The Purple Cloud
Page 55
Bailli's _bureau_: and in one I read the poem, which iscalled 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and thedescription good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownishgloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either palloror blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horrorof man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determinedthat she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book,and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she wasdoing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number ofprints called _La Mode_, and _debris_ of snipped cloth, and medley.When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself,'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took herdown through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, withrevolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some officialor cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon,the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale ofcruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heardwith a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow.
'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her faceat the same time reddened with indignation.
'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising ifmonsters were cruel.'
And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with anew-born smile.
'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she.
'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--'
'That was good of them,' says she.
'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.'
'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'ifthose who set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, whatwould they have been at a time when all the lest were kind? They wouldhave been just like Angels....!'
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At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, bothfor her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passedwhich did not find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon,Ouchy, Vevay, Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages,townlets, or towns, that crowd the shores, all very pretty places, eachwith its charm, and mostly I went on foot, though the railway runs rightround the forty odd miles of the lake's length. One noon-day I waswalking through the main-street of Vevay going on to the Cully-road whenI had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in front of me to the right Iheard a sound--an unmistakable indication of life--as of clatteringmetals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was conscious ofbecoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I stoleup to the open door--peeped in--and it was she standing on the counterof a jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over atray of jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. Iwent _'Hoh!'_ for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, wewere very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walkingtogether by vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she justlike a creature crazy that day with the bliss of living, rolling ingrasses and perilous flowery declines, stamping her foot defiantly atme, arrogant queen that she is, and then running like mad for me tocatch her, with laughter, _abandon_, carolling railleries, and thelevity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flunghair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passagethrough Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flamingdarts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the innersecret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs ofwhite-hot honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much forme, and made me sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deepworld of things? And at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silentlymotioned her from me, for I was dumb, and weak, and I left her there:and all that long night her power was upon me, for she is stronger thangravitation, which may be evaded, and than all the forces of lifecombined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are nothing comparedwith her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in the air, orlike a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me tobreathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay onthat grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night,like a man sore wounded, biting the grass.
What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes sincecoming to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herselfmade some of her dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a numberof coloured fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or shemay have been only modifying finished things from the shops, for herWestern dressing is not quite like what I remember of the modern femalestyle, but is really, I should say, quite her own, rather resembling theGreek, or the eighteenth century. At any rate, the airs and graces areas natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she has changes like themoon; never twice the same, and always transcending her last phase andrevelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom _taste_ wasa faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like smellingor sight--more like _smelling_: for it is the faculty, half Reason, halfImagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suitexquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received theimpression of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: thespecial quality of works of Art being to produce the momentaryconviction that anything else whatever could not possibly be so good.
Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond thedrawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably,training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller thanbefore. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation betweenus more complete than it might have been; and especially after that daybetween Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more Isaw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself likesachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with goldfillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumedEuropean dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, Godknows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted andgroaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my mannerof life and thought might once more now have been called modern andWestern.
All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to dayit seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstratewithin me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared tomenace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, andher, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so greata thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--aversatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in myfiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers.
Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-westof Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentianfield, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Chateau one day inthe third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned acorner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the airabove the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed:for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could seenothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came tothe conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almostcertainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the stringin the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail'of old.
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But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chieflylived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_,she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreuxpleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling andvarnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hersrather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It w
as nouncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from aseven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake andall its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorousand despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight,a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll itstransformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as thegoat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was madevery ill by a two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in herskiff, I being at the Chateau, and she did not come back; and while shewas away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean,and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacantdays of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set outupon a wild-goose quest, of her--of