Three Weeks Part 10

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.

"That will depend upon me, my Paul," she said. "The duration of love in a being always depends upon the loved one. I create an emotion in you, as you create one in me. You do not create it in yourself. It is because something in my personality causes an answering glow in yours that you love me. Were you to cease to do so, it would be because I was no longer able to call forth that answer in you. It would not be your fault any more than when you cease to please me it will be mine. That is where people are unjust."

"But surely," said Paul, "it is only the fickle who can change?"

"It is according to one's nature; if one is born a steadfast gentleman, one is more likely to continue than if one is a _farceur_--prince or no--but it depends upon the object of one's love--whether he or she can hold one or not. One would not blame a needle if it fell from a magnet, the attraction of the magnet being in some way removed, either by a stronger at the needle's side, or by some deadening of the drawing quality in the magnet itself--and so it is in love. Do you follow me, Paul?"

"Yes." said Paul gloomily. "I must try to please you, or you will throw me away."

"You see," she continued, "the ignorant make vows, and being weaklings--for the most part--vanity and fate easily remove their inclination from the loved one; it may not be his fault any more than a broken leg keeping him from walking would be his fault, beyond the fact that it was _his_ leg; but we have to suffer for our own things--so there it is. We will say the weakling's inclination wants to make him break his vows; so he does, either in the letter or spirit--or both! And then he feels degraded and cheap and low, as all must do who break their sacred word given of their own free will when inclination prompted them to. So how much better to make no vow; then at least when the cord of attraction snaps, we can go free, still defying the lightning in our untarnished pride."

"Oh! darling, do not speak of it," cried Paul, "the cord of attraction between us can never snap. I wors.h.i.+p, I adore you--you are just my life, my darling one, my Queen!"

"Sweet Paul!" she whispered, "oh! so good, so good is love, keep me loving you, my beautiful one--keep my desire long to be your Queen."

And after this they melted into one another's arms, and cooed and kissed, and were foolish and incoherent, as lovers always are and have been from the beginning of old time. More concentrated--more absorbed--than the sternest Eastern sage--absorbed in each other.

The spirit of two natures vibrating as One.

CHAPTER X

That evening it was so warm and peaceful they dined at the wide-open balcony windows. They could see far away over the terrace and down to the lake, with the distant lights towards Lucerne. The moon, still slender and fine, was drawing to her setting, and a few cloudlets floated over the sky, obscuring the stars here and there.

The lady was quiet and tender, her eyes melting upon Paul, and something of her ring-dove mood was upon her again. Not once, since they had been on the Burgenstock, had she shown any of the tigerish waywardness that he had had glimpses of at first. It seemed as if her moods, like her chameleon eyes, took colour from her surroundings, and there all was primitive simplicity and nature and peace.

Paul himself was in a state of ecstasy. He hardly knew whether he trod on air or no. No siren of old Greek fable had ever lured mortal more under her spell than this strange foreign woman thing--Queen or Princess or what you will. Nothing else in the world was of any consequence to him--and it was all the more remarkable because subjection was in no way part of his nature. Paul was a masterful youth, and ruled things to his will in his own home.

The lady talked of him--of his tastes--of his pleasures. There was not an incident in his life, or of his family, that she had not fathomed by now.

All about Isabella even--poor Isabella! And she told him how she sympathised with the girl, and how badly he had behaved.

"Another proof, my Paul, of what I said today--no one must make vows about love."

But Paul, in his heart, believed her not. He would wors.h.i.+p her for ever, he knew.

"Yes," she said, answering his thoughts. "You think so, beloved, and it may be so because you do not know from moment to moment how I shall be--if I shall stay here in your arms, or fly far away beyond your reach. You love me because I give you the stimulus of uncertainty, and so keep bright your pa.s.sion, but once you were sure, I should become a duty, as all women become, and then my Paul would yawn and grow to see I was no longer young, and that the expected is always an _ennui_ when it comes!"

"Never, never!" said Paul, with fervour.

Presently their conversation drifted to other things, and Paul told her how he longed to see the world and its people and its ways. She had been almost everywhere, it seemed, and with her talent of word-painting, she took him with her on the magic carpet of her vivid description to east and west and north and south.

Oh! their _entr'actes_ between the incoherence of just lovers' love were not ba.n.a.l or dull. And never she forgot her tender ways of insinuated caresses--small exquisite touches of sentiment and grace. The note ever of One--that they were fused and melted together into one body and soul.

Through all her talk that night Paul caught glimpses of the life of a great lady, surrounded with state and cares, and now and then there was a savage echo which made him think of things barbaric, and wonder more than ever from whence she had come.

It was quite late before the chill of night airs drove them into their salon, and here she made him some Russian tea, and then lay in his arms, and purred love-words to him, and nestled close like a child who wants petting to cure it of some imaginary hurt. Only, in her tenderest caresses he seemed at last to feel something of danger. A slumbering look of pa.s.sion far under the calm exterior, but ready to break forth at any moment from its studied control.

It thrilled and maddened him.