Death the Knight and the Lady/Chapter 12

ago I had been living in Crescent, living in a room with an old faded carpet on the floor, with one picture on the walls,—and such a picture, I can see it still, it was a German oleograph representing the Day of Judgment, and so badly done that the long trumpets seemed sticking in the sides of the angels' cheeks, not out of their mouths, and some of the devils, I remember, had their tails growing from the middle of their backs. The looking-glass made one look horrible, and the handles were off the chest of drawers, so one had to pull the drawers out with a crooked hairpin.

I minded the picture more than anything. Some girls would have grumbled at the chest of drawers, and never thought of the picture, but I have always loved beautiful things, so I suppose that is the reason why I grumbled so much at the picture and so little at the other thing.

You may think, then, how delightful it was next morning when I woke and saw the light filtering in through the rose-coloured blinds. I sat up in the bed and saw the glimmer of the great ivory hair brushes on the dressing-table. I saw my rings lying in a heap—I would never have had those rings only for Geraldine, I would never have been here, only for Geraldine, I might have been in the Thames, floating with dead cats and dogs by this, only for Geraldine. Then I fell back on the pillows, smothered with a strange kind of horror; it was strange, because it had no reason for being. It passed away slowly like a mist dissolving, and I lay looking up at the blue ceiling, with rosy clouds painted on it, and little Cupids peeping at each other from behind them. I pulled up the blinds of my window to look out; then I opened the sash.

It was an autumn morning, warm and dark, the wind of the night before had blown half dead leaves about the garden on which my window looked; it had rained in the night, and the air was full of the smell of dampness and decay, and a faint perfume like the bitter perfume of chrysanthemums; there was just enough wind to make the trees move their leaves about, and make a noise as if they were sighing. I love this autumn weather; I don't know why, perhaps it's just because I don't know why that I love it. That seems rubbish, but I am too lazy to scratch it out. It is just like autumn now as I sit writing this, though it is early spring, and the trees are all covered with little green buds, making ready for another autumn that I shall never see.

Then I dressed. I put on three dresses, one after another, and they all seemed not good enough; but I had no more fit for morning wear, so I left on the third.

Then I came down to breakfast, and I found only one place laid. I could have broken my plate over the old butler's head, but I didn't, and I can't for the life of me tell why I could have done it, or why I didn't do it. Breakfast proceeded in solemn silence.

"Would I have ham?"

No, I would not have ham! where was Geraldine?

Miss Geraldine breakfasted an hour ago alone in her wing of the house; Miss Geraldine sent her compliments, and wanted to know if I would visit her in her own rooms after I had finished breakfast.

He might take Miss Geraldine my compliments, and say that I would have much pleasure in doing so. He had better go at once. No, I required no more coffee.

He went.

Her compliments, indeed, and her wing of the house, I wonder why she didn't send her card. Yes, I would visit her just as often as I pleased—yet I would not if my visits didn't please. No, in that case I would drown myself in the moat, but there was no moat; well, in the big bath upstairs. And the way the old butler said, "Miss Geraldine" quite calmly, though he knows Miss Geraldine is a boy; and she is a boy, and she ought to be smacked for being such a prig. But why smack her when it's not her fault? No, it's James Wilder and the old butler that require smacking, and still—and still, these two old fools between them have produced, or helped to produce, this weird child, just as she is; and in all God's earth she is the most beautiful thing, and the most strange. She is like a thing made of mist, yet she is real; she is a ghost, yet one can touch her. What is she—what is he—who am I—I don't know—I don't want to know. Ha! I felt just then the claws of the little falcon pinching my wrist.

That was the jumbling kind of stuff that ran through my head as I breakfasted; then, when I had finished, instead of going at once to find Geraldine's wing of the house, I hung about the room looking at the pictures, putting off my visit just as a person puts off a bite at a peach. At last I came.

I seemed to know the way by instinct; there was no placard with "To Geraldine" on it, but I found Geraldine for all that. I crossed the hall and passed the picture gallery scarcely looking at the door. Then I lifted a heavy corded silk curtain, and found myself in a corridor. Upon my word, I thought I was in the Arabian Nights. Each side of the corridor was panelled, and on the cream white panels were painted flowers,—it was a regular flower-garden of painting. The roof was white, with coloured windows, each made in the shape of a fan. These stained glass fans were the prettiest things in the way of windows I had ever seen—so I thought. The corridor ended in a heavy curtain like the one at the other end; two doors stood on each side of the curtain. I chose the right hand door, for I guessed it belonged to the room she was in. I was right. I knocked. A voice cried, "Come in," and in I came.

Oh, this Geraldine! I must have seen her all askew last night, for now she seemed eight times lovelier than she was then. Who had taught this being the art of putting on dress? Surely not James Wilder or the old butler. This dress she wore was made from a fabric intended to represent the skin of some tropical lizard, scales of golden satin on a body-ground of dull emerald-coloured silk. She rose from her chair like a snake from a blanket. James Wilder, when he rose from a chair, always reminded me of a flail in a fit. Yet she was his son.

We said "Good morning," but we did not kiss. Something seemed to have come between us; we seemed instinctively to hold aloof from each other. The Geraldine who came up to me last night to be kissed, just as a tame fawn might have done, was not exactly the Geraldine of this morning. And yet I liked this something that had come between us. Kisses are just like apples; if you can get as many as you want they grow tasteless, and the more you pay for them the sweeter they seem, and they are never so sweet as when you steal them. I never heard of a farmer robbing his own orchard, have you?

Then this fine lady sank back into the chair from which she had arisen—it was not sitting down, it was sinking down—and with a ghostly smile resumed her work. And guess the work—tapestry. Tapestry; and she had done yards of it, when she ought to have been playing at marbles and learning to swear.

As for me, I sat down plump on a chair close by, crossed my legs, and nursed my knee with my hands. I felt inclined to whistle. Remember, I was thinking of her now as a boy in petticoats, and as long as I thought of her as that I was in my right senses, that is, my everyday senses. I felt perverse, just as I always feel, and would have liked to tease—only I wouldn't have dared—this half-absurd, wholly delightful production of old James Wilder. But when I thought of her as a girl I felt—I felt the dim remembrance of a past life, and an infinite sadness.

I looked round at the room; it looked like the inside of a shell. Fairies seemed to have furnished it. I never saw such exquisite things before. There were cabinets inlaid with copper on ebony, and Venice glass that seemed coloured with tints of the sea. A wood fire was burning on the tiled hearth, and a great bowl of violets stood on a table supported by carved dragons with jewels for eyes. The smell of the violets made me feel faint every now and then, but the faintness went away when I remembered this Geraldine was a boy. "Remember that," I kept repeating to myself. And in the middle of the room sat Geraldine.

The long French windows were open, and the garden, all damp and sad-coloured, lay outside. Great chrysanthemums, potted out, were nodding under the marble-coloured sky, and they all seemed nodding at Geraldine. When a hitch came in the thread Geraldine's under lip [sic] would pout out. I felt now and then as if I were acting in a play, and the chrysanthemums' faces were the faces of the audience. Perhaps they were. Anyhow, I had learnt my part very badly, so it seemed to me.

The tapestry was a great blessing; one could speak or not as one pleased, and I generally preferred—not. I fell to wondering does she remember anything of that hunting morning so long ago: does she remember the poison, has she forgiven the poisoner, and has God?

Then I began to talk to her again and she answered in a low measured voice that sounded to me like a bell from the far past, yet in spite of the ghostly kind of sadness with which her voice filled me, some of her answers made me laugh.

She didn't know how to read; that came out in the course of our scrappy conversation.

"But, Geraldine, why—you've never read your Bible, then?"

One might have thought from my tone that I was a shocked Sunday-school superintendent, and it really did seem shocking to me that a person should never have read the Bible.

"What is my Bible?" asked Geraldine, staring at me, half-frightened at my astonishment.

"Oh, it's a book. I'll tell you about it some other time, but—but you can't know Geography. Do you know where Japan is, Geraldine, or India?"

Geraldine's head shook. She looked dazed.

"Do you know where England is?"

Oh, yes, she knew where England was,—this house, this garden, all away beyond there, was England—all over there.

How proudly she waved the white hand. It was patriotism pure and simple. She was proud of her park, not because it was her park, but because it was her native land. Her—his—I cannot say "his," I must always say "her;" besides, it doesn't matter now. It will never matter again, nothing will ever matter again. What gibberish I am writing; how those trees nod and nod their heads as if they were nodding at the little graveyard "away over there," just as the chrysanthemums were nodding that morning at Geraldine.

She didn't know her Bible and she didn't know her Geography, and she didn't know "nothing." What a lot of ignorance was stowed away in that small head; but she knew something of natural history. The tapestry work had stopped, and we were walking in the little garden where the chrysanthemums were. I pointed to a snail on the path.

"What is that, Geraldine?"

"That," said Geraldine, "is a snail."

How proud she seemed of her knowledge, and how tenderly she lifted the snail on to a leaf. The clock in the clock-turret was striking noon.

"Can you read the clock, Geraldine?"

"Oh, yes, and my watch."

A watch the size of my thumb-nail was produced. How learned she was, really a kind of professor!

We walked down an alley of cypress trees without speaking, then we stopped, for the sound of a gong came roaring from the house.

It was the luncheon gong, so said Geraldine, and I suddenly woke up from a reverie to remember that I was not in the seventeenth but the nineteenth century.