I felt the strange delight of ownership borne in upon me as it had never been yet.
We had not dared to pa.s.s a night together at the studio.
We had only had short afternoons and evenings, hours s.n.a.t.c.hed here and there, over-clouded by fears of hearing a knock at the door, a footstep outside.
But this deep solitude, these hours of the night when she _slept_ beside me, all powers, all the armour of our intelligence that we wear in our waking moments, laid aside, seemed to give her to me more completely than she had ever given herself before.
And gazing upon her in serene unconsciousness, I felt the intense joy of possession, a sort of madness of satisfaction vibrating through me, stamping that hour on my memory for ever.
The next morning we came down late and enjoyed everything with that keen poignant sense of pleasure that novelty alone can give. To us coming from a stay of months in town the small sitting-room, the open cas.e.m.e.nt window, the simple breakfast-table, the loud noise of birds"
voices without, the green glow of the garden seemed delightful, almost wonderful.
So curtains were really white! how strange it seemed. In town they are always grey or brown, and the air was light and thin with a sweet scent, and the sky was blue!!!
It was a fine day, the sun poured down riotously through the snow-white bloom of the cherry-tree, two cuckoos were calling to each other from opposite sides of the wood, and their note, so soft in the distance, so powerful when near, resounded through the shining air till it seemed full of the sound of a great clanging bell, musical and beautiful.
Viola was delighted; her keen ear enjoyed the unusual sound.
"Oh, Trevor, that repeated note, how glorious it is! It reminds me of a sustained note in Wagner"s _Festpiel_. I do wish they"d go on."
She seated herself by the window listening with rapture in her eyes.
The woman of the house brought in our coffee, but I doubt if we should have got any breakfast, only the cuckoos wanted theirs and fortunately flew off to get it.
When the glorious musical bell rang out far on the other side of the wood, dimmed by distance, Viola came reluctantly to the table.
"How delicious this is! this being in the country _just at first_.
Look at the table with its jonquils! isn"t it pretty? Look at the honey and cream!"
"I think you had better eat some of it," I answered; "or at least pour out the coffee."
Viola laughed and did so, and we breakfasted joyously, full of the curious gayety that belongs to novelty alone.
Then we went out, and the outside was equally entrancing. The scent of the lilac seemed to hang like a canopy in the air under which we walked. There was a fat thrush on the lawn, young and tailless. The sight of him and the dappled marks on his white breast gave me a strange pleasure.
We sat down on the turf finally where the cherry-tree cast a light shade, a sort of white shadow in the sunlight, from its blossoms.
Viola thrust her hands down into the cool, green gra.s.s.
"How lovely this is," she said, looking up the tall tree above us.
"Look at its great tent of white blossoms against the blue sky; it"s like a picture of j.a.pan!"
After a time, when we were tired of the garden, we went out and turned down the white road to explore the country.
It was very hot, and the glare from the road excessive, but as it was all new to us it all seemed delightful, even to the white dust that coated our lips and got into our eyes whenever the breeze stirred.
After about a mile and a half of walking we came to an oak wood. The road dipped suddenly between cool, green, mossy banks and lay in deep, grateful shade from the arching oaks above. I climbed the bank on one side and looked into the wood. It was very thick and wild, apparently rarely penetrated. Through the close-growing stems of the undergrowth I saw a bluebell carpet lying like inverted sky beneath the oaks.
"The wood looks very attractive," I said as I rejoined Viola; "but we can"t stay to go into it now. We haven"t the time; it"s half past twelve already."
"I"m sorry," said Viola, looking wistfully at the green wood. "This is the nicest part; but I suppose we can"t disappoint that woman by not getting back to luncheon."
So we walked back slowly through the noonday sun, admiring the double pink May peeping out from the green hedges.
When we came in just before lunch, she took the easy chair facing the window, and I sat down on one opposite and watched her. She was wearing a white cambric dress that looked very simple and girlish; she was smiling, and her face was delicately rose-coloured after the walk.
A sense of responsibility came over me. She was my cousin, my own blood relation. I must protect her, must think for her if she would not think for herself.
"You know it"s risky being down here like this. You had much better come to some rustic church with me in another village and marry me there."
"No. You know perfectly well I am not going to marry you," she said softly, looking up at me with a smile in her eyes, great pools of blue beneath their exquisitely arched lids.
"It is ridiculous to suppose that you, an artist of twenty-eight, will want to keep faithful to one woman all the rest of your life--or her life. It would be very bad for you, if you did. One can"t go against Nature, and Nature has not arranged things that way. Marriage is a pleasure perhaps; but Nature never arranged, marriage, and a man should not allow himself unnatural pleasures."
She was really laughing now, but I knew her resolve was perfectly serious and I did not see how I could break it up.
"Well, but some men do keep to one woman all their life and are none the worse for it; look at a country clergyman for instance."
Viola raised her eyebrows with a laugh.
"How can you be sure of the country clergyman? I expect he goes up to town sometimes.... However, of course I admit he is fairly faithful, but how about being none the worse for it? A country clergyman is about the most undeveloped creature you could have, and a great artist is the most developed, the nearest approach to a G.o.d of all human beings."
I did not answer, but sat silent staring at her. She looked such a sweet little Saxon schoolgirl in her white dress, but with such tremendous character and power in those great shining eyes.
"But if we marry now," I said at last, "and anything should ... should come between us, I don"t see it would be any worse than...."
"Than if we were living together without marriage," she put in quickly. "Yes, I think it would. Look here, if we marry now with a great blaze and fuss, and invite all our friends to see the event, which is great nonsense anyway, and then you see some other woman later you covet, it seems to me there are only three ways open to us: either you go without the woman and suffer very much in consequence and always owe me a grudge for standing in your way; or you take her and I have to profess to see nothing and look on quietly, which I could never stand, it would send me mad; or we must have all the trouble and worry and scandal of a divorce and call in the public to witness our quarrel; and why _should_ we have the public to interfere in our affairs?" she added, her eyes flashing. "What is it to them whom I love or whom I live with, whom I leave or quarrel with? These are all private matters."
"And if we live together and the same thing happens?" I pursued quietly.
"Why, then we should separate, only without any trouble, any publicity; we should fall apart naturally. If you preferred any one else, you must go to her; I should slip away out of your life, and we should each be free and untied."
"If it"s so much better for the man to change," I said smiling, "it must be the same for the woman."
"So it is," rejoined Viola quickly; "the more men a woman has the more developed she is, the better for her morally, if there is no conventional disgrace attaching to it. Amongst the Greeks, Aspasia and all those women of her cla.s.s were far more intellectual, more developed than the wives who were kept at home to spin and rear children."
"All these things ought to be optional. If a woman loves one man so much she wants to stay with him for ever and ever, probably through such a great pa.s.sion she reaches her highest development; but until she has found that man she ought to be allowed to go from one to another without any disgrace attaching to it. And, of course, just the same law holds good for the man."
"Outsiders like the world and the law ought never to be allowed to interfere between a man and a woman. They never can know the right or the wrong of their relations to each other well enough to enable them to be judges. n.o.body ever knows but the man and the woman themselves, and they ought to be left alone; what they do, whether in quarrelling or love, ought to be as private as the prayers one sends to Heaven."
She paused, and through the window came the gay, loud, triumphant call of the cuckoo seeking its mate of an hour in the heart of the glad green wood.
Viola listened with a look of delight.
"How happy they are!" she said. And the note came again, instinct with love and joy.
"How well Nature arranged everything, and how Man has spoiled it all!
Fancy pa.s.sion, the most subtle, evanescent, delicate, elusive emotion--and yet one so strong--fancy that being bound down by crabbed and crooked laws, being confined by wretched little conventions!"
"But, anyway, we shall have to say we are married here."