Conversations With Egeria: Woman’s Trump Card?, by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
T
THE senator and Egeria sat in the rich man’s tent—a marble palace by the sea—and the little nook in the supper room upon which they had fastened their desire was at last untenanted. Now they slipped into the recently vacated chairs with a smile of content into each other’s eyes across the board.
“A moment ago,” said the senator, unfolding his napkin, “we gazed at those who slowly sipped their coffee and wished that our belief still held its lost Paradise—Hell—that we might mentally consign them thither. A moment since we were the people, hungry, clamorous, watching them ‘spill the bread and spoil the wine.’ In the twinkling of an eye our attitude changed. We now look with indifferent scorn upon the waiting mob, and advise them if they have no bread to eat cake. What a range of experience it gives us! We are one with the labor agitator elevated to the presidency of a trust. We are the men in the saddle—after us, the deluge!”
“We are the conquerors, at any rate,” observed Egeria. “Ours is this delicatepâté, this soft, smooth wine.Vive lerich man! May he entertain oftener! It is unsurpassed.”
“Save by Nature,” returned the senator. “You have failed to notice that she too entertains to-night. What a fête! The sea dashing the froth of its ‘night and its might’ against the wall, that arch of honeysuckle, sweeter than a bank of violets, and yonder pale siren, the moon! Fair to-night, I drink to you!”
“After all,” mused Egeria, “the high gods bestowed on Nature a woman’s privilege—the last word. Art may declaim, Science explain, Religion dogmatize; but Nature has the last word.”
“And the last word, the one word, the eternal word, is ‘beauty,’” he amended.
Egeria shrugged her shoulders. “A matter of surfaces. The mask nature wears to hide her hideous processes of decay. As the lovely heroine of a recent novel says, ‘the beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis.’”
“A superficial and essentially feminine point of view,” commented the senator. “Beauty”—with a wave of the hand—“is a matter of the soul. The skin-deep variety is not worth considering.”
“But most women would pay the price of a pound of radium for that infinitesimal depth,” she returned, flippantly.
“Your sex is hardly a judge of what constitutes feminine beauty.” There was condescension in the senator’s tone. “Here, I can prove the point for you. Grant me your indulgence and I will tell you a little story.” The senator rather fancied himself as araconteur.
“There was once a woman who was regarded by all the men of her acquaintance as ugly, stupid and tiresome, and by all the women who knew her as beautiful, brilliant, fascinating and altogether delightful. Their different points of view led to so much discussion and bickering that they finally decided to submit the matter to a referee, a wise old fellow, who, after a very thoroughacquaintance with the world and its works, had elected to spend the remainder of his days in seclusion.
“The philosopher kindly consented to decide the matter, and consequently gave the lady in question due study. Ultimately he announced his decision.
“‘Both sides are right,’ he said. ‘She is the ugliest, stupidest, most aggressive creature on earth; but masculine indifference and dislike have thrown such a halo about her that all women see her as beautiful and charming.’”
During the recital of this tale, a flush had risen on Egeria’s cheek, and she tapped her foot with growing impatience upon the floor. Barely had he finished when she cried, explosively:
“I hate men! Your fable proves nothing but the ineffable conceit of your sex!”
The senator pursued his advantage. “I saw a similar remark in a book I was reading the other day”—pleasantly. “‘I hate men,’ said one woman to another; ‘I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea.’
“‘Then,’ replied the woman to whom she spoke, ‘we would all be purchasing diving bells.’
“But”—hastily, as Egeria half rose—“you really don’t consider women judges of what constitutes feminine beauty?”
“The only judges. We are not dazzled, hypnotized, by a mere matter of exquisite coloring, the fugitive glance of too expressive eyes. We are able to bring a calm, unbiased scrutiny to bear upon it, to fully analyze it.Wedo not confuse beauty with charm.”
“Are the two, then, distinct?” he pondered.
“Are they distinct?” repeated Egeria, scornfully. “Are they distinct? Some one—a man, of course—has said that if Cleopatra had been without a front tooth the whole history of the world would have been changed; and Heine, you remember, when asked about Madame de Staël, remarked that, had Helen looked so, Troy would not have known a siege. Absurd! The sirens of this world who have swayed men’s hearts and imaginations have never been dependent on their front teeth or their back hair. If Cleopatra had lost a whole row, Antony and every other man who knew her would have insisted that women in the full possession of their molars were repulsive.”
“Ah!” cried the senator, triumphantly, “your words justify me. Beauty is some subtle essence of the soul, as I said.”
A faint, malicious sparkle brightened Egeria’s eyes. “Really, now, would you call the sirens of this world soulful creatures? They were and are psychologists, intuitive diviners of a man’s moods, capable of meeting him on every side of his nature; but——”
“Do you mean,” interrupted the senator, his eyes reflecting the sparkle of hers, “that their dominion over us is through an intellectual comprehension of our moods?”
“Good heavens, no!” disclaimed Egeria, in shocked tones. “Who said anything about the intellectual faculties of woman? I hear enough of them at my club. What I am trying to get at is that beauty without charm has always received a very frigid appreciation. Men prate of it, adore it, yawn, and—leave it. Of the two, they infinitely prefer charm without beauty. Now, senator, what is it you really admire in women?”
“I will tell you if you tell me first what women really admire in men?”
“Ah!” cried Egeria, with complacency, “there we have the advantage of you. We show twice the solid, substantial reasons for the faith that is in us that you do. Woman admires in man masculinity, virility; then brains, ability, distinction. She may loudly profess her devotion to ‘the carpet knight so trim.’ ‘Such a dear, thoughtful fellow, so sweet and sympathetic!’ But her secret preference is profoundly for the one who is ‘in stern fight a warrior grim, in camp a leader sage.’ She has not altered since the Stone Age, not in the least degree. When she was dragged by the hair from her accustomed cave to make a happy home in a new one, do you fancy she gave a thought to the recent companion of herjoys and sorrows who was lying somewhere with his head stove in? Not she. Her pity was swallowed up in admiration for the victor, who, lightly ignoring the marks of her teeth and nails, haled her along to his den. It is to the strong men of this earth that the heart of woman goes out.
“Printed articles on the home,” she went on, with light derision, “are always urging husbands to show the same tender attention and loving courtesies to their wives after marriage as before. In reality, nothing would so bore a woman. Man is an idealist; woman is intensely practical. She would infinitely prefer to have him out winning the bread and butter and jam than sitting at her feet, penning sonnets to her eyebrow. After an experience of the before-wedded, tender courtesies, she would exclaim: ‘John, please don’t be such a fool. I am so sick of this lovey-dovey business, that I would really enjoy a good beating.’
“You see, she knows instinctively that ‘man’s love is of his life, a thing apart,’ and that, if he prefers showing her lover-like attentions to ranging the court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart, she has a freak on her hands. But how I run on; and you haven’t told me yet what it is that men admire in women?”
“Beauty,” still insisted the senator, enthusiastically. “Goodness, truth, constancy, amiability!”
Egeria looked at him with reproach. “Do you really mean it?”—earnestly.
“Of course I do”—surprised at her tone.
“I dare say any man to whom I put the question would answer in the same way.” Her eyebrows expressed resignation. “Stay, I will phrase it differently; why do you think you love a particular woman?”
The senator could not resist the opportunity. “Because she is you!”—gallantly.
“Stop trifling.” Egeria was becoming petulant. “This is a serious matter. Now, answer properly; why do you think you love a particular woman?”
“Because”—emphatically—“I imagine her, rightly or wrongly, to be the possessor of those qualities I have enumerated.”
Egeria sighed. “And you still stick to it?”
“Of course I do,” he responded, with assurance.
She shook her head. “Nonsense! Men are less exacting than you think—and more. They ask neither beauty nor grace nor unselfishness of woman; they demand but one thing—you must charm me. For me you must possess that indefinable quality we call magnetism. Emerson puts it all in a nutshell, voices the essentially masculine point of view:”
I hold it of little matterWhether your jewel be of pure water—A rose diamond, or a white—But whether it dazzle me with light.
I hold it of little matterWhether your jewel be of pure water—A rose diamond, or a white—But whether it dazzle me with light.
I hold it of little matterWhether your jewel be of pure water—A rose diamond, or a white—But whether it dazzle me with light.
“But,” combated the senator, “you must admit that Solomon had ample opportunity to make a study of your sex, and he reserved all his praise for the good woman, averring that her price was above rubies.”
Egeria’s smile was faintly cynical. “That was in his capacity as philosopher. As mere man, he gave the rubies and an immortal song to a Shulamite girl who looked at him with youth in her smile and laughter in her eyes.”
“A tribute to beauty,” contested the senator.
“Not at all. Because she fascinated him.”
“And the secret of fascination is beauty,” he triumphed.
She refused to admit it. “The secret of fascination lies with the woman who can convince a man that under no circumstances could she possibly bore him.”
The senator was still argumentative. “I continue to maintain that beauty is some subtle essence of the soul.”
“But the last word, the one word, the eternal word,” quoted Egeria, rising, “is that beauty is——”
“What?” he questioned, eagerly.
“In the eye of the beholder.”
Mis-Mated Americans, by Julien Gordon (Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger)
M
MR. Henry James is inclined to pity American women, because their men—husbands and lovers—are not up to their level of fastidious refinement.
We are inclined to ask Mr. James to what American women he alludes.
Living in a center which makes history, among men of monumental achievement, of vast intellectual resource, and of comprehensive judgment, I confess that when I first encountered some of these men they seemed to me so lacking in the charms of the drawing room that I asked myself: “How can their women stand them?” When, however, I had made the acquaintance of some of these women, or ladies, the query in my soul became: “How can they stand their women?”
Mating and reproduction are largely animal processes, requiring little play of the imagination. If they did, race suicide would never have been heard of. The heroine of “The Garden of Allah” pins a pale Christ over her bed on her wedding night. It has been a late fashion for English and French writers—Verlaine, Mallock, Oscar Wilde, and even that rare genius Robert Hichens—to intermingle religion and spirituality with the sexual instinct. The fact remains that nothing can be more sane or simple, and it only touches fanatical frenzy in minds which border hysteria and decadence.
We believe that the average American, being absolutely sane, finds his mate. He is even persuaded, when she has invested in a diamond brooch and a brocaded front, that she has become a woman of rare elegance, belonging to that type which energetic newspaper reporters depict as a “leader.” The illusion is no doubt calming. Social ambition is salient among politicians and ambassadors, and a good American who expects Paradise desires his wife and daughters to be “all right.” He is quickly and conveniently persuaded that they are. The enormous egotism of the man of success is large enough to cover, with its gilded wing, family ramifications in its spasms of self-laudation.
It has become a habit to speak of American women as superior to all others, and in Europe the legend is beginning to hold. But in what does this superiority consist? Push, aplomb, finery, what? We cannot concede that it lies in exceptional accomplishments, or in any rare degree of scholarship. American women are not often accomplished, are not frequently even linguists; being usually satisfied with one foreign tongue, and that a very wretched French. We have few amateur musicians; and women artists of the force of Janet Scudder or Mrs. Leslie Cotton can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Our literary women are not ornamental, and are skillfully excluded from drawing rooms. Our feminine poets are usually dishevelled. If we throw out a dozen women in each of our large Eastern cities who have had the advantage of birth, breeding, position and wealth, the rank and file are like the rank and file of any other nation—a little brighter, perhaps; keener,more alert, better groomed, but harder—and often less fascinating. Our women lack the high vitality and repose of the English—weak nerves make for fidgetiness—the subtle seduction of the Austrian, the soft sweetness of the Italian. French women are deteriorating, their present social upheavals being responsible for this change.
Nevertheless, American girls have married well in Europe; principally for their ducats, sometimes for their beauty, only very occasionally for love.
The Latins love readily, particularly when they scent income. The English, more sincere, play their game openly. They demand “dots” at the altar, and—get them. However, as I have said, social ambition is a trait of our new life. It is a wholesome trait and has its use. Only by contact with a high civilization can a new people become civilized. Intermarriage is the easiest method.
We are told that American women who have married foreigners adore their exotic existence and could not be persuaded to return. Is it their husbands whom they adore? Are all theirménagesexceptionally happy? What they do like is the graceful ease of an existence which appeals to fancy and a career which women over here do not attain. For, in fact, American women are overshadowed by their men.La femme politiqueis almost, if not quite, unknown in America, as isla femme artisteorla femme littéraire. There are no literary women in the United States who wield any social power whatsoever. In America talent is rather a social handicap to a girl or woman, and an escape into a wider field is tolerated only by our extremely conservative society when balanced by some peculiar prestige of early environment or personal allurement. We have no drawing rooms here like that of Madeleine Lemaire, in Paris, or like that of a certain cosmopolitan, Corinne of Venice, now, alas! closed forever. In the salons of the artist French woman one encounters English women of rank, the “little duchesses,” the big ambassadresses, men of note in every calling, diplomats, statesmen, scientists and writers.
Our great men have usually married, in their youth, their first love, and, be it said to their credit, have remained, if not always true to this village ideal, at least outwardly loyal. They are not ashamed of past virtue. Their wives, thrown suddenly into a world of which they know nothing, should surely be excused some solecisms. Occupied in the cares of rearing children, of providing for large families on small rations, they have hardly had the leisure to cultivate their minds and manners. We will not allude to grammar and intonation. It would be too much to ask!
These women do not demand that a man appeal to the imagination. They have none. The lover is at once sunk into the father. In fact, they address their husbands as “father” or “papa”—sometimes, indeed, as “pa” pronounced paw in moments of caressing emphasis. What would these women do with a handsome, dashing troubadour, who warbled ditties in feathered cap and doublet? They do not want a tenor about the house, they want their bills paid. “Pa” sees to that. She is eminently practical. Her husband talks little to her of his ambitions, schemes or success, but he signs the check. That check is the epitome of his brain’s travail. If in his arid life he sometimes longs for a higher companionship, and is drawn into the net of some cleverer siren, his wife remains ignorant of the fact. She is entirely trusting—a convenient quality and one which men superlatively admire.
No, Mr. James, Americans on the whole are well matched. Look beyond the few dainty women of fashion who have personally petted you—women accustomed to the homage of men of the world, and who have danced at the courts of kings. To these we are willing to add a handful of brilliant young students who obtain degrees from Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr, are an ornament to the Normal and Barnard College, and distance male competitors at Cornell University.
May one of these be President some day! We quote the wish of a gallant member of the Cabinet. We hope that they have low voices, speak admirable English, and feel sure they never smoke cigarettes and never say “Damn!”
The camp, however, is very wide. The tents are spread, innumerable, over the hills and valleys of our fair country. Lift their flapping curtains, Mr. James. Peep in and you will find content—enough.
IF I should go to you in that old place.(God knows, dear heart, we trod it smooth and straight!)And lifting up to yours a tear-worn face,Should whisper, “Darling, it is not too late,For life and love can soon unbar the gate,”You would say “No,” e’en though your lips were dumb—Fear not: I shall not come.If you should gather up the poor, pale shredsOf what is left and bring them here to me,Saying, “Fate tangled. Let us mend the threadsAnd weave a web more beautiful to see,”All weeping, I would cry, “It may not be.”And I would cast it by with hands all numb—Nay, Sweet; you will not come.We each have learned the lesson rapt apart,The better task Fate set us ere the noon.The storms of Life have beat across my heartAnd scourged its madden’d throbbing into tune.Who would have looked for moth and rust so soon?Nay, Patience, Sweet! God will bend down some dayAnd lift your hand to wipe my tears away.Margaret Houston.
IF I should go to you in that old place.(God knows, dear heart, we trod it smooth and straight!)And lifting up to yours a tear-worn face,Should whisper, “Darling, it is not too late,For life and love can soon unbar the gate,”You would say “No,” e’en though your lips were dumb—Fear not: I shall not come.If you should gather up the poor, pale shredsOf what is left and bring them here to me,Saying, “Fate tangled. Let us mend the threadsAnd weave a web more beautiful to see,”All weeping, I would cry, “It may not be.”And I would cast it by with hands all numb—Nay, Sweet; you will not come.We each have learned the lesson rapt apart,The better task Fate set us ere the noon.The storms of Life have beat across my heartAnd scourged its madden’d throbbing into tune.Who would have looked for moth and rust so soon?Nay, Patience, Sweet! God will bend down some dayAnd lift your hand to wipe my tears away.Margaret Houston.
IF I should go to you in that old place.(God knows, dear heart, we trod it smooth and straight!)And lifting up to yours a tear-worn face,Should whisper, “Darling, it is not too late,For life and love can soon unbar the gate,”You would say “No,” e’en though your lips were dumb—Fear not: I shall not come.
If you should gather up the poor, pale shredsOf what is left and bring them here to me,Saying, “Fate tangled. Let us mend the threadsAnd weave a web more beautiful to see,”All weeping, I would cry, “It may not be.”And I would cast it by with hands all numb—Nay, Sweet; you will not come.
We each have learned the lesson rapt apart,The better task Fate set us ere the noon.The storms of Life have beat across my heartAnd scourged its madden’d throbbing into tune.Who would have looked for moth and rust so soon?Nay, Patience, Sweet! God will bend down some dayAnd lift your hand to wipe my tears away.
Margaret Houston.
The Golden Apple, by Agnes and Egerton Castle
T
THE orchard was on a hill, the farmhouse lay at the foot. There was a long field, in spring a palace of cowslips, between the orchard and the house.
This September dawn Pomona came through it and left a dark track of green along the dew-bepearled grass. Little swaths of mist hung over the cowslip field, but up in the orchard the air was already clear. It was sweet with the scent of the ripe fruit, and the tart, clean autumn pungency left by the light frost.
Pomona shifted the empty basket that she had borne on her head to the ground, and began to fill it with rosy-cheeked apples. Some she shook from the laden boughs, some she picked up from the sward where they had fallen from the tree; but she chose only the best and ripest.
A shaft of sunlight broke over the purple hills. It shone on her ruddy hair and on her smooth cheek. She straightened herself to look out across the valley at the eastern sky; all sights of nature were beautiful to her and gave her a joy that, yet, she had never learned to put into words, hardly into thoughts. Now, as she stood gazing, some one came along the road that skirted the orchard, and, catching sight of her, halted and became lost in contemplation of her, even as she of the sunrise pageant.
As evidently as Pomona, in her homespun skirt and bodice, belonged to the farmhouse, so did he to the great castle near by. The gentleman had made as careful a toilet for his early walk as if he had been bound for St. James. His riding coat was of delicate hue, and laces fluttered at his wrists and throat. His black lovelocks hung carefully combed on either shoulder from under his beplumed hat. A rapier swung at his side, and, as he stood, he flicked at it with the glove in his bare hand. He had a long, pale face and long eyes with drooping lids and haughty eyebrows; a small upturned mustache gave a tilt of mockery to the grave lips. He looked very young, and yet so sedate and self-possessed and scornful that he might have known the emptiness of the world a hundred years.
Pomona turned with a start, feeling herself watched. She gazed for a moment in surprise, and a deep blush rose in her cheeks; then, still staring, she made a slow country courtesy. Off went the befeathered hat; the gentleman returned her salutation by a profound bow. Then he leaped the little ditch into the orchard and threaded his way through the trees toward her. She watched him come; her great eyes were like the eyes of a deer, as shy, as innocent.
“Good-morrow, sir,” said she with another courtesy, and then corrected herself quickly—“good-morrow, my lord.” For, if he came from the castle, he was surely a lord.
“Good-morrow, madam,” returned he, pleasantly. His glance appraised her with open admiration.
What a glorious creature! What proportions; what amber and red on those smooth cheeks, what ruddy radiance in that sun-illumined hair! What a column of a throat, and how white the skin where the coarse kerchief parted above the laced bodice! What lines of bust and hip, of arm and wrist; generous but perfect! A goddess! He glanced at the strong, sunburned hands; they were ringless. Unowned, then, as yet, this superb nymph.
His long eyes moved at their pleasure; and she stood waiting in repose, though the color came and went richly on her cheek. Then he bowed again, the hat clasped to his bosom.
“Thank you,” said he, and replaced his beaver with a turn of the wrist that set all the gray and white plumes rippling round the crown.
“Sir?” she queried, startled, and on her second thought—“my lord?”
At this he broke into a smile. When he smiled, his haughty face gained a rare sweetness.
“Thank you for rising thus early, and coming into the orchard, and standing in the sun rays, and being, my maid, so beautiful. I little thought to find so fair a vision. ’Twill be a sweet one to carry forth with me—if it be the last on earth.”
Her wits were never quick to work. She went her country way, as a rule, as straight and sweetly and unthinkingly as the lilies grow.
To question why a noble visitor at the castle—and a visitor it must be, since his countenance was unfamiliar—should walk forth at the dawn and speak as if this morning saunter were to death, never entered her head.
She stammered: “Oh, sir!” to his compliment, and paused, her lip quivering over the inarticulate sense of her own awkwardness.
“Have you been gathering apples?” quoth he, still smiling on her.
“Ay, sir,” she said; “to make preserve withal;” and faltered yet again, “my lord.”
“Ay,” approved he. “It has a fair sound in your mouth. Would I were your lord! What is your name?”
She told him “Pomona.” Whereat he laughed, and repeated it as if he liked the sound. Then he looked at the east, and behold, the sun had risen, a full ball of crimson in a swimming sea of rose. The light glimmered upon his pale cheek, and on the fine laces of his shirt, redly, as if with stains of new blood.
“I must hence,” he said, and his voice had a stern, far-away sound. “Farewell, Pomona; wilt thou not wish me well?”
“My lord?”
“Wilt thou not?”
“Oh, indeed, my lord, I do.” And she was moved, on a sudden, she knew not why, and the tears gathered like a mist in her eyes. “With all my heart,” she said.
He made her a final bow, bending till his curls fell over his face.
“I thank you.”
She watched him walk away from her in and out the apple trees with his careless stride, and leap the little ditch again; and so on down the road.
And when he was lost to her sight, she still stood looking at the point where the way dipped and vanished and she had seen the last flutter of the gray feathers.
After a while she drew a long sigh and passed her hands over her eyes, as if she were awakening from a dream. Then she began mechanically to fill her basket once more. All the ruddiness faded from the sky. The sun swam up into the blue, and a white brilliance laid hold of the dewy valley. Delicate gossamer threads floated high above the apple trees, against the vault of ever-deeper blue. Somewhere from the hidden folds of the land a church bell began to chime. Then all at once Pomona dropped her basket, and while the apples rolled, yellow, green and red, in all directions, she set off running in the direction the gentleman had taken.
Why she ran, she knew not, but something drove her with a mighty urgency. Her heart beat thickly, and her breath came short, though, as a rule, there was no maid in the countryside that could run as she did. When she came to the foot of the hill she paused, and there, by the bramble brake, where the firwood began, she saw, lying on the lip of the baby stream, a gauntleted gray glove. She turned into the wood.
The pine needles were soft under her feet. The pine stems grew like the pillars of a church aisle, and the air was sweeter with their fragrance than any incense that was ever burned.
And after, but a little way, where the forest aisle widened into a glade, shecame on the grand riding coat tossed in a heap; across it was flung an empty scabbard. And beyond, outstretched at the foot of a tree—— Pomona stopped short. Now she knew why she had had to run so fast!
He lay as if asleep, his head pillowed upon a branching root; but it was no slumber that held him. His features, whiter than ivory, were strangely sharpened and aged, blue shadows were about nostrils and mouth, the parted lips under the mocking mustache were set in a terrible gravity; they were purple, like dead red roses. Between the long, half-open lids the eyeballs shone silver. It was not now God’s lovely sunrise that stained the white cambric of his shirt. From where it had escaped from his relaxed hand a long, keen-bladed sword gleamed among the pine needles.
Pomona knelt down. She parted the ruffled shirt with a steady hand; his heart still beat, but below it was a wound that might well cause death. She sat back on her heels and thought. She could not leave him to call for help, for he might die alone; neither could she sit useless beside him and watch him go. She took her resolution quickly. She rose, then bending, she braced herself and gathered him into her arms as if he had been a child. He was no taller than she, and slight and lean of build. She was used to burdens. But she had not thought to find him so heavy. She staggered and shifted him for an easier grip; and then, as his pallid head lay loose and languid against her shoulder, the half-open eyelids fluttered, the upturned eyes rolled and fixed themselves. He looked at her; dark, dark as eternity was his gaze. She bent her head, his lips were moving.
“Pomona!”
It was the merest breath, but she knew it was her name. Nearer she bent to him; a flicker as of a smile came upon those purple-tinted lips.
“Kiss me, Pomona!”
She kissed him, and thought she drew from his cold mouth the last sigh. But now she was strong. She could have gone to the end of the earth with this burden in her arms.
His black hair, dank and all uncurled, fell over her bare arm. With the movement his wound opened afresh, and as she pressed him against her she felt his blood soak through her bodice to the skin. Then her soul yearned over him with an indescribable, inarticulate passion of desire; to help him, to heal him! If she could have given her blood to him she would have given it with the joy with which a mother gives life to the babe at her breast.
Pomona was mistress of herself and of her farm, and lived alone with her servants. Though she was a firm ruler, these latter considered her soft on certain points. They had known her, before this, carry home a calf that had staked itself, a mongrel cur half-drowned. But a murdered gentleman, that was beyond everything!
“Heavens ha’ mercy, mistress,” cried Sue, rising to the occasion, while the others gaped, and clapped their hands, and whispered together. “Shall I fetch old Mall to help you lay him out?”
“Fool,” panted Pomona, “bring me the Nantes brandy!”
*****
Earl Blantyre woke from a succession of dreams, in which he had had most varied and curious experiences; known strange horrors and strange sweetnesses, flown to more aërial heights than any bird, and sunk to deeper depths than the sea could hold; fought unending combats and lain in peace in tender arms.
He woke. His eyelids were heavy. His hand had grown so weighty that it was as much as he could do to lift it. And yet, as he held it up, he hardly knew it for his own; ’twas a skeleton thing. There was a sound in his ears which, dimly he recognized, had woven into most of his dreams these days, a whirring, soothing sound, like the ceaseless beating of moth’s wings. As he breathed deeply and with delicious ease, there was fragrance of herbs in his nostrils. A tag of poetry floated into hismind—
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.
He turned his head and went to sleep again and dreamed not at all.
Pomona lighted the lamp, and, shading it with her hand, came, with soft tread, into the guest chamber. He was still asleep. She set down the light, mended the fire with another log, peeped into the pan of broth simmering on the hob, and then sat to her spinning wheel once more. Suddenly the wool snapped; she started, to find that he was holding back the curtain with a finger and thumb, and had turned his head on the pillow to watch her; his eyes gleamed in the firelight. She rose and came to him quickly.
“So you were spinning,” he said. His voice was very weak, but how different from those tones of dreadful clearness, of hoarse muttering, with which she had been so sadly familiar.
Pomona knelt beside him and put her hand on his forehead, on his wrist.
“Thank God!” she said.
“By all means,” he answered, peering at her amusedly. “Natheless, why?”
“Nay, you must not speak,” she bade him, and rose to pour the soup into a bowl.
He watched her while she stirred and tasted and added salt. He was smiling. When she lifted him, pillows and all, propped against her strong arm, and held the bowl to his lips at a compelling angle, he laughed outright. It was rather a feeble thing in the way of laughs, but to Pomona it was as wonderful and beautiful an achievement as a child’s first word in the mother’s ear.
“Drink,” she said, firmly, while her heart throbbed in joy.
“Now you must sleep,” she added, as she settled him with extraordinary art. But sleep was far away from those curious wandering eyes.
“Bring the light closer and come to the bed again.”
His voice had gained strength from Pomona’s fine broth, and it rang in command. Without another word she obeyed him. As she sat down on the little oaken stool, where he could see her, the light fell on her face, and from behind her the fire shot ruddily in her crown of hair.
“I remember you now,” said he, lifting himself on his elbow. “You stood in the sunrise gathering apples for preserve; you are the nymph of the orchard.”
He fell back, with a sigh of satisfaction. “And your name is Pomona,” said he.
The girl, her capable, work-marked hands lying folded on her knee, sat in absolute stillness; but her heart was beating stormily under the folds of her kerchief.
The sick man’s beard had grown close and fine round chin and cheeks during these long dreams of his. His hair lay in a mass on one shoulder; it had been carefully tied back with a riband, and in all that black setting the pallor of his countenance seemed deathlike. Yet she knew that he was saved. He lay a while, gazing at the beflowered ceiling of the great four-post bed, and by and by his voice came sighing.
“And after that, what hap befell me? Help me to remember.”
“I found you in the wood,” said she, slowly. “You were lying wounded.”
He interrupted her with a sharp cry.
“Enough! I mind me now. Was I alone?”
“Quite alone, my lord.”
“And my sword?”
There was a current of evil eagerness running through the feeble voice.
“Your sword, my lord?”
“Pshaw! was it clean, child? Bore it no sign upon the blade?”
“There was blood on it,” said Pomona, gravely, “to a third of the length.”
The duelist gave a sigh.
“That is well,” said he, and fell once more into silence, striving to knit present and past in his mind.
After a while he shifted himself on his pillows so that he again looked on her.
Then his eyes wandered round the dark paneling, on the polished surface of which the firelight gleamed like rosy flowers. He touched the coarse sheet, the patchwork quilt, then lifted the sleeve of the homespun shirt that covered his thin arm, and gazed inquiringly from it to the quiet woman.
“How do I come here? Where am I?” queried he, imperiously.
“I brought you; you are in my house,” she answered him.
“You brought me?”
“Ay, my lord.”
“You found me wounded,” he puzzled, drawing his haughty brows together, “and you brought me here to your house? How?”
“I carried you,” said Pomona.
“You carried me!”
The statement was so amazing and Lord Blantyre’s wits were still so weakened that he turned giddy and was fain to close his eyes and allow the old vagueness to cradle him again for a few minutes.
Pomona prayed that he might be sleeping, but as she was stealthily rising from his bedside he opened his eyes and held her with them.
“You carried me, you brought me to your own house? Why?”
“I wanted to nurse you,” said poor Pomona.
She knew no artifice whereby she could answer, yet conceal the truth. But it was as if her heart were being torn from her bit by bit.
His eyes, hard and curious, softened; so did the imperious voice.
“How did you keep them out?”
“Keep them out?”
She was beautiful, but she was dull.
“My kinsfolk, from the castle.”
Pomona stood like a child caught in grave fault.
“They do not know,” she answered, at last.
It was his turn to ejaculate in amazement. “Not know!”
“I did not want them,” said she, then, doggedly. “I did not want any fine ladies about, nor physicians with their lancets. When my father was cut with the scythe, they sent a leech from the castle, who blooded him, and he died. I did not want you to die.”
She spoke the last words almost in a whisper, then she waited breathlessly. There came a low sound from the pillows. His laugh that had been music to her a minute ago now stabbed her to the heart. She turned, the blood flashing into her cheeks; yet his face grew quickly grave; he spoke, his voice was kind.
“Stay. I want to understand. You carried me, all by yourself, from the wood; is it so?”
“Ay.”
“And no one knows where I am, or that you found me?”
“No. I went down to the wood again and brought back your coat and your sword and scabbard and your gloves. I forbade my people to speak. None of the great folk know you are here.”
“And you nursed me?”
“Ay.”
“Was I long ill?”
“Fourteen days.”
“I have been near death, have I not?”
“You have, indeed.”
“And you nursed me!” he repeated again. “How did you learn such science?”
“My lord, I have loved and cared for the dumb things all my life. There was the calf that was staked——” She stopped; that laugh was torture.
“Go on, Pomona!”
“I bathed your wound in cold water over and over till the bleeding stopped, and then, when the fever came, I knew what brew of herbs would help you. One night I thought that you would die——”
“Go on, Pomona!”
“You could not breathe, no matter how high I laid you on the pillows——”
“Ay! Why dost thou halt again? What didst thou then?”
“I held you in my arms,” she said. “You seemed to get your breath better that way, and then you slept at last.”
“While you held me?” he proceeded. “How long did you hold me in your arms, Pomona?”
“My lord,” she said, “the whole night.”
Upon this he kept silence quite a long time, and she sat down on her stool again and waited. She had nursed him and saved him, and now he would soon be well; she ought surely to rejoice, but, she knew not why, her heartwas like lead. Presently he called her; he would be lifted, shifted, his pillows were hot, his bedclothes pressed on him. As she bent over him, the fretful expression suddenly was smoothed from his features.
“I remember now,” he said, with a singular gleam in his eyes. “I remember, Pomona; you kissed me.”
*****
My Lord Blantyre began now to have more consecutive recollections of that time of dreams; and when the night came he felt mightily injured, mightily affronted, to find that the shadow of the watcher in the rushlight against the wall belonged to a bent and aged figure, was a grotesque profile, instead of the mild gray angel that had soothed him hitherto. So deep seemed the injury, so cruel the neglect, that the ill-used patient could not find it in him to consent to sleep, but tossed till his bed grew unbearable, pettishly refused to drink from Mall’s withered hand, was quite positive that the pain in his side was very bad again, and that his angry heart beats were due to fever.
It drew toward midnight. Again Mall brought the cooling drink and offered it patiently. Like an old owl she stood and blinked. Her toothless jaws worked.
He made an angry gesture of refusal; the cup was dashed from her hand and fell clattering on the boards. She cried out in dismay, and he in fury.
“Out of my sight, you Hecate!”
Then suddenly Pomona stood beside them. So soft her tread that neither had heard her come.
“Lord, be good to us! The poor gentleman’s mad again,” whimpered Mall, as she went down on her knees to mop.
Pomona was in a white wrapper, well starched; the wide sleeves spread out like wings. Her hair hung in one loose plait to her knees.
“You look like a monstrous, beautiful great angel,” cried he. Her hand was on his pulse. He was as pleased and soothed as a naughty infant when it is lifted from its cradle and nursed.
She stood, and seemed encircled by the fragrance of the sacrificed cup, lavender and thyme and other sweet and wholesome herbs.
She thought he wandered, yet his pulse was steadying down under her finger into a very reasonable pace for a convalescent. She looked down at him with puzzled eyes.
“What is it, my lord?”
“Prithee,” said he, “though you live so quiet here, my maid, and keep your secrets so well, you would have known, would you not, had there been a death at the castle?”
“Surely, my lord,” she said, and bent closer to comfort him. “Nay, it must be that you have the fever again, I fear. Nay, all is well with your kinsfolk. Mall, haste thee with another cup of the drink. Is the wound painful, my good lord, and how goes it with the breathing?”
As he bent he caught her great plait in both his hands and held it so that she could not straighten herself.
“It would go vastly better,” cried he, “I should breathe with infinite more ease, my sweet nurse, and forget that I had ever had a gaping hole to burn the side of me, could you but tell me that there had been even a trifle of sickness at the house beyond. Come, my sword was red, you know! It was not red for nothing! Was not Master Leech sent for in haste to draw more blood? The excellent physician, thou mindest, who helped thy worthy father so pleasantly from this world.”
She would have drawn from him in soft sorrow and shame, for she understood now, but that his weak fingers plucked her back. Truly there seemed to be a devil in his eyes. Yet she was too tender of him not to humor him, as the mother her spoiled child.
“Hast heard, Mall, of aught amiss at the castle?” quoth she, turning her head to address the old woman at the fire.
“There was a gentleman out hunting with the Lady Julia o’ Thursday,” answered the crone, “as carried his arm in a sling, I heard tell; though he rode with the best of them.”
“Faugh!”
Lord Blantyre loosed Pomona’s tress and lay back sullenly. He drank the cup when she held it to his lips, in the same sullen silence; but when she shook his pillows and smoothed his sheet and cooed to him in the dear voice of his dream: “Now, sleep,” he murmured, complainingly: “Not if you leave me!”
Pomona’s heart gave a great leap, and a rose flush grew on her face, lovelier than ever sunrise or fireglow had called there.
“I will not leave you, my lord,” she replied. Her voice filled the whole room with deep harmony.
He woke in the gray dawn, and there sat Pomona, her eyes dreaming, her hands clasped, her face a little stern in its serene, patient weariness. He cried to her sharply, because of the sharpness with which his heart smote him:
“Hast sat thus the whole night long?”
“Surely!” said she.
“Well, to bed with you, then,” he bade her, impatiently. “Nay, I want nought. Send one of your wenches to my bell, some Sue or Pattie, so it be a young one. And you—to bed, to bed!”
But she would not leave him till she had tested how it stood with him, according to her simple skill. As her hand rested on his brow, “Why Pomona?” queried he.
“My lord?”
“Pomona. ’Tis a marvelous fine name, and marvelous fitting to a nymph of the orchard. Pomona!”
“Indeed,” she answered him, in her grave way, “Sue or Pattie would better become me. But my mother was book-learned, sir, and town-bred, and had her fancies. She sat much in the orchard the spring that I was born.”
“Ay,” he mused. “So thy mother was book-learned and fanciful!” Then briskly he asked her: “Wouldst thou not like to know my name, Pomona? Unless, indeed, you know it already?”
She shook her head.
“Why, what a woman are you! In spite of apples, no daughter of Eve at all?”
She still shook her head, and, smiling faintly, “To me it could make no difference,” she said.
“Well, now you shall know,” he said, “and take it to your maiden dreams. I am Rupert, Earl of Blantyre.”
“What,” she cried, quickly, “the——” she broke off and hesitated. “The great Earl of Blantyre,” she pursued, then, dropping her eyes: “The king’s friend!”
His laugh rang out somewhat harsh.
“What, so solitary a nymph, so country hidden, and yet so learned of the gossip of the great world?”
“People talk,” she murmured, crimsoning as in the deepest shame.
“And you know what they call me? No! Not the Great Earl, hypocrite, the Wicked Earl! You knew it?”
She bent her head.
He laughed again. “Why, now, what a nightmare for you! Here he lies, and, oh! Pomona, you have prolonged his infamous career!”