Part 10 (1/2)
The same coloured orchid-mauve silk curtains as at Lucerne were drawn over the open windows, so the sun in high heaven seemed only as dawn in the room, filtering though the _jalousies_ outside. But what was time? Time counts as one lives, and Paul was living now.
It was twelve o'clock before they were ready for their dainty breakfast, laid out under the balcony awning.
And the lady talked tenderly and occupied herself with the fancies of her lord, as a new bride should.
But all the time the mystery stayed in her eyes. And the thought came to Paul that were he to live with her for a hundred years, he would never be sure of their real meaning.
”What shall we do with our day, my Paul?” she said presently. ”See, you shall choose. Shall we climb to the highest point on this mountain and look at our kingdom of trees and lake below? Or shall we rest in the launch and glide over the blue water, and dream sweet dreams? Or shall we drive in the carriage far inland to a quaint farmhouse I know, where we shall see people living in simple happiness with their cows and their sheep? Decide, sweetheart--decide!”
”Whatever you would wish, my Queen,” said Paul.
Then the lady frowned, and summer lightnings flashed from her eyes.
”Of course, what I shall wis.h.!.+ But I have told you to choose, feeble Paul!
There is nothing so irritates me as these English answers. Should I have asked you to select our day had I decided myself? I would have commanded Dmitry to make the arrangements, that is all. But no! to-day I am thy obedient one. I ask my Love to choose for me. To-morrow I may want my own will; to-day I desire only thine, beloved,” and she leant forward and looked into his eyes.
”The mountain top, then!” said Paul, ”because there we can sit, and I can gaze at you, and learn more of life, close to your lips. I might not touch you in the launch, and you might look at others at the farm--and it seems as if I could not bear one glance or word turned from myself today!”
”You have chosen well. _Mylyi moi._”
The strange words pleased him; he must know their meaning, and learn to p.r.o.nounce them himself. And all this between their dainty dishes took time, so it was an hour later before they started for their walk.
Up, up those winding paths among the firs and larches--up and up to the top. They dawdled slowly until they reached their goal. There, aloof from the beaten track, safe from the prying eyes of some chance stranger, they sat down, their backs against a giant rock, and all the glory of their lake and tree-tops to gaze at down below.
Paul had carried her cloak, and now they spread it out, covering their couch of moss and lichen. A soft languor was over them both. Pa.s.sion was asleep for the while. But what exquisite bliss to sit thus, undisturbed in their eyrie--he and she alone in all the world.
Her words came back to him: ”Love means to be clasped, to be close, to be touching, to be One!” Yes, they were One.
Then she began to talk softly, to open yet more windows in his soul to joy and suns.h.i.+ne. Her mind seemed so vast, each hour gave him fresh surprises in the perception of her infinite knowledge, while she charmed his fancy by her delicate modes of expression and un-English perfect p.r.o.nunciation, no single word slurred over.
”Paul,” she said presently, ”how small seem the puny conventions of the world, do they not, beloved? Small as those little boats floating like scattered flower-leaves on the great lake down there. They were invented first to fill the place of the zest which fighting and holding one's own by the strength of one's arm originally gave to man. Now, he has only laws to combat, instead of a fiercer fellow creature--a dull exchange forsooth!
Here are you and I--mated and wedded and perfectly happy--and yet by these foolish laws we are sinning, and you would be more n.o.bly employed yawning with some bony English miss for your wife--and I by the side of a mad, drunken husband. All because the law made us swear a vow to keep for ever stationary an emotion! Emotion which we can no more control than the trees can which way the wind will blow their branches! To love! Oh! yes, they call it that at the altar--'joined together by G.o.d!' As likely as not two human creatures who hate each other, and are standing there swearing those impossibilities for some political purpose and advantage of their family.
They desecrate the word love. Love is for us, Paul, who came together because our beings cried, 'This is my mate!' I should say nothing of it--oh no! if it had no pretence--marriage. If it were frankly a contract--'Yes, I give you my body and my dowry.' 'Yes, you give me your name and your state.' It is of the coa.r.s.e, horrible things one must pa.s.s through in life--but to call the Great Spirit's blessing upon it, as an exaltation! To stand there and talk of love! Ah--that is what must make G.o.d angry, and I feel for Him.”
Paul noticed that she spoke as if she had no realisation of the lives of lesser persons who might possibly wed because they were ”mated” as well--not for political reasons or ambition of family. Her keen senses divined his thought.
”Yes, beloved, you would say--?”
”Only that supposing you were not married to any one else, we should be swearing the truth if we swore before G.o.d that we loved. I would make any vows to you from my soul, in perfect honesty, for ever and ever, my darling Queen.”
His blue eyes, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with devotion and conviction of the truth of his thought, gazed up at her. And into her strange orbs there came that same look of tenderness that once before had made them as a mother's watching the gambols of her babe.
”There, there,” she said. ”You would swear them and hug your chains of roses--but because they were chains they would turn heavy as lead. Make no vows, sweetheart! Fate will force you to break them if you do, and then the G.o.ds are angry and misfortune follows. Swear none, and that fickle one will keep you pa.s.sionate, in hopes always to lure you into her pitfalls--to vow and to break--pain and regret. Live, live, Paul, and love, and swear nothing at all.”
Paul was troubled. ”But, but,” he said, ”don't you believe I shall love you for ever?”
The lady leant back against the rock and narrowed her eyes.