“I fancy,” said Chevenix, as they breasted the down, “that to the candid observer we present a very pretty sight. He's not here, but I wish he were. A free-moving young lady—this is my idea—a Diana of the Uplands—wasn't there a picture of the name?—going to see an emancipated party of the Open Road, with a chain round her heart, in the custody of a gentleman-friend.”
She took him on his own terms. “Explain your idea. What, for instance, is in the gentleman-friend's custody? The chain or the heart? Because, I assure you—”
“A truce,” said Chevenix, “to your assurances. What I mean is this. It's jolly decent of Nevile to let you off. I don't know how he can bear you out of his sight after the way he's behaved.”
She was in high spirits. She laughed at the vision of Nevile, deeply contrite and afraid that she would find him out. “I don't think Nevile cares much, whatever I may do.” But Chevenix shook his head.
“You never know where to have Nevile. What says the Primer? Timeo Danaos—don't you know?”
She pleaded, Might they not forget Nevile out here in the open? “Do you know,” she asked him, “that I haven't been out like this—”
“On the loose, eh?” he interposed. She nodded.
“Yes, like this—free to do as I like—the world before me—” She fronted the blue valley for a moment, and then turned to the wind—“and the wind in my face, ever since I left Wanless?” Then she reflected with wide and wondering eyes. “And before that—long before. I haven't been free, you know, ever since I knew Nevile. Oh!”—and she inhaled the spirit of the hour—“Oh, I could fall down and hug the earth. Don't you love the thymy smell? I don't know why, but it always makes me think of poetry—and that.” She lifted her rapt face to where, like a fountain of sound, a lark flooded the blue. “To lift up, and up, and up, to be so lovely because one was so glad! Nobody could do that!—except Jack,” she added half in a whisper.
“That old chap's not a man,” said Chevenix, “he's a spirit.”
“They used to call him the Faun, at Bill Hill, where I first met him,” she said. “I fancy now that I never knew him at all. But he knew all about me. That's why I'm so happy. Nobody has ever known me since—and it's such a bore to have to explain yourself. Other people seem to think I am extraordinary. I'm not at all—I'm the most ordinary person in the world. But he liked me like that.”
Chevenix, watching her, said, “He'll like you like this, I expect. May I tell you that you're a heady compound? Do be quiet. Remember that I'm holding the chain. I won't swear to every link.” She laughed, and pressed forward, the wind kissing her eyes.
They reached the racecourse, and had, behind them and before, two valleys. Their road lay now due west, keeping the ridge—a broad grass track belted rarely by woods on the north, but open on the south to hill and vale in diversity of sun and shade, a billowy sea of grass where no sign of man was to be seen. Sanchia's heart was so light she scarcely touched the ground. She swam the air, not flew. Chevenix pounded in her wake.
“You know,” he told her by and by, “he's alone here? A solitary figure? Doing the hermit? Crying in the Wilderness?”
She had guessed, but not known that. Caution set a guard upon her eyes and tongue. “Do you mean—that he's always alone?”
“Bless you, yes. His lady couldn't stick it. She fled. But she's quite fond of him—in her way. I found out his address from her. She was quite glad I was going to see him. But she never goes herself, I believe. She's married. Other views altogether, she has. Or he has—her husband, you know. It was a rum business altogether, her taking up with old Senhouse. I could have told her what would come of that, if she'd asked me. No malice, you know—now. They're good friends. Write to each other. As a fact, she's married. She was a widow. She married a man I know, a chap in the House, name of Duplessis. Sulky chap, but able. Keeps her in order. Old Senhouse will speak about it—you see if he don't.”
She was full of thought over these sayings. What had he been about when he mated with a woman of this sort? “A man don't live like that,” had been Nevile's explanation of part of his own history. Was this the meaning of her friend's vagary? Would he tell her? She would never ask him, but would give worlds to know.
Presently, and quite suddenly, as they pushed their way, now in silence broken only by Chevenix's cheerful whistling, upon that backbone of a broad hill-country—quite suddenly her heart leaped, and then stood fast. “Look, look!” she said softly. “There's Jack, close to us!” In a sheltered hollow some hundred feet below the level at which they were, a hooded figure in pure white was startlingly splashed upon the grey-brown of the dry hills. The peak of a cowl shot straight above his head, and the curtains of it covered his face. He sat, squatting upon the turf, with a lifted hand admonishing. About him, with cocked ears, and quick side-glances, were some six or seven hares, some reared upon their haunches, some, with sleek heads, intent upon the herbage, one lopping here and there in quest, but none out of range of a quick hand. Above his head, high in the blue, birds were wheeling, now up, now down. Peewits tumbling heavily, pigeons with beating wings, sailing jackdaws—higher yet, serene in rarity, a brown kestrel oared the sky.
Sanchia's soft eyes gleamed with wet. “Saint Francis and the hares! Oh, dearest, have I never known you?”
“What a chance for a rifleman!” said Chevenix. “That beats the cocks.”
They stood intent for a while, not daring to disturb the mystery enacting. Chevenix whispered, “He's giving 'em church, to-day being Sunday,” while Sanchia, breathless, said, “Hush! hush!” and felt the tears fret a way down her cheeks. Presently she put both hands to her breast and fell upon her knees. Chevenix, not insensible to her emotion, lit a pipe. Thus he broke the spell.
“Go to him, please. Tell him that I'm here,” she bade him, and then turned away and sat waiting upon a clump of heather. She sat, as not daring to look up, until she heard his soft tread on the turf. Then she lifted to him her wet and rueful eyes.
His long strides brought him close in a second. He was changed. Leaner, browner, older than she had known him. And he wore a strange Eastern garment, a hooded white robe, short-sleeved and buttonless, made of coarse woollen cloth. He had thrown the hood back, and it sat upon his shoulders like a huge rolling collar. Yes, he was changed; there was mystery upon him, which sat broodingly on his brows. But his eyes were the same—bright as a bird's, frosty-kind as a spring morning which stings while it kisses you. “Queen Mab!” he said. “You!” and held out both his hands. It was evident that neither of them could speak. She rose; but there was no touching of the hands.
“And Peachblossom, attendant sprite,” cried the resourceful Chevenix, following him up. “Don't forget him.”
“Puck, I think,” said Senhouse. “Robin Goodfellow.” He had recovered himself in that breathing-space. “How splendid of you both. Come and see my ship. I'm in moorings now, you know. I've cut piracy.”
“And preach to the hares,” said Chevenix. “We saw you at it. What does his lordship say?”
“His lordship, who, in spite of that, is an excellent man, likes it. His lordship was pleased to catch me, as you did, at it, and to suggest that he should bring out a party of her ladyship's friend to see me perform. I told him that I was his hireling, no doubt, but that my friends here were amateurs who didn't care to say their prayers in public. His lordship begged pardon, and I bet you he's a gentleman. Nearly everybody is, when you come to know him.”
Chevenix revelled in him. “Still the complete moralist, old Jack!” he cheered. “I'll back you for a bushel of nuts to have it out with Charon as you ferry across. And here, for want of us, you turn to the hares! Sancie, you and I must get season tickets to Sarum, or he'll forget his tongue.”
Sanchia, overcome by shyness, had nothing to do with this brisk interchange. She walked between the contestants like a child out with her betters. Senhouse led them down the scarped side of a hill into his own valley; rounding a bluff, they suddenly came upon his terraces and creeper-covered hut. The place was a blaze of field flowers; each terrace a thick carpet of colour. In front of them the valley wound softly to the south, and melted into the folds of the hills; to the right, upon a wooded slope, in glades between the trees, goats were at pasture.
“Goats! Robinson Crusoe!” Chevenix pointed them out. “Dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei? Are they yours, Senhouse?”
“I drink them, and make cheese. I learned how to do it at Udine ages ago. You shall have some.”
Sanchia saw them. The sun gleamed upon fawn and white, and made black shine like jet. Deep in the thickets they heard the bell of one, cropping musically.
Senhouse led them to his verandah, which was shadowed from the heat, made them sit on mats, and served them with milk and bread in wooden bowls and trenchers. He was barefooted, which Sanchia, must by all means be—for the day: divining her, as he only could, he knelt without invitation and untied her shoes. “Stockings too, I'll bet you!” was what Chevenix thought; but he was wrong. Senhouse went into his cabin, and returned with sandals. Sanchia had taken off her own stockings. They were sandals to fit her. “I made them for Mary,” he explained; “but she preferred boots.”
“Most of 'em do,” Chevenix said, “in their hearts,” and Senhouse quietly rejoined, “So I've found out.”
Chevenix, the tactful, withdrew himself after a civil interval. He said that he should go goat-stalking, and, instead, went for a ramble, well out of sight. Then he found a place after his mind, smoked his pipe, and had a nap.
The pair, left to themselves, resumed with hardly an effort their ancient footing.
He said, after looking long upon her, “You are changed, Queen Mab; you are graver and quieter—but you are yourself, I see.”
“I am not changed really,” she said. “I love all the things I did. But sometimes one doesn't know it.”
He did not appear to heed her, occupied in his gentle scanning of her. “You are, I suppose, more beautiful than you were—I was prepared for that. You have been very much with me of late.”
Her excitement grew suddenly quick. “Have I? It's very odd, but—”
“It's not at all odd,” he said. “Nothing is. I will tell you what happens. After I go to bed—which is always lateish—I feel you come down the slope. I am not surprised—I wasn't the first time. You come in a blue gown, with bare feet. I can't see anything of you as you come but gleaming ivory—an oval, which is your face—two bars for your arms—two shafts,—and your feet. Your hair is loose all about your shoulders, and close about your face. It makes the oval longer and narrower than I see it now; your face is fuller by day than by night. You come to me out here, where I wait for you, and hold out your hand. I rise, and take it—and off we go. I realise now that I am in the conduct of a fairy. I was inspired when I hailed you—how long ago?—as Queen Mab. You show me wonderful things. Do you know that you come?”
“No, but—” She stopped, and bent her head. Her experience had not been so simple. “I have thought sometimes—” She could not finish—broke off abruptly. There was a beating pause, during which neither of them dared look at the other. She broke it. She asked him what he did out here alone.
“I live,” he said, “very much as I did. I read—in three tongues; I paint rarely; I do a great deal of work. At night I write my book. And then—you come.”
“And what is your book?”
“It began as Memoirs—in three volumes, but those have stopped. There was plenty to say, but after certain experiences which came to me here—singular enough experiences—nothing in it seemed worth while. Now I call it Despoina, after the principal character. Despoina, or the Lore of Proserpine.”
“Who is Despoina?” She showed him that she had the answer already.
He looked at her, smiling with his eyes. “You are Despoina.”
“Oh,” said she, “I thought I was Queen Mab.”
“It is the same thing. Despoina means the Lady—the Lady of the Country. She is a great fairy. The greatest.”
It was now for her to smile at him, which she did a little wistfully. “Your Despoina is either too much fairy, or not enough. She does very humdrum things. She has done mischief; now she is going to repair it. She is going to be married.”
He was watching her quietly, and took her news quietly.
“Yes, so I learned. There was a youth here who told me.”
She stopped him, flushing wildly. “A youth! Struan was here? Then it's true—it's true?”
He was quite calm under this outcry. “Yes, your champion Glyde was here. A good fellow in the main, but, Lord! what a donkey! I think I did him good. He left me a week ago. He had told me about you—found out where you lived, and what was happening.” She sat with her face between her hands, dared not let him see it.
Senhouse resumed the question of her marriage. “It doesn't matter what you do. You are you. So Ingram has forgiven Master Glyde, and now—”
She lifted her pale face at this name of duty.
“His wife died a year ago; rather more. He wants me to marry him, and I think I must.”
“You don't want to?” She shook her head, watching her fingers tear the grass.
“No,” she said, “not in the least. But I shall do it. Don't you think that I should?”
He thought, then threw his arms out. “God knows what I am to say! If the world held only you and me and him—here—fast in this valley—I tell you fairly. I should stop it.” She looked up quickly, and their eyes met. Hers were haunted with longing. He had to turn his head. “But it doesn't. To me what you intend to do seems quite horrible because I am flesh, and cannot see that you are spirit. That is a perfectly reasonable reading of the Laws, which says, What I did as a child I must abide as a woman. It's a law of Nature, after all's said; and yet it can be contradicted in a breath. It's one of those everlasting propositions which are true both ways, positively and negatively; for Nature says, That is my rule, and immediately after, Break it if you're strong enough. Now, you are, but I am not.”
Once more they looked at each other, these two who had but one desire between them—and who knew it each of each. And again it was he who broke away.
“I'm a coward, I'm false to my own belief. It's love that makes me so. Oh, Heaven, I see so well what it would be! And it would be right, mind you. These laws of Society are nothing, absolutely nothing. But you are pleased, for reasons, to submit. You are deliberate, you are strong. It's the old thing over again. Hideous, vile, abominable servitude! But you are pleased to do it. You say it is Destiny, and you may be right. I tell you once more, I dare not say a word against it.”
“No, no,” she said hastily; “don't say anything to stop me. I must go on with it. I have promised. He knows I don't love him, and he doesn't care.”
Senhouse pricked up his head. “Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you believe it?”
She shrugged half-heartedly. “He says so. He seemed to when I told him that I was going away.
“When was that?” he asked her. She told him the whole story as the reader knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands.
At the end of it, he looked out over the valley.
“Would to God,” he said, “you and I had never met, Sanchia.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, why do you say that?”
He took her hands. “You know why.” There was no faltering in the look that passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up, and stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was.
“We may be friends now, I believe,” he said. “You'll let me write to you? You'll trust me?”
“I shall live in your letters,” she said. “I read nothing else but those I have. They are all the help I have.” Then with a cry she broke out, “Oh, Jack, what a mess you've made of our affairs!”
He laughed bitterly. “Do you know my tale?”
“I guess it,” she said.
“I played the rogue,” he told her, “to a good girl, who was as far from my understanding as I was from hers. I thought that I had got over—it, you know, and that she and I could be happy together. Absurd, absurd! God bless her, she's happy now. I swear to you that I meant to do her honour—and directly I found out what she really wanted, I would have given it her. You'll not believe that I was such a fool as to suppose she could feel happy with my ideas of wedded life—but I did. Oh, Heavens! Poor dear, affectionate, simple soul, she felt naked! She shivered at her own plight, and wondered why I'd been so unkind to her, seeing I was by ordinary so kind. I shudder to think what she must have gone through.”
“But,” she said, anxious to save him, “but she knew what your beliefs were—and accepted them. You told me so.”
“Queen Mab,” he said gravely, “she was a woman, not a fairy. And please to observe the difference. She, poor dear, felt as if she was stripped until she married. You will feel stripped when you do. Yet you both do it for the same reason. She obeys the law because she dare not break it; you because you choose to keep it. Despoina! Despoina!”
She laughed, a little awry. “You used to call me Artemis. I'm not she any more.”
“You are all the goddesses. You do what you please. Your mind is of Artemis; you have the form of Demeter, the grave-eyed spirit of the corn—and your gown, I observe, is blue, as hers was. I see Hera in you, too, the peering, proud lady of intolerant eyelids; and Kore, the pale, sad wife—which makes you your own daughter, my dear; and Gaia, by whom the Athenians swore when they were serious,—Gaia, the Heart of the Earth. All these you are in turns; but to me Despoina, the Lady of the Country, whose secrets no man knows but me.”
She was now by his side, very pale and pure in her distress. She put her hand on his shoulder as she leaned to him. “Dearest, there is one of my secrets you have not learned. May I tell it you?”
He listened sideways, not able to look at her. She felt him tremble. “I think not—I think not. You will tell Ingram first—then do as you please. Don't ask me to listen. Haven't I told you that I see you every night?”
“And I tell you nothing of my secret?”
“I never ask you.”
“But do I not tell you? Can I keep it?”
“You don't speak to me. You never speak. You look. Fairies don't speak with the tongue. They have better ways.”
“What do you do with me?”
“I follow you, over the hills.”
“And then?”
“At dawn you leave me.”
“I am a ghost?”
“I don't know. You are Despoina. You go at dawn.”
A power was upon her, and within her. She put both hands on his shoulders. “One night I shall come—and not leave you. And after that you will not follow me any more. I shall follow you.” Perfectly master of himself, his eyes met hers and held them.
“It shall be as you will.”
She smiled confidently. “I shall come. I know that. But I shan't speak.”
“What need of speech between you and me?”
She saw Chevenix upon the high ground above. He stood on the grass dykes of Hirlebury, and waved his hat.
“I must go now,” she said. “Good-bye, my dear one.”
“Good-bye, Despoina. In seven hours you will be here again....”
“It is to be observed,” says a gifted author, “that the laws of human conduct are precisely made for the conduct of this world of Men in which we live and breed and pay rent. They do not affect the Kingdom of the Dogs, nor that of the Fishes; by a parity of reasoning they should not be supposed to obtain in the Kingdom of Heaven, in which the Schoolmen discovered the citizens dwelling in nine spheres, apart from the blessed Immigrants, whose privileges did not extend so near to the Heart of the Presence. How many realms there may be between mankind's and that ultimate object of Pure Desire cannot at present be known, but it may be affirmed with confidence that any denizen of any one of them, brought into relation with human beings, would act, and lawfully act, in ways which to men would seem harsh, unconscionable, without sanction or convenience. Such a being might murder one of the ratepayers of London, compound a felony, or enter into conspiracy to depose the King himself, and, being detected, very properly be put under restraint, or visited with chastisement either deterrent or vindictive, or both. But the true inference from the premisses would be that, although duress or banishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment, so called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or she could not be nostri juris, and that which was abominable to us might well be reasonable to him or her, and, indeed, a fulfilment of the law of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would be shocking, since that which it vindicated, in the mind of the victim either did not exist, or ought not. The ancient Greek who withheld from the sacrifices to Showery Zeus because a thunderbolt destroyed his hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slaves because a god took the life of his eldest son, was neither a pious nor a reasonable person.
“Beyond question,” he continues, “there are such beings upon the earth, visitors or sojourners by chance, whose true commerce is elsewhere, in a state not visible to us, nor to be apprehended by most of us; whose relation with mankind is temporary. The spheres which govern us, govern not them, and their conduct is dictated by their good pleasure, where ours goes after the good pleasure of our betters. Thus a man may, if he can, take a goddess or nymph to wife, but should not be disconcerted with what she may elect to do.”
Sanchia returned silently to London by the 6.50 from Salisbury, and arrived at Charles Street by half-past eight, which was Lady Maria's usual hour. She changed her dress hurriedly and came into the drawing-room. Ingram was waiting there, his hands behind his back. He looked at her as she entered, but did not greet her. Perhaps he saw his doom in her eyes.
“Had a good day, Sancie?” he asked, after a while of gazing.
“Very good,” she said.
“Saw your man?”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“Mad as ever?”
“Ah,” she said, “who is mad?”
“Well, my dear, if he is not, we are. That's certain. What have you done with Bill Chevenix?”
“He's gone home to dress. He will be here directly.”
“I hope,” said Ingram, “he played the perfect squire.” She stood by the window looking out towards the west. Luminous orange mist flared up behind the chimney-stacks in streamers. Above that, in a sky faintly blue, crimson clouds, like plumes of feather, floated without motion.
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 God, 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 institution, eh? You'll feel better, I expect. Keep your pecker 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.”
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