XIII
Fromthe house far above them came the indistinct sound of Mathilda at the piano. Was it “Reflets dans l’eau” she was playing? As the music stopped the chaotic noises of life took up their endless staccato rhythm—cows lowing in the pasture, a workman calling to another, the beat of a hammer in some farmhouse, the restless twitter and trilling of birds, the snapping and stirring of branches, a motorhorn sounding a thousand miles away, it seemed—the music of the universe that was flowing through her now in a full stream. Moira opened her book at random:
“Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;Clear apple leaves are soft upon that moonSeen side-wise like a blossom in the tree;Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon....”
“Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;Clear apple leaves are soft upon that moonSeen side-wise like a blossom in the tree;Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon....”
“Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;
Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;
Clear apple leaves are soft upon that moon
Seen side-wise like a blossom in the tree;
Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon....”
She stopped and looked off through the leaves to the wide fields where the sun lay.
“Don’t you love it, Hal,” she said, “just the sound of it, the perverse beauty of it? Is there anything more wonderful?”
Hal rolled over upon the flat of his back staring thoughtfully up from the shady chamber of green,the tiny grotto at the cliff-foot, up at the grey old overhanging boulders, like moles and maculations on the brow of an ancient crone, the massy tangle of branches and leaves bursting from among them and cutting off half his vision of the glittering blue heaven, wherein floated great flocks of clouds as artificial in their sheer whiteness and hard outlines as puff-balls on a pool. His muscular brown arms and neck were bare to the white bathing shirt. His bright blonde hair was tousled over his face, which was mature and strong. The girl’s voice made little ripples of pleasure run over his limbs; it gave the words a significance which would never have reached him without her—
“The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie,Kissed upon either cheek and either eye.I turn to thee as some green afternoonTurns toward sunset and is loth to die;Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon.”
“The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie,Kissed upon either cheek and either eye.I turn to thee as some green afternoonTurns toward sunset and is loth to die;Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon.”
“The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie,
Kissed upon either cheek and either eye.
I turn to thee as some green afternoon
Turns toward sunset and is loth to die;
Ah God, ah God, that day should come so soon.”
That certainly he could feel supremely, experience in himself. He let his gaze rest upon her. The fine black hair, bobbed at last in spite of Aunt Mathilda’s anxious objections, made a quaint pattern on the face. Against it the glow of her skin and lips was the more brilliant by contrast, and beneath the white angle of brow, the eyes, looking suddenly at him from the page, were as clear, cool, vivid blue as violets in a snowbank.
There was in that face the necessary balance between strength and frailty, self-possession and emotion, at least, so he thought, the features not quite absolutely regular. He preferred that touch of oddness; it was the stamp of her will, her curious insights, her traits of unusual justice. It mitigated too much beauty. Greek models were all very well in statues, but in a woman one wanted a lively difference.... Moira’s book suddenly snapped shut, as though his slowly relished inspection were too much for her. Her short laugh came like a chain of melody from her whole body.
“Poor Hal,” she cried, “aren’t you sorry you will have to listen to Swinburne all your life?”
He reached out an Indian forearm and drew her to him. They were silent for a long time. Then she sat back, her eyes admiring the relaxed strength of his body.
“God!” he muttered, “and I once thought because we were cousins this could never happen—I should never be allowed to speak.”
“Such a good little boy,” she said. “You would have waited to be allowed.”
“It’s odd how I’ve never been able to think of you as Aunt’s daughter.”
“Neither have I,” she replied. “But it is easy to explain. It takes a man—a father—about the house to establish parentage. Mother is a dilettante on her job, anyway. But I have some qualitiesfrom her, I know.... Whatwasfather like?”
“I wasn’t exactly his playmate, you know!” he laughed. “I don’t remember him any more than you do. But he must have been a regular, from all I’ve heard. He was your father, all right.”
“H’m.... Ned Seymoursoundslike a man who might be my father. And names are wonderful—better than portraits—to read people by. I can’t tell much by father’s looks. Poor Daddy, Maman stood by him, I’m glad of that. She’s always been a heretic among her own. But if Daddy was so ambitious, so indifferent to the world and all that, why didn’t he leave me a sign, why didn’t he leave glorious works? He should have.”
“He left you,” laughed Hal.
“The work of an idle moment.”
“Aren’t they the best? But I rather like that about your father, the fact that he was a spectator rather than a spouter. So many darned people aren’t content with their limitations. They have to puddle about with paint and ink.”
“As I do.”
“It’s yours by right, I suppose. At least, you really like it.”
“I have invented a litany, Hal. Will you listen to it? I invented it for the saddest people in the world. It goes like this: O God, be merciful to those who are free and must live with the fettered; to the scornful laughers who are bound to the humourless;to the swift who walk by the slow; and the idle who are bondsmen to the busy—and especially, O God, be merciful to all those whose spirits were young and whose generation denied them youth’s chance, amen. There must have been many like Daddy in his day.”
Through the trees the half moon glowed like the polished end of a woman’s nail against a pink and sapphire West. It was an infinitely tender moment, the end of a week of betrothal, the eve of his departure for a trip North.
“Let me, please, once more,” whispered Moira, “one I love.” And she quoted:
“La lune blancheLuit dans les bois,De chaque brancheParte une voix,Sous la ramée,Oh, bien-aimée.“Une vaste et tendreApaisementSemble descendreDu firmamentQue l’astre irise....C’est l’heure exquise!”
“La lune blancheLuit dans les bois,De chaque brancheParte une voix,Sous la ramée,Oh, bien-aimée.“Une vaste et tendreApaisementSemble descendreDu firmamentQue l’astre irise....C’est l’heure exquise!”
“La lune blancheLuit dans les bois,De chaque brancheParte une voix,Sous la ramée,Oh, bien-aimée.
“La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois,
De chaque branche
Parte une voix,
Sous la ramée,
Oh, bien-aimée.
“Une vaste et tendreApaisementSemble descendreDu firmamentQue l’astre irise....C’est l’heure exquise!”
“Une vaste et tendre
Apaisement
Semble descendre
Du firmament
Que l’astre irise....
C’est l’heure exquise!”
“You gave me those,” she said. “They were a peace offering one Christmas, one year you had treated me very badly. I love them because theyare all young, all fresh, ageless. Let’s you and I, dear, resolve to be young forever. Let’s make a bond of youth, cherish it, study to keep it, never let it go.”
“Moira, you will never be older than this day.”
“I think it is easy to stay young if one keeps one’s unreasonable likes. One should always like things that are a little twisted and strange, in spite of what people think. One must like Verlaine’s absinthe as well as Verlaine, Swinburne and Swinburne’s perversity also, Rob and his wickedness—the wickedness he doesn’t understand. You know, Hal, I didn’t go to college after all, because I was afraid it would make me old, it would give me ‘interests.’ I hate the word. As if everything wasn’t an interest!”
They walked around by the flat, broad meadow, hushed in the dusk. The first whip-poor-will was calling. She clung to his arm, enjoying the sensation of firm muscles flexing under her hand.
“I don’t care,” she cried. “I’m not afraid of anything. I would as soon give myself to you, all of me, now, to-night. The rest, all the fuss, does not count. What is there to fear in this glorious wide world, Hal?”
“Nothing—but fear, I suppose,” he replied.
Two white figures swaying together across the dusty furrows, they merged into the darkness like birds fluttering out of sight in the clouds.