THE NEW DAY
It need not be wondered at that during the night I slept little. It
seemed such a strange thing which had happened to me. That a great lady
should lean upon my arm--a lady of whom before that day I had never
heard--seemed impossible to my slow-moving Scots intelligence.
I sat most of the night by my window, from which I looked down the
valley. The moonlight was filling it. The stars tingled keen and frosty
above. Lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the chasm. On the
horizon there was a flush of rose, in the midst of which hung a snowy
peak like a wave arrested when it curves to break, and on the upmost
surge of white winked a star.
I opened the casement and flung it back. The cool, icy air of night took
hold on me. I listened. There came from below the far sound of falling
waters. Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly. A dull, muffled sound,
vast and mysterious, rose slumberously. I remembered that I was near to
the great Alps. Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche.
But more than all these things,--under this roof, closed within the
white curtains, was the woman who with her well-deep, serene eyes had
looked into my life.
"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!" I said to myself, seeing the
possibilities waver and thicken before me. So I went to my bed, leaving
the window open, and after a time slept.
But very early I was astir. The lake lay asleep. The shadows in its
depths dreamed on untroubled. There was not the lapse of a wavelet on
the shore. The stars diminished to pin-points, and wistfully withdrew
themselves into the coming mystery of blue. Behind the eastern mountains
the sun rose--not yet on us who were in the valley, but flooding the
world overhead with intense light. On the second floor a casement opened
and a blind was drawn aside. There was nothing more--a serving-maid,
belike. But my heart beat tumultuously.
_Nova dies_ indeed, but I fear me not _nova quies_. But when ever to a
man was love a synonym for quietness? Quietness is rest. Rest is
embryonic sleep. Sleep is death's brother. But, contrariwise, love to a
man is life--new life. Life is energy--the opening of new possibilities,
the breaking of ancient habitudes. Sulky self-satisfactions are hunted
from their lair. Sloth is banished, selfishness done violence to with
swiftest poniard-stroke.
Again, even to a passionate woman love is rest. That low sigh which
comes from her when, after weary waiting, at last her lips prove what
she has long expected, is the sigh for rest achieved. There is indeed
nothing that she does not know. But, for her, knowledge is not
enough--she desires possession. The poorest man is glorified when she
takes him to her heart. She desires no longer to doubt and fret--only to
rest and to be quiet. A woman's love when she is true is like a heaven
of Sabbaths. A man's, at his best, like a Monday morn when the work of
day and week begins. For love, to a true man, is above all things a call
to work. And this is more than enough of theory.
Once I was in a manufacturing city when the horns of the factories blew,
and in every street there was the noise of footsteps moving to the work
of the day. It struck me as infinitely cheerful. All these many men had
the best of reasons for working. Behind them, as they came out into the
chill morning air, they shut-to the doors upon wife and children. Why
should they not work? Why should they desire to be idle? Had I,
methought, such reasons and pledges for work, I should never be idle,
and therefore never unhappy. For me, I choose a Monday morning of work
with the whistles blowing, and men shutting their doors behind them. For
that is what I mean by love.
All this came back to me as I walked alone by the lake while the day was
breaking behind the mountains.
As though she had heard the trumpet of my heart calling her, she came. I
did not see her till she was near me on the gravel path which leads to
the châlet by the lake. There was a book of devotion in her hand. It was
marked with a cross. I had forgotten my prayers that morning till I saw
this.
Yet I hardly felt rebuked, for it was morning and the day was before me.
With so much that was new, the old could well wait a little. For which I
had bitterly to repent.
She looked beyond conception lovely as she came towards me. Taller than
I had thought, for I had not seen her--you must remember--since. It
seemed to me that in the night she had been recreated, and came forth
fresh as Eve from the Eden sleep. Her eyelashes were so long that they
swept her cheeks; and her eyes, that I had thought to be violet, had now
the sparkle in them which you may see in the depths of the southern sea
just where the sapphire changes into amethyst.
Did we say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were
walking together. How light the air was!--cool and rapturous like
snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The
ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees
give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine
and quick that I cannot count its pulsings?
What is she saying--this lady of mine? I am not speaking aloud--only
thinking. Cannot I think?
She told me, I believe, why she had come out. I have forgotten why. It
was her custom thus to walk in the prime. She had still the mantilla
over her head, which, as soon as the sun looked over the eastern crest
of the mountains, she let drop on her shoulders and so walked
bareheaded, with her head carried a trifle to the side and thrown back,
so that her little rounded chin was in the air.
"I have thought," she was saying when I came to myself, "all the night
of what you told me of your home on the hills. It must be happiness of
the greatest and most perfect, to be alone there with the voices of
nature--the birds crying over the heather and the cattle in the fields."
"Good enough," I said, "it is for us moorland folk who know nothing
better than each other's society--the bleating sheep to take us out upon
the hills and the lamp-light streaming through the door as we return
homewards."
"There is nothing better in this world!" said the Countess with
emphasis.
But just then I was not at all of that mind.
"Ah, you think so," said I, "because you do not know the hardness of the
life and its weary sameness. It is better to be free to wander where you
will, in this old land of enchantments, where each morning brings a new
joy and every sun a clear sky."
"You are young--young," she said, shaking her head musingly, "and you do
not know. I am old. I have tried many ways of life, and I know."
It angered me thus to hear her speak of being old. It seemed to put her
far from me I remembered afterwards that I spoke with some sharpness,
like a petulant boy.
"You are not so much older than I, and a great lady cannot know of the
hardness of the life of those who have to earn their daily bread."
She smiled in an infinitely patient way behind her eyelashes.
"Douglas," she said, "I have earned my living for more years than the
difference of age that is between us."
I looked at her in amazement, but she went on--
"In my brother's country, which is Russia, we are not secure of what is
our own, even for a day. We may well pray there for our daily bread. In
Russia we learn the meaning of the Lord's Prayer."
"But have you not," I asked, "great possessions in Italy?"
"I have," the Countess said, "an estate here that is my own, and many
anxieties therewith. Also I have, at present, the command of
wealth--which I have never yet seen bring happiness. But for all, I
would that I dwelt on the wide moors and baked my own bread."
I did not contradict her, seeing that her heart was set on such things;
nevertheless, I knew better than she.
"You do not believe!" she said suddenly, for I think from the first she
read my heart like a printed book. "You do not understand! Well, I do
not ask you to believe. You do not know me yet, though I know you. Some
day you will have proof!"
"I believe everything you tell me," I answered fervently.
"Remember," she said, lifting a finger at me--"only enough and not too
much. Tell me what is your idea of the place where I could be happy."
This I could answer, for I had thought of it.
"In a town of clear rivers and marble palaces," I answered, "where
there are brave knights to escort fair ladies and save them from harm.
In a city where to be a woman is to be honoured, and to be young is to
be loved."
"And you, young seer, that are of the moorland and the heather," she
said, "where would you be in such a city?"
"As for me," I said, "I would stand far off and watch you as you passed
by."
"Ah, Messer Dante Alighieri, do not make a mistake. I am no Beatrice. I
love not chill aloofness. I am but Lucia, here to-day and gone
to-morrow. But rather than all rhapsodies, I would that you were just my
friend, and no further off than where I can reach you my hand and you
can take it."
So saying, because we came to the little bridge where the pines meet
overhead, she reached me her hand at the word; and as it lay in mine I
stooped and kissed it, which seemed the most natural thing in the world
to do.
She looked at me earnestly, and I thought there was a reproachful pity
in her eyes.
"Friend of mine, you will keep your promise," she said. I knew well
enough what promise it was that she meant.
"Fear not," I replied; "I promise and I keep."
Yet all the while my heart was busy planning how through all the future
I might abide near by her side.
We turned and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the
morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on
the pebbles with a pleasant clapping sound.
"See," she said, "here is my brother coming to meet us. Tell me if you
have been happy this morning?"
"Oh," I said quickly, "happy!--you know that without needing to be
told."
"No matter what I know," the Countess said, with a certain petulance,
swift and lovable--"tell it me."
So I said obediently, yet as one that means his words to the full--
"I have been happier than ever I thought to be this morning!"
"Lucia!" she said softly--"say Lucia!"
"Lucia!" I answered to her will; yet I thought she did not well to try
me so hard.
Then her brother came up briskly and heartily, like one who had been
a-foot many hours, asking us how we did.