on an evening when the sky was clear and only its fringes embroidered with the purple arabesques of the sunset, joan brett was walking on the upper lawn of the terraced garden at ivywood, where the peacocks trail themselves about. she was not unlike one of the peacocks herself in beauty, and some might have said, in inutility; she had the proud head and the sweeping train; nor was she, in these days, devoid of the occasional disposition to scream. for, indeed, for some time past she had felt her existence closing round her with an incomprehensible quietude; and that is harder for the patience than an incomprehensible noise. whenever she looked at the old yew hedges of the garden they seemed to be higher than when she saw them last; as if those living walls could still grow to shut her in. whenever from the turret windows she had a sight of the sea, it seemed to be farther away. indeed, the whole closing of the end of the turret wing with the new wall of eastern woodwork seemed to symbolise all her shapeless sensations. in her childhood the wing had ended with a broken-down door and a disused staircase. they led to an uncultivated copse and an abandoned railway tunnel, to which neither she nor anyone else ever wanted to go. still, she knew what they led to. now it seemed that this scrap of land had been sold and added to the adjoining estate; and about the adjoining estate nobody seemed to know anything in particular. the sense of things closing in increased upon her. all sorts of silly little details magnified the sensation. she could discover nothing about this new landlord next door, so to speak, since he was, it seemed, an elderly man who preferred to live in the greatest privacy. miss browning, lord ivywood’s secretary, could give her no further information than that he was a gentleman from the mediterranean coast; which singular form of words seemed to have been put into her mouth. as a mediterranean gentleman might mean anything from an american gentleman living in venice to a black african on the edge of the atlas, the description did not illuminate; and probably was not intended to do so. she occasionally saw his liveried servants going about; and their liveries were not like english liveries. she was also, in her somewhat morbid state, annoyed by the fact that the uniforms of the old pebblewick militia had been changed, under the influence of the turkish prestige in the recent war. they wore fezzes like the french zouaves, which were certainly much more practical than the heavy helmets they used to wear. it was a small matter, but it annoyed lady joan, who was, like so many clever women, at once subtle and conservative. it made her feel as if the whole world was being altered outside, and she was not allowed to know about it.
but she had deeper spiritual troubles also, while, under the pathetic entreaties of old lady ivywood and her own sick mother, she stayed on week after week at ivywood house. if the matter be stated cynically (as she herself was quite capable of stating it) she was engaged in the established feminine occupation of trying to like a man. but the cynicism would have been false; as cynicism nearly always is; for during the most crucial days of that period, she had really liked the man.
she had liked him when he was brought in with pump’s bullet in his leg; and was still the strongest and calmest man in the room. she had liked him when the hurt took a dangerous turn, and when he bore pain to admiration. she had liked him when he showed no malice against the angry dorian; she had liked him with something like enthusiasm on the night he rose rigid on his rude crutch, and, crushing all remonstrance, made his rash and swift rush to london. but, despite the queer closing-in-sensations of which we have spoken, she never liked him better than that evening when he lifted himself laboriously on his crutch up the terraces of the old garden and came to speak to her as she stood among the peacocks. he even tried to pat a peacock in a hazy way, as if it were a dog. he told her that these beautiful birds were, of course, imported from the east—by the semi-eastern empire of macedonia. but, all the same, joan had a dim suspicion that he had never noticed before that there were any peacocks at ivywood. his greatest fault was a pride in the faultlessness of his mental and moral strength; but, if he had only known, something faintly comic in the unconscious side of him did him more good with the woman than all the rest.
“they were said to be the birds of juno,” he said, “but i have little doubt that juno, like so much else of the homeric mythology, has also an asiatic origin.”
“i always thought,” said joan, “that juno was rather too stately for the seraglio.”
“you ought to know,” replied ivywood, with a courteous gesture, “for i never saw anyone who looked so like juno as you do. but, indeed, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the arabian or indian view of women. it is, somehow, too simple and solid for our paradoxical christendom to comprehend. even the vulgar joke against the turks, that they like their brides fat, has in it a sort of distorted shadow of what i mean. they do not look so much at the individual, as at womanhood and the power of nature.”
“i sometimes think,” said joan, “that these fascinating theories are a little strained. your friend misysra told me the other day that women had the highest freedom in turkey; as they were allowed to wear trousers.”
ivywood smiled his rare and dry smile. “the prophet has something of a simplicity often found with genius,” he answered. “i will not deny that some of the arguments he has employed have seemed to me crude and even fanciful. but he is right at the root. there is a kind of freedom that consists in never rebelling against nature; and i think they understand it in the orient better than we do in the west. you see, joan, it is all very well to talk about love in our narrow, personal, romantic way; but there is something higher than the love of a lover or the love of love.”
“what is that?” asked joan, looking down.
“the love of fate,” said lord ivywood, with something like spiritual passion in his eyes. “doesn’t nietzsche say somewhere that the delight in destiny is the mark of the hero? we are mistaken if we think that the heroes and saints of islam say ‘kismet’ with bowed heads and in sorrow. they say ‘kismet’ with a shout of joy. that which is fitting—that is what they really mean. in the arabian tales, the most perfect prince is wedded to the most perfect princess—because it is fitting. the spiritual giants, the genii, achieve it—that is, the purposes of nature. in the selfish, sentimental european novels, the loveliest princess on earth might have run away with her middle-aged drawing-master. these things are not in the path. the turk rides out to wed the fairest queen of the earth; he conquers empires to do it; and he is not ashamed of his laurels.”
the crumpled violet clouds around the edge of the silver evening looked to lady joan more and more like vivid violet embroideries hemming some silver curtain in the closed corridor at ivywood. the peacocks looked more lustrous and beautiful than they ever had before; but for the first time she really felt they came out of the land of the arabian nights.
“joan,” said phillip ivywood, very softly, in the twilight, “i am not ashamed of my laurels. i see no meaning in what these christians call humility. i will be the greatest man in the world if i can; and i think i can. therefore, something that is higher than love itself, fate and what is fitting, make it right that i should wed the most beautiful woman in the world. and she stands among the peacocks and is more beautiful and more proud than they.”
joan’s troubled eyes were on the violet horizon and her troubled lips could utter nothing but something like “don’t.”
“joan,” said phillip, again, “i have told you, you are the woman one of the great heroes could have desired. let me now tell you something i could have told no one to whom i had not thus spoken of love and betrothal. when i was twenty years old in a town in germany, pursuing my education, i did what the west calls falling in love. she was a fisher-girl from the coast; for this town was near the sea. my story might have ended there. i could not have entered diplomacy with such a wife, but i should not have minded then. but a little while after, i wandered into the edges of flanders, and found myself standing above some of the last grand reaches of the rhine. and things came over me but for which i might be crying stinking fish to this day. i thought how many holy or lovely nooks that river had left behind, and gone on. it might anywhere in switzerland have spent its weak youth in a spirit over a high crag, or anywhere in the rhinelands lost itself in a marsh covered with flowers. but it went on to the perfect sea, which is the fulfilment of a river.”
again, joan could not speak; and again it was phillip who went on.
“here is yet another thing that could not be said, till the hand of the prince had been offered to the princess. it may be that in the east they carry too far this matter of infant marriages. but look round on the mad young marriages that go to pieces everywhere! and ask yourself whether you don’t wish they had been infant marriages! people talk in the newspapers of the heartlessness of royal marriages. but you and i do not believe the newspapers, i suppose. we know there is no king in england; nor has been since his head fell before whitehall. you know that you and i and the families are the kings of england; and our marriages are royal marriages. let the suburbs call them heartless. let us say they need the brave heart that is the only badge of aristocracy. joan,” he said, very gently, “perhaps you have been near a crag in switzerland, or a marsh covered with flowers. perhaps you have known—a fisher-girl. but there is something greater and simpler than all that; something you find in the great epics of the east—the beautiful woman, and the great man, and fate.”
“my lord,” said joan, using the formal phrase by an unfathomable instinct, “will you allow me a little more time to think of this? and let there be no notion of disloyalty, if my decision is one way or the other?”
“why, of course,” said ivywood, bowing over his crutch; and he limped off, picking his way among the peacocks.
for days afterward joan tried to build the foundations of her earthly destiny. she was still quite young, but she felt as if she had lived thousands of years, worrying over the same question. she told herself again and again, and truly, that many a better woman than she had taken a second-best which was not so first-class a second-best. but there was something complicated in the very atmosphere. she liked listening to phillip ivywood at his best, as anyone likes listening to a man who can really play the violin; but the great trouble always is that at certain awful moments you cannot be certain whether it is the violin or the man.
moreover, there was a curious tone and spirit in the ivywood household, especially after the wound and convalescence of ivywood, about which she could say nothing except that it annoyed her somehow. there was something in it glorious—but also languorous. by an impulse by no means uncommon among intelligent, fashionable people, she felt a desire to talk to a sensible woman of the middle or lower classes; and almost threw herself on the bosom of miss browning for sympathy.
but miss browning, with her curling, reddish hair and white, very clever face, struck the same indescribable note. lord ivywood was assumed as a first principle; as if he were father time, or the clerk of the weather. he was called “he.” the fifth time he was called “he,” joan could not understand why she seemed to smell the plants in the hot conservatory.
“you see,” said miss browning, “we mustn’t interfere with his career; that is the important thing. and, really, i think the quieter we keep about everything the better. i am sure he is maturing very big plans. you heard what the prophet said the other night?”
“the last thing the prophet said to me,” said the darker lady, in a dogged manner, “was that when we english see the english youth, we cry out ‘he is crescent!’ but when we see the english aged man, we cry out ‘he is cross!’”
a lady with so clever a face could not but laugh faintly; but she continued on a determined theme, “the prophet said, you know, that all real love had in it an element of fate. and i am sure that is his view, too. people cluster round a centre as little stars do round a star; because a star is a magnet. you are never wrong when destiny blows behind you like a great big wind; and i think many things have been judged unfairly that way. it’s all very well to talk about the infant marriages in india.”
“miss browning,” said joan, “are you interested in the infant marriages in india?”
“well—” said miss browning.
“is your sister interested in them? i’ll run and ask her,” cried joan, plunging across the room to where mrs. mackintosh was sitting at a table scribbling secretarial notes.
“well,” said mrs. mackintosh, turning up a rich-haired, resolute head, more handsome than her sister’s, “i believe the indian way is the best. when people are left to themselves in early youth, any of them might marry anything. we might have married a nigger or a fish-wife or—a criminal.”
“now, mrs. mackintosh,” said joan, with black-browed severity, “you well know you would never have married a fish-wife. where is enid?” she ended suddenly.
“lady enid,” said miss browning, “is looking out music in the music room, i think.”
joan walked swiftly through several long salons, and found her fair-haired and pallid relative actually at the piano.
“enid,” cried joan, “you know i’ve always been fond of you. for god’s sake tell me what is the matter with this house? i admire phillip as everybody does. but what is the matter with the house? why do all these rooms and gardens seem to be shutting me in and in and in? why does everything look more and more the same? why does everybody say the same thing? oh, i don’t often talk metaphysics; but there is a purpose in this. that’s the only way of putting it; there is a purpose. and i don’t know what it is.”
lady enid wimpole played a preliminary bar or two on the piano. then she said,
“nor do i, joan. i don’t indeed. i know exactly what you mean. but it’s just because there is a purpose that i have faith in him and trust him.” she began softly to play a ballad tune of the rhineland; and perhaps the music suggested her next remark. “suppose you were looking at some of the last reaches of the rhine, where it flows—”
“enid!” cried joan, “if you say ‘into the north sea,’ i shall scream. scream, do you hear, louder than all the peacocks together.”
“well,” expostulated lady enid, looking up rather wildly, “the rhine does flow into the north sea, doesn’t it?”
“i dare say,” said joan, recklessly, “but the rhine might have flowed into the round pond, before you would have known or cared, until—”
“until what?” asked enid; and her music suddenly ceased. “until something happened that i cannot understand,” said joan, moving away.
“you are something i cannot understand,” said enid wimpole. “but i will play something else, if this annoys you.” and she fingered the music again with an eye to choice.
joan walked back through the corridor of the music room, and restlessly resumed her seat in the room with the two lady secretaries.
“well,” asked the red-haired and good-humoured mrs. mackintosh, without looking up from her work of scribbling, “have you discovered anything?”
for some moments joan appeared to be in a blacker state of brooding than usual; then she said, in a candid and friendly tone, which somehow contrasted with her knit and swarthy brows—
“no, really. at least i think i’ve only found out two things; and they are only things about myself. i’ve discovered that i do like heroism, but i don’t like hero worship.”
“surely,” said miss browning, in the girton manner, “the one always flows from the other.”
“i hope not,” said joan.
“but what else can you do with the hero?” asked mrs. mackintosh, still without looking up from her writing, “except worship him?”
“you might crucify him,” said joan, with a sudden return of savage restlessness, as she rose from her chair. “things seem to happen then.”
“aren’t you tired?” asked the miss browning who had the clever face.
“yes,” said joan, “and the worst sort of tiredness; when you don’t even know what you’re tired of. to tell the honest truth, i think i’m tired of this house.”
“it’s very old, of course, and parts of it are still dismal,” said miss browning, “but he has enormously improved it. the decoration, with the moon and stars, down in the wing with the turret is really—”
away in the distant music room, lady enid, having found the music she preferred, was fingering its prelude on the piano. at the first few notes of it, joan brett stood up, like a tigress.
“thanks—” she said, with a hoarse softness, “that’s it, of course! and that’s just what we all are! she’s found the right tune now.”
“what tune is it?” asked the wondering secretary.
“the tune of harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of music,” said joan, softly and fiercely, “when we shall bow down and worship the golden image that nebuchadnezzar the king has set up. girls! women! do you know what this place is? do you know why it is all doors within doors and lattice behind lattice; and everything is curtained and cushioned; and why the flowers that are so fragrant here are not the flowers of our hills?”
from the distant and slowly darkening music room, enid wimpole’s song came thin and clear:
“less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel,
less than the rust that never stained thy sword—”
“do you know what we are?” demanded joan brett, again. “we are a harem.”
“why, what can you mean?” cried the younger girl, in great agitation. “why, lord ivywood has never—”
“i know he has never. i am not sure,” said joan, “even whether he would ever. i shall never understand that man, nor will anybody else. but i tell you that is the spirit. that is what we are. and this room stinks of polygamy as certainly as it smells of tube-roses.”
“why, joan,” cried lady enid, entering the room like a well-bred ghost, “what on earth is the matter with you. you all look as white as sheets.”
joan took no heed of her but went on with her own obstinate argument.
“and, besides,” she said, “if there’s one thing we do know about him it is that he believes on principle in doing things slowly. he calls it evolution and relativity and the expanding of an idea into larger ideas. how do we know he isn’t doing that slowly; getting us accustomed to living like this, so that it may be the less shock when he goes further—steeping us in the atmosphere before he actually introduces,” and she shuddered, “the institution. is it any more calmly outrageous a scheme than any other of ivywood’s schemes; than a sepoy commander-in-chief, or misysra preaching in westminster abbey, or the destruction of all the inns in england? i will not wait and expand. i will not be evolved. i will not develop into something that is not me. my feet shall be outside these walls if i walk the roads for it afterward; or i will scream as i would scream trapped in any den by the docks.”
she swept down the rooms toward the turret, with a sudden passion for solitude; but as she passed the astronomical wood-carving that had closed up the end of the old wing, enid saw her strike it with her clinched hand.
it was in the turret that she had a strange experience. she was again, later on, using its isolation to worry out the best way of having it out with phillip, when he should return from his visit to london; for to tell old lady ivywood what was on her mind would be about as kind and useful as describing chinese tortures to a baby. the evening was very quiet, of the pale grey sort, and all that side of ivywood lay before her eyes, undisturbed. she was the more surprised when her dreaming took note of a sort of stirring in the grey-purple dusk of the bushes; of whisperings; and of many footsteps. then the silence settled down again; and then it was startlingly broken by a big voice singing in the dark distance. it was accompanied by faint sounds that might have been from the fingering of some lute or viol:
“lady, the light is dying in the skies,
lady, and let us die when honour dies,
your dear, dropped glove was like a gauntlet flung,
when you and i were young.
for something more than splendour stood; and ease was not the only good
about the woods in ivywood when you and i were young.
“lady, the stars are falling pale and small,
lady, we will not live if life be all
forgetting those good stars in heaven hung
when all the world was young,
for more than gold was in a ring, and love was not a little thing
between the trees in ivywood when all the world was young.”
the singing ceased; and the bustle in the bushes could hardly be called more than a whisper. but sounds of the same sort and somewhat louder seemed wafted round corners from other sides of the house; and the whole night seemed full of something that was alive, but was more than a single man.
she heard a cry behind her, and enid rushed into the room as white as one of the lilies.
“what awful thing is happening?” she cried. “the courtyard is full of men shouting, and there are torches everywhere and—”
joan heard a tramp of men marching and heard, afar off, another song, sung on a more derisive note, something like—
“but ivywood, lord ivywood,
he rots the tree as ivy would.”
“i think,” said joan, thoughtfully, “it is the end of the world.”
“but where are the police?” wailed her cousin. “they don’t seem to be anywhere about since they wore those fezzes. we shall be murdered or—”
three thundering and measured blows shook the decorative wood panelling at the end of the wing; as if admittance were demanded with the club of a giant. enid remembered that she had thought joan’s little blow energetic, and shuddered. both the girls stared at the stars and moons and suns blazoned on that sacred wall that leapt and shuddered under the strokes of the doom.
then the sun fell from heaven, and the moon and stars dropped down and were scattered about the persian carpet; and by the opening of the end of the world, patrick dalroy came in, carrying a mandolin.
