Mistress of mistresses (44 page)

'And
I will tell you a thing,' said Barganax: 'that when we were gone by, I told
Melates what, as I had ne'er a doubt, the man had in truth been thinking on.'

'Well,
and I,' said she, 'will tell you: that I read that easy guess in your grace's
eyes. But this you did not_ guess: what I was a-thinking on. For besides,' she
said, 'my eyes are my servants: train-bearers but no talebearers.'

All
the time the Duke's gaze was busied upon that unravelling quest amid many
threads of knowledge and outward seeming. As if the memory of the words had
risen like a slow bubble out of the marish waters of his meditation, his lips,
while his eyes were busy, played now with that old sonnet which carries, even
to the written page, the note of the lyre that shook Mitylene:

Fra
bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin,

Ourhailit
with my feeble fantasie;

Like
til a leaf that fallis from a tree,

 
Or til a reed ourblawin with the win.

Twa
Gods guides me: the ane of tham is blin,

Yea
and a bairn brocht up in vanitie;

The
next a Wife ingenrit of the sea,

And
lichter nor a dauphin with her fin.

Unhappy
is the man for evermair

That
tills the sand and.sawis in the air;

But
twice unhappier is he, I lairn,

That
feidis in his hairt a mad desire,

And
follows on a woman throw the fire,

Led
by a blind and teachit by a bairn.

Their
eyes met, a merry, humorous, feasting look. 'You are forgetting the good there
is in change, I think,' she said after a silence. 'For my own part, I incline
much to fair hair in women. Anthea, for instance.'

The
Duke winced.

'I
am resolved: good: dye my hair yellow.'

'If
you dared but even do your hair any way else but my ways—,' he spoke slowly, as
lost in a contemplation, his mind on drawing, not on his words.

'So,
then I'll cut it off,' said she.

His
feeding gaze seemed to grow keener. He said on his breath, 'I'd kill you.'

'I
should make you some sport ere that,' said the lady, her mouth still hidden
behind the lily smoothness of that indolent arm. 'Have you forgot our first
assay, laying aside of ceremonies, a month after that first meeting, three
years ago next summer? I showed you then, my friend: bit a piece of flesh off
your bones.'

'Two
minutes, my heart-dear!' He suddenly fell to drawing, line by line in swift and
firm decision. There was a stillness upon that lady, while line after line
traced, true and aware, its predestined furrow on the polished copper, like the
stillness of a sunshine evening upon some lake in which mountain and wood and
sky hang mirrored in reverse, and nothing moves save (may be with the settlings
of little winged creatures) the dancing gleams, one here, one there, seven or
eight at a time, of liquid golden stars coming and going upon that glassy
water.

The
Duke sprang up: went to the table to rub lampblack into the lines. When he
turned again, she had put on again her bodice, as it were a sleeved mail-coat
made of thousands of tiny orient pearls, close fitting like a glove, and sat
with her back towards him, upright on the couch. He stood for a minute looking
at his drawing, then came and sat down behind her, holding the plate for both
to see it. The clock struck three.

'As
for painting, that was a true word you said that night to Lessingham.'

'To
Lessingham?' she said.

'For
a lover: hard to paint the thing which is.'

'O
I remember: by the dream-stone.'

'The
One, that I still was a-hunting of in the Many, till your day; and now the Many
in you.' Her face was sideways towards him, looking at the dry-point. Her eyes
were become Medusaean and, in its repose, her mouth snakish and cruel.
'Paintings,' he said: 'all trash. They give me but a barren One out of your
Many, and never your One that breeds those Many, as the sun breeds colours.'

'But
this is better, you think?'

'It
is beyond comparison better; and my best.'

'Of
that which changeth ever, and yet, changeth not?'

That
lady's voice took on yet another quality of wonder, as if into the sun-warmed,
cud-chewing, indolence of it were distilled all the warring elements of her
divinity: fanged peril couched amid blood-red peonies: green of seawater, still
and deep, above a bottom of white shell sand, or the lights in lionesses' eyes:
the waved blackness of the Stygian flood in the ferrying across of some soul of
sweetness untimely dead: coal, snow, moonlight, the light of burning cities,
eclipse, prodigious comets, the benediction of the evening star; and behind
these things, a presence as of some darkness that waited, awake, shawled, and
still: gravid with things past and half remembered, and things present yet not
apprehended well, and with things to come: or, may be, not to come, swaying
betwixt birth and the unbeing of the void.

'Of
manifoldness: yes,' said he, after a minute. 'But of your Oneness, a shadow
only: Persephone beneath the sod.'

She
considered the picture again. 'You have my mouth there, I see?'

'Ah,
you can see that? though your arm hides it?'

'You
have it in the eyes, and in the fingers.'

'I
am glad,' said he: 'for I meant it so.'

'It
came of itself I should say. I set much by mouths: especially my own.'

He
stood up, laid the plate on the table, turned and stood looking at her.
'Omne animal triste?'
she said, the devil of provocation viperine in her
mouth's corner.

'I
told you that was a lie,' Barganax said, his eyes on hers. She settled back a
little, sitting there facing him, and her eyes seemed to grow darker and
larger. 'It were not for every man's comfort,' he said: 'mate with you: a swan
swimming with her wings expansed, then, whip, in a moment mew that white
outward skin, soar against the sun, bring out your pounces, fly at fools and
kill too. Nor for every man's capacity.'

'And
yet you will still be picture-making.'

'O
it is well,' he said: 'well that eagles do mate together: other else—'

'Other
else', said she, 'must Fiorinda have led apes in hell? or, worse, lived
housewife in Reisma? Well, I like that a man should high himself even thus
insufferably, so he have the pith to maintain it.'

The
Duke came a step towards her. 'There is no middle way with you,' he said: 'you
are all night and day: dazzling night and intolerable day.'

'And
roses.' It was as if not she but the very stillness of her mouth had spoken.
'Some red, some pink-colour.'

'And
eyes that are the sea. I drown in them,' he said upon a sudden intake of the
breath. 'When I kiss you, it is as if a lioness sucked my tongue.'

She
leaned back with hands clasped behind her head, Valkyrie breasts breathing
under that pearl-woven byrny, and above it her throat's lithe splendour and
strength. 'Seas are for who can swim,' she said, and a sweeping of lyres was in
the lazy voice of her. 'White noon is for the eagle to kindle his eyes upon:
the sweetness of the red rose is to be weighed down upon, to be crushed, to be
scented: the wonder of darkness is lest you should despair and, numbering
perfections, say, It is the sum: it is all. For am not I all, my friend? I am
more than all. And when all is told and numbered and multiplied and told over
again, I say to you, In my darknesses I have more. Come. Prove it again. Come.'

Upon
the chimes of four Doctor Vandermast knocked at the topaz-studded cedar doors
of the painting-room and entered to the Duke's 'Come in.' The Duke, wearing no
more that brocaded fur-purfled gown, but fully dressed in doublet, ruff, and
hose, apprised of Medor's importunities for audience, went out to him in the
gallery. The Lady Fiorinda, yet in some disarray and with her hair unbound,
reclined upon the couch fanning herself with a fan of white peacock feathers
twined with silver wires and set with apple-green chrysoprases in the ribs.

'Small
advance, it is to be feared,' she said as Vandermast surveyed the picture on
the easel. 'But what will you have, if two hours must be expended but in
settling of my pose?' There stirred in the accents of her speech a self-mocking,
self-preening, sleepy grace which, to the attentive and philosophic ear,
carried some note of that silver laughter that the ageless remembering waters
yet dream of, foaming disconsolate in Paphian sea-shallows.

The
doctor smiled, looking on the painting but half begun; then, seeing the
dry-point on the table, took it up and considered it awhile in silence. ‘I
judge from this,' he said at last, 'that your ladyship has been teaching some
lessons in philosophy. It is better. Nay, confine it but within its limit of
purpose defined and propounded for it, there is no more to do: it is perfect.'

'You
will say "Othello's occupation's gone," then? A melancholy
conclusion.'

‘I
will not say that, save after your ladyship,' answered that learned man.

'Well,
you must do maid-service first (these ill-appointed ways we live 'in
):
bring me the looking-glass to do my
hair. Thanks, reverend sir;' she sat up, putting off in an instant her grace of
languorous ease for a grace of wakefulness and speed of action, with deft sure
fingers pinning into a formal court elegance her hair's braided lovelinesses,
night-black, smooth-waved, with blue gleams where the light struck, like the
steel-blue gleaming of certain stars, as of Vega in a moonless night in
autumn. Her hands yet busied upon a last pranking of her ruff, she turned to
meet Barganax's face as he strode into that room like a man that contains
within his breast the whirlwind. Medor, with flushed countenance, followed at
his heel.

'Here's
news, and hell's fires in the tail of it,' said the Duke, making with great
strides towards the window and flinging himself down in his chair. 'The
hennardly knaves: yes, I mean your strutting stately brother, madam, with's
prims and provisoes,' he said, rocking from side to side: 'he hath accepted
Sail Aninma bestowed of him by the thundering tyrant, slick as was Mandricard
to take Alzulma 'pon like offer. And Jeronimy with's cringing in the hams,
licking the hand of the king-killer: if there be a badder man than that Beroald
'tis this back-starting Admiral with his thin wispy beard, ever eats with the
jackals and weeps with the shepherd: now sworn new entire allegiance and
obedience: given out all's o'er 'twixt them and me, our late confirmed league,
'cause of slaying of Mandricard. Damn them! after a month's digesting of it,
now the meat bolketh up again. Damn them!' he said, springing up and stalking,
like a beast caged, about the room: 'they're all habs and nabs, foul means or
fair: hearts in their hose when they catch a breath from Rerek. I almost
enrage!' He caught Fiorinda's eye. 'Well, will not your ladyship go join your
brother in Sail Aninma? Will you not be i' the fashion, all of you, and down
with me now I'm going?'

Fiorinda,
in a statuesque immobility, followed him with her gaze. 'What means your grace
to do now?' she asked. 'Paint, and let the wide world wind?'

The
Duke checked and swung round upon her as if bitten. Little comfort there was in
that lady's eye or in the stony curve of her lip. Yet as he looked upon her,
meeting stare with outfacing stare, it was as if, like fiery molten metal in a
furnace, his rage ran into some mould and cooling took shape and purpose. His
jaw set. His eyes, leaving their flashes, burned steady into hers. Then there
came upon all his pose and carriage that easy magnificence which best became
him; and in his voice that was right antiphone for hers, bantering, careless,
proud, 'I'll tell you,' he said: 'secret, within these walls,' and he looked
round upon Medor and Vandermast. 'Within three days I'll be man or mouse.'

With
a feline elegance the Lady Fiorinda rose, gathering with one white hand, not
to trail them on the floor, the black shimmering flounces of her skirt, and
walked to the window. There she stood, one knee upon the window-seat, her back
to the room; but the Duke's eyes, as the mariner's on the cynosure amid flying
cloud-rack, were fixed on her.

'Medor,'
he said, 'you are both a count of Meszria and captain of my bodyguard. You must
now for a while be my lieutenant and commissioner of my dukedom in the south
here, to do all in my name: what, I shall speedily command you. Write out the
commission, Vandermast: I'll sign it. For you, Medor, you are to muster up an
army suddenly: Melates, Zapheles, every lord i' the south here. High master in
Meszria I yet will be. But it must be suddener than move an army: take the prey
with a jolly quickness, before, like water cut with a sword, they have time to
join together again. Roder holds Kutarmish: by the carriage away of that, all
the de-fenced places of Outer Meszria, and may be o' the March too, will
without resistance be yielded. This then sooner of my own self than by any
other middlers. I'll take with me Dioneo, Bernabo, Ansaldo, him o' the
wall-eye— Friscobaldo, Fontinell: choose me out the rest: twenty-five of the
most outrageousest beseen and likely men we have in the guard. I'll ride
to-morrow.'