by Patrick Guinness, Ithell Colquhoun, Peter Owen, Allen Saddler
‘But I must be with her, I like no one so much.
She is quiet and makes me feel serene.’
‘Listen to me, Oriole; this cannot continue. There is something you must know about her. A few years ago she was married secretly and has since been divorced in very shameful circumstances. She was living abroad at the time and I have only just heard the story from Aunt Astarte. Had I known of it before I should not, of course, have invited Corolla here.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ was Oriole’s stunned reply.
‘It is true, none the less,’ corroborated the voice of the Countess Astarte. ‘The fact is, that though she masquerades as an innocent young girl, she is, I need hardly say, the very reverse.’
‘Whatever she may have done since,’ continued the voice of Aunt Augusta, ‘she is still, according to our views, the wife of the man who married her; so I beg, Oriole, that however charming she seems, you will try to put all thought of her out of your mind. Her influence cannot be other than corrupting; and though, since she is our guest, we must be polite to her during the rest of her stay, we need not show her more than courtesy; and we must not expect to see her here again.’
‘I understand,’ replied Oriole, all the lustre gone from his voice. ‘But please, Aunt Augusta, don’t ask me to do anything or see anyone for an hour or so.’
While the two dowagers remained seated in an alcove of the yews, Oriole wandered sadly away. Corolla silently kept pace with his footsteps, following the line of the massive hedge, until a break occurred in its vegetal symmetry, when, taking the turning thus offered, she came upon him face to face.
‘Oriole,’ she cried in a reproachful tone, ‘I heard all that your Aunt has just said to you, and I want to assure you that it is untrue. If she will not take my word, I can give her proof. But what hurts me far more than her injustice, is that even you seem to doubt me.’
‘Then all those stories are lies?’ he cried in relief.
‘Yes, whatever their source. Decide for yourself what to do. I only want you to know that I have never been married, never even had a sweetheart, except you; and you, I think I have always known, though I did not meet you until two days ago.’
Oriole’s face brightened.
‘I knew I was not deceived!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nothing shall spoil our happiness now.’
They floated together like motes drawn by an aery tide in some celestial beam.
‘Let’s lie down here,’ said Oriole, and hand in hand they sought a mossy incline which, sheltered with scented shrubs, made a rustic couch; and there they lay in tranced embrace, one cannot tell how long. Their dream was broken by a sound of retreating footsteps, and of voices in which were mingled anger and frustration. They knew that they had been not only seen but resentfully observed. They lay however a little longer; and then, walking with arms still entwined, returned to the Hall.
That evening their engagement was announced; and when, next day, most of the other guests took their leave, Oriole insisted that Corolla should remain; should stay, indeed, until they could be married. Aunt Augusta, though scarcely cordial, was obliged to accept the situation with what grace she could. She had even, since the outfacing of the Countess Astarte, reacted a little in the young orphan’s favour.
Another and sadder consideration was the health of the Duke, for the excitement of the last few days seemed to have been more than his fragile constitution could bear. He now alternated between periods of lassitude, in which, lying on a sofa, his hands between Corolla’s, he could do nothing but muse, as they looked out from a lofty window on the green and dusky stretches of the park; and bouts of feverish coughing, in which he was ever bordering on delirium. It soon became plain that the only hope of saving his life, or even of prolonging it a little, was to grant his every desire, chief of which was, of course, his bride’s constant presence. He could not attend to the affairs of his vast estate, nor had he any wish to do so; it was obvious that he would never be able to assume the responsibilities suitable to his rank, nor lead the life appropriate to a wealthy and respected landowner. He was made for an idyll, and beyond this his powers could not reach.
One unforeseen result of Oriole’s illness was the loss of his faculty of flight, so that his enchanting aery excursions with Corolla came to an end. This was a great grief to both, but more poignant perhaps to Corolla, since a veil, only half-transparent, had descended over Oriole, and his days and nights passed in a daze, now torpid, now lurid, which blurred the acuity of all his ideas and sensations. She did not care to fly alone, for it was an activity that, for her, would be incomplete without Oriole; nor did she have much opportunity to do so, even had she desired, since the patient was in constant need of her attentions.
But one evening when the weather was particularly cool and still, he grew more lucid and became almost as he had been when she first met him. She even had hope, as she sat beside him, her arm around his shoulders, of his complete recovery. His couch was placed close under a widely-opened window, from which they could look down upon the tranquil waters of a lake in the grounds, which darkly reflected its wooded nearer shores. This stretch of water wound in such a way as to look, from their viewpoint, almost like a river, and towards its far end the grassy verge was so low that there seemed little solid earth to divide the gleaming western clouds from their image in the mere.
Suddenly, from the air above, they heard a cry that made them both start. It was like the call of a bird, but sounding at the same time a note that was almost human. They listened, and thought they could discern a noise like the rhythmic shuffle of enormous wings planing over the mansion. They leaned out of the window and saw, flying now above the middle of the lake, a bird in shape like a swan, but so huge that it might have been an albatross. The span of its wings showed white against the shadowy woodlands; then as it sank towards the furtherest water, it skimmed the surface for a little, and came to rest, making a closed silhouette on the double of the glowing sky.
Oriole had followed all the bird’s movements entranced; but it only floated in suspense, still as the waters themselves, and seemed to be waiting. Suddenly, as though unknown to them some signal of departure had been given, it rose into the empyrean, spreading its magnificent pinions now against the sunset.
Oriole had arisen trembling, and was climbing out upon the window-sill. The sky’s roseate reflection lent his pallid skin a glow almost of health, and his eyes burned with excitement as he looked back, inviting Corolla to follow him. Scrambling out beside him, she took his hand as she had often done before, and they launched themselves into the air. This flight seemed even more easy and natural than their previous ones, for they had not even to make the effort of ascension, being already far above the ground. They floated on, gently at first, then more rapidly so as not to lose sight of the bird. As they flew, leaving the mansion and its grounds far behind, they became permeated with light and colour; and their blood, always a single stream, now pulsed back and forth along the rays of the sun, as from some magnetic heart. The bird, too, must have felt a link with the fiery west, for it sailed on as though drawn without volition to plunge into that flaming core; and with this creature of air for guide, the two sailed effortlessly on, desiring no return.
‘Blest night of wandering
In secret, where by none might I be spied,
Nor I see anything;
Without a light or guide,
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.’
– Saint John of the Cross.
Tears flowed into any eyes, and this not only on account of the delicate pathos of the tale. For the first time since living in my Uncle’s house, I wept. Heaven knows, I had had enough disquieting experiences to puzzle and distress me, yet until this moment I had only half-believed that they were true. I had expected shortly to awake from a nightmare—disagreeable enough while it lasted through the day’s earliest hours, but sure to flee at the first real light of dawn. Now, however, the full significance of my plight towered
over me with dismal weight; and a wave of utter loneliness overwhelmed me. I realised that I was completely and, it seemed, permanently isolated from all help; with a frigidly-tyrannous Uncle for sole companion, whose intentions towards me were certainly not benevolent, and the more disquieting because unknown. I was by this time convinced that he was mad; but I was none the less sure that he was possessed of powers beyond the common range, and this, perhaps just because he had deliberately pressed beyond the borders of sanity. I could not count on the presence of the Anchorite for friendly intervention, since his enigmatic caprices were hardly more consoling than the vagaries of my Uncle. What I longed for was a companion of my own age, someone discreet and sensitive in whom I could confide; in fact, for such a relationship as was described in the story. I longed above all for flight from my grievous present and for some such escape into well-being as that which the end of the romance, however mixed with poignancy, promised.
Too restless to sleep, I rose from my bed and went over to the open window, which gave upon a particularly sinister region of my Uncle’s demesne.
Surrounded by spectral poplars there lay a choked-up mere, so thickly grown with rushes that the water was all but invisible. A low earthy dyke ran around it, and within this rim the dry ooze of its margin was spoored with the footprints of dinosaur and mastodon. Occasionally the rushes swayed and rustled with the movement of some huge sinuous creature and a strange cry might be heard, but whether of bird or animal one could not tell. The lineage of the spot could be traced in that most antique of plant-forms, the horsetail, which vied here with the suffocating rushes to obscure the pool. Once the horsetail, rich in silicon, grew as tall as now the poplars; to-day a vestige only of its pristine abundance, the jointed stems swayed in a smaller world.
This was a monstrous country—even the park-lands were alive with beings earlier than man. Tortured oak-trees stood or lay, piercing or hollow; a single ancient, near a Templars’ site, reared a herd of ancestral horns and opened its side in a Gothick window. Does the Maiden sometimes look out? I wondered. Clumps of the druidic tree recalled that mysterious Nightingale who nested in nine oaks; the Russian ‘Bylinay’ sing of him, but whether he is bird or hero or demon they do not say.
Every copse was scarred by the passage of some tempestuous force: trees were torn up by the roots, limbs wrenched off, masses of twiglets crushed and broken. This destruction did not seem to be the work of any known wind, but rather of a sudden wanton downrush from the air, chaotic and convulsive.
Knuckles of flint broke as outcrops through the soil of the rougher fields beyond, their shape echoing a goddess’ torso or the curves of some unnamed beast. They seemed to be uncarved, but among them might there not be stones that the Templars treasured?
A feather like one of the primaries from a rook’s wing much magnified was growing out of the landscape into the sky. The contrast between the quill, which was as thick as a tree-trunk, and the delicate branch-plumes that sprang from it, was terrible. A few of these plumes, chiefly the ones emerging near the base, were grey or whitish, reminding one of freak-blackbirds, frost, sere leaves, old age, and ultimately, I suppose, of dissolution.
The rest of the landscape was gay with the prismatic sheen of a thinly-veiled moon; and hilly fields hedged with clumps of woodland seem to invite me to walk among them. But how to avoid the feather? It dominated everything, and whichever way I turned my eye was led towards it, as if it were the magnetic north. What if one were drawn so close to it that one would have to touch it? The only consolation was the fact – I assumed it was a fact, though surrounding vegetation obscured my view – that the tip of the quill was buried in the earth, whitely, so that the most frightening part could not be seen.
Further away I noticed a goddess sitting cross-legged with her back to a cliff, the water at its base circling her loins. A passing giant smudged away her clavicles; her right breast detached itself, slithered down her torso, its tubular nipple pointing towards the lake, flopped in and melted. In its place appeared a great eye, lustrous as an owl’s but clear-coloured like a bubble, surrounded with a foamy-white cornea. Her left breast remained some time, clinging to the surface of her ribs and shrinking gradually. It was finally washed away by a brief storm of thundery rain-drops; and the eye was put out by a flash of summer-lightning as if it had been pricked with a pin.
Alarmed by the seeming approach of a storm, I retreated from the window and again sought rest on the bed. I could hear no sound of thunder, but I sensed a tension in the atmosphere that might have but little to do with the weather outside. Was my room haunted? As an infant has difficulty in believing that it has left the womb, so a new ghost has difficulty in believing that it has left the world. Sometimes the ghost feels, acts, decides as though it were still blown-through by the breath of life. It has to remind itself constantly, and concentrate its attention upon the fact that it is no longer alive: otherwise hauntings occur. Those ghosts return most persistently who have never known that they were dead; others come back fitfully when they have known, and then again forgotten. When they fully realise it at last, their haunting ceases. A ghost must keep always before it a vision of that end which it has reached, and only allow itself to be worked on by the breath of death.
Certain ghosts feel little of that attraction of haunting which so powerfully influences many others, for these former leave upon the earth a physical manifestation in a human being. Sometimes this counterpart appears among their descendants; but when this is not so, another being is chosen and possessed, though perhaps this one is never wholly alien in a physical sense. The chosen one looks henceforth to the ghost as to an illustrious ancestor, and draws from it authority and inspiration.
The chosen being may be singled out in various ways, either before or after the death of the possessor. It may happen that those two halves of Plato’s sphere cannot join on earth, but must be parted by a dividing dimension before they can work as one, the earth too narrow to hold them. One of them has to die. They struggle to decide which is to be the victim, and at last one of them kills the other. The survivor acts in self-defence, and there are thus many murders and suicides that go unrecognised by law. But this being feels, mixed with pain and remorse, a subtle triumph, for it knows that from now onwards it drinks life at a double spring. That very identity which separated it from its inspirer during the day, at night draws them together. They are undivided but working in a manner both hidden and expressed, like an exoteric cult and the secret tradition which it both embodies and conceals. I am not here any longer, I am dead, it is only my unhappy ghost that wanders through my Uncle’s mansion and demesne. I am lying in a small graveyard at the edge of a thirsty plain, the dust is on my eyelids I cannot see, the earth is in my nostrils I cannot breathe, the pebbles are in my ears I cannot hear, the stones are on my feet I cannot move. We two have lain there a single corpse under rocky hills since the beginning of time, and one ghost is still walking, and one has ceased to walk.
I wonder how it was that I never lived in that room at the top of the house, the room with a large window and a view of the acropolis like a shout. Yes, like a shout I say – you could hear the triumphant noise it made striding upwards in the purple light. Why of course I remember now, someone else was living there, some tenant with a prior claim who did not want to leave. And then I was afraid that if I took that room I would go to Olympia with her and she would die there as she said she would if she ever went back to her birthplace. And he dying near by, dying in life, living in death, spending and wasting and dying each time he was with me, each time a step nearer death and death a thought dearer. He was hungry once with that phosphorescent look about him and asked to be kept alive and I gave him stony gifts; I heaped those stones above him, I laid him in that bed of boulders. We were held together at last by slanderous bonds, by ridicule, hatred, contempt, but there were older bonds than those, the sulphur, the phosphor, the salt. Now lying in a small graveyard near bones of kings and beaten gold, he is learning the
length of the horizon and drawing perhaps where the worms twine a straighter line than ever before; drawing perhaps the straight wand of Hermes, with the snakes making spirals around it to right and left, the red and the blue, gyres that I must try to compas. Lying there far from the shrine of a pillow he is echoing that distant day when the first words he spoke were Listen to me! And crying a far cry out of a six-foot cradle he is saying again Listen!
I am listening O I am listening now at last I have ears to hear.
An uneasy sleep must have drawn me into its folds, for I awoke with a start. It had come to me again, that dream; I thought it had visited me for the last time. Then she is living still. What did it say? that she was not dead, that it was strange how anyone could think so, how could the idea have arisen? As in the others, she had been away for a while—there had been no longer separation than that. There she was, smiling as in life; preparing to go away, collecting things together, I helping her. My true ancestor, the alchemists’ white woman, lunar progenitrix—it seems that some ritual is wanting. What can I do? Mother of good counsel, help me; ark of the covenant, gate of heaven. It were not right ever to cease lamenting.
One of the most sinister emotions is hatred of the dead. Living, one has loved them; dead, one loves them for a while still more; then gradually one grows indifferent, and slowly one begins to hate. One conceals this as one never hides hatred of the living; their faults appear as in a beam of light, restricted but intense, that passes over a scarred surface. By this hatred one shares their death. It were not right ever to cease lamenting.
Some years after the tragedy, I found in the old Trocadero museum a massive panel of stone, which had been taken from the side of a tomb in Naples. It was carved in high relief with a Pietà, of the Romanesque style; but what devil had inspired the sculptor? A first glance assumed the traditional gestures of sorrow, but a second revealed the bodies of Saints and Virgin convulsed with a soundless and satanic laughter, their faces contorted with malicious joy. Even the mouth of the Christ, falling open in death, was pinched to an ironic smile; but most strange of all, the face of the Madonna was her face. It were not right ever to cease lamenting.
