CHAPTER XIII
Lavarcham went home.
The sense of urgency and unmeditated haste which for some time had been in her mind was greater than ever, as though she were being pressed to an action, thoroughly comprehended indeed, but for which she had no plan and no explanation. There was something to be done; she knew what it was but could not state it: and there was also something which prevented its accomplishment; and she was similarly aware and unaware of what this latter obstruction was.
This sense of being controlled without being consulted, of being given a key without being told what door it opens, is common to all people who plan and are not sufficiently disengaged to observe that they are being overridden by their own contrivance; forthere is a point up to which we control desire, but at the stage where other people’s interests intersect ours those alien desires and our own meet: they cease to be many and become one thing, and we are ridden in community by the jinn we liberated. But we know with a profound, unconscious certitude all that is happening, and are enlisted for those intuitive purposes beyond the control of interest or prudence or reason. Habit alone remains to guide us in these trackless ways, and it was her habit of verbal reticence which calmed Lavarcham.
Her first impulse had been to tell Deirdre with a rush that the king was coming to see her on the next day. Her second impulse was cautious. If I tell this, she thought, the child will not sleep all night, and she will be heavy-eyed and dull before the king.
Therefore she did not mention the matter to Deirdre.
But she was no longer the calm lady whom the world knew. She would sit down and stand up, and go wandering from room to room, and return from these ramblings, to begin them all over again. Shesat by Deirdre’s side and took her hand, peering long and earnestly into the face she loved: dwelling on the set of her eyes, the line of her cheek, the poise of her lips and her chin: watching how her teeth shone and disappeared as she spoke, what her tongue looked like as it became visible for a short red flash: looking now at her ears and now at her hair; or standing well away to take her in as a girl, as a completion, with all details merged and the human unit standing full formed at the eye.
She cogitated what dress Deirdre should wear on the morrow: what ornaments for her neck and hair; and then she thought, in a fever of inspiration, that she would take no thought of these: that the girl should be dressed even more plainly than usual: that there should be no ornaments upon her of any kind: that there should be nothing to look at but the girl herself with her hair for a crown, and her eyes for all other attraction: the light eagerness of her limbs should be their own witness: the colour of her cheek should be sufficient wonder for any eye.
And again she thought that men do notunderstand these things at a glance; that they are used to looking for that which they have already seen; and that they spend time, not so much in appreciating that which is present, as in trying to account for the absence of that which they had expected to see. And she remembered again that it was Conachúr himself who was coming, with a mind which would ponder exactly what was presented to it, and an eye that would regard no more than could be seen.
She determined, in terror, that she would not prepare Deirdre in any way for the visit, and that until she was called into the presence the child should know nothing even of an impending visitor.
She arranged that this should happen, and at the accustomed hour the torches were quenched and the folk of the household betook themselves to their beds.