In Devon, south of Exeter, Denis Lay had his country seat. The manor
stood in a park of immemorial trees, velvety swards, small lakes that
mirrored the sky, and flowerbeds beautiful in the mildest climate of
such a latitude on earth.
“We’re quite near the Gulf Stream here,” Crammon explained to Christian
and Eva, who, like himself, were Lay’s guests. And he had an expression
as though with his own hands he had brought the warm current to the
English coast from the Gulf of Mexico simply for the benefit of his
friends.
With a gesture of sisterly tenderness Eva walked for hours among the
beds of blossoming violets. Large surfaces were mildly and radiantly
blue. It was March.
A company of English friends was expected, but not until two days later.
The four friends, going for a walk, had been overtaken by showers and
came home drenched. When they had changed their clothes, they met for
tea in the library. It was a great room with wainscoting of dark oak
and mighty cross-beams. Halfway up there ran along the walls a gallery
with carved balustrades, and at one end, between the pointed windows,
appeared the gilded pipes of an organ.
The light was dim and the rain swished without. Eva held an album of
Holbein drawings, and turned the pages slowly. Christian and Crammon
were playing at chess. Denis watched them for a while. Then he sat down
at the organ and began to play.
Eva looked up from the pictures and listened.
“I’ve lost the game,” Christian said. He arose and mounted the steps
to the gallery. He leaned over the balustrade and looked down. In an
outward curve of the balustrade there lay, like an egg in its cup, a
globe on a metal stand.
“What were you playing?” Eva asked, as Denis paused.
He turned around. “I’ve been trying to compose a passage from the Song
of Songs,” he answered. He played again and sang in an agreeable voice:
“Arise, thou lovely one, for the winter is past.”
The sound of the organ stirred a feeling of hatred in Christian. He
gazed upon Eva’s form. In a gown of sea-green, slim, far, estranged,
she sat there. And as he looked at her there blended with his hatred of
the music another feeling--one of oppression and of poignant pain, and
his heart began to throb violently.
“Arise, thou lovely one, and come with me,” Denis sang again, and
Crammon softly hummed the air too. Eva looked up, and her glance met
Christian’s. In her face there was a mysterious expression of loftiness
and love.
Christian took the globe from its stand and played with it. He let
it roll back and forth between his hands on the flat balustrade like
a rubber ball. The sphere suddenly slipped from him, fell and rolled
along the floor to Eva’s feet.
Denis and Crammon gathered about it; Christian came down from the
gallery.
Eva picked up the globe and went toward Christian. He took it from her,
but she at once held out her hands again. Then she held it daintily
poised upon the fingertips of her right hand. Her left hand, with
fingers spread out, she held close to it; her head was gently inclined,
her lips half open.
“So this is the world,” she said, “your world! The blue bits are the
seas, and that soiled yellow the countries. How ugly the countries are,
and how jagged! They look like a cheese at which mice have nibbled. O
world, the things that creep about on you! The things that happen on
you! I hold you now, world, and carry you! I like that!”
The three men smiled, but a psychical shudder passed through them.
For they could no longer stand in human erectness on this little
round earth. A breath of the dancer could blow them down into the
immeasurable depths of the cosmos.
And Christian saw that Denis, fighting with an impulse, regarded
him. Suddenly the Englishman came up to him and held out his hand.
And Christian took the hand of his victorious rival, and knew in his
secretest mind that an ultimate advantage was his. For between Eva’s
face and the smudged globe he seemed to see a ghostly little figure
which charmed her with its glance and which was a tiny image of
himself--Eidolon.
They planned that summer to return to the manor and hunt the deer, as
was the custom of the gentlemen of that region. But when summer came
all things had changed, and Denis had glided from the smooth sphere of
earth into the depth.