by George Moore
For a moment they both felt uneasy, but her hand lay on the cushion between them; Lewis took it in his; this gave her confidence, and she turned and looked at him. They gazed fervidly into each other’s eyes, then, losing all restraint, she put her arms round his neck and set her lips to his.
She had only kissed him once or twice before, and then reservedly; but now he was her husband, now it was her right, hers and hers only, and how delicious it was to lie back on the soft cushions and lean against each other. Lewis put his arm behind her, drew her closer, and he felt her cheek touch his face.
Lady Helen had not decided where and how she would pass her honeymoon in a hurry. She knew that a month of love with him you love is a dream easy to dream, but difficult to realise; that, once gone, neither wealth nor desire can buy it back; that its sentiments, pleasures, and experiences can be tasted but once. She wanted to have Lewis to herself, wholly to herself; she had determined that each minute should be cherished. She had written of love, she had dreamed of it, and now that she was to enjoy it, all other pleasures and desires were to be put aside: all was to be centred in one supreme thought: all things were to be so calculated that they should complete and perfect it.
Having come to this conclusion, she gladly accepted from a friend who was going abroad the loan of her villa at Teddington. She had heard of the high trees where nightingales sang and of the green swards leading to the water side, shaded by willows where one could sit, talk, read, or sleep in a hammock slung from the branches; she had been told that the rooms were papered with the most delicate greens and blues, and hung with choice specimens of art, old Italian mirrors, whose ledges and brackets were covered with quaint china; that the carpets were utterly soft, and strewn with low-cushioned seats; that Chippendale chairs and beautiful majolica vases stood in the corners; that the windows were filled with flowers and surrounded with Virginia creepers, and that a grey parrot talked all day long to an immense Angora cat who slept on the white fur rug.
“What nook in the world more fitted for love?” the fair owner said, as she pressed Lady Helen to accept. Lady Helen’s face flushed as she listened to the description, for she now saw her dream becoming real, all her pale imaginings changing to vivid actualities.
Everything had been prepared to receive them, and on their arrival the butler asked Lady Helen when they would like to dine. The lovers looked at each other, and after a moment’s hesitation, Lewis proposed that they should have supper about nine instead. The idea enchanted Lady Helen, who felt that a solemn dinner in the presence of servants would be too utterly wearisome. Besides, she wanted to see the garden and the river, of which she had heard so much; so, calling on Lewis to follow her, she asked the way. They passed through the drawing-room, but only stopped a moment to praise the fantastic furniture and shady nooks and recesses. Two windows painted yellow, with rose blinds, opened into a large verandah full of cane chairs and overgrown with creeping plants; and she thought of the bright morning hours she would pass there en peignoir, reading and talking to Lewis. On the right were the tall, shady trees where the nightingales sang; on the left was a wall covered with ivy and lined with graceful poplars. The long swards were garnished with flower-beds, a foreign fir added here and there a note of bright yellow, and through the pale green of the willows came the ever-sounding roar of the weir.
Lady Helen felt the godhead of nature, the fragile flowers, the infinite deeps of the skies; she loved the soft grass under her feet, and it was irresistible joy to breathe the large sweet air. She passed her arm through Lewis’s; the intimacy of the pressure was enchantment; she plucked a rose and bruised the soft leaves against her lips, and then gave it to him, that he also might be possessed of its fragrance.
“It is here that the nightingales sing,” she said, “and we shall listen to them here when the moonlight is clear, and a light wind wafts the scent of the roses towards the river.”
With eyes full of dreams Lady Helen looked round. She felt an immense love for the place rising in her heart. Every tree, every flower, became endeared to her by a thousand expectations; she saw not the mundane swards and flower beds, forgot the rose blinds; in her eyes the garden lost its artificial air, and became an Eden, where the purpose of her life was to be accomplished.
Lewis, too, was full of joy. He put his arm round her and kissed her at once passionately and reverently. She trembled in his arms, and hoarse with emotion, he said:
“Is it not wonderful to think, Helen, that we are now man and wife, that life extends before us, that we shall share it together?”
“I fought hard for you, darling, did I not?” she replied, flinging her arms round his neck, and they both sank on a garden bench. Their emotion was akin to the perfume that floated in the air warm with sunlight; and above them there was a manifold twittering of birds. Sitting side by side, their thoughts drifted: and oppressed with tired passion, she put her face to his and sighed. And, in silence sweeter than speech, they dreamed, until the monotonous roar of the unseen weir throbbed in their ears, and they grew glad to go to the water’s edge. Leaning on the iron railing that passed behind the willows, along the circular stone embankment, they looked out into the sky. It was a vast sheet of grey out of which the sun sank, a vague and luminous patch. The rays glittered along the water, bathing in sickly sunlight fleets of skiffs and canoes coming up from Twickenham. On the reedy banks of the weir island, among the tall poplars, pic-nic parties spread their luncheons and shouted at barking dogs that swam after drifting sticks.
“What gaiety! what life!” said Lady Helen, dreamily; “it is quite wonderful.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Lewis replied, mechanically, “and those are the scenes ‘The moderns’ like to paint.”
Lady Helen did not answer; she thought for a moment of asking something about “The moderns,” but she was too weary to do so, and she continued to watch the continual gliding, rowing and sailing of the boats as they came and went. Sometimes they stopped under their wall, and Lady Helen was gazed at long and curiously. Once a man tried to make a sketch, but the boat drifted away too fast. Lewis wondered if the man could draw, Lady Helen was too listless to pay any attention. The magic-lantern-like appearance that the boats presented as they passed down the barge stream amused her. Only the occupants could be seen: the men in white flannel, bending backwards and forwards; the women, gathered together in the stern, shading their faces with red parasols that stained the green of the opposite bank. The tide was beginning to fall, and the water poured boisterously through the coarse, red piers, whilst from the long, grey rail, leaning figures fished in and about the white line of foam.
The warm May afternoon that had sent the young men and women out of town, the latter in their summer dresses, threatened to turn a little chilly. Lady Helen shivered slightly, but more from lassitude than from the light breeze that shook the drooping willow leaves. She was dressed in pale mauve, fitting very close to the figure, and garnished at the bottom with large plaited flounces. Her saffron-coloured hair was scarcely hidden under a wide hat ornamented with a large plume.
“Do you feel cold, dear?” said Lewis, pressing her arm; “shall I fetch you your jacket?”
“Oh, no, not the least. But are you perfectly happy, Lewis? If this time could last for ever!”
Lewis murmured something to the effect that nothing would ever change, but Lady Helen did not appear to hear him, for as she continued to gaze at where the sun sank, her heart grew larger, and she felt as she had never done before the ineffable persuasiveness of nature.
At last, at the end of a long silence, she said: “Supposing we go out on the river; it is not much after six, and we have not ordered supper until nine.”
Lewis approved of the idea; he was beginning to feel very tired of watching the passing boats, and the wide extent of grey sky.
“Do you know how to row?” asked Lady Helen.
“Yes, a little,” he replied, “but I don’t much care about it.”
“Then w
hat shall we do?”
“Sail, of course,” he replied, smiling; and they went to the house to get someone to show them the boat-house and to fetch some rugs, for Lewis declared that the evening would be colder than she expected, when the sun was down.
She put on a little grey cloth jacket trimmed with mauve velvet; Lewis found a large wolf-skin rug in the hall; the gardener got the boat out for them and hoisted the sail; then, leaning back in the stem, their hands laid on the rudder, with wind and tide they sailed down the river.
Knowing nothing of the beauties of the Thames, every moment was to them full of charming surprises. On the left was the Anglers’ Hotel, with a wide fleet of skiffs drawn up by the black painted wharf. Bronze-throated rowing men walked towards the garden, flaring with long beds of red flowers and cosy with laurels, under which sat girls in clear dresses making tea.
“I suppose the people who live here never think of anything but rowing,” said Lewis, astonished at the number of boats.
Lady Helen smiled dreamily; she was very warm, covered over with the wolf skin rug, and, penetrated with a feeling of comfort, she dreamed slowly and indefinitely.
On the right the high bank intercepted the view, but the tops of occasional trees growing blue in the twilight suggested long waste meadows. On the left, as they passed on, villa succeeded villa in uninterrupted succession, some common-place as London houses, some as fantastic as Chinese pagodas, and all hidden or partly hidden in bouquets of large trees. Green swards extended to the water’s edge, guarded either by iron railings or by balustrades lined with vases of geraniums. A woman’s figure, passing round the balcony of a turretted building, came out against the pale sky; amid the willows, a little boy stopped in his play to watch a passing boat, and amid the universal greenery, a yellow boat-cover struck a singularly sharp note.
“How delicious life is when we love! Oh, Lewis, you don’t know how wearisome the years were to me since we talked together by the river side in Sussex. I did not know why I could take no interest in anything, but now I know — I was in love with you.”
“But I always knew I loved you,” he answered, striving to put passion into his words.
“I cannot believe that,” she said, tenderly, but with a suspicion of dissatisfaction in her voice; “you have loved lots of women.”
“That is not true; any fancies I may have had were but dreams; you are the reality.”
She smiled softly with pleasure; the sentiment pleased her, and then, as they sailed through the twilight, they continued to talk in undertones of infinite passion. Lewis spoke fluently, but she only replied occasionally, and continued to watch the landscape which faded before her eyes. It was almost night, the shadows fell like dust; and in the daylight, which still lingered on the water, the Thames glittered and turned like an immense sheet of tin. The reflections of the willows and the studied curves of the swards trembled in the waters with all the strange delicacy of a Japanese water colour, whilst at the back confused heaps of foliage lay piled against a very pale blue sky. Only a few streaks of colour remained to show where the sun had set, and out of the fast paleing heights there fell a calm — tender, vast and delicious; the evening died, gently, without an effort, wrapped in a winding sheet of soft shadow.
The river was rapidly becoming empty of boats; sometimes, like a phantom fish, a long outrigger shot past, the thin sculls flashing tremulously. The skiffs still lingered, the young ladies helping at the oars, whilst the sharp puffing of a pleasure launch broke the silence of the deep distance.
Neither Lewis nor Lady Helen knew anything of sailing, but the breeze blew so gently and steadily that they had nothing to do but to keep in the middle of the stream, and, talking of love and poetry, the time passed imperceptibly.
They had left Twickenham behind before the gathering gloom startled them, and they thought of returning home. Then there was a long delay, and Lady Helen grew irritable as one suddenly awakened. She hated to have her dreams thus rudely dispersed: Lewis had to ask her to change her position in the boat, that he might get off the mud bank, where they had run aground. At one moment they were nearly upset by a false movement on the part of Lady Helen, but Lewis moved to the other side, and the boat righted herself. It was nothing, and he could not help laughing.
“Supposing we were drowned now,” he asked, looking at her very seriously.
“I wonder how you can say such a thing,” she replied, angrily; “if you loved me, you couldn’t speak so unfeelingly.”
Seeing that he annoyed her more than he intended, he apologised; and having got the oars out, he toiled on till they reached Twickenham; then, resting on his oars, he proposed that they should get a man to row them home.
“I am perfectly sick of this work,” he said, turning the boat’s head towards the pier.
“And I am tired of sitting here alone,” replied Lady Helen, tenderly.
The night had not turned out so cold as he had anticipated; yet he was glad to resign his place to a boatman, and wrap himself, with Lady Helen, in the large fur rug.
The landscape lay dark beneath the wide heavens, whose hollow, speckled with a few stars, opened larger and deeper; the river faded on either side into darkness, and the boat followed the stream of crystal light that fell from the mounting moon. On the right a sea of shadow rolled over the gardens, and the black masses of the trees stretched across the sky. On the left all was solitary, and violet, and grey. Along the sedge bank a boat passed with some one asleep in the stem: far ahead, over the bending shoulders of the man towing, a red cap appeared, the last point of colour that remained in the gradual effacement.
Lady Helen lay back on the cushion like one in an invalid chair, and listlessly twisted the hair of the wolf-skin rug. She was very warm in her jacket, and, watching the lights darting through the dark trees, she sought for the windows of their house. Her thoughts and his faded into a sensation of glowing numbness; and slowly they savoured the voluptuous idleness which overtakes lovers towing dreamily throught the moonlight. Lewis -held Helen’s hand in his, and touching the silken skin, slightly moist and delicately soft, he felt her life mingling and becoming one with his.
The green swards were as bright as day, the alleys were filled with blue shadows, and amid the river reeds the monotonous chant of the frogs continued unceasingly. From the distant fields a landrail answered a nightingale that sang in a tree close by, and the light winds that passed seemed to shudder with kisses and warm breaths.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HONEYMOON CONTINUED.
NEXT MORNING SHE was down a few minutes before Lewis. As she lingered in the breakfast-room she noticed, with surprise, that it was only laid for two, and then she smiled at her mistake: she had forgotten that they were living together. As she passed through the drawing-room she stopped to look at the pretty furniture. The Italian glass over the chimney attracted her; she examined the tiny cups and vases with which it was covered, and catching sight of herself in the glass, she wondered why she had done her hair that way. She was in a grey peignoir, and her pale hair was tied into a knot upon her neck. Then she blushed, remembering that it was Lewis who had wished it so. The peignoir amused her, she had never come down to breakfast so before, and she thought she had never looked so handsome.
Her eyes were clear coloured as the morning skies, but around them the skin was rimmed with a somewhat deeper blue — her lips looked like flowers of blood. Elated with a thousand thoughts, she passed into the garden, and breathed the sweet air with gourmandise. Picking a red rose, she placed it in her bosom; she started back, frightened by a chattering blackbird that dived into a thicket on the other side. The weir roared loudly; she caught sight of the river glittering through the leaves of the willows, and the garden tempted her on; but the cold dew, which lay heavily on the grass, pierced the satin shoe. Then, hearing Lewis’s voice, she hastily plucked a rose for him and ran back.
The servant had brought up the tea and coffee — and she took her place at the head of
the table. Feeling a little nervous, she cast a rapid glance to see that the butler was not looking, and asked Lewis with a sign which he would take. The man seemed to her to fidget about the room an interminable time, but when at last he did go, it was delightful to attend to Lewis, to coax him, to talk, to ask him a hundred times if he loved her, and to hear him say that he did — fifty times more than ever.
The morning was passed dreaming in the verandah. Lady Helen lay back in a long cane chair. A light air floated through the garden, the shadows of leaves trembled on the pavement, wings were heard vaguely in the trees, and the lovers murmured for hours the softest words and phrases.
And yet it was not for a few days that she appreciated the whole luxury of living en ménage. At first there was a slight sense of strangeness, but this wore off; every hour brought new pleasures, little surprises, which offered her the most exquisite delight. Once, it was running from the housekeeper’s room to the verandah, where Lewis was smoking his morning cigar, to ask him which he would like better for dessert, a cream or an ice. Another time, it was sewing a button on his glove; but, above all, it was an exquisite satisfaction to write “my husband” to Lady Marion. “Yes,” she thought, as she paused after she had written it, “it was I who won him away from all the others. Yes, I am his little wife, whom he loves better than all the world, and he is my little husband, whom I love better than all the world.” Smiling, she repeated the words over, half conscious of but fascinated by their childishness, letting, all the while, her thoughts drift back to some little remembrance of a day or two, or perhaps only an hour or two old; something she had said to him, something he had said to her of their love, or of love in general, was sufficient matter for an hour’s reflection.
