Two nights she sat just inside her room, by the open door, and listened. Then when he finished she went to sleep, a queer, light, bewitched sleep. In the day she was bewitched. She felt strange and light, as if pressure had been removed from around her. Some pressure had been clamped round her all her life. She had never realized it till now; now it was removed, and her feet felt so light, and her breathing delicate and exquisite. There had always been a pressure against her breathing. Now she breathed delicate and exquisite, so that it was a delight to breathe. Life came in exquisite breaths, quickly, as if it delighted to come to her.
The third night he was silent — though she waited and waited till the small hours of the morning. He was silent, he did not sing. And then she knew the terror and blackness of the feeling that he might never sing any more. She waited like one doomed, throughout the day. And when the night came she trembled. It was her greatest nervous terror, lest her spell should be broken, and she should be thrown back to what she was before.
Night came, and the kind of swoon upon her. Yes, and the call from the night. The call! She rose helplessly and hurried down the corridor. The light was under his door. She sat down in the big oak arm-chair that stood near his door, and huddled herself tight in her black shawl. The corridor was dim with the big, star-studded, yellow lantern-light. Away down she could see the lamp-light in her doorway; she had left her door ajar.
But she saw nothing. Only she wrapped herself close in the black shawl, and listened to the sound from the room. It called. Oh, it called her! Why could she not go? Why could she not cross through the closed door.
Then the noise ceased. And then the light went out, under the door of his room. Must she go back? Must she go back? Oh, impossible. As impossible as that the moon should go back on her tracks, once she has risen. Daphne sat on, wrapped in her black shawl. If it must be so, she would sit on through eternity. Return she never could.
And then began the most terrible song of all. It began with a rather dreary, slow, horrible sound, like death. And then suddenly came a real call — fluty, and a kind of whistling and a strange whirr at the changes, most imperative, and utterly inhuman. Daphne rose to her feet. And at the same moment up rose the whistling throb of a summons out of the death moan.
Daphne tapped low and rapidly at the door. ‘Count! Count!’ she whispered. The sound inside ceased. The door suddenly opened. The pale, obscure figure of Dionys.
‘Lady Daphne!’ he said in astonishment, automatically standing aside.
‘You called,’ she murmured rapidly, and she passed intent into his room.
‘No, I did not call,’ he said gently, his hand on the door still.
‘Shut the door,’ she said abruptly.
He did as he was bid. The room was in complete darkness. There was no moon outside. She could not see him.
‘Where can I sit down?’ she said abruptly.
‘I will take you to the couch,’ he said, putting out his hand and touching her in the dark. She shuddered.
She found the couch and sat down. It was quite dark.
‘What are you singing?’ she said rapidly.
‘I am so sorry. I did not think anyone could hear.’
‘What was it you were singing?’
‘A song of my country.’
‘Had it any words?’
‘Yes, it is a woman who was a swan, and who loved a hunter by the marsh. So she became a woman and married him and had three children. Then in the night one night the king of the swans called to her to come back, or else he would die. So slowly she turned into a swan again, and slowly she opened her wide, wide wings, and left her husband and her children.’
There was silence in the dark room. The Count had been really startled, startled out of his mood of the song into the day-mood of human convention. He was distressed and embarrassed by Daphne’s presence in his dark room. She, however, sat on and did not make a sound. He, too, sat down in a chair by the window. It was everywhere dark. A wind was blowing in gusts outside. He could see nothing inside his room: only the faint, faint strip of light under the door. But he could feel her presence in the darkness. It was uncanny, to feel her near in the dark, and not to see any sign of her, nor to hear any sound.
She had been wounded in her bewitched state by the contact with the every-day human being in him. But now she began to relapse into her spell, as she sat there in the dark. And he, too, in the silence, felt the world sinking away from him once more, leaving him once more alone on a darkened earth, with nothing between him and the infinite dark space. Except now her presence. Darkness answering to darkness, and deep answering to deep. An answer, near to him, and invisible.
But he did not know what to do. He sat still and silent as she was still and silent. The darkness inside the room seemed alive like blood. He had no power to move. The distance between them seemed absolute.
Then suddenly, without knowing, he went across in the dark, feeling for the end of the couch. And he sat beside her on the couch. But he did not touch her. Neither did she move. The darkness flowed about them thick like blood, and time seemed dissolved in it. They sat with the small, invisible distance between them, motionless, speechless, thoughtless.
Then suddenly he felt her finger-tips touch his arm, and a flame went over him that left him no more a man. He was something seated in flame, in flame unconscious, seated erect, like an Egyptian King-god in the statues. Her finger-tips slid down him, and she herself slid down in a strange, silent rush, and he felt her face against his closed feet and ankles, her hands pressing his ankles. He felt her brow and hair against his ankles, her face against his feet, and there she clung in the dark, as if in space below him. He still sat erect and motionless. Then he bent forward and put his hand on her hair.
‘Do you come to me?’ he murmured. ‘Do you come to me?’
The flame that enveloped him seemed to sway him silently.
‘Do you really come to me?’ he repeated. ‘But we have nowhere to go.’
He felt his bare feet wet with her tears. Two things were struggling in him, the sense of eternal solitude, like space, and the rush of dark flame that would throw him out of his solitude towards her.
He was thinking too. He was thinking of the future. He had no future in the world: of that he was conscious. He had no future in this life. Even if he lived on, it would only be a kind of enduring. But he felt that in the after-life the inheritance was his. He felt the after-life belonged to him.
Future in the world he could not give her. Life in the world he had not to offer her. Better go on alone. Surely better go on alone.
But then the tears on his feet: and her face that would face him as he left her! No, no. The next life was his. He was master of the after-life. Why fear for this life? Why not take the soul she offered him? Now and for ever, for the life that would come when they both were dead. Take her into the underworld. Take her into the dark Hades with him, like Francesca and Paolo. And in hell hold her fast, queen of the underworld, himself master of the underworld. Master of the life to come. Father of the soul that would come after.
‘Listen,’ he said to her softly. ‘Now you are mine. In the dark you are mine. And when you die you are mine. But in the day you are not mine, because I have no power in the day. In the night, in the dark, and in death, you are mine. And that is for ever. No matter if I must leave you. I shall come again from time to time. In the dark you are mine. But in the day I cannot claim you. I have no power in the day, and no place. So remember. When the darkness comes, I shall always be in the darkness of you. And as long as I live, from time to time I shall come to find you, when I am able to, when I am not a prisoner. But I shall have to go away soon. So don’t forget — you are the night wife of the ladybird, while you live and even when you die.’
Later, when he took her back to her room, he saw the door still ajar.
‘You shouldn’t leave a light in your room,’ he murmured.
In the morning there was a curious remote look abou
t him. He was quieter than ever, and seemed very far away. Daphne slept late. She had a strange feeling as if she had slipped off all her cares. She did not care, she did not grieve, she did not fret any more. All that had left her. She felt she could sleep, sleep, sleep — for ever. Her face, too, was very still, with a delicate look of virginity that she had never had before. She had always been Aphrodite, the self-conscious one. And her eyes, the green-blue, had been like slow, living jewels, resistant. Now they had unfolded from the hard flower-bud, and had the wonder, and the stillness of a quiet night.
Basil noticed it at once.
‘You’re different, Daphne,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ she said, looking at him with candour.
‘What were you doing then?’
‘What does one do when one doesn’t think? Don’t make me puzzle it out, Basil.’
‘Not a bit of it, if you don’t want to.’
But he was puzzled by her. The sting of his ecstatic love for her seemed to have left him. Yet he did not know what else to do but to make love to her. She went very pale. She submitted to him, bowing her head because she was his wife. But she looked at him with fear, with sorrow, with real suffering. He could feel the heaving of her breast, and knew she was weeping. But there were no tears on her face, she was only death pale. Her eyes were shut.
‘Are you in pain?’ he asked her.
‘No! no!’ She opened her eyes, afraid lest she had disturbed him. She did not want to disturb him.
He was puzzled. His own ecstatic, deadly love for her had received a check. He was out of the reckoning.
He watched her when she was with the Count. Then she seemed so meek — so maidenly — so different from what he had known of her. She was so still, like a virgin girl. And it was this quiet, intact quality of Virginity in her which puzzled him most, puzzled his emotions and his ideas. He became suddenly ashamed to make love to her. And because he was ashamed, he said to her as he stood in her room that night:
‘Daphne, are you in love with the Count?’
He was standing by the dressing-table, uneasy. She was seated in a low chair by the tiny dying wood fire. She looked up at him with wide, slow eyes. Without a word, with wide, soft, dilated eyes she watched him. What was it that made him feel all confused? He turned his face aside, away from her wide, soft eyes.
‘Pardon me, dear. I didn’t intend to ask such a question. Don’t take any notice of it,’ he said. And he strode away and picked up a book. She lowered her head and gazed abstractedly into the fire, without a sound. Then he looked at her again, at her bright hair that the maid had plaited for the night. Her plait hung down over her soft pinkish wrap. His heart softened to her as he saw her sitting there. She seemed like his sister. The excitement of desire had left him, and now he seemed to see clear and feel true for the first time in his life. She was like a dear, dear sister to him. He felt that she was his blood-sister, nearer to him than he had imagined any woman could be. So near — so dear — and all the sex and the desire gone. He didn’t want it — he hadn’t wanted it. This new pure feeling was so much more wonderful.
He went to her side.
‘Forgive me, darling,’ he said, ‘for having questioned you.’
She looked up at him with the wide eyes, without a word. His face was good and beautiful. Tears came to her eyes.
‘You have the right to question me,’ she said sadly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, darling. I have no right to question you. Daphne! Daphne, darling! It shall be as you wish, between us. Shall it? Shall it be as you wish?’
‘You are the husband, Basil,’ she said sadly.
‘Yes, darling. But’ — he went on his knees beside her — ’perhaps, darling, something has changed in us. I feel as if I ought never to touch you again — as if I never wanted to touch you — in that way. I feel it was wrong, darling. Tell me what you think.’
‘Basil, don’t be angry with me.’
‘It isn’t anger; it’s pure love, darling — it is.’
‘Let us not come any nearer to one another than this, Basil — physically — shall we?’ she said. ‘And don’t be angry with me, will you?’
‘Why,’ he said. ‘I think myself the sexual part has been a mistake. I had rather love you — as I love now. I know that this is true love. The other was always a bit whipped up. I know I love you now, darling: now I’m free from that other. But what if it comes upon me, that other, Daphne?’
‘I am always your wife,’ she said quietly. ‘I am always your wife. I want always to obey you, Basil: what you wish.’
‘Give me your hand, dear.’
She gave him her hand. But the look in her eyes at the same time warned him and frightened him. He kissed her hand and left her.
It was to the Count she belonged. This had decided itself in her down to the depths of her soul. If she could not marry him and be his wife in the world, it had nevertheless happened to her for ever. She could no more question it. Question had gone out of her.
Strange how different she had become — a strange new quiescence. The last days were slipping past. He would be going away — Dionys: he with the still remote face, the man she belonged to in the dark and in the light, for ever. He would be going away. He said it must be so. And she acquiesced. The grief was deep, deep inside her. He must go away. Their lives could not be one life, in this world’s day. Even in her anguish she knew it was so. She knew he was right. He was for her infallible. He spoke the deepest soul in her.
She never saw him as a lover. When she saw him, he was the little officer, a prisoner, quiet, claiming nothing in all the world. And when she went to him as his lover, his wife, it was always dark. She only knew his voice and his contact in darkness. ‘My wife in darkness,’ he said to her. And in this too she believed him. She would not have contradicted him, no, not for anything on earth: lest contradicting him she should lose the dark treasures of stillness and bliss which she kept in her breast even when her heart was wrung with the agony of knowing he must go.
No, she had found this wonderful thing after she had heard him singing: she had suddenly collapsed away from her old self into this darkness, this peace, this quiescence that was like a full dark river flowing eternally in her soul. She had gone to sleep from the nuit blanche of her days. And Basil, wonderful, had changed almost at once. She feared him, lest he might change back again. She would always have him to fear. But deep inside her she only feared for this love of hers for the Count: this dark, everlasting love that was like a full river flowing for ever inside her. Ah, let that not be broken.
She was so still inside her. She could sit so still, and feel the day slowly, richly changing to night. And she wanted nothing, she was short of nothing. If only Dionys need not go away! If only he need not go away!
But he said to her, the last morning:
‘Don’t forget me. Always remember me. I leave my soul in your hands and your womb. Nothing can ever separate us, unless we betray one another. If you have to give yourself to your husband, do so, and obey him. If you are true to me, innerly, innerly true, he will not hurt us. He is generous, be generous to him. And never fail to believe in me. Because even on the other side of death I shall be watching for you. I shall be king in Hades when I am dead. And you will be at my side. You will never leave me any more, in the after-death. So don’t be afraid in life. Don’t be afraid. If you have to cry tears, cry them. But in your heart of hearts know that I shall come again, and that I have taken you for ever. And so, in your heart of hearts be still, be still, since you are the wife of the ladybird.’ He laughed as he left her, with his own beautiful, fearless laugh. But they were strange eyes that looked after him.
He went in the car with Basil back to Voynich Hall.
‘I believe Daphne will miss you,’ said Basil.
The Count did not reply for some moments.
‘Well, if she does,’ he said, ‘there will be no bitterness in it.’
‘Are you sure?’ smiled Basil.
‘Why — if we are sure of anything,’ smiled the Count.
‘She’s changed, isn’t she?’
‘Is she?’
‘Yes, she’s quite changed since you came, Count.’
‘She does not seem to me so very different from the girl of seventeen whom I knew.’
‘No — perhaps not. I didn’t know her then. But she’s very different from the wife I have known.’
‘A regrettable difference?’
‘Well — no, not as far as she goes. She is much quieter inside herself. You know, Count, something of me died in the war. I feel it will take me an eternity to sit and think about it all.’
‘I hope you may think it out to your satisfaction, Major.’
‘Yes, I hope so too. But that is how it has left me — feeling as if I needed eternity now to brood about it all, you know. Without the need to act — or even to love, really. I suppose love is action.’
‘Intense action,’ said the Count.
‘Quite so. I know really how I feel. I only ask of life to spare me from further effort of action of any sort — even love. And then to fulfil myself, brooding through eternity. Of course, I don’t mind work, mechanical action. That in itself is a form of inaction.’
‘A man can only be happy following his own inmost need,’ said the Count.
‘Exactly!’ said Basil. ‘I will lay down the law for nobody, not even for myself. And live my day — ’
‘Then you will be happy in your own way. I find it so difficult to keep from laying the law down for myself,’ said the Count. ‘Only the thought of death and the after life saves me from doing it any more.’
‘As the thought of eternity helps me,’ said Basil. ‘I suppose it amounts to the same thing.’
THE END
THE FOX
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 519