LOVE ME A LITTLE--NOT TOO MUCH
I stood by the wooden pillars of the wide piazza and watched the stars
come out. Presently a door opened and the Countess appeared. She had a
black shawl of soft lace about her head, which came round her shoulders
and outlined her figure.
I knew that this must be that mantilla of Spain of which I had read, and
which I had been led to conceive of as a clumsy and beauty-concealing
garment, like the _yashmak_ of the Turks. But the goodliness of the
picture was such that in my own country I had never seen green nor grey
which set any maid one-half so well.
"Let us walk by the lake," she said, "and listen to the night."
So quite naturally I offered her my arm, and she took it as though it
were a nothing hardly to be perceived. Yet in Galloway of the hills it
would have taken me weeks even to conceive myself offering an arm to a
beautiful woman. Here such things were in the air. Nevertheless was my
heart beating wildly within me, like a bird's wings that must perforce
pulsate faster in a rarer atmosphere. So I held my arm a little wide of
my side lest she should feel my heart throbbing. Foolish youth! As
though any woman does not know, most of all one who is beautiful. So
there on my arm, light and white as the dropped feather of an angel's
wing, her hand rested. It was bare, and a diamond shone upon it.
The lake was a steel-grey mirror where it took the light of the sky.
But in the shadows it was dark as night. The evening was very still, and
only the Thal wind drew upward largely and contentedly.
"Tell me of yourself!" she said, as soon as we had passed from under the
shelter of the hotel.
I hesitated, for indeed it seemed a strange thing to speak to so great a
lady concerning the little moorland home, of my mother, and all the
simple people out there upon the hills of sheep.
The Countess looked up at me, and I saw a light shine in the depths of
her eyes.
"You have a mother--tell me of her!" she said.
So I told her in simple words a tale which I had spoken of to no one
before--of slights and scorns, for she was a woman, and understood. It
came into my mind as I spoke that as soon as I had finished she would
leave me; and I slackened my arm that she might the more easily withdraw
her hand. But yet I spoke on faithfully, hiding nothing. I told of our
poverty, of the struggle with the hill-farm and the backward seasons, of
my mother who looked over the moorland with sweet tired eyes as for some
one that came not. I spoke of the sheep that had been my care, of the
books I had read on the heather, and of all the mystery and the sadness
of our life.
Then we fell silent, and the shadows of the sadness I had left behind me
seemed to shut out the kindly stars. I would have taken my arm away, but
that the Countess drew it nearer to herself, clasping her hands about
it, and said softly--
"Tell me more--" and then, after a little pause, she added, "and you may
call me Lucia! For have you not saved my life?"
Like a dream the old Edinburgh room, where with Giovanni Turazza I read
the Tuscan poets, came to me. An ancient rhyme was in my head, and ere
I was aware I murmured--
"Saint Lucy of the Eyes!"
The Countess started as if she had been stung.
"No, not that--not that," she said; "I am not good enough."
There was some meaning in the phrase to her which was not known to me.
"You are good enough to be an angel--I am sure," I said--foolishly, I
fear.
There was a little silence, and a waft of scented air like balm--I think
the perfume of her hair, or it may have been the roses clambering on the
wall. I know not. We were passing some.
"No," she said, very firmly, "not so, nor nearly so--only good enough to
desire to be better, and to walk here with you and listen to you telling
of your mother."
We walked on thus till we heard the roar of the Trevisa falls, and then
turned back, pacing slowly along the shore. The Countess kept her head
hid beneath the mantilla, but swayed a little towards me as though
listening. And I spoke out my heart to her as I had never done before.
Many of the things I said to her then, caused me to blush at the
remembrance of them for many days after. But under the hush of night,
with her hands pressing on my arm, the perfume of flowers in the air,
and a warm woman's heart beating so near mine, it is small wonder that I
was not quite myself. At last, all too soon, we came to the door, and
the Countess stood to say good-night.
"Good-night!" she said, giving me her hand and looking up, yet staying
me with her great eyes; "good-night, friend of mine! You saved my life
to-day, or at least I hold it so. It is not much to save, and I did not
value it highly, but you were not to know that. You have told me much,
and I think I know more. You are young. Twenty-three is childhood. I am
twenty-six, and ages older than you. Remember, you are not to fall in
love with me. You have never been in love, I know. You do not know what
it is. So you must not grow to love me--or, at least, not too much. Then
you will be ready when the True Love that waits somewhere comes your
way."
She left me standing without a word. She ran up the steps swiftly. On
the topmost she poised a moment, as a bird does for flight.
"Good-night, Douglas!" she said. "Stephen is a name too common for
you--I shall call you Douglas. Remember, you must love me a little--but
not too much."
I stood dull and stupid, in a maze of whirling thought. My great lady
had suddenly grown human, but human of a kind that I had had no
conception of. Only this morning I had been opening the stores of very
chill wisdom to my pupil, Henry Fenwick of Allerton. Yet here, long ere
night was at its zenith, was I, standing amazed, trying under the stars
to remember exactly what a woman had said, and how she looked when she
said it.
"To love her a little--yet not to love her too much."
That was the difficult task she had set me. How to perform I knew not.
At the top of the steps I met Henry.
"Do you think that we need go on to-morrow morning?" he said. "Do you
not think we are in a very good quarter of the world, and that we might
do worse than stop a while?"
"If you wish it, I have no objections," I said, with due caution.
"Thank you!" he said, and ran off to give some further directions about
his guns.