When the duke came back from France, and to pay his first eager visit to
his bride that was to be, her ladyship's lacqueys led him not to the
Panelled Parlour, but to a room which he had not entered before, it being
one she had had the fancy to have remodelled and made into a beautiful
closet for herself, her great wealth rendering it possible for her to
accomplish changes without the loss of time the owners of limited purses
are subjected to in the carrying out of plans. This room she had made as
unlike the Panelled Parlour as two rooms would be unlike one another. Its
panellings were white, its furnishings were bright and delicate, its
draperies flowered with rosebuds tied in clusters with love-knots of pink
and blue; it had a large bow-window, through which the sunlight streamed,
and it was blooming with great rose-bowls overrunning with sweetness.
From a seat in the morning sunshine among the flowers and plants in the
bow-window, there rose a tall figure in a snow-white robe--a figure like
that of a beautiful stately girl who was half an angel. It was my lady,
who came to him with blushing cheeks and radiant shining eyes, and was
swept into his arms in such a passion of love and blessed tenderness as
Heaven might have smiled to see.
"My love! my love!" he breathed. "My life! my life and soul!"
"My Gerald!" she cried. "My Gerald--let me say it on your breast a
thousand times!"
"My wife!" he said--"so soon my wife and all my own until life's end."
"Nay, nay," she cried, her cheek pressed to his own, "through all
eternity, for Love's life knows no end."
As it had seemed to her poor lord who had died, so it seemed to this man
who lived and so worshipped her--that the wonder of her sweetness was a
thing to marvel at with passionate reverence. Being a man of greater
mind and poetic imagination than Dunstanwolde, and being himself adored
by her, as that poor gentleman had not had the good fortune to be, he had
ten thousand-fold the power and reason to see the tender radiance of her.
As she was taller than other women, so her love seemed higher and
greater, and as free from any touch of earthly poverty of feeling as her
beauty was from any flaw. In it there could be no doubt, no pride; it
could be bounded by no limit, measured by no rule, its depths sounded by
no plummet.
His very soul was touched by her great longing to give to him the
feeling, and to feel herself, that from the hour that she had become his,
her past life was a thing blotted out.
"I am a new created thing," she said; "until you called me 'Love' I had
no life! All before was darkness. 'Twas you, my Gerald, who said, 'Let
there be light, and there was light.'"
"Hush, hush, sweet love," he said. "Your words would make me too near
God's self."
"Sure Love is God," she cried, her hands upon his shoulders, her face
uplifted. "What else? Love we know; Love we worship and kneel to; Love
conquers us and gives us Heaven. Until I knew it, I believed naught. Now
I kneel each night and pray, and pray, but to be pardoned and made
worthy."
Never before, it was true, had she knelt and prayed, but from this time
no nun in her convent knelt oftener or prayed more ardently, and her
prayer was ever that the past might be forgiven her, the future blessed,
and she taught how to so live that there should be no faintest shadow in
the years to come.
"I know not What is above me," she said. "I cannot lie and say I love It
and believe, but if there is aught, sure It must be a power which is
great, else had the world not been so strange a thing, and I--and those
who live in it--and if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He
has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so
made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for
help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear! We know naught, we
have been told naught; we have but an old book which has been handed down
through strange hands and strange tongues, and may be but poor history.
We have so little, and we are threatened so; but for love's sake I will
pray the poor prayers we are given, and for love's sake there is no dust
too low for me to lie in while I plead."
This was the strange truth--though 'twas not so strange if the world
feared not to admit such things--that through her Gerald, who was but
noble and high-souled man, she was led to bow before God's throne as the
humblest and holiest saint bows, though she had not learned belief and
only had learned love.
"But life lasts so short a while," she said to Osmonde. "It seems so
short when it is spent in such joy as this; and when the day comes--for,
oh! Gerald, my soul sees it already--when the day comes that I kneel by
your bedside and see your eyes close, or you kneel by mine, it _must_ be
that the one who waits behind shall know the parting is not all."
"It could not be all, beloved," Osmonde said. "Love is sure, eternal."
Often in these blissful hours her way was almost like a child's, she was
so tender and so clinging. At times her beauteous, great eyes were full
of an imploring which made them seem soft with tears, and thus they were
now as she looked up at him.
"I will do all I can," she said. "I will obey every law, I will pray
often and give alms, and strive to be dutiful and--holy, that in the end
He will not thrust me from you; that I may stay near--even in the lowest
place, even in the lowest--that I may see your face and know that you see
mine. We are so in His power, He can do aught with us; but I will so
obey Him and so pray that He will let me in."
To Anne she went with curious humility, questioning her as to her
religious duties and beliefs, asking her what books she read, and what
services she attended.
"All your life you have been a religious woman," she said. "I used to
think it folly, but now--"
"But now--" said Anne.
"I know not what to think," she answered. "I would learn."
But when she listened to Anne's simple homilies, and read her weighty
sermons, they but made her restless and unsatisfied.
"Nay, 'tis not that," she said one day, with a deep sigh. "'Tis more
than that; 'tis deeper, and greater, and your sermons do not hold it.
They but set my brain to questioning and rebellion."
But a short time elapsed before the marriage was solemnised, and such a
wedding the world of fashion had not taken part in for years, 'twas said.
Royalty honoured it; the greatest of the land were proud to count
themselves among the guests; the retainers, messengers, and company of
the two great houses were so numerous that in the west end of the town
the streets wore indeed quite a festal air, with the passing to and fro
of servants and gentlefolk with favours upon their arms.
'Twas to the Tower of Camylott, the most beautiful and remote of the
bridegroom's several notable seats, that they removed their household,
when the irksomeness of the extended ceremonies and entertainments were
over--for these they were of too distinguished rank to curtail as lesser
personages might have done. But when all things were over, the stately
town houses closed, and their equipages rolled out beyond the sight of
town into the country roads, the great duke and his great duchess sat
hand in hand, gazing into each other's eyes with as simple and ardent a
joy as they had been but young 'prentice and country maid, flying to hide
from the world their love.
"There is no other woman who is so like a queen," Osmonde said, with
tenderest smiling. "And yet your eyes wear a look so young in these days
that they are like a child's. In all their beauty, I have never seen
them so before."
"It is because I am a new created thing, as I have told you, love," she
answered, and leaned towards him. "Do you not know I never was a child.
I bring myself to you new born. Make of me then what a woman should
be--to be beloved of husband and of God. Teach me, my Gerald. I am your
child and servant."
'Twas ever thus, that her words when they were such as these were ended
upon his breast as she was swept there by his impassioned arm. She was
so goddess-like and beautiful a being, her life one strangely dominant
and brilliant series of triumphs, and yet she came to him with such
softness and humility of passion, that scarcely could he think himself a
waking man.
"Surely," he said, "it is a thing too wondrous and too full of joy's
splendour to be true."
In the golden afternoon, when the sun was deepening and mellowing towards
its setting, they and their retinue entered Camylott. The bells pealed
from the grey belfry of the old church; the villagers came forth in clean
smocks and Sunday cloaks of scarlet, and stood in the street and by the
roadside curtseying and baring their heads with rustic cheers; little
country girls with red cheeks threw posies before the horses' feet, and
into the equipage itself when they were of the bolder sort. Their
chariot passed beneath archways of flowers and boughs, and from the
battlements of the Tower of Camylott there floated a flag in the soft
wind.
"God save your Graces," the simple people cried. "God give your Graces
joy and long life! Lord, what a beautiful pair they be. And though her
Grace was said to be a proud lady, how sweetly she smiles at a poor body.
God love ye, madam! Madam, God love ye!"
Her Grace of Osmonde leaned forward in her equipage and smiled at the
people with the face of an angel.
"I will teach them to love me, Gerald," she said. "I have not had love
enough."
"Has not all the world loved you?" he said.
"Nay," she answered, "only you, and Dunstanwolde and Anne."
Late at night they walked together on the broad terrace before the Tower.
The blue-black vault of heaven above them was studded with myriads of
God's brilliants; below them was spread out the beauty of the land, the
rolling plains, the soft low hills, the forests and moors folded and
hidden in the swathing robe of the night; from the park and gardens
floated upward the freshness of acres of thick sward and deep fern
thicket, the fragrance of roses and a thousand flowers, the tender
sighing of the wind through the huge oaks and beeches bordering the
avenues, and reigning like kings over the seeming boundless grassy
spaces.
As lovers have walked since the days of Eden they walked together, no
longer duke and duchess, but man and woman--near to Paradise as human
beings may draw until God breaks the chain binding them to earth; and,
indeed, it would seem that such hours are given to the straining human
soul that it may know that somewhere perfect joy must be, since sometimes
the gates are for a moment opened that Heaven's light may shine through,
so that human eyes may catch glimpses of the white and golden glories
within.
His arm held her, she leaned against him, their slow steps so harmonising
the one with the other that they accorded with the harmony of music; the
nightingales trilling and bubbling in the rose trees were not affrighted
by the low murmur of their voices; perchance, this night they were so
near to Nature that the barriers were o'erpassed, and they and the
singers were akin.
"Oh! to be a woman," Clorinda murmured. "To be a woman at last. All
other things I have been, and have been called 'Huntress,' 'Goddess,'
'Beauty,' 'Empress,' 'Conqueror,'--but never 'Woman.' And had our paths
not crossed, I think I never could have known what 'twas to be one, for
to be a woman one must close with the man who is one's mate. It must not
be that one looks down, or only pities or protects and guides; and only
to a few a mate seems given. And I--Gerald, how dare I walk thus at your
side and feel your heart so beat near mine, and know you love me, and so
worship you--so worship you--"
She turned and threw herself upon his breast, which was so near.
"Oh, woman! woman!" he breathed, straining her close. "Oh, woman who is
mine, though I am but man."
"We are but one," she said; "one breath, one soul, one thought, and one
desire. Were it not so, I were not woman and your wife, nor you man and
my soul's lover as you are. If it were not so, we were still apart,
though we were wedded a thousand times. Apart, what are we but like
lopped-off limbs; welded together, we are--_this_." And for a moment
they spoke not, and a nightingale on the rose vine, clambering o'er the
terrace's balustrade, threw up its little head and sang as if to the
myriads of golden stars. They stood and listened, hand in hand, her
sweet breast rose and fell, her lovely face was lifted to the bespangled
sky.
"Of all this," she said, "I am a part, as I am a part of you. To-night,
as the great earth throbs, and as the stars tremble, and as the wind
sighs, so I, being woman, throb and am tremulous and sigh also. The
earth lives for the sun, and through strange mysteries blooms forth each
season with fruits and flowers; love is my sun, and through its
sacredness I may bloom too, and be as noble as the earth and that it
bears."