GLAMOUR
Full summer had come, and with it Miss Grey. She was not staying at the
Manor, as Annie had taken a violent dislike to the idea of visitors, and
Ishmael dreaded possible unpleasantness, so that he had been thankful
when Blanche of her own accord suggested going into lodgings. She wanted
to bring a friend with her, she said, a girl who was peaky after too
long nursing of a sick mother in London. Therefore Vassie interviewed
Mrs. Penticost, a cheery soul who rejoiced in a little old Queen Anne
house called "Paradise," a mile along the cliff-path, where it gave on
the outskirts of the village. Blanche was in raptures over the names
Penticost and Paradise, and would have been in raptures over her
landlady too if that worthy woman had not chosen to be rather
unresponsive towards her, though frankly adoring the little friend
Judith Parminter.
Judy was only nineteen, a slim, awkward girl with high cheekbones and
deep-sunk hazel eyes that gave her a look not unlike that of a beautiful
monkey--so Killigrew, when he came down to take up his quarters at the
inn, for a summer's painting, declared. He swore that Judy would be a
great beauty, but that she would always be like a monkey with those
deep, sad eyes and the bistre stains below them that were the only tinge
of colour upon her dark skin. She was a shy, wild creature, given to
solitary roaming and much scribbling of astonishingly good poems in a
little note-book. Blanche said she had genius, and, though Blanche would
have said it just then if it had been true or not, there was something
not without a touch of genius animating the rough, vivid verses of the
monkey-girl. Blanche was "very fond of the little thing," but did not
see much of her. Ishmael not unnaturally absorbed the forefront of her
attention.
One day, when Blanche had been two weeks at Paradise, a morning more
golden, of a stiller warmth than any yet, dawned, and she knew it would
bring Ishmael over early with some plan for a picnic. The little garden
lay steeped in sunshine that turned the stonecrop on the roof to fire
and made the slates iridescent as a pigeon's breast. The rambler that
half-hid the whitewashed lintel threw over it a delicate tracery of
shadow which quivered slightly as though it breathed in a charmed sleep.
Fuchsias drooped their purple and scarlet heads, dahlias, with a
grape-like bloom on their velvety petals, stood stiffly staring, and
against the granite wall giant sunflowers hung their heavy heads on a
curve of sticky green stem. In the sloping fields beyond the lane the
stubble stood glittering and the great golden arishmows cast over it
blue pools of shade. Beyond the fields could be seen the sparkling blue
of the lazily-heaving Atlantic, merging into a heat-haze which glistened
with a jewel-like quality at the world's rim.
Blanche opened the door of the cottage and stood upon the threshold,
swinging her hat in her hand. A white butterfly fluttered down aimlessly
as a scrap of torn paper, and a bee hung buzzing on a sustained note of
content, drowned for a moment as it swung with arched body in the cup of
a flower, then booming forth as it shot out and poised on wings that
seemed nothing but a glistening blur. Blanche stood with eyes half shut
and sniffing nostrils, and as she felt the warm caress of the sun, so
positive as to seem almost tangible, on her bare head, she stretched
herself, cat-like, with a deep sigh of content.
Life was good here, away from the old faces and the old pursuits. She
had been at Paradise only two weeks, but they had been weeks of sun and
soft winds and sweet smells, and the impressionable surface of her mind,
that beneath was so shallow and so unmalleable, was gradually responding
to the influences around her.
Almost imperceptibly to herself her point of view had been changing; a
group of white foxgloves, like ghost-flames, that she had seen in a
coppice, the creeping of a bright eyed shrew mouse through last year's
leaves at her feet, the hundreds of little rabbits with curved-in backs
that ran with their curious rocking action over the dewy fields at
evening--all these things gave her a shock of pleasure so keen it
surprised her. Till now she had not admitted her own artificiality even
to herself; now that she was regaining directness she told herself she
could afford to be more candid.
Nearly every day she and Ishmael, with Vassie and sometimes Killigrew or
Judy, or even the Parson, would go on long expeditions to the cromlechs
and carns of the country around; but sometimes she and Ishmael would
slip away together, defying convention, sometimes on foot, sometimes in
a light market-gig--casual wanderings with no fixed goal, and
inexpressibly delightful to both. On sunny days they put up the pony at
some farm, and lay upon the short, warm grass of a cliff-face watching
the foam patterns form and dissolve again beneath a diamond scatter of
spray. When the sea-mist rolled up steadily over Cloom like blown smoke,
here opaque, there gossamer-thin, they would sally forth and tramp the
spongy moors, the ground sobbing beneath their feet and the mournful
calling of the gulls sounding in their heedless ears. And all the while
her turns of head and throat, the inflections of her low, rich voice,
were being registered on a mind free till now of all such impressions
and tenacious as a child's. Small wonder that as the days drifted past
Ishmael felt that he, too, was drifting on a tide of golden waters to
some shore of promise in a golden dawn.
Blanche, too, was slipping into something like love these days; the
beauty of their surroundings and something simple and primitive in the
boy himself both made the same appeal to her. Was it possible that after
all her flirtations, all her insincerities, she should capture the
birthright of the single-hearted? It seemed so, for Blanche had this
much of grace left--she was responsive to simplicity. There was
something more than the instinct of the coquette in the fullness with
which she gave him all he asked, step by step; she had thrown away
calculation and was letting herself be guided by her own instinct and
the finer instinct she felt to be in him. Each demand his moods made on
her she met, each thing his reverent hand unconsciously asked of hers as
he helped her over the rough places, each expression his eyes looked for
in hers--she gave them all. For here was that rarest of rare things, a
man to whom all could be given without his prizing less highly gift or
giver.
Long after she had gone to bed he would walk the fields and make sweet
picture-plans, all centred tenderly round her. He would stand and look
up at her window when the light in it was out, picturing the room, the
freshness, the delightful girlishness of it, and at this intimacy of
thought he would redden in the dark. His sense of humour was in
abeyance, and the reality, could he have seen it, would have been a
shock to him--the dressing-table a litter of cosmetics and pin-curls;
and on the pillow the face of Blanche surrounded by wavers and shiny
with cold-cream.
On this golden morning Ishmael found Blanche, as she had meant him to,
in the garden at Paradise, the sun turning her ashen hair to fire.
"Don't let's waste a minute of to-day," he said. "We'll have the cart
out and not come back till the evening--that is, if you care about it?"
"Of course I care about it," she told him, and ran upstairs to pin on a
shady hat and powder her face.
"Shall I speak now? Shall I speak now?" thought Ishmael as he drove down
the lane; but with a thrill of anticipation came "No--my hands aren't
free." For Mrs. Penticost's cob, a nervous, spirited creature, newly
broken in, was between the shafts.
"Will he speak yet?" thought Blanche; "and if he does, what shall I
say?" She glanced up at the set, earnest face, and, sensitive to her
look, his eyes met hers. He averted his gaze quickly, but his heart
sang, "She cares! she cares!" And quite suddenly he felt he wished to
postpone speaking as long as possible, that the savour of this suspended
bliss was too sweet to lose. A tremor ran through Blanche as their eyes
met. She recognised that in him was an austerity against which even she
could beat in vain.
It was evening by the time they drove back, and the shadows lay cool and
long across the roads. Urged on by visions of his snug stall, the pony
went like the wind; neither of the two in the cart spoke much: once he
bent down to tuck the rugs more closely round her and his hand, touching
hers, lingered a moment. When they drove into the little yard, Lylie,
the dairymaid, was mixing barley-meal and scald-milk for the pigs and
carrying on bucolic flirtation with Billy Penticost. With the
sheepishness of his sex, that youth made a great business of setting off
to the well, his pails slung outwards on a hoop. The rustic comedy
touched a long-atrophied fibre in Blanche. On an impulse of simplicity,
she told herself, "Yes, this is the best thing. I won't go back to town;
I'll live down here, close to the things that matter, and we'll just be
happy." In the rush of warm feeling she turned her eyes on Ishmael, her
love for him expanding because of the love she felt for the unsentient
things about her. His heart leapt to the look.
"Will you come out into the big field after everyone has gone to bed?"
he asked her, busy unfastening a trace; and as she bent over a buckle on
her side of the pony she whispered, "Yes."
She ate her supper in a state almost too placidly joyous for excitement,
and afterwards went up to her room and sat with her elbows on the
window-sill and her chin on her hands, looking out. The corn had been
cut and stacked in great Cornish arishmows, and Blanche, watching the
orange moon swim up, told herself, "When that shadow has reached the
nearest stook I will go." The shadow lay, finger-like, touching the
stook, but still she sat on, reluctant to go out and make sure of her
happiness. The moon, paling to pearl as it rose, shone clearly into the
room, making sharp shadows under the bed-curtains and lying slantwise on
the white counterpane; Blanche rose and slipped off her frock; she moved
as in a dream--her affectations of thought fell away, leaving her
instinctive. She felt as though this lover were her first, and, without
reasoning about it, knew she must be fitly dressed to meet him. She
bathed her face and hands in cold water, then put on a fresh muslin
gown, moving to and fro in full view of anyone who might be in the
sloping field outside. She half hoped, quite innocently, that Ishmael
was there watching; it seemed to her nothing unclean could live in the
white light that permeated the very air of the room. Overcome for a
moment by the strength of her own emotions, she sat on the bed and
buried her face in her hands. As she looked at herself in the glass
before leaving the room she smiled for pleasure that she was unpowdered
and unrouged, not pausing, in her exalted mood, to wonder whether she
would have faced the daylight so. It was a better, an honester,
Blanche, transmuted by happiness, that crept down the stairs, through
the small garden and across the road into the field. He was awaiting her
by the hedge.
"How late you are!" he said, not reproachfully, but in relief that she
should have come at all. "I thought you must have changed your mind. Do
you know it is past eleven?"
"Have I been as long as that?" Blanche hugged herself to think that she
had been so genuinely wrapped in dreams as to let so much time slip by
unheeded. Together they went down the moonlit field, where the arishmows
seemed like the pavilions of a long-dead Arthurian host conjured up by
some magician's spells. In the last field before the moor Ishmael pulled
the corn out lavishly as a throne for her and installed her on it.
"You look like the spirit of harvest sitting there on your golden
throne," he told her, and, leaning back against the rustling stook, she
smiled mysteriously at him, all the glamour of the moonlight and her own
womanhood in her half-shut eyes.
"Blanche ...!"
He was kneeling beside her, his hands on her shoulders. Her eyelids
dropped before his gaze and she shook slightly.
"You are the most beautiful thing on earth! I love you with all my heart
and soul, with every bit of me. Say you can care--Blanche, say you can...!"
She raised her eyes: the sphinx-like look of her level brows and calm
mouth held for an instant, then her face quivered, grew tremulous and
tender. Her hands made a blind, passionate movement, and as he caught
her to him he heard her sobbing that she loved him.
He held her close, covering her face with clumsy eager kisses, the first
he had ever given a woman, and he gave himself up to worshipping her as
she sat on the throne he had made for her.
"Let us go to the boulders above the wood," whispered Blanche, who even
in the grip of one of the deepest feelings of her life kept her
unfailing flair for the right background; "we can see the sun rise
there, over the trees...."
He helped her to her feet and they walked together, hand in hand, like
children. The keen personal emotion had passed, leaving them almost
timid; now certainty had settled on them passionate inquiry gave place
to peace. So they went, and he felt as though he walked in Eden, with
the one mate in all the world. Across the moors they went; then--for
they were going inland--they came to fields again, and the path ran
through acres of cabbages. The curves of the grey-green leaves held the
light in wide shimmers of silver, the dew vibrating with diamond
colours; edging their two shadows the refraction of the beams brought a
halo of brightest white. Another stretch of furze brought them to the
boulders above the wood on a level with the massed tree-tops. Ishmael
made Blanche put on his coat; then he sat beside her, his hand holding
the coat together under her chin.
Nestling her head against him, she closed her eyes, and with soft,
regular breathings feigned a sleep that presently became reality.
Through the starlit hour between moon-setting and sun-rising Ishmael
held her; every now and then she stirred, half woke, and, moving a
little to ease his arm, lifted the pallor of her face to his. Before the
dawn she awoke completely and began to reproach herself and him.
The time of un-self-consciousness was already over for her, and she was
once more the woman who knew how to make men love.
"Oh, how could you let me waste time sleeping? I've not been really
asleep--only drowsing. I knew I was sitting beside you all the while."
"Then it wasn't waste for you either." His lips trembled a little, and
he said nothing about his own emotions; it had been so unutterably sweet
to him to hold her, trusting, quiescent, in his arms and feel the
night-wind ruffling her hair against his cheek.
It was still dusk, though the misty blue-grey of the tree-tops was
imperceptibly changing to a more living hue, and the sky, stained a deep
rust colour, showed a molten whiteness where it touched the world's rim.
He unknowingly gripped Blanche's hand till she nearly cried out; except
as something that made beauty more beautiful he hardly knew she was
there. Slowly the miracle of dawn unfolded; down in the woods birds
lifted glad heads, the lids were raised from round, bright eyes, and
there came up to the watchers on the rocks the first faint notes that
pierced the air of the new day.
Nothing was very wide-awake as yet; all life stirred as though beneath a
film; a dim blue coverlet still lay lightly over the wood; the earth
held her breath for the moment of birth. What a waiting, what a wide
clear sense of certain expectation! The sky, naked of clouds, had become
a brightening sphere of pearliness; a deep rose gathered over the hills
and spread fanlike, licking up the ashen pallor with stabs of flame. A
livid red-gold rim sprang into being behind the hill crests, and slowly
and in state the sun swam up the molten sky. He turned to Blanche with
the tears in his eyes.
"Dearest, the sun has risen!" He drew her face to his and kissed her,
not as before, but with the sense of consummating a sacrament. She rose
to her feet a little unsteadily, and they set their faces towards
Paradise cottage.
"You must get some rest," he said; "it's only half-past four now."
The exaltation of the dawn had left her, and she quickened her steps,
wondering uneasily what her skin looked like unaided in this dazzling
light. She slipped noiselessly into the house by the front door, which
she barred behind her; the clatter of hobnails from the little yard told
that Billy was already about his business, but behind Mrs. Penticost's
door all was quiet. With her finger to her lips Blanche leaned from her
window and breathed "Good-night" and disappeared into the shadows.