For the Blood Is the Life. Francis Marion Crawford

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the cliffs, lie three tiny islands, green in the short spring months, but parched and brown in summer, dark and dangerous in the stormy winter. They are the isles of the Sirens; past them once sailed the mighty wanderer, bound to the mast of his long black ship, listening with delight and dread to the song of the sea-women, his heart beating fast and his blood on fire with the wild strains of their music. Ligeia and Leucosia and Parthenope are not dead, though they plucked the flowers with Persephone, and though the Muses outrivalled them in harmony and Orpheus vanquished them in song. Still, in calm nights, when the waning moon climbs slowly over the distant hills of the Basilicata, her trembling light falls on the marble limbs and the snowy feathers, the rich wet hair and the passionate dark eyes of the three maidens, and across the lapping waves their voices ring out in a wild, despairing harmony of longdrawn complaint. But when the storm rises and the hot south wind dashes the water into whirlpools and drives clouds of warm spray into the crevices of the islets, the sisters slip from the wet rocks and hide themselves in the cool depths below, where is perpetual calm and a dwelling not fathomed by man. But man visits the shore and the islands too, from time to time, though he rarely stays long. It is too unlike what man is accustomed to, too far removed from the sphere of the modern world's life, to be a sympathetic resting-place for most of our kind. Hither people come in yachts, or upon skinny donkeys from Sorrento, or in little open boats rowed by lazy fishermen; and they gaze and say that it is very classic, and they go away with their cheap impressions and tell their friends that it is hardly worth while after all. That is what everybody does. My tale concerns a little party of persons, not absolutely like every one else, who one day said to each other that it would be possible to live among those wild rocks, and that they believed themselves sufficiently interesting to each other to live a life of temporary exile in an inaccessible region. Such a resolution must'at once brand those who entered upon it with the stamp of eccentricity, with the Cain's mark which society abhors, and it is necessary to say something of the circumstances which led those four persons to determine upon so desperate a course.

      Three of the settlers were young. The fourth was older by some years than any of the rest, but possessed that quality of youth which defies time and, especially, that little moiety of time which we call age. The party then, consisted of a man and his wife, of his mother-in-law and his sister. By the silly calculations of social humanity they ought to have quarrelled. As a matter of fact they did not. This was the first step towards eccentricity, and it can only be explained by an honest and dispassionate description of the four persons.

      Lady Brenda was five and forty years of age — with extenuating circumstances. A German wag once remarked that money alone does not constitute happiness, but that it is also necessary to possess some of it. So years alone do not make age unless one has some of the ills which age brings. No woman has any right to be old at five and forty, but it may be questioned whether at five and forty any woman has a right to be taken for her daughter's sister. Lady Brenda was in some respects the youngest of the party; for she had been young when youth was regarded as an agreeable period of life, and she had brought her traditions with her. In appearance she was of medium height but of faultless figure, slender and rounded as a girl. Her complexion was of the kind produced by avoiding cosmetics. Her thick brown hair grew low upon her forehead and was not supplemented by any artful arrangement of other women's tresses among her own. Her features were very straight, and her large, bright blue eyes, rather deep-set but wide apart, met everything frankly and surveyed the world with an air of radiant satisfaction which was as contagious as her own humour. She moved quickly, laughed easily and felt sincerely the emotions of the hour. Her voice was so fresh and ringing that people liked to listen to it, and the things she said were generally to the point. The basis of her mind was an intuitive comprehension of what was best to be done and said in the manifold situations in which she might find herself placed. Logic she had none, but she arrived at perfectly just conclusions by methods of thought which seemed absurdly illogical. As a matter of fact she did not really arrive at conclusions at all, but having determined a priori what she intended to believe, she thought any argument good enough to support that of which she was already convinced. On the other hand her experience of people was immense, and she understood human nature marvellously well. She had lived in every capital of Europe and had found herself at home everywhere, received into the intimacy of a society exclusive to all other strangers, and she had gathered a vast mass of anecdote and experience, by turns startling, tragic, dramatic and comic which would have sufficed to fill many deeply interesting volumes. With all this, she was a little tired of the great world and had gladly accepted her son-in law's invitation to pass a year in the south of Italy. Lady Brenda's only daughter had been married to Augustus Chard two years before this time, and had presented her husband with a baby which was universally declared' to be at all points the most extraordinary baby ever born, seen, or heard of. Mrs. Chard's name was Gwendoline. Lady Brenda, in the secrecy of her own heart, knew that the combination of names, "Gwendoline Chard," made her think of a race-horse charging into a brick wall. Otherwise she liked her son-in-law very much. The Chards adored each other when they were married, which is usual; but they continued to adore each other after marriage, which is not. There were many reasons why their lives should be harmonious, however, for they were a pair well assorted to live together. Gwendoline differed from her mother in that she had dark eyes, and that her hair was of a reddish gold colour full of magnificent lights. Her skin was paler than her mother's, and her figure, perfectly proportioned and well designed, was a little slighter.

      She was an inch taller than Lady Brenda and carried her beautiful head erect upon her shoulders with an air of dignity beyond her years. Gwendoline was a woman who thought much and who generally decided beforehand exactly what she wanted. When she had decided, she proceeded to obtain her wish, and when she had got it, she was perfectly satisfied. These qualities placed her entirely beyond the pale of ordinary humanity. Her feelings were strong and deep, and her nature was noble and elevated; her wishes were therefore good, and for good things. Though young, she had travelled much and had seen much that was interesting. Gwendoline's principal taste was for music, an art in which she attained to great excellence, for her playing was original, passionate and artistic. As has been said, she worshipped her husband, who in his turn adored her. She could not deny that he held highly original views upon most points, and that his ideas about things in general were a trifle startling, but he had a way of making himself appear to be right which was very convincing to any one who was already disposed to be of his opinion. Lady Brenda was very fond of Augustus Chard, but considered him more than half a visionary; Gwendoline on the other hand was willing to spend her time in helping him to demonstrate that all existing things and conditions of things, with the exception of domestic felicity, were arrant humbug.

      Augustus used to say that the taste for the visionary ran in his family. His sister, who had joined the party, illustrated the truth of his statement. Diana Chard had the temperament of a poet with the mind of a lawyer. Philosophy may be defined to mean the poetry of logic, and accordingly Diana's nature had led her to the study of philosophy. She had read enormously, and she argued keenly with a profound knowledge of her subject. But the hypothesis generally belonged to the transcendental region of thought, where, as the problems proposed are beyond the sphere of all possible experience, the discussion also may be prolonged beyond the bounds of all possible time. She enjoyed the pleasure of argument much more than the hope of solution; and life never seemed dull when she could discuss the immortality of the soul with an unbeliever, or the existence of the supernatural with a well-trained and thoroughly prejudiced materialist. She was moreover a musician, and an accomplished one, like her sister-in-law, but her playing differed so entirely from Gwendoline's that no one thought of comparing the two. Each was perfect in her own way; but each raised entirely different trains of thought in her hearers.

      Of the three ladies Diana was the tallest. She was very slender and very graceful, slow and even languid in her movements, but animated in her speech. Her skin was very dark and pale, her hair abundant and of a dark brown colour, her eyes, a deep grey with strongly marked eyebrows and black lashes; her mouth large and expressive, smiling, easily and showing very beautiful teeth.

      Last of the four to be described is Augustus Chard. Imagine a big, well-knit man of bronzed complexion, with colourless hair, neither fair nor brown, averagesized blue eyes set very deep under an overhanging forehead, СКАЧАТЬ