Mistress of mistresses (39 page)

The
Duke, so sitting and watching, felt sails fill and his spirit move out once
more on that uncharted dangerous ever undiscovered main.

He
rose: took a dish of fruit from the sideboard. Vandermast was half risen to
have taken it from him, as scandalled that his great master should do
handmaid-service, but the Duke prevented him with his eye, and came with the
dish to where she sat. 'If your ladyship will have any conceits after supper,
as medlars, nuts, lady-pears?'

Very
daintily she examined them, took one, and, looking at him not with eyes but
with the snake-black gleams of her back hair and with the curve of white neck
and shoulder, held it up for him to take and peel for her. He peeled it in
silence: gave it back: her eating of it was with an air of creative awareness,,
as of one who carves or models: of conscious art, rather than the plain
business of eating. The Duke watched her for a minute;
then, behind her chair, leaned over the back and
said in a low voice, 'What crinkum-crankum was this?'

She
leaned back her head till he could look straight down into her eyes as he bent
over her, facing him as it were upside down. He looked in them; then in her
mouth's corner where that thing sat at alert; then over all the imperial
pitiless face of her, where a dozen warring imperfections were by some secret
fire transmuted to that which is beyond flattery and beyond alchemy; then to
the warm interspace where, with her leaning back, the bosom of her crimson
dress strained closer; then into her eyes again. 'I wonder,' he said: 'can the
Devil outsubtle you, madonna?'

'How
can I tell?' she said, with great innocence, and the thing there covered its
face. 'Why? Would you engage his help against me?'

'Yes.
Save that I think somewhat scorn to bribe your servant.'

'Is
he my servant?' she asked, as who might ask an indifferent matter for
information's sake: Is Vandermast your secretary? Is Campaspe a naiad?

'Or
I have long been misinformed,' answered the Duke. 'Come, what wages do you pay
him? Though I fear all the wealth I have shall scarce avail me to bid against
you.'

'As
for me, I pay not,' said that lady. 'Neither am paid. Still, I have servants:
perhaps him we spoke on: could at least have him if I would. And still, I am
your mistress. Is not that singular?' She put up a jewelled hand, took his
that rested on her chair-back, drew it secretly against her neck, then swiftly
put it away again.

The
oaths you sware me,' he said, close in her ear, 'after that night last May,
never to do it again. And yet, worse this time. By my soul, I dreamed, and I
was— Lessingham.'

Fiorinda
said, ‘I have heard tell of stranger dreams than that.'

'And
she? that other?' he said, still lower. 'Who is she?'

Fiorinda
sat up and smoothed her gown. Barganax moved a couple of paces round towards
the fire so as to see her face again. 'O, this large-eyed innocence,' he said,
'becomes your ladyship badly, who have all these things in your purse. What, is
she a dress of yours?'

'I
had thought you had learnt by now,' she said, with a swan-like smooth motion of
her hands settling the combs in her hair, 'that everything that is is a dress
of mine. Ever and since the world began,' she said, so low as he should hear
not that: but that little white cat, gazing up at her, seemed to hear it.

The
Duke looked about. Campaspe at the clavichord fingered out some little lilting
canon. Zenianthe had drawn her chair up beside her, and watched her as some
sweet oak-tree might watch the mouse-like darts and pauses of the tree-creeper
along her steadfast dream-fast limbs. The old man talked low with Anthea: that
strange disciple of his was curled up on the carpet as if asleep, one arm about
the little white cat that with slow blinking eyes still studied Fiorinda from a
distance. 'You shall know this,' said the Duke: 'I loved her as my life.'

With
that scarce perceptible little upward scoffing backward movement of her head,
she laughed. 'O sweetly pa-thetical. You mouth it, my lord, like a common play-actor.'

'And
would a let you, madam, go hang.'

*Who
would not be so lovered?' she said; and, with a flower-like grace which had yet
the quality in it as of the outpeeking from flowers of a deadly poisoned adder,
she stood up. ‘I am indeed,' she said delicately, 'of a most lambish patience;
but I much fear, my lord, you grow tedious. Zenianthe, my cloak.'

'Stay,'
said the Duke. 'My tongue can run on patterns as well as your ladyship's. And
men that be in love can ill away to have lovers appointed them by others. It
was a dream.'

'It
was true,' she replied, and her green and slanting and unfathomable eyes held
him while he took a stab from every sensuous movement of her putting on her
cloak. 'The first (as for loving) was true, but not the second: the second was
but said in a bravado to plague me. Think, and you will remember, my friend,
that I say true.'

He
made no reply.

'Moreover,'
she said, 'you would not, no not even this moment, let even her go hang. No,
fling not off, my lord: think. You shall find I say true.'

The
Duke faced that lady's eyes in an arrested stillness. 'Think' she said again;
and he, looking now steadfastly on her lips that seemed to rest upon the
antique secret memory of some condition, primal and abiding, where the being of
these things is altogether at once, which is the peculiar property of
everlastingness, slowly after a pause answered and said, 'Yes: but that is not
to say love. For no man can love and worship his own self.'

'This
that you have said,' said that lady, and her slow voice was like honey of
roses, 'I have strangely heard before. Yet not heard,' she said, her eyebrows
lifting with their look of permanent soft surprise as she looked down, drawing
on her gloves; 'for 'twas but thought, not spoken: seen, in eyes: his eyes, not
yours, in Acrozayana.'

'In
his eyes?' said the Duke. The silence opened quivering wings above them like
the wings that shadow the dream-stone.

'There
have been, to say, brothers and sisters,' she said. It was as if, under the
ironic lazy seductive voice of her, the wings were upstrained to that ultimate
throbbing tension that must dissolve the next instant in some self-consuming
cataclysm of its own extremity. Then, whether upon the mere whim and fantasy:
whether of her most divine discerning bounty,
bis dat quae tarde:
whether but of her April mood, (now lovely
sunshining, now hail from a louring sky, suddenly again those stones melting at
a gleam to jewelled drops on the yellow daffodils and celandines: half-fledged
leaves of sallow and birch and thorn turning to green tiny flames against the
sunlight: the heavens all soft and blue, and the blackthorn and wild cherry
starry above new lambs): whether for all or for none of these reasons, she
loosed hold. 'Reverend sir, are my horses ready?'

'Truly,'
said the Duke, as if awake again, 'I ne'er saw my—' and suddenly his eyes
became veiled. 'Unless—'.

Vandermast
came back from the door: 'Madam, they are ready at the gate.'

Barganax
started. 'What is this place? Madam, I pray you go not yet. 'Least, I'll go
with you.' But, out by the door that aged man held open for her, she was gone.
Barganax, like a man that would pursue in a dream, but his legs, held in the
woolly fetters of sleep, will not obey, stood rooted. Then the door shut.

He
saw Anthea's eyes levelled upon him in a sphinxian expressionless stare.
Letting that go unregarded, he stood now, back to the fire, in a study, erect,
feet wide apart, one hand thrust in his jewelled girdle, the other twirling and
smoothing up his mustachios. The dark fires slept and woke, glowed and slept
and glowed again, in his half-closed eyes. He said in himself, 'But no, dear
Lady of Sakes, beguiler of guiles, O you, beyond soundings: there's something
there beyond that. That he hath in him something of yours, I'll not think it
past credit, that am inured to marvels. Nay, I believe it: it is a lamp: shows
me much was dark till now. But you are more. O you! not with the help of all
the devils could I, at this day, be bobbed with such an insufficient answer.'

Doctor
Vandermast followed that lady through the garden: bare beds rough with
hoar-frost, and over all, hanging high in a frost-clear heaven, the winter
moon. 'While you are in a condition, madam,' said he, 'to understand and teach
me: lest I fall out, may I know if my part is so far jusdy enacted, and
agreeably to your ladyship's desires?'

'Desires?'
she said. 'Have I desires?'

'Nay,'
said he, ‘I speak but as men speak. For I am not ignorant that
Dea expers est passionum, nec ullo laetitice aut
tristitice affectu afficiture:
that
She Who dwelleth on high is with no affect affected, be it of sorrow or of
joy.'

'How
sweet a thing,' said she, 'is divine philosophy! And with how taking a
simplicity it speaketh, so out of your mouth, most wise doctor, flat nays and
yeas of these which were, as I had supposed, opinable matters and disputable!'

'Oh
You, Who albeit You change, change not,' said that old man: 'I speak as men
speak. Tell me, was there aught left undone?'

She
took the reins and let Her beauty shine out for an instant, as a blaze of fire,
now bright, and now away. His eyes took light in the light of it. 'There was
nought undone,' She answered. 'All is perfect.' And they that were harnessed
took wing and, thickening the crisp fine air with a thunder of countless
wing-beats, sped with Her in an instant high below stars through the
down-shedding radiance of the frozen silvery-moon. And the learned doctor,
straining eyes and ears towards heaven, followed their flight, their mounting,
circling, descending; and at length beheld them at his eastern upper window
hovering, that their driver might alight; and there like a dream he beheld Her
enter by that balcony, or like a pale moonbeam. For he saw that not as Our
Lady of Sakes She entered now, but once more Our Lady of Peace.

So
now he himself turned again, came in, shut the door, and came to the fireside
again and his company.

The
clock at his so coming in, (as if She in that dove-drawn flight betwixt earth
and stars had swept the hours, bound to Her chariot, to a speed beyond their
customed measure), struck the last hour before midnight. That old man came to
Lessingham where he stood yet, in a study, his back to the fire. 'Sleep, my
Lord Lessingham, is a surceasing of all the senses from travel. Her ladyship
that came hither with you hath this hour since ta'en her chamber. Suffer me to
conduct you now to yours.'

Pausing
for good-night at his chamber door, Lessingham at last spoke. 'Tell me again,'
he said: *what house is this?'

Vandermast
answered, saying, ‘I have told your excellence, it is the house of peace.

'And,'
he said, speaking, as old men speak, to himself, when he was come downstairs
again and stood at the open door, scenting the April air that blew now from
that garden and the scents of spring: 'it is the house of heart's desire.'

May
be for the very deepness of the peace that folded that sleeping house, so that
even his own breathing and quickened heart-beats had power to keep him waking,
Lessingham might not sleep. An hour past midnight he arose and dressed and
softly opened his chamber door. At the head of the stair he paused, seeing
lights yet in the hall both of candles and the flickering firelight.
Noiselessly he came down a step or two, and stood still. On the great cushioned
settle drawn up before the fire sat Doctor Vandermast. Anthea, upon the-same
settle, lay full length, a sleeping danger, very lovely in her sleep, her head
upon the lap of that learned doctor. Zenianthe sat upon the floor, her back
against his knees, staring in the fire. Campaspe knelt, sitting on her heels,
her back to the fire, facing the others; Lessingham saw that she played some
little game with cards on the floor, very intently, yet listening through her
game to the doctor's words as he talked on in his contemplation.

'Be
it but perceived and understood,' said Vandermast,
'sub specie aeternitatis,
it can never be too sensual: it can never be too
spiritual.'

Zenianthe,
smiling in the fire, slowly shook her head. 'Multiplication of matterless
words,' said she.

'Nay,
you, dear lady, should know this
per
experientiam,
as from
withinward. For what will a hamadryad do if. her tree be cut down? What but
die?'

'Can
anything die?' she said. 'Least of all, we, that are not of mortal race?'