Mistress of mistresses (4 page)

It
was not until I had ended that I felt I had been making something of a fool of
myself, letting my thoughts run away with my tongue. For some minutes there was
silence, broken only by the solemn ticking of the clock, and now and then a
sea-bird's desolate cry without. Then the Senorita's voice stole on the silence
as a meteor steals across darkness: 'All must pass away, all must break at
last, everything we care for: lips wither, the bright brain grow dim, "the
vine, the woman, and the rose": even the names, even the mention and remembrance
of created things, must die and be forgotten; until at last not these only, but
death and oblivion itself must - cease, dissipated in that infinite frost of
illimitable nothingness of space and time, for ever and ever and ever.'

I
listened with that sensation of alternating strain and collapse of certain
muscles which belongs to some dreams where the dreamer climbs insecurely from
frame to frame over rows of pictures hung on a wall of tremendous height below
which opens the abyss. Hitherto the mere conception of annihilation (when once
I had imaginatively compassed it, as now and then I have been able to
do,-lying awake in the middle of the night) had had so much power of horror
upon me that I could barely refrain from shrieking in my bed. But now, for the
first time in my life, I found I could look down from that sickening verge
steadfastly and undismayed. It seemed a strange turn, that here in death's
manifest presence I, for the first time, found myself unable seriously to
believe in death.

My
outward eyes were on Lessingham's face, the face of an Ozymandias. My inward
eye searched the night, plunging to those deeps beyond the star-shine where,
after uncounted millions of light-years' journeying, the two ends of a straight
line meet, and the rays complete the full circle on themselves; so that what to
my earthly gaze shows as this almost indiscernible speck of mist, seen through
a gap in the sand-strewn thousands of the stars of the Lion, may be but the
back view of the very same unknown cosmic island of suns and galaxies which (as
a like unremarkable speck) faces my searching eye in the direct opposite region
of the heavens, in the low dark sign of Capricorn.

Then,
as another meteor across darkness: 'Many have blasphemed God for these things,'
she said; 'but without reason, surely. Shall infinite Love that is able to
wield infinite Power be subdued to our necessities? Must the Gods make haste,
for Whom no night cometh? Is there a sooner or a later in Eternity? Have you
thought of this: you had an evil dream: you were in hell that night; yet you
woke and forgot it utterly. Are you to-night any jot the worse for it?'

She
seemed to speak of forgotten things that I had known long ago and that,
remembered now, brought back all that was lost and healed all sorrows. I had no
words' to answer her, but I thought of Lessingham's poems, and they seemed to
be, to this mind she brought me to, as shadows before the sun. I reached down
from the shelf at my left, beside the window, a book of vellum with clasps of
gold. 'Lessingham shall answer you from this book,' I said, looking up at her
where she sat against the sunset The book opened at his rondel of
Aphrodite Ourania.
I read it aloud. My voice shook, and marred the
reading:

Between
the sunset and the sea

The
years shall still behold Your glory,

Seen
through this troubled fantasy

Of
doubtful things and transitory.

Desire's
clear eyes still search for Thee

Beyond
Time's transient territory,

Upon
some flower-robed promontory

 
Between the sunset and the sea.

Our
Lady of Paphos: though a story

They
count You: though Your temples be

Time-wrecked,
dishonoured, mute and hoary—

You
are more than their philosophy.

Between
the sunset and the sea

Waiteth
Your eternal glory.

While
I read, the Senorita sat motionless, her gaze bent on Lessingham. Then she rose
softly from her seat in the window and stood once more in that place where I
had first seen her that night, like the Queen of Love sorrowing for a great
lover dead. The clock ticked on, and I measured it against my heart-beats. An
unreasoning terror now took hold of me, that Death was in the room and had
laid on my heart also his fleshless and icy hand. I dropped the book and made
as if to rise from my seat, but my knees gave way like a drunken man's. Then
with the music of her voice, speaking once more, as if love itself were
speaking out of the interstellar spaces from beyond the mists of time and
desolation and decay, my heart gave over its fluttering and became quiet like a
dove held safe in its mistress's hand. 'It is midnight now,' she said. 'Time to
say farewell, seal the chamber, and light the pyre. But first you have leave to
look upon the picture, and to read that which was written.'

At
the time, I wondered at nothing, but accepted, as in a dream, her knowledge of
this secret charge bequeathed - to me by Lessingham through sealed instructions
locked in a fireproof box which I had only opened on his death, and of which he
had once or twice assured me that no person other than himself had seen the
contents. In that box was a key of gold, and with that I was at midnight of his
death-day to unlock the folding doors of a cabinet that was built into the wall
above his bed, and so leave him lying in state under the picture that was in
the cabinet. And I must seal the room, and burn up Digermulen castle, and him
and all that was in it, as he had burnt up his house in Wastdale fifty years
before. And he had let me know that in that cabinet was his wife's picture,
painted by himself, his masterpiece never seen by living eye except the
painter's and the sitter's; the only one of all her pictures that he had
spared.

The
cabinet doors were of black lacquer and gold, flush with the wall. I turned the
golden key, and opened them left and right. My eyes swam as I looked upon that
loveliness that showed doubtfully in the glittering candlelight and the
diffused rosy dusk from without. I saw well now that this great picture had
been painted for himself alone. A sob choked me as I thought of this last
pledge of our friendship, planned by him so many years ago to speak for him to
me from beyond death, that my eyes should be allowed to see his treasure before
it was committed, with his own mortal remains, to the consuming element of
fire. And now I saw how upon the inside panels of the cabinet was inlaid (by
his own hand, I doubt not) in letters of gold this poem, six stanzas upon
either door:

A
VISION OF ZIMIAMVIA

I
will have gold and silver for my delight:

Hangings
of red silk, purfled and worked in gold

With
mantichores and what worse shapes of fright

Terror
Antiquus spawn'd in the days of old.

I
will have columns of Parian vein'd with gems,

Their
capitals by Pheidias' self design'd,

By
his hand carv'd, for flowers with strong smooth stems,

Nepenthe,
Elysian Amaranth, and their kind.

I
will have night: and the taste of a field well fought,

And
a golden bed made wide for
luxury;                     
^/

And
there,—since else were all things else prov’d naught,—

Bestower
and hallower of all things: I will have Thee.

—Thee,
and hawthorn time. For in that new birth though all

Change,
you I will have unchanged: even that dress,

So
fall'n to your hips as lapping waves should fall:

You,
cloth'd upon with your beauty's nakedness.

The
line of your flank: so lily-pure and warm:

The
globed wonder of splendid breasts made bare:

The
gleam, like cymbals a-clash, when you lift your arm;

And
the faun leaps out with the sweetness of red-gold hair.

My
dear,—my tongue is broken: 1 cannot
see:

A
sudden subtle fire beneath my skin

Runs,
and an inward thunder deafens me,

Drowning
mine ears: I tremble.—O unpin

Those
pins of anachite diamond, and unbraid

Those
strings of margery-pearls, and so let fall

Your
python tresses in their deep cascade

 
To be your misty robe imperial.—

The
beating of wings, the gallop, the wild spate,

 
Die down. A hush resumes all Being, which you

Do
with your starry presence consecrate,

And
peace of moon-trod gardens and falling dew.

Two
are our bodies: two are our minds, but wed.

On
your dear shoulder, like a child asleep,

I
let my shut lids press, while round my head

Your
gracious hands their benediction keep.

Mistress
of my delights; and Mistress of Peace:

O
ever changing, never changing, You:

Dear
pledge of our true love's unending lease,

Since
true to you means to mine own self true.—

I
will have gold and jewels for my delight:

Hyacinth,
ruby, and smaragd, and curtains work'd in gold

With
mantichores and what worse shapes of fright

Terror
Antiquus spawn'd in the days of old.

Earth
I will have, and the deep sky's ornament:

Lordship,
and hardship, and peril by land and sea.—

And
still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,

Safe
in the lowe of the firelight 1 will have Thee.

Half
blinded with tears, I read the stanzas and copied them down. All the while I
was conscious of the Senorita's presence at my side, a consciousness from which
in some irrational way I seemed to derive an inexplicable support, beyond
comprehension or comparisons. These were things which by all right judgement it
was unpardonable that any living creature other than myself should have looked
upon. Yet of the lightness of her presence, (more, of its deep necessity), my
sense was so lively as to pass without remark or question. When
I
had finished my writing,
I
saw that she had not moved, but remained there,
very still, one hand laid lightly on the bedpost at the foot of the bed,
between the ears of the great golden hippogriff.
I
heard her say, faint as the breath of
night-flowers under the stars: 'The fabled land of
Zimiamvia.
Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of
that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do
inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth
and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the
delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor
yet oppressors?'

'Who
knows?'
I
said. 'Who dares say he knows?'

Then
I
heard her say, in her voice that was gentler than
the glow-worm's light among rose-trees in a forgotten garden between dewfall
and moonrise:
Be content. I
have promised and I will perform.

And
as my eyes rested on that strange woman's face, it seemed to take upon itself,
as she looked on Lessingham dead, that unsearchable look, of laughter-loving
lips divine, half closed in a grave expectancy, of infinite pity, infinite
patience, and infinite sweetness, which sits on the face of Praxiteles's
Knidian Aphrodite.

ZIMIAMVIA

Principal
Persons
LESSINGHAM BARGANAX
FIORINDA ANTIOPE