Part 25 (1/2)
”It is because I am a new created thing, as I have told you, love,” she answered, and leaned towards him. ”Do you not know I never was a child. I bring myself to you new born. Make of me then what a woman should be-to be beloved of husband and of G.o.d. Teach me, my Gerald. I am your child and servant.”
'Twas ever thus, that her words when they were such as these were ended upon his breast as she was swept there by his impa.s.sioned arm. She was so G.o.ddess-like and beautiful a being, her life one strangely dominant and brilliant series of triumphs, and yet she came to him with such softness and humility of pa.s.sion, that scarcely could he think himself a waking man.
”Surely,” he said, ”it is a thing too wondrous and too full of joy's splendour to be true.”
In the golden afternoon, when the sun was deepening and mellowing towards its setting, they and their retinue entered Camylott. The bells pealed from the grey belfry of the old church; the villagers came forth in clean smocks and Sunday cloaks of scarlet, and stood in the street and by the roadside curtseying and baring their heads with rustic cheers; little country girls with red cheeks threw posies before the horses' feet, and into the equipage itself when they were of the bolder sort. Their chariot pa.s.sed beneath archways of flowers and boughs, and from the battlements of the Tower of Camylott there floated a flag in the soft wind.
”G.o.d save your Graces,” the simple people cried. ”G.o.d give your Graces joy and long life! Lord, what a beautiful pair they be. And though her Grace was said to be a proud lady, how sweetly she smiles at a poor body. G.o.d love ye, madam! Madam, G.o.d love ye!”
Her Grace of Osmonde leaned forward in her equipage and smiled at the people with the face of an angel.
”I will teach them to love me, Gerald,” she said. ”I have not had love enough.”
”Has not all the world loved you?” he said.
”Nay,” she answered, ”only you, and Dunstanwolde and Anne.”
Late at night they walked together on the broad terrace before the Tower. The blue-black vault of heaven above them was studded with myriads of G.o.d's brilliants; below them was spread out the beauty of the land, the rolling plains, the soft low hills, the forests and moors folded and hidden in the swathing robe of the night; from the park and gardens floated upward the freshness of acres of thick sward and deep fern thicket, the fragrance of roses and a thousand flowers, the tender sighing of the wind through the huge oaks and beeches bordering the avenues, and reigning like kings over the seeming boundless gra.s.sy s.p.a.ces.
As lovers have walked since the days of Eden they walked together, no longer duke and d.u.c.h.ess, but man and woman-near to Paradise as human beings may draw until G.o.d breaks the chain binding them to earth; and, indeed, it would seem that such hours are given to the straining human soul that it may know that somewhere perfect joy must be, since sometimes the gates are for a moment opened that Heaven's light may s.h.i.+ne through, so that human eyes may catch glimpses of the white and golden glories within.
His arm held her, she leaned against him, their slow steps so harmonising the one with the other that they accorded with the harmony of music; the nightingales trilling and bubbling in the rose trees were not affrighted by the low murmur of their voices; perchance, this night they were so near to Nature that the barriers were o'erpa.s.sed, and they and the singers were akin.
”Oh! to be a woman,” Clorinda murmured. ”To be a woman at last. All other things I have been, and have been called 'Huntress,' 'G.o.ddess,' 'Beauty,' 'Empress,' 'Conqueror,'-but never 'Woman.' And had our paths not crossed, I think I never could have known what 'twas to be one, for to be a woman one must close with the man who is one's mate. It must not be that one looks down, or only pities or protects and guides; and only to a few a mate seems given. And I-Gerald, how dare I walk thus at your side and feel your heart so beat near mine, and know you love me, and so wors.h.i.+p you-so wors.h.i.+p you-”
She turned and threw herself upon his breast, which was so near.
”Oh, woman! woman!” he breathed, straining her close. ”Oh, woman who is mine, though I am but man.”
”We are but one,” she said; ”one breath, one soul, one thought, and one desire. Were it not so, I were not woman and your wife, nor you man and my soul's lover as you are. If it were not so, we were still apart, though we were wedded a thousand times. Apart, what are we but like lopped-off limbs; welded together, we are-this.” And for a moment they spoke not, and a nightingale on the rose vine, clambering o'er the terrace's bal.u.s.trade, threw up its little head and sang as if to the myriads of golden stars. They stood and listened, hand in hand, her sweet breast rose and fell, her lovely face was lifted to the bespangled sky.
”Of all this,” she said, ”I am a part, as I am a part of you. To-night, as the great earth throbs, and as the stars tremble, and as the wind sighs, so I, being woman, throb and am tremulous and sigh also. The earth lives for the sun, and through strange mysteries blooms forth each season with fruits and flowers; love is my sun, and through its sacredness I may bloom too, and be as n.o.ble as the earth and that it bears.”
CHAPTER XXI-An heir is born
In a fair tower whose windows looked out upon spreading woods, and rich lovely plains stretching to the freshness of the sea, Mistress Anne had her abode which her d.u.c.h.ess sister had given to her for her own living in as she would. There she dwelt and prayed and looked on the new life which so beauteously unfolded itself before her day by day, as the leaves of a great tree unfold from buds and become n.o.ble branches, housing birds and their nests, shading the earth and those sheltering beneath them, braving centuries of storms.
To this simile her simple mind oft reverted, for indeed it seemed to her that naught more perfect and more n.o.ble in its high likeness to pure Nature and the fulfilling of G.o.d's will than the pa.s.sing days of these two lives could be.
”As the first two lived-Adam and Eve in their garden of Eden-they seem to me,” she used to say to her own heart; ”but the Tree of Knowledge was not forbidden them, and it has taught them naught ign.o.ble.”
As she had been wont to watch her sister from behind the ivy of her chamber windows, so she often watched her now, though there was no fear in her hiding, only tenderness, it being a pleasure to her full of wonder and reverence to see this beautiful and stately pair go lovingly and in high and gentle converse side by side, up and down the terrace, through the paths, among the beds of flowers, under the thick branched trees and over the sward's softness.
”It is as if I saw Love's self, and dwelt with it-the love G.o.d's nature made,” she said, with gentle sighs.
For if these two had been great and beauteous before, it seemed in these days as if life and love glowed within them, and shone through their mere bodies as a radiant light s.h.i.+nes through alabaster lamps. The strength of each was so the being of the other that no thought could take form in the brain of one without the other's stirring with it.
”Neither of us dare be ign.o.ble,” Osmonde said, ”for 'twould make poor and base the one who was not so in truth.”