The stone dragon and other tragic romances

By Murray Gilchrist

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Title: The stone dragon and other tragic romances

Author: Murray Gilchrist

Release date: May 24, 2025 [eBook #76153]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Methuen and Co, 1894

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STONE DRAGON AND OTHER TRAGIC ROMANCES ***





  THE STONE DRAGON
  AND OTHER TRAGIC ROMANCES




  THE
  STONE DRAGON
  AND OTHER TRAGIC
  ROMANCES: BY
  MURRAY GILCHRIST

  AUTHOR OF
  ‘PASSION THE PLAYTHING’
  ‘FRANGIPANNI,’ ETC.

  [Illustration]

  METHUEN AND CO.
  18 BURY STREET, W.C.
  LONDON
  1894




Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty




Dedicated to George Alfred Garfitt




CONTENTS


                                                      PAGE

  THE STONE DRAGON,                                      1

  THE MANUSCRIPT OF FRANCIS SHACKERLEY,                 38

  MIDSUMMER MADNESS,                                    63

  THE LOST MISTRESS,                                    85

  WITCH IN-GRAIN,                                      100

  THE NOBLE COURTESAN,                                 106

  THE WRITINGS OF ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR,                   117

  THE RETURN,                                          131

  THE BASILISK,                                        142

  DAME INOWSLAD,                                       154

  EXCERPTS FROM PLINY WITHERTON’S JOURNAL: ALSO A
    LETTER OF CRYSTALLA’S,                             163

  MY FRIEND,                                           175

  ROXANA RUNS LUNATICK,                                197

  THE PAGEANT OF GHOSTS,                               202




Certain among the Stories in this volume--‘Witch In-grain,’ ‘The
Writings of Althea Swarthmoor,’ ‘The Return,’ ‘The Basilisk,’ and
others--have appeared in _The National Observer_, by permission of
whose proprietors they are here reprinted.




THE STONE DRAGON


CHAPTER I

My father’s account of his last visit to Furnivaux Castle, which
I found in his journal some years after his death, enlightened me
concerning the cause of his disagreement with my great-aunt Barbara.
In response to an imperious summons he had travelled hurriedly from
the south of France to the remote corner of Westmoreland where her
estate lay; no sooner had he reached the portico than the old woman
confronted him, and began to discuss a new plan for restoring his
shrunken fortunes, by a marriage compact between myself and one of her
great nieces, either Rachel or Mary, both of whom were children in the
house. I was fifteen years old then, Rachel thirteen, and Mary ten. The
ceremony was to take place at once; and I was to travel for some years
before claiming my child-wife.

My father refused indignantly: scarce had his decisive words been
spoken ere Lady Barbara turned away angrily.

‘Fool, is there no changing you?’ she cried.

He understood her peculiarities, and despite his acknowledgment that
she was a gross and materialistic woman, who held no views beyond this
world, and whose chief enjoyment was to interfere mischievously with
the affairs of other folk, his kinship made him treat her with respect.

‘None,’ he replied. ‘My boy shall not be forced into bondage before
he knows what love means. I would rather he begged for his bread than
wronged body and soul.’

She swung round and showed a menacing face. ‘You have refused what I
had set my heart on!’ Her voice softened: ‘’Tis for the love I bear
you, Alston. I want to help you; remember that I am your mother’s
sister. Don’t refuse me.’

‘Aunt,’ he said painfully, ‘it may not be. I cannot sin against my son.’

She came still nearer. ‘Well, so be it,’ she muttered in his ear.
‘Others will suffer for your obstinacy. I know what my project meant;
but you, with your blind gropings after light, will never see. Nay; you
come no further into my house; this is no place for you!’

The door was closed violently, and my father passed along the dark
avenues to the village. He was with me in two days; but, although I
pressed him often (being curious to hear all about Furnivaux, which I
had never seen), he refused to disclose either the cause or the result
of his visit.

Before two years had passed, however, I found myself, by a curious
trick of fortune, in the vicinity of Furnivaux Castle. I had suffered
from an acute attack of brain fever, and when convalescent had been
ordered by the doctor to taste the air of Marlbrok-over-Sands, a
quaint watering-place at the mouth of the Lamber estuary. My father
was engaged at the time in preparing for the press his volume of
_Philosophical Discussions_, and, although he would willingly have
accompanied me, I chose rather to take Jeffreys, a man who had been
his valet in former times, but who held now the posts of confidant,
secretary and checker of the domestic accounts--a faithful old servant
of a type unknown to the present generation.

At first my father was averse to my visiting Marlbrok. He had suggested
Nice or Mentone, fancying that the bustle of foreign life would act
as a tonic; but as he heard of the marvellous strengthening virtues
which, according to Doctor Pulteney, belonged to the Lamber water, he
consented, and after strictly enjoining me not to go within at least a
mile of Furnivaux, travelled with me, and left me with Jeffreys at an
ancient inn.

On the fourth evening of my stay I strolled with Jeffreys to a large
hill whose seaward side is perfectly precipitous, but which is easily
climbed landward by a winding sheep-path. When I had reached the summit
I threw myself on the grass and rested for a while, gazing at the misty
outline of Man; then when my dimmed eyes had cleared I turned and saw
high on the side of a far-distant inland hill an enormous building,
which at first sight appeared on fire, for the westering sun struck
full on the great square windows. A grove of majestic trees gloomed to
the left, and a park besprinkled with herds of deer sloped downward to
the furthermost recess of the estuary.

A shepherd was training a dog near the place where I sat: regardless of
Jeffrey’s deprecations, I called to him, and inquired the name of the
house.

‘Furnivaux Castle, young sir. Lady Barbara Verelst’s place,’ he replied.

‘What?’ I cried. ‘Tell me all about it. Have you ever been there? What
is it like?’

Before he could answer Jeffreys interposed. ‘Come, Master Ralph, it is
growing chill; we shall have Doctor Pulteney here if you take cold.’

But I took no heed of him, and despite his attempted hindrance obtained
all the necessary information concerning the way. An evil desire to
disobey my father filled me: it seemed as if the glamour of the house
had cast a spell over me, and as I was hurried away by Jeffreys, I
resolved to take advantage of him in the early morning, and to visit
Lady Barbara.

I slept little that night, but lay watching the dawn creep over the
sea, and listening to the plaintive chirping of birds. As the cracked
bell of Marlbrok-St.-Mary’s struck six I sprang from my bed, dressed
hurriedly, and after a quiet laugh at the thought of what Jeffreys’
consternation would be when he discovered my absence, I slipped from
the house, and followed the path the shepherd had described.

It led through a long wood of small trees, matted with bracken and
sedge, and crossed by many rivulets that ran down to the sea. There
was much honeysuckle--so sweet that life grew absolutely perfect: I
gathered a large bunch, wherein lay many bees; and chanting extempore
rhymes I hurried onward.

When I reached the terrace of Furnivaux it was nearly breakfast-time.
The hall door, half open, revealed a vista of ancient pictures. As I
knocked there timidly, an ancient serving-man in fawn livery appeared.
Something, perhaps my resemblance to my father, amazed him, and he bade
me enter at once.

‘I wish to see Lady Barbara Verelst,’ I said.

He ushered me into a small, white-panelled room. ‘Her ladyship will be
with you very soon,’ he replied.

Meanwhile I arranged the honeysuckle in a large china dish. As I
was doing this a slight noise disturbed me, and looking up I saw a
white-frocked little girl eyeing me very intently. A black Persian cat
lay in her arms, rubbing its head on her shoulder.

‘_Cousin Mary!_’ I cried.

The child dropped the cat and ran forward to bring her tiny mouth to
mine. But even as she kissed footsteps came, and she drew back alarmed.
I took the honeysuckle and flung it all into her apron, and she, as if
fearing to be seen, made for another door and disappeared.

Then Lady Barbara entered. There was nothing of the patrician in her
appearance. Clad in a plain brown dress with a narrow collar of lace,
she might well have passed for a housekeeper who had no liking for
bright colour. Her face was round and russet, with a broad low forehead
that was covered with an intricate network of wrinkles. Her eyes were
small and sherry-coloured, and her teeth, which (as I heard afterwards)
were natural, glistened like regular pieces of ivory. Altogether she
struck me as a sharp bargain-driving country-woman, with a good deal of
craft, and an underlying vein of sarcastic humour. As she saw me she
courtesied very low.

‘So you are Ralph, or Rafe, as I love best to say it,’ she said. ‘Well,
you are very welcome here, though your father and I got across at our
last meeting. But I suppose he has thought better of my proposal, and
sent you now.’ Here she looked at her watch, a massive gold and crystal
globe that swung from her girdle. ‘The girl is a long time!’ she
exclaimed.

Before I could open my mouth to declare the truth about my father, a
rustling of silks came, and a girl swept through the doorway. She was
about fifteen years old, but might well have passed for twenty. Tall
and slender in figure, and with a face so perfectly, so strangely
lovely, it compelled me to make a simile of a flame resolving at the
lambent crest into a star. She moved towards me, and with no assumption
of modesty, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. I have no idea
how she was dressed, but as I write comes a recollection of the flower
called ‘crown imperial,’ lying on a web of red-golden hair.

Lady Barbara shrieked in affected dismay. ‘My dear Rachel!’ she
cried, ‘you are forgetting yourself; Rafe is not a little boy--he’s
seventeen--he’s a _man_!’

Rachel Verelst turned to her, uplifting luminous eyes: ‘O aunt,’ she
said, with a sigh of relief, ‘it is most delicious to see a _man_. I
am Miranda--he Ferdinand. Cousin (mincingly), you’re the first man
I’ve seen for two years, except of course the servants, and they don’t
count with such people as your lowly handmaid.’

Something about her--perhaps the fact that her manner was so opposed
to that with which I had endowed my ideal woman--fascinated me at
once. Never before had I seen such radiant beauty: never before had I
known a woman lay herself out so coquettishly to attract attention.
She was unlike anything I had ever dreamed of, and even as I stood I
felt myself become enthralled. There was such admiration, too, in her
glance--admiration of the most flattering kind. All suddenly I sprang
high in self-esteem.

‘A handsome couple,’ the old woman said pointedly. ‘One fair as day:
the other, as Shakespeare says somewhere, black as night. Yes, day and
night! Now pray let me see you walk together to the breakfast-room. I
will waive etiquette for once, and you shall take precedence. Ah, yes,
sir, your arm was given gracefully; I am quite satisfied with your
manner. You are a Verelst, though your name is Eyre.’

With many comments upon the picture we made, she followed us to a small
parlour hung with red velvet, embossed with earl’s coronets in gilt. A
light meal was spread. The aroma of coffee filled the air, and after
the footman had brought in the hot dishes, a gust of fresher sweetness
came as Mary, shyly bedecked with honeysuckle, entered and sat at my
side. Lady Barbara took no heed of her appearance, so bent was she on
her own plans.

‘So your father has really conquered his prejudices,’ she remarked. ‘I
knew all the time that they meant nothing (poor Alston, he was always
feather-brained!), and I did not believe that he would have held out so
long. Well, forgive and forget. It does my heart good to see you and
Rachel at table together; I am almost inclined to sing _Nunc Dimittis_
at once!’

Something in the exultancy of her voice suppressed my avowal that,
overpowered by curiosity and attraction, I had come clandestinely. It
was not from kindness that my tongue refused its office, but rather of
a dread of how she might act.

‘Did he send any message, any writings?’ she inquired sharply.

I shook my head.

‘Ah, the rogue!’ she said. ‘He’s proud of you; he knows that your
presence is enough to explain all. Ay, and a very good recommendation
to my favour! Alston had ever a little of the diplomatist. Again let me
assure you that nobody could be more welcome.’

So the meal passed. Often Rachel turned to me with proudly sweeping
eyes, and brought her face so near mine that I could see my reflection
in each apple. For one so young her wit was brilliant and sharp-edged,
but the vivid outlines of her colouring prevented me from seeing
anything unmaidenly in her demeanour. There was depth mingled with
unstableness in her character; and although against my will I was
allured, I could not help feeling a sort of oppression, as if the air
were becoming too heavily perfumed. Two centuries ago she might have
shone as a king’s mistress. When I looked at her sister, timid, frail,
and shrinking, it was as if a draught of cool air rippled across my
temples.

Once the child essayed to speak. ‘Cousin Rafe,’ she said softly, ‘will
you tell me after breakfast what the world is like. I don’t mean the
country or the little market towns, but those places that one reads
about. Is Venice like Mrs. Radcliffe paints it in the _Mysteries of
Udolpho_?’

Lady Barbara began to laugh rather coarsely. ‘What is the girl raving
about?’ she said, turning contemptuously to Rachel. ‘Does she think
that at my age I’ve nothing better to do than to listen to puerile
descriptions. My dear Rafe, do not trouble with her. Rachel, I wonder
you permit his attention to be distracted.’

Great tears rolled down Mary’s cheeks. I was angered. ‘I like to hear
her talk,’ I said chivalrously.

At this my great-aunt laughed again, but Rachel, with wonderful tact
rose and embraced her sister. If she had not done so I believe that I
should have hated her. Even Lady Barbara was pleased.

‘You are a good girl, Rachel,’ she said, patting her shoulder. ‘Now,
Mary, you must forgive my querulousness.’

She took Rachel’s hand and drew her from the table. As she reached the
door she paused.

‘Rafe,’ she said, ‘can you amuse yourself till noon? Rachel writes my
letters and manages everything for me, so I must take her away. Mary,
make your cousin’s stay here as pleasant as you can: show him all over
the house and gardens--or anywhere so long as he’s entertained. If you
care to ride order the ponies.’

But Mary, as soon as we were alone, led me to the open window. A flight
of stairs descended from here to an old garden where busts and urns
surmounted columns of fluted marble. A spring, prattling over many-hued
stones, crossed the middle of this and deepened into shallow pools that
were edged with irises and flowering rushes.

‘Let us sit beside the dragon at the well-head,’ she said; ‘it is my
favourite dreaming-place, and I will ask you all I want to know. I am
not tiresome to you, Cousin Rafe?’ she added, with downcast eyes.

Our spirits rose. Ere long I was chasing her up and down the maze,
quite forgetful of the gravity of seventeen, and attempting at each
corner to grasp her flying skirts, but ever failing intentionally,
out of compliment to her lightness of foot. Her paleness had quite
disappeared, and as she laughed at me through the legs of the yew
peacocks, she looked like a young nymph. She began to sing hurriedly,
in a silvery voice, in imitation of some gaffer:--

  ‘When first I went a-waggonin’, a-waggonin’ did go,
  I filled my pairients’ hearts full of sorra’, grief, an’ woe;
  And many are the hardships that I ha’ since gone thro’.
      So sing wo, my lads, sing wo. Drive on, my lads, Yo-ho!
      For ye canna drive a waggon when the horses wunna go.’

Every word came clear and distinct. Scarcely, however, had she begun
the second verse than the sound of an approaching vehicle silenced her.
We looked down the avenue, and beheld a trap drawn by a bony white
horse.

It drew up near us. A familiar voice accosted me: ‘Master Ralph.’

To my surprise it was old Jeffreys, very haggard, and with eyes more
sad than reproachful.

‘O Master Ralph,’ he said, ‘come back at once, for God’s sake! There’s
just time enough to catch the boat, if you don’t linger a moment. Word
came this morning that my poor master was dying.’

His voice broke into sobs. Turning hastily to the child who stood
aghast at my side, I gave her one quick kiss, and then sprang up to the
seat, forgetful of all save the great catastrophe.


CHAPTER II

When I reached home it was to find my father dead. Had I arrived an
hour sooner I should have had the gratification of holding his hand
in mine during the parting moments, and have heard his last words.
But my act of disobedience had prevented this, and by my secret visit
to Furnivaux I had lost what would have been one of the dearest
recollections of my life. He had died thinking of me, and as the last
struggle began had stammered out that I was to yield myself entirely
to the written instructions contained in the secret drawer of his
writing-desk, and intended for my eyes alone.

Therein I found myself directed to spend the years intervening before
my coming of age at a tiny estate in northern Italy. He had purchased
it several months before his death, and having such use for it in view,
had furnished the house comfortably and revived the faded glories of
the library. Bound by a solemn command I was to live retired from the
world, and not to present myself at Furnivaux whilst Lady Barbara
Verelst lived.

The manuscript concluded mystically: ‘I have known that in your youth
she will cross your path; an unscrupulous woman who cares for nought so
long as her heart’s desire is fulfilled. The stars declare it. Perhaps,
even as I write, she may be weaving the fatal web that is to destroy
life and happiness. But the line of Fate runs on straightway. I cannot
tell (for the evil destiny may overpower you) what to advise, but let
justice and love ever sway you, and remember that earth’s joy is nought
in comparison with that which follows. Beware, Ralph, of her I write
of, wherever she be.’

Overpowered with grief, my first impulse was a petulant and
unreasonable fury against those with whom I had passed that delicious
summer morning. So angry was I with the cause of my disobedience that
I did not even write to Lady Barbara, and after my father’s funeral I
started at once for the home he had chosen.

Here I passed seven years of irresolute work. The management of the
estate was entirely in my own hands, and I worked in a desultory
fashion amongst my people, earning their affection, and being as
happy as any man who has no aim in life. I had always my ideals and
my recollections to think of, and I never felt a desire for stronger
interests.

At last came a time when all this ceased, and I became terribly
depressed. Who can trust presentiments? I have had so many--so
many true and so many false, that I have alternately believed and
disbelieved in the supernatural powers in which foolish people place
such absolute trust. We spend many hours in mourning over catastrophies
that never occur, whilst at the time that the greatest possible
disasters are affecting our fortunes, we are plunged into the lightest
ecstasy.

Yet I must confess that, when I received word from the Verelst’s lawyer
that on the opening of my great-aunt’s will he had discovered a new
codicil by which I was compelled to marry either Rachel or Mary, or to
suffer the estates to pass entirely from our branch of the family, a
long vista of ills opened before me, and I complained bitterly, because
of the craftiness and self-will of the old woman, who would not believe
that ought but worldly interest was necessary for marriage.

At first I determined not to go, but as the knowledge came that, unless
I did so my cousins would be plunged into poverty, I gave instructions
for my trunk to be packed, and left everything in the hands of a
steward. It was with considerable trepidation that I pondered over our
meeting; and as I looked farewell on the gardens of my house, on the
vineyards and the river, I execrated the memory of the old make-plot.

In four days I was on the platform at Carlrhys station, watching with
a sort of amazement the train that had brought me disappearing at the
curve, and wondering whether the letter I had written from Dover had
forewarned the ladies, when a withered groom advanced and touched his
hat in antiquated style.

‘Be ye Mr. Rafe?’ he said. ‘Why, God bless me, what am I sayin’--as if
I couldn’t tell him from his likeness to Mr. Alston!’

‘Yes,’ I responded laughingly. ‘I am Rafe Eyre. You are from Furnivaux
Castle?’ He wore the old fawn livery with pelicans wrought on the
buttons, and a high white crape stock was tied around his neck. ‘You
are surely not Stephen, whom my father spoke of so often?’

‘That I be!’ he cried.

I remembered him perfectly now, from my father’s description. In my
boyhood, I had been told that he was at least ninety; yet he was still
straight as a staff.

‘Miss Rachel’s waiting outside in the carriage, sir,’ he said. ‘Train’s
nigh upon an hour late!’

With this gentle hint that his mistress might be growing impatient, he
seized my luggage and led me to the gate, where stood a large green
chariot.

A woman’s voice accosted me. ‘I bid you welcome, cousin.’ And before I
could speak I felt my hand taken and held. The sunlight was gleaming
so fiercely, that I could scarcely distinguish the features that
smiled beneath the crown of red-golden hair; but when I did so it was
with a start of astonishment, for Rachel Verelst’s beauty had become
transcendent.

She leaned back against the soft olive velvet cushions, and after
insisting on my sitting at her side, she gave the order, and we were
driven through the stretches of woodland and moor, and over the miles
of park road that lead to Furnivaux. Half bewildered I continually
turned to look at my companion. Strange to say she did not wear
mourning, but a gown of yellow tulle, worked in high relief with golden
flowers, and the outline of her splendidly proportioned figure was
visible through the gauzy folds.

Whether it was that my arrival had excited her, or that it was her
ordinary motion, I could not tell, but her heart was beating wildly
beneath its coverings, and floods of a rich colour sped to and from her
cheeks.

Her bizarre conversation related much to the object of my visit. The
peculiarity of the circumstances she took little heed of, and having
at the first moment leaped into the familiarity of an old friend, she
tacitly refused to vacate the position.

‘How delightful it is,’ she remarked as we passed through the Headless
Cross wood, ‘to meet a man who knows something of the outer world! O
the stupidity of our country gentlemen, whose noblest aspiration is
to dine well; whose noblest possibility is to hide the mark of the
ploughman and the lout! How definitely you refresh me, Rafe! Your
presence here has already done me a world of good. If you only knew how
stagnant--how wearisome life is! Bah! but you don’t sympathise!’

This last observation was made because I had not replied, but to tell
the truth I did not wish my voice to break the musical echo hers had
left in my ears. I expressed a hope that she would not regard me as
laconic, but rather as overwhelmed by the gladness of reunion.

Whilst I spoke the turrets of Furnivaux, just touched by the purple
rays of the setting sun, gleamed above a cluster of gnarled elms. The
mists from the sloping woods had ascended to the parapet of the roof
and given it the aspect of a terrace in the clouds. A gaily-coloured
flag fluttered in the Giant’s Tower, and I could distinctly see the
crest wrought in flagrant contradiction to the laws of blazonry.

‘’Twas I who did it,’ Rachel said, ‘in your honour. Mary wanted to
embroider the pelican, but it was all my own idea, and I would not let
her. However, she prevailed on me concerning the motto--see--you can
just catch a glimpse of her _Nourrit par son sang_, in azure letters.’

The carriage stopped in front of the portico, and Stephen opened the
door. My cousin laid her hand on my arm, and we entered the great hall
together. As I paused to look up at the domed roof, with its pargeting
of wyverns and cockleshells, a feeling of chilliness made me shiver.

‘My dear Rafe,’ Rachel said, ‘the change of climate tries you. Had I
imagined that the place would be so cold I would have ordered a fire
to be lighted. This is the way to the dining-room. I wonder where my
sister is;--ah, you are there, Mary.’

One dressed in the plainest of white muslins stood in an open doorway.
She shrank visibly at the sight of my outstretched hand, and it was
only by an effort that she placed her own in it; to lie there for too
brief a space. Her figure was slight and insignificant, and she had
not a feature worthy of comparison with her brilliant sister’s. Rachel
had taken away all the awkwardness of my involuntary visit; Mary had
forced it back again, and I mentally accused her of inhospitality.

Rachel, seeing that I was hurt, turned with the intention of diverting
my thoughts.

‘Pray do not change your clothes this evening,’ she said. ‘We are very
unconventional here, and it is nearly dinner-time. I will show you the
state bedroom--it is at your disposal.’

So saying she led me to an immense upper chamber, with a gilt bedstead
hung with watchet blue. Grotesque lacquered cabinets lined the walls,
and in each corner stood a dark-green monster from Nankin. Here I made
a few hasty alterations in my toilet, and after slipping a spray of
honeysuckle from a bowl on the dressing-table into my button-hole I
hurried down to the drawing-room. Mary sat within; her knees covered by
a long piece of lawn which she was embroidering. It fell to the floor
and she turned very pale as I entered.

‘Cousin Mary,’ I said reproachfully, ‘why do you treat me so coldly?
Have I offended you?’

Her eyes were slowly lifted to mine, and I beheld in them, despite
her timidity, a look of the keenest pleasure. She held out her hand
tentatively, and seemed relieved when I grasped it.

‘I am sorry that you should have misunderstood me,’ she murmured. ‘The
anticipation of this meeting has been so painful. I am not as strong
as Rachel, and anything disconcerts me.’

Rachel’s entrance prevented any further remarks. She had taken
advantage of the short time to doff her yellow gown for one of pale
green gauze, of the same hue as the sea where the sunlight falls over
shallows. A pair of fancifully worked gloves were fastened to her
girdle: they were made of a claret-coloured, semi-transparent skin.
With a laughing reminder of the ceremony we had used as boy and girl
at our first meeting, she accompanied me to the table, where the meal
passed in delicious interchange of thought, during which, although Mary
neither spoke nor seemed to listen I could well understand that she was
appreciative.

When I returned to the drawing-room Rachel’s look was mischievous: Mary
had evidently been reproving her.

‘You shall judge me, Rafe,’ she cried, holding up her hands so that
I might see what she had done. The gloves she had worn at her belt
covered them now. They were awkwardly made, and on the back of each was
worked a silk picture of a dagger and a vial.

‘They are tragic accompaniments,’ she said. ‘Mary has been scolding me
for wearing them--she declares that they will bring me ill luck. Do you
believe in such nonsense?’

She did not wait for my reply, but continued: ‘They were made of the
skin of a murderess gibbeted in these parts a hundred and twenty years
ago. Old Barnard Verelst insisted on having a piece: he wanted to
cover a book with it, but his wife, whom tradition reports as a real
she-devil, insisted on having these gloves instead. Between ourselves,
the result was that she poisoned her lord, but as he was very old,
nobody was much the worse.’

And mirthfully arching her mouth, she passed the gloves into my hand. A
strong repugnance to touch them made me immediately drop them on a side
table. Rachel’s originality carried her into strange humours. I was
not sorry when the lamps were brought. They were of curious Venetian
make, with round shades of silver lattice work filled in with cubes of
gold-coloured glass. Their soft and pleasant light enhanced Rachel’s
personal charm.

She went to the piano soon, and calling me to her side, began to play.
Never had I heard such wild and fantastical music as the first three
melodies. They were Russian; savage, rough airs, which fretted me to
unhealthy excess of inquietude. After the third, by which the soul is
wrought to such a pitch that it is hard to refrain from shrieking, she
began a plaintive air with a grotesque rhythm.

‘This is the tune the gnomes dance to on the hillside’, she said.
‘Here they emphasise the step; now they float round and round in
rings; now the king is performing alone and they are all watching. My
favourite is that one with the white slashed doublet and crooked face,
with a moustache so long that it pricks the others. Ah, well! (with
hands brought down clashingly) they must all creep through the bronze
door. _So!_’ Then, playing another unfamiliar melody, she began to sing
Shelley’s ‘Love’s Philosophy.’ I scarcely dare attempt to describe her
voice. Poets have dreamed of its likes (heard them I may swear never);
it was almost unearthly in its pathos, and tears were streaming from
my eyes ere the first verse was ended. How she could sing so purely I
cannot tell, but it seemed as if to the accompaniment of music all the
dross were purged from her spiritual nature, and an innocence left,
unsullied as that of our first mother ere she sinned.

As the song went on a fuller harmony sustained her, and looking around,
I saw that Mary’s hands swept delicately over the strings of a harp
that stood in shadow. I leaned back, delivered to perfect delight, but
just as my head pressed the cushion a sob came from Rachel’s lips, and
rising hastily, she pressed her hands over her face and hurried from
the room.

Mary followed her, but returned almost immediately. ‘Cousin Rafe,’
she said nervously, ‘forget that Rachel has broken down--her singing
often overpowers her--she feels everything too acutely. She begs you
to pardon her absence for the rest of the evening. Recent events--my
aunt’s illness and sudden death amongst them--have unnerved her; you
must remember what great store they set on each other.’

The revulsion was very distressing. I had begun to regard Rachel as a
woman of iron will, endowed with an intellect nothing could quail. This
sign of weakness, coming so unexpectedly, surprised and pained me. Had
I been more closely connected with her, I would have sought her chamber
and drawn her head to my breast.

As I sat, the moon began to rise over the further hills. The rays
slanted into the Italian garden, where, seven years before, Mary and I
had played like young children. She had returned to her harp and was
drawing forth soft chords. The night, however, became so beautiful that
I felt I must breathe the outer air.

‘Let us walk together,’ I said. ‘Show me the dragon and the maze
where we ran, and the lilies and flowing rushes. The heat of the room
oppresses me.’

She led me silently down the broad stone stairs. The dragon was
unchanged.

‘We will sit here,’ she said; ‘and you can tell me everything that has
happened in the last few years. I have nothing to give in return, for
my life has been placid from the very beginning, and the only great
excitement I ever had was when you visited Furnivaux before. Rachel
says that I have a small soul; it must be so, for the quiet content of
this place suits me well. I suppose that I am one of those weeds that
root themselves firmly anywhere. Each thing about here I love as if
it were a part of me. Now, forgive me for my tediousness, and tell me
everything!’

Thus bidden, I began the story of how I had spent the intervening time.
There was little worth telling. It was a brief and simple record of
dormant faculties and aspirations, when my highest desire had been for
undisturbed sleep. Mary listened in silence, and when I had finished,
looked up.

‘But the awakening has come now,’ she said very gently. ‘A new future
is thrust upon you:--your life will no longer be as it was.’

Somehow as she spoke my head moved nearer hers, and before she could
draw back my lips had pressed her cheek. She rose, gasping, then
turning on me a look of surprise and wonder, she hurried away. Perhaps
some reminiscence of our former racing came to her, for I heard her
laugh, light and long and silvery, as her gown glimmered through the
yews.

When I retired to my room, it was not to sleep. A conflict was raging
in heart and brain. Rachel was undeniably the more beautiful: indeed
she was by far the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and her
wit and power of fascination were incomparably superior to Mary’s.
She evidently believed that I _must_ choose her, and so I had fully
intended to do until a tone in Mary’s voice and a quick responsive
beating of my own heart told me that it could not be. Mary had never
imagined that I should take her in preference, but I knew now that
whatever love lay in my nature must be placed in her keeping. I had
discovered that I wanted no mental stronghold to surround me, but a
wife, tender, loving, and dependent.

Uncertain whether a declaration would or not be premature, I decided
to leave the castle early next morning, and to reflect for at least
a month on my decision. Rachel had acquired a strong influence over
me, and I dared not venture to free myself from her bonds without
tightening my armour. So, rising almost before daybreak, I set out in
secret, from the village inn despatching a short note:--

‘My dear Rachel,--Do not attempt to fathom the motive which compels
me to leave Furnivaux. Impute it, if you will, to flightiness. I was
always fond of doing strange things. I shall return in a month--a month
to-day.--RALPH EYRE.’

My meditating place was Northen Hall, a small manor-house situated
about two hundred miles away. I had inherited it from my mother. It
stands in a little park, outside an antiquated market town. I had
installed Jeffreys, my father’s old friend, and he was living out the
remainder of his years in ease and solitude.

He was standing in the walled rose-garden when I reached the place.
Half his time since my father’s death had been spent with me in Italy;
but the climate had proved unsuited to him, and he had been compelled
to return to England. The affection he greeted me with was very
touching. Although I had always been very tiresome, I have no doubt
that he loved me deeply.

A suite of rooms had been kept in readiness for me, and I was soon
made comfortable therein. I had much writing to do, and for some days
worked hard, so that I might drive away the thought of my dilemma. But
after awhile, when I was idle again, the remembrance of Mary’s timid
loveliness haunted me from morning to night, and I began to long for
the time of my return.

The momentous day came at last. Rachel Verelst, like another Fiammetta,
clad in a gown of dull dark green, with scarlet lilies at the neck, met
me on the terrace. There was a slightly puzzled look in her eyes, when
I did not give her the warm greeting she evidently expected; but she
slipped her arm into mine with as much graceful ease as if she were
already my wife.

There was no sign of Mary, and when I inquired for her Rachel replied
evasively. Not until I went to the drawing-room after dinner did I see
her. She was alone, sitting near a window, with a book in her hands.

She gave a sudden start when she saw me. ‘O Rafe,’ she cried, ‘when
did you come? I did not know you were here: Rachel would not tell me
anything about you, either where you were or why you went, and I have
only just come in from riding to watch the sunset.’

Before she had done speaking I had clasped her in my arms and was
showering kisses on her lips.

‘Mary,’ I whispered, ‘I have come back for you!’

She began to extricate herself, but before I had released her the door
opened, and Rachel herself entered.


CHAPTER III

She gave but little sign that she had seen the embrace. The bunch of
white roses she held in her right hand were raised slowly, as if she
wished to inhale their perfume, and beneath their shade her lips were
convulsed for just one moment. Then with even more than the old grace
she came near. Her skirt caught the gilded legs of a chair and drew
it for a short distance, but she took no heed. She began to smile
winningly.

‘Has Mary told you of the naughty trick I played?’ she said. ‘I wanted
to keep all the gratification to myself: it was so great a pleasure to
know something of you that nobody else knew. Of course I was selfish!
Now, my cousin, as you gave her a guerdon for waiting so patiently,
do not forget that I also waited. Not with patience, for I have
chafed terribly--but still, every awakening has been fraught with the
knowledge that a day nearer our meeting had come.’

And she held up her mouth, sweet and ruddy as the lilies on her breast.
I kissed her. Seeing that I made no motion to encircle her with my arms
as I had done to Mary, she clasped her hands at the back of my neck,
and again brought her lips to mine.

‘There is nothing wrong in my kissing you?’ she murmured inquiringly.
‘When women kiss it is mere passionless duty and affection; but when I
kiss you ... O Rafe, Rafe, Rafe! I cannot say it!’

I saw Mary’s reflection in a mirror. She was standing wan and
wretched-looking by the window. When she knew that I was watching her
she moved quietly from the room. Rachel laughed nervously as the door
closed.

‘It is well to be alone, Rafe! I never thought that I should feel the
presence of a third person such a restraint, but so it is! I cannot
breathe freely with you unless I have you entirely to myself. Now, I
wish to know what you have been doing away from me, or rather (for, of
course, I _do_ know all about it), I am dying to hear the words you
have to say to me.’

Not divining her meaning, I hesitated. ‘I do not understand you,’ I
said.

She laughed again, this time very sadly. Somehow I felt that she was
murdering her scruples. She raised her fan and struck me lightly on the
shoulder.

‘Dear Rafe,’ she said, ‘I know well that you are overcome with a kind
of reluctance to declare yourself. Why then should we temporise? You
have not known me for so short a time as not to see that--that--_I love
you with my whole heart and soul_.’

The last words came in a hoarse undertone. Then with her flushed face
downcast she left me, turning once at the door, to see if I followed.
But, being almost petrified with amazement, I did not move. I had never
thought sufficiently highly of myself as to believe that Rachel would
really love me. I knew that she might marry me to retain the estates,
but not for one instant had I imagined that I could stir her passion.

The knowledge filled me with dread. Although she charmed, nay, almost
magnetised me, my pulse beat none the quicker because of her presence,
and I felt blinded with excess of light. A desire came for the soothing
Mary’s voice alone could give, and I too left the room.

Old Stephen, stiff as the mailed figures in the hall, was pacing
outside the door. His eighty years of service had given him the freedom
of the house. He divined my intention. ‘Miss Mary is in the garden,’ he
said.

I went to the Stone Dragon, convinced that I should find her there. I
was not deceived: she was sitting on the sward beside the monster; her
head resting on his scaly back. At my approach her face lighted up, and
she rose to meet me.

‘Forgive me for being so weak,’ she murmured coyly. ‘I could not bear
to see you kissing Rachel. I am foolishly jealous and--it followed so
quickly after----’

‘Dear Mary,’ I said, ‘let us forget it all. To-night I would leave the
precincts of the house. Let us walk together to the moor. There is a
British camp somewhere near: it will be just the place for a solemn
vowing. Show me the way!’

She led me through the intricate maze to a door in a moss-covered wall,
which opened on a barren path. This crossed a mile of park, and then
reached a broad and hilly stretch of moorland. Here the track was
sunken between gravelly banks. At some distance rose a mound, on whose
top stood three cromlechs.

When we stood against the largest, I took her right hand.

‘I, Ralph Eyre, swear solemnly that all my life shall be devoted to
your happiness.’

Mary’s voice, soft and trembling, followed. ‘I, Mary Verelst, swear
solemnly that all my life shall be devoted----’

A harsh cry interrupted her. Turning sharply we saw Rachel herself,
covered with a long grey cloak, whose hood had fallen back. How she
had followed so silently I never knew: it may have been that she
had unwittingly chosen this as a night walk, but whether or no, her
presence here was the work of some evil genius. She was haggard, and
as the moonlight fell on her distorted face I saw that her eyes had
contracted so much as to be almost invisible. One hand was tearing the
flowers from her throat, the other moved automatically in front.

‘Rafe!’ she muttered, ‘Rafe!’

Mary came closer, and passed her arm around my waist. She was nearly
fainting, and required all my strength to support her, but I was
impotent as a new-born child, and could only grasp her elbow with
nerveless fingers.

‘Is this the end?’ Rachel asked. Her voice was dull and monotonous.
‘Answer me quickly--don’t you know what a woman’s heart is? Is this the
end of all I have prayed for--this refusal of my passion?’

I strove to speak: my teeth chattered.

‘I am not an heroic woman, noble enough to wear the willow in peace,
and to pass my prime in the doing of good deeds. God forgive me; my
nature is small--so small that you have consumed its virtue! If only my
love would change to hatred I could endure it better.’

With this she moved rapidly away. Some minutes passed in silence.

‘Let us go in at once,’ Mary said. ‘I am afraid.’

We returned to the castle. As we reached the postern door Rachel’s grey
figure rose before us again. Her attitude was threatening now, and her
voice clear and loud. She thrust out both hands to show that she had
donned the skin gloves.

‘Am I attired for tragedy?’ she cried, ‘or is it because of the devilry
in my soul that I desire evil things about me? See, they fit better
now--my fingers are swollen--with bitterness if you like!’

Nearer she came. Mary flung her arms around me, and despite my
endeavours and entreaties that she should move, leaned closely on my
breast.

‘She shall kill me first,’ she said quietly. ‘My body is yours.’

Rachel’s eyes were flaming sullenly. ‘I am denied,’ she said. ‘Had you
died before this moment I should have been a maid all my life; had you
vowed celibacy, I would have loved you still, though the world lay
between us. As it is----’

With one powerful effort I forced Mary aside and stood facing Rachel.
‘How can I control my affection?’ I cried. ‘I had not the creating of
it.’

She shook her head ominously. ‘Since you are lost to me as the
completion of myself,’ she murmured, ‘let us remain unwed, and choose
poverty for the future. Who knows but we may rise to greater riches
and state? I will be content with little--a pressure of the hand,
nay to breathe the same air will be enough for me. Only give me your
constancy! It is the thought that you will belong to another that hurts
so cruelly now!’

Strung to the highest tension, I replied, ‘_It cannot be_.’

Rachel’s hand toyed at her breast for an instant, then making a sudden
upward movement, curved in the air and came glittering towards my heart.

A moan of horror was the only sound. Afterwards something bore down at
my feet, and a fountain of hot blood gushed over the grass. Mary had
sprung before me and saved my life. Forgetful of all else, I knelt, and
lifting her in my arms, carried her to the house. Rachel was no longer
in sight. As soon as the blow had fallen she fled.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bells rang from daybreak. It was a hot autumn morning, and the
after-math of honeysuckle was very rich. I had gathered great clusters
for my bride, and was in my lightest humour. That morning I was to wed
her whom I had watched so long winning her way back to health.

Together we walked to the damp old church: she in her simplest gown,
I in my ordinary clothes. Mary had ever a fond belief that her sister
would return to forgive her for her guiltless sin; and she would not
agree to our leaving Furnivaux for even one day.

So we were married. No wedding party accompanied us: the clerk gave
Mary away, and although money had been dispensed amongst the villagers,
there was no merry-making. A few girls cast roses on the path,--that
was all.

Home we went. Old Stephen was standing at the door. A senile resentment
was on his face: he looked as if he hated us.

‘She’s come back,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘Poor lass! poor lass!’

Mary ran forward, her face glowing with joy. She had never harboured an
ill-feeling against her sister.

‘Where is she?’ she asked. ‘Did you tell her, Stephen?’

‘No, Miss Mary, I didn’t. She knew about it, though, I’ll be bound!
Perhaps Mr. Eyre had best go alone to find her!’

But my true love clasped my arm. ‘Let me come too,’ she said. ‘Stephen,
tell us where she is.’

‘She’s sought you at th’ old stone dragon, where ye were always
a-sitting in th’ old time. Ye’ll find her there right enow.’

The man burst out sobbing as we hurried down the staircase. To me there
came a terrible fear, but Mary had a bride’s blitheness.

We reached the Italian garden. A travel-stained form lay beside the
dragon. The face was buried in the thick wild thyme, but a bright web
of red-golden hair was spread over the lichened stone.

Mary knelt and strove to turn her. ‘My darling,’ she said. ‘How much
I have missed you. It was tender of you to come to-day. Though I love
Rafe so, you were always most dear and wonderful to me!’

After much effort she raised Rachel’s head to her lap. The beautiful
features had sharpened strangely and the skin was ashen grey.

‘O my God! O Rafe!’ my wife shrieked. ‘She is cold; _she is dead_!’




THE MANUSCRIPT OF FRANCIS SHACKERLEY

(_Being a True Account of the Most Noble Lady, the Lady Millicent
Campion._)


Since that news has come this day of Sir Humphreville Campion--a death
strangely caused by the bursting of an alembic--there is naught to
hinder me from taking up my drowsy pen and writing a true history of
certain matters that caused no small wonder in their day. True it is
that I would liefer work in my garden amongst the simples and flowers,
for since the last affairs to be narrated in my history, all thought
has been painful to me, and the world a place rather to endure than to
dwell in. There is a quiet joy in the breeding of small cattle and the
growth of crops; but to one who has tasted of life’s sweetness such
pleasure is wondrously pitiable.

We met first in 1611. My father’s coach, as we were travelling to
Sherenesse Manor, where dwelt my aunt Bargrave, broke down outside the
village of Stratton--the left sling being over-chafed. How it came
about I know not, but in the scuffle, when my folks were hastening
back to the inn, I stole unnoticed across the road to a mossy wall,
and, filled with arrant mischief, leaped over and ran panting along
the sward. Monstrous elms, with contorted boles, stood about: it was
springtide and the leaves were freshly green; in the branches overhead
squirrels played and squeaked.

Soon I heard two sounds, cuckoo and a child mocking cuckoo; turning
abruptly past a high jetto, as thin in the lower part as a needle, but
towards the top breaking into mist which the sun made orange and purple
and blue, I reached a tennis-court, where a girl danced, an odd pretty
creature, with a pale face and ringlets so deeply hued that they might
have been washed in blood. She was all alone, tripping round and round
in a ring, first on one foot, then on the other, and singing to herself
in baby language. The cuckoo marked time: at every note little mistress
drew herself upright, clasped her hands, and cried _cookoo_, then
continued her dance. I stood by in silence, till, as she passed for the
third time, she lifted her eyes, showing how they were hazel and big.

‘Ah,’ she said in a proud fashion, ‘’tis not Humphreville! Day after
day have I thought to see him. They said last summer he had flown away
with the cuckoo, and I know that with the cuckoo he must return. It is
lonely here with no playmates. Who are you?’

‘Frank Shackerley. My father’s coach broke down, and I ran away.’

She held out a tapering brown hand, on whose marriage finger gleamed a
golden ring. ‘And I am the most noble lady, the Lady Millicent Campion,
wife to Sir Humphreville Campion.’

‘You tease me,’ I said vexedly. ‘You are not nearly as old as I, so you
cannot be a wife.’

The Lady Millicent came nearer, tears gathering in her eyes; she put
her arm around my neck. ‘Dear heart,’ she murmured, ‘’tis true. I know
not how it came, but in the summer Humphreville stayed here with his
parents, and I was wedded to him. At night when I was put to bed they
brought him to kiss me, and when I awoke in the morning he had gone
with the cuckoo. Why does not he stay with me and keep house like other
husbands?’

At this moment an elderly woman came through the yew archway: she
leaped almost off her feet with surprise. ‘Bless us!’ she cried, ‘an
elvling!’ And she caught little Millicent in her arms; but the child
laughed and patted her cheeks.

‘Nurse Granmodè,’ she said, ‘Master Shackerley hath stole away from
his friends to visit me. Put me down at once, for I must speak with
him. At once, I say! Dear nurse, do!’

The woman obeyed, and Millicent came again to my side. ‘Now let us
kiss, for you must go back to your people,’ she whispered. ‘’Tis very
good to meet you. I shall often think of you when you are gone.’

She brought her smooth lips to mine, and kissed with evident delight.
The nurse separated us. ‘Madam, your mother will be uneasy if we do not
return now,’ she said. ‘The bell has rung: we must go at once.’

Her charge took up the seams of her green skirt, and made a courtesy,
then with a strange grace walked quietly away. In some manner she made
me feel that I was utterly unpolished in comparison: her gait--her way
of speaking--might have been copied in courts.

When she had passed out of sight I hurried back to the coach, where I
found the men taking out the valuables. My parents and sisters had gone
back to Stratton, imagining that I had preceded them; so I hastened
along the road and soon reached the ‘Bull and Butcher,’ which we had
left only an hour before.

In the inn-yard a set of mountebanks was playing ‘The Merriments of
the Men of Gotham’; but though I loved these shows, I did not pause
till I entered the presence of my mother, who was in high unrest at
my absence. My father stood conversing with the innkeeper, a comely,
well-proportioned dame, who put me in mind of the portrait of Anne
Bullen at Amnest. ‘’Twas more than strange--’twas wicked,’ I heard him
say, ‘the lass to have no choice!’

Mistress Nappy-ale replied, ‘A sweet child if ever there was any!’
My mother’s curiosity conquered. I was sitting on her knee--all
fears were allayed. ‘Pray, husband, what is the purport of your long
conversation?’ He took her hand lightly. ‘A pitiful story, indeed!’ he
said. ‘Mistress here is telling me of Lord Dorel’s mad freak about his
daughter’s marriage. Will you not repeat it to my wife? Dorel’s Park
was where the sling broke.’

Our hostess then began an account of how the Earl of Dorel, who had
lost much of his fortune at the court of Elizabeth, had slightly
retrieved his position by selling his child as wife to Humphreville
Campion, a lad of thirteen: his father, Sir Withers Campion, being
desirous for him to interwed with one of the purest stock in England.
The Earl was old and profligate: he desired to shine amongst the
gallants of Scottish James. Lady Millicent was seven years old at the
time: her mother, a simple creature, so browbeaten that she dared not
oppose any wish of her lord. After the ceremony, which was performed
by the Bishop of Exeter, Sir Withers took Humphreville away to dwell at
Campion Court until both parties attained ripe years. The act had made
Lord Dorel very unpopular in the country, and since that day, now eight
months ago, he had not once appeared at Dorel’s Park.

This story made a deep impression on me. I remember that I was silent
about my meeting with the baby-wife, not even telling the truth to my
mother. When the coach was repaired and we went on to Aunt Bargrave’s,
my quietness was construed by my sisters into a sense of shame because
of my escapade. For some weeks I was dull and heavy: I desired a
companionship that was not attainable, and was regarded for a time as
wasting. Nature, however, took mistress-ship, and before midsummer the
subtle influence of Millicent seemed to have worn away.

Then intervened seventeen years, which, since they have little or
naught to do with the Lady Millicent, I may pass over without excess of
detail. I was educated at Salisbury Grammar School, and in 1617 became
gentleman commoner at Christchurch, where, in 1622, I took the degree
of Master of Arts. My father dying about this time, left me the estate
of Amnest. My three sisters were married, one to a French noble, the
others to men of position in our own county. Unaccustomed to the use
of money, I set to squandering my fortune, and, being drawn into the
vices of the court, kept wenches and horses both for myself and my
less endowed friends. Time came when I discovered that half my money
was dissipated: all my land mortgaged. I had some talent for writing:
at Oxford I had composed many satires; so, with some wild view of
retrieval, I wrote a play, which was often acted with great applause by
the High and Mighty Prince Charles’s servants, at the private house in
Salisbury Court. Three other comedies followed; then a tragedy, then
an epic of _Mars and Venus_, then _The Mother_, a tragi-comedy, on the
presentation of which, before the king and queen, at the ‘Red Bull’ in
Drury Lane, I first met Humphreville, now Sir Humphreville Campion.

His repute had often reached me, for he was accounted one of the
maddest men in England. In his youth he had spent some years on the
continent, and had there imbibed a love of occult things. ’Twas
even said that he discovered the philosopher’s stone. Darcy, my
schoolfellow, who was murdered in Italy on his first tour, wrote
once from Paris, where he had visited Sir Humphreville, who showed
him a richly-coloured water, which he declared would turn any metal
into gold. Then, doubtless by some sleight of hand, he performed an
experiment whereby two ounces of the great metal were found in a
crucible where lead had been before. Darcy had begged for a piece, but
had been denied on the plea that all was not perfected.

Seeing that I had often wondered about him, it will amaze none to find
that I examined him from top to toe. He was very tall--of at least six
feet; his frame was thin; his hands and feet were small, the former
exquisitely kept; his face was speckled like a toad’s belly; his eyes
deep brown--the left one with a slight cast; his hair black and crisp;
his lips ripe red, very full and voluptuous, and his teeth of dazzling
purity.

He seemed to favour notorieties. Hearing that I was the playwright he
came to me, and, on the next seat’s being left unoccupied, sat there
and watched. He dispersed a rich smell of violets--it was said that his
skin by some artificial means had been impregnated lastingly with their
odour. When the play was done I bade him to a supper I had made for
the actors; and there, though his language savoured of the empiric, he
discoursed most interestingly, particularly on antipathies: in France
he said he had kept a mistress who fainted at the sight of velvet; and
even if it were drawn over her face in sleep she would instantly fall
into convulsions. This, and such-like information, kept us together
till late in the morning. On parting he entreated me to visit him at
his house at Hampstead, where, he told me, the Lady Millicent was
lying. I kept my own counsel about our former meeting, thinking it
might give him some displeasure.

On the morrow I went, to find Sir Humphreville away from home, but
expected shortly. I was shown into his library, a spacious chamber,
lighted by a louvre of many-coloured glass, and lined with a collection
of books such as I had never seen before in the house of a private
gentleman. It consisted chiefly of modern poets and dramatists, memoirs
in divers foreign languages, works on witchcraft, chemistry, and
astrology: on the whole being of more pretence than worth.

As I took up a new copy of Michael Scott’s _Quaestio Curiosa de
Natura Solis et Lunae_, I heard the rustling of a woman’s gown, and
turning, saw Lady Millicent gazing at me with a mirthful face. She
was much changed. As a child she had seemed sad and fantastic, now at
twenty-four she had developed into a woman of heavenly beauty. Her
face was white as snow, an admirable oval; her grey eyes clearer than
crystal; her hair, which had not, as hair is wont, changed with the
passage of years, fell in heavy curls down her back and over her bosom,
held from her brow by an ornament of pearls.

‘So we meet again,’ she said. ‘You were my fairy prince. I almost
doubted that you had ever really existed. It is very sweet to find you
here. When they brought your name to me, years seemed to roll away. Ay
me, for those long past days at Dorel’s Park!’ she sighed.

Somehow her words brought back the hollowness of my manhood. Would
that we two were children again! That once more I might run through
the Park, where the jetto played and the squirrels squeaked, and the
stately little maid kissed me. Lady Millicent noted my depression.

‘Childhood is sweeter than barren knowledge,’ she said in a low tone.
‘For one year of unalloyed happiness I would sell all the rest of my
life.’

As she spoke a curtain swung back, and one entered in the guise of a
Saracen; turbaned and bedecked with many precious stones. He passed
round the room by the wall; not until he reached the further door did
I observe his face. It was the most terrible I had ever seen. Heavy
brows leaned over green and yellow eyes: the skin was puckered in
huge wrinkles: a few silver hairs swayed from his chin. His mouth was
loathsome; by some preternatural means the lips had been drawn almost
to the ears, and in the gulfed space lay a hedge of black teeth,
which being opened--the jaw hanging loosely on his breast--showed me
in that short space that the tongue was missing, and its place taken
by some white snake-like roots. At the door he made his obeisance,
accompanying it with a hoarse, frightful sound.

‘It is Sir Humphreville’s mute eunuch,’ she said frowning. ‘He has the
leave of the house. My lord bought him from the Soldan. He is reputed
to have stores of forbidden knowledge--Sir Humphreville sets a high
value on him: they work for hours in the laboratory together.’

When the creature had gone she laid her hand on my arm. ‘I have a fond
belief that yonder gelding pollutes the air. Let us sit in my own
chamber: there at least he is forbidden to enter.’

She accompanied me to a cabinet furnished in the richest, most
extravagant fashion. The walls, where not hung with white satin, were
of alabaster, fretted with moresks of finely-beaten gold; the ceiling,
also of white, but pierced with a crescent moon and stars that by some
arrangement of changing mirrors and lights glittered more brightly than
the real firmament. Tripods of silver with smouldering spills sent out
dainty clouds that massed beneath this mock sky and filtered through
its orifices.

There we sat and discoursed of our lives. She had heard of my fame;
had even seen one of my comedies at White Hall. She made no attempt
to glose, but begged for information as simply as a begging child.
When I had told her all, she began to relate her own history since
her marriage. Sir Humphreville (whom, as I had already noted, she
spoke of in a constrained fashion) had returned from the Continent
in her sixteenth year to take possession. The Earl of Dorel had died
meanwhile; and her husband, after a year of quiet life, had been
appointed ambassador to Naples. There she had passed three unhappy
years, the women of Italy not being companionable, and Sir Humphreville
overmuch engrossed in his philosophical researches. After that they
had resided in England; at divers seats of the Campions; and now, Sir
Humphreville being called to the Court, where he was in high favour
because of his proposal to turn all the copper of the kingdom into
gold, he had bought the house at Hampstead. Day by day, she said, he
worked with the king in the royal laboratory.

When she had done, the noise of a coach in the yard made her rise. ‘He
has arrived. We will go back to the library,’ she said timidly. So we
returned thither, and almost before I could kiss her hand she retired.
As I turned towards the window I caught sight of the mute, half hidden
behind a heavy crimson curtain, with his foul face drawn into one most
filthy grin. A curious fascination--as is felt of him that looks upon
a cockatrice--took possession of me; and I stared until Campion’s
appearing, who came forward with a wry smile of welcome. I heard
afterwards that some most precious liquid had been spilled that morning
by the king’s carelessness.

When we had conversed for a while on the matters of playwriting--he
himself was one of those discontented characters who aspire to
everything, and he would ask much of me concerning the general make
and conduct of a drama--the mute came forward, after sundry signs of
impatience, and speaking as it were with his fingers, imparted some
news to his master. From a motion of his head I understood that he was
telling of my encounter with Lady Millicent; and my fears proved too
well-founded; for Campion turned to me with a suspicious face, and,
immediately, though with courteous words, he brought our interview to
a conclusion, pleading that an important experiment would be destroyed
if it were not viewed at once. He expressed no desire to see me again,
whereat I was sorry; for my meeting with the woman whose memory I had
cherished so long had filled me with a hope of many exquisite hours.
But I went back to my house, and that same day gave Arbel Strype, my
mistress, a small farm in Dorsetshire, and liberty to marry: then
dismissed her, glad that it had lain in my power to make her becoming
provision.

In the evening I went again to the play, and, as before, I saw Sir
Humphreville Campion in attendance on the royal party. I saluted him;
but to my surprise had no acknowledgment. It seemed either that he had
forgotten me altogether, or that some jealous fear had so blinded him
that he could not force himself to be courteous. Next day the illness
of my mother, who was living on her dower at Amnest, called me to her
bedside, where I remained until the end, which took place a se’nnight
afterwards. The arrangements for her obsequies and the winding up of
her affairs so engaged me that I had little time to think of other
matters: indeed, I had half resolved to withdraw altogether from town
life when news came that Sir Humphreville Campion had been despatched
on a secret mission to the Court of Spain, and in the hope of meeting
his lady I repaired to my house in Gracious Street. Here, to my amaze,
I found an epistle, with the Campion crest of a dragon on the seal. It
was from Lady Millicent herself.

‘Sir,’ it read, ‘if it be true there are reasons why you should not
visit me, I pray you explain them. I am alone here: Campion at this
moment is in Madrid. I have little to tell except that every available
word of your writing I have perused, and won great pleasure therefrom;
that I would willingly play student to your better intelligence: there
are many things I would choose to learn from you. Write to me on your
return from the country, and tell me that we may meet, and that
shortly. All my old friends are alienated: you alone are left to remind
me of an innocent past. But of this no more.--MILLICENT CAMPION.’

I went: she received me in state. The old Dowager-Countess of Dorel,
blind and deaf by reason of her years, sat with us through the
interview, and we talked to our hearts’ content. A pretty fable Lady
Millicent told me; called by herself _The New Andromeda_, which she
had writ for a fancy of her own. ’Twas of a young child tied to a rock
for a warlock to devour--another Dragon of Wantley, forsooth. The
babe, innocent of her fate, plays and frolics; Perseus--or More of
More Hall, or what you will--comes by,--is too innocent to understand
the danger--and little mistress is left for the warlock. I could see
that she meant her own history: I was the useless hero--she, the
victim. Old madam nodded in her chair the while. When the time came
to depart Millicent said she was leaving London on the morrow by Sir
Humphreville’s command, to retire to a country seat in the Yorkshire
fells until her master’s return. Byland Grange was the place: if I
would honour it with a visit, she would herself show me the riches of
the hills and valleys. That there was little of the really happy in the
world she made no doubt: let each choose his own joy. When I took her
hand she said, ‘’Tis the same ring I wore at Dorel’s: as years passed
it chafed and was enlarged: now it chafes again.’

Three days afterwards I started to follow her, half in hopes to come up
with her equipage, but it seemed she had the advantage and ever kept
a day in front. I rode the two hundred and forty miles in four days,
and it was on a Sunday afternoon when I led my horse into the yard of
the Campion Arms, and bespoke a chamber. My man followed by post with
mails; but I did not wait for ceremony, and having eaten in haste, I
passed through the stately gates of the park. A spacious wilderness
lay before me, netted with undergrowth green in the spring’s triumph.
Rivulets leaped across the clean stoned path, and crags frowned, their
feet laved in clear pools, where strange waterfowl swam, their sides
almost hidden beneath mosses and tangles of dove’s-foot. Here and there
belvideres watched down vistas, terminated by fish-ponds or stairlike
ranges of peaks.

So great was the loveliness that I paused: in my most lively dreams I
had never imagined aught like so perfect. As I stood I heard the cry
of _cuckoo_, then from the distance the laughing mockery of a voice.
Years rolled away like a mist, I was a boy again, she a girl; vice and
dishonesty and sadness had all disappeared, and life was fresh and
sweet as in those days of old. I ran clapping my hands to a coppice of
firs, which, as firs are used, had caught about its trunks a golden
mist, and there I found Millicent, knee-deep in bracken.

There is a certain tremulous joy whose remembrance pains me almost too
much to describe. When I said before that we were boy and girl again I
spoke rashly, though children we were in a sense. But we were weaker
because of our age: children love for very joy of heart and innocence,
men and women love for love’s sake. There was no reticence in either,
we gave ourselves to each other with freedom and without shame. Neither
had lived so long as to be unconscious that true love--true passion--is
the completion of existence. She loitered at my side through the open
park, where stands a ruined abbey, and along glades to the terrace
of the house. Byland Grange is one of the strangest mansions in our
country, standing against an abruptly rising cliff which mountain ashes
and silver birches cover with greenery. The building is of red brick,
with two wings and a court garden, and so covered with ivy that from
the distance it seems like a cluster of rare trees with ruddy trunks
and branches. The sun had taken the windows, and the whole front was
chequered with glittering lights.

The great door stood open: we went into a hall where stood wooden
knights in complete panoply. At the end were two flights of stairs,
which joined to a corridor that pierced the house: in niches fountains
fell with pleasing music from satyrs’ heads and dolphins’ mouths. In a
chamber of faded colours we sat together on the same settee, silently,
heedless of the hours. Through the window we saw the moon disentangle
herself from the tree-tops, the stars twinkle out one by one. Not until
candles were brought did I take my leave, and then I entreated my
mistress to meet me early on the morrow.

At parting she looked at me long and earnestly. ‘We are carried away
by some hidden current,’ she said. ‘Passion has entrapped us; we must
be happy and we must suffer! Thus!’ And she stood tip-toe and kissed
me; her warm sweet tresses falling on my shoulder. At my inn I tossed
all night awake--a battlefield of hopes and fears; so that when I arose
in the morning I was haggard and languid. Of that I took no heed; but
hastily donning my clothes, I ate, and hurried to the meeting-place.
I had not waited a minute before she swept down, tired-looking and
big-eyed. She wore a royal gown, somewhat like one I had read of in
a description of the Princess Elizabeth’s wardrobe. It was of a pure
satin, in colour betwixt apple green and rose; once it shone the one,
again the other; and the skirt was embroidered with eyes of amethyst
and seed pearls.

In our talk we made no mention of Campion: ’twas as if each were in
a little world some genius forbade him to enter. But as time passed
we grew less and less masters of ourselves. This day our tongues were
loosened, but neither rhyme nor reason came, and we babbled like hoyden
and hobble-de-hoy. In a little arbour near the abbey she had ordered
a collation of fruit and wine to be placed, and at noon we ate and
drank together; then strolled on amongst the giant beeches. The heat
of the sun overpowered us, and we sat to rest; she unlaced her bodice
to breathe the freer, and, like me, weary for lack of sleep, let her
head sink back to the green grass. With the movement the kerchief
fell loosely from her throat, and showed me, lying upon her breast, a
curious miniature of myself, wrought by some unknown hand and framed
in rubies. My hand caught hers; I grew drowsier and drowsier until we
slept. We lay thus for three hours, when both were awakened rudely
by the sound of a thunder-clap. We sat up and beheld the skies of a
uniform blackness. Heavy drops of rain began to fall; almost ere we had
reached the open we felt water on our skin. But the sight of the storm
was so terrible and tragical that we took no care for ourselves. My
mistress was not frightened: the gods were holding a chariot race, she
said, and indeed the rumbling sounded as if it were so.

The forks leaped across the fells: when they passed over water, it
seemed to hiss; avenues of flame opened from one end of the park to
another. The strong wind caught the trees and made them kiss the
ground; the evening was pregnant with inquietude. We sheltered in an
archway of the abbey: in mortal peril there, for stones that steamed
with the uncooled heat were cast about our heads. It was well-nigh dark
before there came a lull; and Millicent was so outworn with the strife
of the elements that she could scarce move. So I took her in my arms
and stumbled across the wilderness to the Grange. There the servants,
who were old and careless, had not so much as taken note of their
lady’s absence.

She hastened to her chamber, and sent dry clothes to me; some
grandsire’s garments taken from an ancient press and heavy with the
odour of musk. I donned them, and saw myself a courtier of Henry’s
time in doublet and hose of slashed velvet. The storm did not abate;
and when I descended from the place where I had shifted to a parlour
on the ground floor, I had given to me a hasty note. ‘I am tired,’ it
ran, ‘to-night I cannot see you; a bedchamber is prepared; honour me by
spending the night here.’

My heart sank now at the thought of times apart from her; but I strove
to wile the hours with a lute I found; and I made verses on my lady’s
beauty, which I wrote on some tablets that lay in the window-seat. At
midnight I retired to bed, where, being still exhausted, I fell asleep
immediately--to dream that terrible and most sweet day all over again.
I woke in an hour. Outside the wind shrieked and howled: it shook the
mullions; strange things rattled across the panes. My candle, which I
had forgotten to blow out, was guttering in the socket.

Suddenly I heard a woman’s cry--it was repeated--it rang above the
noise of tempest: ‘_Francis, O Francis, help me! they are killing
me!--they are killing me!_’

I sprang from bed and ran into the corridor, my feet clapping loudly
on the plaster floor. At the further end was an open door, with a
brilliant gleam. All indoors was quiet: on the threshold I paused,
seeing a golden bedstead, hung with curtains of tissue, and the shape
of a woman beneath the covering.

Again came that frightful cry--fainter and fainter, ‘_Francis, my
Francis, help me!--help me!_’

Then I went to the bedside and tore aside the fabric; to behold my
mistress’s face all contorted as with fear and pain. Forgetful of all
save my desire to drive away her torturing fancies (for I saw that she
rode the wild mare), I leaped upon the pillow and caught her head to my
lap, where the grey eyes opened in wonderment, and a flush spread over
the cheeks. She gave one laughing sigh--a woman’s whinny; then thrust
out her arms and clasped my waist....

At that moment came the sounds of bolts undrawn and doors banging; then
followed a loud tumult in the hall below--then a quavering of voices
hushed by one sharp and loud. I would have drawn away for her sake; but
her hands were locked.

‘It is he,’ she whispered. ‘How he comes I know not. Stay with me to
the end.’

The clamping of shoes, the clinking of spurs moved along the gallery;
then Sir Humphreville and the mute came through the open door. Jealous
hatred flashed on us from the knight’s eyes; he held his sword before
him; I could see him tremble.

‘ADULTERESS!’ He spoke no more than the one word.

Lady Millicent smiled--still from my lap. ‘Think you so?’ she said.

At a motion from him the Saracen came forward, holding a knife. The
garments of both dropped water on the floor. The mute pricked those
white fingers till they unclasped, then dragged me away. I flung myself
upon him, naked as I was, but his long arms held me like serpents, so
that hardly might I breathe. Then Campion tore down one of the curtains
and bound me to a chair. He seemed to meditate. Millicent his wife gave
no sign of fear, but lay watching from her disordered pillow. At last
he locked the door and stood between us.

‘In all things I chose refinement,’ he said. ‘If I were a boor, both
of you should die--both be sent into lasting damnation together. But
as I hold that those who love meet in the next world, one of you shall
go, the other be left, so that such joy you may not have. For my own
easement, and the better that I may attend to my particular work, I
think best that you, Madam Whore, should be the one to bleed.’

She stepped from the bed. ‘Wonderful man, wonderful genius,’ she said
scornfully, ‘I am ready.’

Campion tore off her lawn smock, so that she stood before us in naked
beauty. ‘Fie upon you!’ she said, ‘to treat a woman thus.’

He drew her towards a large silver bath that lay in an alcove, there he
forced her to lie in the water. I began to struggle, but the gelding
tied a kerchief round my neck, and offered the point of his knife at my
heart. I tried to press forward on it, but he broke the skin, and then
withdrew it. Again and again I strove, ever without success.

Then Sir Humphreville took from his breast an emerald pencil, which,
being opened, revealed a tiny lancet. He knelt where Millicent lay,
and breathed a vein in her lovely arm. A fountain of blood pulsed out,
discolouring first the water around her shoulders, then circling in
clouds to her feet.

She turned and brought her eyes to mine, they were laughing still.

‘When we come together again, Frank,’ she said faintly, ‘’twill be in
God’s sight.’

Dimness overcame my eyes, and for a while I could scarce see, but on
my brain was printing the form of a naked woman lying on a mattress of
blood and silver....

‘How we met boy and girl! how I loved you in my heart of hearts! Speak
to me, Frank. Shall we ... shall we be young again some day?’

I sought to answer, but my tongue forsook its office; at my side the
mute made his horrid attempt at speech. Sir Humphreville drew himself
upright and folded his arms waiting for the end. From the bath a steam
began to rise, the smell of blood filled the room.

She made effort to turn on her side, but she could not. From her lips
came the word _cuckoo_--just as she had mocked the bird at Dorel’s....
Campion knelt again and clapped his hand over her mouth, thinking haply
she was jeering him in death. Moan came after moan: such a sound as a
weeping angel might make. There was a faint splashing, then silence.

... It is all told.

What spells and charms were worked on me, I cannot tell. When six
months after I found myself at Amnest, brought by means I knew nothing
of, all desire of vengeance as of life had gone. It seemed to me, while
Sir Humphreville lived, I could not publish this history to the world:
for--perhaps by some enchantment learned in his pursuit of hidden
knowledge--he had gained a great power over me. No will was left: I was
doomed to feebleness both of mind and body.

Yet this scripture must be done, for traduction hath been at work with
a most noble lady, and before I go to her I would fain have the world
to understand.




MIDSUMMER MADNESS


PART I

THE MARRIAGE EVE

She had never looked fairer, for the full moonlight fell on her bosom
and arms, and threw into her sweet face a statuesque quietness. For a
while the curious question of whether the garden were or not a fitting
background for her beauty puzzled me; but soon, with a self-pitying
smile, I gave my attention again to her whose inspirations governed
mine. She was leaning against a great vase, from whose margin toad’s
flax and creeping violets--flowers she loved--hung in clusters, with
odours floating about in almost tangible clouds.

We were to be married on the morrow, and I was excited and was scarce
myself. I dared not think of my courtship; for the knowledge that her
affection was too great a gift--that I was indeed unworthy to approach
that white, delicious creature whose subtle potency forced me against
my will to love her--this knowledge, I say, confounded me beyond belief.

Fate had thrown us together, ironically matching a woman whose story
was irredeemably sad with a man wounded in a thousand struggles, who
bore no other trophy to lay at her feet than a dead youth. She had
stooped with more than human tenderness, and had raised me to her
breast, and pressed my head there until the heated brow had cooled, and
the temple-throbbings ceased.

As time passed I essayed a question. Had it not been desecration I
would have leaned forward and pressed that bare shoulder with my lips.
As it was, the purity hindered me: I could as soon have kissed the
heavens.

‘Once more, Phyllida, for the last time in our unwedded life,’ I said,
‘tell me, with all your heart, if you love me?’

I looked for her simple assurance, accompanied by the fond chiding that
maddened me; and waited tremulously for answering. None such came, and
looking into her face I saw a strange air of abstraction. Wounded by
her indifference, I repeated my question.

She turned wearily. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said. ‘I have often said that
I love you. Let me be silent for awhile--not alone, (seeing that I was
hurt, and that I moved away)--‘your presence is enough for me: to know
that you are here, and that I may touch you when I will.’

Vainly enough, jealous perhaps of her thoughts, I now strove to compare
Phyllida with the splendour of her surroundings; and pained by her
apathetic humour, I fancied as my eyes glanced over the landscape that
her beauty suffered in comparison. Behind us lay the half-ruined gables
of Colmer Hall. Hebe’s urn in the terrace fountain was brimful of clear
water, and the mantle of scarlet moss that time had spread over the
statue seemed trebly luxuriant in the clare-obscure of the moonlight.
The windows of the morning-parlour were thrown open, and the lamplight
showed those quaint thread-embroideries of fabulous beast and fowl and
fish; one outcome of the over-exuberant fancy of Phyllida’s ancestress,
Margot Colmer.

In front lay the choked fish-ponds, with their pretentious water-stairs
and sleeping reeds. To the right the beech-planting with its vistaed
alleys sloped down to a brawling river. To the left, through great
elms, stretched the long barren view of fields and hills, chequered by
mortarless limestone walls.

Then I looked again at Phyllida. I cannot attempt to describe her
countenance in full. It did not approach any conventional type. White
and still and languid, with lips arched in the fashion old poets loved;
clear-cut brows and perfect in fancifulness; in the chin power and
voluptuous ease combined.

Hers was more than a woman’s height. Her gown was of snowy silk; one of
those ancient costumes of which there was such store in the presses;
the style was of the time of Anne. Gorgeous arabesques were woven in
metal thread on bodice and petticoat; pictures of woodbine-covered
lattices, idylls of cornfields, of spring flowers budding. Twisted
about one arm was a long string of glittering sapphires: clasped on the
other a Javan bracelet of rich filigrain inwrought with rubies.

I stood feasting greedily on the sight, whilst I scorned myself for
attempting to compare her to anything earthly. Her bosom had moved more
freely since she had discarded the bloodstone heart. I was glad of
its disappearance, for she would never disclose, although I had often
begged to hear it, the story of how it had become hers; and of late its
presence had angered me unreasonably.

At last she looked up, and stretched her right hand to fondle mine.

‘Mad genius,’ she said gravely, ‘can you burst into no wild ode about
me? You are in the humour for tragedy. Remote as my thoughts have been,
yet I have felt that you have wavered angrily and striven to drive me
into nothingness. But after all I am paramount.’

What could I do but lift her hand to my lips and press it until I was
lost in the ecstasy of touching her flesh so for the first time. She
withdrew it, seeing that I quivered from head to foot.

‘Come,’ she cried, with a mirth that I had never known her affect
before. ‘Come, let us return to the house. To-night, Rupert, of all
nights, I have something to tell: something concerning the past I must
make known.’

And she lifted her eyes to the moon, and held her hands fantastically
forward, as if she expected the orb to fall from its setting. When she
was wearied, she took my arm within hers and, leaning, walked to the
entrance of the hall.

There the moonlight fell on the armed figures. The damascene
breast-plates worn four centuries ago in French battles gleamed like
Phyllida’s gown. The bloody mort-cloth with the stained opals, that
hung dusty and tattered by the door, twisted as if a strong current of
air stirred behind. The lamp in the morning-room had burned so low that
the air was tainted.

Phyllida left me, whilst I gazed at Anne Killigrew’s portrait of James
the Second and his queen. Was ever picture more ludicrous? Each crease
of the royal draperies concealed a demon of dulness; in each feature
of the royal countenances was an excessive, wooden minuteness that
deprived the dark, ugly faces of the faintest suggestion of life. The
lacquer-framed tapestry to the left of the window offered as ever only
a conflicting relief, for the enigma of the aureoled woman, who bore
in her hand a bag of gold with the inscription _Holy Barbara bringeth
Help_, could never be unriddled.

Suddenly a cry of wonder burst from my lips. A bust modelled in red
clay had taken the place of the devotional book on the reading-table.
It was the head of a man in the early prime of life, suave, handsome,
and priestly: the brow was high and narrow, the mouth painfully
compressed, the tonsure of such curls as would have graced a bacchanal.
The crudeness of detail, and the luxuriance of fancy, showed me that
Phyllida was the modeller.

A fierce murmur, like a wounded animal’s, checked me as I laid my hand
on the forehead to gauge its lack of breadth.

‘Touch anything but that! Do not let your hands corrupt it! Profane!
profane!’

I turned aghast, to see Phyllida at my side. Her face was wan, her eyes
red and swollen with tears. She seemed a pious witness of some random
sacrilege.

‘What is wrong?’ I said. ‘What have I done? Am I so unworthy?’

Without heeding me she unfastened the bundle of papers she had brought,
and having extracted several, she laid them on the table. Then,
touching my arm, she motioned me to a chair, and in lamplight that
dimmed and dimmed as the moon prevailed she began to read:--

  ‘_Sensuous hopes trampled upon; visionary joys despised. There is no
  future gladness. Destiny works. What are we more than a handful of
  faded leaves, tossed by the early winter wind? Some speed--others are
  checked and lie until corruption. I have reached a splendid goal;
  you, poor flower--poor slug-a-bed!... Alas! why should I chide, I of
  all men?_’

‘I do not understand,’ I interrupted. ‘Explain, Phyllida!’ She gave no
sign of hearing, but continued:--

  ‘_For our love had seemed impossibly great before. O heart of mine!
  is it that passion is dying--leaping high before burning out? I
  cannot breathe as I think of you--cannot sit, nor walk, nor lie, but
  must everlastingly fall with my spirit ebbing from my lips._’

At this I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hand. What
talisman gave Phyllida power to evoke such mental agony. The very
fragmentariness of the selections maddened me. Each word seemed as if
it might have been forced from me, or from one of my impossible heroes.

  ‘_You are mine for ever. Strive as you will against the gossamer
  network that I have flung over you; call on your God for assistance;
  curse me until you hate, and yet there is no remedy._’

The voice that had grown so soft as to be almost a whisper ceased now,
and looking up I found that I was alone.


PART II

THE MARRIAGE MORNING

The roofless building where Phyllida had desired our marriage to be
solemnised lies in the outermost corner of the Colmer estate. I had
only seen it once before; on a spring twilight when, reckless with
undeclared passion, neither knowing nor caring whither I went, I had
stumbled into the enclosure, where the scent of withering snowdrops
filled the air.

Dreams that were beautified by traditions half understood before swept
through my brain in the short disturbed sleep of the marriage morning.
I saw Patrick Drassington killing the last wolf in England on the
Wyke Quicksand, saw him staggering homeward to the manor-house with
the monstrous head in his arms, and the wound in his side vomiting
life-blood. Legends I had gleaned from the Colmer records came on in
rapid succession:--I traced the histories of the Princess Ursula from
Ravenna, who married Elizabeth’s favourite, and slew herself so that
on her death-bed she might hear her husband declare his love revived;
of Margot Colmer, who laid down her life for Charles the Second; of
faithful Driden, the steward, who, like Catherine Douglas, strove to
save his master at the cost of his right arm. A thousand other pictures
followed. Indeed, I was just in the act of mounting a pillion to ride
before a woman in sea-green paduasoy when I woke to find the sun risen,
and the clock in the house-place striking four.

My wedding clothes lay beside the bed; I gazed at them for some time
ere I rose, scarcely believing my own happiness; then, when I sprang
to the floor, I drew aside the window curtain and looked down into the
orchard. The cherries had ripened in the night; they were large and
lush, with wasps a-grovel in the bursting sweetness of their sides.

Never before had I been so slow or so proud about my toilet. The
waistcoat my father had worn at his own nuptials was held up to the
light at least twelve times so that I might catch the scintillations
of the diamond buttons, and admire the white roses my mother had
embroidered. There was a shade of vanity in my eyes as I stood
before the mirror. After all, I was not ugly; for something in my
face relieved its grotesque outline, and the change that had come of
late--the flush that breathed in my cheeks, and the glad dilation of
the eyes--charmed me almost into egotism.

I had no friends to attend me to the chapel, for years ago I had
broken with all the country gentry, and had lived like a recluse in
Drassington Manor. Sometimes, but always vainly, I asked myself the
true cause of this isolation; for the charge of infidelity was not of
itself sufficient, and my writings, if they corrupted, corrupted out of
the reader’s wickedness. God knows that I wrote with a pure mind.

The world was glad, but drowsy withal; the songs of the birds were
deadened, the chirpings of the grasshoppers less shrill, and even the
shallow canal in the Pleasaunce (the canal I had planted with willows,
in imitation of the Dean’s work at Laracor) exhaled a sleepy odour.
The path lay across ripening cornfields. Poppies were full-blown. I
gathered a great bunch, for Phyllida loved them, and I fastened them in
my waistcoat, intending to weave them in her hair.

She met me at the east entrance of Colmer Park. I ran open-armed to
embrace her, but she drew back coldly.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking into my face.

‘How?’ I cried. ‘I am not late. I am here at the very moment!’

‘You know what I speak of,’ she replied coldly. ‘What do you mean by
_being_ at all? I was contented, happy even, before you came. The past
had died and you have revived it. I am going to break the most sacred
vows.’

‘Phyllida!’ I exclaimed in amazement. ‘What vows? I know that you have
a past. Let us forget all our unhappiness----’

At this she raised her arm swiftly, as though she would strike me, then
with a dull, heartless laugh she came nearer and caught my hand.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I am as mad as you. It is well to be mad: we
can suffer and enjoy a thousand times more keenly. Yes, Rupert, dear
Rupert, lover, husband, mournful already, I can tell of what you are
thinking. You are white now--there are red circles round your eyes.’

‘Hush!’ I faltered. ‘If you read me well you will be silent. This
morning I cannot endure at once to see your beauty and to hear your
words!’

If I were nearly mad before, the sight of Phyllida, as she stood filled
with conflicting emotions, was sufficient to blast for ever the few
shreds of reason left me. She no longer wore a virginal colour, but a
long rippling gown of flame-coloured silk, whose lowest hem was wrought
round with yellow tongues. Her face was more tender, her chin trembled,
and those eyes, into whose depths I had gazed for hours, and seen no
change in their coldness, were filled with warmth and light.

When I had feasted on the sight I leaned forward, and clasping her
neck and waist drew her to my bosom. There I held her until she cried
out; but even then my arms would not relax, and she was compelled to
extricate herself with a charming force. Being my first full embrace it
made me delirious. She began to laugh again, childishly, silverily, and
taking my hand she paced slowly at my side along the way that led to
Stony Mountgrace.

We reached the ruined doorway, and stood beneath its wealth of carved
foliage. The sound of boys’ singing came from within. Phyllida herself
had arranged everything with the old vicar of Drassington. How she
had conquered his scruples against reading the ritual in a roofless
building I never knew; but the place was still consecrated, and the
altar tomb of Elizabeth Colmer, which in past days had been used as the
holy table, still stood in the chancel under the east window, where the
stained glass of Saint Anthony, with the human-faced swine crawling up
his pastoral staff, cast subtle hues on the broken floor.

The words of the marriage hymn were indistinctly sung: the choristers’
voices sounded cold and sharp, and the vicar looked almost frenzied
with impatience.

‘How is this, madam?’ he said, with his bearded face drawn into the
severest lines. ‘You beg me to come here as a favour, and when, after
the considerations laid before me I agree, you keep me waiting until an
hour after the appointed time!’

‘An hour?’ I gasped, looking not at the vicar, but at Phyllida. ‘An
hour late! Why we met at the moment----’

Phyllida was triumphant. ‘Silence,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot explain,
unless that we have dreamed.’ She turned to the ascetic. ‘I am ready to
atone in any way for my fault,’ she said contritely. ‘Forgive me, sir,
it was unavoidable.’ And she made her eyes so pleading that he had been
no man had he not calmed instantly and forgiven her for her guiltless
offence.

‘Enter,’ he said. ‘It is almost too late. Had you been absent five more
minutes you would not have found me here.’

As we reached the apse the voices of the choristers swelled loudly,
before dying in a long sustained murmur, and the vicar, with his
tattered black-letter book held near his eyes, began to read the
marriage service. Not a word did I understand: I repeated automatically
when I was bidden to repeat, I forced the ring on Phyllida’s finger at
the ordained time. But all the while I thought of naught, or spiritual
or sensual, save her incarnate loveliness.

Phyllida was mine now! Phyllida was mine now! Daintily I lifted
her hand to my arm, and with the echo of the vicar’s shrewish
congratulations ringing in our ears we moved into the mid-day sunlight,
and began to walk towards Colmer.

‘You are my wife,’ I said. ‘Mistress Drassington, we are out of
everybody’s sight--these trees will hide us--you need have no shame in
kissing me here.’

She made no reply: I turned towards her, imagining that she was wrought
beyond speech. We had reached the Syne Marie Wood, where the great
conifers screened off the sun. But one dusky shaft crowned Phyllida,
and sliding from her head struck her fingers and danced there. Her face
was set, her eyelids had fallen.

‘Tell me, love,’ I murmured. ‘Let me help you: you know you are mine
now. One kiss, just one, my meed if I have ever given you an instant’s
happiness.’

Neither word nor movement responded. She was impenetrably silent: her
flame-coloured gown became a barrier of defence: I dared not touch her.

‘Phyllida,’ I entreated. ‘My wife!’

Those woebegone eyes were raised slowly. ‘Wife,’ she said, like one in
a dream, ‘I am no wife. I am true, true as Heaven itself. Do not write
again, I will be true.’

Suddenly her face changed terribly, and she drew herself to her full
height. ‘For God’s sake, Rupert Drassington!’ she cried, ‘for God’s
sake tell me that it is not so!’

‘What, dearest?’ I said.

‘My terror--that we are man and wife.’

‘I am yours and you are mine--my wife--my wife.’ And my tongue dwelt on
the words with delight.

But Phyllida left my side, and, sitting on the trunk of a newly-felled
tree, wept as her poor heart would break.


PART III

THE MARRIAGE NIGHT

A dull fear troubled me from the moment when Phyllida, with many
piteous words, begged me to leave her to herself until evening. Her
face was averted all the time, although I strove to make her look at
mine, in the belief that my agony at this phase might excite her pity
and compel the confidence she withheld.

Assured that she loved me with all her soul, I had no distrust of her.
Phyllida was the perfection of purity; in what I knew of her past she
had shone with a splendid chasteness, and not a breath had sullied
her repute. The curious letters she had read the night before told
of nothing but the holiest love, and the insinuation concerning an
influence that would prevail was nothing more than a poet’s fancy. I
had conceived many such: in my story of _Hope Deferred_ Michael strives
to bind Mary so, and despite her fears of being his bond-maid for ever,
at the dawn of a stronger passion, a stretching of the limbs, a higher
inspiration breaks lightly asunder the shrivelled withes, and Michael
becomes a memory and no more.

Thus, to a great extent, must it be with Phyllida. At the birth of her
love for me she had broken most of the bonds--broken them unwittingly:
for to-day she was unaware of her freedom, fancying that the past still
held her and that she had sinned against fidelity. I knew otherwise;
the few films of gossamer that remained would soon disappear and leave
her entirely mine.

Yet was I depressed; and when, after her entreaties had wrung the
promise from me, and she had begun to return to Colmer alone, I took
her seat and followed with my eyes, as with a step uncertain and often
lingering, she threaded the intricacies of the wood. When she had
disappeared I prepared for a disinterment of memories.

The aromatic scent of the resin, as it oozed from the heated bark,
overburdened the air. In a distant glade the light played so daintily
that I amused myself by picturing seraphim sliding down the beams.
I moved there and rested amongst sun-stricken trees, whose perfect
silhouettes fretted the ground. A ripe-berried mountain-ash grew
near--how it came in a fir-wood I cannot imagine--and a culver,
undisturbed by my silent presence flew to the key-twig and perched
there crooning, until the leaves shook, and then all the boughs, and
finally the trunk itself.

Had I been prophetic in my early writings? Had I suffered in the
anguish I felt when writing the last chapter of _Hope Deferred_
(in which Mary Blakesmoor loses her wifely love and becomes
self-concentrated) a foretaste of my own doom?... Moreover in
_Alnaschar’s Bride_ the fairest hopes were blasted....

But Phyllida was different--was stronger and purer than any of these
visioned heroines; and surely I had a firmer purpose than their lovers?
Nay, as much as she excelled the women in beauty, I excelled the men in
strength of will. I would not be thwarted. Who grapples with fortune
conquers, and I would conquer!

What folly ramping in my brain made me imagine that such puppets could
resemble my living wife! I began to accuse myself of faithlessness,
and grew desirous beyond endurance to touch her hands.

How slowly the afternoon faded! The day had been too fine for a
gorgeous sky, so the sun, contented with his work, descended quietly
into the tops of the distant trees, shook himself there for awhile, and
then sank out of sight, leaving the clouds stained bright yellow. Soon
after his departure a grey curtain crept up to the zenith, and blotted
out the few stars that had already appeared.

I rose, determined to return to Colmer at a snail’s pace. If I walked
speedily I should reach the house before the time Phyllida had
appointed: I might disturb her in the act of conquering her last few
remembrances, and cause the past to rise drossily. My sadness left me,
and I grew happy once more. As I loitered I drew one by one from my
vest the withered poppies, and detaching the petals, let one fall at
every step, giving to each flower a verse from some ancient ballad.

When all my poppies were destroyed I bethought myself of an image from
Spenser’s ‘Ruines of Time,’ and laughed again and again. It was of the
ivory harp with golden strings that the poet saw borne up to heaven.
Ah, my joy--_mine_!--was assured! No malicious intervention could hold
me from it now. In one short hour, in one short hour!

Twilight deepened into evening as I walked; soon large drops of rain
began to fall, and the parched vegetation cried aloud with joy, as its
fibres relaxed and its thirsty flowers drank their fill. There was a
numbness in the air that foretold a thunderstorm before morning.

Thrice a light blanched the heavens, showing me the distant avenue
that led to the garden. The lime-trees were in full bloom, and the
heavy shower beat the flowers to the ground. Scarce had my foot touched
the velvety grass ere from the distance came the sound of voices in
impetuous discussion. My wonder was great at any human creature’s
daring to walk in these weird precincts after nightfall.

The voices were those of a man and a woman; the one commanding, the
other pleading earnestly. They were coming rapidly towards me. Indeed I
could already distinguish something black moving beneath the limes.

A flood of bombast rushed to my lips. The desire for something
discordant almost overpowered me, forcing me to rack my brain for some
bizarre sarcasm wherewith to distract the love-making of these country
sweethearts. Soon their speech resolved into distinct words; it seemed
as if they lingered.

‘Nay, leave me! Take me no further! Was ever woman so tortured?’ one
cried loudly.

‘Was ever woman so false? was ever woman so unworthy?’ the other
replied.

‘But I swear, Cuthbert, I will not come. Oh, let me return! I love
him--this very moment he is waiting for me. My darling Rupert, my
husband. I _will_ return.’

At these words I felt my stature lengthen: then sight, speech,
everything left me save the quickened sense of hearing.

‘Do you remember the old promises? Fool! to think of contending against
my influence--to dream of setting that dullard’s power against mine!
You are mine, planned so by God, joined to my soul in implacable union.
Come, Phyllida.’

Silence followed.

Phyllida was false and I was wifeless. I leaned against the trunk of a
lime, waiting for the last sight of the woman who had betrayed me so
pitifully.

The footsteps approached nearer, and erelong a man passed. He was more
fragile than I, and his long form was shrouded in a black cloak. His
arms waved from side to side in magnetic rhythm, and his white face
and hands shone like those of a corpse. I watched him, spellbound; and
when he had gone a little way I heard the voices begin anew. It was
illusion--magic--anything but the terrible thing I had feared. The
relief made me fall, face downwards, to the sodden grass.

In less than half an hour I entered Colmer Hall. Hester, Phyllida’s old
nurse, came to me at the foot of the staircase, and laid her hand upon
my shoulder.

‘Madam--nay, pardon me--my lady, bade me say that she would be in the
morning-parlour. She has waited long.’

I turned the handle of the door, and was confronted by darkness. Yet
was I not appalled, for I could understand Phyllida’s delicacy in
wishing that our first meeting should be where her blushes might go
unseen. I stole to the window, and sat on the praying-stool, with my
eyes travelling through the gloom to her place. For the fourth time
the sky blanched, and I saw her beside the table, resting her head on
her hands, with her hair spread over shoulders and bosom in rippling
swathes.

At last, wounded by her indifference, I spoke, and destroyed a
delightful hope that she would bid me welcome.

‘Phyllida!’

The old silence. I knew that she must be in one of those wonderful
depths of feeling that she sometimes sounded, and felt proud of a
woman of such strange charms. But what had swayed in the mistress
troubled in the wife.

‘Are we not in perfect sympathy?’ I cried.

Afraid of I know not what (the air in the room seemed turbulently
struggling to pass through the closed windows), I opened the door and
took one of the candles from a sconce in the hall.

‘Phyllida! Phyllida! Phyllida!’ I whispered, holding the light above my
head. ‘I am here, sweet one, look at me!’

Still silence. Fiercely, perhaps, but still lovingly, I placed my hands
beneath her forehead, to make her look upwards. At my touch a bundle of
papers fell from her breast, and lay scattered on the floor. The clay
bust I had seen on my marriage eve stood near: I thrust out my right
hand angrily and broke it into fragments. The past was done with now! I
had conquered! My victory made me exultant. Phyllida’s gossamer bonds
were torn away for ever.

As I drew back the hair and let the candlelight fall softly on my
wife’s face she sighed heavily.

‘Dead love has slain my passion,’ she said.




THE LOST MISTRESS


PART I

THE AUTHOR’S STUDY

A half-dead _Spirëa Japonica_ stood on the writing-table; reared
against the pot was a miniature, which, as the only beautiful thing
in the room, and, moreover, as the work of John Ravil himself, merits
a full description. Not even the most ardent flatterer of the sex
would have sworn that the woman was less than eight-and-twenty. She
was reclining on a luxurious, shawl-covered chair, with a background
of pale roses and quaintly shapen mirrors. One hand held a frontal of
pearls just taken from the light-brown hair; the other a letter which
she was reading with some tenderness. Her face was fair, her eyes of
a rich blue. Firm and lustrous shoulders peeped through the smooth
white muslin of her gown. Mother Eve could not have peered her physical
charm.

John Ravil himself was grotesque even to ugliness. Of scarcely the
middle height, ill-shapen in body, and husky voiced, his peculiarities
were so marked that it was impossible for him to walk in the streets
without exciting unfavourable comment. His complexion was neither
light nor dark; and an odd look was given by a bushy copper-coloured
moustache, whose ends had never known training. An overhanging
forehead, with knitted brows and stiff white hair that stood on end,
completed the list of his most noticeable faults. Despite the marks
of age, however, he was as yet only in his twenty-third year, and
evidences of his youth were visible in his large brown eyes that seemed
at times to belong to a young child.

To-day those eyes were full of terrified perplexity. A change had come
into his life; the love that had sapped his fountain of inspiration,
and hindered him in his struggle for bread, had grown more and more
absorbing of late, and in proportion, the passion of the beloved one
had dwindled. Life had nothing for him save this woman: fame could
never come now, and in his unhappiness he felt himself degraded to the
verge of the commonplace.

After awhile he rose, with a heavy indraught of breath, and opening the
secret drawer of an old mahogany bureau took thence a small bundle
of letters, each enclosed in its gilt-edged envelope. A band of white
paper, whereon was inscribed ‘Flavia’s Correspondence,’ was tied round
all. This he loosened, and taking the topmost letter, reverentially
unfolded the sheet. It had been written soon after their first meeting.
Flavia’s hand was eccentrically masculine. ‘Forgive me,’ it ran, ‘for
being so obtuse last night in not divining the meaning of your words.
You stung me somehow when you laughed at my singing: it was not till
afterwards that I understood your laughter--strange and harsh as it
sounded--as a far greater compliment than any other man could bestow.
Truth to tell, I half resented the little speech that followed. _Why
should I sing only alone or only for one?_ Heaven knows that I have
not a beautiful voice, but still I believe (and I am not an egotist)
that I have the power of expressing the predominant sentiment of the
song. _Addio_, stay, I often visit that alley of firs you admire so--in
the afternoon of most fine days--and a voice sounds infinitely more
_spacious_ there. Shall I sing there alone?’

Here John Ravil bit his white lower lip until the blood oozed in
scarlet drops. O the midsummer noon-tide; the trembling air; the golden
dusk that clung around the fir trunks! Flavia had wafted towards him
from the eastern glade, clad in azure and seeming like a cloud-borne
cherub. Cherubs sing too, and she sang; but no cherub ever sang as she.
Only one song--

  ‘Oh turn, love, oh turn I pray
   I prithee, love, turn to me.’

But such memories add to one’s agony.

The second letter, dated two months later, told of capitulation.

‘You did not come,--some scruple withheld you? If you had known how
utterly sick I grew as the hours passed you would have pitied me. At
every sound I gazed from my window, craving to see you on the terrace,
your head downcast as ever; your eyes waiting for the brightness that
my presence alone can bring. You are very cruel; I could not bear you
to suffer as I do. Even when absent you magnetise me. Nothing appeals
to me now--the gorgeous sunsets of late; the autumn foliage; the
knee-deep drifts of already fallen leaves. Come to-night, my lover,
my--I had almost blasphemed! Just to let my heart spring to yours, my
blood leap through my body, my beauty grow paramount.’

Ravil sat for a while with his hands covering his face. The blood
trickled down his chin and fell on the white sheet; he wiped it away,
replaced the letter in its envelope and took the next. The tide of love
was flowing yet.

‘Genius,’ it began, ‘poet-painter, genius of mine, I thank you for
your idealising of me. But I was never as lovely as the picture. I am
almost glad that you insisted on retaining it, for I should have become
jealous of its excellence, and perhaps destroyed it in some frenzy. How
lively must my image be to you in absence!

‘To other people you are grotesque (what you said was true): to me
you are the handsomest in the world. I and none other have seen that
wondrous lighting of countenance, have heard that quickening of the
voice. At this moment I could tear myself without a murmur from the
vain world, to dwell in some remote garden where conventionalism
triumphs not; where we should exist for each other, and let our lives
form one perfection. Come to-night: I will sit with your head cushioned
on my breast. Bring your story and let us cry together.’

Soon after this the woman’s passion had begun to fade. Ravil knew
what was in the other letters. She had wearied slowly of the genius.
Her feeling had been too fervent to endure. She was healthy and
full-blooded. Another, ‘a swart-haired Hercules,’ had taken her
fancy; and with the admission of this second love all the old worship
had grown lukewarm. In proportion, however, as she had become less
infatuated, he had descended almost to madness: had craved over humbly
that she would consider the wrong she was doing him; had sworn that if
she were false to him, life would hold naught of goodness more.

Men as highly strung and as unfortunate have little sustaining
strength. Fate, the evil godmother, bestows an excess of imaginative
power, and Nature, angry in the unwelcome gift, takes her spite out of
the unsinning god-child, and makes him timorous and unmanly.

Flavia’s last letter must have cost her an effort. Each word was as a
dart through his vitals.

‘My love, there is a certain proverb which I am not powerful enough to
disprove, that the constancy of women exists more in fiction than in
reality. You accuse me of no longer loving you? In a measure you are
wrong: your friendship will be more to me than anything in life. One
way I have failed. Forgive me if I tell you that you will ever appeal
to my spiritual part. We never could have married; in my cooler moments
I have often acknowledged myself too cowardly to cross the bridge
between our ranks. The homage of my kind is necessary after all. Let us
regard the past as a pleasant episode.

‘Apparently you have heard the rumour of my approaching marriage. Let
me beg of you one thing: in honour you are bound to return my letters;
yours are ready in exchange. I shall be much pained to part with what
has given me almost preternatural pleasure. Why should we not meet and
bid each other good-bye?’


PART II

THE LADY’S BOUDOIR

The chamber was softly radiant with mother-o’-pearl colours, all
so blended that by contrast a woman’s face might wear a heightened
charm. Plants with pale leaves and white flowers filled the oriel;
dusky mandarins leered in corners; chastened pictures hung on the
silk-covered walls. Before each window was drawn a gleaming tissue.

Flavia rose from the piano with a great sigh: tears were rolling down
her cheeks (evidently the song had suggested woe), and some fell on
the brown cover of a volume that lay on the table. It was John Ravil’s
_Venus’s Apple_, a romance which, he had once dreamed, was like to
bring him fame. Flavia took it up and held it over her breast until it
was warm. It should ever be the dearest book in the world! Although
love was dead, gratitude remained. For his short hour her lover had
been all-in-all; through him she had tasted of intellectual pleasures
unknown before their meeting.

‘He will bear it well enough in time,’ she sighed; ‘it will give
him strength for his work; he will use his Oriental richness no
longer,--will curb his luxuriance, and develop an epigrammatic style,
which, being coupled with that fine imaginativeness of his, must needs
fillip him into popularity.’

The thought gave consolation, and she became herself again in mentally
comparing the two lovers: the one saturnine, ugly, oppressive; the
other bright, laughing, and handsome--her ideal of manhood. Sure ’twas
only in an unwholesome dream that Ravil had been victor?

She raised the lid of her cedar desk and took his letters from their
nest amidst dried rose-leaves. Then she sank back to her favourite
chair, leaning almost in the same posture as in the miniature. The
collection was unfastened and placed in her lap, and soon, with a few
more sighs, she raised the sheets for a last reading.

Even for letters of passion they were extravagant: the weakness of
his nature, his need of a restraining power, was manifest in each.
They were almost hysterical: no man healthy in body and mind could
have written them. Yet Flavia’s face grew troubled, and her lips moved
pitifully.

‘Why did you look at me so,’ the first began, ‘look at our first
greeting as if I had been by your side all my life? You brought a
strange fluttering to my heart; you stopped my breath; the room
whirled round and round. You must have thought me a very fool in the
incoherent words I spoke. You may guess the cause; my oppressed brain
had never permitted me even to imagine such beauty as yours.

‘Only once before in my life have I known such a feeling: I had read a
story told of love and death under a southern sky. The hot malaria, the
aroma of lilies, the thick water, seemed to envelop me, and I swooned.
It was like rain on parched ground to find myself still in my own room,
nodding my head to the bunch of yellow-flags I had bought of a child at
the door.

‘But now I swoon again, and the awakening can only come at the
transition into the next world’s darkness.

‘I am in love’s wine-press, shrieking at the weight that must descend
and crush out new-born joy. Give me, in the name of God, one word of
tenderness, and forget that I ever dared to lift my eyes.’

As Flavia read she smiled, as women smile upon a baby thrusting out a
tiny fist with broken flowers. As free and natural a gift was Ravil’s
love. Her eyes grew tender: she looked at her shoulder just as if his
head were resting there.

‘Poor head, poor coarse hair!’ she said.

The next letter treated of some dereliction.

‘You have tortured me cruelly. When you rode past on the road, I
stamped in the dust till my folly was manifest, even to myself. _Who
is he? I insist on knowing._ When I saw him loose-mouthed and peering
right into your pupils all the tigerish part of me sprang up, and I
could have destroyed him for his temporary usurpation of my rights. How
dared he look at you so? All night I lay awake, calling upon your name,
praying for some miracle to bring you to my chamber.’

Flavia remembered her exultation when her fingers tore this sheet open:
how she had been so merry as to sing and run and play like a young
girl. She passed hastily over more, and came to that he had written
after she had yielded him her honour. Her own letters had feebly echoed
his at the time.

‘Sweetest and noblest,’ it ran, ‘life has changed. The dense veil
that shrouded my future has been withdrawn. To-day I feel infinitely
more inspired than ever I felt in my youth. A myriad rich ideas float
from my brain, and were it not for very impatience of the hour of our
meeting I would sit at my table and write some grand epic, or some
romance that would shake the centre of every heart. Love! love!’

Flavia’s eyes glittered now; but grew languid quickly as she fell to
picturing old scenes. The minutes passed and passed, ere she returned
to her task. The letter she took had signs of a lover’s doubts.

‘I awaken in madness; for the dread that grows in my companionless
nights deepens towards morning. Suppose that Flavia had never really
loved me;--suppose that I had been only her last dearly-paid-for
whim;--suppose,--nay, now I have written it my fears go in laughter.
Flavia is the paragon: I alone understand her mystery. Any man less
initiated in the secrets of her character might declare that to me
her outward demeanour was cold. But I glory in her apparent lack of
feeling, conscious that my position is impregnable, and that her
passion, though chastened, is still powerful.’

The white shoulders were shrugged, ‘How lacking in discrimination!’
Before he had written thus she had been absolutely discourteous, whilst
he had ever refused to understand. It was her remark, that change is
necessary to existence, which had evoked this strange protest. Besides,
she knew herself to be inconstant in thought. The hours spent in his
company, which at first were almost unearthly in their speed of flight,
were dull and wearisome now, and she had grown to hail the time of his
departure with something akin to pleasure.

Six more letters were passed unopened--much less unread. Then she
unfolded the last--his reply to her renunciation.

‘Flavia, it is hard to think that you of all the world should care
to jest with me. That your letter is anything more than a jest I am
struggling not to believe. After all your vows, breathed as you lay in
my arms, whispered in a tone that made me vibrate like a harp-string,
you should not play with my feelings. You know me, darling: it was
unkind.

‘O God in heaven, I dare not believe it! I will not! I cannot! My mind
is not large enough to take in so monstrous a truth!

‘We will meet to-morrow in the wood, and laugh together at the
frightened fool you have made of me! and in revenge I will be sardonic
and cruel.’


PART III

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Sloping fir alleys; bounded at one end by a darkly mantled fish-pond,
at the other by an open park, with grazing deer and cattle. Birds avoid
these fir-woods: this one was silent, save for a low boom of insects
and the dwarfish whistling of shrew-mice.

Ravil was first at the meeting-place. He rested in a cathedral-like
vista overarched with olive--the glade where Flavia had sung. The wiry
grass was hot with the sun, the air thick with fragrance.

He waited in gladness. As the time had drawn near much of his dread had
vanished, and although he still felt like a man who stands with his
back to a pit, on whose verge his heels are pressing, the light beating
on his brain so dazzled him that little save the maddest joy was left.

In the interval he conjured up visions of her beauty: his lips moved
as if to kiss. He reviewed for the thousandth time the history of
their passion. No false humility had ever troubled him; and despite
the worldly distinction between noble and plebeian, he saw himself her
equal at all points. In his egotistical belief, the highest patent of
nobility should be bestowed on those with unplumbed depths of feeling,
with superior capacities for suffering.

At last she came, not in azure this time, but in a gown of plain
russet, such as any of the cottagers’ wives on her land might have
worn. But something exquisite in her manner of wearing it showed the
gentle rounding of her breasts, the rise and fall of her breathing. A
flush spread over her face as he rose to greet her; at the sight the
old hunger came, and he bent his head to hers.

‘Once,’ she said very faintly.

There was a note of sublime renunciation in her voice. If she had loved
him with all her heart, and had discovered that his future required
the breaking of the unlawful bond, she could not have shown a nobler
pathos. He flung his arm about her neck, and half-savagely kissed her
ripe lips.

Soon she drew apart. ‘You hurt me,’ she said. ‘There is not much
time.... I must return soon ... there are people.... He....’

He fell back with contorted mouth, for the lash had agonised him with
its subtle poison. Pity filled her, and she soothed him with velvet
caresses, tried to flatter him with hopes of fame. ’Twould be best for
him; in after years they would meet, he jubilant with men’s praise, she
saddened and broken in by the legal bond. For his sake, all for his
sake.

When he had recovered somewhat he strove to discover the truth in her
eyes. It was a profitless task.

His chin began to tremble. ‘Here are the letters,’ he whispered
huskily. ‘Keep mine.... Leave me here.... Good-bye.’

Flavia went weeping away. Ere she had walked a mile a sudden thrill
shook her from head to foot, and she sank down to the grass. A
wonderful light shone from her face. Life’s greatness was upon her: her
lover’s child had stirred within her body.

Born of womanly ecstasy, born of the pain of parting, love that before
had been a sickly dwarf, sprang up a ruddy giant. O the bliss, the
ten-fold bliss of passion revived!

She hurried to the place where she had left him, wild to pant out her
secret on his breast. He was there still, but white and rigid, and with
a purple wound in his temple.




WITCH IN-GRAIN


Of late Michal had been much engrossed in the reading of the
black-letter books that Philosopher Bale brought from France. As you
know I am no Latinist--though one while she was earnest in her desire
to instruct me; but the open air had ever greater charms for me than
had the dry precincts of a library. So I grudged the time she spent
apart, and throughout the spring I would have been all day at her side,
talking such foolery as lovers use. But ever she must steal away and
hide herself amongst dead volumes.

Yestereven I crossed the Roods, and entered the garden, to find the
girl sitting under a yew-tree. Her face was haggard and her eyes
sunken: for the time it seemed as if many years had passed over her
head, but somehow the change had only added to her beauty. And I
marvelled greatly, but ere I could speak a huge bird, whose plumage
was as the brightest gold, fluttered out of her lap from under the
silken apron; and looking on her uncovered bosom I saw that his beak
had pierced her tender flesh. I cried aloud, and would have caught the
thing, but it rose slowly, laughing like a man, and, beating upwards,
passed out of sight in the quincunx. Then Michal drew long breaths,
and her youth came back in some measure. But she frowned, and said,
‘What is it, sweetheart? Why hast awakened me? I dreamed that I fed the
Dragon of the Hesperidean Garden.’ Meanwhile, her gaze set on the place
whither the bird had flown.

‘Thou hast chosen a filthy mammet,’ I said. ‘Tell me how came it
hither?’

She rose without reply, and kissed her hands to the gaudy wings, which
were nearing through the trees. Then, lifting up a great tome that had
lain at her feet, she turned towards the house. But ere she had reached
the end of the maze she stopped, and smiled with strange subtlety.

‘How camest _thou_ hither, O satyr?’ she cried. ‘Even when the Dragon
slept, and the fruit hung naked to my touch.... The gates fell to.’

Perplexed and sore adread, I followed to the hall; and found in the
herb garden the men struggling with an ancient woman--a foul crone,
brown and puckered as a rotten costard. At sight of Michal she thrust
out her hands, crying, ‘Save me, mistress!’ The girl cowered, and ran
up the perron and indoors. But for me, I questioned Simon, who stood
well out of reach of the wretch’s nails, as to the wherefore of this
hurly-burly.

His underlings bound the runnion with cords, and haled her to the
closet in the banqueting gallery. Then, her beldering being stilled,
Simon entreated me to compel Michal to prick her arm. So I went down
to the library, and found my sweetheart sitting by the window, tranced
with seeing that goblin fowl go tumbling on the lawn.

My heart was full of terror and anguish. ‘Dearest Michal,’ I prayed,
‘for the sake of our passion let me command. Here is a knife.’ I took a
poniard from Sir Roger’s stand of arms. ‘Come with me now; I will tell
you all.’

Her gaze still shed her heart upon the popinjay; and when I took her
hand and drew her from the room, she strove hard to escape. In the
gallery I pressed her fingers round the haft, and knowing that the
witch was bound, flung open the door so that they faced each other. But
Mother Benmusk’s eyes glared like fire, so that Michal was withered
up, and sank swooning into my arms. And a chuckle of disdain leaped
from the hag’s ragged lips. Simon and the others came hurrying, and
when Michal had found her life, we begged her to cut into one of those
knotted arms. Yet she would none of it, but turned her face and signed
no--no--she would not. And as we strove to prevail with her, word came
that one of the Bishop’s horses had cast a shoe in the village, and
that his lordship craved the hospitality of Ford, until the smith had
mended the mishap. Nigh at the heels of his message came the divine,
and having heard and pondered our tale, he would fain speak with her.

I took her to the withdrawing-room, where at the sight of him she burst
into such a loud fit of laughter that the old man rose in fear and went
away.

‘Surely it is an obsession,’ he cried; ‘nought can be done until the
witch takes back her spells!’

So I bade the servants carry Benmusk to the mere, and cast her in the
muddy part thereof where her head would lie above water. That was
fifteen hours ago, but methinks I still hear her screams clanging
through the stagnant air. Never was hag so fierce and full of strength!
All along the garden I saw a track of uprooted flowers. Amongst the
sedges the turmoil grew and grew till every heron fled. They threw
her in, and the whole mere seethed as if the floor of it were hell.
For full an hour she cursed us fearsomely: then, finding that every
time she neared the land the men thrust her back again, her spirit
waxed abject, and she fell to whimpering. Two hours before twelve she
cried that she would tell all she knew. So we landed her, and she was
loosened of her bonds and she mumbled in my ear: ‘I swear by Satan
that I am innocent of this harm! I ha’ none but pawtry secrets. Go at
midnight to the lows and watch Baldus’s tomb. There thou shalt find
all.’

The beldam tottered away, her bemired petticoats clapping her legs;
and I bade them let her rest in peace until I had certainly proved her
guilt. With this I returned to the house; but, finding that Michal had
retired for the night, I sat by the fire, waiting for the time to pass.
A clock struck the half before eleven, and I set out for King Baldus’s
grave, whither, had not such a great matter been at stake, I dared not
have ventured after dark. I stole from the garden and through the first
copse. The moon lay against a brazen curtain; little snail-like clouds
were crawling underneath, and the horns of them pricked her face.

As I neared the lane to the waste, a most unholy dawn broke behind
the fringe of pines, looping the boles with strings of grey-golden
light. Surely a figure moved there? I ran. A curious motley and a noisy
swarmed forth at me. Another moment, and I was in the midst of a host
of weasels and hares and such-like creatures, all flying from the
precincts of the tomb. I quaked with dread, and the hair of my flesh
stood upright. But I thrust on, and parted the thorn boughs, and looked
up at the mound.

On the summit thereof sat Michal, triumphing, invested with flames. And
the Shape approached, and wrapped her in his blackness.




THE NOBLE COURTESAN


_The Apology of the Noble Courtesan_ was fresh from the printers; the
smell of ink filled the antechamber. The volume was bound in white
parchment, richly gilt; on the front board was a scarlet shield graven
with a familiar coat-of-arms. Frambant turned the leaves hastily, and
found on the dedication page the following address:--

  ‘_To the Right Honourable Michael, Lord Frambant, Baron of Britton_

  ‘MY LORD,--It is not from desire of pandering to your position as one
  who has served his country wisely and well that I presume to dedicate
  to you the following Apology. A name so honoured, a character so
  perfect, need no illuming. ’Tis as a Woman whose heart you have
  stirred, into whose life you are bound to enter. For know, my Lord,
  that women are paramount in this world. In the after-sphere we may
  be Apes, but here we are the Controllers of Men’s fates, and so, in
  the character of one whom you have stricken with love, I profess
  myself, my Lord, your Lordship’s Most Obliged and Most Obedient
  Humble Servant,
                                                   THE NOBLE COURTESAN.’

Frambant flung the book angrily across the room. What trull was this
who dared approach him so familiarly? His brows contracted; his grey
eyes shot fire; a warm dash of blood drove the wanness from his cheeks.
The very thought of strange women was hateful: it was scarce a year
since the wife he had won after so much striving had yielded up life in
childbed, and he had sworn to remain alone for the rest of his days.
Catching sight of his reflection in a mirror, he saw resentment and
disgust there.

But when he looked again at the book he found that a note had been
forced from its cover. Curiosity overcame, and he stooped and took
it in his hand. Like the dedication it was addressed to himself: he
unfolded it with some degree of fear.

‘You will infinitely oblige a distressed Lover,’ he read, ‘if you
meet her at Madam Horneck’s bagnio. Midnight’s the time. She will
wear a domino of green gauze, a white satin robe braided with golden
serpents.--CONSTANTIA.’

This communication fascinated him, and sitting down by the window
he began to read the wildest book that ever was written. It was a
fantastic history of the four intrigues of a fantastic woman. Her
first lover had been a foreign churchman (an avowed ascetic) who had
withstood her sieging for nearly a twelvemonth; her second, a poet
who had addressed a sequence of amorous sonnets to her under the name
of Amaryllis; her third a prince, or rather a king’s bastard; and her
fourth a simple country squire. Some years had elapsed between each
infatuation, and madam had utilised them in the study of the politer
arts. The volume teemed with quotations from the more elegant classic
writers, and the literature of the period was not ignored. The ending
ran thus:--

‘It has ever been my belief that love, nay, life itself, should
terminate at the moment of excess of bliss. I hold Secrets, use of
which teaches me that after a certain time passion may be tasted
with the same keen joy as when maidenhood is resigned. But, as the
lively L’Estrange declares, “the itch of knowing Secrets is naturally
accompanied with another itch of telling them,” I fling aside my pen in
fear.’

As he finished reading his brother Villiers entered the room. He was
ten years Frambant’s junior, and resembled him only in stature and
profile. His skin was olive, his eyes nut-brown, his forehead still
free from lines. He leaned over the chair and put a strong arm round
his brother’s neck.

‘What is this wondrous book, so quaintly bound?’ he said. ‘By Venus,
queen of love, a wagtail’s song!’

Frambant flushed again, and raising the _Apology_ flung it on the fire,
where it screamed aloud.

‘It is the work of an impudent woman,’ he replied. ‘To-morrow all town
will ring with it. She has dedicated it to me.’

‘Surely a sin to burn such a treasure! Let me recover it.’

Villiers took the tongs and strove to draw the swollen thing from the
flame, but it collapsed into a heap of blackness. The note, however,
which Frambant had replaced, lay uncurled in the hearth, and the lad
read its message.

At that moment one came with word that Sir Benjamin Mast, an old
country baronet whom Frambant held in high esteem, lay at the point
of death. ‘The water crept higher and higher, and my lady thought you
might choose to be with him at the last. The coach waited.’ Frambant
hurried downstairs, and was soon with the dying man. Sir Benjamin’s
hydropsy had swollen him to an immense size, but his uncowed soul
permitted him to laugh and jest with heart till the end. His wife, a
pious resigned woman of sixty, shared the vigil.

Darkness fell, and the chamber was lighted. Forgetful of all save his
friend’s departure he never remarked the passage of time, and not until
after midnight when Mast’s eyes were closed in death did his thoughts
recur to the _Apology_. He took his seat in the coach with a grim
feeling of satisfaction at the imaginary picture of the wanton waiting,
and waiting in vain.

After a time, being wearied with excitement and lulled by the motion
of the vehicle as it passed slowly along the narrow streets, he let
his head sink back on the cushion, and fell asleep almost instantly.
Five minutes could not have passed before he woke; but in the interval
a curious idea had entered his brain. He remembered Constantia’s
account of her lovers, and her belief that life should wither at the
moment of love’s height, and simultaneously there came upon him the
recollection of four tragedies which had stricken the land with horror.
So overwhelming was the connection that he could no longer endure the
tediousness of the journey, but dismissed his coach and walked down the
Strand.

The first case was that of the Cardinal of Castellamare, who had been
exiled from Italy, and who, after attending a court ball and mixing
freely with the dancers, had been found dead on his couch; his fingers
clutching the pearl handle of a stiletto, whose point was in his heart.
Then, in the same conditions, Meadowes the laureate, the Count de
Dijon, and Brooke Gurdom the Derbyshire landowner, had all been found
dead. No trace of the culprit had been found, but in every case was the
rumour of a woman’s visit.

He reached the old road where stood his house, and stumbled against
a weird sedan that waited in a recess by his gateway. An arching
hornbeam hid it from the moonlight. Two men stood beside it attired
in outlandish clothes. Frambant stopped to examine the equipage, and
at the same moment a link-boy approached. He called for the light,
and to his wonderment found that the bearers were blackamoors with
smooth-shaven heads and staring eyes.

The sedan was of green cypress embellished with silver; a perfume of
oriental herbs spread from its open windows. Frambant asked the owner’s
name, but the men with one accord began to jangle in so harsh a tongue
that he was fain to leave them and go indoors.

In the antechamber a great reluctance to pass further came upon
him, and he halloed for a serving-man. Frambant was merciful to his
underlings, keeping little show of state. Rowley, the butler, came
soon, half-dressed and sleepy. On his master’s inquiry if any visitor
had entered the house, he protested that he knew of none, though
he had waited in the hall till past midnight. So, at the word of
dismissal, he retired, leaving Frambant to enter his chamber alone.

He took a candle and went to the place where hung the portrait of his
wife. There he paused to gaze on the unearthly loveliness of face and
figure. His eyes dimmed, and he turned away and began to undress; but
he was wearied and troubled because of his friend’s death, and when his
vest was doffed he threw himself upon a settle.

Presently the ripple of a long sigh ran through the sleeping house.
Frambant sprang to his feet and went to the antechamber. There he
heard the sound again: it came from the west wing, which for the last
year had been reserved for Villiers’s use. He caught up the candle and
hurried along the cold passages. At his brother’s door he paused, for
through the chinks and keyhole came soft broken lights.

A woman was speaking in a voice full of agony:--

‘Infamous, cruel deceiver! I have loved another, and given myself to
thee!’

Again came that long sigh. Well-nigh petrified with fear, he fumbled at
the latch until the door swung open. A terrible sight met his eyes.

Villiers lay stark on the bed, a red stain spreading over his linen. On
the pillow was a mask that had been rent in twain. Beside him stood a
tall, shapely woman, covered from shoulder to foot with a loose web of
diaphanous silk. Her long hair (of a withered-bracken colour) hung far
below her knees; a veil of green gauze covered the upper part of her
face. She was swaying to and fro, as if in pain.

‘Dastard,’ she wailed. ‘Thou hast attained the promised bliss unjustly.
In my arms all innocently I slew thee, praying for thy soul to pass to
my own heaven.’

Frambant’s lips moved. ‘My brother! my brother!’

The woman turned, glided towards him, and sank to her knees. She
laughed, with the silver laughter of a child who after much lamentation
has found the lost toy.

‘It is thou,’ she murmured. ‘Let us forget the evil he hath wrought
against us--let us forget and--love.’

She put out her hand to grasp his, he lifted his arm and thrust her
away.

‘Touch me not!’ he cried.

She rose and faced him, supporting herself by grasping the bedpost.

‘He has wronged us foully,’ she said. ‘The last love--the flower of my
life--he would have cheated me of it!’

‘Murderess! murderess!’

Her breath came very quickly; its sweetness pierced her veil and
touched his cheek.

‘What evil thing have I done?’ she asked. ‘’Tis my creed to love and to
destroy.’

Frambant went to the further side of the bed, and felt at his brother’s
heart. It was still, the flesh was growing cold. He flung his arm over
the dead breast and wept, and Constantia stole nearer and knelt at his
side.

‘God,’ she prayed, holding her hands above her head, ‘pervert all my
former entreaties, let all the punishments of hell fall upon the dead
man! Sustain the strength that has never failed, that I may conquer him
who lives.’

Frambant staggered away; she locked her arms about his knees.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I loved thee from the first moment.... When we met
at the bagnio, he was disguised--not until I had killed him and looked
on his brow did I know the truth.’

He made no reply, but considered the corpse in stony horror. So she
released her hold and stood before him again.

‘O cold and sluggish man! Why should I faint now? Cleopatra bought as
hard a lover’s passion.’

With a sudden movement she undid her robe at the neck, so that it
whispered and slipped down, showing a form so beautiful that a mist
rose and cloaked it from his eyes,--such perfection being beyond nature.

He moved towards the door, but she interrupted him. ‘Is not this
enough?’ she cried. And she tore away the green veil and showed him a
face fit to match the rest. Only once before had he seen its wondrous
loveliness.

Again his eyes were drawn to Villiers. How he had loved the lad! Very
strange it was: but at the instant his mind went back to boyhood, when
he had made him hobby-horses.

‘You have killed my brother! you have killed my brother!’

Constantia laughed wearily. ‘Enough of that mixture of iron and clay.
What is the penalty?’

‘The law shall decide.’

She sprang forward and drew the knife from Villiers’s breast. Frambant,
however, forced it from her hand.

‘For love of the wife who died, who even now is pleading at God’s
throne for me?’

Frambant’s fingers relaxed. ‘Hush!’ he said.

‘If I must die let it be at thy hands.’

‘As you will: here ... write.’ He took a quill from the table and
dipped it in the pool of stiffening blood.

Then he dictated, whilst she wrote in a firm hand.

‘_I, Constantia, the Noble Courtesan, after slaying five men, meet
with a just punishment. Seek not to know further._’

She pressed close to him, smiling very tenderly. Her eyes were full of
passionate adoration. As he raised the knife to her breast she caught
his disengaged hand between her own....

Frambant wrapped her in the gauze. Then after pinning the paper at the
head, and covering all with the gown of white satin that was braided
with golden serpents, he carried her through the house and garden.
Dayspring was near, the light appalling.

He reached the cypress sedan and laid his burden inside. The two
blackamoors, who had gibbered sleepily the while, caught up the poles
and bore the Noble Courtesan away.




THE WRITINGS OF ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR


A portrait of Althea Swarthmoor hangs in the library of the House with
Eleven Staircases. She is depicted (by Kneller’s brush) as a tall, thin
woman of about thirty, somewhat sallow in the matter of complexion,
and with deerhound eyes. Her crisp black hair is drawn plainly from an
admirably arched brow, and there is a perplexed look about her lips.

Doctor Marston’s miniature hangs beside--the presentment of a
corpulent, thick-necked divine with a fair skin, pallid eyes, and a
sensuous mouth. Herrickian curls lie flat on the temples. A suave grace
is manifest in the dimpled chin and complacent cheeks.

The literary remains of Althea are coffined in sheepskin on the topmost
shelf of the bookcase. The Swarthmoors have a strenuous objection
to the opening of this volume, for the episode of their seven times
great-aunt is supposed to reflect no honour on the family. However,
a few specimens of her fantastic letters, culled at random, can harm
neither them nor the reader.


ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR TO DR. MARSTON.

                                       THE HOUSE WITH ELEVEN STAIRCASES,
                                              _19th May 1709_.

Do not fear, good Doctor, that I shall ever lose the remembrance
of those tender words you spoke in the maze t’other evening. It
is not necessary to copy them down for me; for they seem part of
some rich painting, whereof the hanging moon and the stars form the
background--such a picture as shall ever remain before my view. Yet
I thank you for your kind proffer, and, whilst I forbid you, entreat
you to know that I am depriving myself of what would be a most valued
souvenir. Commend me to madam your wife; and understand that I am most
cordially your ever faithful friend to serve you.


DR. MARSTON TO ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR[1]

                                                 BALTCOMB IN LANCASHIRE,
                                                     _20th May 1709_.

Honoured Madam,--I was writing my discourse for the Sunday when the
messenger brought your most gracious epistle. Truly a great happiness
hath fallen to me! When I declared myself as one whom the power of
your presence and the fascination of your glances conquered, I felt
the same spirit as is described by the lover in the Canticles--_Turn
away thine eyes, for they have overcome me_. In the pulpit I shall
next hold forth on the Shulamite and her would-be spouse. A fig for
those who fondly believe the Church is meant! ’Tis an idyllic cry of
passion betwixt real man and real woman; the preparative for as rich
a marriage song as the world ever imagined. Yet, madam, to you alone
dare I acknowledge this idea. We are both freed (in mind) from the
conventional; but the world is apt to be censorious with those who have
strength to think apart from the multitude. Therefore my treatment of
the old love-song must be in the usual veil of supposed prophecy. How
rarely does it befall a man to have such a friend (if I dare think you
my friend) as you! Let me see you soon: I have a thousand thoughts to
elaborate--a thousand religious fears to overcome. My poor wife is
at present sunning herself among the herbs; she is again threatened
with a plethora.--I am, with the truest sense of gratitude and respect
possible, your most humble, most obedient and most obliged servant.

[1] This letter is the only one preserved.


ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR TO DR. MARSTON.

                                       THE HOUSE WITH ELEVEN STAIRCASES,
                                              _30th July 1709._

Were it not that I had promised to write whene’er I had leisure, I
might, perchance, choose rather to loiter about the pleasaunce with
my brother’s children, and to sit by the water basins, watching the
goldfish, and paddling my fingers. But the strange impatience that has
held me of late forces me to take pen in hand, and to write the wild
thoughts that flee through my brain. If only the sound of thy voice
came, the mid-day heat would disappear and I should be refreshed as by
fountains.

Tell me of Love, not in the few words that almost make me swoon with
their power, but in one long, uninterrupted recital. Fear not the
censure of other folk (for the speech shall sink secret into my bosom)
but drag it out of thy very heart--one drop of blood for each word.
Thy miniature lies on my table; alas! my Bible hath grown dusty with
neglect. May we not meet to talk of Passion and of Death, and how they
oft walk hand in hand together?--Your most loyal and ever devoted

                                                                 ALTHEA.


THE SAME TO THE SAME.

                                                      _5th August 1709._

A trifle I have written I enclose. One at dinner chid me for never
having loved. The verses were born of fevered heat during a restless
night. I have named them ‘The Secret Priestess of the Amorous Deities’

  Nymphs and Shepherds forthwith sing
  To Dan Cupid, Friend and King,
  Gamester with our wavering hearts,
  Giver both of joys and smarts:
                      Hail to Cupid! Hail!

  Hail to Venus! Mother Queen,
  Who, with eyes of glist’ning sheen,
  Sports him on, our souls to cheat,
  Laughs and sings at every feat:
                      Hail to Venus! Hail!

  But the Love, which dwelt inside
  My heart’s core, had leifer died,
  Than be praised and sung aloud,
                      For ’twas secret, wild, and proud.


THE SAME TO THE SAME.

                                                 _September 20th, 1809._

That we should truly admire what you were good enough to praise gives
me pure joy. In my girlhood I had dreams of helping another by throwing
my whole life into his. Am I really of service to you? Assure me that
you did not flatter. Doubting is delicious only when one is certain
that the doubts must be resolved. Another walk in the coppice, now
that the nights are so sweet and so misty. Another of those fatal,
delicious hours, wherein Love comes at the flood. Dear Marston, best
and noblest of friends, believe me ever to be your devoted and very
attached servant.


A MANUSCRIPT OF ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR, SUGGESTED BY SOME DREAD.

(Written about January 1710.)

There is nothing in the world more sad than a Love that’s dying.
Profoundest melancholy comes when the gaudily-hued leaves drop from the
parent boughs in Autumn, and leave the trunk gaunt, bare, and unlovely.
Those trees are beautifullest whose fruit hangs bright and cheering
through the Winter, but alack! they are rare indeed.

How the groaning branches weep when they see their offspring, yellow,
crimson, and death-colour, lying beneath them, or carried off, dancing
blithely, by every little breeze, to shrivel and decay as Nature
demands, on some alien soil! The fairest lineaments of Devotion depart
thus from us, and though we grasp a withered tenderness with such a
palsied hold as an age-worn oak clutches its leaves, the unwilling
thing passes away, floats through the thin air, and leaves us tearful.

We force ourselves to exact those little attentions given by the
beloved one, and take an unhealthy gratification in such, believing, or
striving to believe, that there is no gold and nought but baser metal
in the world. But this cannot last. The Passions of some are destined
to die quickly. To warm a corse on the hearth brings back no life. Bury
the dead deeply, water its grave with streaming eyes, and in springtide
pluck a withered violet or some other sweet-scented blossom from the
green sod. Whilst cherishing the token in thy bosom, laugh and be merry
in the knowledge that there is no attendant Spirit from the pined
creature hovering near.

First desire is ever immature, and worthless in comparison with that
which comes in after-life. It is not true that the nature understood to
be the largest is capable of the grandest thoughts, for often the most
selfish soul is lifted to the highest ecstasy. The strength given by
powerful Love is Divine;--the sun warms and ripens Life; Earth is no
longer Earth. Existence is a glorious gift.

Love that’s true lasts for ever. Death _cannot_ end it. My certain
hope, nay belief, is that, whether the Afterwards be cast in a
wondrous, lovely country or an arid desert, an arm will clasp my waist
and feet pace beside mine, whose owner will share all my joy and all my
pain.


ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR TO DR. MARSTON.

                                                    _1st February 1710._

Day after day of wearisome snow! Interminable workings with my needle
and discoursings on my sister’s spinet! No interview in private to
make me forget the staleness of life. When you come here I must needs
sit with hands folded, to listen to the mouldy apophthegms my brother
repeats, and admire the quiet courtesy wherewith you reply. A woman
must think of nought but her still-room, her table, and the fashions.
Even as it is they look upon me as a hawk amongst sparrows.

Ah me, to live with a squire who knows nought but Bacon, and knows him,
alas! insufficiently; and a lady whose highest inspiration is to work
tent-stitch better than her neighbours at Thundercliffe! Lord, how the
children are bred! Barbary, who is twenty, sits demure, and fancies she
was brought out of a parsley-plot!

Send me those writings of yours, that speak so curiously of happiness.
Also those volumes of Suckling and Rochester you mentioned.
‘Pigmalion’s Image’ I read with delight: it is a picture of such vivid,
fruit-like loveliness as no modern poet could invent. Almost the reader
believes in its truth--for me, my breath came quick and my cheeks grew
hot as the Sculptor’s desire was granted. Is there no other poem told
in so sweet fashion? Have you not quoted one ‘Hero and Leander’ by Kit
Marlowe; the story of a lover who swam the sea? Pray, if thou canst
procure it, do so, for I am enamoured of verse.

To-morrow night we go to the Assembly Ball. I have prepared a surprise
for you. Such a gown as you swore would become me most has been
devised, and you will see me in light green, with laces of dead-leaf
colour. Let not scruples hinder your coming.

Lastly, for I was fain to finish with the taste of this, I am sending
you a cravat, wrought by my own hands, of admirable point, of the kind
Antonio Moro loved to paint. It has all been done in my chamber, and
none knows of it save myself. Honour me by wearing it to-morrow, and
understand me, as ever, your loving friend.


THE SAME TO THE SAME.

                                                       _24th June 1710._

Since your removal to Bath, life here has been trebly stagnant. I trust
the waters are improving the health of madam your wife, to whom pray
commend me.

My godmother, Lady Comber, is staying near you. She wrote the other
day to bid me come over, but--I cannot. You would be less _for_ me, I
less _to_ you in the midst of a crowd of intellectual and fashionable
folk. So I must endure the sweltering summer at home, but truly beg for
all possible alleviation of the dulness by what letters your kindness
may prompt you to send. As you ask, I have writ no more poetry. In a
sardonic mood, such as I suffer at present, I am inclined to think all
my past work neither rhyme nor reason.

This day I have been over all the walks we affected plucking flowers
for our favourite seat, and kissing the lavender tree that grows at
the lake-vista. It was a solemn pleasure to revisit these places; a
pleasure illumined with the glad certainty that erelong you will be my
companion again. Write to me soon, and tell me a thousand things of
yourself.

Have you met the great wits? Have you played and won, or--God
forbid--lost? What said you in your sermon before the Prince? BUT ABOVE
ALL, HAVE YOU MISSED ME?

Last night I could not sleep. The heat was great, my imagination
tortured. Ever and anon I fancied you were near, so rising from my bed
at last I sat looking down the terrace, each moment anticipating your
approach. By some miracle you were to arrive and to tell me that the
strength of my affection had drawn you.

Dawn tore the East to tatters, Phœbus shook himself and leaped out
golden. One by one the birds awoke. Yet my dream did not die until
Hieronimo (for so I have named the young peacock) shrieked harshly
beneath my window. Only then did I understand that you were still at
Bath; and with the knowledge of the eightscore miles of separating hill
and plain came the bitterest of tears--those from a lonely woman’s eyes.

So, genius and divine, wipe out their remembrance with the tenderest,
lovingest letter you ever wrote, and earn the everlasting gratitude of
thy Bedeswoman

                                                                 ALTHEA.


THE SAME TO THE SAME.

                                                      _Sept. 1st, 1710._

Since you chide me for my melancholy, dear, good Marston, tell me how
I may avoid it. Stay, do not write. Your protracted absence will soon
be over--’tis but a week to your return; a week of leaden hours whose
passing I shall count one by one, and enjoy them in the same way that
we enjoy crab-apples before a feast. The rapture of seeing you again,
of hearing your voice, ay, of breathing the same air, must come in one
overpowering excess. Because you love me I am crowned amongst women!
What glorious, mad words were those ending your last letter: ‘There may
be no real happiness for us in this sphere, but in the next, whate’er
betide, all my joy shall be with you.’

O fools that we be, not to dare to pluck the good which lies in our
power!

Forgive me now, for I am a coward and need assuring. Art thou sure
that after death thou wilt be mine? Nay, I could not live here under
suspicion of having yielded to the sweetest temptation. Rest content
then, dear heart. There is a particular Paradise for those denied joy
on earth. _Addio_, I have kissed the spot of my signature.


FRAGMENT OF A DIDACTIC SERMON BY THE ESTIMABLE DR. MARSTON.

Conquer then, I say, conquer the lusts of the flesh; trample them
beneath the feet; crush them as men crush venomous reptiles. Live
loftily and purely, admit no evil thought; do what good thou canst, and
thou shalt inherit God’s Kingdom. To the righteous evil desires never
come, and the most lovely career is that which like the sun swerves
not in its path and sinks to rest amidst the peaks of the country of
Beulah. The only perfect man is he whose life is calm and passionless,
etc. etc.


ALTHEA SWARTHMOOR TO DR. MARSTON.

                                                   _15th November 1710._

It is harder than I dreamed to live without you, in the now uncertain
hope of a meeting after this world. Yet when you ask me to meet you
again in the fir-wood for a long and sweet discourse such as we were
wont to have, I cannot but say nay; for my brother’s eyes have oft
been set upon me lately, and he has questioned me in strange fashion
concerning my abstraction and frequent absences. Dearest, I lied to
him, and said, with all the blood of my body rushing to my heart, that
I was much engaged in meditation and writing. I dare not meet you
to-night, but if you rise betimes in the morning I will be in the Long
Spinney. Till sunbreak then, yours,

                                                                 ALTHEA.


FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

                                                   _16th November 1710._

Let it be now, my lover, let us not wait until age or disease brings us
together. To die in the full expectation of joy, without one thought of
the gloomy past, with its lurid clouds and too-scorching light--to die
in the strongest appreciation, uncaring for men’s calumny--is my hope
and heart’s desire. And even if there be no future but eternal sleep,
’tis eternal sleep at thy side. What more can a tired, loving woman
wish for than rest by the man she adores? But there is another country,
of that I am assured. So we will brave it together, seize Death at the
height of Life, and enter, with unwarped souls, a new existence.

I have been to gaze upon our old trysting places for the last time.
Shall we be permitted to visit them when, existing for each other, we
pass hand in hand through the air?

At midnight Althea Swarthmoor will be counted amongst the Dead. She
calls thee--she bids thee welcome.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tradition is silent as to the precise manner of the lady’s end. Suffice
it to say that she died violently at the appointed time. Dr. Marston
survived her by forty years; becoming in turn Dean of Barnchester and
Bishop of Norbarry. Besides twelve volumes of sermons, he wrote a
‘Dissertation on the Human Feelings,’ which is still notorious for its
triteness.




THE RETURN


Five minutes ago I drew the window curtain aside and let the mellow
sunset light contend with the glare from the girandoles. Below lay the
orchard of Vernon Garth, rich in heavily flowered fruit-trees--yonder
a medlar, here a pear, next a quince. As my eyes, unaccustomed to the
day, blinked rapidly, the recollection came of a scene forty-five years
past, and once more beneath the oldest tree stood the girl I loved,
mischievously plucking yarrow, and, despite its evil omen, twining the
snowy clusters in her black hair. Again her coquettish words rang in
my ears: ‘Make me thy lady! Make me the richest woman in England, and
I promise thee, Brian, we shall be the happiest of God’s creatures.’
And I remembered how the mad thirst for gold filled me: how I trusted
in her fidelity, and without reasoning or even telling her that I would
conquer fortune for her sake, I kissed her sadly and passed into the
world. Then followed a complete silence until the _Star of Europe_,
the greatest diamond discovered in modern times, lay in my hand,--a
rough unpolished stone not unlike the lumps of spar I had often seen
lying on the sandy lanes of my native county. This should be Rose’s
own, and all the others that clanked so melodiously in their leather
bulse should go towards fulfilling her ambition. Rich and happy I
should be soon, and should I not marry an untitled gentlewoman, sweet
in her prime? The twenty years’ interval of work and sleep was like a
fading dream, for I was going home. The knowledge thrilled me so that
my nerves were strung tight as iron ropes and I laughed like a young
boy. And it was all because my home was to be in Rose Pascal’s arms.

I crossed the sea and posted straight for Halkton village. The old
hostelry was crowded. Jane Hopgarth, whom I remembered a ruddy-faced
child, stood on the box-edged terrace, courtesying in matronly fashion
to the departing mail-coach. A change in the sign-board drew my eye:
the white lilies had been painted over with a mitre, and the name
changed from the Pascal Arms to the Lord Bishop. Angrily aghast at this
disloyalty, I cross-questioned the ostlers, who hurried to and fro, but
failing to obtain any coherent reply I was fain to content myself with
a mental denunciation of the times.

At last I saw Bow-Legged Jeffries, now bent double with age, sunning
himself at his favourite place, the side of the horse-trough. As of old
he was chewing a straw. No sign of recognition came over his face as he
gazed at me, and I was shocked, because I wished to impart some of my
gladness to a fellow-creature. I went to him, and after trying in vain
to make him speak, held forth a gold coin. He rose instantly, grasped
it with palsied fingers, and, muttering that the hounds were starting,
hurried from my presence. Feeling half sad I crossed to the churchyard
and gazed through the grated window of the Pascal burial chapel at the
recumbent and undisturbed effigies of Geoffrey Pascal, gentleman, of
Bretton Hall; and Margot Maltrevor his wife, with their quaint epitaph
about a perfect marriage enduring for ever. Then, after noting the
rankness of the docks and nettles, I crossed the worn stile and with
footsteps surprising fleet passed towards the stretch of moorland at
whose further end stands Bretton Hall.

Twilight had fallen ere I reached the cottage at the entrance of the
park. This was in a ruinous condition: here and there sheaves in the
thatched roof had parted and formed crevices through which smoke
filtered. Some of the tiny windows had been walled up, and even where
the glass remained snake-like ivy hindered any light from falling into
their thick recesses.

The door stood open, although the evening was chill. As I approached,
the heavy autumnal dew shook down from the firs and fell upon my
shoulders. A bat, swooping in an undulation, struck between my eyes and
fell to the grass, moaning querulously. I entered. A withered woman sat
beside the peat fire. She held a pair of steel knitting-needles which
she moved without cessation. There was no thread upon them, and when
they clicked her lips twitched as if she had counted. Some time passed
before I recognised Rose’s foster-mother, Elizabeth Carless. The russet
colour of her cheeks had faded and left a sickly grey: those sunken,
dimmed eyes were utterly unlike the bright black orbs that had danced
so mirthfully. Her stature, too, had shrunk. I was struck with wonder.
Elizabeth could not be more than fifty-six years old. I had been
away twenty years; Rose was fifteen when I left her, and I had heard
Elizabeth say that she was only twenty-one at the time of her darling’s
weaning. But what a change! She had such an air of weary grief that my
heart grew sick.

Advancing to her side I touched her arm. She turned, but neither
spoke nor seemed aware of my presence. Soon, however, she rose, and
helping herself along by grasping the scanty furniture, tottered to a
window and peered out. Her right hand crept to her throat; she untied
the string of her gown and took from her bosom a pomander set in a
battered silver case. I cried out; Rose had loved that toy in her
childhood; thousands of times had we played ball with it.... Elizabeth
held it to her mouth and mumbled it, as if it were a baby’s hand.
Maddened with impatience, I caught her shoulder and roughly bade her
say where I should find Rose. But something awoke in her eyes, and
she shrank away to the other side of the house-place: I followed; she
cowered on the floor, looking at me with a strange horror. Her lips
began to move, but they made no sound. Only when I crossed to the
threshold did she rise; and then her head moved wildly from side to
side, and her hands pressed close to her breast, as if the pain there
were too great to endure.

I ran from the place, not daring to look back. In a few minutes I
reached the balustraded wall of the Hall garden. The vegetation
there was wonderfully luxuriant. As of old, the great blue and
white Canterbury bells grew thickly, and those curious flowers to
which tradition has given the name of ‘Marie’s Heart’ still spread
their creamy tendrils and blood-coloured bloom on every hand. But
‘Pascal’s Dribble,’ the tiny spring whose water pulsed so fiercely
as it emerged from the earth, had long since burst its bounds, and
converted the winter garden into a swamp, where a miniature forest of
queen-of-the-meadow filled the air with melancholy sweetness. The house
looked as if no careful hand had touched it for years. The elements had
played havoc with its oriels, and many of the latticed frames hung on
single hinges. The curtain of the blue parlour hung outside, draggled
and faded, and half hidden by a thick growth of bindweed.

With an almost savage force I raised my arm high above my head and
brought my fist down upon the central panel of the door. There was no
need for such violence, for the decayed fastenings made no resistance,
and some of the rotten boards fell to the ground. As I entered the hall
and saw the ancient furniture, once so fondly kept, now mildewed and
crumbling to dust, quick sobs burst from my throat. Rose’s spinet stood
beside the door of the withdrawing-room. How many carols had we sung to
its music! As I passed my foot struck one of the legs and the rickety
structure groaned as if it were coming to pieces. I thrust out my hand
to steady it, but at my touch the velvet covering of the lid came off
and the tiny gilt ornaments rattled downwards. The moon was just rising
and only half her disc was visible over the distant edge of the Hell
Garden. The light in the room was very uncertain, yet I could see that
the keys of the instrument were stained brown, and bound together with
thick cobwebs.

Whilst I stood beside it I felt an overpowering desire to play a
country ballad with an over-word of ‘Willow browbound.’ The words in
strict accordance with the melody are merry and sad by turns: at one
time filled with light happiness, at another bitter as the voice of
one bereaved for ever of joy. So I cleared off the spiders and began
to strike the keys with my forefinger. Many were dumb, and when I
struck them gave forth no sound save a peculiar sigh; but still the
melody rhythmed as distinctly as if a low voice crooned it out of the
darkness. Wearied with the bitterness, I turned away.

By now the full moonlight pierced the window and quivered on the floor.
As I gazed on the tremulous pattern it changed into quaint devices
of hearts, daggers, rings, and a thousand tokens more. All suddenly
another object glided amongst them so quickly that I wondered whether
my eyes had been at fault,--a tiny satin shoe, stained crimson across
the lappets. A revulsion of feeling came to my soul and drove away
all my fear. I had seen that selfsame shoe white and unsoiled twenty
years before, when vain, vain Rose danced amongst her reapers at the
harvest-home. And my voice cried out in ecstasy, ‘Rose, heart of mine!
Delight of all the world’s delights!’

She stood before me, wondering, amazed. Alas, so changed! The
red-and-yellow silk shawl still covered her shoulders; her hair still
hung in those eldritch curls. But the beautiful face had grown wan and
tired, and across the forehead lines were drawn like silver threads.
She threw her arms round my neck and, pressing her bosom heavily on
mine, sobbed so piteously that I grew afraid for her, and drew back
the long masses of hair which had fallen forward, and kissed again and
again those lips that were too lovely for simile. Never came a word of
chiding from them. ‘Love,’ she said, when she had regained her breath,
‘the past struggle was sharp and torturing--the future struggle will be
crueller still. What a great love yours was, to wait and trust for so
long! Would that mine had been as powerful! Poor, weak heart that could
not endure!’

The tones of a wild fear throbbed through all her speech, strongly,
yet with insufficient power to prevent her feeling the tenderness of
those moments. Often, timorously raising her head from my shoulder,
she looked about and then turned with a soft, inarticulate, and glad
murmur to hide her face on my bosom. I spoke fervently; told of the
years spent away from her; how, when working in the diamond-fields she
had ever been present in my fancy; how at night her name had fallen
from my lips in my only prayer; how I had dreamed of her amongst the
greatest in the land,--the richest, and, I dare swear, the loveliest
woman in the world. I grew warmer still: all the gladness which had
been constrained for so long now burst wildly from my lips: a myriad
of rich ideas resolved into words, which, being spoken, wove one long
and delicious fit of passion. As we stood together, the moon brightened
and filled the chamber with a light like the day’s. The ridges of the
surrounding moorland stood out in sharp relief.

Rose drank in my declarations thirstily, but soon interrupted me with
a heavy sigh. ‘Come away,’ she said softly. ‘I no longer live in this
house. You must stay with me to-night. This place is so wretched now;
for time, that in you and me has only strengthened love, has wrought
much ruin here.’

Half leaning on me, she led me from the precincts of Bretton Hall.
We walked in silence over the waste that crowns the valley of the
Whitelands and, being near the verge of the rocks, saw the great
pinewood sloping downwards, lighted near us by the moon, but soon
lost in density. Along the mysterious line where the light changed
into gloom, intricate shadows of withered summer bracken struck and
receded in a mimic battle. Before us lay the Priests’ Cliff. The
moon was veiled by a grove of elms, whose ever-swaying branches
alternately increased and lessened her brightness. This was a place of
notoriety--a veritable Golgotha--a haunt fit only for demons. Murder
and theft had been punished here; and to this day fireside stories are
told of evil women dancing round that Druids’ circle, carrying hearts
plucked from gibbeted bodies.

‘Rose,’ I whispered, ‘why have you brought me here?’

She made no reply, but pressed her head more closely to my shoulder.
Scarce had my lips closed ere a sound like the hiss of a half-strangled
snake vibrated amongst the trees. It grew louder and louder. A
monstrous shadow hovered above.

Rose from my bosom murmured. ‘Love is strong as Death! Love is strong
as Death!’

I locked her in my arms, so tightly that she grew breathless. ‘Hold
me,’ she panted. ‘You are strong.’

A cold hand touched our foreheads so that, benumbed, we sank together
to the ground, to fall instantly into a dreamless slumber.

When I awoke the clear grey light of the early morning had spread
over the country. Beyond the Hell Garden the sun was just bursting
through the clouds, and had already spread a long golden haze along the
horizon. The babbling of the streamlet that runs down to Halkton was
so distinct that it seemed almost at my side. How sweetly the wild
thyme smelt! Filled with the tender recollections of the night, without
turning, I called Rose Pascal from her sleep.

‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, waken! waken! waken! See how glad the world
looks--see the omens of a happy future.’

No answer came. I sat up, and looking round me saw that I was alone.
A square stone lay near. When the sun was high I crept to read the
inscription carved thereon:--‘_Here, at four cross-paths, lieth, with a
stake through the bosom, the body of Rose Pascal, who in her sixteenth
year wilfully cast away the life God gave._’




THE BASILISK


Marina gave no sign that she heard my protestation. The embroidery
of Venus’s hands in her silk picture of The Judgment of Paris was
seemingly of greater import to her than the love which almost tore
my soul and body asunder. In absolute despair I sat until she had
replenished her needle seven times. Then impassioned nature cried
aloud:--

‘You do not love me!’

She looked up somewhat wearily, as one debarred from rest. ‘Listen,’
she said. ‘There is a creature called a Basilisk, which turns men and
women into stone. In my girlhood I saw the Basilisk--I am stone!’

And, rising from her chair, she departed the room, leaving me in amazed
doubt as to whether I had heard aright. I had always known of some
curious secret in her life: a secret which permitted her to speak of
and to understand things to which no other woman had dared to lift
her thoughts. But alas! it was a secret whose influence ever thrust
her back from the attaining of happiness. She would warm, then freeze
instantly; discuss the purest wisdom, then cease with contemptuous lips
and eyes. Doubtless this strangeness had been the first thing to awaken
my passion. Her beauty was not of the kind that smites men with sudden
craving: it was pale and reposeful, the loveliness of a marble image.
Yet, as time went on, so wondrous became her fascination that even
the murmur of her swaying garments sickened me with longing. Not more
than a year had passed since our first meeting, when I had found her
laden with flaming tendrils in the thinned woods of my heritage. A very
Dryad, robed in grass colour, she was chanting to the sylvan deities.
The invisible web took me, and I became her slave.

Her house lay two leagues from mine. It was a low-built mansion lying
in a concave park. The thatch was gaudy with stonecrop and lichen.
Amongst the central chimneys a foreign bird sat on a nest of twigs.
The long windows blazed with heraldic devices; and paintings of kings
and queens and nobles hung in the dim chambers. Here she dwelt with
a retinue of aged servants, fantastic women and men half imbecile,
who salaamed before her with eastern humility and yet addressed her
in such terms as gossips use. Had she given them life they could not
have obeyed with more reverence. Quaint things the women wrought for
her--pomanders and cushions of thistledown; and the men were never
happier than when they could tell her of the first thrush’s egg in
the thornbush or the sege of bitterns that haunted the marsh. She was
their goddess and their daughter. Each day had its own routine. In the
morning she rode and sang and played; at noon she read in the dusty
library, drinking to the full of the dramatists and the platonists.
Her own life was such a tragedy as an Elizabethan would have adored.
None save her people knew her history, but there were wonderful stories
of how she had bowed to tradition, and concentrated in herself the
characteristics of a thousand wizard fathers. In the blossom of her
youth she had sought strange knowledge, and had tasted thereof, and
rued.

The morning after my declaration she rode across her park to the
meditating walk I always paced till noon. She was alone, dressed
in a habit of white lutestring with a loose girdle of blue. As her
mare reached the yew hedge, she dismounted, and came to me with more
lightness than I had ever beheld in her. At her waist hung a black
glass mirror, and her half-bare arms were adorned with cabalistic
jewels.

When I knelt to kiss her hand, she sighed heavily. ‘Ask me nothing,’
she said. ‘Life itself is too joyless to be more embittered by
explanations. Let all rest between us as now. I will love coldly, you
warmly, with no nearer approaching.’ Her voice rang full of a wistful
expectancy: as if she knew that I should combat her half-explained
decision. She read me well, for almost ere she had done I cried out
loudly against it:--‘It can never be so--I cannot breathe--I shall die?’

She sank to the low moss-covered wall. ‘Must the sacrifice be made?’
she asked, half to herself. ‘Must I tell him all?’ Silence prevailed
a while, then turning away her face she said: ‘From the first I loved
you, but last night in the darkness, when I could not sleep for
thinking of your words, love sprang into desire.’

I was forbidden to speak.

‘And desire seemed to burst the cords that bound me. In that moment’s
strength I felt that I could give all for the joy of being once utterly
yours.’

I longed to clasp her to my heart. But her eyes were stern, and a frown
crossed her brow.

‘At morning light,’ she said, ‘desire died, but in my ecstasy I had
sworn to give what must be given for that short bliss, and to lie in
your arms and pant against you before another midnight. So I have come
to bid you fare with me to the place where the spell may be loosed, and
happiness bought.’

She called the mare: it came whinnying, and pawed the ground until
she had stroked its neck. She mounted, setting in my hand a tiny,
satin-shod foot that seemed rather child’s than woman’s. ‘Let us go
together to my house,’ she said. ‘I have orders to give and duties to
fulfil. I will not keep you there long, for we must start soon on our
errand.’ I walked exultantly at her side, but, the grange in view,
I entreated her to speak explicitly of our mysterious journey. She
stooped and patted my head. ‘’Tis but a matter of buying and selling,’
she answered.

When she had arranged her household affairs, she came to the library
and bade me follow her. Then, with the mirror still swinging against
her knees, she led me through the garden and the wilderness down to
a misty wood. It being autumn, the trees were tinted gloriously in
dusky bars of colouring. The rowan, with his amber leaves and scarlet
berries, stood before the brown black-spotted sycamore; the silver
beech flaunted his golden coins against my poverty; firs, green and
fawn-hued, slumbered in hazy gossamer. No bird carolled, although the
sun was hot. Marina noted the absence of sound, and without prelude
of any kind began to sing from the ballad of the Witch Mother: about
the nine enchanted knots, and the trouble-comb in the lady’s knotted
hair, and the master-kid that ran beneath her couch. Every drop of my
blood froze in dread, for whilst she sang her face took on the majesty
of one who traffics with infernal powers. As the shade of the trees
fell over her, and we passed intermittently out of the light, I saw
that her eyes glittered like rings of sapphires. Believing now that the
ordeal she must undergo would be too frightful, I begged her to return.
Supplicating on my knees--‘Let me face the evil alone!’ I said, ‘I
will entreat the loosening of the bonds. I will compel and accept any
penalty.’ She grew calm. ‘Nay,’ she said, very gently, ‘if aught can
conquer, it is my love alone. In the fervour of my last wish I can dare
everything.’

By now, at the end of a sloping alley, we had reached the shores of a
vast marsh. Some unknown quality in the sparkling water had stained its
whole bed a bright yellow. Green leaves, of such a sour brightness as
almost poisoned to behold, floated on the surface of the rush-girdled
pools. Weeds like tempting veils of mossy velvet grew beneath in vivid
contrast with the soil. Alders and willows hung over the margin. From
where we stood a half-submerged path of rough stones, threaded by deep
swift channels, crossed to the very centre. Marina put her foot upon
the first step. ‘I must go first,’ she said. ‘Only once before have I
gone this way, yet I know its pitfalls better than any living creature.’

Before I could hinder her she was leaping from stone to stone like
a hunted animal. I followed hastily, seeking, but vainly, to lessen
the space between us. She was gasping for breath, and her heart-beats
sounded like the ticking of a clock. When we reached a great pool,
itself almost a lake, that was covered with lavender scum, the path
turned abruptly to the right, where stood an isolated grove of wasted
elms. As Marina beheld this, her pace slackened, and she paused in
momentary indecision; but, at my first word of pleading that she should
go no further, she went on, dragging her silken mud-bespattered skirts.
We climbed the slippery shores of the island (for island it was, being
raised much above the level of the marsh), and Marina led the way over
lush grass to an open glade. A great marble tank lay there, supported
on two thick pillars. Decayed boughs rested on the crust of stagnancy
within, and divers frogs, bloated and almost blue, rolled off at our
approach. To the left stood the columns of a temple, a round, domed
building, with a closed door of bronze. Wild vines had grown athwart
the portal; rank, clinging herbs had sprung from the overteeming soil;
astrological figures were enchiselled on the broad stairs.

Here Marina stopped. ‘I shall blindfold you,’ she said, taking off her
loose sash, ‘and you must vow obedience to all I tell you. The least
error will betray us.’ I promised, and submitted to the bandage. With
a pressure of the hand, and bidding me neither move nor speak, she
left me and went to the door of the temple. Thrice her hand struck the
dull metal. At the last stroke a hissing shriek came from within, and
the massive hinges creaked loudly. A breath like an icy tongue leaped
out and touched me, and in the terror my hand sprang to the kerchief.
Marina’s voice, filled with agony, gave me instant pause. ‘_Oh, why am
I thus torn between the man and the fiend? The mesh that holds life in
will be ripped from end to end! Is there no mercy?_’

My hand fell impotent. Every muscle shrank. I felt myself turn to
stone. After a while came a sweet scent of smouldering wood: such an
Oriental fragrance as is offered to Indian gods. Then the door swung
to, and I heard Marina’s voice, dim and wordless, but raised in wild
deprecation. Hour after hour passed so, and still I waited. Not until
the sash grew crimson with the rays of the sinking sun did the door
open.

‘Come to me!’ Marina whispered. ‘Do not unblindfold. Quick--we must not
stay here long. He is glutted with my sacrifice.’

Newborn joy rang in her tones. I stumbled across and was caught in
her arms. Shafts of delight pierced my heart at the first contact with
her warm breasts. She turned me round, and bidding me look straight in
front, with one swift touch untied the knot. The first thing my dazed
eyes fell upon was the mirror of black glass which had hung from her
waist. She held it so that I might gaze into its depths. And there,
with a cry of amazement and fear, _I saw the shadow of the Basilisk_.

The Thing was lying prone on the floor, the presentment of a sleeping
horror. Vivid scarlet and sable feathers covered its gold-crowned
cock’s-head, and its leathern dragon-wings were folded. Its sinuous
tail, capped with a snake’s eyes and mouth, was curved in luxurious and
delighted satiety. A prodigious evil leaped in its atmosphere. But even
as I looked a mist crowded over the surface of the mirror: the shadow
faded, leaving only an indistinct and wavering shape. Marina breathed
upon it, and, as I peered and pored, the gloom went off the plate and
left, where the Chimera had lain, the prostrate figure of a man. He
was young and stalwart, a dark outline with a white face, and short
black curls that fell in tangles over a shapely forehead, and eyelids
languorous and red. His aspect was that of a wearied demon-god.

When Marina looked sideways and saw my wonderment, she laughed
delightedly in one rippling running tune that should have quickened
the dead entrails of the marsh. ‘I have conquered!’ she cried. ‘I have
purchased the fulness of joy!’ And with one outstretched arm she closed
the door before I could turn to look; with the other she encircled my
neck, and, bringing down my head, pressed my mouth to hers. The mirror
fell from her hand, and with her foot she crushed its shards into the
dank mould.

The sun had sunk behind the trees now, and glittered through the
intricate leafage like a charcoal-burner’s fire. All the nymphs of
the pools arose and danced, grey and cold, exulting at the absence of
the divine light. So thickly gathered the vapours that the path grew
perilous. ‘Stay, love,’ I said. ‘Let me take you in my arms and carry
you. It is no longer safe for you to walk alone.’ She made no reply,
but, a flush arising to her pale cheeks, she stood and let me lift her
to my bosom. She rested a hand on either shoulder, and gave no sign of
fear as I bounded from stone to stone. The way lengthened deliciously,
and by the time we reached the plantation the moon was rising over the
further hills. Hope and fear fought in my heart: soon both were set at
rest. When I set her on the dry ground she stood a-tiptoe, and murmured
with exquisite shame: ‘To-night, then, dearest. My home is yours now.’

So, in a rapture too subtle for words, we walked together,
arm-enfolded, to her house. Preparations for a banquet were going
on within: the windows were ablaze, and figures passed behind them
bowed with heavy dishes. At the threshold of the hall we were met by
a triumphant crash of melody. In the musician’s gallery bald-pated
veterans stood to it with flute and harp and viol-de-gamba. In two long
rows the antic retainers stood, and bowed, and cried merrily: ‘Joy
and health to the bride and groom!’ And they kissed Marina’s hands
and mine, and, with the players sending forth that half-forgotten
tenderness which threads through ancient song-books, we passed to
the feast, seating ourselves on the daïs, whilst the servants filled
the tables below. But we made little feint of appetite. As the last
dish of confections was removing, a weird pageant swept across the
further end of the banqueting-room: Oberon and Titania with Robin
Goodfellow and the rest, attired in silks and satins gorgeous of hue,
and bedizened with such late flowers as were still with us. I leaned
forward to commend, and saw that each face was brown and wizened
and thin-haired: so that their motions and their epithalamy felt
goblin and discomforting; nor could I smile till they departed by the
further door. Then the tables were cleared away, and Marina, taking my
finger-tips in hers, opened a stately dance. The servants followed,
and in the second maze a shrill and joyful laughter proclaimed that the
bride had sought her chamber....

Ere the dawn I wakened from a troubled sleep. My dream had been of
despair: I had been persecuted by a host of devils, thieves of a
priceless jewel. So I leaned over the pillow for Marina’s consolation;
my lips sought hers, my hand crept beneath her head. My heart gave one
mad bound--then stopped.




DAME INOWSLAD


Sycamores and beeches surrounded the inn; elders, still green-flowered,
leaned over the grass-grown roads. The belt of sward was white with
lady-smocks, but in the damp hollows marsh-marigolds radiated essential
sunlight. The blackbirds sang, and loudly, yet without the true strain
of mirth: sang like blackbirds that must sing, but of rifled nests.
Even the grasshoppers had some trouble: never had they chirped so
pathetically before.

On the green the gilded figure of a bull hung from two uprights; it
swung from side to side in the light breeze. The copper bell on a
twisted pole hard by was green with mould: a-swing from it was a rusty
chain; it had been used in the old posting days, and many a yeoman had
haled himself into his saddle from the worn mounting-block beside it.

For the inn itself, it was vast and rambling, dwarfed by the towering
trees. For miles in every direction lay the old forest of Gardomwood,
a relic of primeval woodland, rich in glades and brakes, in streamlets
and mizzies: hazy in the clearings, where sheer-legs, like the trivets
of witches’ caldrons, and tents and blue-smoking heaps told of
charcoal-burners and their ever-shifting trade.

The Golden Bull with its beautiful precincts took me back to that
fading Arcady whose shepherdesses and swains felt the end of the
joy-time coming. It was utterly sad; but I was caught in the meshes of
its melancholy, and for the while could not escape. Twilight fell, and
I ceased from exploring, and went indoors. In the parlour was a great
square piano. Its music, while acidly discordant, was yet plaintive
with the curious speech such old things often own. I played a few
Robin Hood ballads--of the Outlaw and Little John, of the Bishop of
Hereford and Robin’s pleasing escape. Then the hostess entered with a
great Nottingham jar full of white lilac. She set this down between the
fire-dogs, and stood leaning one hand on a chair-back and listening to
the music. When I stopped she sighed heavily: I left the piano, and
offered her a chair. She was middle-aged and deformed; her shoulders
were humped, her face was shrivelled, but she had large grey eyes and a
wistful smile.

‘I thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘’Twas the music drew me in. Nobody’s
played since last summer, when Sir Jake Inowslad stayed here. His taste
was sonatas and fugues--things pretty enow, but only pleasing at the
time. Give me a melody that I can catch--almost grasp in my hand so to
speak.’

‘Do you play?’ I asked, half-hoping to hear some air she had loved in
her youth.

‘No, I cannot play. I was still-room maid at Melbrook Abbey, so I never
had opportunity.’

As she spoke, a girl came in with the snuffer-tray and candles. She was
pale and tall and of a tempting shape. Beautiful she was not, yet the
sad strangeness of her face impressed me more than great beauty would
have done. Her eyes were like the other woman’s, but clearer and more
expressive; her lips were quaintly arched; long yellow hair hung down
her back. She seemed, although she walked erect, to be recovering from
some violent illness. When she had gone the hostess spoke again. ‘My
niece is not strong,’ she said, laying an unnecessary emphasis on the
word _niece_. ‘The air does not suit her.’

‘Was not she bred in the country?’ I inquired.

‘Ah, no! She is not without money--her father endowed her well. Until
two years back she was at the convent of the Sisters of Saint Vincent
de Paul for her education. ’Tis in the hill-country, and I think that
coming to the flatness of Gardomwood has done her harm.’

The girl came in again: this time I noted her grace of movement; it had
something of the wearied goddess. ‘Aunt,’ she said quietly, ‘I wish to
go into the woods--you can spare me? All I had to do is done; the women
are sewing in the kitchen.’ She went to the further end of the room,
where a cloak of rose-coloured silk hung, ermine-lined, from a nail in
the panelling. She donned it at her leisure; her long and narrow hands
were of a perfect colour. She tied the broad ribands of the collar; she
lighted two candles that hung before a tarnished mirror, and gazed at
her shadow; then, her lips moving silently, she left the room.

‘Ever the same,’ the elder woman said. ‘Night after night does she
leave the house and travel about like an aimless thing. Come back,
Dinah,’ she called, ‘come back.’ But the thin voice went wavering
through the empty passages unanswered. So the hostess rose and with a
half-apologetic ‘Good-night,’ left me alone. I sat down in the deep
recess of the window behind a heavy curtain. A copy of Denis Diderot’s
_Religieuse_ lay on the little table. I took it up, and was soon
engrossed in it: for of all books this is the most fascinating, the
most disappointing, the most grim. A light came glimmering at the
end of the vista before me: it grew and grew, and the moon uplifted
herself waist-high above the trees. And when I had watched her thus
far, I returned to my nun and reached page twenty-two of the second
volume, where I read the following sentence: ‘After a few flourishes
she played some things, foolish, wild, and incoherent as her own ideas,
but through all the defects of her execution I saw she had a touch
infinitely superior to mine.’ Then in the shaded window-seat I fell
asleep....

The striking of a tall clock near the hearth awakened me: I had slept
till midnight. The candles had been removed from the table to the
piano; those in the girandole had guttered out or been extinguished.
A young man sat at the piano on the embroidered stool. His back was
towards me; I saw nothing but high, narrow shoulders and a dome-shaped
head of dishevelled black hair plentifully besprinkled with grey.
From the road outside came a noise of horses whinnying and plunging.
I looked out, and there was a lumbering coach drawn by four stallions
which, black in daylight, shone now like burnished steel.

The would-be musician turned and showed me a long painful face with
glistening eyes and a brow ridged upward like a ruined stair. It was
a face of intense eagerness: the eagerness of a man experimenting and
praying for a result whereon his life depends. Without any prelude he
played a dance of ghosts in an old ball-room: ghosts of men and women
that moved in lavoltas and sarabands; ghosts that laughed at Susanna
in the tapestry; ghosts that loved and hated. When the last chord
had sent them crowding to their graves he turned and listened for a
footstep. None came. He lifted a leather case from the side of the
stool and, unfastening its clasps, took out a necklace which glistened
in the candlelight like a fairy shower of rain and snow. ’Twas of table
diamonds and margarites, the gems as big as filberts. He spread it
across the wires, and after an instant’s reflection began to play. The
carcanet rattled and jangled as he went: it was as an advancing host of
cymbal-women. When he listened again, great tears oozed from his eyes.
He took up the jewel and played a melody vapid at first, but so subtle
in its repetitions that none might doubt its meaning: thus and not
otherwise would sound a lyke-wake sung in a worn voice after a night
of singing. And whilst he played, the door opened silently, and I saw
Dinah, there in her nightgown, holding the posts with her hands. She
took one swift glance, then disappeared again in the darkness, and came
back carrying in her arms a bundle swathed in pure linen and strongly
redolent of aromatic herbs. Holding this to her breast, she approached
the man. Her shadow fell across the keys, and he lifted his head. From
both came a long murmur: his of love and joy and protection, hers of
agony. He rose and would have clasped her, but she drew back and placed
her burden in his outstretched hands.

‘It is the child,’ she said. ‘Three months ago I gave birth to her,
none knew save myself.... She was all that remained of you: all that I
had, and I dared not part with her.... But now--now that I have seen
you again--take her away--leave me--leave me in peace.’

‘Dinah,’ he said proudly, ‘listen to me.’

‘Nay,’ she whispered, ‘not again. If I listen I may forget your
wickedness; I might be weak again. Leave me, Jake.’

‘Dinah, you must hear me. Why, out of all the love you held and hold
for me, can you condemn? When I left you I fell mad; for the year I
have been mad, and only yesterday did they set me loose. See, I have
brought you all the diamonds; to-morrow you will be Dame Inowslad.’ And
he laid the dead thing on a table, and caught the mother to his bosom.
Her figure was shaken with sobs.

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘it has been hard; but my trial has brought the true
guerdon of happiness. Only once have I missed seeing the place where
you promised to meet me--the place where you said you loved me; and
that was on the night of my lonely travailing.’

Outside the horses plunged and snorted: a shrunken postillion swaying
at the neck of the off-leader. In the hollows of the road lay sheets
of mist, and the moonlight turned them into floods. A long train of
startled owls left the hollow sycamores and passed hooting ... hooting
... down the glade.

‘Let us go,’ Sir Jake said; ‘by morning light we shall be in sight of
Cammere, where Heaven grant us a happy time;--a year of joy for each
week of pain. Do not wait to dress; rich robes and linen are inside the
coach; I have brought many of my mother’s gowns.’

Dinah extricated herself from his embrace, and went to find her cloak.
During her absence a strange and terrible look came into Inowslad’s
face and he smote his forehead. He smiled at her re-appearing. ‘Dinah,’
he said, looking downwards, so that she might not see his eyes, ‘Dinah,
I am so happy that I can scarce see. Lead me from the house.’

He took up the dead little one in his right arm, and carried it as
believers carry relics. The outer door closed softly; they descended
the mossgrown steps, and entered the coach. The horses leaped forward,
half drowning the sound of a chuckle. A glint of the moon pierced the
coach windows, and I saw a brown hand, convulsed and violent, griping a
long white throat.




EXCERPTS FROM WITHERTON’S JOURNAL: ALSO A LETTER OF CRYSTALLA’S


The principal events of Pliny Witherton’s life are written at length in
Goodwin’s _Records of English Painters_, a volume published by Dodsley
in 1752. He is described therein as one whose genius went beyond his
achievement; who suffered ecstatic pain in conception, yet brought
forth little worthy of remembrance.

Personally he was small and ill-formed: of that sallow countenance and
red skein-like hair wherewith tradition has gifted Judas Iscariot. His
gait was felinely nimble, his voice harsh. Notwithstanding his great
defects, he was a favourite with women.

He died at his zenith. His celebrity was ephemeral; for, possessed of
a curious medium, the secret of whose preparation he refused to share
with any contemporary, he used it with such fatal effect that his
works, which were strangely rich at first, became almost colourless
after the lapse of a few decades. The only picture still existent is
at Hambleton; where is also preserved the journal whence the following
extracts are taken. It is a ‘Boadicea,’ faded to a sober brown.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Jan. 12, 1700._--This morning my uncle chose the story of Jacob
wrestling with the Angel. I know not how I bore his tedious droning.
He pictured the dullest scene, put into their mouths the dullest
words. And there came something that thrust a hand through my breast
and caught about my heart, and forced tears down my cheeks. Oh to have
shown them what I beheld!

Little Anne saw me through the broken panel of the Earl’s pew, and put
her fingers to my knee to feel the thrilling. But I thrust them away,
for the child is a bastard and as ugly as a toad--yet not so ugly
neither, but foreign (her mother came of the Rouvigny’s) and pale and
quiet. She is downtrodden by madam the Countess. May be I was hard upon
her.

The lass blenched, for had she not but yesternight slyly given me her
father’s present--a golden guinea--to buy colours for my work? What if
she give me no more! Alack! So after the _Amen_ was mumbled I stole
with her to the pools amongst the groove-hillocks, and showed her
rush-tips covered with hoar above the ice. As we stood she put her arm
about my neck and said: ‘We are both lonely, none loves us.’ And I fell
angry again and struck her face. ‘I am not lonely, I shall be famous,’
I cried; ‘but you, Mistress Craven-spirit, are fit for naught but
nursing madam’s brats.’

_May 1, 1703._--Too terrible Fortune, prisoning me in an iron cage;
from between whose bars I see thy wheel turning, turning, turning!
To-day is my twentieth birthday, and I have done no work for all these
years. Creations enow have stirred my brain. I see heroes in jewelled
harness; ruddy-hued and beautiful dames. They play their parts, yet
when I take the crayon, ’tis to depict a crowd of malkins. God, never
was being so ill-fated!

Anne brought me a purse woven of her own coarse hair; it held eight
crowns and a posy-ring. Yesterday I had threatened to leave this
accursed house and never send word. She hath now sold all her trinkets.
The office of secretary to such a dotard as the Earl I loathe; and the
continual buzzing of my hummer-bee-uncle frets my very soul.

I walked with Anne on Danman’s Moor, and the strong wind blew a colour
into her hollow cheeks. Moreover, her eyes looked very big and
lustrous. But she wore such a faded gown as any village alewife would
have scorned; and the looseness made her shoulders seem huckled. Withal
on her lips was such a smile as I shall give Christ’s Mother in my
masterpiece. As I gazed the rosiness deepened, and she murmured in a
voice half-moan, ‘Is there aught worthy there?’ So, being malicious of
humour, I praised that smile, and saw her bosom rise and fall like a
wild beast’s panting apart from the hunters.

_Jan. 9, 1704._--At last I have left Hambleton. There was no money
there, and my lord strove to repress my ambition with his eternal ‘Thy
uncle on his death-bed wished it so. For, leaving thee not a penny,
he commended thee to my care. The chaplainship shall be thine, an’ I
need no secretary-work save what thou canst do at odd times. Alas! nine
daughters have I to dower!’ And Anne had given me all, so I rolled my
pictures in a bundle and am come to seek the patronage of our great
men, who, as I have learnt, are ever ready to help on struggling Wits.

_July 27, 1704._--O Heaven, that this world should be so cruel! Flouted
in rich fools’ antechambers; turned roughly from door after door! Shame
devours me to-day; for though poverty no longer pricks me I have sold
my honour. Twenty golden pieces earned with bloody sweat lie on the
table. The signs were delivered scarce two hours since. The first I
wrought had some solace, for the Angel was a careful presentment of
Lucy, as sweet a maid as England holds. But twelve years old, and yet
with the wit and loveliness of Sheba’s queen, how she shrivels her
base-born half-sister! A hundred times since I came to this town has
her proud excellence disquieted my slumbers. The beauty that daunts a
man’s the beauty for me.

Accursed be this vile place where art and genius crouch together in the
alleys!

_Septr. 30, 1704._--The last page I may write in this poor journal
shall contain naught of anger. Once I read that he conquers who strives
with circumstance. No greater fallacy was ever writ. The last coin is
spent; utter ruin in store. The certainty of my gift hinders me from
pandering again to the vulgar. Life and I nearly parted at the great
humiliation. Those terrible pictures, to whose doing desperation forced
me, haunt me like ghosts. I dared not pace the streets lest I should
see my handiwork swinging over the causey. It is better for me to die.

To Anne I bequeath all good and tender wishes, for she alone would aid
me in my early strugglings. In this my last hour I fully acknowledge
her kindness....

_Oct. 1, 1704._--Dolt that I was to lose courage! At last the goddess
hath smoothed her frown. When I rose at the sound of knocking ’twas to
find a cloaked and hooded woman at my door. The domino fell open and
discovered Anne’s face, haggard and stained with tears. In her hands
she carried a heavy bag. ‘My Aunt Rouvigny is dead,’ she cried, ‘and
since she might leave me naught by will this she gave me in private.
None knows of it save myself. It is yours--all lies before you now.
Take the road to Fame.’ And though we had not met for so long, she
waited for no word.

Dear heart, to resign that fortune for my sake! When I have seen all
that Europe boasts, and studied the works of the dark masters, I will
return and make her my wife. Here is a copy of what I writ to her at
Hambleton:--

‘Mistress, I entreat you would be pleased to receive my very great
thanks for the largeness of your generosity. I have warmer dreams of my
work than ever, and with travel and the instruction of Italian artists
I hope to do wondrous pictures. You have been my staff, and when the
day comes that I already foresee, I shall cast myself a willing slave
at your feet.--I am your humble Servant,

                                                       PLINY WITHERTON.’

       *       *       *       *       *

[The journal contains an accurate narrative of adventures on the
Continent. Anne’s gift was a thousand guineas. The relation of
Witherton’s amours in France and Italy is worthy of Smollett. Anne’s
constancy is noted at intervals. Her father and the tyrannical Countess
had died, and left her guardian of their nine children, and she spent
the years at Hambleton fostering the estate.

Witherton suffered anguish before the Titians at Venice, and swooned
in the Sistine Chapel. English art being what it was, his work won him
some notice in Rome. Success strengthened his imagination, and his
creations became more virile.

At the Russian Court, whither he travelled from Italy, he was made
painter-in-chief, and found his emoluments so large, and his position
so vastly improved, that at the end of the fifth year he returned to
England, with the intention of fulfilling his promise to Anne.]

       *       *       *       *       *

_Jan. 1, 1710._--’Tis no longer the Hambleton of my boyhood; ’tis a
centre of wretchedness and parsimony! Then all was lavishness--open
house--the whole world welcome. Even whilst the leather hung rotting
from the walls, came tuns of wine and rare fruits for each season. Now
a new order ruleth;--to the deuce with such cheeseparing! ‘Mistress
orders the fish from our own ponds; mistress orders the gorcocks to be
killed on Danman’s Moor.’ The meanness of habit that sickened me in
earlier times has now reached head.

And yesternight I made her understand. In the days before the
_cognoscenti_ acknowledged my genius, we had been wont to watch the New
Year in from the windows of the Grecian temple that lies a quoit’s-cast
from the hill-walk.

When we had supped together she rose from the table, and courtesied
with an old maid’s awkwardness.

‘You play hoodman-blind when I am by,’ she said. ‘Do you not see my
gown? From Firenze you wrote that purple becomes pale faces best.’

But one at table had worn damassin of pale green, woven with gold and
silver arabesks--Lady Lucy, a debonair maid, rosy-lipped and eyed like
Venus--and I had sight for no other.

Mistress drew me to the bay, and pointed to the clearing beyond the
pines where seven squares of light fell on the frosty grass.

‘In your honour, O painter mine, a fire has burned there all week, and
now five hundred candles are lighted! When we went before ’twas as
downtrodden children. To-night let us sit and watch and listen to the
bells.’

She laid her hand on my arm, and drawing over her shoulders the rich
furs I had brought as a spousal gift, passed with me from the house.
When we reached the temple steps, she ran forward and flung the valves
open, so that, even ere we entered, we were bathed in the glow. Inside
much reparation had been done: the walls shone in white and gold, and
the ceiling-fresco of ‘Aurora pursuing Night’ was newly cleaned and
restored. The chamber was warm and sweet with burning logs. We closed
the door and sat on the pigskin stools by the fire, the length of the
hearth lying betwixt.

Drifting against the glass came the noise of Edale Bells. The lads were
drunk as ever, lashing out the old tempestuous jangle.

‘We are crowned,’ she said. ‘We have ever fought side by side, and now
we are victors.’

I looked at her, and saw that the frost had pinched her face and
reddened her eyes. Then I gazed at Aurora, juicy and fresh. On the
hearth lay a withered leaf that had tapped in after us: on the table a
great yellow rose. And I was moved by these things to speak the truth.

‘Anne, let it be all over between us. We have grown apart; life
together would be miserable.... I have my art, and you would bind me to
earth. From this night we will be cordial friends; lovers we have never
been.... I cannot love you.’

After a while she turned her eyes from mine and bowed her head. ‘Better
so,’ she murmured. ‘I am not worthy.’

For an hour she sat in silence, flushing and twining her hands....


CRYSTALLA’S LETTER TO THE _Spectator_.

                                                        _Jan. 19, 1712._

_Mr._ Spectator,

As I have dwelt in these wilds since my birth, and, though an Earl’s
daughter, have never been permitted to show myself in London, a
description of my face and figure must needs give you pleasure. ’Tis
not my own, but that of Pictor, read to me from this Journal.

‘Of a full, ripe beauty, such as none but Virgins of high birth
possess. A face neither round nor oval, but something between, touched
with the softness of an apricock’s sunside. Eyes lupin-coloured; in
sober moments half-hid behind velvet lashes, but when roused sparkling
azure fire. Lips such as a god might pasture on. Shoulders pure and
white and smoothly dimpled; and a waist of most admirable shape. A foot
so arched that Philip, her pet sparrow, cowers ’neath the instep.’

Methinks, sir, if you but saw me, spite of your melancholy, you also
would fall in love. Though I be modest, I protest that the picture is
nowise over-coloured. The simple country folk are so enamoured of my
person that the louts line the way to church, and swear when ’tis fine,
‘’Tis Crystalla’s weather.’

That your humble servant may receive advice concerning the disposal of
her person, she begs to lay her case before you. For two years she has
been courted by an aged nobleman, who offers her a position of highest
rank, and such wealth as only pertains to princes. There are many
stains on his character, but he is old and not like to live long.

And now Pictor himself comes forward and sighs at my feet. He is
a man of great fame, and, moreover, one attached by old kindness
to my family. He is strangely ugly, being livid-skinned and
orange-tawny-haired; but, notwithstanding, it has never fallen to me to
meet a man of so many attractions. Maybe his stealthiness charms me,
for he is like a cat treading softly and creeping from all manner of
places; and I vow I would rather wed him than the handsomest man made
since Adam.

He hath had love passages with a poor relation of mine, whom my
parents, in return for fancied services, made guardian of my sisters
and myself. She is a vixen and a shrew, who fancies to keep us within
bounds; but I’ll have none of her! Pictor, coming from a foreign land,
brought her many gifts, utterly forgetting your handmaid, but their
meeting was the quaintest and coldest thing (on his side) that I have
yet beheld.

When he saw me his humour changed, and he put himself forward to
delight, and his witless creature wept for very joy. With time,
however, I saw his distaste grow and grow, till I could scarce forbear
twitting both.

Now I see her going quietly about her work, but sighing in odd corners
as if her heart would break.

So, dear Mr. Spectator, I desire you to inform me whether, being an
Earl’s daughter, it would be great folly in me to choose the painter
and flout the duke. The one holds me in chains of fascination; the
other, though I don’t hate him, wakens no tender feeling.

I am, Sir, your dutiful and obedient servant and admirer,
                                                              CRYSTALLA.

_P.S.--I entreat you let me know soon._




MY FRIEND


They have just told me that I cannot live beyond midnight. But this is
no confession of guilt. Knowing that I was soon to see an unknown land,
and that the friend I had won (the first and the last) loved me so
dearly that he would be unhappy unless his hand were clasping mine--did
I sin in my desire that he should go forth, and be waiting for me?

A fortnight ago I met him in the street. His head was hanging, his
gait dejected, he was talking to himself. I stood watching him. As
he approached, long before he really saw me, a change came over him:
his figure grew erect, his face sharpened, his lips closed. He smiled
strangely as our eyes met, and I felt exultant in the knowledge that
such spontaneous gladness should never degenerate. I took his hand, and
held it so long that the townsfolk looked and laughed.

‘Gabriel,’ I said, ‘I have been dreaming of you again. I thought we had
gone together to spend Sunday on the Naze of Blakelow.’ A warm flush of
pleasure spread over his face. ‘Yes,’ I went on, ‘and you said in my
dream that it was the last of the vignettes’ (he had a way of calling
our short holidays ‘vignettes’), ‘and I replied that this was on a
grander scale.’ He laughed, though I am sure he did not understand.
‘If only you _would_ go,’ he made answer, ‘I feel that I should be so
much better for the mountain air. I am out of tune with all the world
but you. I can start soon--in two hours, if you will.’ So we met later.
I looked on his dark face, and my heart leaped out to him. I forgot
the acrimony of living with those whose only feeling for me was one of
relationship; forgot the Dead Sea apples of my past, and felt joyful
beyond expression: often pressing my hand to my heart, where the toy I
carried nestled in its scarlet sheath.

Something in his face told me that he was sad. ‘You are not happy now?’
I said. ‘I am not,’ he replied. ‘I am envious of you. Your life is so
free: you have no business affairs to drag you to earth. But I shall
be happy soon; it is good to be with you.’ As for myself, I never was
happier. My spirits rose quickly; from the far recesses of my brain I
brought the wildest thoughts to lay before him. Flashes of inspiration
that only showed in his presence (sparks of divine fire, perhaps) spun
themselves into one glittering string for his sake.

We were to sleep at the Eagle, a hostelry whose prosperity began
dwindling with the decline of coaching. It lies eighteen miles from
our town, midway between the hamlets Ashstraw and Glosboro. Neither of
us had been there before; but the guide-book was explicit. The weather
was dull; but it took no hold on me. We left the precincts of the town
and reached the great moorland with its bridle-path. When the dense
smoke of the furnaces had given place to fresh, heather-scented air, I
essayed a question.

‘Are you still depressed?’

‘No,’ he cried, with his brown eyes full of mirth.

‘Then you are perfectly happy?’ said I. (It was always gratifying to be
assured of this.)

‘I cannot be otherwise when I have left the town with you,’ he said.

And at this I took his arm, for it was always less painful to
myself when I walked close to him. We began to talk of our dreams.
Circumstances had bound him to a profession that chafed his very core;
but Nature had given him aspirations, and miraged him a future as great
(if as worthless) as my own.

How daring I grew! Farther and farther I had ventured down the
heretical abyss. Gabriel’s face gleamed with amazement: he drank it
all in greedily. Was it not curious that I, who knew how fast the end
was nearing, should have dared to relax my hold upon those snatches of
hope which are as straws to the drowning man? After a time I turned the
discussion--if you may call a monologue discussion--to my favourite
theme, which is death. I had grown so morbid that I could pile horror
upon horror. I gloated on the orthodox eternity: I drew brave pictures
of my childhood’s Satan in his environment of fire and gloom. But after
the sunset rain came down in torrents. In five minutes we were wet to
the skin. My clothes were old, my shoes let water; I had no umbrella,
but walked under Gabriel’s. Just before twilight the path left the
heath, and descended abruptly to the grass-grown coach-road that runs
along the side of the hill they call the Silver Patines. Evening fell.
The rain hissed on the heather, and the wind, catching the few gnarled
thorns, drew from them a dull, sonorous cry. The river, somewhat in
flood, rushed over jagged stones; a few moorland sheep were sheltering
under the rocks that lined his banks. Owls, so unfamiliar with man that
they rattled their wings well-nigh in our faces, went whirring through
the air. They started a train of abstract reasoning in me as to the
doctrine of transmigration.

‘Ah, Pythagoras’s metempsychosis!’ I said to myself. I am certain that
my tongue was silent; yet Gabriel smiled. I was slightly hurt, and,
drawing my arm away, walked to the other side of the road, refusing to
shelter beneath the umbrella. Soon came the knowledge that his smile
contained no touch of contempt, but was only a glad movement for that
he knew himself in such sympathy with me as to apprehend my unvoiced
fancy. I hastened to his side, and begged him to forgive. But the
charm was broken for a time. My thoughts had withered, my words were
grown unpregnant. So his happiness fled, there came a sequence of
those drossy moments when silence is loathsome, yet must be. We felt
them keenly. My head grew hot with grief: I it was who had snapped the
golden cord. We had not walked much further before Gabriel stopped and
leaned his cheek on the wet stones of the wall. ‘I wish that I were
dead,’ he murmured. ‘I am tired.’

‘Then shall we go back?’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would be best. We are both
wet through: the inn may be uncomfortable--the rooms damp.’

He turned and gave me his hand. ‘Go back?’ he gasped: ‘go back? Why--I
wish--that I might pass--all my life thus!’

‘With the shadows and the rain and the wind’s howling,’ I added
laughingly, ‘and no home, but inn after inn, strange bed after strange
bed?’

‘No home, and you with me!’ he cried. ‘Ah! I could forget everything if
you were with me.’

By now we could see nothing afar from us. At intervals a sound as of
heavy hoofs a-splash on the road warned us to go warily. Ever and
anon we waded tiny gullies. Thrice blasts of warm air, from the airt
in which we were going, fluttered about my cheek and my hands. I
fancied, and said, that these were disembodied souls hustled by the
storm. Gabriel could not feel them; and when I said that another and
yet another had touched me, held out his hands without avail. The wind
piped with a shriller sound, changing its tone to one that mystified
me, for we had passed the region of trees. Long-drawn sighs came first,
then chords of broken melody, then whisperings as it were in a foreign
tongue. Why, we were nearing some Druid stones! Ten yards to the right
they stood, in a perfect circle, stately and tall, their bases hid in
ling.

Again a change in the wind’s song: a thousand shrieks as though men
were being tortured with sharp knives. I turned to Gabriel, and spoke;
it seemed as if my voice leaped with the storm. ‘Gabriel,’ I cried.
‘What is it?’ His wan face came near to mine. ‘I hear nothing,’ he
said. ‘Come, let us hurry; it is getting late--they may not let us in.’
And a change had come into his voice too; a troubled note, as if a
dread had swept over him. ‘You are not afraid?’ I said lightly. He made
no reply.

Suddenly, as I listened, the heavens were rent from end to end, and a
flash of lightning leaped out: to laugh and dance and gambol on the
hill-tops, and then skip hissing across the river.

A sacrificial hymn was beginning at the Circle--a naked and bleeding
victim was bound to the altar--fire and water were there--the
long-bearded priests shook their white robes--the sharp knife
glittered--and my own stiletto waxed heavy, as it strove to draw me
downwards. I lifted my hand: just to touch the smooth pearl handle!
Again the skies opened, but with only a momentary gleam; one glance of
the Almighty Eye. But it was not so swift as to prevent me from seeing
the face of the Sacrifice. ‘They have taken him away,’ I faltered. ‘He
was at my side an instant ago.’ Gabriel drew me away.

He was shivering. For the first time that night I thought of his
health. ‘Let us run,’ I said. ‘Give me your hand.’ He lowered his
umbrella (it was of small use now, for the wind had risen--risen!)
and then, hand in hand like young children, we ran together. It was
delightful; but we were tired. So our feet were soon stayed, and,
standing at an abrupt turn of the valley, we were aware of a lonely
light agleam in the darkness--the light of the first house we had
remarked since our nightmare town. It disappeared ere we reached the
threshold. A sign-board flapped uneasily, and we found that our
journey was done. It was a vision of gables, with dormers and oriels;
immense beams here and there upheld a sodden thatch; the chimney
stacks, huddled and incongruously set, gave forth no friendly smoke.
With a mad desire to harangue, I ascended the perron-staircase,
and grasping its scrolled balustrade, began:--‘Friend Gabriel, who
listenest with the night bats and the darkness--what is the soul?’
(Heedless of the pelting rain and Gabriel’s tender lungs: brute that I
was!) ‘Nay,’ I continued, ‘rather what is the body? That I can define:
husks--husks--a frippery of flesh!’ The light came again, this time at
an upper window. I struck the door with my fist; but nobody heeded.

A few nights before Gabriel and I had seen a strolling company play
_Cymbeline_: so I began to mimic the stentorian voice of the Imogen.
The keyhole, which was hard to find, was covered with a stiff and rusty
scutcheon, which I had some difficulty in moving. At last, though, I
could press my lips to the void, and ‘What, ho, Pisanio!’ I cried.
Gabriel was too tired to smile; but footsteps came along the passage,
and after a wearisome time the bolts were all undrawn, and the door
opened as wide as the chain would run. A harsh and feeble voice came
forth upon the night: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Supper and a room,’ I
said. Another minute, and we stood in a yellow-washed hall, hung at
even distances with dusty stags’-heads. A few paintings of scriptural
scenes, done in Guercino’s style and framed in black, were fixed
between queer oak carvings, the subjects taken from the superstitions
of Holy Church, for in the first I saw Christ, crowned with a great
golden aureole, descending a ladder into flames that coiled snake-like
about the bottom rungs.

I showed it to Gabriel; but he scarce seemed to heed. His eyes and
mind were fixed on the woman who stood looking at us, the candle held
above her head. To tell the truth, I never saw a stranger creature. She
wore a long gown of amber cloth, padded voluminously, but unbuttoned
at the bosom and showing her brown, wrinkled throat. Her feet were
shoeless, and were covered with grey stockings. Her face was profoundly
unhallowed. There were remains of marvellous beauty; unparalleled
eyes, pure and light blue and unfathomably deep, under white, knotted,
bushy brows. No other feature did I note, save loose, prehensile lips
and rippling flaxen hair that fell, like a young girl’s, in great
locks over her shoulders. In truth, she had sinned monstrously; and
in punishment thereof Nature had gifted the most alluring of her
sweetnesses with a perenneity of youth: so making her a frightful
anomaly--a terrifying Death-and-Life. She stood bowed; her mouth
twisting, her eyes falling with inquiry on me. Gabriel she scarce
observed; and I know not what in myself attracted her. I was excited,
and could scarce repress my mirth. Yet, when I think of it, how oddly
laughter would have rung along that mildewed passage! How Sara in the
painting of the Angel’s Visit would have smiled a grimmer smile!

After a while, sighing heavily, she turned and led the way to a great
room. Here she lighted two candles on the central table and, bidding
us wait for a little, disappeared. We could hear her movements grow
more and more distant. I sat on a tiny settee--(bah, how cold it
was!)--whilst Gabriel wandered about, lifting the candle at times to
the Italian landscapes painted on the panelling. ‘The Colosseum!’ he
cried suddenly--‘and not ruined, but in its full pride. See, I can’t
understand this!’ He drew me towards the picture (poor Gabriel was
always a lover of art),--I looked, and was amazed to see the building
I had so often dreamed of glistening in the moonlight. But my gaze was
not so deeply interested as his, and, leaving the picture, it fell
upon the miniature of a young girl above the mantelpiece. A host of
memories came, my eyes grew dim, my chin trembled. Surely--surely--the
likeness was familiar? Yet it could not be. The woman with the web of
flaxen hair, Lenore whom I had lost, but never loved, Lenore whom I had
forgotten years ago. Lenore with a rose--a lust-flower--a flower of
volupty--warming the iciness of the breasts it glowed between! _Lenore!
Lenore! Lenore!_

I could not show it to Gabriel. It was not Lenore. How should the
portrait of the holy witch, who slept so peacefully, encounter me here
of all places? Fie! An instant, and I had fallen to speculating as the
jack-o’-lanthorn of my folly bade, when the hostess came back. She bore
a pan of live coals and a bundle of fagots; these she threw on the
hearth, so that a bright flame was soon leaping giddily up the chimney.
‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘your chamber is making ready. Supper shall be
laid anon.’

Gabriel and I went to the fireside now, and stood in the heat. He
was silent but not unhappy: indeed the gleaming of his sunken eyes
went far towards dispelling the passion awakened by the miniature.
Again the woman entered, this time with a laden tray. She drew the
table nearer the fire, and, having spread the cloth and arranged the
quaint china, produced from a large press dishes of old-fashioned
confections--rose-petals, clusterberries, and almond comfits. Also,
there were birds dressed in a way that I had never seen before. We
grew very hungry at the sight. A sense of possession came over me: I
was the host, Gabriel the guest. I assumed the honours. ‘Pray, make
yourself comfortable!’ I said, and we both laughed until the lamplight
fluttered. He could laugh best--with the most singleheartedness.
Outside the wind cried like a beaten child, and the gusts in the
corridors were as mournful as the last breaths of a dying man. As no
rain beat upon the windows, I surmised that the weather was fair, and I
drew one of the sombre curtains. But I could see nothing but blackness:
so with a shudder and a joyful thanksgiving that we were indoors, I
went back to the table.

The collation done, I rang for the dishes to be removed. When, after a
long time, the woman came, her suspicious curiosity was gone, and she
moved in apathy. As she left us for the last time, after placing two
logs across the andirons, she courtesied foolishly. ‘Gentlemen,’ she
said, ‘the door of your chamber opens on the first landing. A fire is
burning there: you will see the reflection when you wish to retire.’

Beside the hearth were two great leathern arm-chairs, shaped like
sedans. Gabriel took one, I the other. They were padded deep, and
exquisitely comfortable. I leaned back, gazing dreamily on my friend’s
face; for I wanted his features burned into my brain. He enjoyed the
examination, but soon distracted me by speech.

‘It seems a hundred years since we left the town,’ he said; ‘we are in
quite another world--in a realm full of romance----’

‘Gabriel,’ I interrupted, as if I had not heard his remark, ‘will you
tell me the perfect truth if I ask you something?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I promise seriously.’ I covered my forehead with my
handkerchief. I was fain to hide my look. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘it is this:
_Do you really care for my friendship?_’

‘My dear fellow,’ he cried impetuously, ‘why do you ask? I thought
you knew before now. There is nobody else on earth for whom I care a
thousandth part as much.’

‘Have I been of any use to you?’ I asked: unnecessarily, for I knew
what his reply would be. He reiterated my words.

‘Any use to me--any use to me? Why I had sunk into a dreadful slough
before I knew you. It had been a sleep of years and years, and you
helped me out of it all, and made me human again. You have brought me
ideal happiness in our friendship.’

I was silent a moment, then I said tentatively: ‘Suppose that I had
to take a long journey--one with no chance of returning? What of your
friendship then?’

His face grew very white. ‘If you take such a journey,’ he said, ‘I go
with you.’

A stillness followed, so profound that I was afraid lest the beating
of my heart should attain to him and stir his sympathy. The gleaming
logs on the hearth were as quiet as if the lapping flames were magical;
and a dull, subtle perfume spread from the wisps of azure smoke that
came winnowing down the chimney. The mantel was wonderfully wrought--a
masterpiece in carven oak. Lilith, the wife of Adam, stood to the
left; the Queen of Sheba, her feet on Solomon’s Mirror, to the right;
on the transome, clustering and grotesque, were angels and fiends. It
was in accordance with my imagination--wild and fantastic, and with no
unity. I bent towards Gabriel to point it out, but seeing that, drowsy
with the heat, he had let his head fall back to the cushion, and was
already well-nigh asleep, I strangled my remark, and began conning his
face once more. What a curious forehead! It was high: not narrow, but
oddly misshapen, particularly above the eyes, where the great black
brows, bristling on penthouses, gave a fiercely kind look. His nose was
good, his moustache coarse and with bitten ends; his lips were full and
unequal; his chin was square. Here was nothing fascinating, save the
fact that it was the face of my only friend.

Soon, impatient that he should sleep when I was wide awake, I rose
from my chair and began walking about the room. Not daring to look at
the miniature again, I turned to the opposite wall. A cry of delight
burst from me, for standing there was a satin-wood spinet with open
lid. I read the label of Johannes Pohlman, and the date, 1781. I had
cherished from my earliest childhood the desire of playing on such an
instrument, and I drew out the needleworked stool, and ran my fingers
lightly over the keys in an attempt to harmonise my thoughts. To my
surprise the tone was neither discordant nor decayed, but echoed with
a charming tinkling. In a minor, on a numbed undercurrent of bass, a
melody like a thin gold wire began its incantation. I lost myself: I
was the Spirit of the Music--not the fragile fool whose life should be
required of him so soon! But the vein was soon exhausted, and I turned
to Gabriel to find him awake and looking at me. ‘What are you playing?’
he said eagerly. ‘I was dreaming unpleasantly, and the sound brought me
to myself. I never heard anything like it’ (he passed his hand over his
forehead as if perplexed): ‘it reminds me of twilight vapours in June,
wind-borne across a marshy pool to die among foxgloves and wild aniseed
on the farther shore.’

‘You are right,’ I replied. ‘It is a requiem.’

Looking at my watch, I saw that it was now midnight, so I took up
a candle and, lighting it at the fire, suggested sleepily that we
should go to bed. Gabriel rose, and ascended the staircase at my side.
The fagots in the bedroom had burnt low: only a dim red gleam was
mirrored on the panelling of the landing and on the glossy door of a
clock, above whose dial a curious arrangement showed the waxing and
waning of the moon. Our chamber was large, and apparently was over
the supper-room. No carpet covered the worm-eaten floor; but a few
discoloured skin rugs, irregularly shapen, lay about, chiefly round the
cedar bedstead in the middle, whereon a volant angel, blowing a gilt
bugle, leaned from the top of every post. I threw logs on the hearth,
and while Gabriel undressed I lay on a couch from one of the recesses
in the wall. As I rested, hot tears ran down my cheeks.

Gabriel drew aside the bed-curtains. I sprang to his side and took his
hands. ‘Stay,’ I said gravely; ‘you have not said your prayers.’

He laughed blithely. ‘I never say them,’ he replied. I did not relax my
hold.

‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered, ‘say them to-night of all nights.’

His mirth died quickly: ‘If you will sleep better with the knowledge, I
will say them;’ and he began to pray with a surprising beauty. I said
_Amen_ when all was done. In less than ten minutes he was fast asleep.

For me, I sat listening to the deathwatch sound in the region of my
heart; the nearly silent drip-dropping of blood from the vessel,
now well-nigh exhausted, whose emptiness means freedom. Its ticking
alternated with the clock’s, and each one brought a separate vision to
my fancy--visions that I had thought ripped from my heart years ago.
Visions of Lenore! O damned miniature! But Gabriel’s breathing soothed
me. Once he murmured: ‘Friend!’

The gleaming of the hangings startled me. Some dull metal was
interwoven with the wool, so that, as the light rose and fell, figures
sprang from the folds and leaped down chasms, eyes gleamed and dimmed,
arms were uplifted and struck. Soon, in my curiosity, I began to
consider the chief subject, and was amazed to find it that scene in
_Tamburlane_, where Bajazeth and Zabina lie with their brains dashed
out. It was wrought on the side nearest the fire, and on the other
(which I saw by candlelight) was an uncouth picture of the tent of
Heber the Kenite, with Jael in act to use the lethal hammer. Suicide
and murder, each grimly figured--suicide and murder: here were strange
subjects for a temple of rest! Yet Gabriel’s dreams were happy. Often
during my vigil I drew the curtain, and laid my hand tenderly on his
forehead, and watched the lines of care fade out and away. As the night
passed, he seemed to realise my presence: so, not wishing to break his
rest, I was content to listen to the rise and fall of his breath.

The wind lulled before dawn. I looked from the window, and high above
(for the opposite hill walled out all but a narrow slit) was the
sky, dark blue and nebulous. On the sill a thin-voiced bird chirped a
few odd notes. Another light began contending with the gleam from the
fire. A solemn grey took the place of the gloom outside--a grey that
brightened and brightened.

... ‘Gabriel,’ I said aloud. ‘Let us see the sunrise together. Come,
dress yourself! We will go to the crest of the Naze.’

He sat up in bed yawning.

‘Nay,’ he answered. ‘I am too lazy to walk far before breakfast. It is
not time to get up yet. I am sleepy.’

But, seeing me fully dressed, he sprang to the floor with a bound that
made things shake, and, clamouring that he was no sluggard, began to
put on his clothes.

The sun rose; a long ruddy haze trembled above the hill. All the stars
faded, and the glitter began to creep down the side of the valley.
Streamlets were leaping in the tiny cloughs, and spreading before they
reached the melancholy river into brown and white mare’s tails. Only
that one bird, with the same acid piping! When we descended, breakfast
had just been laid. There was nobody to wait at table; but everything
you needed was there. ’Twas a still stranger meal than that of the
night before. The food was impregnated with a strong flavouring, as
of cinnamon; the coffee smelled deliciously; but a dish of scarlet
poppies, with hearts like fingers, effused a close and sleepy perfume.
We ate in silence; and, having sat a while, I rang for the reckoning.

The woman came, as evil-looking as ever; still wearing the amber gown.
Moreover, the interest she had in me was greatly heightened, for she
stood a minute gazing open-mouthed at my face, and her words were
mystical. ‘I trust that you have slept well here,’ she said dreamily,
‘for he who sleeps here needs no more sleep on earth. But this is not
your last visit!’ Had she seen anything in my eyes? Was she a witch?
I turned to Gabriel, my heart panting. Thank God, he had not heard!
But when I had paid her she plucked my sleeve, and led me to a great
mirror between the windows. There she pointed to the reflection of my
face, which I had never seen so impassive before. I turned half-angrily
away, aghast but not surprised at her familiarity (for I knew her now),
and she cackled drily, with a sound that better suggested wickedness
than the most insidious speech. Even Gabriel was startled, and walked
quickly to the door. As we stood on the threshold, to which she
followed to speed us with courtesyings, I asked the nearest way to the
village of Esperance, whose church, with its priest’s chamber and its
bells, I wished to see.

‘’Tis fourteen miles from here, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Pass for a
good step along the river; cross at the leppings, where the water
lies broadest; and when you reach the hill-top eight miles of barren
moorland lie before you. The path is a Roman road, swarded and wide.
Turn at the pillar with the snake-rings. Go straight through the clough
to the right, and there is Esperance, with the Featherbed Moss betwixt.’

She closed the door with a loud bang, and left us standing in amaze.
The guide-book showed me that the village was at most some seven miles
off, and that by a straight road. But the sound of drawing bolts
prevented us from asking any more: so we started for the river-side.
Suddenly Gabriel turned to look at the quaint cluster of buildings.
A cry burst from his lips: ‘By Jove, we’ve come to the wrong place!
This is not the Eagle--just look at the sign!’ We returned. It was a
long swinging hatchment, a lozenge with proper supporters, whereon
was painted an ungainly mythical creature, half dog and half bird.
An inscription--_Ye Gabbleratch Inne_--in faded gilt letters gleamed
below. But that was not all; for through a small mullioned window to
the left the old woman was peering at us, and looking over her shoulder
was the face of the handsomest man I have ever seen: youthful, white,
and with auburn hair: but so sinister withal that his gaze seemed as
petrifying as a cockatrice’s.

We turned and fled, breathless almost, but with a fleetness I should
not have believed attainable to one in my condition. Ere long we turned
the foot of a crag, and to our common relief passed out of sight of the
inn.

‘The Devil and his Dam!’ quoth Gabriel, half in earnest.

The river broadened until it filled the bottom of the valley, whose
walls grew more and more precipitous. Moss-covered stones, that bore
the marks of ancient carving, met the path soon; and, though in places
they were somewhat under water, they were distinct enough to make
crossing safe. They ended at the entrance to a gorge, along whose side
a path, built of clamped flags, rose sharply to a level platform. When
we reached the top there lay a prospect of utter barrenness: an immense
plain with an horizon of jagged peaks; a few scant patches of heather
relieving the sameness of the red earth; the Roman road, with its
green, velvety turf, stretching, like a stagnant canal, from where we
stood to the furthest crevice in the sky-line.

A queer memory awoke in me. ‘Gabriel,’ I said, ‘do you know the secret
of this earth?’ He did not: so I told him of a place, something akin to
this, where, in my own childhood, the body of a girl, murdered in the
first year of Queen Anne, was discovered perfectly intact and supple.
The tale pleased him. ‘This is just the place I should like to be
buried in,’ he remarked. His words excited me. At that instant I could
have done it--painfully. But I wished above all things to spare him
pain.

Once I paused; between myself and the sun a hawk was grappling with a
smaller bird, whose feathers floated down like snow-flakes. My tongue
formed the word ‘metempsychosis’ again, and Gabriel understood once
more. A taint of sorrow came at the thought of our brief parting. And
then I was possessed of an unutterable joy.

       *       *       *       *       *

At mid-day he lay sleeping beside me on the moor. With my own hands
I made his bed: with my own hands smoothed the sheet. Evening had
fallen, when, alone and pensive, I heard the sweet bells of Saint Anne
of Esperance, and saw the dim valleys of Braithwage and Camsdell with
their serpentine streams.




ROXANA RUNS LUNATICK


Amongst the May poetry in the ninety-first volume of the _British
Review_ is the following composition by Lady Penwhile, whose Roxana had
shaken the town for a whole season.

‘Placed in the hand of the Satyr who guards the Puzzle-Pegs at N----,
with a tress of hair for Hyperion.’

_If so be that Hyperion visit thy stately lawn on the anniversary of
our parting, O Satyr, wilt thou tell him that R---- hath often sigh’d
for him there, and that, tho’ she has worn green Hellebore, such as
he gave her a year agone--when he vow’d an early return--her hopes
grow ever fainter and fainter. Say to him that she is bound in golden
chains, but that her heart sings when she thinks of him--(ay, her heart
is ever singing)--whisper that she loves him more as every moment
passes. And when thou hast done all this, bid Pan trill from his pipes,
whilst thou chantest this ditty._

Five halting verses follow, wherein ’tis told that the lovers had
parted, that Roxana had wedded an old man, that she felt incapable of
expressing in words the vehemency of her passion. But dear, pleasing
ghosts haunted her chambers day and night.

My lord’s cast-off doxy sent the journal, with a venomous letter
bidding him rub his forehead, for fear of the cuckoo. So he pondered in
his book-room, his half-blinded eyes fixed upon the logs; and, after
many struggles with his better nature, he devised a plot worthy of
Satan himself.

For Roxana was a prize worth keeping. She was pale, exquisitely pale.
One forgot her eyes, but remembered that somewhere in her face was seen
the sudden starting of a timid woman’s soul.... Hast ever watched the
heart of a palm-catkin when a wanton hand has fired it? Lurking under
the outer blackness are red and yellow intermixed. Such was the colour
of her hair that fell from nape to heel. Hands that alone might have
quenched lawless desires: of a subtle pink, like the ivory that comes
from Africk.

Few women could have given such devotion as she gave my lord. By
some stratagem, some wild persuasion in her moment of wavering, he
had gained possession. Compassion weakens distaste, and he had posed
long as one broken-hearted. How daintily did she acknowledge his
requirements, how sweet her service had become! When he had decided
concerning Hyperion, his punctilio was greater than ever: the house
rang with shrill commands for madam’s comfort, and he sat hour after
hour listening to her tenderest songs. She was a lutanist too, and
great in the Italian masters.

On Oak Day, when men and maids bore the garland through the park, a
country fellow came to mistress and delivered her a note. My lord was
not present, but she grew faint and chill, and had much ado to applaud
the pageant. With unseemly haste she withdrew to her chamber and read
there----

‘Many days have passed ere I could summon courage. At twilight
to-morrow we will meet; I have discovered the place. What manner of
love was mine erstwhile that thou wert false?’

In her cabinet were many choice silks. She made a bag of the richest,
and put the folded sheet inside, and spread ambergris upon it, then
hung it between her breasts. That night as she slept her fingers
relaxed, and my lord took thence the token, and read it, gnashing his
teeth. He put it back: so that in the morning flush, when her hand
sought the thing, it seemed untouched.

That day passed so wearily! In her spouse’s company she was gay and
brilliant; all her paleness had disappeared, and a feverish red pulsed
in her cheeks. And he was brimful of paradox and of jesting, but
sometimes she trembled because of the fearsome coldness of his looks.
Once, when she fawned upon him he put her away, not untenderly.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said towards sunset, ‘an’ if thou wert false!’

‘Ay, me,’ she faltered, for the repetition of Hyperion’s words struck
her with terror. ‘False! false!’

It was growing dusk; he peered close to the clock-face. ‘More than two
months have passed since we came here,’ he noted, breaking the ominous
silence. ‘And yet this place is strange to you. Let us visit the old
house--see, here are the keys! Dearest, lean on my arm.’

They passed through the garden to the porch and so to the mildewed
avenues of the pre-Elizabethan part where all the lumber was stored. My
lord saw Roxana’s bodice swell as if the threads would burst. Soon they
reached a great hall lighted with green windows, whose dimness scarce
revealed the many sacks of too long-garnered grain, where the mice
ran in and out. There, near the foot of a staircase that led to the
gallery, he left her, and she heard the clicking of a lock.

My lord went to an upper chamber whence he could see the outlet of
the maze. The belling of his red-eyed dogs as they strutted in their
leash tickled his ears: he laughed and rubbed his forehead. The moon
rose, and he could hear Roxana clamouring in the hall. After a while
he descended by another way, and took out his death-hounds, and went
towards the trysting-place.

Roxana could not know what happened in the darkness. The agony of the
man whose every vestige of clothes was torn away, and whose white flesh
gaped bloodily, was hidden from her by the seven feet of masonry that
parted them as he leaped madly into the courtyard. Nor could she hear
his worn, querulous cry--such a cry as the peewit makes before dawn.
Yet, withal, her hands began to drum in her lap.

When the darkness was intense my lord came back. He felt for Roxana in
the place where he had left her. She was not there: an hour before she
had climbed to the gallery. He groped painfully round the walls.

In one corner soft delicious things like nets of gossamer fell on his
fingers. He stooped to the floor, and touched more of them. Above was
a sound of tearing, but no panting nor indrawing of breath. Another
web fluttered past his face; his lips began to quiver. It was Roxana’s
hair.




THE PAGEANT OF GHOSTS


A late twilight in June. A wood-lark rippling in mid-air.
Drowsy-scented ladies’ bed-straw in a marsh that was once a garden. On
the terrace wall, beside the cedar, a stone urn with a lambent flame.

The casement hung open, and the excess of beauty and perfume drugged
me: so that, with a sigh, I sank back into a moth-eaten sedan that
had borne four generations to Court. Dried dust of lavender and rue
filtered through the brocade lining, and grew into a mist, wherethrough
the bird’s song waxed fainter and fainter. Indeed, I was just closing
my eyes when the tuning of fifes and viols roused me with a start.

A shrill titter from the further end of the ball-room drew me from my
seat. At the outer extremity of the oriel hung a curtain of Philimot
velvet, lined inwardly with pale green silk: behind this I stole, and,
parting the draperies from the wall, gazed towards the musicians’
gallery. Five men, dressed in styles that ranged from the trunk-hose
and collared mantle of Elizabeth’s day to the pantaloons and muslin
cravats of the third George, were arranging yellow music-sheets on the
table. The youngest forced a harsh note from his viol, then struck
another’s bald pate, and set all a-laughing. A grave silence followed.
Then began just such a curious melody as the wind makes in a wood of
half-blighted firs.

All the sconces were lighted of a sudden, and the martlets and serpents
in the alt-relief above the panelling sprang into a weird life. Resting
between the fire-dogs on the open hearth were three logs, one of pine,
another of oak, and a third of sycamore. The grey flame licked them
hungrily, and the sap hissed and bubbled. The carved work of the walls
was distinct: Potiphar’s wife wrapped her bed-gown about Joseph, Judith
triumphed with the bloody head aloft, and in the centre Lot’s daughters
paddled with his withered jowls.

I felt but little wonder at the change from stillness to life. As the
last of my race, treasurer of a vast hoard of traditions, why should I
be disturbed by this return of the creatures of old? I dragged forth
the creaking sedan, and sat waiting.

A rusty, half-unstrung zither that hung near quivered and gave one
faint note to the melody. Ere its vibration had ceased, Mistress Lenore
entered through the arched doorway. Hour after hour had she plucked
those wires that cried out in welcome.

Her fox-coloured tresses were wrought into a fantastic web; each
separate hair twisted and coiled. A pink flush painted her cheeks,
and her lustrous blue eyes were mirthful. She wore opals (unfortunate
stones for such as love), and hanging from a black riband below her
throat was the golden cross Prince Charles had sent her from Rome.

The legends of her character came in floods. Wantonly capricious at
one moment, earnest and devout as a nun’s at another, her expression
changed a thousand times as I beheld. Now she was racking her soul with
jealousy; now pleading--as she alone could plead--for pardon; now,
when pardon was won, laughingly swearing that her repentance was only
feigned. As she neared my heart beat furiously, and I cried ‘_Lenore!
Lenore!_’ My voice was low and broken (the music gave a loud burst
then), but she passed without a word, her ivory-like hands almost
hidden beneath jewels and lace. The further door stood open, and she
disappeared.

Nowell the Platonist followed; a haggard middle-aged man in a long
cloak of sable-edged black velvet. Forgetful of all save desire, he
bore a scroll of parchment, whereon was written in great letters _To
Parthenia_. This was the only outcome of his one passion. At the second
window he paused, with a wry mouth, to gaze on that statue of Europa
from whose arm he had hanged himself. Then his hands were uplifted to
his head to force away the agony of despair; for hurrying towards him
came the Mad Maid, who could not love him, being devoted to the memory
of one wrecked at sea.

‘Why art thou in anguish?’ she said. ‘See my joy; laugh with me, dance
with me. He returns to-morrow--the boat’s coming in. Ah, darling! ah,
heart’s delight!’ And she held up her arms to a girandole whose candles
fluttered; but her face grew long, and thin, and pale, and she rested
on a settee and drew from her pocket a dusky lace veil, which, being
unfolded, discovered a ring with a burning topaz and a heart of silver.
She leaned forward, resting her brow in her hands, and talked to the
toys in her lap as if they understood.

To the veil she said, ‘No bride’s joy-blushes shalt thou conceal!’

To the ring, ‘Thou last gift of him who died and left me!’

To the heart, ‘O heart, thou hast endured! Thou art not broken!’

After a few tears she refolded all, and unbuttoning her bodice took
from the bosom a miniature framed with pearls; but, as if afraid lest
it should grow cold, she replaced it hurriedly, and seeing that Nowell
beckoned towards her, glided on, sighing, and with downcast looks.

Then passed a cavalier in azure silk and snowy ruffled cravat and
long-plumed cap of estate. He was whistling a song that threw all
bachelors into humorous ecstasy. Who he was I know not: unless the
courtier who had fought a duel with my Lord Brandreth, and had died in
the wood near St. Giles’s Well, pressing convulsively in his right hand
a dainty glove of Spanish kid. A merry fellow, quoth the legend, who
loved the world and all in it, but who was over fond of his own jest.

Fidessa, the singer, entered next. She had brought her little
gilt harp, and her lips were parted to join harmonies of voice
and instrument. Bright yellow hair plaited in bands that formed
a filigrain-bound coronet; eyes half-veiled, with sleepy lashes,
hands fragile as sea-shells. It was the _Verdi Prati_, Mr. Handel’s
celebrated song, that she adored most, and on the morrow she would sing
it at Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields Theatre. At least she purposed to sing it
then and there. Fate, however, had otherwise ordained: the to-morrow
would never come, and the sweetheart at the upland grange might well
write on her letters, ‘Darkness hath overcome me.’

Thin and pale Margot, her wanness heightened by dishevelled black
curls, came forward in her scarlet cloak. Silent reproach was in her
every feature; her eyes were stern and long-suffering. The prophecy
that bound up her life with that of her dying twin was rapidly
approaching consummation. Another moment and the direst pain filled
her; for a loud cry from an outer chamber told her he was dead.

As she disappeared in the gloom, Nabob Darrington, himself in life
the lover of a ghost, paced slowly along. A beau of the last century,
wearing a satin flowered waistcoat and a coat and breeches of
plum-coloured kerseymere, between his finger and thumb he held the
diamond which he had brought from the East as a spousal gift for the
woman who, unknown to him, had died of waiting. He was anticipating the
meeting with her, and his brown cheeks flushed blood-red at the sound
of a light footstep. He turned, saw one with violet eyes and tragic
forehead; and with one joyous murmur they enfolded each other and
passed.

Althea approached; a massive creature gowned in white and gold. In one
hand she held a tangle of sops-in-wine, in the other, as symbolical
kings hold globes, a bejewelled missal. The contention between the two
lovers--the old, who had tyrannised until her life was of the saddest,
and the new, who filled her with such wild happiness--was troubling
her, and she was pondering as to which should gain the victory. She was
just beginning to understand that to wait in passive indecision is to
be torn with dragon’s teeth.

Barbara, with eyes like moon-pierced amethysts, followed, singing Ben
Jonson’s _Robin Goodfellow_ in a sweet quaver that was only just heard
above the music. How strangely her looks changed--from maiden innocence
to the awakening of love! from the height of passion to the abyss of
despair!

But as she went the horizon was ripped from end to end, and a golden
arrow leaped into the ball-room. Dawn had broken. The scent of the
ladies’ bed-straw was trebly strong; the tired wood-lark sank lower and
lower.

The room was empty--the pageant passed and done.


THE END.


  Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
  at the Edinburgh University Press.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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