Mistress of mistresses (48 page)

'Ah,'
he said, 'we talk dream and truth till each swallow other, like as the two
pythons, and nothing left. But as for that old world: it was you, Mary, said it
to me in the old time, that it was as if One should have sat down alone with
the chessmen and said to them, "Live: and now see whether they can teach
themselves the game." And so wait, and watch. Time enough, in eternity.
But needeth patience. More patience than for manning of a haggard, madonna.
More patience than mine, by heavens!'

'The
patience of the Gods,' said she.

'An
experiment of Hers? for the mere pleasure of it, will you think? to while away
a morning, as fly at the heron?' He sat silent a minute, gazing at her. Then,
'I think,' he said: 'another painting.'

'Painting?
A barrenness of One? or dry-point, that shall give you, as you say, a bodiless
thin Many?' They waited, as if each had heard or seen somewhat that was here
and was gone. The alexandrite stone was upon her finger, water green in this
light of evening, yet with a stir as of embers below the green ready to flare
red when lamps should be lit.

'An
experiment,' said Lessingham, taking up his thread. 'A breath: then no more to
touch: no more but sit down and see if the meanest rude nothingness, once it be
raised to being, shall not of itself in the end become the thing She chooseth.
Infinite patience of the Gods. Slow perfection. The refining and refining of
the Vision.—You said it, Mary. Do you remember?'

'Why
will you say "of Hers"?'

Lessingham
smiled. 'Why will you, "His"?'

'Well,
if it pleases me?'

They
looked at one another, each with that scarcely perceptible half-mocking
challenge of the head: a grace of the antlered deer. 'A very good answer,' said
Lessingham. 'I cannot better it. Unless,' he said suddenly, and his voice died
away as he leaned nearer, his right elbow on the table, his left arm resting,
but not to touch her, on the back of her chair. It was as if from without-doors
a distant music, as once upon Ambremerine, made a thin obbligato to the accents
of his speech that came like the roll of muffled thunder: 'unless indeed it has
been with me, from the beginning, as with Anchises it was: a mortal man: not
once, but many times: but many times:

—with
an immortal Goddess: not clearly knowing.'

The
deep tones of Lessingham's voice, so speaking, were hushed to the quivering
superfices of silence, beneath which the darkness stirred as with a rushing of
arpeggios upon muted strings. Mary nodded twice, thrice, very gently, looking
down. The line of her throat and chin seen sideways was of a purity passing all
purity of flowers or wind-sculptured mountain snows. 'Not clearly knowing,' she
said; and in the corner of her mouth the minor dia-bolus, dainty and seductive,
seemed to turn and stretch in its sleep. They sat silent. By some trick of the
light, the colour of her hair seemed to change: to a gold-drained pale glory of
moonlight, instead of, as her dress, red of the bog-asphodel in seed. And her
eyes that had been green seemed grey now, like far sea horizons. Lessingham
felt the peace of her mind enfold him like the peace of great flats of tidal
bird-haunted marsh-land in a June morning looked on with the sun behind the
looker: no shadows: the sky grey of the dove's breast, toning to soft blues
with faint clouds blurred and indefinite: the landscape all greens and warm
greys, as if it held within it a twilight which, under the growing splendour of
the sun, dilutes that splendour and tames it to its own gentleness: here and
there a slice of blue where the water in the creeks between wide mud-banks
mirrors the sky: mirrors also boats, which, corn-yellow, white,
chocolate-brown, show (and their masts) clear against sky in those reflections
but less clear, against land, in nature: so, and all the air filled, as with
delicate thoughts, with the voices of larks and the brilliant white and black
of martins skimming, and white butterflies: drifts of horses and sheep and
cattle, littler and littler in the distance, peopling the richer pastures on
the right where buttercups turn the green to gold: all in a brooding
loveliness, as if it could hurt nothing, and as if it scarce dared breathe for
fear of waking something that sleeps and should be left to sleep because it is
kind and good and deserves to be left so.

Campaspe
said, at the clavichord: 'You will have more?' The bodiless tinkle of the
preluding blades of sound drew like streaked clouds across the face of the
stillness: then, 'What shall I sing to you?' she said: 'another of my Lady
Fiorinda's songs?' And her naiad voice, effortless, passionless, bodiless,
perfect on the note, began to sing:

Se
j'avoie ameit un jor,

je
diroie a tons:

bones
sont amors.

Lessingham
leaned forward on the table, his fists to his temples. He raised his head
suddenly, staring. 'I have forgotten,' he said. 'What is this I have
forgotten?'-"

After
a minute, he sprang up. 'Let us go into the garden,' he said to Antiope:
'settle it there. I must south. I would have you return no more to Rialmar
until this tempest be overblown. You can be safe here, and my mind at ease so.'

Anthea
exchanged glances with Campaspe, and laughed a laugh like the crash of spears.

Lessingham
followed the Queen to the door which that unnamed disciple now opened for them.
They stepped out, not into that wayside garden of Vandermast's, but now,
strangely, into an appearance of that Teremnene garden: the statue gracious
above floating lily-leaves: terraced granite walks and steps going up from the
pond: flowers asleep in the borders: the path where Derxis had thrown his
stone: over all the star-dim spring night. The door shut behind them, shutting
them out from the glow and the candlebeams. Antiope put a hand in his.

'Why
do you tremble?' said Lessingham. 'Be safe, you are now free from him.'

Antiope
said: 'There is nought to bind you in your choice. But neither is there to bind
me. Different ways you and I cannot choose. If yours to walk through dangerous
and high places and to approach near steep downfalls, so mine. Or if you the
safe way, so then I. And so, if you will abide by your saying and go south,
then must I queen it out in Rialmar.'

They
looked each at other. Lessingham took a great breath. He turned to Aphrodite's
statua in its cold high beauty, netted and held in the loneliness of starlight.
'Let-Her', he said, 'choose for us.'

'Be
it so,' said Antiope. "There is no other way of wise choosing.'

'Let
me look at your face,' he said. She raised it to his under the stars.

After
a while, he spoke in a whisper. 'What mystery was this? Looking but now in your
face, I have been my own love: seen myself: loved myself, being myself you for
that instant, madonna: chosen for you, and for me, with your love as from
withinwards. Been your love. Been—' he caught his breath: 'Was that the
threshold? upon Ambremerine, with glow-worms in her hair?'

‘I
do not know,' Antiope said, her face hidden now against his shoulder. 'But what
you have seen I have seen too: I too have chosen: been you for that instant,
loving me. For a pang, and away.'

For
a minute they abode so, as one, motionless: then stood back and joined hands as
might two brothers before battle. 'Then, this being our choice,' he said,
'better it is, madonna, that you remain in Rialmar rather than come south with
me. For all Rerek and Meszria are up in war now, and my going is to put all in
hazard that must us save or spill. And well as I can answer for my cousin while
I sit in the saddle, I would not, were I to fall, leave him executor of my
trusts toward you; nor with the means to come at you. I leave you a great army
here, and the lord knight marshal: a general expert and to trust. I take but my
own eight hundred horse, and may be three hundred more. And Rialmar is by
nature inexpugnable. By heavens, they shall see lightning out of Fingiswold,
and the thunder of it shall shake Meszria and Rerek ere they shall have
reckoned with me.'

Antiope
said, as he kissed her hand under starlight: 'We have chosen, my friend

He
raised his head again, her hand still in his. It was as if the stars and the
huge darknesses without remembered again for their own that saying of the
Lycian king to his loved kinsman, standing forth under windly Ilios:

Ah,
lad, and were't but so: and, from this war fleeing,

 
We twain, thou and I, for ever ageless and
deathless

Might
endure: not then would I in the van do battle.

 
Neither send forth thee to battle which maketh
glorious.

 
—But now,—since thus serried the fates of
death come nigh us:

Thousands,
nor is't in mortal to flee such, neither elude them,—

On!
be it praise we become for another, or, haply, reap it.

Lessingham's
nostrils were like a war-horse's that hears the trumpets. Then on the sudden, in
that questionable garden under stars, he seemed to see how a change, as with
eclipse or deep clouding of the moon, overcame the beautiful face of this Queen
of his, as if night should suddenly have clothed her with the mantle,
inexorable, stony, archaic, of Astarte or if there be any crueller dethroned
divinity of ages outworn: Terror Antiquus, treading the dead mouldered faces
and unfleshed skeletons of nameless forgotten men. Then, as the silver moon
with the passing of that red shadow, her beauty shone fair.

The
awe of that sight darkened his voice as he spoke: 'Who are you?'

Antiope
trembled. 'Sometimes, in such places as this,' she said, ‘I scarcely know.'

It
was morning now in Doctor Vandermast's wayside house. Lessingham, booted and
spurred ready for setting forth, stood beside her pillow, as debating whether
to wake her or let this, awake and asleep, be the last before their returning
again to action and that banquet-table. Antiope lay asleep on her side, back
towards him where he stood, so that he saw, partly from behind, the line of her
cheek and brow and the rose of sleep that warmed it. Lessingham said in
himself: 'Forgetfulness. What does it matter? Belike the old man spoke aright:
that it is a precious gift of Her lap, this forgetting; in order that She may
give all again, morning-new. Every momentary glimpse: every half-heard overtone
in her voice: the sheet drawn so, as it always is, nicely across that mouth of
mine: eyelid, virginal quiet line and long drooped lashes, closed asleep: pale
dawn-like gold of that hair of mine tied back with those ribbons: I have
forgotten, and even these shall be forgotten. Well: so She give it anew. Well:
so that She have said: "They are Mine: I keep them: I store them up. In
time they are gone for ever, but they are Mine unto all eternity."'

He
tucked the sheet gently in behind her shoulders. She turned at the touch with a
contented inarticulate little murmur and, between half-opened eyelids, as only
half waking, looked up at him. 'Those two songs,' she said after a moment, her
voice soft with the down of sleep.

'Did
the little water-swallow say hers for you?' said Lessingham.

Antiope
said, 'Say it for me again.'

Lessingham
said:

I
am love: Loving my lover, Love but his love:

Love
that arrayeth me, Beddeth me, wardeth me—

 
Sunn'd in his noon, Safe under hand of him,

Open
my wild-rose Petals to him:

Dance
in his music. —Such-like is love.

Antiope
said, ‘I like it better than that other. Say you like it better too.' ‘I like
it best.' 'Why?'

His
mustachios stirred with the flicker of a smile. He paused, thoughtful, stroking
his black beard. 'As not my way,' he said, 'could I by some magic be turned to
a— As not known from within. I am not Barganax.'

'My
brother,' she said. 'I have never seen him. Have you seen: that lady?'

'So
far as any but he may see,' answered Lessingham, ‘I have seen her.'

'How
far was that?'

He
said, as if searching for words, 'May be, so far as —but no: you have never
seen him. What are brothers and sisters? In the main, so. But once, until I
beheld nothing. Then once, until I beheld you.'

'Say
it again, that you like Campaspe's best.'

Lessingham
said again, 'I like it best.'

‘I
am glad.' It was as if on her breath two shadows crossed, of laughter and
tears. 'I cannot, that other way.'