I
Her spirits on the rebound, her courage waving in her face, like the
flag on a citadel, she hesitated at nothing. On Chevenix's suggestion
that they must “play the game with Nevile,” she told her betrothed what
she proposed to do. He had raised his eyebrows, but said, “Why not?”
“I thought you didn't love each other,” had been her answer, and he had
responded:
“Well, I have no reason to dislike him. In fact, he gave you to me, if
you remember.” He chuckled over the memory. “When the thing between us
was at its reddest heat, your man came pelting up to me. He had seen
you, it appears, and nothing would stop him. I never told you this tale,
but you may as well have it now. The man's a lunatic, you know. What do
you think he wanted? How do you think he put it? As thus: 'I loathe you,
my dear man'--I'm giving you the substance--'You stand for everything
I'm vowed to destroy; but I hope you'll marry her, and tie her to you
for life.' That was his little plan. As you know, I couldn't oblige him.
He thought I could!”
She had been staring out of the window while he harangued from the
hearthrug, his favourite post in a room. At this time she had no
eyes but for the Open Country, or what of it could be seen over the
chimney-pots. But at those last words she did turn and look at him! “Why
did he think you could?”
It was for Ingram then to stare. “Why did he think so? My dear, I'll
tell you why no sane man would have thought so, if you insist. He
thought that as I had lived alone ever since Claire bolted, I could get
a divorce. That's what _he_ thought.”
Sanchia pondered his reply, facing the window again. Ingram fidgeted,
with his hands in his pockets. “Men don't live like that,” he said.
Sanchia did not move. More as if it were to satisfy herself than to
credit him, she said, to the window and street beyond it, “I wonder that
he didn't remember that you would never drag any one into notoriety whom
you had once--loved.” Ingram grinned.
“As your man Glyde tried to drag you, my dear! Well, that's one way of
accounting for old Senhouse, certainly. I don't know that _that_ would
have stood in the light, after the way she behaved. Notoriety! She
managed that for herself.”
“Then--” she began, but did not finish. She stopped, looked sharply
about her, out of window, across the room, seemed to be listening to
something, or for something. Then she said, “I see.” For the rest of the
evening she was very quiet, burning in a hidden fire.
Here was Saturday, and to-morrow she should see him again--the man who
had loved her so much that he had never kissed her. Love such as that,
rendered in kisses, was unthinkable. She knew that she must not think of
it, though she could not help her dreams. But there was no fear. The
man who had not dared to kiss her when he might should find that she was
worthy of such high honour.
Through the strings blew the wind from the south-west. “I love him--I
shall see him to-morrow--I shall never tell him so--but he will read it
in my eyes. He never kissed me when he might--he will not do it now when
he must not. I am a fool, a fool, a fool! Thank God, I am a fool again!”
II
“I fancy,” said Chevenix, as they breasted the down, “that to the candid
observer we present a very pretty sight. He's not here, but I wish
he were. A free-moving young lady--this is my idea--a Diana of
the Uplands--wasn't there a picture of the name?--going to see an
emancipated party of the Open Road, with a chain round her heart, in the
custody of a gentleman-friend.”
She took him on his own terms. “Explain your idea. What, for instance,
is in the gentleman-friend's custody? The chain or the heart? Because, I
assure you--”
“A truce,” said Chevenix, “to your assurances. What I mean is this. It's
jolly decent of Nevile to let you off. I don't know how he can bear you
out of his sight after the way he's behaved.”
She was in high spirits. She laughed at the vision of Nevile, deeply
contrite and afraid that she would find him out. “I don't think Nevile
cares much, whatever I may do.” But Chevenix shook his head.
“You never know where to have Nevile. What says the Primer? _Timeo
Danaos_--don't you know?”
She pleaded, Might they not forget Nevile out here in the open? “Do you
know,” she asked him, “that I haven't been out like this--”
“On the loose, eh?” he interposed. She nodded.
“Yes, like this--free to do as I like--the world before me--” She
fronted the blue valley for a moment, and then turned to the wind--“and
the wind in my face, ever since I left Wanless?” Then she reflected with
wide and wondering eyes. “And before that--long before. I haven't been
free, you know, ever since I knew Nevile. Oh!”--and she inhaled the
spirit of the hour--“Oh, I could fall down and hug the earth. Don't you
love the thymy smell? I don't know why, but it always makes me think of
poetry--and _that_.” She lifted her rapt face to where, like a fountain
of sound, a lark flooded the blue. “To lift up, and up, and up, to be so
lovely because one was so glad! Nobody could do that!--except Jack,” she
added half in a whisper.
“That old chap's not a man,” said Chevenix, “he's a spirit.”
“They used to call him the Faun, at Bill Hill, where I first met him,”
she said. “I fancy now that I never knew him at all. But he knew all
about me. That's why I'm so happy. Nobody has ever known me since--and
it's such a bore to have to explain yourself. Other people seem to think
I am extraordinary. I'm not at all--I'm the most ordinary person in the
world. But he liked me like that.”
Chevenix, watching her, said, “He'll like you like this, I expect. May
I tell you that you're a heady compound? Do be quiet. Remember that
I'm holding the chain. I won't swear to every link.” She laughed, and
pressed forward, the wind kissing her eyes.
They reached the racecourse, and had, behind them and before, two
valleys. Their road lay now due west, keeping the ridge--a broad grass
track belted rarely by woods on the north, but open on the south to hill
and vale in diversity of sun and shade, a billowy sea of grass where no
sign of man was to be seen. Sanchia's heart was so light she scarcely
touched the ground. She swam the air, not flew. Chevenix pounded in her
wake.
“You know,” he told her by and by, “he's alone here? A solitary figure?
Doing the hermit? Crying in the Wilderness?”
She had guessed, but not known that. Caution set a guard upon her eyes
and tongue. “Do you mean--that he's always alone?”
“Bless you, yes. His lady couldn't stick it. She fled. But she's quite
fond of him--in her way. I found out his address from her. She was quite
glad I was going to see him. But she never goes herself, I believe.
She's married. Other views altogether, she has. Or _he_ has--her
husband, you know. It was a rum business altogether, her taking up with
old Senhouse. I could have told her what would come of that, if she'd
asked me. No malice, you know--now. They're good friends. Write to each
other. As a fact, she's married. She was a widow. She married a man
I know, a chap in the House, name of Duplessis. Sulky chap, but able.
Keeps her in order. Old Senhouse will speak about it--you see if he
don't.”
She was full of thought over these sayings. What had he been about when
he mated with a woman of this sort? “A man don't live like that,” had
been Nevile's explanation of part of his own history. Was this the
meaning of her friend's vagary? Would he tell her? She would never ask
him, but would give worlds to know.
Presently, and quite suddenly, as they pushed their way, now in silence
broken only by Chevenix's cheerful whistling, upon that backbone of
a broad hill-country--quite suddenly her heart leaped, and then stood
fast. “Look, look!” she said softly. “There's Jack, close to us!” In a
sheltered hollow some hundred feet below the level at which they were, a
hooded figure in pure white was startlingly splashed upon the grey-brown
of the dry hills. The peak of a cowl shot straight above his head, and
the curtains of it covered his face. He sat, squatting upon the turf,
with a lifted hand admonishing. About him, with cocked ears, and quick
side-glances, were some six or seven hares, some reared upon their
haunches, some, with sleek heads, intent upon the herbage, one lopping
here and there in quest, but none out of range of a quick hand. Above
his head, high in the blue, birds were wheeling, now up, now down.
Peewits tumbling heavily, pigeons with beating wings, sailing
jackdaws--higher yet, serene in rarity, a brown kestrel oared the sky.
Sanchia's soft eyes gleamed with wet. “Saint Francis and the hares! Oh,
dearest, have I never known you?”
“What a chance for a rifleman!” said Chevenix. “That beats the cocks.”
They stood intent for a while, not daring to disturb the mystery
enacting. Chevenix whispered, “He's giving 'em church, to-day being
Sunday,” while Sanchia, breathless, said, “Hush! hush!” and felt the
tears fret a way down her cheeks. Presently she put both hands to her
breast and fell upon her knees. Chevenix, not insensible to her emotion,
lit a pipe. Thus he broke the spell.
“Go to him, please. Tell him that I'm here,” she bade him, and then
turned away and sat waiting upon a clump of heather. She sat, as not
daring to look up, until she heard his soft tread on the turf. Then she
lifted to him her wet and rueful eyes.
His long strides brought him close in a second. He was changed. Leaner,
browner, older than she had known him. And he wore a strange Eastern
garment, a hooded white robe, short-sleeved and buttonless, made of
coarse woollen cloth. He had thrown the hood back, and it sat upon his
shoulders like a huge rolling collar. Yes, he was changed; there was
mystery upon him, which sat broodingly on his brows. But his eyes were
the same--bright as a bird's, frosty-kind as a spring morning which
stings while it kisses you. “Queen Mab!” he said. “You!” and held out
both his hands. It was evident that neither of them could speak. She
rose; but there was no touching of the hands.
“And Peachblossom, attendant sprite,” cried the resourceful Chevenix,
following him up. “Don't forget him.”
“Puck, I think,” said Senhouse. “Robin Goodfellow.” He had recovered
himself in that breathing-space. “How splendid of you both. Come and see
my ship. I'm in moorings now, you know. I've cut piracy.”
“And preach to the hares,” said Chevenix. “We saw you at it. What does
his lordship say?”
“His lordship, who, in spite of that, is an excellent man, likes it. His
lordship was pleased to catch me, as you did, at it, and to suggest that
he should bring out a party of her ladyship's friend to see me perform.
I told him that I was his hireling, no doubt, but that my friends
here were amateurs who didn't care to say their prayers in public. His
lordship begged pardon, and I bet you he's a gentleman. Nearly everybody
is, when you come to know him.”
Chevenix revelled in him. “Still the complete moralist, old Jack!” he
cheered. “I'll back you for a bushel of nuts to have it out with Charon
as you ferry across. And here, for want of _us_, you turn to the hares!
Sancie, you and I must get season tickets to Sarum, or he'll forget his
tongue.”
Sanchia, overcome by shyness, had nothing to do with this brisk
interchange. She walked between the contestants like a child out with
her betters. Senhouse led them down the scarped side of a hill into his
own valley; rounding a bluff, they suddenly came upon his terraces
and creeper-covered hut. The place was a blaze of field flowers; each
terrace a thick carpet of colour. In front of them the valley wound
softly to the south, and melted into the folds of the hills; to the
right, upon a wooded slope, in glades between the trees, goats were at
pasture.
“Goats! Robinson Crusoe!” Chevenix pointed them out. “_Dic mihi,
Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei?_ Are they yours, Senhouse?”
“I drink them, and make cheese. I learned how to do it at Udine ages
ago. You shall have some.”
Sanchia saw them. The sun gleamed upon fawn and white, and made black
shine like jet. Deep in the thickets they heard the bell of one,
cropping musically.
Senhouse led them to his verandah, which was shadowed from the heat,
made them sit on mats, and served them with milk and bread in wooden
bowls and trenchers. He was barefooted, which Sanchia, must by all
means be--for the day: divining her, as he only could, he knelt without
invitation and untied her shoes. “Stockings too, I'll bet you!” was what
Chevenix thought; but he was wrong. Senhouse went into his cabin, and
returned with sandals. Sanchia had taken off her own stockings. They
were sandals to fit her. “I made them for Mary,” he explained; “but she
preferred boots.”
“Most of 'em do,” Chevenix said, “in their hearts,” and Senhouse quietly
rejoined, “So I've found out.”
Chevenix, the tactful, withdrew himself after a civil interval. He said
that he should go goat-stalking, and, instead, went for a ramble, well
out of sight. Then he found a place after his mind, smoked his pipe, and
had a nap.
The pair, left to themselves, resumed with hardly an effort their
ancient footing.
He said, after looking long upon her, “You are changed, Queen Mab; you
are graver and quieter--but you are yourself, I see.”
“I am not changed really,” she said. “I love all the things I did. But
sometimes one doesn't know it.”
He did not appear to heed her, occupied in his gentle scanning of her.
“You are, I suppose, more beautiful than you were--I was prepared for
that. You have been very much with me of late.”
Her excitement grew suddenly quick. “Have I? It's very odd, but--”
“It's not at all odd,” he said. “Nothing is. I will tell you what
happens. After I go to bed--which is always lateish--I feel you come
down the slope. I am not surprised--I wasn't the first time. You come in
a blue gown, with bare feet. I can't see anything of you as you come but
gleaming ivory--an oval, which is your face--two bars for your arms--two
shafts,--and your feet. Your hair is loose all about your shoulders, and
close about your face. It makes the oval longer and narrower than I see
it now; your face is fuller by day than by night. You come to me out
here, where I wait for you, and hold out your hand. I rise, and take
it--and off we go. I realise now that I am in the conduct of a fairy. I
was inspired when I hailed you--how long ago?--as Queen Mab. You show me
wonderful things. Do you know that you come?”
“No, but--” She stopped, and bent her head. Her experience had not been
so simple. “I have thought sometimes--” She could not finish--broke off
abruptly. There was a beating pause, during which neither of them dared
look at the other. She broke it. She asked him what he did out here
alone.
“I live,” he said, “very much as I did. I read--in three tongues; I
paint rarely; I do a great deal of work. At night I write my book. And
then--you come.”
“And what is your book?”
“It began as Memoirs--in three volumes, but those have stopped. There
was plenty to say, but after certain experiences which came to me
here--singular enough experiences--nothing in it seemed worth while. Now
I call it Despoina, after the principal character. Despoina, or the Lore
of Proserpine.”
“Who is Despoina?” She showed him that she had the answer already.
He looked at her, smiling with his eyes. “You are Despoina.”
“Oh,” said she, “I thought I was Queen Mab.”
“It is the same thing. Despoina means the Lady--the Lady of the Country.
She is a great fairy. The greatest.”
It was now for her to smile at him, which she did a little wistfully.
“Your Despoina is either too much fairy, or not enough. She does very
humdrum things. She has done mischief; now she is going to repair it.
She is going to be married.”
He was watching her quietly, and took her news quietly.
“Yes, so I learned. There was a youth here who told me.”
She stopped him, flushing wildly. “A youth! Struan was here? Then it's
true--it's true?”
He was quite calm under this outcry. “Yes, your champion Glyde was here.
A good fellow in the main, but, Lord! what a donkey! I think I did him
good. He left me a week ago. He had told me about you--found out where
you lived, and what was happening.” She sat with her face between her
hands, dared not let him see it.
Senhouse resumed the question of her marriage. “It doesn't matter what
you do. You are you. So Ingram has forgiven Master Glyde, and now--”
She lifted her pale face at this name of duty.
“His wife died a year ago; rather more. He wants me to marry him, and I
think I must.”
“You don't want to?” She shook her head, watching her fingers tear the
grass.
“No,” she said, “not in the least. But I shall do it. Don't you think
that I should?”
He thought, then threw his arms out. “God knows what I am to say! If the
world held only you and me and him--here--fast in this valley--I tell
you fairly. I should stop it.” She looked up quickly, and their eyes
met. Hers were haunted with longing. He had to turn his head. “But it
doesn't. To me what you intend to do seems quite horrible because I
am flesh, and cannot see that you are spirit. That is a perfectly
reasonable reading of the Laws, which says, What I did as a child I must
abide as a woman. It's a law of Nature, after all's said; and yet it can
be contradicted in a breath. It's one of those everlasting propositions
which are true both ways, positively and negatively; for Nature says,
That is my rule, and immediately after, Break it if you're strong
enough. Now, you are, but I am not.”
Once more they looked at each other, these two who had but one desire
between them--and who knew it each of each. And again it was he who
broke away.
“I'm a coward, I'm false to my own belief. It's love that makes me so.
Oh, Heaven, I see so well what it would be! And it would be right, mind
you. These laws of Society are nothing, absolutely nothing. But you are
pleased, for reasons, to submit. You are deliberate, you are strong.
It's the old thing over again. Hideous, vile, abominable servitude! But
you are pleased to do it. You say it is Destiny, and you may be right. I
tell you once more, I dare not say a word against it.”
“No, no,” she said hastily; “don't say anything to stop me. I must go
on with it. I have promised. He knows I don't love him, and he doesn't
care.”
Senhouse pricked up his head. “Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you
believe it?”
She shrugged half-heartedly. “He says so. He seemed to when I told him
that I was going away.
“When was that?” he asked her. She told him the whole story as the
reader knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands.
At the end of it, he looked out over the valley.
“Would to God,” he said, “you and I had never met, Sanchia.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, why do you say that?”
He took her hands. “You know why.” There was no faltering in the look
that passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up,
and stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was.
“We may be friends now, I believe,” he said. “You'll let me write to you?
You'll trust me?”
“I shall live in your letters,” she said. “I read nothing else but those
I have. They are all the help I have.” Then with a cry she broke out,
“Oh, Jack, what a mess you've made of our affairs!”
He laughed bitterly. “Do you know my tale?”
“I guess it,” she said.
“I played the rogue,” he told her, “to a good girl, who was as far from
my understanding as I was from hers. I thought that I had got over--it,
you know, and that she and I could be happy together. Absurd, absurd!
God bless her, she's happy now. I swear to you that I meant to do her
honour--and directly I found out what she really wanted, I would have
given it her. You'll not believe that I was such a fool as to suppose
she could feel happy with my ideas of wedded life--but I did. Oh,
Heavens! Poor dear, affectionate, simple soul, she felt naked! She
shivered at her own plight, and wondered why I'd been so unkind to her,
seeing I was by ordinary so kind. I shudder to think what she must have
gone through.”
“But,” she said, anxious to save him, “but she knew what your beliefs
were--and accepted them. You told me so.”
“Queen Mab,” he said gravely, “she was a woman, not a fairy. And please
to observe the difference. She, poor dear, felt as if she was stripped
until she married. You will feel stripped when you do. Yet you both do
it for the same reason. She obeys the law because she dare not break it;
you because you choose to keep it. Despoina! Despoina!”
She laughed, a little awry. “You used to call me Artemis. I'm not she
any more.”
“You are all the goddesses. You do what you please. Your mind is of
Artemis; you have the form of Demeter, the grave-eyed spirit of the
corn--and your gown, I observe, is blue, as hers was. I see Hera in you,
too, the peering, proud lady of intolerant eyelids; and Kore, the pale,
sad wife--which makes you your own daughter, my dear; and Gaia, by whom
the Athenians swore when they were serious,--Gaia, the Heart of the
Earth. All these you are in turns; but to me Despoina, the Lady of the
Country, whose secrets no man knows but me.”
She was now by his side, very pale and pure in her distress. She put her
hand on his shoulder as she leaned to him. “Dearest, there is one of my
secrets you have not learned. May I tell it you?”
He listened sideways, not able to look at her. She felt him tremble.
“I think not--I think not. You will tell Ingram first--then do as you
please. Don't ask me to listen. Haven't I told you that I see you every
night?”
“And I tell you nothing of my secret?”
“I never ask you.”
“But do I not tell you? Can I keep it?”
“You don't speak to me. You never speak. You look. Fairies don't speak
with the tongue. They have better ways.”
“What do you do with me?”
“I follow you, over the hills.”
“And then?”
“At dawn you leave me.”
“I am a ghost?”
“I don't know. You are Despoina. You go at dawn.”
A power was upon her, and within her. She put both hands on his
shoulders. “One night I shall come--and not leave you. And after that
you will not follow me any more. I shall follow you.” Perfectly master
of himself, his eyes met hers and held them.
“It shall be as you will.”
She smiled confidently. “I shall come. I know that. But I shan't speak.”
“What need of speech between you and me?”
She saw Chevenix upon the high ground above. He stood on the grass dykes
of Hirlebury, and waved his hat.
“I must go now,” she said. “Good-bye, my dear one.”
“Good-bye, Despoina. In seven hours you will be here again....”
“It is to be observed,” says a gifted author, “that the laws of human
conduct are precisely made for the conduct of this world of Men in which
we live and breed and pay rent. They do not affect the Kingdom of the
Dogs, nor that of the Fishes; by a parity of reasoning they should not
be supposed to obtain in the Kingdom of Heaven, in which the Schoolmen
discovered the citizens dwelling in nine spheres, apart from the blessed
Immigrants, whose privileges did not extend so near to the Heart of
the Presence. How many realms there may be between mankind's and that
ultimate object of Pure Desire cannot at present be known, but it may
be affirmed with confidence that any denizen of any one of them, brought
into relation with human beings, would act, and lawfully act, in ways
which to men would seem harsh, unconscionable, without sanction or
convenience. Such a being might murder one of the ratepayers of London,
compound a felony, or enter into conspiracy to depose the King himself,
and, being detected, very properly be put under restraint, or visited
with chastisement either deterrent or vindictive, or both. But the
true inference from the premisses would be that, although duress or
banishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment, so
called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or she could
not be _nostri juris,_ and that which was abominable to us might well
be reasonable to him or her, and, indeed, a fulfilment of the law of his
being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person
punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would
be shocking, since that which it vindicated, in the mind of the victim
either did not exist, or ought not. The ancient Greek who withheld
from the sacrifices to Showery Zeus because a thunderbolt destroyed his
hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slaves because a god took
the life of his eldest son, was neither a pious nor a reasonable person.
“Beyond question,” he continues, “there are such beings upon the earth,
visitors or sojourners by chance, whose true commerce is elsewhere, in
a state not visible to us, nor to be apprehended by most of us; whose
relation with mankind is temporary. The spheres which govern us, govern
not them, and their conduct is dictated by their good pleasure, where
ours goes after the good pleasure of our betters. Thus a man may, if
he can, take a goddess or nymph to wife, but should not be disconcerted
with what she may elect to do.”
Sanchia returned silently to London by the 6.50 from Salisbury, and
arrived at Charles Street by half-past eight, which was Lady Maria's
usual hour. She changed her dress hurriedly and came into the
drawing-room. Ingram was waiting there, his hands behind his back. He
looked at her as she entered, but did not greet her. Perhaps he saw his
doom in her eyes.
“Had a good day, Sancie?” he asked, after a while of gazing.
“Very good,” she said.
“Saw your man?”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“Mad as ever?”
“Ah,” she said, “who is mad?”
“Well, my dear, if he is not, we are. That's certain. What have you done
with Bill Chevenix?”
“He's gone home to dress. He will be here directly.”
“I hope,” said Ingram, “he played the perfect squire.” She stood by
the window looking out towards the west. Luminous orange mist flared
up behind the chimney-stacks in streamers. Above that, in a sky faintly
blue, crimson clouds, like plumes of feather, floated without motion.
Ingram called her to him. “Sancie, come here a minute. I want you.” She
turned her head and looked at him, then slowly crossed the room. She
kept her eyes upon him, but did not seem to see him. They were haunted
eyes. She came in front of him, and stood, questing his face, as if she
was trying to see him within it.
He continued to smile jauntily, but his lips twitched with the strain.
He put his arm round her shoulder and drew her towards him. “This day
month, my girl,” he said, and kissed her. She stiffened at his touch.
Her lips were cold, and made him shiver. His arm fell back. “Pooh! what
do you care?” She stood in her place before him without speaking. If
she had looked at him she might have stricken him blind. When Lady Maria
came in, she moved away, and returned to the window. The glow had almost
gone; nothing remained but wan blue, white towards the horizon. It was
the colour of death; but a single star shone out in it.
Chevenix came in briskly, fastening his sleeve-links. “Here is the
Perfect Chaperon, here is he!” he said, and bowed to Lady Maria. “My
dear Aunt Wenman, you've no notion how hungry I am. We saw Senhouse
teaching the hares their catechism. Afterwards we lunched on
conversation and water. Ah, and salad. Excellent salad. Then I went
goat-stalking, and had a nap. Sancie and the Seer conversed. A great
day.”
Lady Maria took Ingram's arm, Sanchia that of Chevenix, and they went
downstairs. Half-way down she stopped. Chevenix looked at her. She was
white; she could hardly breathe. “Good God, Sancie, what's the matter?”
She stared, gasped, moved her head about. “I can't go on--I can't--I
can't. It's horrible--it's awful--I'm afraid. Hush--don't make a fuss.
I'm going away. This isn't possible.”
The other couple were in the dining-room by now. Chevenix didn't know
what to do.
“There's dinner, you know, Sancie,” he said. “That's an institution,
eh? You'll feel better, I expect. Keep your pecker up. I'll have a go at
Nevile for you. I swear I will. Now, where's your pluck, my dear?”
She shook her head, struggling all the time to get her breath. “It's
gone--clean gone.”
“You want food, Sancie; that's what you want. Come. Don't let's have a
commotion. You leave all this to me.”
She leaned against the wall, and brushed her hand across her face.
Chevenix was in despair. Nevile, from below, called up, “What are you
two conspiring about?” Sanchia shivered, and stood up.
“Go down alone,” she said. “I can't.”
III
She dragged herself upstairs, and locked herself in her room, stumbled
to the window, caught at it by the sill and leaned out. Her skin burned,
her blood beat at her temples, and her breath came panting from her. Her
white breasts ached with the burden of her strife. “I was born to live,
not die. Air! or I shall fall.”
It was mellow dusk by now, the lamps below her lighted, and above the
chimneys and broken roof-line, above the trembling glare which meant
London, there were stars in a violet sky. The stars which looked on
London, looked also on the dim grass wolds, on hills rolling like waves,
on muffled woods, rivers swift under their banks, on cornlands stiff
and silent in the calm, on pastures and drowsy sheep. But the hills
stretched out on either side of a valley, fold upon fold, everlastingly
the same. There Despoina walked, at the deepest hour of the night. Even
now she was looked for by one who sat in the valley and watched the
East--intent, hooded, white, his chin upon his knees. A knock sounded at
her door. She turned and ran to open. “Her ladyship have sent to know
if you would have something sent up, miss.”
“Nothing, nothing.” She sped back to the window.
At midnight, Despoina should be there. At midnight! In three hours! It
was time to get ready; there wasn't a moment to lose. She watched the
night as if she were listening to it, counting its pulse. Then, kneeling
where she was, she began to unfasten her hair, running her hands through
it as each clinging coil loosened and grew light. So presently she was
curtained in her hair.
It drooped about her burning cheeks and veiled her bosom. She looked
like the Magdalen in the desert, facing, wide-eyed, the preacher. There
she knelt on, in a trance, waiting for the hour.
It struck ten--eleven.
She changed her dress and put on again the blue cotton gown of the day's
wearing--but she left her hair loose about her face and shoulders, and
her feet were bare. She looked at herself in the glass. Her face was
white, her eyes were wide and strange. She did not know herself, smiling
so sharply--like a goddess wild with a rapture not known by men and
women. Fiercer delights than theirs she knew, the joy of power mated
with its equal, coping fellow to fellow. Consciousness of immortal bliss
dawned upon her wise lips, and flickered in their curve.
“Despoina is here,” she said, and blew out the light.
IV
It was intensely dark in the cup of the hills, but by the difference
of a tone it was just possible to make out where the sky began. Looking
closer yet, you could guess at a film of light, as if the rim of down
absorbed and reflected a caught radiance from the stars.
On a quiet night the stars seem to burn more fiercely, and on this night
you might have believed they gave you heat. There was no moon; but the
sky was illuminated by stars. Jupiter had rays like a sun, and Sirius
lay low down and glowed, now fiery, now green. A winged creature,
crossing up the valley, would pass unnoticed; but if it struck suddenly
upwards for a higher flight, above the hills into the upper air, you
would see the light upon its pinions, and even the glitter of its
watchful eye.
There was no wind; the silence could be felt, throbbing about you. It
was past the hour when the creatures go hunting; the time when every
breathing thing submits to the same power. Men and women forgot each
other and their loves; foxes lay coiled in their earths. The shriek of
the field-mouse startled you no more, nor the swift dry rustle of the
grass-snake. Presently, very far away across the hills, in some valley
not to be known, a dog barked; but the sound just marked the silence,
and died down.
The hooded figure down there sat like a Buddha on his rock, motionless,
unwinking, breathing deep and slow. His hands clasped his shins,
his chin was on his knees; he pored into the dark. He sat facing the
ridgeway where it came from the East, and watched the courses of the
stars.
Through the window of the hidden hut a faint light glimmered, and within
the open door there was to be discerned a pale diffusion of light. In
the beam of this he sat, cowled in white, but his face was shadowed. He
was like the shell of a man who had died in his thought, and stiffened
in the act of meditation. No relation between him and the rest of the
world could be discerned. He was as far from the sleepers as the dead
are.
Yet within him was the patience which comes of wild expectancy. His mind
was as couched as his body for the moment. He had not fasted for years
in the wilderness, and communed with the spirits of the hidden creatures
without learning the secret of their immobility. To him who could speak
with plants and beasts, with hills and trees, the Night itself could
converse. So surely as the crystal fluid which is the air streams in
circles of waves about our sphere, so surely ranged his sense.
At a certain moment of time, without stirring, he changed. Intensity of
search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for
a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an
act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon
in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His
look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might,
one could have seen nothing to break the translucent veil of dark.
Yet, after a time, looking just there, one might feel rather than know
a something coming. The watcher certainly did. Deep within the shadow of
the cowl his eyes dilated and narrowed, his lips parted, his breath came
quick and sharp. But he did not move.
The sense of a presence heightened; one knew it much nearer. By and
by, one could have seen pale forms wavering in the fluid violet of the
night, like marsh-fires going and coming--and could guess them one and
the same. Bodily substance could only be inferred. But he who waited,
tense for the hour, knew that the hour had come.
Her white face, made narrow by the streaming curtain of her hair, her
white arms and feet were luminous in that dark place, and revealed the
semblance of her body. His cowl was thrown back; he had bowed his head
to his knees. She stood over him, looking down upon him, not moving. Her
eyes were clear and wide, and her parted lips smiled. The rise and fall
of her breasts could be heard as they stirred her gown.
She put out her hand and laid it on his head; she stooped to him as he
looked fearfully up, and, meeting his face, kissed him. No words passed
between them, but he rose and stood by her, and she took his hand.
Together, hand in hand, they went deep into the valley, and the night
hid them under the stars, and the silence swallowed up the sounds of
their bare footfalls.
V
The philosopher sat barefoot in the hollow of his valley, and wrote
diligently in a book. He paused, pen in hand, and looked over the folds
of the hills where the haze of heat hung blue, and brown at the edges.
It lay upon the hill-tops like a mist. The sky was grey, and the land
was pale, burned to the bone. Heavy masses of trees in the hanging wood
showed lifeless and black. No bird sang, but there were crickets in the
bents, shrilling inconceivably. The swoon of midsummer was over all, and
Sanchia was coming.
He knew that she was coming before he saw her. She came along the edge
of the plain above him springing barefoot. He saw her legs gleam under
her swirling skirts. He strained his eyes to her, but could not see her
face for the mist over them. He waited for her, watching, feeling her
approach. She began the descent of the scarp timidly, as if she was
playing with the thought of his bliss, which she held daintily in her
hands. “Dangerously beautiful, my Beautiful One, art thou. Heedless
always of thyself. Now a wind blows from thee to me. Thy herald, O Thou
that shrillest on the wind!”
He heard her gay and confident voice. “Jack! Jack! Where are you?” He
rose and went to meet her; she saw him, and suddenly faltered in her
stoop. She stopped, poised as if for flight; he saw her wings fold
behind her, and lie quivering where they touched each other.
Her heart urged her. “Go to him.”
She looked at him. “I can't see him perfectly, and can't trust myself.”
Her heart cried, “I have brought you so far. I daren't stop.” Still she
stood and flickered.
Senhouse mounted to meet her. Blushful and bashful she stood; but her
eyes, deeply watchful, never left him.
He, too, had lost his tongue. “Queen Mab! I knew that you were coming.”
Her eyes were timid and her tongue tied. She was like a rueful child.
“How did you come, my dear?”
“I don't know.”
“You came last night?”
“Ah, you knew me?”
“Well, Queen Mab?”
She had nothing to say.
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” he asked her, “why are you come?”
“I can't tell you if you don't know.” She looked at him, and he knew.
“You came to me--not because I love you?”
“No, no! Not for that!”
“You are beautiful beyond belief, Queen Mab. And you are the soul of
truth. My dear one, do you love me?”
She hung her head, and looked up from under her long lashes. He saw, not
heard, her answer.
He encircled her with his arm, and felt her trembling at his side. “My
dear,” he said, “I was writing my Memoirs. Now we'll burn the book, for
I see that I am now going to be born.”
She looked up at him laughing. She was the colour of a flushed rose. “My
bride,” he said, and kissed her lips. She turned in his arm and clung to
him. The storm swept surging over her; passion long pent made her shiver
like a blown fire. They took their wild joy....
He led her by her hand to the shade of the valley, where the deep turf
is hardly ever dry. She was barefoot, as he was, and bareheaded. In her
bosom was a spray of dog-rose.
“You are blue-gowned, like Despoina,” he told her, “and, indeed, that is
your name. I am to have a fairy wife.”
“Artemis no more,” she laughed.
“You fulfil all the goddesses. Artemis was your childhood. But let's be
practical. What is to be done?” She faltered her answer.
“I have found out by myself what to do,” she said. And then she kissed
him. “It's done now.”
They picked up their lives where they had dropped them. They were
content to wait for the fulness of their joy. He busied himself with
food for her; he cooked, and she helped him; they talked of his affairs
as if they had always been hers.
Something stirred the practical side of him. She was to see him as near
a man of the world as it was possible for him to be. It might have been
a shock to her, but its simplicity was all his own.
“I must see one person, and you must see one. I'll go to your father,
and you shall tell Ingram what's going to happen. We don't owe him much,
but there's that, I think. I've a great idea of treating the world with
civility. The one thing it has worth having is its sense of manners.
Let us have manners, then. Don't you think so?” He held her close as he
spoke, and with a strange discrepancy between sight and sound, looked at
her with dim eyes of love, before which she had to close down her own.
To his, “Don't you think so?” she could only murmur without breath,
“You mustn't love me so much--not yet, not yet!” but he pressed her the
nearer and laughed his joy of her. “What! After eight years! And if I
don't hold her very close, Mab, the tricksy sprite, may slip me.”
Then he returned to his moralisings. “You'll see Ingram, my blessed one,
don't you think?”
She said gravely, with hard outlook upon the distant wold, “Yes, I must
see him--” and then, with a sudden turn to him and a wondrous veil of
tenderness upon her eyes, “You know that I think what you think from now
onwards.” Their lips sealed the pact.
He broke away at last. “Practice! Practice! Do let's be practical. Think
of this. My house is yours until we marry; that can't be for a week.” A
week! This was Senhouse practical. She blushed her answer.
“What will you do? I mustn't turn you out.” He opened his arms wide to
the airs of the down.
“I sleep in the open. The stars for me. They shall see you wedded.
Meanwhile, I shall wait upon you. But do let us be practical. We wait a
week; we marry; but then what shall we do? Shall we reform the world? I
think we shall do that in spite of ourselves; for if two people dare
to be simple, there's no reason why two million shouldn't.” She lay at
peace considering; her blue eyes, searching wonderfully into his, saw
peace like a crown of stars.
“I'll tell you what I should like to do,” she said. “I've thought about
it this minute. It never occurred to me before, but I should like to
teach better than anything in the world.”
He looked far out to the white rim of horizon. He took her very
seriously. “It's the highest profession of all, of course. Let's think.
I've begun on it already, oddly enough. And yet, you know, it's not
odd. Nothing is after our experiences.... We will teach. Woodcraft,
weathercraft, husbandry, beast-craft, sky-craft. I can do that much
for them. Lit., hum., Greek, Latin, English, Dante. History, shadowy;
geography, practical. Tinkering, carpentering, planting. No mathematics;
I can't add two to two.”
“But I can,” she told him. “I'll teach the babies, for we must have
babies.”
His eyes flashed upon hers for one beating second of full interchange.
Then he turned them away, and scanned again the hazy hills. But hers
remained on their watch, charged with their wistful dream.
“Our school,” he presently resumed, “I see it. We teach first of
all Nature's face and the love of it. We lead their hungry mouths to
Nature's breast. No books! No books for them to glue their eyes upon.
They shall learn by ear; their eyes have a better book to read in.
Classics by ear and by heart, eh?”
She glowed at a memory. “You wrote to me about that. You said that,
before the Printing Press, people used to get poetry by heart.”
He looked down at her where she lay at ease. “'As I have got you,' I
said.” She dreamed beneath her flickering eyelids.
“You had me then. I didn't know it; but you had. And you have me still.
That's wonderful. But now I have got you!” She lay awhile under the
spell of him and the thought, and glowed and blossomed under them until
at last, flowering like a rose, she turned and hid her face in his arm.
Senhouse, grave and strong, let her lie where she was; but he felt the
pulsing of her bosom, and was moved to utterance. Nothing in the eyes he
bent down to her beauty, and nothing in his words betrayed the passion
of his heart.
[Illustration: Senhouse came back to her bedside and put a little flower
into her hand]
“The loveliest thing in all the world to me,” he said, “is a beautiful
thing bent in humility, stooping to serve. I shall see you teaching your
children. They will be at your knees, on your knees; you will kiss
them, and I shall go mad with joy. Flowers and you! Yes, we'll have our
school. We'll teach people the beauty of their own business by means of
the most beautiful things. Flowers and you!”
They talked long and late, walking down the valley to the farmstead
for bread. On this, with milk and fruit, they supped after Sanchia had
bathed, and clad herself in one of his Moorish robes. Hooded and folded
in this she sat at meat, and Senhouse, filled with the Holy Ghost,
discoursed at large. The past they took for granted; the present was but
a golden frame for the throbbing blue of the days to come.
* * * * *
Very early on the morning after the night when, as has been foretold,
she was made a wife under the stars, Senhouse came back to her bedside
and put a little flower into her hand. It woke her out of her dreams;
glozed and dewy from them she looked at it, and smiled at him through
it. In grey-green leafage, dewy and downy, lay a little blossom of
delicate pink, chalice-shaped, with a lip of flushed white. Watching
him, she laid it to her lips. “My flower, our flower,” she said, and
watching him still put it deep within her bosom. “My dear one, we have
earned it.”
“'Rest-Harrow,'” said Senhouse, in a sententious mood, “'grows in any
soil.... The seed may be sown as soon as ripe, in warm, sheltered spots
out of doors.... It is a British plant.' So says Weathers, the learned.”