Chapter IV: Part I: The Marriage Eve

She had never looked fairer, for the full moonlight fell on her bosom and arms, and threw into her sweet face a statuesque quietness. For a while the curious question of whether the garden were or not a fitting background for her beauty puzzled me; but soon, with a self-pitying smile, I gave my attention again to her whose inspirations governed mine. She was leaning against a great vase, from whose margin toad’s flax and creeping violets--flowers she loved--hung in clusters, with odours floating about in almost tangible clouds.

We were to be married on the morrow, and I was excited and was scarce myself. I dared not think of my courtship; for the knowledge that her affection was too great a gift--that I was indeed unworthy to approach that white, delicious creature whose subtle potency forced me against my will to love her--this knowledge, I say, confounded me beyond belief.

Fate had thrown us together, ironically matching a woman whose story was irredeemably sad with a man wounded in a thousand struggles, who bore no other trophy to lay at her feet than a dead youth. She had stooped with more than human tenderness, and had raised me to her breast, and pressed my head there until the heated brow had cooled, and the temple-throbbings ceased.

As time passed I essayed a question. Had it not been desecration I would have leaned forward and pressed that bare shoulder with my lips. As it was, the purity hindered me: I could as soon have kissed the heavens.

‘Once more, Phyllida, for the last time in our unwedded life,’ I said, ‘tell me, with all your heart, if you love me?’

I looked for her simple assurance, accompanied by the fond chiding that maddened me; and waited tremulously for answering. None such came, and looking into her face I saw a strange air of abstraction. Wounded by her indifference, I repeated my question.

She turned wearily. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said. ‘I have often said that I love you. Let me be silent for awhile--not alone, (seeing that I was hurt, and that I moved away)--‘your presence is enough for me: to know that you are here, and that I may touch you when I will.’

Vainly enough, jealous perhaps of her thoughts, I now strove to compare Phyllida with the splendour of her surroundings; and pained by her apathetic humour, I fancied as my eyes glanced over the landscape that her beauty suffered in comparison. Behind us lay the half-ruined gables of Colmer Hall. Hebe’s urn in the terrace fountain was brimful of clear water, and the mantle of scarlet moss that time had spread over the statue seemed trebly luxuriant in the clare-obscure of the moonlight. The windows of the morning-parlour were thrown open, and the lamplight showed those quaint thread-embroideries of fabulous beast and fowl and fish; one outcome of the over-exuberant fancy of Phyllida’s ancestress, Margot Colmer.

In front lay the choked fish-ponds, with their pretentious water-stairs and sleeping reeds. To the right the beech-planting with its vistaed alleys sloped down to a brawling river. To the left, through great elms, stretched the long barren view of fields and hills, chequered by mortarless limestone walls.

Then I looked again at Phyllida. I cannot attempt to describe her countenance in full. It did not approach any conventional type. White and still and languid, with lips arched in the fashion old poets loved; clear-cut brows and perfect in fancifulness; in the chin power and voluptuous ease combined.

Hers was more than a woman’s height. Her gown was of snowy silk; one of those ancient costumes of which there was such store in the presses; the style was of the time of Anne. Gorgeous arabesques were woven in metal thread on bodice and petticoat; pictures of woodbine-covered lattices, idylls of cornfields, of spring flowers budding. Twisted about one arm was a long string of glittering sapphires: clasped on the other a Javan bracelet of rich filigrain inwrought with rubies.

I stood feasting greedily on the sight, whilst I scorned myself for attempting to compare her to anything earthly. Her bosom had moved more freely since she had discarded the bloodstone heart. I was glad of its disappearance, for she would never disclose, although I had often begged to hear it, the story of how it had become hers; and of late its presence had angered me unreasonably.

At last she looked up, and stretched her right hand to fondle mine.

‘Mad genius,’ she said gravely, ‘can you burst into no wild ode about me? You are in the humour for tragedy. Remote as my thoughts have been, yet I have felt that you have wavered angrily and striven to drive me into nothingness. But after all I am paramount.’

What could I do but lift her hand to my lips and press it until I was lost in the ecstasy of touching her flesh so for the first time. She withdrew it, seeing that I quivered from head to foot.

‘Come,’ she cried, with a mirth that I had never known her affect before. ‘Come, let us return to the house. To-night, Rupert, of all nights, I have something to tell: something concerning the past I must make known.’

And she lifted her eyes to the moon, and held her hands fantastically forward, as if she expected the orb to fall from its setting. When she was wearied, she took my arm within hers and, leaning, walked to the entrance of the hall.

There the moonlight fell on the armed figures. The damascene breast-plates worn four centuries ago in French battles gleamed like Phyllida’s gown. The bloody mort-cloth with the stained opals, that hung dusty and tattered by the door, twisted as if a strong current of air stirred behind. The lamp in the morning-room had burned so low that the air was tainted.

Phyllida left me, whilst I gazed at Anne Killigrew’s portrait of James the Second and his queen. Was ever picture more ludicrous? Each crease of the royal draperies concealed a demon of dulness; in each feature of the royal countenances was an excessive, wooden minuteness that deprived the dark, ugly faces of the faintest suggestion of life. The lacquer-framed tapestry to the left of the window offered as ever only a conflicting relief, for the enigma of the aureoled woman, who bore in her hand a bag of gold with the inscription _Holy Barbara bringeth Help_, could never be unriddled.

Suddenly a cry of wonder burst from my lips. A bust modelled in red clay had taken the place of the devotional book on the reading-table. It was the head of a man in the early prime of life, suave, handsome, and priestly: the brow was high and narrow, the mouth painfully compressed, the tonsure of such curls as would have graced a bacchanal. The crudeness of detail, and the luxuriance of fancy, showed me that Phyllida was the modeller.

A fierce murmur, like a wounded animal’s, checked me as I laid my hand on the forehead to gauge its lack of breadth.

‘Touch anything but that! Do not let your hands corrupt it! Profane! profane!’

I turned aghast, to see Phyllida at my side. Her face was wan, her eyes red and swollen with tears. She seemed a pious witness of some random sacrilege.

‘What is wrong?’ I said. ‘What have I done? Am I so unworthy?’

Without heeding me she unfastened the bundle of papers she had brought, and having extracted several, she laid them on the table. Then, touching my arm, she motioned me to a chair, and in lamplight that dimmed and dimmed as the moon prevailed she began to read:--

‘_Sensuous hopes trampled upon; visionary joys despised. There is no
future gladness. Destiny works. What are we more than a handful of
faded leaves, tossed by the early winter wind? Some speed--others are
checked and lie until corruption. I have reached a splendid goal;
you, poor flower--poor slug-a-bed!... Alas! why should I chide, I of
all men?_’

‘I do not understand,’ I interrupted. ‘Explain, Phyllida!’ She gave no sign of hearing, but continued:--

‘_For our love had seemed impossibly great before. O heart of mine!
is it that passion is dying--leaping high before burning out? I
cannot breathe as I think of you--cannot sit, nor walk, nor lie, but
must everlastingly fall with my spirit ebbing from my lips._’

At this I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hand. What talisman gave Phyllida power to evoke such mental agony. The very fragmentariness of the selections maddened me. Each word seemed as if it might have been forced from me, or from one of my impossible heroes.

‘_You are mine for ever. Strive as you will against the gossamer
network that I have flung over you; call on your God for assistance;
curse me until you hate, and yet there is no remedy._’

The voice that had grown so soft as to be almost a whisper ceased now, and looking up I found that I was alone.