Well there I stood, all but lost to my surroundings, and lost to shame; and, in this condition, low and soft yet quite distinct, I heard the sound of a voice near at hand yet as if out of nowhere. It was addressing me. It had said, ‘Hands up!’
On my honour, I assure you, just like that. In a low, even, unaffected tone: ‘Hands up!’ Almost as perfunctorily as one might call softly to a child, ‘Take care!’ or to a friend (if one were less fastidious in the use of English than you are), ‘So long!’ For an instant I suspected that the conscience which makes cowards of us all had been the victim of an illusion. And then, still with the wooden case between my fingers, I turned my head over my shoulder and saw a woman standing in the doorway. Saw her, indeed! – in that light!
She looked rather taller than she actually was, maybe because the faded blue dress she wore with its full skirts fell to her ankles. Her face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones; her hair, smooth and parted in the middle, was of a dull gold and tied in a knot at the back. Beneath it, over blue eyes steadfastly fixed on mine, arched unusually dark eyebrows. These, too, and her eyelashes had a little gold in their dark, like that of her hair.
For moments together we gazed at each other eye to eye – utter strangers, yet sharing the common memories of all humanity. And in her hand – and quite in the approved fashion of the ‘golden remote wild west’ – she held a small but effective-looking revolver.
It is curious how flatly one reads of these lethal weapons – Brownings, Colts, and suchlike – in a newspaper. As a literary device they were long since exhausted, but yet no melodrama, no movie, is complete without them. I remember one even in one of Henry James’s stories, and incredibly odd it looked in the environment of his style. None the less, when such things actually come poking into one’s private life, the novelty is complete.
On the other hand, I can honestly say that I was not in the least dismayed or alarmed. I suppose the summons of those quiet lips had conveyed to my mind no active meaning – and that in part maybe because that summons had been so remote from my personal vocabulary. But only in part, for immediately after that prolonged exchange of looks between us, there was in a sense no need to understand it. Our spirits, our revenants, our secret sharers, or whatever one means by such words, had exchanged greetings in their secret tongue; and further explanations would be without need.
There we were, we two human beings, in by far the loveliest place I have ever seen on earth, beyond change, beyond decay, its beauty awakening only incredulity and wonder in the presence of this miracle of serenity and light. What on earth at such a moment could anything practical matter – even a bullet in your stomach? Mere self – that horrible Ego one talks about, perched inside one, like the blackened anatomy of a crow – seemed to be of no importance. I was hardly even thinking. I glanced at the sinister little round black hole of the revolver and then looked straight up again into this stranger’s face, and knew I was smiling.
The one thing I hesitated to do, queerly enough, was to hide the thing between us from view. I realized instinctively that any such action would put the two of us on an entirely different footing. At present we were quits, so to speak; discoverer and discovered; hunter and quarry; pilgrim and priestess. Then she would have the supreme advantage. For after all, mine was the most abjectly contemptible ‘case’.
Instead, I put the box down on the table beside the precious stone, and began to explain myself. I told her precisely how I had come to be found there in these – compromising circumstances. I nodded, still smiling, at the jinnee on the table. It was unlikely I should wish to run away with that, I explained. I was completely at her mercy, of course, and under her orders. But …
Remember, too, that she too was there – in that particular place, and in those particular circumstances; and therefore of a curious loveliness, though she was no longer young. Indeed any object, living or inanimate, rare or common, could not but be transmuted, essentialized in that gentle lustrous light. And I realized not only that she was not now thinking of the situation in itself, but also that my account of myself was now of minor importance. Even further- she was not in the least concerned, I could see, with what I should like to call the sanctity of the place. An odd word to use, perhaps; but still, I stick to it. Yet as for me, so for her, this experience was something entirely unforeseen; even though she must again and again have rehearsed in fancy a similar eventuality. But it had never been one quite like this. In that at least we were at one.
‘You are not an American?’ she questioned me – her first question. And she still kept the revolver in true alignment. ‘You are English?’
This surprised me, for I had not yet observed in any of my remarks to her that anything was ‘nice’ or ‘awfully jolly’. And most English visitors in America suppose that such little peculiarities as these bewray them.
I explained that I was on a visit; that I had come along the little railway.
‘What for?’ she said.
My shoulders shrugged themselves of their own volition, but I managed to suggest that my presence there was chiefly due to curiosity – to curiosity and delight in the beauty of the American countryside as it showed to an English visitor who had never so much as dreamt of its existence. Then again the derelict track and this house – her house; its effect, its atmosphere. It had resembled the experience, in the grey of night at sea, of looking up across dark dawn-lit tumbling water, and there! an abandoned ship floating above its shadow, almost within hail; appealing, mysterious. I agreed that this was chiefly because I was a stranger to her part of the world; and added, a ‘queer kind of stranger, too’. Then I remarked once more that the house was fascinating.
‘Fascinating!’ she echoed, listening to me with intense attention; and there was more in the cadence and timbre of the word that a whole sheet of this notepaper could express. It suggested to me that she was desperately sick of the place; that she longed to be quit of it; that she loathed this secluded life; that she was all but beyond being delighted or surprised by anything. At least, that is how it seemed to me at the time. And it filled me with dismay. I realized at once that her light, at any rate, had for years been unintermittently concealed and (as she supposed) wasted. All this, of course, passed only vaguely through my mind at the moment, but it was true, none the less. Her square masterful hand dropped to her side, and the full faded blue skirt at once concealed it, and what it held.
‘If my husband had found you here like this,’ she went on in restrained and slightly trembling tones, ‘I doubt if you would have got away again. So far as I know – apart from ourselves and our two old negro servants – there isn’t a living creature on earth who has seen that.’ A barely perceptible shrug indicated what she referred to. ‘He does not wish it to be seen.’ She said it as if it were an edict of the Caesars. ‘I don’t see why you came here at all. What right have you? But never mind. He hasn’t seen you yet. And I shall take the risk of not telling him. And you meanwhile – well, I am assuming that you, on your side too, will say nothing of all this; of what you have seen. But that being so, we must – I must – talk to you again. No visitors ever come here; though occasionally we go into the town. But when I was small, just the first eight years of my life, I lived in England. And so —’ She took a deep breath and broke off – a blank desolation had swept gently over her face. Her eyes looked at me almost as if she were frightened.
These were not her actual words, of course; they are only the nearest I can get to remembering them. But I remember her. We had remained in the same position while we had been talking – she in the doorway, I at the table, the wooden creatures above us concentrating their gaze upon us both. I remember how low we kept our voices, and the queer physical and mental restraint that seemed to have come over me, due in part, no doubt, to her unusual personality.
But only in part, for meanwhile the unwasting radiance of that other inmate of the room seemed to be conferring a curious saliency and meaning on even the commonest object
within its ‘sweet influences’. It was as if the light it shed were a kind of divination. For after all, the meaning and beauty of anything depends on who is looking at it. Imagine an intelligence resembling in its serene lucidity that stone! Imagine what this life on earth would be to us humans if never sun or moon or star had been in heaven to stir its dark. I can’t put into words what I mean; but in a sense surely the light of the mind and that of the world without are in definite relation one with the other, and in a sense interdependent?
Whether or not; this particular radiance patterned the rough distemper of walls and ceiling behind the pendant images with the loveliest of coloured shadows, softly transmuted their faded gilt, revealing even the knots and graining of their wood, and that of the painted window-frame. It glowed softly on every several thread of a spider’s web that hung from tip of seraph’s wing to cornice. All this – the very texture of that threadbare blue dress – seemed to be symbols of an indecipherable yet enthralling message. As for the wearer of that dress, I seemed to be gazing at her far rather as though she were a work of art than one of nature – the tiny arch of her lip, the curve of her nostril, the line of eyelid and temple, the sheen of her eyelashes, and every facet of the cut-steel brooch of coloured gems she wore at her breast. They had become manifest and significant in a fashion that – well, only Rembrandt could tell you how.
No portrait I have ever seen bears comparison in memory with that solitary figure. Yet it was not her own beauty that was the marvel. My eye travelled in fascination up and down the double row of little pearl buttons that decorated the border of her bodice, and I sighed. Even the criss-crossed cotton with which they had been sewn on seemed to be letters of some secret rune.
Smile on, sardonic creature; but you’ll agree that it’s difficult to describe a state of mind. We went on talking after that almost like casual visitors at a religious ceremony, and, on my part, not wholly unconscious of the indecorum in so doing. She was asking me questions, chiefly, I fancied, to gain time while she continued to reflect on other matters. Anyhow, she showed little interest in my replies to them. At last there came a pause. She turned her face away towards the gauze-blurred window – the marvel of merely watching her there: the translucent eye-ball, the capable hand now visible again, the arch of the head, the golden separate hairs! The very thought of interruption at this moment of utter serenity filled me with dismay. But there! – however closely I try to put the experience into words, something remains that evades me. I can merely hint at it. An unknown power or presence was between us compared with which we were objects no more if no less meaningful than were those dangling wooden seraphim compared with our own sensitive and miraculous humanity. My God, how we have debased and defiled even the fountains of our nature. What fools we humans are in our anxious restlessness of mind and body. Only still waters reflect the skies.
‘I think perhaps you had better go now,’ she said presently, as if half to herself. ‘Would you please cover the thing up, and we will arrange when and where we are to meet again.’
She turned back on me. ‘You see, it would at least be as well for you to hear definitely if my husband finds any evidence of your having been here.’
It was sheer bravado, of course, but there was nothing to reply to that except that I was perfectly willing – even eager – to await his return. She looked fixedly at me, and gently shook her head.
‘Better not,’ she said, and for the first time smiled. ‘That would be four to one.’ The words haunt me.
But then so too do those of ‘O Keith of Ravelston, the sorrows of thy line!’ and so too do ‘Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang’, and so too do ‘Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young’. What are we to make of ourselves while we are the slaves of such incantations as these?
There was no need to argue the question. And yet, I wonder. I replaced its ebony hood over the diamond as you might place a rusty extinguisher on a guttering tallow candle; and in that moment it seemed as if all interest, life and reality had vanished out of the room. In the dingy blur of the window the gilded images still showed faintly, but their office was gone, and the ceilinged sun became slightly Frenchified and vulgar in effect. We ourselves had returned to the condition of just two ordinary human beings, self-conscious, slightly compromised, so to speak, who yet seemed to have passed through an overwhelming experience together. That at least was my impression. I cannot even guess how much of it she shared.
I followed her out of the room, shut the door, pushed back the old dresser into its place, and she led the way downstairs. At the foot she bade me stay where I was for a moment, and went out. The melodrama was over; the limelight had been extinguished, and these were the jaded wings.
I stood there looking out of the doorway. A change had passed over the scene in my absence. The sun was gone; it must by now be nearly set. The matted carpet of convolvulus showed only a surface of sombre green and grey; every gaudy little trumpet having wreathed itself into an everlasting silence, its day ended. It was absurd; but at sight of them (their beauty gone but their true creative service beginning) a sort of disillusionment and regret came over me – that I had ever been decoyed not only into trespassing in these particular wilds, but into the world at all.
I got back to John and Flora’s before nightfall; meeting not a single human being on the way. My solitude seemed insipid and fatuous. I loafed from room to room in a fit of mental and spiritual indigestion. What I wanted of course was to talk to somebody, but my only company was the black butler, and he met every attempt I made at conversation with little more than an inexhaustibly genial but vacant grin.
John was nothing much of a bookman, and Flora confined her reading chiefly to fiction; and I searched their shelves in vain for any monograph on precious stones. But since then I have read the subject up a little. It is worth while solely for its own sake. The giants of the species have had alluring names, and many of them such bloody and romantic histories they might well have been the creation of the evil one.
But I might as profitably have remained resigned to my native ignorance. Not one of my specialists made any attempt to explain the human lust and infatuation produced by such baubles. It cannot be merely on account of their beauty and rarity? Hardly. Burton, as usual, blows hot and cold in turn. ‘“That stones can work any wonders let them believe that list … for my part I have found no virtue in them.”’ On the other hand, ‘“They adorn kings’ crowns, grace the fingers … defend us from enchantments … drive away grief, cares, and exhilarate the mind.”’ He mentions in his inimitable fashion the sapphire, too, that mends manners; and the cheledonius (found in a swallow’s belly) that makes lunatics amiable and merry. But concerning the diamond he is mum.
Browne is even more disappointing, merely citing (in order to dismiss it) the vulgar error that a diamond may be ‘made soft, or broke by the blood of a goat’. Charming speculations; but alas, the mystery remains. Personally I detest diamonds. They are hard and showy. They give any young and lovely human creature an air of meretriciousness; and merely serve to disguise and conceal the old and ugly. They price their wearer, and only the evil come alive in their baleful company. But I must cut this cackle – with the warning, a trifle late, perhaps, that this adventure of mine is nothing of a story. Like life itself, it will come to a full stop, but not to be continued in our next. Never mind. I want to get through with it.
In the small hours that night – and my windows were thickly curtained – I discovered myself lying wide awake in bed, the room an oven, my mind swept and garnished, my body in a cold sweat. I lay staring up into the dark, and the enormity of the evening’s adventure swept over me. Like a cadging thief I had crept into what I believed to be an unprotected house, had made an impudent attempt to explore it, and had been caught in the act by an armed female. Vanity writhed within me like a wounded worm. The whole experience in those few hours of sleep had withered and rotted away like Jonah’s gourd; had become utterly vulgarized.
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In cowardly self-defence I began to consider the motives of my strange lady; and to speculate on the value of her charge. And once you invite the spectre of money, or of distrust, into your drowsy mind, not only sleep but the most precious ghost that’s in you at once decamps. The very hint of money is in some degree destructive of one’s peace and poise of mind. So at least it seems to me. Pay a man in kind – do you find him gloating on his earnings. Would the Hope Blue Diamond – that fragmentary frozen lump of violet light – have sent quite so many victims to a quick end if all that could be got in exchange for it had been beef and potatoes?
The Young Man in Holy Orders, for example, stooping in ecstasy over the dewy mould under that bottle-glassed wall that wondrous summer morning – was his soul’s quarry only what the Rajah’s heirloom would bring in hard cash? Didn’t his aspirations reach out from cash to kind, from symbol to substance, and then on to symbol again? Not that R.L.S. was much concerned with such niceties in that particular context. That’s what I enjoy in him. He tells stories; and he is only off and on a casuistical Scot. He amuses himself.
Let us get back to Virginia. For hours that night I tossed about in John and Flora’s swans’-down guest-bed, prostrated with humiliation and chagrin. How much simpler, how much more restful an eventuality it would have been if my ‘armed female’ had been the kind of ‘vamp’ one would cheer to the echo in a detective story – a vamp decoying me on in order to give that wide-hatted husband of hers and the old negro a chance of digging my last resting-place under that tangled mat of wild convolvulus? But no; a cemetery with more headstones even than geraniums is likelier to be my final goal.
In actual fact she had accompanied me a few hundred yards beyond the house, to see me on my way. Not a breath of wind had stirred between earth and evening sky. And apart from the chorus of grasshoppers the only sound that broke upon us, shrill and liquid – was the voice (I suppose) of the old negress singing in the backward parts of the house over a tub of washing. It was like a scene from a book, from an old Kentucky ballad. At times I wonder if the whole thing is not merely the memory of a dream. I wish it were.
Short Stories 1895-1926 Page 57