He stood still and made her listen. It was late afternoon. The
strange laugh of his face made the air seem dark to her. And she
could easily have believed that she heard a faint, fine shivering,
cracking, through the air, a delicate crackling noise.
'You hear it? Yes? Oh, may I live long! May I live long, so that
my hammer may strike and strike, and the cracks go deeper, deeper!
Ah, the world of man! Ah, the joy, the passion in every heart-
beat! Strike home, strike true, strike sure. Strike to destroy
it. Strike! Strike! To destroy the world of man. Ah, God. Ah,
God, prisoner of peace. Do I not know you, Lady Daphne? Do I not?
Do I not?'
She was silent for some moments, looking away at the twinkling
lights of a station beyond.
'Not the white plucked lily of your body. I have gathered no
flower for my ostentatious life. But in the cold dark, your lily
root, Lady Daphne. Ah, yes, you will know it all your life, that I
know where your root lies buried, with its sad, sad quick of life.
What does it matter!'
They had walked slowly towards the house. She was silent. Then at
last she said, in a peculiar voice:
'And you would never want to kiss me?'
'Ah, no!' he answered sharply.
She held out her hand.
'Good-bye, Count Dionys,' she drawled, fashionably. He bowed over
her hand, but did not kiss it.
'Good-bye, Lady Daphne.'
She went away, with her brow set hard. And henceforth she thought
only of her husband, of Basil. She made the Count die out of her.
Basil was coming, he was near. He was coming back from the East,
from war and death. Ah, he had been through awful fire of
experience. He would be something new, something she did not know.
He was something new, a stronger lover who had been through
terrible fire, and had come out strange and new, like a god. Ah,
new and terrible his love would be, pure and intensified by the
awful fire of suffering. A new lover--a new bridegroom--a new,
supernatural wedding-night. She shivered in anticipation, waiting
for her husband. She hardly noticed the wild excitement of the
Armistice. She was waiting for something more wonderful to her.
And yet the moment she heard his voice on the telephone, her heart
contracted with fear. It was his well-known voice, deliberate,
diffident, almost drawling, with the same subtle suggestion of
deference, and the rather exaggerated Cambridge intonation, up and
down. But there was a difference, a new icy note that went through
her veins like death.
'Is that you, Daphne? I shall be with you in half an hour. Is
that all right for you? Yes, I've just landed, and shall come
straight to you. Yes, a taxi. Shall I be too sudden for you,
darling? No? Good, oh good! Half an hour, then! I say, Daphne?
There won't be anyone else there, will there? Quite alone! Good!
I can ring up Dad afterwards. Yes, splendid, splendid. Sure
you're all right, my darling? I'm at death's door till I see you.
Yes. Good-bye--half an hour. Good-bye.'
When Daphne had hung up the receiver she sat down almost in a
faint. What was it that so frightened her? His terrible, terrible
altered voice, like cold, blue steel. She had no time to think.
She rang for her maid.
'Oh, my lady, it isn't bad news?' cried Millicent, when she caught
sight of her mistress white as death.
'No, good news. Major Apsley will be here in half an hour. Help
me to dress. Ring to Murry's first to send in some roses, red
ones, and some lilac-coloured iris--two dozen of each, at once.'
Daphne went to her room. She didn't know what to wear, she didn't
know how she wanted her hair dressed. She spoke hastily to her
maid. She chose a violet-coloured dress. She did not know what
she was doing. In the middle of dressing the flowers came, and she
left off to put them in the bowls. So that when she heard his
voice in the hall, she was still standing in front of the mirror
reddening her lips and wiping it away again.
'Major Apsley, my lady!' murmured the maid, in excitement.
'Yes, I can hear. Go and tell him I shall be one minute.'
Daphne's voice had become slow and sonorous, like bronze, as it
always did when she was upset. Her face looked almost haggard, and
in vain she dabbed with the rouge.
'How does he look?' she asked curtly, when her maid came back.
'A long scar here,' said the maid, and she drew her finger from the
left-hand corner of her mouth into her cheek, slanting downwards.
'Make him look very different?' asked Daphne.
'Not so VERY different, my lady,' said Millicent gently. 'His eyes
are the same, I think.' The girl also was distressed.
'All right,' said Daphne. She looked at herself a long, last look
as she turned away from the mirror. The sight of her own face made
her feel almost sick. She had seen so much of herself. And yet
even now she was fascinated by the heavy droop of her lilac-veined
lids over her slow, strange, large, green-blue eyes. They WERE
mysterious-looking. And she gave herself a long, sideways glance,
curious and Chinese. How was it possible there was a touch of the
Chinese in her face?--she so purely an English blonde, an Aphrodite
of the foam, as Basil had called her in poetry. Ah well! She left
off her thoughts and went through the hall to the drawing-room.
He was standing nervously in the middle of the room in his uniform.
She hardly glanced at his face--and saw only the scar.
'Hullo, Daphne,' he said, in a voice full of the expected emotion.
He stepped forward and took her in his arms, and kissed her
forehead.
'So glad! So glad it's happened at last,' she said, hiding her
tears.
'So glad what has happened, darling?' he asked, in his deliberate
manner.
'That you're back.' Her voice had the bronze resonance, she spoke
rather fast.
'Yes, I'm back, Daphne darling--as much of me as there is to bring
back.'
'Why?' she said. 'You've come back whole, surely?' She was
frightened.
'Yes, apparently I have. Apparently. But don't let's talk of
that. Let's talk of you, darling. How are you? Let me look at
you. You are thinner, you are older. But you are more wonderful
than ever. Far more wonderful.'
'How?' said she.
'I can't exactly say how. You were only a girl. Now you are a
woman. I suppose it's all that's happened. But you are wonderful
as a woman, Daphne darling--more wonderful than all that's
happened. I couldn't have believed you'd be so wonderful. I'd
forgotten--or else I'd never known. I say, I'm a lucky chap
really. Here I am, alive and well, and I've got you for a wife.
It's brought you out like a flower. I say, darling, there is more
now than Venus of the foam--grander. How beautiful you are! But
you look like the beauty of all life--as if you were moon-mother of
the world--Aphrodite. God is
good to me after all, darling. I
ought never to utter a single complaint. How lovely you are--how
lovely you are, my darling! I'd forgotten you--and I thought I
knew you so well. Is it true that you belong to me? Are you
really mine?'
They were seated on the yellow sofa. He was holding her hand, and
his eyes were going up and down, from her face to her throat and
her breast. The sound of his words, and the strong, cold desire in
his voice excited her, pleased her, and made her heart freeze. She
turned and looked into his light blue eyes. They had no longer the
amused light, nor the young look. They burned with a hard, focused
light, whitish.
'It's all right. You are mine, aren't you, Daphne darling?' came
his cultured, musical voice, that had always the well-bred twang of
diffidence.
She looked back into his eyes.
'Yes, I am yours,' she said, from the lips.
'Darling! Darling!' he murmured, kissing her hand.
Her heart beat suddenly so terribly, as if her breast would be
ruptured, and she rose in one movement and went across the room.
She leaned her hand on the mantelpiece and looked down at the
electric fire. She could hear the faint, faint noise of it. There
was silence for a few moments.
Then she turned and looked at him. He was watching her intently.
His face was gaunt, and there was a curious deathly sub-pallor,
though his cheeks were not white. The scar ran livid from the side
of his mouth. It was not so very big. But it seemed like a scar
in him himself, in his brain, as it were. In his eyes was that
hard, white, focused light that fascinated her and was terrible to
her. He was different. He was like death; like risen death. She
felt she dared not touch him. White death was still upon him. She
could tell that he shrank with a kind of agony from contact.
'Touch me not, I am not yet ascended unto the Father.' Yet for
contact he had come. Something, someone seemed to be looking over
his shoulder. His own young ghost looking over his shoulder. Oh,
God! She closed her eyes, seeming to swoon. He remained leaning
forward on the sofa, watching her.
'Aren't you well, darling?' he asked. There was a strange,
incomprehensible coldness in his very fire. He did not move to
come near her.
'Yes, I'm well. It is only that after all it is so sudden. Let me
get used to you,' she said, turning aside her face from him. She
felt utterly like a victim of his white, awful face.
'I suppose I must be a bit of a shock to you,' he said. 'I hope
you won't leave off loving me. It won't be that, will it?'
The strange coldness in his voice! And yet the white, uncanny
fire.
'No, I shan't leave off loving you,' she admitted, in a low tone,
as if almost ashamed. She DARED not have said otherwise. And the
saying it made it true.
'Ah, if you're sure of that,' he said. 'I'm a pretty unlovely
sight to behold, I know, with this wound-scar. But if you can
forgive it me, darling. Do you think you can?' There was
something like compulsion in his tone.
She looked at him, and shivered slightly.
'I love you--more than before,' she said hurriedly.
'Even the scar?' came his terrible voice, inquiring.
She glanced again, with that slow, Chinese side-look, and felt she
would die.
'Yes,' she said, looking away at nothingness. It was an awful
moment to her. A little, slightly imbecile smile widened on his
face.
He suddenly knelt at her feet, and kissed the toe of her slipper,
and kissed the instep, and kissed the ankle in the thin black
stocking.
'I knew,' he said in a muffled voice. 'I knew you would make good.
I knew if I had to kneel, it was before you. I knew you were
divine, you were the one--Cybele--Isis. I knew I was your slave.
I knew. It has all been just a long initiation. I had to learn
how to worship you.'
He kissed her feet again and again, without the slightest self-
consciousness, or the slightest misgiving. Then he went back to
the sofa, and sat there looking at her, saying:
'It isn't love, it is worship. Love between me and you will be a
sacrament, Daphne. That's what I had to learn. You are beyond me.
A mystery to me. My God, how great it all is. How marvellous!'
She stood with her hand on the mantelpiece, looking down and not
answering. She was frightened--almost horrified: but she was
thrilled deep down to her soul. She really felt she could glow
white and fill the universe like the moon, like Astarte, like Isis,
like Venus. The grandeur of her own pale power. The man
religiously worshipped her, not merely amorously. She was ready
for him--for the sacrament of his supreme worship.
He sat on the sofa with his hands spread on the yellow brocade and
pushing downwards behind him, down between the deep upholstery of
the back and the seat. He had long, white hands with pale
freckles. And his fingers touched something. With his long white
fingers he groped and brought it out. It was the lost thimble.
And inside it was the bit of screwed-up blue paper.
'I say, is that YOUR thimble?' he asked.
She started, and went hurriedly forward for it.
'Where was it?' she said, agitated.
But he did not give it to her. He turned it round and pulled out
the bit of blue paper. He saw the faint pencil marks on the
screwed-up ball, and unrolled the band of paper, and slowly
deciphered the verse.
'Wenn ich ein Voglein war'
Und auch zwei Fluglein hatt'
Flog' ich zu dir--'
'How awfully touching that is,' he said. 'A Voglein with two
little Fluglein! But what a precious darling child you are! Whom
did you want to fly to, if you were a Voglein?' He looked up at
her with a curious smile.
'I can't remember,' she said, turning aside her head.
'I hope it was to me,' he said. 'Anyhow, I shall consider it was,
and shall love you all the more for it. What a darling child! A
Voglein if you please, with two little wings! Why, how beautifully
absurd of you, darling!'
He folded the scrap of paper carefully, and put it in his pocket-
book, keeping the thimble all the time between his knees.
'Tell me when you lost it, Daphne,' he said, examining the bauble.
'About a month ago--or two months.'
'About a month ago--or two months. And what were you sewing? Do
you mind if I ask? I like to think of you then. I was still in
that beastly El Hasrun. What were you sewing, darling, two months
ago, when you lost your thimble?'
'A shirt.'
'I say, a shirt! Whose shirt?'
'Yours.'
'There. Now we've run it to earth. Were you really sewing a shirt
for me! Is it finished? Can I put it on at this minute?'
'That one isn't finished, but the first one is.'
'I say, darling, let me go and put it on. To think I should have
it nex
t my skin! I shall feel you all round me, all over me. I
say how marvellous that will be! Won't you come?'
'Won't you give me the thimble?' she said.
'Yes, of course. What a noble thimble too! Who gave it you?'
'Count Dionys Psanek.'
'Who was he?'
'A Bohemian Count, in Dresden. He once stayed with us in
Thoresway--with a tall wife. Didn't you meet them?'
'I don't think I did. I don't think I did. I don't remember.
What was he like?'
'A little man with black hair and a rather low, dark forehead--
rather dressy.'
'No, I don't remember him at all. So he gave it you. Well, I
wonder where he is now? Probably rotted, poor devil.'
'No, he's interned in Voynich Hall. Mother and I have been to see
him several times. He was awfully badly wounded.'
'Poor little beggar! In Voynich Hall! I'll look at him before he
goes. Odd thing, to give you a thimble. Odd gift! You were a girl
then, though. Do you think he had it made, or do you think he
found it in a shop?'
'I think it belonged to the family. The ladybird at the top is
part of their crest--and the snake as well, I think.'
'A ladybird! Funny thing for a crest. Americans would call it a
bug. I must look at him before he goes. And you were sewing a
shirt for me! And then you posted me this little letter into the
sofa. Well, I'm awfully glad I received it, and that it didn't go
astray in the post, like so many things. "Wenn ich ein Voglein
war"--you perfect child! But that is the beauty of a woman like
you: you are so superb and beyond worship, and then such an
exquisite naive child. Who could help worshipping you and loving
you: immortal and mortal together. What, you want the thimble?
Here! Wonderful, wonderful, white fingers. Ah, darling, you are
more goddess than child, you long, limber Isis with sacred hands.
White, white, and immortal! Don't tell me your hands could die,
darling: your wonderful Proserpine fingers. They are immortal as
February and snowdrops. If you lift your hands the spring comes.
I CAN'T help kneeling before you, darling. I am no more than a
sacrifice to you, an offering. I WISH I could die in giving myself
to you, give you all my blood on your altar, for ever.'
She looked at him with a long, slow look, as he turned his face to
her. His face was white with ecstasy. And she was not afraid.
Somewhere, saturnine, she knew it was absurd. But she chose not to
know. A certain swoon-sleep was on her. With her slow, green-blue
eyes she looked down on his ecstasized face, almost benign. But in
her right hand unconsciously she held the thimble fast, she only
gave him her left hand. He took her hand and rose to his feet in
that curious priestly ecstasy which made him more than a man or a
soldier, far, far more than a lover to her.
Nevertheless, his home-coming made her begin to be ill again.
Afterwards, after his love, she had to bear herself in torment. To
her shame and her heaviness, she knew she was not strong enough, or
pure enough, to bear this awful outpouring adoration-lust. It was
not her fault she felt weak and fretful afterwards, as if she
wanted to cry and be fretful and petulant, wanted someone to save
her. She could not turn to Basil, her husband. After his ecstasy
of adoration-lust for her, she recoiled from him. Alas, she was
not the goddess, the superb person he named her. She was flawed
with the fatal humility of her age. She could not harden her heart
and burn her soul pure of this humility, this misgiving. She could
not finally believe in her own woman-godhead--only in her own
female mortality.
That fierce power of being alone, even with your lover, the fierce
power of the woman in excelsis--alas, she could not keep it. She
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