Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution Part 36

Ingram called her to him. "Sancie, come here a minute. I want you." She turned her head and looked at him, then slowly crossed the room. She kept her eyes upon him, but did not seem to see him. They were haunted eyes.

She came in front of him, and stood, questing his face, as if she was trying to see him within it.

He continued to smile jauntily, but his lips twitched with the strain. He put his arm round her shoulder and drew her towards him. "This day month, my girl," he said, and kissed her. She stiffened at his touch. Her lips were cold, and made him shiver. His arm fell back. "Pooh! what do you care?" She stood in her place before him without speaking. If she had looked at him she might have stricken him blind. When Lady Maria came in, she moved away, and returned to the window. The glow had almost gone; nothing remained but wan blue, white towards the horizon. It was the colour of death; but a single star shone out in it.

Chevenix came in briskly, fastening his sleeve-links. "Here is the Perfect Chaperon, here is he!" he said, and bowed to Lady Maria. "My dear Aunt Wenman, you've no notion how hungry I am. We saw Senhouse teaching the hares their catechism. Afterwards we lunched on conversation and water.

Ah, and salad. Excellent salad. Then I went goat-stalking, and had a nap.

Sancie and the Seer conversed. A great day."

Lady Maria took Ingram's arm, Sanchia that of Chevenix, and they went downstairs. Half-way down she stopped. Chevenix looked at her. She was white; she could hardly breathe. "Good G.o.d, Sancie, what's the matter?"

She stared, gasped, moved her head about. "I can't go on--I can't--I can't. It's horrible--it's awful--I'm afraid. Hush--don't make a fuss. I'm going away. This isn't possible."

The other couple were in the dining-room by now. Chevenix didn't know what to do.

"There's dinner, you know, Sancie," he said. "That's an inst.i.tution, eh?

You'll feel better, I expect. Keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up. I'll have a go at Nevile for you. I swear I will. Now, where's your pluck, my dear?"

She shook her head, struggling all the time to get her breath. "It's gone --clean gone."

"You want food, Sancie; that's what you want. Come. Don't let's have a commotion. You leave all this to me."

She leaned against the wall, and brushed her hand across her face.

Chevenix was in despair. Nevile, from below, called up, "What are you two conspiring about?" Sanchia shivered, and stood up.

"Go down alone," she said. "I can't."

III

She dragged herself upstairs, and locked herself in her room, stumbled to the window, caught at it by the sill and leaned out. Her skin burned, her blood beat at her temples, and her breath came panting from her. Her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s ached with the burden of her strife. "I was born to live, not die.

Air! or I shall fall."

It was mellow dusk by now, the lamps below her lighted, and above the chimneys and broken roof-line, above the trembling glare which meant London, there were stars in a violet sky. The stars which looked on London, looked also on the dim gra.s.s wolds, on hills rolling like waves, on m.u.f.fled woods, rivers swift under their banks, on cornlands stiff and silent in the calm, on pastures and drowsy sheep. But the hills stretched out on either side of a valley, fold upon fold, everlastingly the same.

There Despoina walked, at the deepest hour of the night. Even now she was looked for by one who sat in the valley and watched the East--intent, hooded, white, his chin upon his knees. A knock sounded at her door. She turned and ran to open. "Her ladyship have sent to know if you would have something sent up, miss." "Nothing, nothing." She sped back to the window.

At midnight, Despoina should be there. At midnight! In three hours! It was time to get ready; there wasn't a moment to lose. She watched the night as if she were listening to it, counting its pulse. Then, kneeling where she was, she began to unfasten her hair, running her hands through it as each clinging coil loosened and grew light. So presently she was curtained in her hair.

It drooped about her burning cheeks and veiled her bosom. She looked like the Magdalen in the desert, facing, wide-eyed, the preacher. There she knelt on, in a trance, waiting for the hour.

It struck ten--eleven.

She changed her dress and put on again the blue cotton gown of the day's wearing--but she left her hair loose about her face and shoulders, and her feet were bare. She looked at herself in the gla.s.s. Her face was white, her eyes were wide and strange. She did not know herself, smiling so sharply--like a G.o.ddess wild with a rapture not known by men and women.

Fiercer delights than theirs she knew, the joy of power mated with its equal, coping fellow to fellow. Consciousness of immortal bliss dawned upon her wise lips, and flickered in their curve.

"Despoina is here," she said, and blew out the light.

IV

It was intensely dark in the cup of the hills, but by the difference of a tone it was just possible to make out where the sky began. Looking closer yet, you could guess at a film of light, as if the rim of down absorbed and reflected a caught radiance from the stars.

On a quiet night the stars seem to burn more fiercely, and on this night you might have believed they gave you heat. There was no moon; but the sky was illuminated by stars. Jupiter had rays like a sun, and Sirius lay low down and glowed, now fiery, now green. A winged creature, crossing up the valley, would pa.s.s unnoticed; but if it struck suddenly upwards for a higher flight, above the hills into the upper air, you would see the light upon its pinions, and even the glitter of its watchful eye.

There was no wind; the silence could be felt, throbbing about you. It was past the hour when the creatures go hunting; the time when every breathing thing submits to the same power. Men and women forgot each other and their loves; foxes lay coiled in their earths. The shriek of the field-mouse startled you no more, nor the swift dry rustle of the gra.s.s-snake.

Presently, very far away across the hills, in some valley not to be known, a dog barked; but the sound just marked the silence, and died down.

The hooded figure down there sat like a Buddha on his rock, motionless, unwinking, breathing deep and slow. His hands clasped his shins, his chin was on his knees; he pored into the dark. He sat facing the ridgeway where it came from the East, and watched the courses of the stars.

Through the window of the hidden hut a faint light glimmered, and within the open door there was to be discerned a pale diffusion of light. In the beam of this he sat, cowled in white, but his face was shadowed. He was like the sh.e.l.l of a man who had died in his thought, and stiffened in the act of meditation. No relation between him and the rest of the world could be discerned. He was as far from the sleepers as the dead are.

Yet within him was the patience which comes of wild expectancy. His mind was as couched as his body for the moment. He had not fasted for years in the wilderness, and communed with the spirits of the hidden creatures without learning the secret of their immobility. To him who could speak with plants and beasts, with hills and trees, the Night itself could converse. So surely as the crystal fluid which is the air streams in circles of waves about our sphere, so surely ranged his sense.

At a certain moment of time, without stirring, he changed. Intensity of search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might, one could have seen nothing to break the translucent veil of dark.

Yet, after a time, looking just there, one might feel rather than know a something coming. The watcher certainly did. Deep within the shadow of the cowl his eyes dilated and narrowed, his lips parted, his breath came quick and sharp. But he did not move.

The sense of a presence heightened; one knew it much nearer. By and by, one could have seen pale forms wavering in the fluid violet of the night, like marsh-fires going and coming--and could guess them one and the same.

Bodily substance could only be inferred. But he who waited, tense for the hour, knew that the hour had come.

Her white face, made narrow by the streaming curtain of her hair, her white arms and feet were luminous in that dark place, and revealed the semblance of her body. His cowl was thrown back; he had bowed his head to his knees. She stood over him, looking down upon him, not moving. Her eyes were clear and wide, and her parted lips smiled. The rise and fall of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s could be heard as they stirred her gown.

She put out her hand and laid it on his head; she stooped to him as he looked fearfully up, and, meeting his face, kissed him. No words pa.s.sed between them, but he rose and stood by her, and she took his hand.

Together, hand in hand, they went deep into the valley, and the night hid them under the stars, and the silence swallowed up the sounds of their bare footfalls.

V

The philosopher sat barefoot in the hollow of his valley, and wrote diligently in a book. He paused, pen in hand, and looked over the folds of the hills where the haze of heat hung blue, and brown at the edges. It lay upon the hill-tops like a mist. The sky was grey, and the land was pale, burned to the bone. Heavy ma.s.ses of trees in the hanging wood showed lifeless and black. No bird sang, but there were crickets in the bents, shrilling inconceivably. The swoon of midsummer was over all, and Sanchia was coming.

He knew that she was coming before he saw her. She came along the edge of the plain above him springing barefoot. He saw her legs gleam under her swirling skirts. He strained his eyes to her, but could not see her face for the mist over them. He waited for her, watching, feeling her approach.

She began the descent of the scarp timidly, as if she was playing with the thought of his bliss, which she held daintily in her hands. "Dangerously beautiful, my Beautiful One, art thou. Heedless always of thyself. Now a wind blows from thee to me. Thy herald, O Thou that shrillest on the wind!"

He heard her gay and confident voice. "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" He rose and went to meet her; she saw him, and suddenly faltered in her stoop. She stopped, poised as if for flight; he saw her wings fold behind her, and lie quivering where they touched each other.

Her heart urged her. "Go to him."

She looked at him. "I can't see him perfectly, and can't trust myself."