Of their act she had made a thing akin with beauty, with radiance, with light, and he could only feel glorified, as he saw she did.
Innocently, grandly, full of a fervent delight in him as she had in beauty, she had given herself to him, as Venus might have given herself to Anchises; he could think of no other simile.
And to the tender love he had felt invade his soul for her in those after moments which to some are so bitter, he could find no parallel in all his former existence.
His one desire was to hold her again in his arms, though he had so lately left her, to feel the tender bosom strain against his, to gaze into the wonderful light and fire of those eyes.
This ecstatic state, this empire of mere nature, which knows nothing of convention, nor the ways and laws of the world, over him; this delight of the senses, the afterglow, as it were, of passion, remained with him all the night, and then with the white light of the dawn came a horrible sense of dismay.
What had he done? He had allowed the torrent of his own wishes, his own desire, to sweep him over the brink of disaster, and he had dragged this innocent, loving creature with him. Some men, in similar circumstances, blame the woman; Everest only cursed himself, as he sprang from his bed to face the coming day.
This bright, young life, so full of wonderful talent, this beautiful, fresh flower, only just opened to the sunlight of life, he had sacrificed to himself, to his passion and pleasure of an hour. It seemed incredible to him, as he thought of it, that he could have been so selfish, so weak, so vile.
What was there in that maddening garden that stole away all sense of the outside world, and seemed to whisper that man was not the trained puppet of the wretched, artificial sphere he has created, but the free, natural, joyous creature Nature intended him to be?
Man must always remember that he is a puppet, and a slave, and that the laws of Nature now exist no longer for him. He in his blindness has made other and contrary laws, which he has to obey.
Regina? What of her? What of this waking hour for her? She had not appeared at dinner the previous night. He had not seen her since leaving her in the garden. Was she suffering as he was? He longed to see her, to speak to her.... Were those glorious eyes clouded by tears? Was that sweet, smiling face convulsed in misery? It was like iron twisting in his heart to think of it.
He felt as if he had taken a swift, joyous swallow, just rising to the sun, and broken both its wings, and thrown it to the ground, to die. He loathed himself.
He dressed rapidly, made himself some tea with his own lamp, and then sat down by the window, thinking. The girl was just above him; if he could only go to her, see her, find out what she was thinking, feeling.
Other episodes with women had affected him differently. In nearly all it had been possible to compensate the woman in some way, or else she was in some invulnerable position of safety, where their deeds would not react upon her. But Regina? He foresaw every possible kind of suffering for her in the future, and no reparation could be offered her—except—marriage....
Yes, the thought came whirling into his disordered brain with stunning force. He had the power to change everything for her. If she were in tears, he could dry them instantly; if her heart was beating with fear, he could allay all its terror. He could not undo what he had done, but he could go farther and, as far as she was concerned, give her complete protection and happiness. As he thought of her, as she had been last evening, in the soft shades of the garden, as her image came before him, radiant, inspiring, irresistible, in those moments of ecstasy, he thought he would do that. It was not what he had thought of, wished or desired, when he had come there; but neither was this. To enter his friend's home welcomed by all, and then to steal the fairest ornament there, to leave misery and wretchedness where he had found joyous innocence, unquestioning love and trust....
No, he could not do this. A sense of being dishonoured, if he did, came over him. Never in his life yet had he done a mean or cruel action, and somehow, looked at in all its lights, this seemed to be both.
Well, he would do that; he would give up all other views and thoughts for his future, and he would marry Regina.
This resolve came rolling into his mind on the flood-tide of his troubled thoughts, and found a harbour there.
It was easier for it to do so, because of the very real passion he had for her. Of all the women he had known, none had given him a greater joy than she had, and the idea of possessing her, and her love and youth, and all her passionate impulses, chaining them to himself only, had its seduction.
Everest had reached the meridian of his years, and already, through the green woods of his life, was stealing the cold whisper of the coming winter of age, but with Regina he forgot it; she seemed to enwrap him in her eighteen years, to hold the cup of elixir of eternal youth to his lips. With her warm arms about him, her fresh, joyful heart beating on his, it seemed the spring of life must always stay with him. He could not part with her, he would keep her, and know again and again with her those happy hours that were worth all the world could give. Full of the new determination, he rose, and going over to the mantelpiece he closed the open velvet case that contained the perfect face, the delicate, cameo-like features of his cousin, and laid it away amongst other cases, books and papers. That idea was over; that matter was of the past.
He found his writing materials and wrote a few lines to Regina.
He did not see her till she came in at the last moment before luncheon, and took her place at the table. He felt afraid to look much at her, lest his eyes should in any way betray him to the others, but one glance at her face told him that she looked pale, and as if she had not slept much the previous night.
Time seemed a blank until the hour arrived when he could start for his afternoon walk, and then he hastened his steps as much as possible, dreading some interruption, some hindrance to seeing her. He felt he could not exist longer, unless he could have speech with her. When he came in sight of the garden he saw the door stood open, and beyond it, against the deep green within, her white lace dress was visible. He hurried forward, and in another moment the gate was shut upon them and their embrace. She had come to meet him. She was not, as he had tortured himself by imagining, tear-stained, broken and drooping, full of sadness and reproaches. She was smiling, fresh, radiant, as usual, with her face full now of rose and pearl, lifted to his, and her soft arms tightly twined round his neck.
They walked a few steps farther, into the deepest recesses of the place, and he told her all he had suffered, and how he hated himself for his selfishness, and how his only thought now was to efface it all from her mind by their marriage as soon as possible.
"I think we will go up to town together, and we will marry there. What do you say?"
His face was very pale as he spoke the decisive words—words that had never passed his lips to any woman before, and that he had always thought vaguely he would say some day in such different circumstances—circumstances where they would mean linking himself to brilliant, worldly prospects, to landed possessions, to high lineage, to a family old as his own; and now they were being said to this simple girl, who had none of these, and not even that surprising beauty which sometimes outweighs them all.
She had conquered him where other women all his life long had tried and tried in vain. Why was it? Unless this ground on which they walked were indeed enchanted. As is the case with so many men, love and marriage stood widely separated in his mind. Love was a wonderful, passionate pleasure, which had been his companion all his life. Marriage was a stupid business arrangement, that he might have to make some time, because certain practical advantages went with it.
He had immense property to leave behind him, and as he entertained the usual family dislike of all his brothers and sisters, he would have preferred to have a legitimate son to whom it would go, but it had been urged upon him, ever since he could remember, that to marry was "his duty," and as he had always found the "duties" discovered for him by others were extremely disagreeable, he had come naturally to have a very real distaste for it. No one had suggested to him that marriage meant, or could or ought to mean, pleasure.
Pleasure and sin were always jumbled together, and held before his eyes, through his childhood and youth, in his severe Scottish home, and marriage was associated with duty, with constraint, with bondage, with monetary considerations, and nothing else; with everything that he most hated.
And the result of this training had been far from what his stern family would have wished. The Oriental youth, who leads a cleaner life than English youths, and is a stranger to dissipation, is taught differently. Marriage to him is not represented as a holy penance, involving renunciation and sacrifice, but as the only gate to supreme delight. In all Eastern languages the word for marriage is identical with the word for pleasure.
Does it not seem a wiser method?
So that, considering his upbringing, it was no wonder that Everest's face paled and his heart sank as he pronounced the dismal word "marry," which had always seemed to him to mean the end of everything, the termination of freedom, the finishing of pleasure, the dismissal of love, only to be compensated for by great worldly gain. And here there was no gain. His feet had somehow got entangled in the horrid mesh at last. Yet, as he glanced at the girl beside him, so bright, with her springing step, her rose-like face and her wide, innocent eyes, he could not feel that she had spread it for him, as others had done in vain. No, he had courted disaster, and himself pulled it down upon his head.
Regina stopped in her walk, and looked up at him.
What loveliness in those blue eyes, full of the sky and heaven's own light.
"No, Everest, I am not going to marry you."
The man could never recall exactly what his feelings were as he heard her. Amaze was certainly the first, then a sort of relief, then disappointment, and then, so strange is humanity, a nascent desire that they should marry after all.
"But, my darling, why not?"
"Because you don't really wish it; you ask me because you think it is your duty, after what has happened. But I have given you my love and myself as free gifts, not at a price that you must pay. I have no price. No one can buy me, either by marriage or anything else. Most women have; the women of the town bargain for so many shillings before they give themselves; the women of our class bargain for marriage and settlements, for a home, for fixed income, for the chained servitude to them, for all his life, of the man they say they love; but I feel differently, Everest." And she turned to him suddenly, stopping under the branch of the swaying palm; her eyes were alight, her form seemed to expand and heighten, red shafts of the sunlight sought out her hair and rested there, crowning her with light. "I have given you what I have given. There is nothing I want from you. I have given you myself, and you have given me passion and intense, overwhelming happiness. I do not want, and I will not accept, anything more."
Everest looked back at her and could not take his eyes away. As in the first hour of their passion, she seemed less to him like a woman than a goddess, an immortal. To talk of worldly things to her, to think of them in her presence, seemed suddenly absurd. In his own room, while thinking of her, she had seemed a helpless girl, whom he had injured, and was bound in honour to protect. Face to face with her now, in the garden, she seemed an all-powerful divinity, who had bestowed upon him gifts that had no earthly price. The vivid sky above them enveloped her with light, turning her white clothing into gold, and her fair hair into flame, the red glow of it fell across the smooth pallor of her face and shone in the wide-open eyes, regarding him with proud, fearless confidence.
He felt silenced, abashed, confused, with a still more violent passion waking within him for her, now that she seemed to hold herself aloof from him full of conscious power, self-reliant, seeking and asking nothing from him. Like most men, Everest felt a sort of instinctive intolerance of women who clung to him, pursued him. He was kind to them, for that was his nature, but his own passion and desire began to wane the moment its object seemed to be clinging dependently to him. The wild spring towards liberty, the elastic rebound of the captive in his arms, were what stirred the fiercest fires within him, nerved him to the greatest efforts to hold her to him. Now, looking at the passionate, beautiful form of the woman before him, and understanding that she neither wished to curtail his freedom nor give up her own, he really felt he would like to lead her to church, and there bind her to him fast, by all the laws that man and God could devise. He advanced towards her with one of those quick, easy movements that always wrapped her in delight when she saw them, and brought the red deer of Exmoor to her mind.
He took her arms above the elbows; through the muslin she was wearing he could feel their soft firmness, their satin surface. How the touch thrilled him, and her also! The electric shock of joy in the contact was so great to them both that neither could speak or move for the moment, but each stood motionless, gazing into the other's transfigured face.
"But, Regina, I wish it! I want you to marry me!"
"Then you should have asked me before, when you first said you loved me, and I would have consented, to obtain the joy of giving myself to you. Now it is too much like paying a price, too much as if you felt obliged to offer me some reparation, too much as if I had led you into accepting gifts from me, knowing that you would feel bound in honour to pay for them afterwards. Marriage was not in your mind when you came here, not when you saw me, not when you desired me. You wished to go away and I persuaded you to stay. Yes, but not to obtain anything from you, Everest, only to give.... To give to you.... And, if you knew what supreme delight you have given me, what these hours in this garden have been to me, you would know there is no debt, no need for reparation.... If I have to pay with my life for them, which is quite possible, I am ready to pay."
Everest drew her close up to his breast, and held her there tightly.
"My sweet, don't say such things. As long as I am in the world, nothing shall ever hurt you. Say you will come up to town now, and marry me.... It will make me much happier."
He looked down on the radiant, light-crowned head pressed against his breast and thought again of the mortal Anchises when the goddess stooped to his kiss.
"Of course I will do anything you wish, if you continue to wish it, a little later, but not now. You shall not feel that, like Medea, I have thrown enchantment over you, and made you do what you never planned."
Everest was silent, lost in a maze of wondering thought. He saw he had been right in his estimation of Regina. She had not the ordinary modern mind, which measures everything by the standards of the world and of convention. She chose to do what she thought was right, and as it did not seem to her right to accept him she would not do so, overwhelming as the advantage to herself would be, horrible in its risks and dangers, its ruin, according to all worldly ideas, as her position without it now was. She had, as he had thought, just the soul of Regulus, who gave himself up to the Carthaginian tortures rather than speak a few words of false advice to Rome. How he admired her, loved her! He realised the greatness of her feelings towards him. She had perfect, absolute trust in him, as she had shown from the first. She was willing to pay the highest price herself for his love, and yet shield him from paying in the smallest coin. How different, how utterly different from all the women he had ever known! There was not one among those who had not fought and scrambled and clutched for self-advantage, self-gain—not one who, in spite of her love for him, would not have willingly sacrificed him to herself.
Regina, like her name, had come to him from Latin times.
He put his arm round her, and they sat down together, very close, sheltered by the laburnum, and the doves flew down, and walked, cooing, on the velvet moss at their feet. They talked of their plans, and Everest got her to promise this much, that if, when he had been away from her some time, living his own life, amongst his own people, if he then asked her again, perhaps she would consent to marry him.
"You see, my very dearest," she said, in that soft voice of hers, which always stirred his senses, "if you still wish it we will do it, but, if you do change, how much better for you not to have married me now!"
"And better for you too?" he asked.
"No, no, no! You know, just for myself, there would be nothing in the world better for me than to marry you," she returned passionately. "Everest, there is no need for me to tell you that, surely? You must see how it all appears to me.... You are so wonderful, so exceptional!... I feel you ought to have the very best and loveliest woman who ever existed...."
"Have I not got her here?" returned Everest, with equal passion, leaning over her, and kissing her on the mouth and eyes, so that she could neither breathe nor see. "You try to make me the most conceited man in the world, but I have sense enough left to know I am not half worthy of you."
Regina yielded herself up to his caresses, nestling close against his breast, her lips on the warm brown of his neck, above his collar.
"Listen," she whispered, "I want you to listen to me. I have just this one quality that is good: I love you so intensely, so absorbingly, that myself is nothing to me beside you. It is very difficult to put the absolute extremes of emotion into words, but I love you so much that when I think of you my own life, my own happiness means nothing to me, beside yours. You must be happy, that's all that matters. Nothing else is of any account at all. If I can in any way make you happy that would be my greatest delight, as it has been already; but I am not sure I should be really doing that by marrying you, and until I am sure, I won't do it. I am after all only a country rector's daughter, without any special birth, position or beauty.... No—hush," she said, putting her hand over his mouth, as he tried to interrupt her. "I am only beautiful just now, because I am young and in love with you—blazing with love for you in every vein. That fire lights up my eyes and paints my cheeks and lips, and makes me look beautiful, but that is your gift," she interrupted herself passionately, kissing him on his black hair, above the ear, "you have given me that beauty.... It is not the stone-cut massive regularity that the world calls beauty, and so, when your friends saw me as your wife they would say: 'Why has he married her? He must have been trapped in some way—she is only this; she is only that—she has no this, and no that,' and perhaps, after a time, you might get to feel so too. And it would kill me, simply, nothing else, to see you regretted marrying me. You came here as our guest, and we all, as hosts, have a sacred duty towards you. I want you to go away as absolutely free and untied as when you came, free to marry, if you wish, some rich great, wonderful person, your equal, who has magnificent beauty and everything else to offer you."
"Do you think that I could do that now, after yesterday? Marry another woman and put her in the place that belongs to you? I feel now I shall never care to take another woman in my arms again. You were so sweet to me, so unquestioning, so trusting, and I acted so badly, I shall never forgive myself! It is not you that tie me, my own action binds me."
Regina raised herself with a quick spring in his clasp.
"Whatever obligation there was, if there were any," she said in a low tone, "is paid in full now by your offer and my refusal. Yesterday was a gift to you, a gift, a gift, a gift," she repeated, with hot kisses on his hand at each word, "just as I would give my life itself to you, if you wanted it."
"There must be many days like yesterday, and you can give me something else, which no other woman can, when we are married, for we will marry whatever you say."
"What could I give you?" she asked, with a swift, eager note in her voice.
"A son," returned Everest, kissing her questioning lips, "just like yourself, all courage and fire, and strength, in body and mind. Would you like that, my sweet?"
She clasped her arms tightly round his neck.
"Anything done for you would be my greatest, my supreme delight! Do you wish for children, Everest?"
"No, not personally, but there is the property. I must have a legitimate son or let it all go to my brother. I should hate to have a weak, mindless, feeble child, which could never happen if Regina were its mother! So if, when my visit here ends, I go away to Scotland for some weeks, as I must do to look after my place, when I come back, you will marry me, will you not?"
"If you wish it—yes," she murmured.
"The suffering, the sacrifices, the danger of maternity, that does not frighten you?"
"No, I am not afraid of anything, Everest."
He looked into her eyes, and in their blue depths he saw that cool, serene courage that he loved, that made his heart throb with admiration, with some sentiment which it was new for him to feel for a woman.
He wanted to tell her this, but he could not at the moment find words in which to define and express it; so in silence he kissed her again, where the sun darting through the leaves lighted up the pink down of her cheek, and, as is the way with lovers, all their talk melted into caresses, and their arguments became kisses, and every thought and emotion were soon merged into mere overwhelming delight in each other.
The golden hours went by, and nothing came to disturb them in their solitude until the evening light, a most gentle messenger, stole through the blossoms in a rosy glow, warning them that they must part.
Everest rose after one last strenuous passionate embrace, and as she saw him standing above her, his brilliant face flushed and smiling, his dark eyes kindling with elation, she felt that this life had given her her due, if it gave no more. When he had gone she lay still for a little while longer in the shadow.
"I was right to refuse to marry him. I am sure I was right. If he loves me he will still wish it. If not, it is I who will suffer, not he, and he will know—he must know now—that I only care about him, that I would die for his happiness," she thought vaguely, mistily, for she was tired and would have liked to stay there, half waking, half dreaming of him.
It was with a great effort that she got up a little later and walked slowly back to the Rectory.
With dressing for dinner and appearing reasonably conversational at the meal, Everest had not much time for quiet thought until late that night when he was going to bed. Then, as his mind reverted to the afternoon, the stupendous unselfishness of Regina's attitude came before him. If a girl refused such a marriage with a man to whom she was indifferent, the refusal would be remarkable for its negation of so much worldly good; but for one filled with intense and passionate desire for the man who offered it, such a refusal must need the most heroic courage, the greatest steadfastness of purpose, the highest fortitude, the acme of devotion. He sat in his room, absorbed in the contemplation of it, unable to go to bed, unable to sleep, feeling compelled to study this new light on a woman's love.
It was worth while conquering and winning and possessing a woman like that. All his blood glowed within him as he thought of the greatness of that character, the largeness and the splendour of that soul that had yielded to his influence, that had submitted so unquestioningly to him. He had been accustomed to view women somewhat as soft and pretty kittens, liable to scratch and bite sometimes in their little tempers, but, on the whole, caressable and lovable, charming to indulge and to fondle; but he had often thought vaguely how differently he could feel for another type, how glad he would be if a wild lioness, full of her splendid strength and mettle and independence, sprang across his path and became gentle and tame to him. Caressing a lioness he would like much better than stroking a kitten. And this now had actually happened! He knew that in Regina, under her soft and beautiful exterior, lay just those same wild, brave impulses, that contempt for the dangers of life, that enthusiasm for great things and emotions that burned within himself. The realisation that now he had made this soul his own, that, grand though it was, it now virtually knew no law except his will and his pleasure, seemed to send waves of fire through his whole being.
When he at last went to bed that night, it was only to dream of her as she had stood crowned with ruddy light in the garden.
The golden days of June slipped by swiftly, silently, vanishing into the past like radiant dreams, and while the rest of the household, in the sleepy, creeper-covered Rectory, led their ordinary, bovine existence of feeding and sleeping, varied by their unbovine petty quarrelling, these two at least lived a life of which every hour flew off to Eternity on gilded, flame-coloured wings. When two such deep and strong natures as Everest's and Regina's come together and mingle, the education to each, the interchange and interplay of emotion and feeling are very great. And as each lovely day of sunshine, or gentle silver rain, or turbulent grey cloud wrought imperceptible changes in the nature round them, added different notes to the nightingales' songs, unclosed new roses and ripened fresh blossom on the lime and chestnuts, ardently leading onward and upward to the glorious perfection of midsummer, so did each day work mysteriously and enchantingly on the passion and intimacy of these two, unfolding fresh impulses, new thoughts, striking hidden chords, unveiling deep recesses.
This period for them was different in its gentle and subtle teaching, in its gradual drawing away of the sacred veil that floats before the face of passion, from the conventional honeymoon with its abrupt and violent candour, its sudden wrenching down of all the delicate curtains of mystery, of idealism, of poetical fancy which fall round the shrine of love. In a honeymoon the two lovers are flung suddenly into incessant contact, absolute isolation with each other, from which they cannot escape, as one might push a couple of prisoners into a cell. Every obstacle, every bar between them that has till now raised their passion to divine heights is removed. Every duty, every work from which either has been accustomed to receive moral stimulus and support, is laid aside, every diversion, every amusement and occupation taken away. Night and day, without change, without rest, they are thrust into each other's arms. Is it surprising that when the moon is past so few have anything but utter satiety to show for it?—that the wonderful flame of love that lives on excitement, danger, privation, romance, difficulties, should for ever be quenched and put out?—leaving the travellers to wander on down the narrow lane of marriage without its sparkling, radiant light to guide them in its dark places.
Everest and Regina could never meet except by the overcoming of difficulties, by planning, by suffering, between periods of eager waiting, and when they met the parting was never far off, the possibility of discovery, of interruption always present. So the wild pleasure of their first embrace lived in all the others, and their passion for each other increased, as a fire blazes all the more fiercely for a little water thrown on to it and other futile attempts to extinguish it. For the girl, life had suddenly turned into the mazes of a glorious dream. Her ordinary existence of hard work, of study, stood still. She mixed with the rest of the family and did such tasks and duties as were required of her, exactly as a well-regulated machine would have done, her real life for herself began and ended only in the garden. She was glad that she had always spent so much time there, in solitude and away from the others: it made her absences from home now less noticeable.
She would start for the garden the moment after luncheon, and walk with the books, that were never opened, clasped to her as usual, through the hot, silent noonday slowly towards the sea. She loved to reach the garden and be there before Everest, so that she might have time to think and dream there, of him alone. At this scorching hour there was such a deep silence in the thick green shades. The birds were quiet, taking their noontime rest after their ceaseless labours since the first grey light of dawn; the doves even sat puffed and voiceless in and about their cotes; her own light step on the sandy paths was the only sound. How lovely it was to go on, past the lilac bushes, of which the blossom was now over, but the leaves were still fair in their smooth, neat green, between the round and bunchy may-trees, most of them still laden with their pink and white snow and under the hanging veils of gold of the laburnum, until she reached the green turf beneath the palm, where the roses, so luxuriant in their June growth, no longer stood, as in the winter, like girls waiting for their partners, but joined hands with each other and danced merrily, nodding a thousand blooms as the light breath of summer passed over them. Here she would sit quietly, feeling her heart beating tumultuously at the thought that he was coming to find her there, that she would see the foliage part and the roses give way as the slim, beautiful figure came towards her, the green shade and gold light alternately falling on him. She was never quite sure that he would come. There was always that breathless uncertainty about it that is so painful and yet so delicious. Anything might occur at home that would make it impossible for him to insist on going out alone, and very often it did happen that he was kept and delayed at the last moment, and Regina waited and waited, trembling under the roses, her cheek flushing and paling, her bosom broken up by her heart-beats, until the intensity of longing and hoping and fearing became such that when he did appear she would fall into his arms in a passion of weeping from relief and delight.
But the moments before he came and before she began to fear that he would not come, while the hour was still early, and she sat there awaiting him in her pretty fresh dress, knowing that she was lovely as the flowers themselves in the tender light beneath the trees, were very dear to her. She lost herself in golden, glowing dreams of the future: she would be with him; they would wander together in those wonderful places where he loved to go; she would be beside him, and perhaps danger would come upon him and she would be able to protect him, save him; perhaps she would have the supreme privilege of dying for him. She would give up her life, oh, how gladly, in shielding him from pain or hurt; but what spoiled the happiness of this dream was the knowledge that Everest must suffer by her death, and yet that idea was delicious too, and she saw into his nature so well, she knew that he too would think nothing of his life if called upon to give it for her. Fortunately, dreams are not exacting, they do not make demands upon our logic. They lull us, soothe us and shut us in with rosy mists and lead us gently along soft, golden ways.
Sometimes all night she could not sleep for the joy of thinking of the morrow, and all the morning she could not read, nor paint, nor play for thinking of the afternoon and looking forward to the moment when she might take her way through the sleepy Rectory garden to the highroad and the sea.
Love is always wonderful, and to a woman always beautiful and entrancing, no matter what the guise in which it comes, or what the time or circumstances. If it comes to her late, when her face has lines in it which cause her agony lest her lover should perceive them, if her lover himself is a very imperfect specimen of humanity, that even her blinded eyes are offended by, even then love still gives her pleasure; but in Regina's case all of her love's setting and circumstance was as lovely as love itself and her joy was unclouded, exquisite, complete. Radiant in her eighteen years, she had no burden of deceit or cares or fears; she could lift her face to Everest and know there was nothing there, nor in her heart, that she dreaded him to find, and in his countenance bending over her there was that beauty, that perfection that gives rapture to the eyes as a melody does to the ears. Often returning from the garden, through the sweet-scented meadows in the long, light evenings, those calm evenings of the English summer which seem to carry madness to the blood of youth, after a long and happy afternoon spent with him, it seemed to her as if her head was light with joy, as if her brain or heart must burst with the excited happiness of loving and being loved by such a man as this.
In the soft violet dark that gathers under the limes, she would stand still, drinking in the fragrance of all the grasses rising from the cooling earth and listening to the triumphant laugh of the cuckoo when he found at last his mate in the thorn thicket beside her, and the call of the nightingale and all the hundred lesser voices of the wood, each summoning its mate, and would realise slowly in awed wonder that she too now was sharing in the great universal joy of the world. Sometimes also when she was with the others, and should have kept her mind free from all private thought, irresistibly the memory of some hour in the sheltered garden would come over her with such force that it absolutely shut her brain and senses to surrounding things. Once at the luncheon-table her father addressed her as she sat towards the other end and her ears were so sealed that she did not hear his voice, her eyes so fixed on the vision they saw that the figures round her, the wonder growing on all their faces as she sat immovable, like one suddenly deaf and blind, did not exist for her. It was only the sense of touch that remained true to its post, guarding the body, whence for the moment the mind, on Memory's wings, had fled. When her sister Violet tugged at her arm to rouse her she started, and came back to herself to find the whole table gazing upon her with various degrees of amusement and surprise. She flushed scarlet, to herself the blood seemed to get into her very eyes and burn.
"Father has spoken to you three times," remarked Violet, "you seem quite deaf." Regina apologised, beneath her drooping lashes over her burning cheeks her eyes took a glance at Everest opposite her. He was smiling too. He could well guess where her thoughts had been.
After that she tried hard never to think of all this wonderful inner life she was living, except when alone, but Love was sometimes insistent and far stronger than she, and she could not always shut the door of her thoughts upon him. So one day when she was obliged to go to the village on a mission for her mother, instead of to the garden, she lost her purse, and the eighteen shillings in it, and could never remember where it slipped from her hand, though she had never lost or forgotten it in her life before.
And to Everest, also, this time was very full of emotion, charged with an intensity of feeling that was new to him, although he kept his wits about him at luncheon and did not lose his purse. There were times for him, too, when he could think of nothing but Regina, when the image of the girl came before him with an insistence that would not be denied, and swept whatever he was doing aside and claimed him for its own. He longed to have her with him and for himself; he hated the long separations that now intervened often between their meetings, though they were in reality very good for him and helped to make the supreme delight of those moments in the garden.
The day of his departure came at length and his face grew pale and his heart beat painfully when he awoke at dawn and realised he had to leave her. It was arranged that the Rector and the two elder girls should drive him over to Stossop station in the landau, Regina being left out, as usual, of any general programme. She did not mind—their real good-byes had been exchanged yesterday under the whispering trees of the garden. An exceptionally lovely day, it was like the centre jewel on Summer's forehead in her diadem of wondrous days and nights. Warm and golden, without wind or cloud, it seemed to bless the lovers as they met in the deep hush of the sheltered spot and walked slowly, side by side, down the little narrow winding paths covered in by aloe and tamarisk and climbing giant rose towards the balustrade above the sea. How vital and life-giving was its warm salt breath as it met their faces, stealing up through the thickets, talking to them of its cool, seaweed-filled caves, of its still green pools teeming with infinite life; and at last they came in sight of it, calm and deeply purple, swaying and heaving gently as a maiden's bosom, under a rosy golden haze, softly, very softly, traced in delicate lilac against the evening sky lay the outlines of the hills across the bay; colour and light were jewel-like in their transparency. They approached the porphyry railing; but Regina could not look at the soft loveliness of the scene, she could only gaze up at him, so soon to be taken from her. Oh, the ache of that parting now it had come so near. She could have gone with him, claimed him openly, spared herself all pain. He had wished it, offered it. With a single word now she could be free from suffering, she could keep by his side. For a moment it seemed to her she must speak that word; but no, she held to her strength with both hands. Better to let him go free, better to prove to him the quality, the selflessness of her love, better to leave her fate in his hands. So she was silent, and only continued to gaze and gaze on the outline of his head, dark against the glowing sky. They leant there silent, each thinking of the first day when they had stood there, before their pact was made for meeting in solitude, before the influence of the garden had made them each other's and its own. But there was no bitterness, no regret in the thought of either. Their union had been full of magic beauty, of divine rapture, as if it had been in the Elysian fields, and they would not either of them have wished it in any way different.
When he drew her gently from the balustrade, and they turned inward again to the dark, close-roofed-in, leafy recesses of the garden, they were talking earnestly with beating hearts of the life that might spring from those dear glad hours there, and in a tiny glade, where the turf was like velvet and the great tamarisk-trees twisting and intertwining their thick branches overhead made a perfect roof, and the may-trees stood so thickly round that the nightingales were already singing there in the soft green dusk, he pressed her close to him and said one sentence that burnt into her brain and remained there as if stamped in with fire.
"If you know it when I am away from you, do not feel frightened or oppressed, dear one. I should hate you to feel that; write to me at once, that I may arrange for you to come to me, and for our marriage, and remember, it is my dearest wish."
Regina listened, pale, her bosom fluttering with emotion, a little overawed, but the next moment she was clinging to him passionately, trying to tell him how deep, how infinite her love for him was, and nothing could frighten her: she would only be intensely, wildly glad when she knew. The hour passed golden-edged, full of tumultuous happiness, and when at last Everest left her and walked away down the silent green road, full now of ruby light, he realized that, crowded as his life had been with experience, adventure, emotion, yet here in this garden behind him the greatest thing of all had happened to him: he had seen Divinity itself. Eros with his rainbow wings had descended to him there. To-day he was going. A subdued sadness was visible in the whole party. Only Violet, the middle sister, seemed indifferent. The Rector was kind and genial as usual, but Mrs. Marlow and Jane were notably pale and silent.
Regina stood at the Rectory door beside her mother to see the carriage start. His luggage had been sent to the station previously. Jane and Violet, in their delicate dresses, their large and shady hats, got in, and Regina thought how lovely they looked—like flowers themselves in the bright sunshine. Then he came out of the house and shook hands with her mother, and said how much he had enjoyed his visit. He was in the travelling suit she had first seen him in. He was holding his hat, and the sun poured down on his thick, dark hair and the clear pale bronze of the perfectly modelled face. He was quite calm and natural in his bearing, and Regina knew it was due to them both that she should appear so too; as he turned to her and held out his hand she felt all the blood surge violently to her heart; she was as pale as white stone, otherwise not a tremor passed over her face as she gave a little smile and said good-bye, laying her hand in his. His firm warm fingers closed over it instantly, and the quick, close, iron pressure of it told her many things, and seemed to give her nerve-force and courage. He was in the carriage. Then the Rector entered, and in a few moments more the white dust of the road was rising in a cloud as the carriage rolled out on it from the Rectory garden.
Mrs. Marlow and Regina turned slowly back into the house. It seemed very still and quiet, the very air seemed to hang more heavily and with less movement now the essentially vital personality of Everest had gone. The doors of his rooms stood open as they passed by—the scent of the roses that he had always had on his table came out to them.
They passed on to Mrs. Marlow's sitting-room, which lay at the back of the Rectory, with a bow window looking out on to the garden.
"Are you going out, mother?" asked Regina, "or shall we have tea together?"
"No; I have no engagements this afternoon. Come in, and we'll have tea here. It will be late before the others get back."
Tea was brought in, and Regina, seated in the deep bay of the window, watched her mother pour it out.
"I am very sorry Mr. Lanark did not take a fancy to either of the girls," she remarked; "it would have been a splendid match for them."
"Perhaps he would if they had been more clever," hazarded Regina, in a low tone.
"Beauty is always supposed to be the great thing in a woman."
"Yes, the beauty attracts, but it does not rivet the chain it throws round the beholder. It is something else, mind or talent, that does that. In all the histories of the grandes passions of the world the woman has had a certain amount of beauty, of course, but she has always been clever too."
Mrs. Marlow looked up, surprised. Regina stirred her tea absently, gazing out into the sunlit garden.
"Well, he ought to have proposed to marry you, then," Mrs. Marlow said smilingly, without for an instant dreaming that was just what Everest had done. "You are clever enough and very pretty too."
Regina flushed rose-red and laughed. But when tea was over and she slipped away, her face was very sad again. She passed Everest's rooms on her way to her own and went in there. They stood in perfect order, just as they had been while he was in them. She took all the roses from the vases, the flowers she knew he had gathered and looked after himself, and took them away with her and went up slowly to her room. There she stood at the window looking out. It was the last day of June. He had been with them not quite a month. Three weeks she had had of absolute, unclouded happiness. There are a few human beings who can claim that much out of the whole of their life. Now, whatever the result, whatever the price she had to pay, she would never regret, never wish one moment of that perfect time obliterated.
Day after day passed slowly by, and to the girl, after that tremendous expenditure of energy, that intense excitement, it seemed as if her life literally stood still. In the soft, sombre quiet of the monotonous Rectory days she seemed to herself to have been wrapped up in cotton wool and buried. Was it possible that people like her sleepy sister Violet, and all the other twenty-eight unmarried ladies of Stossop, could go on existing like this, twenty—thirty—forty years, their whole life? Like flashes of hot light shot from a distant furnace came Everest's letters to her; they seemed to illumine the twilight of her quiet tomb. She went to the garden whenever it was fine, and sat there and dreamed of him beneath the waving trees, or hung over the balustrade looking down on to the sea, listening to its vital whispers and picturing his image in its deep purple mirrors. Her brain felt too tired to read or to learn, she neither played nor painted any more.
For the time he became her life.
Three weeks after Everest had left, Regina, coming first, as usual, into the breakfast-room, saw by her plate, on the table, a letter and a small square registered packet, both directed in his handwriting. Her heart beat rapidly; a tender mist of tears rose in her eyes. A present from him! A gift from the man she loves, what a wonderful thing that is to a woman! Gifts from all the world, from kings and emperors, might move her not at all, but one little thing that he has chosen, has selected, sought out and bought for her, how infinitely dear it is!
Regina went up to the table, and taking the letter hastily concealed it in the bosom of her dress. Not here, but in the sacred garden, she would read it.... Here, it might be snatched from her and destroyed before she could do so. The packet she turned over and commenced to open. At last, from out of its silver paper and casing, the jewel lay revealed, and she stood, gazing a little awestruck at its flashing beauty.
It was a diamond star, to be worn as a brooch, and, every spike radiating from the centre diamond of great size and brilliancy, was composed of selected stones. Worked in across the star, in sapphires, were the words "Regina Imperatrix," and the blue and white lights from sapphire and diamond shone dazzlingly from their satin bed.
While she stood gazing at it, thinking of the care and thought he must have bestowed on it, and the colour racing across her cheeks as she felt the meaning of the word "Imperatrix" come home to her, the Rector and the rest of the family entered the room.
"Why, Regina, what's that?" the Rector asked cheerily. On the loose paper of the wrapper he recognised Everest's handwriting, and was not at all ill-pleased to see what he had sent to his daughter.
Personally, as a business matter—and everything was a business matter to the Rector—he did not care a bit which daughter it was that Everest fancied. He could only marry one, and any one would be just as good for the rest of the family. The Rector was an extremely acute individual where worldly matters were concerned, and, while the others had been really blind to what was passing so close to them, he had had a pretty good idea of the meaning of Everest's love of afternoon exercise and where his walks to the sea had taken him. In the back of his mind was the fear that it all might lead to some irregular connection, but while his code of morality for his girls was absolutely rigid where poor men might be concerned, Everest's great wealth made it suddenly grow very elastic. Regular connections sometimes grew out of irregular ones, and no connection with a rich man could be wholly bad. Hence his amiable glance on his youngest daughter as she held out to him her starry jewel.
Jane Marlow pressed up close to him. Her face was ashy-white and seemed suddenly to line with age, so closely are age and evil allied.
"How disgraceful! Presents like that from a man! You'll make her return it, won't you, father?"
She trembled in her virtuous indignation. She could have torn the star from his hand and trampled on it.
The Rector turned to her blandly:
"Jane, don't be ridiculous. You would have been very pleased if Everest had sent it to you. And if there would be no harm in your accepting it, neither is there in Regina's case. She is quite entitled to have it and enjoy it."
Jane turned away, the muscles of her face quivering, shaken with the blackest envy and hatred from head to foot. She had so planned and hoped to win this man for herself. In all her low-nerved, weakly, doll-like body there was not a single pulse or fibre, which could tremble to the music of love. But, like her father, she was dominated by intensely worldly instincts, and to be married to a man of wealth and position, no matter what the individual, was her dream and her constant obsession by night and day, the only thing that filled her little atrophied soul.
Everest's looks she had hardly seen, of his personality she never thought, but night by night she dreamed of herself, sitting in motor or carriage, driving to some great house, where, resplendent in jewels, she would pass amongst the crowd admiring her beauty.
And she had so tried to please him.... She had taken him to her poor, and let him see how charitable and devoted, and domestic she was. She had taken him to church, and knelt so devoutly, and yet so prettily, and in such becoming dresses, before him, at the communion-table; she had never let any frivolous or unseemly word pass her lips to him; she had never, while he was there, quarrelled with her sisters or abused her mother. She had been the perfect, pure, sedate Rector's daughter, and he had seemed lately to appreciate it.... Regina?... What had she done?... She had been just as she always was. She had taken no trouble, but it seemed now it was she who would have the motor and the jewels, and live in town, while Jane would be left to grow mouldy in the horrid old Rectory! It was too much!... She could not control herself!... She burst into a flood of angry tears, and rushed out of the room as the Rector was beginning to say grace.
When grace was over, Regina fastened the star at her neck, and her sister Violet sat staring at it, in a dull solid way, through the meal. In her heavy, apathetic mind she had recognised early that Everest was not for her, and in some dim, instinctive way she was not dissatisfied that it was so. He alarmed her. To her, with her fishlike circulation, and her unused brain, the sense of virile strength and power about him, which so delighted Regina, brought oppression. His experiences, his brilliant intellect, his knowledge, put him outside the circle of her stupid little thoughts.
She could not understand one-tenth of his conversation with Regina, nor follow what he said, and his presence, his glance only, vaguely frightened and confused her. Great things are for great people, and little things for little people, and Violet, during Everest's visit, had begun to realise dimly that, if a fine marriage meant belonging to an incomprehensible and terrifying individual like this, the idle novel-reading, the church-going, the humdrum little potter of home life, were more suited to her mental and physical equipment. So she stared at the brooch without any deep resentment, only the general sisterly dislike that Regina should have any present at all.
After breakfast Regina slipped away, and in the heat of the morning sun walked to the garden, as fast as her swift-moving feet would carry her, and once beyond its magic gate took out the dear letter, and with beating heart unfolded it.
"My Darling,—I miss you so much, and want to have you in my arms again. I send you a little brooch I have had made for you, my Empress. I went about our flat, yesterday, as soon as I got back from Scotland. I have a good one in view, and will let you know as soon as it is ready for you. Only these few lines now, as I have so much to do.
"Till we meet again, my sweet.
"Everest."
When she had read it more than a hundred times, lingering over each word, she kissed it and slipped it back in her bodice.
Everest had referred to the flat before. In all his letters there had been the same eager, impatient note: he wanted her, and whether she chose to marry him or not she was to join him in London. He would take a flat, and as soon as it was ready he hoped she would come, as he could not go on living without her. He left everything in her hands. If she would like him to come down, with a special licence in his pocket-book, and marry her from the Rectory, he would do that, if not, she must come to him. He would prefer to write to her father about their engagement.... Might he do that? Whatever she decided, she was to remember he could not exist without her.... Several letters of this sort had reached her from Scotland, and had carried to her heart the extreme of happiness. She had not answered very definitely. She did not wish to curtail his time in Scotland by fixing dates herself. When he was back in town some wish of his would develop itself, and she would follow that.
The same afternoon she spent in her room. She locked herself in and then got out all her paintings, and went slowly over them in review.
She knew they were very good. Everest, the only person who had seen them, had said so, but that would have made no difference to her. She would not have believed it unless her own intuitive knowledge had told her so. Sometimes she had done bad work, but she had known it instantly, and destroyed it, as relentlessly as the all-wise animals destroy their ill-made or imperfect offspring. All that had survived was fit to live, and she sat in the centre of her pictures, looking from one to the other in a glow of delight.
Genius comes into the world not to learn, but to teach, and that is what the commonplace mind cannot grasp.
It will insist that everything must be taught, forgetting that at some time there could not have been any teacher. The question: Which came first, the hen or the egg? might well be asked of those people.... Which came first: the teacher or the taught?
As a matter of fact, genius knows no teacher but the divine force within that guides, directs, accomplishes all.
And Regina, leaning rocking on her bedroom chair, in the middle of the sheets of white paper that she had converted into living, joy-giving things, her slender hands clasped round her knees, knew that, whatever happened, she need never starve, never be dependent on anyone, never ask anything from anyone, as long as her fingers kept their cunning and her eyes their sight. As she sat there, the thought suddenly darted into her mind that it was Saturday, and unless she wrote to Everest before the London post left he could not have her acknowledgment of the brooch until Monday.
She sprang up, found her writing materials, and wrote.
It was only a few paces down the road to a letter-box, and, knowing it could not take her more than a second or two to reach it, she did not stay to lock up her work, as usual.
She ran down the stairs without her hat, and across the garden, to the highroad. The letter-box had been cleared when she reached it, but she knew she could overtake the old postman and get to the post office before he arrived, or give him the letter on the road. She went on with flying feet, but she had to traverse the whole distance to the village post before she came up with him. She saw him put the precious missive in his bag, then she turned homeward, eager to get back to her pictures.
When she came back she went up to her own room. On opening the door she look round, surprised. Her pictures, that she had left scattered about, on chair and easel, were not visible anywhere.
Her first thought was that the maid, in clearing up the room, had laid them all together, and put them away somewhere. She opened one drawer, and then another, but without finding them.
Then, with a suddenly anxiously beating heart, she looked round the room again. A side-table caught her eye, and on it—what was that strange mass of ragged-edged paper piled there? She crossed to it. Her pictures were there, or the torn fragments of them, destroyed beyond hope of recovery, and on the top of the broken heap lay her Bible.
Bewildered, distracted, hardly realising what had happened, Regina laid the book aside and took up first one mutilated sheet, and then another, scanning them with staring eyes. Each one had been torn across and then across again many times, and roughly, so that the edges were violently jagged.... Nothing of beauty remained, except the wonderful colours; the scraps of softly brilliant tints even in their hopeless destruction had a confused loveliness.
Regina's fingers trembled more and more as she turned them over. All the blood had left her face; it was ashy, convulsed. Who could have done it? It seemed the act of a child or a maniac. Months of patient, untiring work, buoyed up by hopes and anticipation of success and the joy of creation, had been undone in a few moments. When it came home to her that not one of these precious children that she had so loved and rejoiced in, that had been her constant companions and comforters through days and weeks, remained to her, a slow sort of agony took possession of her, that was so intense it seemed it must kill her. Gasping, she sat down on a chair, holding the rim of the table and staring at its contents.
Jane and Violet Marlow were sitting together that afternoon in a small boudoir they shared between them, when suddenly the door was opened, Regina appeared on the threshold, deadly white, and with black and kindling eyes.
"Have you, either of you, been to my room and destroyed my pictures?" she asked. Her tones were like the scrape of steel against iron. Both the girls looked up, one from the novel she was reading, the other from the band of silk she was embroidering. Regina knew in that first second, in that first upward glance of surprise and dismay, that they were not the guilty ones.
"Oh, Regina!" was all they could either find to say, but the accent in it of genuine horror was enough for her quick ears. Both girls knew how Regina loved and valued her paintings, and some dim conception of her suffering came home to them as they looked at her distorted face.
"Someone has," she returned. "Where's mother?"
"In the linen-room," Violet answered, and Regina turned away, closing the door behind her. Her feet hardly touched the ground as she went down to the linen-room. She opened the door and found Mrs. Marlow sitting before the huge linen cupboard, her lap full of damask tablecloths she was sorting.
"Mother, someone has destroyed all my pictures.... Is it you?"
Mrs. Marlow looked up in surprise.
Regina stood in the doorway, rigid, white as a statue, her face haggard and drawn. In that moment it resembled so much another countenance that Mrs. Marlow had seen bend over her in a last farewell that the woman stared back at her daughter almost as pallid. Usually, when Regina recalled to her those dear past hours of delight Mrs. Marlow resented it and felt angered by this living witness to dead things, but to-day had been the anniversary, not of Regina's birth, but of her conception, and all day Mrs. Marlow had been struggling in the clinging arms of memories that would not be denied. She had fled to the linen cupboard, and counted the damask cloths again and again, aloud, in vain, to stop them, and now, when like an apparition the very face of her lover came before her vision, the woman's struggling soul fainted and called to it.
She almost stretched out her arms to her, letting the linen fall heavily to the floor in her sudden movement. She would have liked Regina to lay her head down on her breast and sob out her anguish there, as he once had done.
But Regina, never having been accustomed to affection or caresses in her home, naturally did not understand the gesture: she only repeated her question, standing by the door:
"Dear child, no," returned Mrs. Marlow. "Destroy your paintings! I should not think of such a thing.... No one would. Surely it must be some accident. I am so sorry!"
"I don't think it is an accident," Regina answered, retreating. "Thank you, mother, very much."
She withdrew and went on down the flight of stairs. Her whole body was quivering in physical agony, transmitted from the mind; her brain seemed bursting. As she reached the hall she saw the footman come out of her father's study and close the door gently. He saw Regina approaching it, hesitated, and then said respectfully:
"Master said he wished not to be disturbed, that he was going to write his sermon."
Regina pursued her way, and laid her hand on the door.
"Thank you, Williams, but I am afraid I must disturb him for a few moments."
Williams went on his way, wondering what was the matter with his young mistress.
"She looked like a person as has been taking some of them deadly poisons," he remarked at the servants' tea, and Williams was very near the truth, for the action of all fierce anger is to distil a corroding poison within ourselves, which infects the whole current of the blood.
When the girl entered the study the Rector was sitting at his desk, by the far window, sheets of manuscript paper lying before him. He looked up, as the door opened, and when he saw who it was that had entered his eyebrows contracted, and he made an authoritative gesture for her to withdraw.
But Regina advanced steadily, with the grim, remorseless step of the hunting beast of prey. When she was close to the desk she stopped. Her eyes glittered in the deadly white of her face.
"Was it you who tore up my paintings?"
Unconsciously, the Rector looked round for help or assistance. Some primitive, physical instinct warned him he was near death at that moment, though such a thought never came near his mind. His eyes came back from their search round the empty room and from the far-off bell. He fidgeted with his pen, and then said nervously:
"You see, Regina, I have to think of your moral good ... I ... er, can't let things go on in my house of which I ... ah ... of which my conscience does not approve."
"Then that means you did destroy them?"
She was very near the desk now, the waning light of the afternoon fell upon her face. The Rector thought he had never seen such a terrible look of rage on any countenance before. It was truly shocking.... These human passions were really dreadful, when you came face to face with them.
"I considered it my duty," he returned. "I laid your Bible on them to show you what actuated me."
Then he had done it! This was the man who had torn to pieces that fabric of beauty she had built up with such tender, adoring care, into which she had woven so many hopes.
A gust of fury enveloped her, so that she shook from head to foot. The lust to kill, to murder him, rushed upon her like a great beast and gripped her, shook her in its teeth, till all grew black and red before her. She gripped the mahogany chair back, by which she stood, till the knuckles started out on the back of her hands, white and shining.
But the instinct of her strong mentality was to elucidate the mystery, to search out the clue to this bewildering act, that she could not in the least understand.
"Why did you do it?" she asked.
The Rector unconsciously bent under the penetrating will of the query.
"Because they were improper—most improper pictures to have in a clergyman's house."
"Improper?" Regina stared at him in a blank amaze that for the moment eclipsed the welling tide of passion. Had her father suddenly become mad? Was that the solution of the mystery? She had yet to realise that there is no madness so blinding, so deadly, so destructive, as the craze of the impure mind against all artistic creations.
"They were landscapes, sunsets ... the most beautiful things I could find ... the skies, the effects of light.... What do you mean?" she continued, and again the Rector felt compelled to stand her cross-examination and reply.
That same primitive impulse of self-preservation that had stirred within him at his daughter's approach warned him now, without his thinking about it, that his sole safety lay in the defence and explanation, such as it was, that he had to make.
"Yes, of course, they were landscapes.... But there is a way of treating even a landscape, so that it becomes objectionable. I have never seen such things before, myself. Those staring, red skies, those flushed appearances, those twisted black trees, those dark, slimy pools.... I really cannot tell you the unpleasant things they suggest....
"Those stormy heaths and wind-tossed foliage seem to me to typify the riot of the passions, and those mossy banks in the sun suggest sensuality.... Improper? Yes; highly improper I consider them!"
Regina stood listening wide-eyed, in sheer, paralysed amazement. That a person's mind could be so deformed and twisted that by its own blackness it could defile the innocent beauty and sweetness of a landscape was a fact so new to her, and so astounding, that she felt stunned by it.
That the man before her was speaking honestly she saw.
"But these things are just portraits of what we see about us," she went on, after a silence, her clear, logical mind battling with the psychological problem before her. "If the landscapes were improper, then so must the things be. What do you do when you go out and see a sunset sky?"
"If it suggests to me unsatisfactory thoughts, I don't look at it."
"But how can it?" queried the girl passionately. "When I see the sunset sky I feel I am being borne away on invisible wings to paradise; and these mossy banks, with the gold light lying on them, they are exquisite, and they are all around here.... You can't go out without seeing them."
"Don't continue talking like that, Regina. I have told you, when I go for my walks, if I see anything likely to disturb my moral sense I turn my eyes away; and because there are many dangerous and attractive things in nature about us, that is no reason why we should portray them and bring them into the home for constant contemplation."
Regina's haggard eyes looked blankly back at him. He was talking to her in an unknown language she could not understand; telling her incredible things she could not believe, for her own mind was bright and clear, crystal-like as a mirror, reflecting everything it faced with added beauty; diamond-like in its sharp, unstainable purity. And the obfuscated, turbid, sensual mass of incoherent ideas and thoughts that represented this man's mind appalled her, as she looked into it.
"If you destroyed the landscapes only because you thought them immoral, why did you tear up the interior of Exeter Cathedral? There could be no harm in that...."
"That was the worst of all," answered the Rector stormily, moving his papers angrily before him; "the very worst! Of course it was the cathedral, and a very beautiful picture it might have made, treated properly, in the daylight, and full of worshippers; but there again, you had got it nearly in darkness—the evening effect you would call it, I suppose; the interior was quite dusky, and a red light was coming through the chancel window. A very unpleasant suggestion was there, very.... And still further enhanced by the solitude.... The place was practically empty."
"What was the suggestion, please?" asked Regina, completely bewildered now by the attack on this picture of all others, and dazed by her wandering in the mazes of another and wholly alien mind. She still clung to the idea that she must grip hold of the keynote of these mysteries somehow.