Now this Thursday was the night of the full moon. A cloudless morning sky
promised a glorious evening.
The lovers woke early, and had their breakfast on the loggia overlooking
the oleander garden. The lady was in an enchanting mood of sunshine, and
no one could have guessed of the sorrow of her dawn vigil thoughts. She was
wayward and playful--one moment petting Paul with exquisite sweetness, the
next teasing his curls and biting the lobes of his ears. She never left him
for one second--it seemed she must teach him still more subtle caresses,
and call forth even new shades of emotion and bliss. All fear was banished,
only a brilliant glory remained. She laughed and half-closed her eyes with
provoking smiles. She undulated about, creeping as a serpent over her
lover, and kissing his eyelids and hair. They were so infinitely happy it
was growing to afternoon before they thought of leaving their loggia, and
then they started in the open gondola, and glided away through quaint,
narrow canals until they came to the lagoon.
"We shall not stay in the gondola long, my Paul," she said. "I cannot bear
to be out of your arms, and our palace is fair. And oh! my beloved,
to-night I shall feast you as never before. The night of our full moon!
Paul, I have ordered a bower of roses and music and song. I want you to
remember it the whole of your life."
"As though I could forget a moment of our time, my sweet," said Paul. "It
needs no feasts or roses--only whatever delights you to do, delights me
too."
"Paul," she cooed after a while, during which her hand had lain in his and
there had been a soft silence, "is not this a life of joy, so smooth and
gliding, this way of Venice? It seems far from ruffles and storms. I shall
love it always, shall not you? and you must come back in other years and
study its buildings and its history, Paul--with your new, fine eyes."
"We shall come together, my darling," he answered. "I should never want
anything alone."
"Sweetheart!" she cooed again in his ears; and then presently, "Paul," she
said, "some day you must read 'Salammbo,' that masterpiece of Flaubert's.
There is a spirit of love in that which now you would understand--the love
which looked out of Matho's eyes when his body was beaten to jelly. It is
the love I have for you, my own--a love 'beyond all words or sense'--as one
of your English poets says. Do you know, with the strange irony of things,
when a woman's love for a man rises to the highest point there is in it
always an element of _the wife_? However wayward and tigerish and
undomestic she may be, she then desires to be the acknowledged possession
and belonging of the man, even to her own dishonour. She desires to
reproduce his likeness, she wants to compass his material good. She will
think of his food, and his raiment, and his well-being, and never of her
own--only, if she is wise she will hide all these things in her heart, for
the average man cannot stand this great light of her sweetness, and when
her love becomes selfless, his love will wane."
"The average man's--yes, perhaps so," agreed Paul. "But then, what does the
average person of either sex know of love at all?"
"They think they know," she said. "Really think it, but love like ours
happens perhaps once in a century, and generally makes history of some
sort--bad or good."
"Let it!" said Paul. "I am like Antony in that poem you read me last
night. I must have you for my own, 'Though death, dishonour, anything you
will, stand in the way.' He knew what he was talking about, Antony! so did
the man who wrote the poem!"
"He was a great sculptor as well as a poet," the lady said. "And yes, he
knew all about those wonderful lovers better far than your Shakespeare did,
who leaves me quite cold when I read his view of them. Cleopatra was to me
so subtle, so splendid a queen."
"Of course she was just you, my heart," said Paul. "You are her soul living
over again, and that poem you must give me to keep some day, because it
says just what I shall want to say if ever I must be away from you for a
time. See, have I remembered it right?
"'Tell her, till I see Those eyes, I do not live--that Rome to me Is
hateful,--tell her--oh!--I know not what--That every thought and feeling,
space and spot, Is like an ugly dream where she is not; All persons
plagues; all living wearisome; All talking empty...'.
"Yes, that is what I should say--I say it to myself now even in the short
while I am absent from you dressing!"
The lady's eyes brimmed with tenderness. "Paul!--you do love me, my own!"
she said.
"Oh, why can't we go on and travel together, darling?" Paul continued. "I
want you to show me the world--at least the best of Europe. In every
country you would make me feel the spirit of the place. Let us go to
Greece, and see the temples and worship those old gods. They knew about
love, did they not?"
The lady leant back and smiled, as if she liked to hear him talk.
"I often ask myself did they really know," she said. "They knew the whole
material part of it at any rate. They were perhaps too practical to have
indulged in the mental emotions we weave into it now--but they were wise,
they did not educate the wives and daughters, they realised that to perform
well domestic duties a woman's mind should not be over-trained in learning.
Learning and charm and grace of mind were for the others, the _hetaerae_ of
whom they asked no tiresome ties. And in all ages it is unfortunately not
the simple good women who have ruled the hearts of men. Think of Pericles
and Aspasia--Antony and Cleopatra--Justinian and Theodora--Belisarius and
Antonina--and later, all the mistresses of the French kings--even, too,
your English Nelson and Lady Hamilton! Not one of these was a man's ideal
of what a wife and mother ought to be. So no doubt the Greeks were right in
that principle, as they were right in all basic principles of art and
balance. And now we mix the whole thing up, my Paul--domesticity and
learning--nerves and art, and feverish cravings for the impossible new--so
we get a conglomeration of false proportions, and a ceaseless unrest."
"Yes," said Paul, and thought of his mother. She was a perfectly domestic
and beautiful woman, but somehow he felt sure she had never made his
father's heart beat. Then his mind went back to the argument in what the
lady had said--he wanted to hear more.
"If this is so, that would prove that all the very clever women of history
were immoral--do you mean that?" he asked.
The lady laughed.
"Immoral! It is so quaint a word, my Paul! Each one sees it how they
will. For me it is immoral to be false, to be mean, to steal, to cheat, to
stoop to low actions and small ends. Yet one can be and do all those
things, and if one remains as well the faithful beast of burden to one man,
one is counted in the world a moral woman! But that shining light of
hypocrisy and virtue--to judge by her sentiments in her writings--your
George Eliot, must be classed as immoral because, having chosen her mate
without the law's blessing, she yet wrote the highest sentiments of British
respectability! To me she was being immoral _only_ because she was
deliberately doing what--, again I say, judging by her writings--she felt
must be a grievous wrong. That is immoral--deliberately to still one's
conscience and indulge in a pleasure against it. But to live a life with
one's love, if it engenders the most lofty aspirations, to me is highly
moral and good. I feel myself ennobled, exalted, because you are my lover,
and our child, when it comes to us, will have a noble mind."
The thought of this, as ever, made Paul thrill; he forgot all other
arguments, and a quiver ran through him of intense emotion; his eyes swam
and he clasped more tightly her hand. The lady, too, leant back and closed
her eyes.
"Oh! the beautiful dream!" she said, "the beautiful, beautiful--certainly!
Sweetheart, let us have done with all this philosophising and go back to
our palace, where we are happy in the temple of the greatest of all
Gods--the God of Love!"
Then she gave the order for home.
But on the way they stopped at Jesurum's, and she supervised Paul's
purchases for his mother, and allowed him to buy herself some small gifts.
And between them they spent a good deal of money, and laughed over it like
happy children. So when they got back to the palazzo there was joy in
their hearts like the sunlight of the late afternoon.
She would not let Paul go on to the loggia overlooking the Grand Canal. He
had noticed as they passed that some high screens of lilac-bushes had been
placed in front of the wide arched openings. No fear of prying eyes from
opposite houses now! And yet they were not too high to prevent those in the
loggia from seeing the moon and the sky. Their feast was preparing
evidently, and he knew it would be a night of the gods.
But from then until it was time to dress for dinner his lady decreed that
they should rest in their rooms.
"Thou must sleep, my Paul," she said, "so that thy spirit may be fresh for
new joys."
And it was only after hard pleading she would allow him to have it that
they rested on the other loggia couches, so that his closing eyes might
know her near.