SERIOUS-MINDED folk will need to pass over this raising of Venus, but
I will shorten it as well as I can. It seemed a dreadful thing to me, as
I set forth when the evening came, that I should be going to show myself
stark naked. For though I knew that Miss Dorabella and other grand
ladies did take off the tops of their gowns, evenings, and come forth
half bare, and think it no shame, yet women of our sort have more
chariness of themselves.
As I went in by the garden way, through the door on the low level, not
to be seen, I was all of a tremble, and it was only the pitifulness of
poor Jancis that made me go through with it. We could hear Beguildy
moving about up above opening the trap-door and putting all ready. I
thought what a silly old man he was, to think anybody believed in his
May-games. Then we heard young Mister Camperdine’s horse, and there was
a shuffling of feet above, and Beguildy pulled on the rope to show all
was ready.
Oftentimes it is easier to die for love’s sake than to be made a fool of
for love’s sake. So I thought as I was lugged up into the dark room in a
cloud of smoke that made me gasp, holding out my hands to keep me from
knocking against the sides of the trap, and not knowing whether to laugh
at the foolishness of it all, or to cry at the sorrowfulness of this
play-acting, which so mocked me. For here I was pretending to be the
most beautiful woman that ever was, and a goddess into the bargain, and
yet I was cursed as you know.
All was dimmery in the room. I could but just make out a figure at the
far side. Beguildy was singing some queer kind of spell in the kitchen,
and the young man’s horse was stamping and shaking its bridle outside.
As I came up clear of the trap, and hung there in the rosy light, the
young squire started forrard in his chair, and held out his hands like a
child at a pastry shop. But I knew he was under solemn oath not to stir
from his chair. I thought it must be a strange thing to go through life
with men holding out their hands on this side and on that, to be always
the pastry cake in the window with hungry eyes upon it. Then all of a
sudden I heard a movement on the other side of the room, and turning
that way I could have cried aloud, for there sat Kester Woodseaves.
Did ever Fate play such a trick? Here was the one man out of all the
world that I must hide from, since already I loved him so dear, and so
must never hurt him with my grief. And there he was, so close in the
small place that two strides would have fetched him to me. He was
leaning forrard like the young squire, and he made to hold his arms out
and then drew back and gave a sigh, and I know now that the desire of
woman was stirring within him. It came on me then with a great joy that
it was my own self and no other that had made him hold out his arms. For
in that place he could not see my curse, he could only see me gleaming
pale as any woman would. Often since, I have wondered if he’d have been
so stirred if it had been Jancis hanging there, crucified in nakedness,
instead of me. Was it all of the flesh as it was with the young squire,
or did my soul, that was twin to his, draw him and wile him, succour his
heart and summon his love, even then? For I do think that the spirit
makes herself busy about the body, and breathes through it, and throws a
veil over it to make it more fair than it is of itself. For what is
flesh alone? You may see flesh alone and feel nought but loathing. You
may see it in the butcher’s shop cut up, or in the gutter, drunken, or
in the coffin, dead. For the world is full of flesh as the chandler’s
shelf is full of lanthorns at the beginning of winter. But it inna till
you take the lanthorn home and light it that you have any comfort of it.
And I have ever seen that the women with fair mounded cheeks, and
breasts like the round pyatt where Felena danced, yet lacking any soul
to laugh or weep in them, be not the ones that draw men. The ones that
lure men to them by the tuthree, the score, and the hundred, as folk
draw towards a lighted church when the Easter Supper is ready, be often
those that care not much for their bodies.
This is a strange thing, as true things are often, but not so strange as
this wiling and summoning of a man by a woman flawed and cursed, a woman
to whom it was said, “You’ll never have a lover.” Two men would have
been my lovers that night if I’d willed it so. And as I saw the squire’s
shoulders stooped forrard with the weight of his longing I knew for the
first time that, whatever my face might be, my body was fair enough.
From foot to shoulder I was as passable as any woman could be. Under the
red light my flesh was like rose petals, and the shape of me was such as
the water-fairies were said to have, lissom and lovesome.
I hadna cared so much, nor been so dismayed, at playing this foolish
game afore a stranger. But now I was all one blush from head to foot,
and cold as ice as well. Every second was an hour, and I was shamed as
if I had gone whoring. Yet I couldna but rejoice to have given my body
in this wise to the eyes of him who was maister in the house of me for
ever and ever.
I pulled the muslin over my face and looked slanting through it towards
this wonder. For indeed he was a wonder to me then and always, not for
his looks nor for anything that he did, but for the silent power of what
he was, the power gathered up in him, as tremendous as a great mountain
on the sky, that you couldna measure nor name, but only feel.
In the thinning smoke I could see him, with his face set beneath the
shock of bodily love, for whether or not he loved me after, he did in
that hour, and with the wounded look that is ever on the faces of men
between the coming of the lust of the eye and its satisfying.
It takes a long while to write down, but I was only in the room as long
as Missis Beguildy could count sixty. Beguildy was afraid they’d find
him out if he allowed them too long, never dreaming, poor simple fool,
that neither of them believed a word of his tales. While I was still
fainty from the shock of seeing Kester Woodseaves, Beguildy called from
the kitchen—
“Well, well, gentlemen, have I yearned my five pound?”
“Aye, aye!” says Mister Camperdine, with his look heavy on me, “and
more, and more!”
Beguildy began to sing another foolish rhyme, which was the sign for me
to be ready to go down. Never was any woman so glad of a cellar as I was
when I raught back there. I got into my clothes as quick as might be,
for we could hear the squire argufying with Beguildy in the kitchen.
“What now? What now? Speak with a bogy?” Beguildy was saying. “Now how
can ye speak with Missis Venus, and she dead and gone this thousand
year? I fetched her back for ye, through the grave and gate of death,
for five pound in cash, but I canna keep her. She comes a-walking on the
air, in a cloud, for the time you can count sixty, and then she’s gone.
For she is but a beautiful bogy, seesta! and she mun be raught home by
candlelight.”
There was a great burst of laughter at that, and as Mister Camperdine
went out to his horse, he called back—
“I’ll have another look at Venus one day, Beguildy. She’s got a very
tidy figure, by Gad, _wherever_ she’s from!”
As I crept home under the close net of winter boughs, my heart was all
dumbfounded, even as the heart of a bride when first her lover looks
upon her beauty. Only there was shame in this, and a great distress,
being that I was no bride, and that I had been stared-upon and
longed-after by a strange man as well as by him that was the world and
all to me, though I had seen him but once afore.
It was strange to think that while I went about my house-work and
out-door work to-morrow, slaving like a man, at men’s jobs, I should be
in my own soul the bride of the weaver. While I ploughed with Gideon,
turning up the frosty earth, while I cleaned the shippen in my sacking
and clogs, while I stood in the mucky fold giving the ducks and fowls
their meat, looking more like a man than a woman, and more like a mawkin
than a man, all this time I should be woman to him, dwelling beneath the
light of his eyes, warmed by his smile, his banner over me being love.
While I strode but half a furrow or so behind Gideon, I should be lying
trembling in my lover’s arms, fainty as I was at Beguildy’s. Though my
hands were hard and chapped and my face red and coarsened with weather,
I should be, while I thought upon him I loved, a flower and the petal of
a flower. For love is a May-dew that can turn the swartest woman to a
Jancis. And though I had but the shadow of it, yes! the shadow of a
shadow, as when you see the reflection of a water-lily in the mere, not
still, but in ripples, so that even the reflection is all distraught and
is not wholly yours, yet it had made the world all anew.
I wondered if aught would have happened to me in my outward life by the
time the water-lilies came again, lying along the edges of the mere like
great gouts of pale wax. There was but a mockery of them now, for amid
the frozen leaves lay lilies of ice. Yet as I thought of Kester
Woodseaves and what he had come to mean, I seemed to hear and see on
this side and on that, in the dark woods, a sound and a gleam of the
gathering of spring. There was a piping call in the oakwood, a bursting
of purple in the tree-tops, a soft yellowing of celandine in the
rookery. When I was come into the attic, spring was there afore me,
though it was so cold that my hands could scarce write. None the less, I
put down in my book the words, “The first day of spring.” And I wrote it
in the best tall script, flourished. So I should ever call to mind the
second time of seeing him I loved, and the first time of his seeing me.
Not only had he looked at me, but he had looked with favour and longing,
and though I knew it was only because the truth was hidden from him, yet
I was glad of what I had, as a winter bird is, that will come to your
hand for a little crumb, though in plenteous times she would but mock
you from the topmost bough.