A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02 (16 page)

'Behaved as if you didn't.'

'OI shall always do that. Do you mind?'

‘I
think I prefer it,' Mary said, and her foot touched his under the table. 'We must be careful what we say. (Don't look round)—the gentleman behind you, with not one blade of hair on him: I'm a great puzzle to him. I'm sure this will make him draw the worst conclusions. A German gentleman, I think. He was in the train two days ago, coming up from Bozen. Had a curious stammer, and every time he stammered he spat. His wife has quite decided I'm the scarlet woman: shameless English hussy gadding about like this alone.'

The elder of the girls brought Lessingham's coffee:
'And
a large cup,' she said, putting it down with a flourish.

'What a memory you have, Paula!'

'O well, but some things one remembers.'

'Are we to have the schuhplattler dance to-night?' said Mary. 'You and Andreas? I expect you've got all the steps now?'

The girl laughed. To-morrow, it may be. To-night, no, no. To-night, some dancers from Vienna. We do not like them. But father say they can come once.'

'Why don't you like them?'

Paula screwed up her nose and shook herself. 'They are not as should be,' she said. Too saucy.—I must get you some more butter: some more honey.' She went about it, direct as a water-hen hastens across a lawn to fetch food for its young.

'Herr Birkel is a pet,' said Mary. Tearful excitement when I arrived. Took my hand in both his. "Welcome,
My Lady.
You are taller, I think, than ever."—and then, ever so confidential and intense—
"And
prettier!"'

‘
Perfectly true. Even in ten days.'

‘
Ten days! It seems like ten months. Or,—some ways, —ten minutes.—You look very spry and wide awake after your all-night journey.'

'Slept my berserk sleep out at Waidbruck: thirty-one hours solid. Hadn't had a wink for five nights. Woke up about midnight: dined, or rather breakfasted, on soup, an omelette, Wiener schnitzel, a bit of Hansl and Gretl cake, red wine, coffee: made them produce a chariot: and here I am.'

'I was so glad of your telegram,' said Mary. 'So all went well in Paris?'

'In the end. Only way—wear them down. Thing wanted tidying up: two years now since poor Fred went, and still hanging about with loose ends. So I just had to hold their noses to it till they signed what I wanted: just to get rid of me. Quite as amusing as fighting the Bulgarians. Much more amusing than Berlin in nineteen-twelve.—Hullo, who's this?'—as a tiny white kitten clambered up the wooden balustrade and so onto Mary's lap.

'Mitzi,' said she, handing it across the table to Lessingham.
^‘
—The fact is, you like to be in charge.'

‘I
wrote to your father from Paris as soon as the thing was through; and to Jim, as your trustee. Told him there's two sums of twelve hundred thousand to go into trust: one under our marriage settlement, the other for you personally. Together, about a third of the whole. That's in case some day I go crazy with all this money business: take to high finance and burn my fingers. Do you think it's some Jew blood coming out?'

Mary smiled. "There's never any telling! The Medici blood, reason enough, I should think.'

'Sounds nicer. Still, if it has the same effect? You know, I wouldn't really like to spend my life money-grubbing.

Not really,' Lessingham said, holding up the kitten in his right hand where it sat as if in an armchair, and bringing it nearer and nearer to his face. 'Not really, really, really.' Mitzi, as if mesmerized, kept very still, staring at him out of eyes of that dawn-like blue that belongs to the eyes of little kittens; then, when he was near enough, put out a hesitating velvety paw to touch Lessingham on the cheek. 'Have we the same room as then?' 'Haven't you been to look?'

'Do you think I'd waste time on that, when they told me you were on the terrace?'

'Well, we have,' she said. 'And your dressing-room next door.'

'Do they blow the horn still at half past six, for them to open the doors for the beasts to go out to pasture?' 'Yes.'And one microscopic child to drive them!' 'Want your wuzz again?'

She held out both hands: took the little creature. Lessingham lighted a cigar. They said no more for a few minutes; using perhaps the mountains, and the village life about them, and the bodily sight of each other sitting there, as a directer medium than overt speech.

After a while, he spoke. 'Have you ever felt double inside?'

'No,' she answered, upon a note part mocking part caressing in her voice, as though 'No' were washed with honey-water.

'One half all
Ambitioso:
set the whole world to rights and enslave mankind. The other half, all
Lussurioso
and
Supervacuo:
makes me want to abduct you to some undiscovered south sea-island of the blest, and there, paint, write, live on sweetmeats: spend the whole course of everlasting time in the moving and melancholy meditation that man's life is as unlasting as a flower. Instead of either of which,' he said, getting up from the. table, 'how about taking our lunch up to the Sella Pass?'

Doctor Vandermast, a learned man, present secretary and foretime tutor to the Duke of Zayana, was walking at break of day under Memison, by a trodden path southeastward along the lake's edge, a mile or so on the way toward Reisma. It was between three and four o'clock: the twentieth morning after that secret master-stroke of the King's in Rerek. Reisma Mere, smooth like polished steel, spread to cool distances veiled in mist. Water, meadow-land, oakwood and beechwood and birch and far-off mountain ranges showed as but varying depths of that indeterminate grey, having a tremulousness within it as of awakening blue, which filled the whole sky. Only in the north-east the great peaks began to shape themselves to a gradual crystalline sharpness and to take on a more cold and azured tinge as the sky behind them became streaked with saffron, and at length, above the saffron, one or two little clouds (invisible till now) began to show purple, and to burn underneath with fire of gold. A delicate primrose-coloured light began to infuse all the east and to mirror itself in the still lake; and now, for first voice of day, the cuckoo replied to the owl's last hoot. The learned doctor, alone with, the moment while other mortals slept, stayed it by his art: made it, as he walked, tarry for him awhile to his more perfect satisfaction and enjoyment.

He had years on his back four score. And yet, being spare of build as a dragon-fly, all eyes and leanness, he carried himself erect and without old age's infirmity. Hollowed with thought were his eye-sockets under their bristling eaves, and wan and lanked with thought was his cheek, but not to take away the fire-edge of that spirit which burned in his eyes. His white beard fell to his girdle. He was clad in a flowing gaberdine, ginger colour, and upon his head a scarlet bonnet of linsey-woolsey. Suffering, by his art, time to resume its course, he paused at a footbridge across
a stream that, grown up with wa
terweeds, barely trickled toward the lake. Under the further bank, where a thicket of alder overhung that stream, was a water-rat, sitting in a ball, holding in her little hands a bit of weed and eating it prettily, like a squirrel. The doctor bade her 'Good morrow, mouse'; and she, with a shy glance of beady black eyes set in her round head between small short rounded ears, greeted him again, in a tiny reed-like voice but with human speech.

'Where is Madam Anthea?' said the doctor.

'She passed by this way, reverend sir, about midnight on her way to the snows. Frighted me, me being in this dress and she in her teeth and claws.'

'What, frighted of your sister? How shall we call this, but the most gross unknowing of God? She could not hurt you, my Campaspe, even if she would.'

'It is not fit she should come in her dresses when I am in mine. Hers are too rough: mine, so easily torn.'

'You can take your true shape.'

‘I
like my little dresses. One must play and be merry a little: not duty and service all the time.' She whisked across from the weedy raft she had rested on and so up the bank, and sat there washing her face and ears. 'O we are all in our humours: grown a little restless, as you may conceive, sir, with all these doings.'

Under Vandermast's nose the little nymphish creature changed in the twinkling of an eye her fur dress for feathers: for the silk-smooth brownish green dress, creaming to greenish buff in the under-parts, of a peg-gy-whitethroat: fluttered her wings, and was gone. From a hiding-place among the branches she ran him a descant, sweet falling notes of her woodland warble. His eye followed the sound to a flicker in the alderleaves; and there she was with her eyebrows. 'There's been double-dealings of late,' she said; 'where neither of them had seen the other, nor none of them knew other's person, nor knew of other's coming.' She hopped from twig to twig; daintily picked an insect or two. 'Tell me, who is this King then? And this son of his, this Duke?'

'That question', said Vandermast, 'raiseth problems of high dubitation: a problem
de natura substantiarum;
a
problem of selfn
ess. Lieth not in man to resolve it, save so far as to peradventures, and by guess-work.'

'And what is your guess?' She perched now in the tip-most leaves of the alder, bobbing and flirting her tail, looking down at him.

'You must be content with your own guesses, my little lovebird: I with mine.'

'Why?'

She paused on the spray a moment; then flew down into the grass before his feet. 'Well, I will tell you my guess so far,' she said: 'that they are one and the same, even as She in Her shapes in one and the same; and yet other. And this world his world: even as it is the King's. And by Her giving.'

All the whole arch of day above them widened and rose moment by moment to new infinitudes of dawn-washed golden light. That old man resumed his walk, slowly onward.

She flew after him: settled on his finger. 'Shall I take my true shape?'

'As you please. But you are very well suited thus.'

'But I long to do as shall please you. You are so strange in your likes and dislikes. Why are you so?'

'Well,' said Vandermast smiling, 'you must remember, for one thing, I am very orderly in years.'

'Do you choose, then.'

‘
Your little dresses? there's none prettier, I trunk, than my water-rat.'

She ran along his sleeve to the crook of his elbow and sat there eyeing him, while she washed her face with her paws. 'Why?'

'In these matters, is but one answer why.'

'Our Lady? She likes me thus?'

'Surely.'

'She likes me all ways. We are part of Her empiredom. Is it not so?'

'Please Her,' said the learned doctor, 'it is so.'

'There was a word in your mouth the other day:
deificatio.
What is that?'

'It is,' answered the doctor, 'a term of art, signifying a condition we can sooner imagine than understand: the fusing and merging of God and the soul into each other,'

'Why?' The mouse-like hand and arm of Campaspe, suddenly in her own shape now, gloved to the elbow with soft brown leather that gave out a sharp odour of water-plants under a hot sun, rested light as air on his sleeve. Her grown of pale satin wrought all over with carnation silk made, as she walked, little summer-noises as of wind coming and going among reeds and willows. 'Why?'

Vandermast smiled and shook his head. 'Naiad: dryad,' he began to say, slowly: 'hamadryad: oread: nymphs of the woods and of gentle waters and of the kinless mountain, what can you learn by me? For you know all that is needful to know: know it as to the knowing born, without knowin
g that you know it: knowing it
from within. Whereas I, th
at am but a looker on from with
outward—'

Campaspe looked up into his face with her bead-like eyes. 'But who are you, then?' she said, and her hand tightened on his arm.

As from a window in the clouds a shaft of sunlight passes over the cold sea, so seemed for a moment the thought-furrowed lean countenance of Vandermast. 'I am, I suppose,' answered he, 'an old man that am yet in love with youth.'

‘I
had not thought of youth. Why with youth?' she said. 'What is youth?'

But that learned philosopher, armed with so questionable a she-disciple, but came his way in silence.

Mary, walking ahead up the pass (a practice grounded, by tacit agreement, in two sufficient reasons: to feed the eyes behind her, and to leave it to her to set the pace), paused now in the shortening shadow of a pine. They were by this time come up a thousand feet from the floor of the valley, to where the hollow mountain side is a maze of hills and dells, with wide turfy stretches starred all over with flowers, and on every hand little watercourses: some alive with beck or waterfall, some but dry beds where water comes down after rain. And at every turn, with the winding upwards of that intermittent and stony path, the cliffs of the Sella constantly changed their aspect, lying back in ever more and more forced distortions of perspective as the way led nearer their roots, and thrusting up in succession ever a fresh spur of foot-stool to eclipse by its nearness the loftier summits behind it, and, in
a
vast illusion of instability, lean out from the body of the mountain. Under the gathering power of the sun the whole hillside was alive with grass-hoppers both great and small, taking hither and thither their low criss-cross flights, some with scarlet wings some with orange some with blue, and filling the air with the hot metallic thrill of their chirping. Lessingham, halting a few paces below her in the open, shaded his eyes to see her where she stood looking upwards to the thin roof made by the pine-tree fronds. Air stirred in the branches, sending ever changing tesselated patterns of white sunshine and amethystine luminous shadow across Mary's upturned face: her beautiful fire-red hair, done in the beautiful Austrian way, gleamed where the sun caught it, like polished metal; and every loose tendril floating on the air was at one instant invisible, the next instant a trembling of flame.