She looked at him for a moment in silence. In her eyes her normal and her unknown selves contended.
"It is true I often go out as you say, something drives me, but I do not know why myself. And I get very tired and can never remember clearly what it has been like. It is as though I did it almost in my sleep, or had dreamt it."
"It _is_ a dream--everything"s a dream, and I"ve got to wake up soon.
Let"s have this bit of dream together--Desiree!"
She yielded. They took bread and wine and apples for a midnight feast, and set off together over the lava-fields to the woods that tufted the mountain slopes. Through the deep, soft night the pallor of her face and throat glimmered as through dark water. She held his hand to guide him over the fissures and round the piled boulders, once he slipped on a hummock of harsh gra.s.s, and felt her grow rigid on the instant to check his fall. They were very silent, until, seated at the edge of the woods, they ate their supper, and then they laughed softly together like children, with fragmentary speech; and once Desiree sang a s.n.a.t.c.h of a Provencal song; Archie, who knew his Mistral, joining in.
Presently, when they fell on silence again, it seemed the wood was full of noises--stealthy footfalls, snapping of dry twigs, the rustling of parted shrubs. As the late moon, almost at the full, swam up the sky, making the distant snow-peaks gleam like white flames against the dusky blue, and shimmering on the pools cupped here and there over the hollowed expanse below, Archie could have sworn that the penetrating light showed quick-glancing faces and bright eyes from the thicket. . . .
Once a great white owl did sail out with a beating of wings; so close to them that they could see the stiff brows that bristled over his lambent orbs, and once a strong smell and a gleam of black and white told of a wild cat tracking her prey.
They buried the disfiguring remnants of their little feast, and then Archie solemnly poured out what was left of the red wine on to the slope below.
"For the G.o.ds!" he announced, "the liquor for us and the dregs for them!"
"Ah!" cried Desiree, as though his action p.r.i.c.ked sleeping memories to life, "now I remember it all again! I forget when I go home, but then the next time everything is clear again, and so it goes on."
She disappeared in a jutting spur of the wood, and Archie scrambled to his feet and followed her. As he broke through to the further edge, which hung over a wide pool, he caught his foot in something soft--Desiree"s clothes that lay in a circle, just as she had slipped out of them.
She stood at the pool"s brim, her hands clasping at the back of her head; a thing to dream of. She was so lovely that all feeling died save a pa.s.sionate appreciation, keen to the verge of pain; she was so lovely that of necessity she awoke an impersonal motion. Slowly she stretched herself, and as the muscles rippled into curves and sank, the delicate shadows ebbed and breathed out again on the pearl-white of her body.
Archie"s every nerve was strung not to lose one line or one breath of tone.
Putting out a foot she touched the water, so that little tremors soft as feathers fled over the surface; then, as she waded in, deeper and deeper, the water parted round her in flakes of brightness that shook and mixed up and broke away. When she rose, dripping wet, the moonlight refracted off her, was mirrored in the water, and thrown back again on her--a magic shuttle weaving an aura of whiteness. Long arrows of light fled back through the pool as she waded to sh.o.r.e, where she stood for a moment motionless; head slightly forward, arms hanging, and one hip thrown outwards as she poised her weight. Myriads of tiny, crescent-shaped drops clung to her limbs like fish-scales, so that she seemed more mermaiden than wood-nymph, but Archie"s eyes proclaimed her Artemis--she would have calmed a satyr as she stood. Thoughts of forest glades were chill, sweet sports were held, and the wildest hoof was tamed to the childlike kinship with Nature that is pagan innocence, floated through his mind like visible things.
Suddenly she became conscious of his presence, and gave one glance in which invitation and a certain calm aloofness seemed to mingle.
"Desiree!" stammered Archie, "Desiree!"
All at once excitement tingled through him, blurring his ideas, just as chloroform sets the blood p.r.i.c.king with thousands of points and edges, while dizzying the brain. She stayed still a second longer; then, either the fearful nymph swayed her utterly, or, as it seemed to Archie, a sudden rejection of him, the clumsy, civilized mortal, sprang into her eyes. She flung up her head, turned, and was gone in the tangle of the woods. Without more than a second"s hesitation he plunged in after her.
To Archie, whenever he looked back, that night seemed an orgy of chase-gone-mad; gathering in force as it went and sweeping into its resistless flow the most incongruous of elements.
He ran after her, stumbling, tripping, whipped across the face by brambles. Everything in life was crystallized into the desire to catch up, to track her to the enchanted green where, with her, he could become part of a remote free life he had never imagined before. All his own personality, except that in him which was hers, had ceased to exist--work, Gwendolen, the great world, and the inn at Draginoules, were wiped out of knowledge by the force of his concentration on one thing. The arbitrary line drawn between the actual and the unreal, the credible and the impossible, sanity and so-called madness, was swept away. She, the descendant of the G.o.ds knew what strange race--a race that perhaps had lingered in these crater-fastnesses and myrtle groves long after it had died off the rest of the earth--was fleeing before him through a wood alive with brightened eyes and quickened hoofs; and in her veins the slender strain of blood derived from some goat-legged, tall-eared thing--a strain asleep through the generations of her ancestors, had mastered all the rest of her heritage, and was triumphant in her soul as in Sylvestre"s body. She ran on, swiftly, and without effort, and Archie ran after her.
Dawn broke at last, reluctant, chill, showing the woods clear-edged and motionless as though cut out of steel, glimmering on the quiet pools and the ribbed lava slopes, though the hollow of the plain still held a great lake of shadow.
Desiree"s clothes lay no longer by the pool where she had bathed; no trace of human presence remained; even the marshy edge showed only trampled hoof-marks, as though some goat-footed herd had watered there.
To Archie, breaking through the undergrowth at the edge of the wood, it seemed incredible that everything should look so much as usual. Still more he felt the wonder when, with the broad sunlight, he reached his inn. He himself felt so shaken in soul that even the thought of the Englishman"s panacea--a cold bath--failed to appeal to him as a solution of all trouble. Plucked out of his accustomed place, flung by the sport of what strange G.o.ds he knew not, into a headlong medley of undreamed emotions, his values had been so violently disrupted that he could not have told which held true worth--the normal life of Gwendolens and one-man shows and newspaper criticisms, or what had pa.s.sed in the woods that night. And, whatever strange rite he had surprised, and whether it were golden actuality that a man might live happy because he had once seen, or the mere wildness of a dream, there had been something about it which taught him not to blaspheme the revelation. He did not tell himself that the _vin ordinaire_ must have gone to his head, or that he had been a romantic fool worked on by moonlight. This was remarkable, for few people are strong enough not to profane the past.
So much of grace held by him even when he found a letter awaiting him to tell of Gwendolen"s arrival with the obedient aunt at Cannes, whither she summoned him. He debated whether to say good-bye to Desiree or not.
The matter was settled for him by meeting her accidently outside the _buvette_. She was looking pale and jaded, not at all at her best, but her eyes were blankly unknowing and clear of all embarra.s.sment. She said good-bye with charming unemotional friendliness and informed him that she was going to be married very soon--Monsieur Colombini had had a rise that justified it. Here was anti-climax enough, even if the cold bath, the letter and the prose of packing were not sufficient. And yet, since it had not been Desiree, the frank peasant, who had shown Archie the wonders of that night, his memories remained. Half-fearful and half splendid, not enough to make him walk with the vision beautiful, but merely enough to spoil his pictures for the public, because instead of being content with the merely obvious he was now always trying for something beyond his powers to express. Enough also, to p.r.i.c.k him to an occasional weary clear-eyed knowledge of his Gwendolen--a knowledge that was hardly criticism, for he admitted his kinship with her world. And what it was that companioned him, that he strove to show in his pictures, he never entirely told; for just as no woman ever tells what it is her s.e.x has and the other lacks--that something which makes all the difference--just as no man tells a woman what it is he and his fellows talk about when the last skirt has trailed from the dinner-table, so no one ever tells the whole truth about the beloved.
THE LADDER
I
THE TRIAL
(_Account taken from a contemporary journal_)
"To-day, March 3, the Court being sat in the Castle at Launceston, about eight o"clock in the morning, the prisoner was set to the bar.
"Sophia Bendigo, of the parish of St. Annan in this county, was indicted, for that she, not having the fear of G.o.d before her eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on October 20, in the 24th year of his Majesty"s reign, and again since, to wit, on October 21, with force and arms upon the body of Constantine Bendigo, Gent., her father, did make an a.s.sault, and in her malice aforethought, did kill and murder, by putting into some water-gruel a certain powder called a.r.s.enic, and afterwards giving to him, the said Constantine Bendigo, a potion thereof, knowing it to be mixed with the powder aforesaid, so that he, the said Constantine, was poisoned, and of which poison, he, the said Constantine, died, on the 22nd of the said month of October; against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity.
"The Counsel for the Crown were the Hon. Mr. Bathwick; Mr. Sergeant Wheeler; Mr. Grice, Town Clerk of Launceston; Mr. Rose, Mr. Kirton, and the Hon. Mr. Harrington: And for the prisoner, Mr. Ford, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Walton.
"The Counsel for the Crown having opened the indictment, proceeded to inform the Court and Jury that this prosecution was carried on by the order, and at the expense of his Majesty (who is ever watchful to preserve the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects) against the prisoner at the bar, Sophia Bendigo, for one of the most atrocious crimes; the cruel, inhuman, and deliberate murder of her own father: That the prisoner at the bar was the daughter and only child of Mr.
Constantine Bendigo, Squire of Troon, in the hundred of Penwith, a gentleman both by his birth and education; that as she was the only, so she was the beloved child of her father, who had spared no pains in giving her a genteel, as well as a pious education; that her father, indeed, had used this pious fraud (if he might be allowed that expression) in saying that her fortune would be 10,000, to the end, he supposed, that his daughter might be married suitable to such a fortune.
That in June of the preceding year one Capt. William Lucius Crandon came to Penwith map-making, and hearing that Miss Bendigo was a 10,000 fortune, and having a mind to marry this fortune, notwithstanding he had a wife and child alive, contrived to get acquainted with this family; how well he succeeded, and how sadly for this family, this unhappy catastrophe has shown. That Mr. Bendigo, having been informed that Mr.
Crandon was married, he desired his daughter to break off all correspondence with him; that instead of doing so, she acquainted Mr.
Crandon with her father"s command, who, instead of clearing his character to her father"s satisfaction, contrives the means and persuades this beloved, this tenderly indulged daughter, to be an actor in her father"s destruction.
"That the Captain left Cornwall at the end of September, since when, on the miscarriage of his plans, he had disappeared entirely; and soon after he is gone, we find this wicked scheme beginning to be put into execution. That on October 20, Mr. Bendigo found himself much disordered after taking some tea, that next day, the prisoner having made him another dish of tea, deceased had thought it to taste odd and sent it downstairs; that Crandon, to hasten the work of destruction, sent a letter to the prisoner, making use of an allegorical expression, not to spare the powder, in order to keep the rust off the pebbles. That the tea being too thin to admit of a larger quant.i.ty at the time, you will find by the witnesses that shall be produced, that the prisoner did mix a large quant.i.ty of the powder in a pan of water-gruel and gave some of it to her father next day which had such terrible effects as to occasion his death on the morning of the 23rd. That he would call the physicians first, and they would prove that what was administered to the deceased was poison and the cause of his death.
"Mr. Harvey, of St. Annan, and Dr. Polwhele, of Penzance, were then called and both sworn; and Mr. Harvey said that, being on the evening of the 22nd sent for to Mr. Bendigo, he thus made his complaints: That he had a violent burning pain, saying it was a ball of fire in his guts, that he vomited much since taking some tea two days before and again after taking some gruel that evening, that he had a cold sweat, hiccups, p.r.i.c.kings all over his body, which he compared to a number of needles.
He desired to drink, but could not swallow, his pulse intermitted, his tongue swelled, his throat was excoriated, his breath difficult and interrupted. Towards morning he grew worse, became delirious and sank gradually, dying about six o"clock in the morning.
"Being asked if he thought Mr. Bendigo was poisoned, witness answered, He really believed he was, for that the symptoms, while living, were like those of a person who had taken a.r.s.enic; and the appearances after death, like those that were poisoned by a.r.s.enic."[A]
"King"s Counsel: Did you also make an examination of the powder found in the gruel?
"Mr. Harvey: I did. I threw it upon a hot iron; boiled ten grains in water and divided the concoction, after filtering it into five equal parts. Into one I put oil of vitriol, into another tartar, into the third spirit of sal ammoniac, into the fourth spirit of salt, and into the fifth spirit of wine. I tried it also with syrup of violets, and made the like experiments with the same quant.i.ty of white a.r.s.enic which I bought in Penzance. It answered exactly to every one of them, and therefore I believed it to be white a.r.s.enic.
"Mr. Harvey further deposed that Mr. Bendigo told him that he suspected poison, and that he believed it came to his daughter with the serpentine beads, for that his daughter had had a present of those d.a.m.ned pebbles that morning; that if he, this witness, would look in the gruel, he might find something, that when he, this witness, asked Mr. Bendigo whom he imagined gave him the poison, he replied, A poor love-sick girl, but I forgive her; what will not a woman do for the man she loves?
"That later on the evening of the 22nd, Mr. Bendigo being a trifle easier, consented to see Miss, that he, this witness, was present when Miss came into the chamber, and fell down upon her knees, saying, Oh!
sir, forgive me! Do what you will with me, and I"ll never see Crandon more if you will but forgive me. To which Mr. Bendigo replied, I forgive thee, but thou shouldst have remembered that I am thy father, upon which Miss said, Oh, sir, your goodness strikes daggers to my soul; sir, I must down on my knees and pray that you will not curse me. He replied, No, child, I bless thee and pray that G.o.d may bless thee and let thee live to repent. Miss then declared she was innocent of this illness, and he replied, that he feared she was not, and that some of the powder was in such hands as would show it against her. Witness added that deceased, before Miss Bendigo"s entry, had bidden him look to the remainder of the gruel.
"Prisoner"s Counsel: Who was it sent for you when deceased was taken ill?
"Harvey: James Ruffiniac,[B] the steward, fetched me and said it was at the command of Miss Bendigo, who said, to-morrow will not satisfy me, you must go now, which he did.
"Prisoner"s Counsel: All the years you have known Miss Bendigo what has been her behaviour to her father? Has she not always done everything that an affectionate child could for her father"s ease?
"Harvey: She always behaved like a dutiful daughter, as far as ever I knew, and seemed to do everything in her power for her father"s recovery whenever he was indisposed.
"King"s Counsel: Did she tell you that she had put anything into her father"s gruel and that she feared it might in some measure occasion his death?
"Harvey: She never did.
"Dr. Polwhele, having been sworn at the same time as Mr. Harvey, and stood in Court close by him, was now asked by the King"s Counsel if he was present at the opening of Mr. Bendigo and whether the observations made by Mr. Harvey were true: he said he was present and made the same observations himself. He was then asked what was his opinion of the cause of the death of Mr. Bendigo, and he replied, by poison absolutely.