Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 11

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW DAY

It need not be wondered at that during the night I slept little. It seemed such a strange thing which had happened to me. That a great lady should lean upon my arm--a lady of whom before that day I had never heard--seemed impossible to my slow-moving Scots intelligence.

I sat most of the night by my window, from which I looked down the valley. The moonlight was filling it. The stars tingled keen and frosty above. Lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the chasm. On the horizon there was a flush of rose, in the midst of which hung a snowy peak like a wave arrested when it curves to break, and on the upmost surge of white winked a star.

I opened the cas.e.m.e.nt and flung it back. The cool, icy air of night took hold on me. I listened. There came from below the far sound of falling waters. Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly. A dull, m.u.f.fled sound, vast and mysterious, rose slumberously. I remembered that I was near to the great Alps. Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche.

But more than all these things,--under this roof, closed within the white curtains, was the woman who with her well-deep, serene eyes had looked into my life.

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!" I said to myself, seeing the possibilities waver and thicken before me. So I went to my bed, leaving the window open, and after a time slept.

But very early I was astir. The lake lay asleep. The shadows in its depths dreamed on untroubled. There was not the lapse of a wavelet on the sh.o.r.e. The stars diminished to pin-points, and wistfully withdrew themselves into the coming mystery of blue. Behind the eastern mountains the sun rose--not yet on us who were in the valley, but flooding the world overhead with intense light. On the second floor a cas.e.m.e.nt opened and a blind was drawn aside. There was nothing more--a serving-maid, belike. But my heart beat tumultuously.

_Nova dies_ indeed, but I fear me not _nova quies_. But when ever to a man was love a synonym for quietness? Quietness is rest. Rest is embryonic sleep. Sleep is death's brother. But, contrariwise, love to a man is life--new life. Life is energy--the opening of new possibilities, the breaking of ancient habitudes. Sulky self-satisfactions are hunted from their lair. Sloth is banished, selfishness done violence to with swiftest poniard-stroke.

Again, even to a pa.s.sionate woman love is rest. That low sigh which comes from her when, after weary waiting, at last her lips prove what she has long expected, is the sigh for rest achieved. There is indeed nothing that she does not know. But, for her, knowledge is not enough--she desires possession. The poorest man is glorified when she takes him to her heart. She desires no longer to doubt and fret--only to rest and to be quiet. A woman's love when she is true is like a heaven of Sabbaths. A man's, at his best, like a Monday morn when the work of day and week begins. For love, to a true man, is above all things a call to work. And this is more than enough of theory.

Once I was in a manufacturing city when the horns of the factories blew, and in every street there was the noise of footsteps moving to the work of the day. It struck me as infinitely cheerful. All these many men had the best of reasons for working. Behind them, as they came out into the chill morning air, they shut-to the doors upon wife and children. Why should they not work? Why should they desire to be idle? Had I, methought, such reasons and pledges for work, I should never be idle, and therefore never unhappy. For me, I choose a Monday morning of work with the whistles blowing, and men shutting their doors behind them. For that is what I mean by love.

All this came back to me as I walked alone by the lake while the day was breaking behind the mountains.

As though she had heard the trumpet of my heart calling her, she came. I did not see her till she was near me on the gravel path which leads to the chalet by the lake. There was a book of devotion in her hand. It was marked with a cross. I had forgotten my prayers that morning till I saw this.

Yet I hardly felt rebuked, for it was morning and the day was before me.

With so much that was new, the old could well wait a little. For which I had bitterly to repent.

She looked beyond conception lovely as she came towards me. Taller than I had thought, for I had not seen her--you must remember--since. It seemed to me that in the night she had been recreated, and came forth fresh as Eve from the Eden sleep. Her eyelashes were so long that they swept her cheeks; and her eyes, that I had thought to be violet, had now the sparkle in them which you may see in the depths of the southern sea just where the sapphire changes into amethyst.

Did we say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were walking together. How light the air was!--cool and rapturous like snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine and quick that I cannot count its pulsings?

What is she saying--this lady of mine? I am not speaking aloud--only thinking. Cannot I think?

She told me, I believe, why she had come out. I have forgotten why. It was her custom thus to walk in the prime. She had still the mantilla over her head, which, as soon as the sun looked over the eastern crest of the mountains, she let drop on her shoulders and so walked bareheaded, with her head carried a trifle to the side and thrown back, so that her little rounded chin was in the air.

"I have thought," she was saying when I came to myself, "all the night of what you told me of your home on the hills. It must be happiness of the greatest and most perfect, to be alone there with the voices of nature--the birds crying over the heather and the cattle in the fields."

"Good enough," I said, "it is for us moorland folk who know nothing better than each other's society--the bleating sheep to take us out upon the hills and the lamp-light streaming through the door as we return homewards."

"There is nothing better in this world!" said the Countess with emphasis.

But just then I was not at all of that mind.

"Ah, you think so," said I, "because you do not know the hardness of the life and its weary sameness. It is better to be free to wander where you will, in this old land of enchantments, where each morning brings a new joy and every sun a clear sky."

"You are young--young," she said, shaking her head musingly, "and you do not know. I am old. I have tried many ways of life, and I know."

It angered me thus to hear her speak of being old. It seemed to put her far from me I remembered afterwards that I spoke with some sharpness, like a petulant boy.

"You are not so much older than I, and a great lady cannot know of the hardness of the life of those who have to earn their daily bread."

She smiled in an infinitely patient way behind her eyelashes.

"Douglas," she said, "I have earned my living for more years than the difference of age that is between us."

I looked at her in amazement, but she went on--

"In my brother's country, which is Russia, we are not secure of what is our own, even for a day. We may well pray there for our daily bread. In Russia we learn the meaning of the Lord's Prayer."

"But have you not," I asked, "great possessions in Italy?"

"I have," the Countess said, "an estate here that is my own, and many anxieties therewith. Also I have, at present, the command of wealth--which I have never yet seen bring happiness. But for all, I would that I dwelt on the wide moors and baked my own bread."

I did not contradict her, seeing that her heart was set on such things; nevertheless, I knew better than she.

"You do not believe!" she said suddenly, for I think from the first she read my heart like a printed book. "You do not understand! Well, I do not ask you to believe. You do not know me yet, though I know you. Some day you will have proof!"

"I believe everything you tell me," I answered fervently.

"Remember," she said, lifting a finger at me--"only enough and not too much. Tell me what is your idea of the place where I could be happy."

This I could answer, for I had thought of it.

"In a town of clear rivers and marble palaces," I answered, "where there are brave knights to escort fair ladies and save them from harm.

In a city where to be a woman is to be honoured, and to be young is to be loved."

"And you, young seer, that are of the moorland and the heather," she said, "where would you be in such a city?"

"As for me," I said, "I would stand far off and watch you as you pa.s.sed by."

"Ah, Messer Dante Alighieri, do not make a mistake. I am no Beatrice. I love not chill aloofness. I am but Lucia, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But rather than all rhapsodies, I would that you were just my friend, and no further off than where I can reach you my hand and you can take it."

So saying, because we came to the little bridge where the pines meet overhead, she reached me her hand at the word; and as it lay in mine I stooped and kissed it, which seemed the most natural thing in the world to do.

She looked at me earnestly, and I thought there was a reproachful pity in her eyes.

"Friend of mine, you will keep your promise," she said. I knew well enough what promise it was that she meant.

"Fear not," I replied; "I promise and I keep."

Yet all the while my heart was busy planning how through all the future I might abide near by her side.

We turned and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a pleasant clapping sound.