by E R Eddison
The Duke, so sitting and watching, felt sails fill and his spirit move out once more on that uncharted dangerous ever undiscovered main.
He rose: took a dish of fruit from the sideboard. Vandermast was half risen to have taken it from him, as scandalled that his great master should do handmaid-service, but the Duke prevented him with his eye, and came with the dish to where she sat. ‘If your ladyship will have any conceits after supper, as medlars, nuts, lady-pears?’
Very daintily she examined them, took one, and, looking at him not with eyes but with the snake-black gleams of her black hair and with the curve of white neck and shoulder, held it up for him to take and peel for her. He peeled it in silence: gave it back: her eating of it was with an air of creative awareness, as of one who carves or models: of conscious art, rather than the plain business of eating. The Duke watched her for a minute; then, behind her chair, leaned over the back and said in a low voice, ‘What crinkum-crankum was this?’
She leaned back her head till he could look straight down into her eyes as he bent over her, facing him as it were upside down. He looked in them; then in her mouth’s corner where that thing sat at alert; then over all the imperial pitiless face of her, where a dozen warring imperfections were by some secret fire transmuted to that which is beyond flattery and beyond alchemy; then to the warm interspace where, with her leaning back, the bosom of her crimson dress strained closer; then into her eyes again. ‘I wonder,’ he said: ‘can the Devil outsubtle you, madonna?’
‘How can I tell?’ she said, with great innocence, and the thing there covered its face. ‘Why? Would you engage his help against me?’
‘Yes. Save that I think somewhat scorn to bribe your servant.’
‘Is he my servant?’ she asked, as who might ask an indifferent matter for information’s sake: Is Vandermast your secretary? Is Campaspe a naiad?
‘Or I have long been misinformed,’ answered the Duke. ‘Come, what wages do you pay him? Though I fear all the wealth I have shall scarce avail me to bid against you.’
‘As for me, I pay not,’ said that lady. ‘Neither am paid. Still, I have servants: perhaps him we spoke on: could at least have him if I would. And still, I am your mistress. Is not that singular?’ She put up a jewelled hand, took his that rested on her chair-back, drew it secretly against her neck, then swiftly put it away again.
The oaths you sware me,’ he said, close in her ear, ‘after that night last May, never to do it again. And yet, worse this time. By my soul, I dreamed, and I was – Lessingham.’
Fiorinda said, ‘I have heard tell of stranger dreams than that.’
‘And she? That other?’ he said, still lower. ‘Who is she?’
Fiorinda sat up and smoothed her gown. Barganax moved a couple of paces round towards the fire so as to see her face again. ‘O, this large-eyed innocence,’ he said, ‘becomes your ladyship badly, who have all these things in your purse. What, is she a dress of yours?’
‘I had thought you had learnt by now,’ she said, with a swan-like smooth motion of her hands settling the combs in her hair, ‘that everything that is is a dress of mine. Ever and since the world began,’ she said, so low as he should hear not that: but that little white cat, gazing up at her, seemed to hear it.
The Duke looked about. Campaspe at the clavichord fingered out some little lilting canon. Zenianthe had drawn her chair up beside her, and watched her as some sweet oak-tree might watch the mouse-like darts and pauses of the tree-creeper along her steadfast dream-fast limbs. The old man talked low with Anthea: that strange disciple of his was curled up on the carpet as if asleep, one arm about the little white cat that with slow blinking eyes still studied Fiorinda from a distance. ‘You shall know this,’ said the Duke: ‘I loved her as my life.’
With that scarce perceptible little upward scoffing backward movement of her head, she laughed. ‘O sweetly pathetical. You mouth it, my lord, like a common play-actor.’
‘And would a let you, madam, go hang.’
‘Who would not be so lovered?’ she said; and, with a flower-like grace which had yet the quality in it as of the outpeeking from flowers of a deadly poisoned adder, she stood up. ‘I am indeed,’ she said delicately, ‘of a most lambish patience; but I much fear, my lord, you grow tedious. Zenianthe, my cloak.’
‘Stay,’ said the Duke. ‘My tongue can run on patterns as well as your ladyship’s. And men that be in love can ill away to have lovers appointed them by others. It was a dream.’
‘It was true,’ she replied, and her green and slanting and unfathomable eyes held him while he took a stab from every sensuous movement of her putting on her cloak. ‘The first (as for loving) was true, but not the second: the second was but said in a bravado to plague me. Think, and you will remember, my friend, that I say true.’
He made no reply.
‘Moreover,’ she said, ‘you would not, no not even this moment, let even her go hang. No, fling not off, my lord: think. You shall find I say true.’
The Duke faced that lady’s eyes in an arrested stillness. ‘Think,’ she said again; and he, looking now steadfastly on her lips that seemed to rest upon the antique secret memory of some condition, primal and abiding, where the being of these things is altogether at once, which is the peculiar property of everlastingness, slowly after a pause answered and said, ‘Yes: but that is not to say love. For no man can love and worship his own self.’
‘This that you have said,’ said that lady, and her slow voice was like honey of roses, ‘I have strangely heard before. Yet not heard,’ she said, her eyebrows lifting with their look of permanent soft surprise as she looked down, drawing on her gloves; ‘for ’twas but thought, not spoken: seen, in eyes: his eyes, not yours, in Acrozayana.’
‘In his eyes?’ said the Duke. The silence opened quivering wings above them like the wings that shadow the dream-stone.
‘There have been, to say, brothers and sisters,’ she said. It was as if, under the ironic lazy seductive voice of her, the wings were upstrained to that ultimate throbbing tension that must dissolve the next instant in some self-consuming cataclysm of its own extremity. Then, whether upon the mere whim and fantasy: whether of her most divine discerning bounty, bis dat quae tarde: whether but of her April mood (now lovely sunshining, now hail from a louring sky, suddenly again those stones melting at a gleam to jewelled drops on the yellow daffodils and celandines: half-fledged leaves of sallow and birch and thorn turning to green tiny flames against the sunlight: the heavens all soft and blue, and the blackthorn and wild cherry starry above new lambs): whether for all or for none of these reasons, she loosed hold. ‘Reverend sir, are my horses ready?’
‘Truly,’ said the Duke, as if awake again, ‘I ne’er saw my—’ and suddenly his eyes became veiled. ‘Unless—’
Vandermast came back from the door: ‘Madam, they are ready at the gate.’
Barganax started. ‘What is this place? Madam, I pray you go not yet. ‘Least, I’ll go with you.’ But, out by the door that aged man held open for her, she was gone. Barganax, like a man that would pursue in a dream, but his legs, held in the woolly fetters of sleep, will not obey, stood rooted. Then the door shut.
He saw Anthea’s eyes levelled upon him in a sphinxian expressionless stare. Letting that go unregarded, he stood now, back to the fire, in a study, erect, feet wide apart, one hand thrust in his jewelled girdle, the other twirling and smoothing up his mustachios. The dark fires slept and woke, glowed and slept and glowed again, in his half-closed eyes. He said in himself, ‘But no, dear Lady of Sakes, beguiler of guiles, O you, beyond soundings: there’s something there beyond that. That he hath in him something of yours, I’ll not think it past credit, that am inured to marvels. Nay, I believe it: it is a lamp: shows me much was dark till now. But you are more. O you! not with the help of all the devils could I, at this day, be bobbed with such an insufficient answer.’
Doctor Vandermast followed that lady through the garden: bare beds rough with hoar-frost, and over
all, hanging high in a frost-clear heaven, the winter moon. ‘While you are in a condition, madam,’ said he, ‘to understand and teach me: lest I fall out, may I know if my part is so far justly enacted, and agreeably to your ladyship’s desires?’
‘Desires?’ she said. ‘Have I desires?’
‘Nay,’ said he, ‘I speak but as men speak. For I am not ignorant that Dea expers est passionum, nec ullo laetitiae aut tristitiae affectu afficiture: that She Who dwelleth on high is with no affect affected, be it of sorrow or of joy.’
‘How sweet a thing,’ said she, ‘is divine philosophy! And with how taking a simplicity it speaketh, so out of your mouth, most wise doctor, flat nays and yeas of these which were, as I had supposed, opinable matters and disputable!’
‘Oh You, Who albeit You change, change not,’ said that old man: ‘I speak as men speak. Tell me, was there aught left undone?’
She took the reins and let Her beauty shine out for an instant, as a blaze of fire, now bright, and now away. His eyes took light in the light of it. ‘There was nought undone,’ She answered. ‘All is perfect.’ And they that were harnessed took wing and, thickening the crisp fine air with a thunder of countless wing-beats, sped with Her in an instant high below stars through the down-shedding radiance of the frozen silvery-moon. And the learned doctor, straining eyes and ears towards heaven, followed their flight, their mounting, circling, descending; and at length beheld them at his eastern upper window hovering, that their driver might alight; and there like a dream he beheld Her enter by that balcony, or like a pale moonbeam. For he saw that not as Our Lady of Sakes She entered now, but once more Our Lady of Peace.
So now he himself turned again, came in, shut the door, and came to the fireside again and his company.
The clock at his so coming in (as if She in that dove-drawn flight betwixt earth and stars had swept the hours, bound to Her chariot, to a speed beyond their customed measure), struck the last hour before midnight. That old man came to Lessingham where he stood yet, in a study, his back to the fire. ‘Sleep, my Lord Lessingham, is a surceasing of all the senses from travel. Her ladyship that came hither with you hath this hour since ta’en her chamber. Suffer me to conduct you now to yours.’
Pausing for good-night at his chamber door, Lessingham at last spoke. ‘Tell me again,’ he said: ‘what house is this?’
Vandermast answered, saying, ‘I have told your excellence, it is the house of peace.
‘And,’ he said, speaking, as old men speak, to himself, when he was come downstairs again and stood at the open door, scenting the April air that blew now from that garden and the scents of spring: ‘it is the house of heart’s desire.’
May be for the very deepness of the peace that folded that sleeping house, so that even his own breathing and quickened heart-beats had power to keep him waking, Lessingham might not sleep. An hour past midnight he arose and dressed and softly opened his chamber door. At the head of the stair he paused, seeing lights yet in the hall both of candles and the flickering firelight. Noiselessly he came down a step or two, and stood still. On the great cushioned settle drawn up before the fire sat Doctor Vandermast. Anthea, upon the same settle, lay full length, a sleeping danger, very lovely in her sleep, her head upon the lap of that learned doctor. Zenianthe sat upon the floor, her back against his knees, staring in the fire. Campaspe knelt, sitting on her heels, her back to the fire, facing the others; Lessingham saw that she played some little game with cards on the floor, very intently, yet listening through her game to the doctor’s words as he talked on in his contemplation.
‘Be it but perceived and understood,’ said Vandermast, ‘sub specie aeternitatis, it can never be too sensual: it can never be too spiritual.’
Zenianthe, smiling in the fire, slowly shook her head. ‘Multiplication of matterless words,’ said she.
‘Nay, you, dear lady, should know this per experientiam, as from withinward. For what will a hamadryad do if her tree be cut down? What but die?’
‘Can anything die?’ she said. ‘Least of all, we, that are not of mortal race?’
‘I speak,’ said he, ‘as men speak. And indeed I have thought may be there is in very deed a kind of death, as of foolish bodies who say, Tush, there is no spirit: or others, Tush, there is no sense. And have not old men ere this become dead before their time, with forgetting that this winter of their years is but a limbeck of Hers for trying of their truth and allegiance, as silver and gold are fined and tried in the fire? But, even as ’twas always that the cat winked when her eye was out, so they: ’stead of hold fast and trust in Her to bind up and bring back and give again hereafter.’
‘Are you, to say, old?’ said Campaspe, marrying queen of spades and king of hearts.
Vandermast smiled. ‘I am, at least, no more fit for past youth-tricks.’
‘No more?’
‘I speak,’ said he, ‘as of here and now.’
‘What else is there?’ said she.
Vandermast stroked his white beard. ‘It may be, nothing.’
‘But you spoke but now,’ said Zenianthe, putting very gently a fresh log on the fire so that the flames crackled up, and that oread lady, with the doctor’s knees for her pillow, turned in her sleep: ‘you spoke of “hereafter”.’
‘It may be,’ said Vandermast, ‘that “hereafter” (and, by like process of logic, “heretofore”) is here and now.’
Campaspe turned up the seven of diamonds. ‘What is old age?’
‘What is youth, my little siren of the oozy quagmires and wood anemones in spring and sallow catkins where the puss-moth feeds at dusk of night?’
‘Well, it is us,’ she said.
‘As for old age,’ said Zenianthe, ‘the poet hath it—
‘My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
‘That for age. And for youth I would but turn the saying, and say—
‘My joy lies onward.’
‘Who taught you that?’ said the learned doctor.
‘My oak-woods,’ answered she.
He mused for a while in silence. Then, ‘It is of divine philosophy,’ he said, ‘to search lower into the most darkness and inspissation of these antinomies which are in the roots of things. I am old;’ and his eyes overran the sleeping beauty of Anthea, stretched feline at her length. Scarcely to touch it, his finger followed her hair where it was pressed upwards in aureate waves from under her left brow and cheek where her head lay on his knee in the innocence of slumber. ‘I am old; and yet, as the Poetess—
‘I love delicacy, and for me love hath
the sun’s splendour and beauty.’
Zenianthe said, ‘We know, sir, who taught you that.’
Still Lessingham, upon the stairs, stood and listened. Their backs were towards him. Vandermast replied: ‘Yes: She, ingenerable and incorruptible. Are youth and age toys of Hers? How else? Seeing She plays with all things. And age, I have thought ere now, is also a part of Her wiles and guiles, to trick us into that folly which scorneth and dispraiseth the goods we can no more enjoy. Then, after leading of us as marsh-fires lead, through so many turn-agains, unveil the grace in Her eyes: laugh at us in the end.’
‘Love were too serious else,’ said Campaspe. She fetched for the queen of hearts the king of clubs: ‘Antiope: Lessingham.’
‘What is Lessingham?’ Zenianthe asked the fibre. ‘What is Barganax?’
‘What am I?’ asked Vandermast. ‘Tell me, dreamer and huntress of the ancient oak-woods, is it outside the scheme that there should be, of young men, an old age wise, unrepentant, undisillusioned? I mean not some supposititious mathematical esse formale, as some fantastics dream, but bodied, here and now? For truly and in sadness, searching inward in myself I have not once but often times—’ He fell silent.
‘What is here and now?’ Zenianthe said, gazing into the heart of the fire with brown dreaming eyes.
Vandermast was leaned back, his head against a cushion, his lean hands slack, palms downwards, on the seat on either side of hi
m. He too gazed in the fire, and, may be for the hotness of it, may be for the lateness of the hour, the gleam of his eyes was softened. ‘As part of Her peace?’ he said. ‘As part of Her pleasure? – O gay Goddess lustring, You Who do make all things stoop to Your lure – Seeing all the pleasures of the world are only sparkles and parcels sent out from God? And seeing it is for Her that all things, omnia quae existunt, are kept and preserved, a sola vi Dei, by the sole power of God alone?’
Zenianthe spoke: ‘And of lovers? Will you not think a lover has power?’
‘Love,’ said that aged man, ‘is vis Dei. There is no other power.’
‘And to serve Her,’ said Campaspe, still sitting on her heels, still playing on the floor, ‘(I have heard you say it): no other wisdom.’