could rise to the height for the time, the incandescent,
transcendent, moon-fierce womanhood. But alas, she could not stay
intensified and resplendent in her white, womanly powers, her
female mystery. She relaxed, she lost her glory, and became
fretful. Fretful and ill and never to be soothed. And then
naturally her man became ashy and somewhat acrid, while she ached
with nerves, and could not eat.
Of course she began to dream about Count Dionys: to yearn wistfully
for him. And it was absolutely a fatal thought to her that he was
going away. When she thought that--that he was leaving England
soon--going away into the dark for ever--then the last spark seemed
to die in her. She felt her soul perish, whilst she herself was
worn and soulless like a prostitute. A prostitute goddess. And
her husband, the gaunt, white, intensified priest of her, who never
ceased from being before her like a lust.
'Tomorrow,' she said to him, gathering her last courage and looking
at him with a side look, 'I want to go to Voynich Hall.'
'What, to see Count Psanek? Oh, good! Yes, very good! I'll come
along as well. I should like very much to see him. I suppose
he'll be getting sent back before long.'
It was a fortnight before Christmas, very dark weather. Her
husband was in khaki. She wore her black furs and a black lace
veil over her face, so that she seemed mysterious. But she lifted
the veil and looped it behind, so that it made a frame for her
face. She looked very lovely like that--her face pure like the
most white hellebore flower, touched with winter pink, amid the
blackness of her drapery and furs. Only she was rather too much
like the picture of a modern beauty: too much the actual thing.
She had half an idea that Dionys would hate her for her effective
loveliness. He would see it and hate it. The thought was like a
bitter balm to her. For herself, she loved her loveliness almost
with obsession.
The Count came cautiously forward, glancing from the lovely figure
of Lady Daphne to the gaunt well-bred Major at her side. Daphne
was so beautiful in her dark furs, the black lace of her veil
thrown back over her close-fitting, dull-gold-threaded hat, and her
face fair like a winter flower in a cranny of darkness. But on her
face, that was smiling with a slow self-satisfaction of beauty and
of knowledge that she was dangling the two men, and setting all the
imprisoned officers wildly on the alert, the Count could read that
acridity of dissatisfaction and of inefficiency. And he looked
away to the livid scar on the Major's cheek.
'Count Dionys, I wanted to bring my husband to see you. May I
introduce him to you? Major Apsley--Count Dionys Psanek.'
The two men shook hands rather stiffly.
'I can sympathize with you being fastened up in this place,' said
Basil in his slow, easy fashion. 'I hated it, I assure you, out
there in the East.'
'But your conditions were much worse than mine,' smiled the Count.
'Well, perhaps they were. But prison is prison, even if it were
heaven itself.'
'Lady Apsley has been the one angel of my heaven,' smiled the
Count.
'I'm afraid I was as inefficient as most angels,' said she.
The small smile never left the Count's dark face. It was true as
she said, he was low-browed, the black hair growing low on his
brow, and his eyebrows making a thick bow above his dark eyes,
which had again long black lashes. So that the upper part of his
face seemed very dusky-black. His nose was small and somewhat
translucent. There was a touch of mockery about him, which was
intensified even by his small, energetic stature. He was still
carefully dressed in the dark-blue uniform, whose shabbiness could
not hinder the dark flame of life which seemed to glow through the
cloth from his body. He was not thin--but still had a curious
swarthy translucency of skin in his low-browed face.
'What would you have been more?' he laughed, making equivocal dark
eyes at her.
'Oh, of course, a delivering angel--a cinema heroine,' she replied,
closing her eyes and turning her face aside.
All the while the white-faced, tall Major watched the little man
with a fixed, half-smiling scrutiny. The Count seemed to notice.
He turned to the Englishman.
'I am glad that I can congratulate you, Major Apsley, on your safe
and happy return to your home.'
'Thanks. I hope I may be able to congratulate you in the same way
before long.'
'Oh yes,' said the Count. 'Before long I shall be shipped back.'
'Have you any news of your family?' interrupted Daphne.
'No news,' he replied briefly, with sudden gravity.
'It seems you'll find a fairish mess out in Austria,' said Basil.
'Yes, probably. It is what we had to expect,' replied the Count.
'Well, I don't know. Sometimes things do turn out for the best. I
feel that's as good as true in my case,' said the Major.
'Things have turned out for the best?' said the Count, with an
intonation of polite inquiry.
'Yes. Just for me personally, I mean--to put it quite selfishly.
After all, what we've learned is that a man can only speak for
himself. And I feel it's been dreadful, but it's not been lost.
It was like an ordeal one had to go through,' said Basil.
'You mean the war?'
'The war and everything that went with it.'
'And when you've been through the ordeal?' politely inquired the
Count.
'Why, you arrive at a higher state of consciousness, and therefore
of life. And so, of course, at a higher plane of love. A
surprisingly higher plane of love, that you had never suspected the
existence of before.'
The Count looked from Basil to Daphne, who was posing her head a
little self-consciously.
'Then indeed the war has been a valuable thing,' he said.
'Exactly!' cried Basil. 'I am another man.'
'And Lady Apsley?' queried the Count.
'Oh'--her husband faced round to her--'she is ABSOLUTELY another
woman--and MUCH more wonderful, more marvellous.'
The Count smiled and bowed slightly.
'When we knew her ten years ago, we should have said then that it
was impossible,' said he, 'for her to be more wonderful.'
'Oh, quite!' returned the husband. 'It always seems impossible.
And the impossible is always happening. As a matter of fact, I
think the war has opened another circle of life to us--a wider
ring.'
'It may be so,' said the Count.
'You don't feel it so yourself?' The Major looked with his keen,
white attention into the dark, low-browed face of the other man.
The Count looked smiling at Daphne.
'I am only a prisoner still, Major, therefore I feel my ring quite
small.'
'Yes, of course you do. Of course. Well, I do hope you won't be a
prisoner much longer. You must be dying to get back into your own
country.'
'Yes, I shall be glad to be free. Also,' he smiled. 'I shall miss
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my prison and my visits from the angels.'
Even Daphne could not be sure he was mocking her. It was evident
the visit was unpleasant to him. She could see he did not like
Basil. Nay, more, she could feel that the presence of her tall,
gaunt, idealistic husband was hateful to the little swarthy man.
But he passed it all off in smiles and polite speeches.
On the other hand, Basil was as if fascinated by the Count. He
watched him absorbedly all the time, quite forgetting Daphne. She
knew this. She knew that she was quite gone out of her husband's
consciousness, like a lamp that has been carried away into another
room. There he stood completely in the dark, as far as she was
concerned, and all his attention focused on the other man. On his
pale, gaunt face was a fixed smile of amused attention.
'But don't you get awfully bored,' he said, 'between the visits?'
The Count looked up with an affection of frankness.
'No, I do not,' he said. 'I can brood, you see, on the things that
come to pass.'
'I think that's where the harm comes in,' replied the Major. 'One
sits and broods, and is cut off from everything, and one loses
one's contact with reality. That's the effect it had on me, being
a prisoner.'
'Contact with reality--what is that?'
'Well--contact with anybody, really--or anything.'
'Why must one have contact?'
'Well, because one must,' said Basil.
The Count smiled slowly.
'But I can sit and watch fate flowing, like black water, deep down
in my own soul,' he said. 'I feel that there, in the dark of my
own soul, things are happening.'
'That may be. But whatever happens, it is only one thing, really.
It is a contact between your own soul and the soul of one other
being, or of many other beings. Nothing else can happen to man.
That's how I figured it out for myself. I may be wrong. But
that's how I figured it out when I was wounded and a prisoner.'
The Count's face had gone dark and serious.
'But is this contact an aim in itself?' he asked.
'Well'--said the Major--he had taken his degree in philosophy--'it
seems to me it is. It results inevitably in some form of activity.
But the cause and the origin and the life-impetus of all action,
activity, whether constructive or destructive, seems to me to be in
the dynamic contact between human beings. You bring to pass a
certain dynamic contact between men, and you get war. Another sort
of dynamic contact, and you get them all building a cathedral, as
they did in the Middle Ages.'
'But was not the war, or the cathedral, the real aim, and the
emotional contact just the means?' said the Count.
'I don't think so,' said the Major, his curious white passion
beginning to glow through his face. The three were seated in a
little card-room, left alone by courtesy by the other men. Daphne
was still draped in her dark, too-becoming drapery. But alas, she
sat now ignored by both men. She might just as well have been an
ugly little nobody, for all the notice that was taken of her. She
sat in the window-seat of the dreary small room with a look of
discontent on her exotic, rare face, that was like a delicate white
and pink hot-house flower. From time to time she glanced with
long, slow looks from man to man: from her husband, whose pallid,
intense, white glowing face was pressed forward across the table to
the Count, who sat back in his chair, as if in opposition, and
whose dark face seemed clubbed together in a dark, unwilling stare.
Her husband was QUITE unaware of anything but his own white
identity. But the Count still had a grain of secondary
consciousness which hovered round and remained aware of the woman
in the window-seat. The whole of his face, and his forward-looking
attention was concentrated on Basil. But somewhere at the back of
him he kept track of Daphne. She sat uneasy, in discontent, as
women always do sit when men are locked together in a combustion of
words. At the same time, she followed the argument. It was
curious that, while her sympathy at this moment was with the Count,
it was her husband whose words she believed to be true. The
contact, the emotional contact was the real thing, the so-called
'aim' was only a by-product. Even wars and cathedrals, in her
mind, were only by-products. The real thing was what the warriors
and cathedral-builders had had in common, as a great uniting
feeling: the thing they felt for one another, and for their women
in particular, of course.
'There are a great many kinds of contact, nevertheless,' said
Dionys.
'Well, do you know,' said the Major, 'it seems to me there is
really only one supreme contact, the contact of love. Mind you,
the love may take on an infinite variety of forms. And in my
opinion, no form of love is wrong, so long as it IS love, and you
yourself HONOUR what you are doing. Love has an extraordinary
variety of forms! And that is all that there is in life, it seems
to me. But I grant you, if you deny the VARIETY of love you deny
love altogether. If you try to specialize love into one set of
accepted feelings, you wound the very soul of love. Love MUST be
multiform, else it is just tyranny, just death.'
'But why call it all LOVE?' said the Count.
'Because it seems to me it IS love: the great power that draws
human beings together, no matter what the result of the contact may
be. Of course there is hate, but hate is only the recoil of love.'
'Do you think the old Egypt was established on love?' asked Dionys.
'Why, of course! And perhaps the most multiform, the most
comprehensive love that the world has seen. All that we suffer
from now is that our way of love is narrow, exclusive, and
therefore not love at all; more like death and tyranny.'
The Count slowly shook his head, smiling slowly and as if sadly.
'No,' he said. 'No. It is no good. You must use another word
than love.'
'I don't agree at all,' said Basil.
'What word then?' blurted Daphne.
The Count looked at her.
'Obedience, submission, faith, belief, responsibility, power,' he
said slowly, picking out the words slowly, as if searching for what
he wanted, and never quite finding it. He looked with his quiet
dark eyes into her eyes. It was curious, she disliked his words
intensely, but she liked him. On the other hand, she believed
absolutely what her husband said, yet her physical sympathy was
against him.
'Do you agree, Daphne?' asked Basil.
'Not a bit,' she replied, with a heavy look at her husband.
'Nor I,' said Basil. 'It seems to me, if you love, there is no
obedience nor submission, except to the soul of love. If you mean
obedience, submission, and all the rest, to the soul of love
itself, I quite agree. But if you mean obedience, submission of
one person to another, and one man having power over others--I
don't agree, and never shall. It seems to
me just there where we
have gone wrong. Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted power--'
'No, no,' said the Count. 'He was a mountebank. He had no
conception of the sacredness of power.'
'He proved himself very dangerous.'
'Oh yes. But peace can be even more dangerous still.'
'Tell me, then. Do you believe that you, as an aristocrat, should
have feudal power over a few hundreds of other men, who happen to
be born serfs, or not aristocrats?'
'Not as a hereditary aristocrat, but as a MAN who is by nature an
aristocrat,' said the Count, 'it is my sacred duty to hold the
lives of other men in my hands, and to shape the issue. But I can
never fulfil my destiny till men will willingly put their lives in
my hands.'
'You don't expect them to, do you?' smiled Basil.
'At this moment, no.'
'Or at any moment!' The Major was sarcastic.
'At a certain moment the men who are really living will come
beseeching to put their lives into the hands of the greater men
among them, beseeching the greater men to take the sacred
responsibility of power.'
'Do you think so? Perhaps you mean men will at last begin to
choose leaders whom they will LOVE,' said Basil. 'I wish they
would.'
'No, I mean that they will at last yield themselves before men who
are greater than they: become vassals by choice.'
'Vassals!' exclaimed Basil, smiling. 'You are still in the feudal
ages, Count.'
'Vassals. Not to any hereditary aristocrat--Hohenzollern or
Hapsburg or Psanek,' smiled the Count. 'But to the man whose soul
is born single, able to be alone, to choose and to command. At
last the masses will come to such men and say: "You are greater
than we. Be our lords. Take our life and our death in your hands,
and dispose of us according to your will. Because we see a light
in your face, and burning on your mouth."'
The Major smiled for many moments, really piqued and amused,
watching the Count, who did not turn a hair.
'I say, you must be awfully naive, Count, if you believe the modern
masses are ever going to behave like that. I assure you, they
never will.'
'If they did,' said the Count, 'would you call it a new reign of
love, or something else?'
'Well, of course, it would contain an element of love. There would
have to be an element of love in their feeling for their leaders.'
'Do you think so? I thought that love assumed an equality in
difference. I thought that love gave to every man the right to
judge the acts of other men--"This was not an act of love,
therefore it was wrong." Does not democracy, and love, give to
every man this right?'
'Certainly,' said Basil.
'Ah, but my chosen aristocrat would say to those who chose him:
"If you choose me, you give up forever your right to judge me. If
you have truly chosen to follow me, you have thereby rejected all
your right to criticize me. You can no longer either approve or
disapprove of me. You have performed the sacred act of choice.
Henceforth you can only obey."'
'They wouldn't be able to help criticizing, for all that,' said
Daphne, blurting in her say.
He looked at her slowly, and for the first time in her life she was
doubtful of what she was saying.
'The day of Judas,' he said, 'ends with the day of love.'
Basil woke up from a sort of trance.
'I think, of course, Count,' he said, 'that it's an awfully amusing
idea. A retrogression slap back to the Dark Ages.'
'Not so,' said the Count. 'Men--the mass of men--were never before
free to perform the sacred act of choice. Today--soon--they may be
free.'
'Oh, I don't know. Many tribes chose their kings and chiefs.'