But if in the morning he were strong, Kitty was more beautiful than
ever.
They walked towards the tennis seat, with its red-striped awning. They
listened to the feeble cawing of young rooks swinging on the branches.
They watched the larks nestle in and fly out of the golden meadow. It
was May-time, and the air was bright with buds and summer bees. She
was dressed in white, and the shadow of the straw hat fell across her
eyes when she raised her face. He was dressed in black, and the
clerical frock-coat, buttoned by one button at the throat, fell
straight.
They sat under the red-striped awning of the tennis seat. The large
grasping hands holding the polished cane contrasted with the reedy,
translucent hands laid upon the white folds. The low, sweet breath of
the May-time breathed within them, and their hearts were light; hers
was only conscious of the May-time, but his was awake with unconscious
love, and he yielded to her, to the perfume of the garden, to the
absorbing sweetness of the moment. He was no longer John Norton. His
being was part of the May--time; it had gone forth and had mingled
with the colour of the fields and sky; with the life of the flowers,
with all vague scents and sounds.
'How beautiful the day is,' he said, speaking slowly. 'Is it not all
light and colour? And you, in your white dress, with the sunlight on
your hair, seem more blossom--like than any flower. I wonder what
flower I should compare you to? Shall I say a rose? No, not a rose,
nor a lily, nor a violet; you remind me rather of a tall, delicate,
pale carnation....'
'Why, John, I never heard you speak like that before. I thought you
never paid compliments.'
The transparent green of the limes shivered, the young rooks cawed
feebly, and the birds flew out of and nestled with amorous wings in
the golden meadow. Kitty had taken off her straw hat, the sunlight
caressed the delicate plenitudes of the bent neck, the delicate
plenitudes bound with white cambric, cambric swelling gently over the
bosom into the narrow of the waist, cambric fluting to the little
wrist, reedy, translucid hands; cambric falling outwards, and flowing
like a great white flower over the greensward, over the mauve
stocking, and the little shoe set firmly. The ear like a rose leaf; a
fluff of light hair trembling on the curving nape, and the head
crowned with thick brown gold. And her pale marmoreal eyes were
haunted by a yearning look which he had always loved, and which he had
hitherto only found in some beautiful relics of antiquity. She seemed
to him purged, as a Greek statue, of all life's grossness; and as the
women of Botticelli and Mantegna she seemed to him to live in a long
afternoon of unchanging aspiration.
And it seemed to him that he thought of her as impersonally as he
thought of these women, and the fact that she participated in the life
of the flesh neither concerned him nor did it matter. That she lived
in the flesh instead of in marble was an accident. He smiled at the
paradox, for he had recovered from the fears of overnight and was
certain that even the longing to strain her in his arms was only part
of the impulse which compels our lips to the rose, which buries our
hands in the earth when we lie at length, which fills our souls with
longing for white peaks and valleys when the great clouds tower and
shine.
And that evening, as he sat in his study, his thoughts suddenly said:
'She is the symbol of my inner life.' Surprised and perplexed, he
sought the meaning of the words. He was forced to admit that her
beauty had penetrated his soul. But was it not natural for him to
admire all beautiful things, especially things on a certain plane of
idea? He had admired other women: in what then did his admiration for
this woman differ from that, which others had drawn from him? In his
admiration for other women there had always been a sense of repulsion;
this feeling of repulsion seemed to be absent from his admiration for
Kitty.... He hardly perceived any sex in her; she was sexless as a
work of art, as the women of the first Italian painters, as some Greek
statues.
Then by natural association of idea his mind was carried back to early
youth, to struggles with himself, and to temptations which he had
conquered, and the memory of which he was always careful to keep out
of mind. In that critical time he had felt that it was essential for
him 'to come to terms with life.' And the terms he had discovered were
strictest adhesion to the rules laid down by the Catholic Church for
the conduct of life. He had lived within these rules and had received
peace. Now for the first time that peace was seriously assailed. His
thoughts continued their questioning, and he found himself asking if
sufficient change had come into his nature to allow him to accept
marriage. But before answer could be given an opposing thought asked
if this girl were more than a mere emissary of Satan; and with that
thought all that was mediaeval in him arose.
_Femina dulce mahim pariter favus atque venenum._
'Not sweet evil,' he said, determined to outdo the monk in
denunciation, 'but the vilest of evils, not honeycomb and venom but
filth and venom. Though as fair as roses the beginning the end is gall
and wormwood; heartache and misery are the end of love. Why then do we
seek passion when we may find happiness only in calm?'
He had known the truth, as if by instinct, from the first. No life was
possible for him except an ascetic life. But he had no vocation for
the priesthood. True that in a moment of weakness, after a severe
illness, he had returned to Stanton College with the intention of
taking orders; but with renewal of health the truth had come home to
him that he was as unfitted to the priesthood as he was for marriage,
or nearly so. The path of his life lay between the church and the
world; he must remain in the world though he never could be of the
world, he could only view the world as a spectator, as a passing
pageant it interested him; and with art and literature and music, for
necessary distraction, and the fixed resolve to save his soul--nothing
really mattered but that--he hoped to achieve his destiny.