Mistress of mistresses (19 page)

'What
is that lady?' said Lessingham.

Vandermast
said, 'You did command me, my lord, to learn you to apprehend fully. But here,
in limine demonstrationis,
upon the very threshold, appeareth a difficulty
beyond solution, in that your lordship is instructed already in things
contingent and apparent,
affectiones,
actiones,
phenomenal
actualities
rei politico; et
militaris,
the council chamber
and the camp,
puella-puellae
and matters conducive thereunto. But in things
substantial I find you less well grounded, and here it is beyond my art to,
carry you further seeing my art is the doctor's practice of reason; because
things substantial are not known by reason but by perception:
perceptio per solam suam essentiam;
and
omnis
substantia est necessario infinita:
all
substance, in its essence, infinite.'

'Leave
this discourse,' said Lessingham, 'which, did I understand its drift, should
make me, I doubt not, as wise as a capon. Answer me: of what
substantia
or
essentia
is that lady?'

Doctor
Vandermast lowered his eyes. 'She is my Mistress,' he said.

'That,
to use your gibberish, old sir, is
per
accidens,'
said Lessingham. 'I
had supposed her the Duke's mistress: the Devil's mistress too, belike. But
per
essence,
what is she? Why did my eyes dazzle when I would have looked upon her but at
that moment to-night? since many a time ere then I easily enough beheld her.
And why should aught lie on it, that they did so dazzle? Come, we have dealt
with seeming women to-night that be nymphs of the lakes and mountains, taking
at their will bird-like shapes and beastly. What is she? Is she such an one?
Tell me, for I will know.'

'No,'
said Vandermast, shaking his head. 'She is not such as these.'

Eastward,
ahead, Lessingham saw how, with the dancings of summer lightnings, the sky was
opened on a sudden behind the towers and rampires of Acrozayana. For that
instant it was as if a veil had been torn to show where, built of starbeams and
empyreal light, waited, over all, the house of heart's desire.

That
learned man was searching now beneath the folds of his gaberdine, and now he
drew forth a little somewhat and, holding it carefully in his fingers, scanned
it this way and that and raised it to view its shape against the moon. Then,
giving it carefully to Lessingham, 'My lord,' he said, 'take this, and tender
it as you would a precious stone; for indeed albeit but a little withered leaf,
there be few jewels so hard to come by or of such curious virtue. Because I
have unwittingly done your lordship an ill service to-night, and because not
wisdom itself could conduct you to that apprehension you do stand in need of, I
would every deal I may to serve and further you. And because I know (both of my
own judgement and by certain weightier confirmations of my art) the proud
integrity of your lordship's mind and certain conditions of your inward being,
whereby I may, without harm to my own fealty, trust you thus, albeit to-morrow
again our enemy: therefore, my Lord Lessingham, behold a thing for your peace.
For the name of this leaf is called
sferra
cavallo,
and this virtue it
hath, to break and open all locks of steel and iron. Take it then to your bed,
my lord, now in the fair guest-chamber prepared for you in Acrozayana. And if,
for the things you saw and for the things you saw not to-night, your heart
shall be troubled, and sleep stand iron-eyed willing not to lie down with you
and fold her plumes about your eyelids, then if you will, my lord, taking this
leaf, you may rise and seek. What I may, that do I, my lord, giving you this.
There shall, at least, no door be shut against you. But when night is done and
day cometh you must by all means, (and this lieth upon your honour), burn the
leaf. It is to do you good I give it unto you, and for your
peace. Not for a weapon against my own sovereign
lord.'

Lessingham
took it and examined it well in the light of the moon. Then, with a noble look
to Vandermast, he put it away like a jewel in his bosom.

VIII

Sferra
Cavallo

PURSUIT
OF A NIGHT VISION
 
FIORINDA ON THE DREAM-STONE  
   WHIRLPOOL      MISTRESS  OF
MISTRESSES
 
'NORTH, IN RIALMAR.'

In the
deep
and dead time of the night there went forth a dream through the gate of horn,
by permission of Her that is, and is to come. And the dream, treading the
viewless ways, came down to the land of Meszria and to the citadel that
overlooks Zayana town, and entered and stood in the fair guest-chamber at the
foot of the golden bed, the posts whereof were fashioned in the likeness of
hippogriffs, gold and with eyes of sapphire. And upon that bed was the Lord
Lessingham but even now fallen into an uncertain slumber. And the dream put on
beauty, and, to temper that beauty, the appearance of moonlight as a gown and
of a girdle as of silvery moonlight upon snow mountains, and the appearance as
of a bodice woven of those stars which men call Berenice's Hair: stars of so
delicate a shimmering brightness that the gross direct look may ill perceive
it, but is best gazed on askance or indirect. But by ordainment of the Gods,
there was drawn about the head of that dream and across its face
a
veil of light, as darkness inscrutable, or as
wonder overwritten upon wonder so as none might read. And the dream spake with
the voice that a sleeper may hear, too fine for waking ears, (unless, indeed,
for a moment
they wake and
dream at once), saying:
I
promised and I will perform.

Lessingham,
hearing these words, and knowing that voice, moved and opened his eyes and
awoke to the night and the lonely chamber.

It
was not as if a dream had fled: rather truth, that had stood but a moment since
ready to cast off her cloak. Like a man overtaken by swift-darkening night in a
bog through which a path leads, hard to find even by day and now lost though
but a moment since he trod it, he seemed to plunge and stagger without a guide.
Betwixt sleeping and waking, he clad himself, girt on his sword, took from
beneath the pillow that little leaf, and, filled with that vision, blundered
towards the door. The great iron key stood in the lock where, upon going to bed,
he had turned it. With the touch of that leaf the locked door swung open before
him like a door that opens in a dream. As a dreamer with hastening undirected
noiseless footsteps follows an unknown quest, Lessingham, not knowing well
whether he dreamed or no, followed he knew not what, save that, may be, there
was nought else in earth or heaven worth the following. And as he, strode or
stumbled along dim corridors, up winding shadowy stairs, across moonlit courts,
still there sprang open before him both lock and bolt in a suddenness of
dream-like stillness. And ever as each door opened, it opened upon emptiness:
quiet empty rooms of darkness or silent moonlight

In
the mean time, not Lessingham alone waked in Acrozayana. In the spacious
throne-room the wings that lifted their glory above the dream-stone seemed to
quiver a little. The blackness of the great twisted pillars, the poppied
frieze, the walls, the very floor of marble, seemed to waver like the texture
of a dream. It was as if, in that midnight hour, some deeper drowsiness of
moonset, that held its breath to listen to its own stillness, hung in the
perfumed air, circling, tending in slow eddies ever to one centre. And there,
as it had been glamour's selfmade flesh for a season, to be queen of all scents
and furry wings, dews, and silences, and star-shimmering depths, and of all
wild hearts' desires that cry to the heart of summer night, Fiorinda sat
throned upon the dream-stone.

She
had let fall her cloak, which lay tumbled in waves of sea-green velvet and
silver about her feet and about the cushions where she sat. Her arms, bare to
the shoulder, had an ivory pallour and an ivory smoothness: pillars at the
temple door. Her finger-nails were as shells new-taken from some enchanted sea:
the fingers as branched white coral from that sea's treasure-groves,
marvellously transmuted from its native insensate elegance to be the ornament
and living instrument of that lady's life and her inward thought, and wearing
the livery of her own aching loveliness. Her gown was of gauzy silk coloured
like moonlight, pleated with a hundred pleats and a-glitter with silver sequins
and a maze of spiral tendrils made of little beads of jet. A girdle of corded
silver lace curved low on her hips. Her bodice, of the like stuff save that
here were diamonds instead of sequins amid the spirals, barely contained as
with a double cup its warm and breathing treasures. Betwixt bodice and girdle
the sweet bare interspace was a thing to shame all jewels, to make driven snow
seem sullied, and magnolia petals coarse and common, beside the lily of its
heavenly purity.

Upon
her left, below her, a pace or so removed, Barganax sat sideways on the steps
of the throne, whence he might behold all at a look her beauty: strange,
complex, discordant in its elements, yet in the living whole satisfying and
perfect.

'More,'
he said.

'I
am tired of talking,' answered she.

'Look
at me, then,' said the Duke.

She
did so, with a little finical inclination of the head, as a rose might take
notice of a butterfly, and looked away again.

'Were
it not that I do suspect 'twas your own devilish device to trip me up, the
better to flaunt your power upon me, I should be sorry,' said the Duke, after a
minute's silence.

'Repentance,'
said Fiorinda, 'is a thing not easy to forgive, in a great man.'

'Will
you forgive the deed?' he said. 'For your forgiveness, may be, shall be a
sunshine to drink up these mists.'

'I'll
have it named first,' she said.

'I'll
not name it,' said the Duke. 'It was an abomination, a woe, a miscreative
dream.'

'A
nameless abomination! I must pursue this.' There was in her voice a voluptuous
lazy languor. 'And it befell —when?'

'Upon
Friday of last week.'

'And
this is Monday!' she said. A whole masque of little gadflies of unseizable
conscient comedy danced forth in her eyes and were gone. 'And yet,' she said:
'Anthea: one of my most happiest devisements. And yet: was it fit indeed to sup
a falcon with straw?'

Barganax
looked at her, and as he looked his brow lightened and his eyes grew dark. 'O,
you are beyond soundings,' he said. 'Do you laugh? or do your nurse it against
me? Well, there it is: and I swear to you, there was not an instant in it but
my thought and my sense were nailed to you: but only to prove for the
thousandth time your power, that outparagons all.

'Well,'
he said: 'do you know that?'

Her
eyebrows, like brooding wings beyond nature long and slender of some far-flown
bird, informed the serene purity of her brow with an air of permanent soft
surprise touched sometimes with contemplation, and now with a faint mockery.
'Yes,' she said.

'Will
you forgive me?'

'Yes,'
she said.

'I
would give much,' said Barganax, 'but to see your mind. Do you understand, that
every road I tread leads to you?'

‘I
have heard you say so,' she said. 'No doubt your grace will accept the same
comforting assurance from me.'

'It
is true I am a proud man,' said Barganax then; 'yet I doubt my pride for this.
For this, I must know in myself perfection.'

Fiorinda
smiled. It was as if the termlessness of some divinity, clear, secure,
pitiless, taking its easeful pleasure in the contemplation of its own self, lay
veiled in that faint Olympian smile.

'But
with you,' said the Duke: 'no such matter. You are perfect. You know it. Most
devilishly you know it.'

He
stood up and paced back and forth upon the carpet, then came to a stop beside
her. 'But no. Jealousy', he said, 'is a distemper of little men. Puff! 'tis
gone. 1 play even, madonna. And,—well, I hold my own.'

Slowly,
after a minute, she turned her head: gave him her green eyes. As she looked
they widened, and it was as if fire leapt in their deeps and then flickered
down to quiet embers. She turned away, giving him now, from black hair to
silver shoulder, the virginal sweet line of her bended neck; the side view of
her chin, firm and proud, and of lips, where her thought seemed to rest like a
lily on still water.