IN THE WAYS OF DELIGHT
The next morning Everest, after a troubled and restless night, found
himself the first in the breakfast-room, and when the door opened
it was Regina who came in. She was dressed in a morning cotton of
rose-colour, and either by contrast to that, or from emotion, her face
looked pale as their eyes met and he took her hand in his.
"You were all in silver armour last night when I saw you," he said
gently, "like an image of Diana." The colour came then in soft waves to
her cheeks and beat there; her gaze seemed locked in his and could not
get away.
"Diana was a horrid and cruel divinity, I like her least of any of
them; Venus was kinder," she murmured.
"Well, you must be Venus to me," returned Everest, smiling down upon
her; his face had a gentle, tender expression, the tones of his voice
were very soft, and the girl's heart beat to suffocation as she heard
them.
She could not answer. Just then the door opened and the Rector, with
the entire family group behind him, appeared in the doorway. Everest
and Regina moved a little apart, their hands, which had remained in
each other's, fell to their sides. Everest moved forward to greet his
host.
"Glad to see you are an early riser," remarked the Rector genially.
"Did you sleep well?"
"No, I can't say I did, there are so many disturbing influences in the
country: nightingales and church clocks and all sorts of things; then
when I did go to sleep I dreamt, which I never do in town."
"What did you dream about?" asked Jane Marlow. She looked very pretty
this morning in a fresh white cambric, with a green ribbon round her
slim throat.
"Of silver images," replied Everest, and his eyes went to Regina, who
stood by her place at the table. She looked down as she heard these
words; a tremor went through her whole frame.
"How funny dreams are, they never seem to correspond to anything one
has seen or done in the day, do they?" replied Jane, and Everest
answered calmly, "Hardly ever."
The coffee was brought in and they all closed round the table while the
Rector began to say grace.
Breakfast was generally a most unpleasant meal at the Rectory. From the
last word of the long grace at the beginning, to the first word of the
long grace at the end, it was a series of surly, grumbling wrangles,
in which everyone showed their early-morning ill-humour to the utmost.
Mrs. Marlow, according to the Rector, had always done something wrong:
either she was late, or she had had the coffee made too weak, or too
strong, or the housemaid had not called him early enough, or too early,
or his bath was cold. Mrs. Marlow generally argued out the respective
points, until she was clearly proved in the right, or at least her
husband was reduced to an exhausted silence. Then the two sisters had
various complaints to make, or else the continuation of some personal
quarrel begun upstairs absorbed them.
Regina, for herself, took no part in either the grace or the wrangling.
To her the first seemed rendered ludicrous by the Rector gabbling over
it, in a tremendous hurry, that he might begin abusing his wife; and
further, if the Creator gave them their breakfast, He presumably gave
them everything else, and of His gifts she would not certainly have
picked out this detestable breakfast to thank Him for. She would sooner
have thanked Him, sitting before her easel in solitude: "For what I am
about to paint," for the powers He had given her, than for what she was
about to eat in hostility at the table.
She used to sit quite silent, while the waves of querulous, complaining
or angry voices rose and fell round her, and when she had finished
her meal, which she naturally did long before the others, since so
much disputing takes time, she would sit looking through the window,
watching the robins at their singing matches on the lawn, and longing
to be away with her painting or music, her Latin or Greek, or in the
enchanted garden, out of earshot at least of her amiable family and
their incessant discussion of things that to her view mattered so
little.
She wondered to-day how the meal would go, because she believed they
were not bad-mannered enough to quarrel before a guest, and she was
astonished to find that the conversation, as a matter of fact, was kept
up entirely between her and Everest. For the latter, with a strenuous
resolve to ban the sick poor at breakfast, steered away from Miss
Marlow's opening remarks on almshouses, and plunged resolutely into the
heart of Africa, continuing the conversation with Regina which had been
interrupted last night.
Regina had read much on Africa, and followed the history of many
explorers through Uganda, and wandered with many authors in the pigmy
forests and by the Great Lakes. Consequently, although she made some
mistakes, she had a good general knowledge of the subject, and her
eager enthusiasm, her perfect attention, her quick comprehension, made
her a naturally good and easy talker on any subject.
As the rest of the family knew absolutely nothing about Africa, except,
as regards the Rector, that it was a country "full of black heathen,"
as regards the mother, "that it was a swampy, unhealthy place, where
there were snakes and one got fever and things," and as regards the
sisters, that it was one of the places where "missions were sent to
cannibals," they remained out of the conversation and sat silent,
listening in wonder to the brilliant talk flying across the table, much
of which they could barely comprehend.
After breakfast, when they had all risen, the Rector claimed Everest to
go with him to see his model cottages, recently erected in the village,
and Everest, grateful for having escaped the sick poor at breakfast,
felt it his duty to put up with some poor now, since his host wished
it, and consented pleasantly.
"What are we going to do this afternoon?" he asked.
He put the question in a general way, but his eyes sought Regina, who
turned hers aside with a singing gladness in her heart.
Miss Marlow answered him:
"We are going to drive you over to Lady Delamere's for tea--we start
from here about three."
"I'll join you outside, Everest," called the Rector from the door. "I
have to look into my study for half-a-minute."
Everest nodded and went up to his own room for his hat. Coming down he
met Regina alone, on the stairs, and paused.
"You are coming this afternoon?" he asked.
She was by a long window, through which the sun fell on her. Her face
looked just like a rose, in its pink and white colour, as she lifted it
towards him, standing two or three steps above her.
"No," she answered, smiling, "mother and Jane and Violet are going, and
the carriage holds only four comfortably."
"You and I could walk?" suggested Everest promptly.
Regina laughed outright as the picture of her sisters' faces came
before her, as they would look if, when the carriage was starting,
Everest left his seat to walk with her.
"Oh, no," she said; "we could not do that. My sisters have set their
hearts on taking you with them to the Delameres'."
"Well, where are you going then?" he asked.
"I shall go, I think, to the enchanted garden--it is such a lovely day."
"How nice that sounds! The enchanted garden! I wish I were coming there
too."
"Why do you wish it?"
"I don't know. One cannot always trace the birth and growth of one's
desires." Regina gazed at him as he stood there, one hand on the
banister rail, thinking how truly wonderful he was in his difference
from all the other men she had ever seen. The crowded country church
on Sundays, what a mass of more or less ungainly, shambling, shuffling
figures it contained, representatives of the middle-aged or old
inhabitants; and the young men seen on the cricket and football ground,
how fat and round and stodgy they looked, or else how thin and weedy,
leaning over, as it were, the hollow of their own chests!
But here in Everest's case how all was changed! It was difficult to
say whether the strength or grace of his figure left the greater
impression on the eye, so perfectly were the two united in it. It was
a form beautifully planned out by Nature, which the ceaseless activity
of its owner had enhanced. It suggested potential energy; the balance
and the poise of it, whether in action or repose, were always perfect.
It had that curious symmetry, that look of its perfect adaptability to
every possible movement, that one sees in the wild animal while at the
height of its beauty and power. To Regina's mind came, as she looked
at him, the thought of the slim and graceful fox, treading deftly with
its sure, trim feet the edge of the covert, with all that tremendous
power of swift, enduring speed locked in its beautiful, sinuous body.
And again the red deer of Exmoor occurred to her, with their splendid
carriage, their proud beauty of line, their clean-cut elegance of form.
Everest was forty-six, but so lightly had the feet of the years
touched him in their flight over him that he looked hardly more than
twenty-eight or twenty-nine. His hair had not a single white strand in
it, nor had the dark moustache that flowed in a straight line across
his face, not pulled downwards nor twisted up, and of which some of
the threads glowed with a red-gold sheen on their blackness, if the
sun struck across them. Very few lines marked the clear, warm tan of
the skin; the teeth were even, perfect, untouched by dentistry. Life
and experience had added power and intellect to the face, had deepened
the mental charm without, as yet, taking from its physical beauty. Out
of the beautiful youth he had been at eighteen, Nature had built up
through all these years one of her masterpieces, and it seemed that she
was so pleased with it, now that it had reached its perfection, that
even she, fidget though she is, always doing and undoing, was loath to
begin her task of pulling it all to pieces.
Regina gazed and gazed upon him in silence that was thrilled through
and through with joy, for to the artist there is no delight more keen
than looking on what is beautiful and perfect, and Everest asked her
with a little smile of what she was thinking.
"Of an Exmoor deer that I saw standing, once, on a little tor at
sunrise, surveying the sleeping moor," she said slowly and in a low
tone, and then went on up the stairs, as she heard doors shutting, and
steps approaching from below.
Everest passed on down. The beautiful imagery of her words won his
quick, artistic sense, and, little conceited as he was, the flattery
from the fresh, girlish lips pleased him. He went on, feeling well
able to grapple even with the model cottages and the sick poor.
Regina in her room could do nothing; she tried to read, but she
only heard his voice speaking; she turned to the paintings, but she
hardly saw them: his face hung before her. Finally she descended to
the drawing-room and sought to play, but her hands dropped from the
keyboard, and she sat silent, gazing before her.
So, she remembered, had she felt once before in her life, when Nature's
voice first called to her to leave her dolls and playthings and begin
to prepare herself for her life's work.
How well she remembered that day, when first the scales of childhood
had fallen from her eyes, and her dolls, formerly living things,
had been seen for the first time as they were: bits of rag and wood
and stone. How she remembered the keen wonder she had felt, the
astonishment that she could play no more!
Then had come the period of fierce intelligence, the appetite and
desire for work, the longing to know and to expand the brain. For
since Nature has made woman to be not only the mother but the nurse
of the child, and it is the mother's brain and not the father's that
is transmitted to the child, she gives to the female, with the first
development of sex, this sharp desire for knowledge, for learning, for
mental endowment, so that it may be duly passed on to the offspring.
Hence that overwhelming thirst for mental work, for study, which is
so common in the developing girl for these few years in her life,
so unusual in the male, who rarely learns, except for material and
worldly considerations. And as Nature's voice had peremptorily called
her from her playthings, and forced her to her studies, so now, her
time for study being over, Nature again summoned her to leave her
accomplished duties, and prepare herself for the new ones in store for
her.
Nature was strong in Regina; she was its child. The cramped artifices
of civilisation had not got hold of her and stifled out of her the
breath of Nature. So after a time she abandoned all work, finding it
impossible, and sat gazing out of the window, thinking.
At luncheon, Everest, having quite made up his mind as to his
afternoon's programme, which was to include other items besides the
Delamere call, took comparatively little notice of Regina, and talked
chiefly to the Rector on model cottages, and their morning's inspection.
The Rector delightedly expounded his views, which seemed to Everest to
have for their aim the increasing dependence of the poor upon the rich,
the incompetent upon the capable, the weak and idle upon the strong and
industrious, and the undermining of what thrift the poor possessed by
removing the urgent necessity for it.
The model cottages were to be practically free, with only a nominal
rent; old people were to be kept by the parish; sick people were to
be tended gratis; young people were to be encouraged to marry early
and bring into the world large families for their neighbours to
keep; chance immorality was to be avoided at all costs, and punished
mercilessly; large broods of infants, no matter from what drunken,
vicious, idle parents, were to be favoured and cared for out of the
money of the honest and sober, provided only the brood was born in
wedlock, and the father and mother had the sanction of the Church.
Finally he gleefully totted up the subscriptions he had dragged out
of the unwilling hands of the hard-working and thrifty portion of
the villagers, for his doors, his windows, his model baths, his new
sinks, and only lamented that he was still short a hundred pounds for
finishing the hearths.
Everest, to whom this exposition of views had been intensely repellent,
felt relieved that the point of asking for charity, up to which he felt
sure the Rector was slowly working, had been reached at last, and said
immediately:
"Oh, well, you must count on me for the remaining hundred for the
fireplaces. I will give you the cheque after luncheon."
The Rector flushed with pleasure. How convincing his arguments had been!
"My dear Everest, it's most good of you. I assure you it will take a
load off my mind. I really feel ashamed to go and beg any more from my
parishioners, though I must say, hard pressed for money as they are,
and hard as they have to work for it, they seldom refuse me."
Regina, sitting opposite them both, and watching the pale, severe
gravity that had come over the handsome countenance, knew that Everest
was giving that hundred, not because he cared whether the very unmodel
cottagers in their model cottages had hearths or not, nor whether the
tribes of sickly infants that they had no right to bring into the world
at all, since they could not keep them, were warmed by his fires or
not, but simply because it was Regina's father who asked him, and
because Regina herself sat opposite him, and another link was looped up
in that golden chain that was slowly forging in life's furnace to bind
her to him.
"All the same you know I don't think you are right, John," Everest
answered easily, in his light, polished tones. "You think you are
alleviating poverty, but in reality you are creating it. The dread of
dying in the workhouse when they are old is the only stimulus to a
great many to work at all while they are young; take that away, and put
old vagabonds in free model cottages, what inducement do you give to
the young vagabond to work? And what reward have you for the honest,
sober hard worker if you take his savings to help keep his idle and
drunken brother? It seems to me you actually put a premium on idleness
and vice, and rob honesty and virtue to do it. Then as regards your
idea of morality, I think that the poor, hard-working, healthy girl,
who, without marriage, brings one healthy child into the world, and
works all her life to keep it, as many of them do, is a less deadly
enemy to society than those wretched, improvident couples who rush into
marriage and keep producing more and more unfit humanity, for which
there is no use, and which other people at their own self-sacrifice
have to support."
The Rector's large face gradually grew purple as he listened; he was
a very heavy eater and drinker, and all his superabundant blood went
up to his head in boiling wrath if anyone attacked his particular and
exceedingly narrow outlook upon sexual subjects. Here, he had to choke
down his feelings as best he could, for he would not, on any account,
quarrel with Everest. Moreover the cheque was promised but not yet
written. He cleared his throat many times, and nervously broke up the
toast crusts lying at his left hand, before replying.
"I know your views are peculiar," he said at last; "they were at
Oxford; I am afraid you hardly give due importance to the Sacraments of
the Church. Er ... have we all finished? Then let us say grace."
Everest's eyes met Regina's and a little flash passed between them, an
instant's glance that was very dear to them both. She loved him for
every word he had uttered, and Everest knew that his views were hers,
by the glad eager look on her face as she listened to him.
He knew each time he sat down to the table that his host was opposed
to him in every opinion, and that the others had no opinions at all.
It was only Regina, with her quick, active mentality, her rapid
perceptions, that was with him, on every subject, and somehow the
knowledge seemed very sweet to him, and to draw them very closely
together.
Luncheon over, the elder girls went up to change their toilettes, and
Everest and Regina stepped through the long windows out upon the lawn.
It was a wonderful day. After a cold and stormy spring, summer had come
in with that perfect glory, that golden radiance, that rescue England's
reputation from entire ruin.
The sky, of the palest, most delicate blue, showed tiny dapplings of
pearly white against its sapphire clearness; all the air seemed dancing
with a golden sheen, and in it seemed to hang, like a canopy, the scent
of flowers, of the pink and white snow of the May not yet over, of the
laburnum already in blossom.
"What a heavenly day!" Everest exclaimed. "I wish you were coming with
us this afternoon."
"So do I, as you are going," she answered, looking up at him,
delighting in the sensation of walking beside him and seeing that dark
brilliant face above her. "But I know my sisters will like it best as
it is. I shall go to the garden and think about you instead."
"Of me? A poor subject, I am afraid. You were better off with the
_Cyclops_."
"I can't get interested in it now. Do you know, I tried everything this
morning: Greek and Latin and painting, and I tried to play; it was all
no good. I had to just sit still and think about you."
Everest looked at her, but she met his gaze quite openly and simply.
Her eyes were innocent, frank, ingenuous. There seemed no design on
her part to flatter him. She merely appeared to feel no necessity for
concealing what she thought. She admired him and said so, she thought
about him and said so. That was all. There was none of the veiled
would-be seduction of the women he was accustomed to.
Praise and adulation so absolutely transparent, so obviously honest,
has an irresistible power. It ceases to be flattery; it becomes homage,
and has its effect on the recipient, as incense has upon the senses.
"I shall be sorry if my coming here has interrupted your work and
lessened your powers," he answered, and his voice had grown suddenly so
sad and grave that Regina exclaimed:
"Oh, never be sorry for me that you have come! If you knew how
perfectly happy I am. Your visit here and your companionship is to me
just as if the sun or moon had come down to walk about with me."
Everest laughed outright.
"Either might be a most dangerous companion, it seems to me," he
answered, and Regina laughed with him.
"But think of the honour and the experience, the novelty, the joy of
it! It would be well worth being burned alive for, I think!"
Everest did not answer for a moment. His laugh died away, and she
thought his face looked pale and grave in the sunlight. Just then the
Rector's voice came to them calling Everest, and Regina drew away
towards the copse.
"Good-bye, then. I am going to the garden. I hope you will enjoy your
afternoon." And as he turned back to his host, she disappeared in the
soft green shadows of the wood.
She walked quickly, and could have well run or danced, she felt so
full of life and joy; the breeze was soft, it came to her cheek like a
caress. The wood seemed full of music; small birds were warbling in it
everywhere and calling to each other across the leafy screen of green;
the leaves themselves quivered and rustled and murmured in the warm and
scented air.
Regina for the past few years had been happy in the knowledge of her
youth and power to please, and now that love had come to her also,
it seemed as if her heart, her whole system, could not contain her
delight. For she knew within herself that though nothing had been
said, and though his acquaintance with her could be measured by hours,
Everest was going to love her just as the doctor and the master and the
assistant master and the curate had done. There was the same curious
softening of all his face when he looked at her as she had seen in
theirs, the same velvet edge to his tones when he spoke to her, as she
had heard from them. And while their love was useless to her, because
she could not return it, for this man she felt she could, and was ready
to feel a passionate adoration, to pour out her life in love for him,
and so know the supreme happiness that Nature holds in this life for
a woman. To be loved is nothing, to love is something, to love and
be loved is everything. Critical and sensitive about every point in
another, as she was, so that the least deviation from her standard of
beauty or intellect would have spoiled the perfection of her feeling,
she could find nothing wanting in Everest; in all her dearest dreams
and visions no ideal had ever been invested with greater charm than the
living man now had for her. And it seemed to her like a miracle in her
favour that, of all the men that might have come to her home, he had
been the one to do so.
To be merely in the same room with him, to see and hear him talking to
another, to study him as he leant back in an arm-chair, reading, and
watch the slender brown hand, that she knew had such power, hold a book
or newspaper, seemed to make her whole being vibrate with delight; and
he admired her, wondered at her, liked to match his learning and his
talk with her, was interested in, sought her; soon, she knew, he would
desire and love her. And the price of it all? What would it be? Her
feet, that had been dancing so merrily over the green moss, stopped
suddenly; a trembling seized all her limbs and a chill came over her in
the soft sunny air. She sank on an old log, by the winding path, both
hands pressed over her heart to still its beating. In these moments she
knew, whatever the price, she must pay it.
When the time came for him to ask anything from her, she must give it.
She knew beforehand she could not resist him, could not refuse or deny
to this man anything, because of the glorious pleasure of the giving,
pleasure that would compensate her for everything, for life itself, if
won....
She was very pale as she sat there and shivered, for love is absolutely
merciless and inexorable, and counts out its moments of supreme delight
against the drops of its victim's life-blood, and she knew this. All in
a moment, in the midst of her happy triumph, the thought of his wealth
and position, so far above her own in its powers and possibilities,
had reared itself up in her mind, like a great wall towering over her,
menacing to crush her. She hated it; it separated him from her. If he
had only been poor, like the young master, who had had nothing but
his life, which he had laid down at her feet! How perfect then her
happiness might have been! The meanest, commonest existence, shared
with Everest, would have been as if it were wrapped in cloth of gold
to her. Tiny rooms, poor living, hard working, what would she have
cared? Had he said: "Marry me and come to a lonely tent in the burning
Soudan," she would have said: "Yes," oh, how gladly! As she would have
said it had he asked her to marry him and share a prison, or hell
itself. But some instinct told her that Everest would not want to marry
her, that a man with that accumulated wealth and vast inheritance would
not enter marriage merely for the sake of passion; that he would need
other conditions, which she vaguely felt she did not fill.
And even if in the blindness of love he offered it, would it be her
part, would it be right to accept it?
Suppose in the awakening, after, from that blinding dream that passion
is, she saw that he regretted?
How it would rend her, heart and soul, to think that she, who would
cast down her life like a mantle, for him to walk over, did he wish it,
had brought him a burden of regret!
The thought hurt and stung her; it bit deeply into her brain. She
rose and hurried on with quick steps to the garden, as if seeking its
protection from these thoughts, that pursued her like living things.
Whatever happened, she thought, she would be content as long as no
suffering through her fell on him. Nothing would she take, nothing
would she accept from him, that meant loss or sacrifice to himself. On
that she was quite resolved.
To a woman's passion is always added the wonderful instinct of maternal
love. In all its wildness, in all its demands, there is still that
guiding, underlying impulse to shield, to protect, to guard, to
encircle with tender care the man she loves, and in Regina, now that
she loved, this instinct rose to its full strength, and pervaded all
her heart and soul. She herself and all that happened to her was of no
moment. At all costs Everest was to be considered; his happiness kept
safe and sacred in her hands.
Her quick walking soon brought her to the garden and the sea. As
she unlocked the gate she noticed how the summer heat of the last
twenty-four hours had called the laburnum into bloom. The whole garden
glowed golden with it! On every side it gleamed and shone like amber
rain, falling amongst the other foliage. Never had she seen it look so
beautiful in its contrast with the pale blue of the sky, never had the
rich yellow tint of it been so perfect. Rejoiced, she walked round all
the narrow winding paths. She longed to show the garden to Everest, and
it seemed as if it had arrayed itself in its most radiant and glorious
dress in honour of his coming.
The standard rose-trees made of the centre a mass of vivid colour;
the May was all in bloom, and the wild tamarisk threw up against the
azure light a perfect foam of pink blossom. The perfumes from all the
different flowering plants and trees floated mingling in the still
and sheltered air like the strains of melody, wandering through and
interwoven in a musical harmony; and the hum of the happy bees, the
call of the nesting birds, the coo of the doves, rose and fell sweetly
above the low murmur and ripple of the sea. Anxious and foreboding
thoughts slipped from her mind; as always here, she relapsed joyously
into reflecting simply upon Everest, upon his personality that so
called to her own, upon the delight of his having come there, and all
that wonder and rapture lying hidden in the heart of life to which her
eyes were being opened.
She found her way to a little rustic seat beneath the palm at last, and
there sat down, amongst the maze of roses, only wanting one thing to
complete her happiness--his presence there.
The hot hours of the noonday went softly past, and the day hastened
to array itself in fresh beauty to meet the sunset; the light began
to deepen, the sky to flush with rose, the air to grow heavier with
fragrance.
Those birds that were still singing, not yet exhausted by their nesting
cares, gave out their last floods of melody before the approach of
evening.
Suddenly as she sat there she heard a step on the gravel, and started.
This was her sacred ground; no one had a right to come there; but she
guessed whose step that was, firm and light and springing like the
tread of a deer.
She sprang up, her heart leaping with joy, and through the drooping,
swaying palm branches saw the slim figure she expected approaching, and
the light falling sideways across the dark and handsome face.
She went forward to meet him, making no effort to conceal the joy and
pleasure shining in her eyes.
"How lovely this is! I am so glad you have come! How did you get in?"
"By the gate."
"But I locked it."
Everest laughed. "Locked gates are nothing to me. I jumped over it!"
"How splendid!" she said, gazing at him, her soft azure eyes full of
admiration. "That high, spike-topped gate! I wish I had seen you. And
how did you get here? How did you find the garden?"
"I walked here from the Delameres'."
"Walked! It's fifteen miles to their house."
"Well, what is fifteen miles?" he answered, smiling down into her
upraised face. "Nothing, after fifty miles a day of cross country, as
I have often had to do; and as to finding you, in comparison with the
interior of Africa, Stossop's geography is pretty easy."
"How wonderful you are," she said softly, "and I am so glad you are
here. I wanted to show you my garden. What do you think of it?"
"It is a beautiful place. It seems like those magic gardens one reads
of. One can't believe it's just ordinary England."
"It is perfect to me now you are here. I was wishing so much for you to
come."
"It must have been that which drew me here to you--darling."
He had not meant to use that word, nor any endearing term, but it
passed his lips almost unconsciously; she did look such a darling in
her pretty summer dress, with her fresh, pink-tinted face all aglow
with her ardent, enthusiastic welcome of himself. And he knew, as he
looked at the lovely, youthful form, that there was the spirit of a
lioness within. She was a thing of life and light and fire; full to the
brim, like himself, of ardent energy and power. There was no doll-like,
sawdust body here, with brains of wool, as many of the women had had
whom he had known, lovely though their outsides had been.
She attracted him violently, irrepressibly; there was an all-compelling
magnet in each slender finger, as he touched her hand.
Nature does not take long in setting up her wondrous all but
unbreakable current of electricity when she has brought together two
individuals suitable to mate with each other, and just like that other
common form of electricity which holds the hands relentlessly to a
battery so that their owner has no power to lift or stir a finger, so
does this other magnetic current sweep round its two captives, binding
them together without will or power to move asunder.
At the word "darling" a quiver passed over Regina's face and she looked
away as if she had not heard.
It is the part of virginity to flee from passion, and instinctively it
fulfils its part as long as passion pursues. If there is any pause in
the chase, virginity kindly stops and waits, till passion is ready to
take up the pursuit, when it promptly flies again.
So Regina, with her pulses leaping with joy and her feet on air, and
seeing the garden about her, all transfigured with a new glory, at the
sound of that word in his voice looked away instinctively and seemed
not to have heard.
They walked round the green turf, the roses nodding in the gently
moving air and throwing their perfume on to it, under the thick wild
unpruned tamarisk, that looked like the softest feathers against the
glowing sky, under the swaying palms that threw shadow and sunlight
alternatively down on them, and then on by those little dark green
winding paths where the air was still and warm and dusk laden with the
scent of the rose and the vital life-giving salt breath of the sea.
They spoke a little, mostly in praise of the beauty around them, or of
the doves flying in circles overhead, or of the wild calling note of
the nightingale that came from the thickets, and both were intensely
happy in the beauty and proximity of the other and because of the magic
steel-like ring that nature was drawing tighter and tighter round them,
each moment forcing them towards each other.
As last, before them, through the crossing and re-crossing of delicate
lines of branch and leaf, they saw the gleam of purple and the glitter
of the sea. Regina quickened her steps a little and reached first the
porphyry balustrade and leant over with a little cry of delight as her
eyes caught all the radiance gathering in the western sky and all the
jewelled light flung on the opposite coast, where peak and headland lay
in lines of velvet blue under a golden haze.
"Oh, look how lovely this is," she said, as Everest came and stood
beside her. "I have a painting of it that I did on an evening like
this. I should like to show it to you."
"Did you paint this?" he said. "It is a difficult subject. What a lot
you have learnt in your few short years of life! You seem to know so
much, and then to be only eighteen; you are a revelation to me."
A little smile played over her face, irradiated by the mellowing light
as she looked up at him.
"I am so glad," she said simply. "I should like to please you. To me
you are the most wonderful, beautiful and perfect person I have ever
seen."
"Regina." He was very near her now, one arm came round her shoulder.
Ah, that touch, how it moved her, the first touch of that being she so
admired, how it vibrated through her, body and mind, from head to foot.
She recognised the strength and force of the arm, yet how gentle and
reverent its contact was with her now. How strange it is that amongst
a hundred men who might touch a woman and leave her wood and stone to
them there is perhaps just one whose slightest contact may give her
that extreme ecstasy!
She did not move from him, only looked up with all the fires of the
sunset in her eyes. The face that she would have chosen out of all
the world hung just above her; the man that she would have chosen out
of all the world was there beside her, seeking her. She had no other
thought than to please him, to yield to his empire. At any cost, at any
sacrifice of herself, at the price of her life, if necessary, she was
dedicated, consecrated to him; worship, adoration was in her face and
in her heart as she looked up at him. It is the spontaneous impulse in
all virgin love, and those women who have not felt it for their lovers
have missed love's soul.
Everest bent down and kissed her, and in all her after years Regina
could never recall a higher pinnacle of joy to which she had climbed
than was reached in that first kiss. The very purity of it, the first
expression of her whole ardent, unstained soul, the etherealised
emotions of awe and wonder of devotion that went through it, lifted it
out of the range of earthly things. Regina's kiss, full of passionate
enthusiasm as it was, was still like the burning kiss of the young
nun upon her rosary, as the strains of the anthem bear away her soul
to heaven. Everest understood her perfectly, practised as he was in
these matters, and being himself of that sensitive timbre that made
him respond easily to and comprehend every grade of varying emotion in
another.
People had called him dissipated and reckless, simply because he had
always been unconventional and lived according to the laws of his own
conscience instead of the laws of the world. But all his pleasures had
been of the refined and delicate order, things of the mind and soul as
well as the body--the pleasures of the wild poetic Celtic nature rather
than of the coarse and brutal Saxon. The mere wallowing of the body in
physical indulgence, whether of drunkenness, overeating, or other vice,
was unknown to him. The excitable brain, the refined and sensitive
mind, in his case must be charmed and captured before pleasure could
begin.
It was to these that Regina in her innocent and unveiled admiration
so appealed, and his touch was very tender and gentle as he drew her
wholly into his arms up against his breast, and the girl yielded,
silent, submerged in that overwhelming first delight of love, that no
after one can wholly surpass. So they stood for a few minutes in the
light, both feeling the happiness of the world was absolutely complete.
Then the man relaxed his clasp suddenly and put her away from his arms
in the same decisive way he had drawn her into them. His face was very
pale and set as he turned from her and leaned over the balustrade,
looking away to the gorgeous fires of the west.
Regina stood quite silent, passive, shaken with happiness, voiceless.
He had put her away from him, swept over by some feeling she did not
understand, but she yielded to that as obediently as when he had drawn
her to him. It was a delight to watch him, and her fascinated eyes
strayed over him as he leant beside her; and behind him, growing deeper
and fiercer every moment, burned the red flare of the sunset.
After a long silence, in which Regina had studied the fine outline
of his head and neck, the small ear, the dear arm in the light grey
sleeve, the fine linen of the cuff enclosing the smooth and supple
wrist, he said:
"I should be so interested in your paintings, when may I see them?"
"It is rather difficult," she answered, in a low tone. "I don't think
my people would like me to bring them to the drawing-room, they don't
really care about any of those things."
There was a pause for a moment, then he said, turning to her:
"Would you like to bring them to my sitting-room after dinner, some
time when the others are gone to bed?"
"Yes, I could do that," she answered simply. He saw she was thinking at
the moment only of her work, and the unconventionality of such a visit
did not oppress her, was not even near her mind.
"We must go now," she said regretfully, "or we shall be late. I think,"
she added slowly, "we had better not go back together. Will you go home
and I will follow by the short cut to the house. My sisters know that
I spend a great deal of my time here, but they would not like it if
they thought that you came. They would want to come here too, and then
all the peace and beauty I enjoy would be spoiled. Do you see?"
"Perfectly," said Everest, smiling, as they turned from the sea to the
scented shades of the garden.
"This place has always been for you alone and now it is to be for us
alone. We will share it with no one and tell nobody of our comings and
goings."
He spoke lightly, jestingly, but both felt that the pact they had made
was a serious one, a pact for companionship in hidden solitude in this
magic, intoxicating place.
The paths were very narrow between the encroaching foliage of flowering
shrubs on every side, and they had to walk closely together, sometimes
touching each other in the soft violet shade beneath the overhanging
trees, and each time her fair head and rose cheek moved near him he
longed to draw her into his arms and kiss her again, but he would not
yield to the impulse, and almost in silence they passed on through the
groves till they were near the high gate by which he had entered.
"Will you jump it again?" she said, smiling up at him.
"No; I have no inclination now," he answered. "There is nothing I want
on the other side."
The girl coloured and laughed at the implied compliment. Bending down
and putting the key in the gate, she opened and pushed it. It swung
wide, giving access to the quiet road, full now of a luminous rose dusk
beneath its arching trees.
"Shall I see you and the pictures this evening?" he asked.
"Yes, I will bring them," she answered, and just at that moment, over
their heads in the thickets of climbing rose, a nightingale burst into
its loud throbbing, commanding call. They listened, hesitating, while
the mad, impatient beat of it vibrated through the quiet air, and far
off somewhere in the woods, after an interval, came back an answering
call.
Then he passed through the gate and the girl stood watching him,
delighting in the beauty of his quick and easy walk down the shadowy
road. When he had vanished she turned back and went by the winding path
to the centre palm, and there, beneath its protecting boughs, she threw
herself down, laying her face against the bosom of the springing turf.
"I was right, I was right," she murmured to herself. "It is more
beautiful than music, than the sunset skies, than the golden light on
the palms, than the play of the moonbeams; and it is like them all.
Bright as the sunlight, mysterious as the ocean, wonderful as the
fragrance of the rose, that is what they call love, and I have it, I
have found it in its perfection. What happiness! What good fortune!"
She lay still and silent, wrapped round and round in a strange soft
delight, lulled as if in some half-waking dream by the cooing of the
doves above her, the wave of the tamarisk in the hot air, the low
murmur of the sea.
The doves came down near her, finding her so still. They were very
tame, for she came there to feed them all through the winter, and she
heard the twinge of its lovely wings as one almost brushed her cheek.
She turned and stretched out her hand to it. "Bird of Venus," she said
softly, "Erasmie peleia, come and talk to me." And the dove let her
gather it up to her breast and put her lips on its sleek head. "Born of
love and for love, I love you," she murmured to it. "Did you see him
kiss me this evening? Oh, dove! how wonderful that was." She pressed
her warm hands on the shoulders of the bird and kissed it again. Then
she opened her clasp and let it go, for she could not bear to constrain
it, but the bird only fluttered as far as her feet and stayed there
beside her, pecking in the grass.
Regina looked up to the sky through the palm leaves. It was deeply
flushed now, even to the zenith, and strangely luminous.
"For their paradise, the Mohammedans thought of beauty and women--that
is, love--and the Christians thought of the rapture of music and the
ecstasy of adoration, and that is love too; the idea underlying both is
the same, and neither could think of anything better than that."
She was a little late for dinner, but everybody else was the same, and
the Rector never stormed nor swore at his family before strangers.
Moreover he was in a particularly good temper, as in addition to
Everest's cheque he had picked up another good donation for the
cottages from Lady Delamere. So the dinner was quite a cheerful meal
and passed over in good temper and gaiety.
At ten-thirty Everest was sitting in his sitting-room expecting
Regina. The room was lighted by large swinging lamps depending from
the ceiling, so that the light was good and well diffused; on the
table stood a spray of white roses in a vase, for Everest was fond of
flowers, and as he had not found any put in his room he had gathered
some in the Rectory garden and brought them in himself.
The window stood open and the scent of the climbing flowers all around
the sill filled the air with fragrance.
He sat idle, thinking of Regina and the strong, fearless, self-reliant
sort of character she had. How simply and easily she had assented to
his invitation to come to his room to show her pictures! Just as a man
would do. She seemed to be entirely without that mincing, mawkish way
so many girls and women have, that silly, hesitating questioning about
every trifle. Shall I? Ought I? Is it proper? Will it seem this or that?
Regina gave him the idea of being absolutely innocent and upright, and
therefore candid and fearless; never accustomed to consider or trouble
about the opinions of others. He felt that about her own actions she
would only ask herself, Is it right? Whereas most people do not care in
the least about that, all they ever ask themselves is, What will others
think? How will it seem? Will it be found out? And this attracted him
in her greatly.
At a little after the half-hour he heard her step outside and went to
open the door for her. She came in with a smile, both hands full of her
paintings, clasping them to her.
Everest pulled forward some chairs, and together they set the sheets
up, leaning against the backs where the light fell best upon them.
There were about twenty paintings in water-colour and they found
places for most of them. Then Everest retreated to the point from where
he could see them best and considered them in silence.
He was surprised. He had expected something more of the ordinary young
lady's drawing-room decorations, though he felt sure that all Regina
created would be artistic and beautiful. But here he saw at once it was
a special talent that he was looking at, that here was no question of a
little skill acquired with a drawing-master's aid. Here were no copies
of rustic cottages, nor yet the inevitable mill, water-wheel and bridge.
Each picture was strong, vivid, with its own marked stamp upon it, and
a challenging originality was in them all. The tones of colour, the
effects of light were marvellous; sunset and dawn, the radiance of the
late afternoon, the deep shades of approaching night--all were here
rendered in their idealised, sublimated form, showing, as the artist
always seeks to show, the essence of beauty.
Regina stood beside him, also looking at the pictures. He divined that
she was quite lost in their contemplation, that his own presence for
the moment was a secondary thing. This also proves the artist, for to
him even the height of passion is less than the height of his artistic
attainment.
"What do you think of them?" she asked, after a silence.
"I think they are quite beautiful; they are surprising. You have a
magnificent gift."
Regina flushed and trembled with pleasure. Hitherto her art had given
her intense joy as she recognised the worth in her creations. But now
she felt that intenser joy of bringing it forward to another and
seeing its effect on him, for the first time. The praise that we know
ourselves is true! What a delight it brings with it. That this man whom
she so admired and longed to please should be interested in her work,
surprised at its excellence, made her heart beat and her eyes dance.
Everest was greatly interested. An artist himself, he saw directly the
difficulties of the subjects she had chosen, and the talent that was
necessary to overcome them as she had done. He picked up first one and
then another, looking at them from a distance to see the general effect
and examining them closely to consider the workmanship, and the girl
sat silent, watching him, as he handled her sacred work that was so
dear to her and that had never been before any eyes for judgment until
now. Her sisters and mother knew that she painted, and had seen her
work occasionally in her room, but knowing and caring nothing about
such things they had not heeded it.
Now she sat absorbed, watching him and the beautifully coloured work
glowing in his hands.
"They are all wonderfully done. As you have had no lessons, and never
been taught, it simply means you have a great genius for it," he said,
laying down the last sheet and looking over to where she sat, a sweet
picture herself in her white dinner dress, gazing so earnestly at him
with her lustrous eyes, her rose-hued face supported on her hand, her
milky, dimpled elbow leaning on the chair arm.
"I am so glad," she said softly. "I hoped it might be so, for when I go
to Exeter and see exhibitions of painting there, and the things they
sell in the shops, somehow I feel that mine are--well, different."
"They are quite different, and very much better than the ordinary
water-colour--this is a most difficult subject, and perfectly done." He
lifted a painting of the enchanted garden. All across the foreground
waved boldly the mass of wild flowering tamarisk; admirably thrown
back, the garden and its wealth of roses was seen behind and beyond,
far off across the hazy blue of the sea burned the sunset sky in
softest crimson.
"I should like to have that in my gloomy London rooms."
"Would you really?" she answered, all her face glowing. "Do then accept
it. I am so proud and honoured and delighted. Do, please, choose any
one you like, or more than one. They would all be yours if you wished
it."
"This one appeals to me specially, and I shall never part with it,
because it is the scene of our first kiss," Everest said, in a low
tone, and rose with the picture in his hand to make space for it on the
mantelpiece. As he did so he took a velvet case from before the glass
and laid it on the table. It was just by Regina, and she glanced at it.
"What a beautiful face," she said, as the miniature of a girl's head
with a delicate, cameo-like profile met her eyes.
"That? Yes; it's my cousin. She is considered very pretty," answered
Everest from the mantelpiece; where he was installing her painting.
A little chill came over Regina as she looked; the cold, perfect face
seemed to hold her gaze. His cousin's! Her portrait here! Suddenly his
life, his far-off existence that was all so vague to her, had put out a
hand and claimed him.
She sat silent, and Everest turned from the hearth, closed the frame
and laid it on a side-table. Regina's painting now sat enthroned before
the glass. The whole room was bright with pictures. Windows seemed open
everywhere in the walls through which one saw vivid skies and seas and
waving trees. They spoke about them all in turn; two artists together
with fresh work to view will sit and talk all night over it if left
undisturbed.
It struck twelve by her sister's silver clock on his table, before
either of them noticed how the time had gone.
She sprang up from her chair and gathered the paintings together.
"How wrong of me to stay so late! And you came here to get well and
keep early hours; I am so sorry."
She was going, and Everest rose from his seat and saw her flushed with
excitement and pleasure, a joyous, shining vision in the lamplight. The
colour came suddenly to his own face, the dark eyes lit up, he made a
movement towards her.
"Regina, one good-night kiss."
She looked back at him standing under the light. Just behind him, near
the closed panels of the door into his room, over his shoulder she
saw the open casement standing wide to the mysterious, all-sheltering
night. She hesitated, and suddenly Everest turned aside.
"No, it is better not; you are my guest this evening. Good-night, my
sweet."
Regina backed towards the door and softly, silently vanished through
it. With flying, noiseless feet she ran up the stairs to her own room
and there, laying the paper sheets on the bed, threw herself on her
knees beside it with her head on her outstretched arms.