grass, the lawn and flower-beds, and close to the walls
of the heavy mansion. He peered in through a window, lifting her up
to peer in with him. He recognised the world to which outwardly he
belonged; he understood; a little gasp escaped him; and a slight shiver
ran down the girl's body into his own. She turned her eyes away. "See,"
she murmured in his ear, "it's ugly, it's not natural. They feel guilty
and ashamed. There is no innocence!" She saw the men; it was the women
that he saw chiefly.
Lolling ungracefully, with a kind of boldness that asserted
independence, the women smoked their cigarettes with an air of
invitation they sought to conceal and yet showed plainly. He saw
his familiar world in nakedness. Their backs were bare, for all the
elaborate clothes they wore; they hung their breasts uncleanly; in
their eyes shone light that had never known the open sun. Hoping they
were alluring and desirable, they feigned a guilty ignorance of that
hope. They all pretended. Instead of wind and dew upon their hair, he
saw flowers grown artificially to ape wild beauty, tresses without
lustre borrowed from the slums of city factories. He watched them
manoeuvring with the men; heard dark sentences; caught gestures half
delivered whose meaning should just convey that glimpse of guilt they
deemed to increase pleasure. The women were calculating, but nowhere
glad; the men experienced, but nowhere joyous. Pretended innocence lay
cloaked with a veil of something that whispered secretly, clandestine,
ashamed, yet with a brazen air that laid mockery instead of sunshine in
their smiles. Vice masqueraded in the ugly shape of pleasure; beauty
was degraded into calculated tricks. They were not natural. They knew
not joy.
"The forward ones, the civilised!" she laughed in his ear, tweaking his
horns with energy. "_We_ are the backward!"
"Unclean," he muttered, recalling a catchword of the world he gazed
upon.
They were the civilised! They were refined and educated--advanced.
Generations of careful breeding, mate cautiously selecting mate,
laid the polish of caste upon their hands and faces where gleamed
ridiculous, untaught jewels--rings, bracelets, necklaces hanging
absurdly from every possible angle.
"But--they are dressed up--for fun," he exclaimed, more to himself than
to the girl in skins who clung to his shoulders with her naked arms.
"_Un_dressed!" she answered, putting her brown hand in play across his
eyes. "Only they have forgotten even that!" And another shiver passed
through her into him. He turned and hid his face against the soft skins
that touched his cheek. He kissed her body. Seizing his horns, she
pressed him to her, laughing happily.
"Look!" she whispered, raising her head again; "they're coming out."
And he saw that two of them, a man and a girl, with an interchange
of secret glances, had stolen from the room and were already by the
door of the conservatory that led into the garden. It was his wife to
be--and his distinguished cousin.
"Oh, Pan!" she cried in mischief. The girl sprang from his arms and
pointed. "We will follow them. We will put natural life into their
little veins!"
"Or panic terror," he answered, catching the yellow panther skin and
following her swiftly round the building. He kept in the shadow, though
she ran full into the blaze of moonlight. "But they can't see us,"
she called, looking over her shoulder a moment. "They can only feel
our presence, perhaps." And, as she danced across the lawn, it seemed
a moonbeam slipped from a sapling birch tree that the wind curved
earthwards, then tossed back against the sky.
Keeping just ahead, they led the pair, by methods known instinctively
to elemental blood yet not translatable--led them towards the little
grove of waiting pines. The night wind murmured in the branches; a bird
woke into a sudden burst of song. These sounds were plainly audible.
But four little pointed ears caught other, wilder notes behind the wind
and music of the bird--the cries and ringing laughter, the leaping
footsteps and the happy singing of their merry kin within the wood.
And the throng paused then amid the revels to watch the "civilised"
draw near. They presently reached the trees, halted, looked about them,
hesitated a moment--then, with a hurried movement as of shame and fear
lest they be caught, entered the zone of shadow.
"Let's go in here," said the man, without music in his voice. "It's dry
on the pine needles, and we can't be seen." He led the way; she picked
up her skirts and followed over the strip of long wet grass. "Here's a
log all ready for us," he added, sat down, and drew her into his arms
with a sigh of satisfaction. "Sit on my knee; it's warmer for your
pretty figure." He chuckled; evidently they were on familiar terms,
for though she hesitated, pretending to be coy, there was no real
resistance in her, and she allowed the ungraceful roughness. "But are
we _quite_ safe? Are you sure?" she asked between his kisses.
"What does it matter, even if we're not?" he replied, establishing her
more securely on his knees. "But, as a matter of fact, we're safer here
than in my own house." He kissed her hungrily. "By Jove, Hermione, but
you're divine," he cried passionately, "divinely beautiful. I love you
with every atom of my being--with my soul."
"Yes, dear, I know--I mean, I know you do, but----"
"But what?" he asked impatiently.
"Those detectives----"
He laughed. Yet it seemed to annoy him. "My wife is a beast, isn't
she?--to have me watched like that," he said quickly.
"They're everywhere," she replied, a sudden hush in her tone. She
looked at the encircling trees a moment, then added bitterly: "I hate
her, simply _hate_ her."
"I love you," he cried, crushing her to him, "that's all that matters
now. Don't let's waste time talking about the rest." She contrived to
shudder, and hid her face against his coat, while he showered kisses on
her neck and hair.
And the solemn pine trees watched them, the silvery moonlight fell on
their faces, the scent of new-mown hay went floating past.
"I love you with my very soul," he repeated with intense conviction.
"I'd do anything, give up anything, bear anything--just to give you a
moment's happiness. I swear it--before God!"
There was a faint sound among the trees behind them, and the girl sat
up, alert. She would have scrambled to her feet, but that he held her
tight.
"What the devil's the matter with you to-night?" he asked in a
different tone, his vexation plainly audible. "You're as nervy as if
_you_ were being watched, instead of me."
She paused before she answered, her finger on her lip. Then she said
slowly, hushing her voice a little:
"Watched! That's exactly what I did feel. I've felt it ever since we
came into the wood."
"Nonsense, Hermione. It's too many cigarettes." He drew her back into
his arms, forcing her head up so that he could kiss her better.
"I suppose it is nonsense," she said, smiling. "It's gone now, anyhow."
He began admiring her hair, her dress, her shoes, her pretty ankles,
while she resisted in a way that proved her practice. "It's not _me_
you love," she pouted, yet drinking in his praise. She listened to his
repeated assurances that he loved her with his "soul" and was prepared
for any sacrifice.
"I feel so safe with you," she murmured, knowing the moves in the game
as well as he did. She looked up guiltily into his face, and he looked
down with a passion that he thought perhaps was joy.
"You'll be married before the summer's out," he said, "and all the
thrill and excitement will be over. Poor Hermione!" She lay back in his
arms, drawing his face down with both hands, and kissing him on the
lips. "You'll have more of him than you can do with--eh? As much as you
care about, anyhow."
"I shall be much more free," she whispered. "Things will be easier. And
I've got to marry some one----"
She broke off with another start. There was a sound again behind them.
The man heard nothing. The blood in his temples pulsed too loudly,
doubtless.
"Well, what is it this time?" he asked sharply.
She was peering into the wood, where the patches of dark shadow and
moonlit spaces made odd, irregular patterns in the air. A low branch
waved slightly in the wind.
"Did you hear that?" she asked nervously.
"Wind," he replied, annoyed that her change of mood disturbed his
pleasure.
"But something moved----"
"Only a branch. We're quite alone, quite safe, I tell you," and
there was a rasping sound in his voice as he said it. "Don't be so
imaginative. I can take care of you."
She sprang up. The moonlight caught her figure, revealing its exquisite
young curves beneath the smother of the costly clothing. Her hair had
dropped a little in the struggle. The man eyed her eagerly, making a
quick, impatient gesture towards her, then stopped abruptly. He saw the
terror in her eyes.
"Oh, hark! What's that?" she whispered in a startled voice. She put her
finger up. "Oh, let's go back. I don't like this wood. I'm frightened."
"Rubbish," he said, and tried to catch her by the waist.
"It's safer in the house--my room--or yours----" She broke off again.
"There it is--don't you hear? It's a footstep!" Her face was whiter
than the moon.
"I tell you it's the wind in the branches," he repeated gruffly. "Oh,
come on, _do_. We were just getting jolly together. There's nothing to
be afraid of. Can't you believe me?" He tried to pull her down upon his
knee again with force. His face wore an unpleasant expression that was
half leer, half grin.
But the girl stood away from him. She continued to peer nervously about
her. She listened.
"You give me the creeps," he exclaimed crossly, clawing at her waist
again with passionate eagerness that now betrayed exasperation. His
disappointment turned him coarse.
The girl made a quick movement of escape, turning so as to look in
every direction. She gave a little scream.
"That _was_ a step. Oh, oh, it's close beside us. I heard it. We're
being watched!" she cried in terror. She darted towards him, then
shrank back. He did not try to touch her this time.
"Moonshine!" he growled. "You've spoilt my--spoilt our chance with your
silly nerves."
But she did not hear him apparently. She stood there shivering as with
sudden cold.
"There! I saw it again. I'm sure of it. Something went past me through
the air."
And the man, still thinking only of his own pleasure frustrated, got
up heavily, something like anger in his eyes. "All right," he said
testily; "if you're going to make a fuss, we'd better go. The house
_is_ safer, possibly, as you say. You know my room. Come along!" Even
that risk he would not take. He loved her with his "soul."
They crept stealthily out of the wood, the girl slightly in front of
him, casting frightened backward glances. Afraid, guilty, ashamed, with
an air as though they had been detected, they stole back towards the
garden and the house, and disappeared from view.
And a wind rose suddenly with a rushing sound, poured through the wood
as though to cleanse it, swept out the artificial scent and trace of
shame, and brought back again the song, the laughter, and the happy
revels. It roared across the park, it shook the windows of the house,
then sank away as quickly as it came. The trees stood motionless again,
guarding their secret in the clean, sweet moonlight that held the world
in dream until the dawn stole up and sunshine took the earth with joy.
III
THE WINGS OF HORUS
Binovitch had the bird in him somewhere: in his features, certainly,
with his piercing eye and hawk-like nose; in his movements, with
his quick way of flitting, hopping, darting; in the way he perched
on the edge of a chair; in the manner he pecked at his food; in his
twittering, high-pitched voice as well; and, above all, in his mind.
He skimmed all subjects and picked their heart out neatly, as a bird
skims lawn or air to snatch its prey. He had the bird's-eye view of
everything. He loved birds and understood them instinctively; could
imitate their whistling notes with astonishing accuracy. Their one
quality he had not was poise and balance. He was a nervous little man;
he was neurasthenic. And he was in Egypt by doctor's orders.
Such imaginative, unnecessary ideas he had! Such uncommon beliefs!
"The old Egyptians," he said laughingly, yet with a touch of solemn
conviction in his manner, "were a great people. Their consciousness was
different from ours. The bird idea, for instance, conveyed a sense of
deity to them--of bird deity, that is: they had sacred birds--hawks,
ibis, and so forth--and worshipped them." And he put his tongue out as
though to say with challenge, "Ha, ha!"
"They also worshipped cats and crocodiles and cows," grinned Palazov.
Binovitch seemed to dart across the table at his adversary. His eyes
flashed; his nose pecked the air. Almost one could imagine the beating
of his angry wings.