The words of the Priest now superseded the Lily’s in her thoughts: “As in the vast regions of the air one speck of dust meets another, and they drift apart, such is the pollination of flowers. It is not well to hope, and to pine for love, for in the instant of meeting there must be a parting. Thou and that other shall be united but by a flying speck, and both must shortly return into the Infinite, the Supreme. . . .”
“This Supreme, this Infinite,” she mused, “is a disagreeable sort of thing, and really very much the same as the Water Lily’s cold truth.”
That flower resumed his complaint. “A world, finally, in which vegetables have lost the dominion. For now are we increasingly subject to a dimly felt oppression of capricious presences. . . .”
She interrupted his thoughts with thoughts of her own. For had she not been oppressive and capricious with the knife and the electric probe? Had she not experimented with anesthetic and poison? Did she not know that the plants lived in the very machines with which she measured their responses?
These thoughts belonged to the specifically human part of her constitution, and the human part of her was waking. The Water Lily withered before her eyes; the Fig of Krishna became a plant in a pot; the tinted firmament took shape as a wall of glass; she returned to her proper condition, disappointed and angry. “You have learned nothing of the life of plants!” she told herself, shaking her golden head. All those thoughts she herself must have invented – but out of what unknown part of her did these imaginations proceed? Out of what secret store of experience did she clothe what were perhaps, after all, plant realities in human language?
§ XVIII
‘What a fool you are!” She plagued herself, dragging home tired and hungry, in the growing heat of the summer’s afternoon. She had abandoned her work.
“A student of botanical science; the reputed possessor of a critical intelligence – enamored of an imagined Orchid!” She laughed suddenly in the face of an early clerk who was passing; and he faltered in his tracks, mortally wounded.
“How can it happen so easily?” she questioned. “Really, if I should imagine him again, and if he should offer to kiss me, I must . . .” But what she must do was left undecided, for she was trying to recall his appearance. It was not quite easy, for in this waking mood he had to resemble a human being more closely: she had to invent a man. Still, she caught glimpses of him – savage lord of some green and temperate forest on Himalayan slopes, delicate Rajah of some marble palace among lakes and hanging gardens and mysterious woods. So delicate and yet so fierce! So strong and yet so slender; shy, yet instant. What dazzling flesh, what a fair broad chest, and what shapely shoulders! Rhythms of the leopard lived in the muscles of head and neck; there was a quelling hint of the tiger-leap in loins and well-proportioned limbs. The mouth was sensitive, aristocratic, a trifle petulant; the eyes were long and deep and splendid. But there was melancholy on his face; a purple doom-shadow. Her heart suffered for him, and suddenly she remembered the deep violet of his eyes that had held hers, the lovely hues that had flushed his cheek, the delicate and intoxicating scent of his kiss.
“If I should imagine him again . . .” her nerves shivered . . . “kiss me he may,” she said aloud; and a man passing, an irresolute-looking man, one full of unquiet doubts and half-confirmed suspicions, stopped and lingered under the wall.
“He may! He may!” she repeated. “For I did not know life held such wonder, such delight, as this experience of being incontinently in love.” Her brows frowned on the sudden profound anguish of desire.
But she had turned into the lime avenue, and the picture of the lover she had so clearly imagined as she glided along (straw in mouth, the golden stable-boy!) mingled inextricably with the picture of Roland. She banished it.
She was home. On the second landing, outside the bathroom, she met Hubert in his dressing-gown, bathed and cool after the heat of the day. He looked closely in her eyes and considered the color of her cheeks. “You’ve been meeting some one,” he accused.
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I tell you I haven’t.”
“Why did you go out so early this morning?”
“I went to see the Water Lilies.”
“What on earth for, at that time of day?”
“Because they have to be examined in the morning. They are only fully expanded then. Didn’t you know?”
He signified his complete rejection of her statements, and vanished into his room. She was left with the world of her imagination shuddering from his blatant touch. How mad to dream within herself of the kisses of an Orchid – how unbotanical! how anthropomorphic!
§ XIX
Now it was almost June, and though no clear vision had come to her for a few days she was not disturbed: she felt, now, like a spectator of events that were bound to take place in her mind, and she was prepared, now, to abandon herself almost entirely to her experiences. But not quite. She still held to some part of her human mind and would not let go. It was as if some spirit-lover demanded the full surrender of her imagination to his uses, and still she refused, clinging to human dreams. But the glory of summer increased in her the desire of beauty.
She was working, one afternoon, on questions of descent as regards the Selaginellæ. “These are proud ones, I suppose,” she observed to herself. “Very old family, these. But how they must have come down in the world – from being great and stately trees to insignificant and not always particularly pretty ferns.” But she was restless and expectant; increasingly, as the day wore on: sometimes, instead of working and thinking about the Selaginellæ, she found herself staring at the glowing gold moss on the trunks of the tree-ferns, or at the line where the green wall of creeper, like the wall of some old, ruined temple in a fern-forest, stood up against the glassy spaces of sky; sometimes she was on the point of conceiving an evasive, green-golden, unearthly beauty that brought to her eyes tears bright and sweet as the dew-diamonds that stand on the floating leaves of the water-ferns; sometimes she stood on tiptoe, with her hand at her heart, listening, in the heat and stalk-smell and dripping silence, for a footfall, a whispering voice, an insistent mouth.
“They are somewhere near me,” she whispered, “the plant people. On the other side of a silence. Behind the light.” She half closed her eyes for the sweetness of her sensations, and the mass of ferns looked, through her eyelids, like forests hanging on the mountains, with Lygodium volubile pouring from the shoulder of the range like a cascade. Then she seemed to wander there among old cities buried in a green twilight, and for an instant she became a fern, and smelled the warm earth and took pleasure in the spray of the waterfall. “They are there on those mountains,” she said, coming to herself, “so far that I can hardly see them; too far for them to hear my voice.” A green aureole of maidenhair clung to a hanging basket: she took the delicate sprays in her hands, and pressed her face into the heart of the moist green cloud. Then swiftly opened her eyes and stared round her: for had there been a movement, a murmur? No. There was no movement, no murmur.
The ferns dreamed on in the stillness and heat and moist silence of the afternoon, and she considered her work. Then it occurred to her that she had a job to do among the cactuses. “Why should that suddenly occur to me?” she critically asked – and smiled, for it was nearer the lily tank, nearer the orchid house. For the minute she could think of no reason connected with her work for going to the orchids.
She transferred her attentions, then, to the cactuses, and for some time she pursued her investigations among them with fairly single mind, making an effort, perhaps, to justify the abrupt change of occupation. “I’m afraid,” she said, busily handling her tools, “that I’m doing some plant an injury. But what can I do? One has to handle them thus in the interests of science . . . well . . . even in their own interests. It’s a pity, of course, when they ar
e young, tender . . . oh!” She laid down her instrument. “How wonderful it would be to dissect an orchid! To cut one’s lover open, and slit him up, and separate him part from part . . . ! How would a flower like to dissect a woman?” She stopped, horrified at herself. “What an awful sort of thing I must be,” she thought, trembling. “Why do I have such thoughts?” She saw herself as a ghoul, and ran from the place to escape the terrible vision of her own nature. By chance she took refuge in the orchid house.
§ XX
She lay hidden, drugged with the redolent heat, until the gardeners had gone, and the plant-houses were shut, and only a drip of water disturbed the silence. Then she stole out again and looked among the plants. There he was, and she forgot everything. There he was, the Orchid, with his substance of evening sunlight indwelling in frozen snow, symbol of Himalayan cold rising from tropical sunset. Gently she touched the flower with her fingers and ventured a little pinch, and threads of flame ran through her nerves from his body of white fire. Beyond him, through the glass, she saw twilight lawns and darkening tree-masses; beyond that, burning through tones of purple, a deep glory of the sun. It was very still and quiet; an extraordinary stillness and peace stole through her body, fortifying her for the onset of profound beauty. It came sudden and full. She put her two hands about the flower, and kissed the deep violet of his heart, swooning with love.
§ XXI
She carried the flower in her hand among evening trees, a poet shielding her spark of the heavenly fire. There was a chance. She was gliding, the golden diaphane, among dark and ancient conifers on the shore of a lake, and a dull-red planet, swimming in a warm and musky twilight, berubied the water. She stole like a scented wind through the whispering bamboo garden, seeking her lover, and there the moon hung in the sky, a golden hawk perched over a star. Now she was flitting by staircase and colonnade of marble in the gardens of some great lord: in the moonlight she dimly perceived a presence of flowers, a glimmer of amorous faces; the somber and splendid passion of love bloomed like the rhododendron. Somewhat terror-struck because of her loneliness in that ghostly palace, she passed among orange trees in a gleaming arcade where green parrots slept. And where was this? In whose gardens, and in what time? Her memory knew those gleaming terraces, those dreamy trees. They were the gardens of a prince – but who was he? Iranian conqueror in the daybreak of history; fair-haired Greek reigning in the palace of some conquered Indian; or hyacinthine immortal? Her heart was beating as an ever more vivid memory of scented kisses returned to her. But he was not there, her master. Vainly her eyes swept the great terrace that overhung a wild and enchanted water: there was nothing but silence; silence and gloomy forests out there on the mountains; moon-drenched silence more terrible because of some passionate bird that poured out song in tune with her pulses. The little balcony at the far end of the terrace was empty, save for the blue moonbeams; empty, and she must have lost her way, or forgotten some habit of her lord’s, in these remembered gardens. But ah! The wild beating of her heart redoubled, for now that little balcony of marble was not quite empty; there was a form among the blue moonbeams, a flower of the moonlight, the silence, the bird’s passion, the sadness of the water and the forest, the vast, cruel beauty of night. She gave a little ghost of a cry that went shivering among the marble columns: he turned, and she saw once more his cold, beautiful face, his wide and splendid eyes: at last she was in his arms, swooning with love and waking as she swooned to the remembered sweetness of his handling.
“You have been a long time,” he said, when their first happiness abated. “You have kept me.” His voice was grave and imperious, and she remembered how cruel this beautiful warrior and godlike master of women could be. But just now she was fain even of his anger and clung to him, saying: “I was detained. . . . I don’t know . . . there was some cause why I could not come to you.” It was sweet to submit herself to the mercy of his desire.
He led her to a seat, and she lay with her head on his breast, while her eyes took in the familiar mosaic of anemones on a ground of moss-green, and marble elephants, rising from the water, on whose huge shoulders the terrace rested.
“Princess and captive,” he said, “you have not thanked me, to-night, that I delivered you from a tyrant. . . .”
“And brought me under this delicious tyranny.” She turned her face up to him, remembering some incident – a shining and imperial figure on a horse, with attendant princes in some warlike country; the flash of swords; instant and overwhelming love.
He sought her mouth, and his princely hand had captured her breast. She met his lips coldly.
“Why do you not thank me, since the minutes speed by?” he asked with slow anger, and addressed himself once more to the task of compulsion. Yet though longing she still refused, and made him strive more amusingly for his reward. But why did he say that the moments sped? Had they not time for their love? A cloud was on her mind. “You are cruel,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she answered, permitting kisses.
“And capricious!” as she put an end to them.
But now she felt the surge of his wrath, and gravely set her mouth to his dazzling flesh. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “This is a dangerous way of thanking a king!”
A king! Some word of doom echoed. She pondered a little, as she lay on his breast, and again her eyes searched those colonnades, those orchards of orange trees. Hidden there, she remembered, were little melancholy gardens, and sad rooms with mosaic of glass and porcelain – roses, she remembered, and kingfishers. There came back to her a host of sad meditations in those delicate chambers, a recollection of physical agony and some profound suffering of the mind: had she been tortured there by a lord whose desire had altered; or had he died? A door opened on darkness, and she shrank back into the bosom of her lover, who now seemed somewhat shadowy and spectral.
Once more his voice: “Tell me again, golden spear, of that glowing country that made this white flesh; tell me what foreign thoughts there are in those moonlit-cloud eyes.”
But a sadness, a fear, had seized her. His eyes looking into hers were eyes of violet night, and in them, she knew, was a love for her enveloping and terrible as the darkness of space; his love, his cruelty and his princely coldness were of eternity and the unknown, and her individuality perished in that infinite darkness. But on him, on the lordly body that desired her fairness, lay the decree of fate. And now she saw the violet shadows of death on his countenance, and suddenly remembered their doom. The last night . . . the last time. . . . She had an inkling of imperial disasters and dynastic overthrows; she turned to him swiftly; their passion became deeper and more solemn; as their lips met they knew that when an hour should have spilled its moments there must begin for them an age-long separation. She was to pass on, from this terrace of ghostly marble, out of this sultry and magical night – where? What stranger experience awaited her? Once more she drew back, shuddering, from a blackness and abyss of the mind.
How taciturn he was; taciturn, as one who knows the futility of words in the face of doom. Nor, if this proud king and cold philosopher had asked for consolation, could she have found any language to avail with the oncoming silence. Yet suddenly he clapped his hands twice, and there was music made by the royal orchestra hidden under the terrace. He sought her fingers again, but his clasp did not tighten on her. He sat in a profound stillness, an image of pure marble gazing calmly out over the lake. His stillness lulled her into a sleep within a sleep, so that the mysterious music seemed the very voice of the lilies ascending from the water, and she was within a little of passing altogether into the body and experience of a flower. Once again that shuddering, that fear, so that her lover, aware of it, pressed her hand.
“Do not tremble,” his calm voice said. “Death and darkness and the soul of the universe are kind, and we shall forget our pain.”
“And our love?” She woke from her dream within a dream murmuring
that question.
“Yes, death will annihilate love. Love is neither deep nor sweet, if it does not know this, and the kindness of it.”
“It is not true,” she said; but he smiled. “You are a woman.” She only looked at him sidelong, and smiled, secretly, in her turn.
Now both were silent, listening to the mysterious water-music and gazing at the moon, the golden eagle hanging over the forests. She lay in his arms, and sometimes his lips were on her mouth or her eyelids; but the sweetness of their passion was somewhat dim, like a memory that must not detain her, and the taste of his kisses flowed away from her, a little unheeded, on the remorseless stream of time. Once more she came near the edge of what is human: and this time she did not draw back. “I am not afraid of death,” she said all at once, as a thought stole into her mind. “I await it” – but her flesh shrank from the remembered agony of the sword blade, and she glanced among the columns and orange trees – “that I may continue my journey, or else return home. For it seems to me that I am on a queer voyage. My spirit is wandering to and fro in the dark fields of time, seeking some old experience, or some new one, and it has lodged here, in these magic gardens, because of a familiar memory. But how it will quicken all my life with a fierce pain when I think of your face and your kisses!”
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