The Ladybird

  This was Daphne's home, where she had been born. She loved it with

  an ache of affection. But now it was hard to forget her dead

  brothers. She wandered about in the sun, with two old dogs padding

  after her. She talked with everybody--gardener, groom, stableman,

  with the farm-hands. That filled a large part of her life--

  straying round talking with the work-people. They were, of course,

  respectful to her--but not at all afraid of her. They knew she was

  poor, that she could not afford a car, nor anything. So they

  talked to her very freely: perhaps a little too freely. Yet she

  let it be. It was her one passion at Thoresway to hear the

  dependants talk and talk--about everything. The curious feeling of

  intimacy across a breach fascinated her. Their lives fascinated

  her: what they thought, what they FELT. These, what they felt.

  That fascinated her. There was a gamekeeper she could have loved--

  an impudent, ruddy-faced, laughing, ingratiating fellow; she could

  have loved him, if he had not been isolated beyond the breach of

  his birth, her culture, her consciousness. Her CONSCIOUSNESS

  seemed to make a great gulf between her and the lower classes, the

  unconscious classes. She accepted it as her doom. She could never

  meet in real contact anyone but a super-conscious, finished being

  like herself: or like her husband. Her father had some of the

  unconscious blood-warmth of the lower classes. But he was like a

  man who is damned. And the Count, of course. The Count had

  something that was hot and invisible, a dark flame of life that

  might warm the cold white fire of her own blood. But--

  They avoided each other. All three, they avoided one another.

  Basil, too, went off alone. Or he immersed himself in poetry.

  Sometimes he and the Count played billiards. Sometimes all three

  walked in the park. Often Basil and Daphne walked to the village,

  to post. But truly, they avoided one another, all three. The days

  slipped by.

  At evening they sat together in the small west room that had books

  and a piano and comfortable shabby furniture of faded rose-coloured

  tapestry: a shabby room. Sometimes Basil read aloud: sometimes the

  Count played the piano. And they talked. And Daphne stitch by

  stitch went on with a big embroidered bedspread, which she might

  finish if she lived long enough. But they always went to bed

  early. They were nearly always avoiding one another.

  Dionys had a bedroom in the east bay--a long way from the rooms of

  the others. He had a habit, when he was quite alone, of singing,

  or rather crooning, to himself the old songs of his childhood. It

  was only when he felt he was quite alone: when other people seemed

  to fade out of him, and all the world seemed to dissolve into

  darkness, and there was nothing but himself, his own soul, alive in

  the middle of his own small night, isolate for ever. Then, half

  unconscious, he would croon in a small, high-pitched, squeezed

  voice, a sort of high dream-voice, the songs of his childhood

  dialect. It was a curious noise: the sound of a man who is alone

  in his own blood: almost the sound of a man who is going to be

  executed.

  Daphne heard the sound one night when she was going downstairs

  again with the corridor lantern to find a book. She was a bad

  sleeper, and her nights were a torture to her. She, too, like a

  neurotic, was nailed inside her own fretful self-consciousness.

  But she had a very keen ear. So she started as she heard the

  small, bat-like sound of the Count's singing to himself. She stood

  in the midst of the wide corridor, that was wide as a room,

  carpeted with a faded lavender-coloured carpet, with a piece of

  massive dark furniture at intervals by the wall, and an oak arm-

  chair and sometimes a faded, reddish Oriental rug. The big horn

  lantern which stood at nights at the end of the corridor she held

  in her hand. The intense 'peeping' sound of the Count, like a

  witchcraft, made her forget everything. She could not understand a

  word, of course. She could not understand the noise even. After

  listening for a long time, she went on downstairs. When she came

  back again he was still, and the light was gone from under his

  door.

  After this, it became almost an obsession to her to listen for him.

  She waited with fretful impatience for ten o'clock, when she could

  retire. She waited more fretfully still for the maid to leave her,

  and for her husband to come and say good-night. Basil had the room

  across the corridor. And then in resentful impatience she waited

  for the sounds of the house to become still. Then she opened her

  door to listen.

  And far away, as if from far, far away in the unseen, like a

  ventriloquist sound or a bat's uncanny peeping, came the frail,

  almost inaudible sound of the Count's singing to himself before he

  went to bed. It WAS inaudible to anyone but herself. But she, by

  concentration, seemed to hear supernaturally. She had a low arm-

  chair by the door, and there, wrapped in a huge old black silk

  shawl, she sat and listened. At first she could not hear. That

  is, she could hear the sound. But it was only a sound. And then,

  gradually, gradually she began to follow the thread of it. It was

  like a thread which she followed out of the world: out of the

  world. And as she went, slowly, by degrees, far, far away, down

  the thin thread of his singing, she knew peace--she knew

  forgetfulness. She could pass beyond the world, away beyond where

  her soul balanced like a bird on wings, and was perfected.

  So it was, in her upper spirit. But underneath was a wild, wild

  yearning, actually to go, actually to be given. Actually to go,

  actually to die the death, actually to cross the border and be

  gone, to be gone. To be gone from this herself, from this Daphne,

  to be gone from father and mother, brothers and husband, and home

  and land and world: to be gone. To be gone to the call from the

  beyond: the call. It was the Count calling. He was calling her.

  She was sure he was calling her. Out of herself, out of her world,

  he was calling her.

  Two nights she sat just inside her room, by the open door, and

  listened. Then when he finished she went to sleep, a queer, light,

  bewitched sleep. In the day she was bewitched. She felt strange

  and light, as if pressure had been removed from around her. Some

  pressure had been clamped round her all her life. She had never

  realized it till now; now it was removed, and her feet felt so

  light, and her breathing delicate and exquisite. There had always

  been a pressure against her breathing. Now she breathed delicate

  and exquisite, so that it was a delight to breathe. Life came in

  exquisite breaths, quickly, as if it delighted to come to her.

  The third night he was silent--though she waited and waited till

  the small hours of the morning. He was silent, he did not sing.

  And then she knew the terror and blackness of the feeling that he

  might never
sing any more. She waited like one doomed, throughout

  the day. And when the night came she trembled. It was her

  greatest nervous terror, lest her spell should be broken, and she

  should be thrown back to what she was before.

  Night came, and the kind of swoon upon her. Yes, and the call from

  the night. The call! She rose helplessly and hurried down the

  corridor. The light was under his door. She sat down in the big

  oak arm-chair that stood near his door, and huddled herself tight

  in her black shawl. The corridor was dim with the big, star-

  studded, yellow lantern-light. Away down she could see the lamp-

  light in her doorway; she had left her door ajar.

  But she saw nothing. Only she wrapped herself close in the black

  shawl, and listened to the sound from the room. It called. Oh, it

  called her! Why could she not go? Why could she not cross through

  the closed door.

  Then the noise ceased. And then the light went out, under the door

  of his room. Must she go back? Must she go back? Oh, impossible.

  As impossible as that the moon should go back on her tracks, once

  she has risen. Daphne sat on, wrapped in her black shawl. If it

  must be so, she would sit on through eternity. Return she never

  could.

  And then began the most terrible song of all. It began with a

  rather dreary, slow, horrible sound, like death. And then suddenly

  came a real call--fluty, and a kind of whistling and a strange

  whirr at the changes, most imperative, and utterly inhuman. Daphne

  rose to her feet. And at the same moment up rose the whistling

  throb of a summons out of the death moan.

  Daphne tapped low and rapidly at the door. 'Count! Count!' she

  whispered. The sound inside ceased. The door suddenly opened.

  The pale, obscure figure of Dionys.

  'Lady Daphne!' he said in astonishment, automatically standing

  aside.

  'You called,' she murmured rapidly, and she passed intent into his

  room.

  'No, I did not call,' he said gently, his hand on the door still.

  'Shut the door,' she said abruptly.

  He did as he was bid. The room was in complete darkness. There

  was no moon outside. She could not see him.

  'Where can I sit down?' she said abruptly.

  'I will take you to the couch,' he said, putting out his hand and

  touching her in the dark. She shuddered.

  She found the couch and sat down. It was quite dark.

  'What are you singing?' she said rapidly.

  'I am so sorry. I did not think anyone could hear.'

  'What was it you were singing?'

  'A song of my country.'

  'Had it any words?'

  'Yes, it is a woman who was a swan, and who loved a hunter by the

  marsh. So she became a woman and married him and had three

  children. Then in the night one night the king of the swans called

  to her to come back, or else he would die. So slowly she turned

  into a swan again, and slowly she opened her wide, wide wings, and

  left her husband and her children.'

  There was silence in the dark room. The Count had been really

  startled, startled out of his mood of the song into the day-mood of

  human convention. He was distressed and embarrassed by Daphne's

  presence in his dark room. She, however, sat on and did not make a

  sound. He, too, sat down in a chair by the window. It was

  everywhere dark. A wind was blowing in gusts outside. He could

  see nothing inside his room: only the faint, faint strip of light

  under the door. But he could feel her presence in the darkness.

  It was uncanny, to feel her near in the dark, and not to see any

  sign of her, nor to hear any sound.

  She had been wounded in her bewitched state by the contact with the

  every-day human being in him. But now she began to relapse into

  her spell, as she sat there in the dark. And he, too, in the

  silence, felt the world sinking away from him once more, leaving

  him once more alone on a darkened earth, with nothing between him

  and the infinite dark space. Except now her presence. Darkness

  answering to darkness, and deep answering to deep. An answer, near

  to him, and invisible.

  But he did not know what to do. He sat still and silent as she was

  still and silent. The darkness inside the room seemed alive like

  blood. He had no power to move. The distance between them seemed

  absolute.

  Then suddenly, without knowing, he went across in the dark, feeling

  for the end of the couch. And he sat beside her on the couch. But

  he did not touch her. Neither did she move. The darkness flowed

  about them thick like blood, and time seemed dissolved in it. They

  sat with the small, invisible distance between them, motionless,

  speechless, thoughtless.

  Then suddenly he felt her finger-tips touch his arm, and a flame

  went over him that left him no more a man. He was something seated

  in flame, in flame unconscious, seated erect, like an Egyptian

  King-god in the statues. Her finger-tips slid down him, and she

  herself slid down in a strange, silent rush, and he felt her face

  against his closed feet and ankles, her hands pressing his ankles.

  He felt her brow and hair against his ankles, her face against his

  feet, and there she clung in the dark, as if in space below him.

  He still sat erect and motionless. Then he bent forward and put

  his hand on her hair.

  'Do you come to me?' he murmured. 'Do you come to me?'

  The flame that enveloped him seemed to sway him silently.

  'Do you really come to me?' he repeated. 'But we have nowhere to

  go.'

  He felt his bare feet wet with her tears. Two things were

  struggling in him, the sense of eternal solitude, like space, and

  the rush of dark flame that would throw him out of his solitude

  towards her.

  He was thinking too. He was thinking of the future. He had no

  future in the world: of that he was conscious. He had no future in

  this life. Even if he lived on, it would only be a kind of

  enduring. But he felt that in the after-life the inheritance was

  his. He felt the after-life belonged to him.

  Future in the world he could not give her. Life in the world he

  had not to offer her. Better go on alone. Surely better go on

  alone.

  But then the tears on his feet: and her face that would face him as

  he left her! No, no. The next life was his. He was master of the

  after-life. Why fear for this life? Why not take the soul she

  offered him? Now and for ever, for the life that would come when

  they both were dead. Take her into the underworld. Take her into

  the dark Hades with him, like Francesca and Paolo. And in hell

  hold her fast, queen of the underworld, himself master of the

  underworld. Master of the life to come. Father of the soul that

  would come after.

  'Listen,' he said to her softly. 'Now you are mine. In the dark

  you are mine. And when you die you are mine. But in the day you

  are not mine, because I have no power in the day. In the night, in

  the dark, and in death, you
are mine. And that is for ever. No

  matter if I must leave you. I shall come again from time to time.

  In the dark you are mine. But in the day I cannot claim you. I

  have no power in the day, and no place. So remember. When the

  darkness comes, I shall always be in the darkness of you. And as

  long as I live, from time to time I shall come to find you, when I

  am able to, when I am not a prisoner. But I shall have to go away

  soon. So don't forget--you are the night wife of the ladybird,

  while you live and even when you die.'

  Later, when he took her back to her room, he saw the door still

  ajar.

  'You shouldn't leave a light in your room,' he murmured.

  In the morning there was a curious remote look about him. He was

  quieter than ever, and seemed very far away. Daphne slept late.

  She had a strange feeling as if she had slipped off all her cares.

  She did not care, she did not grieve, she did not fret any more.

  All that had left her. She felt she could sleep, sleep, sleep--for

  ever. Her face, too, was very still, with a delicate look of

  virginity that she had never had before. She had always been

  Aphrodite, the self-conscious one. And her eyes, the green-blue,

  had been like slow, living jewels, resistant. Now they had

  unfolded from the hard flower-bud, and had the wonder, and the

  stillness of a quiet night.

  Basil noticed it at once.

  'You're different, Daphne,' he said. 'What are you thinking

  about?'

  'I wasn't thinking,' she said, looking at him with candour.

  'What were you doing then?'

  'What does one do when one doesn't think? Don't make me puzzle it

  out, Basil.'

  'Not a bit of it, if you don't want to.'

  But he was puzzled by her. The sting of his ecstatic love for her

  seemed to have left him. Yet he did not know what else to do but

  to make love to her. She went very pale. She submitted to him,

  bowing her head because she was his wife. But she looked at him

  with fear, with sorrow, with real suffering. He could feel the

  heaving of her breast, and knew she was weeping. But there were no

  tears on her face, she was only death pale. Her eyes were shut.

  'Are you in pain?' he asked her.

  'No! no!' She opened her eyes, afraid lest she had disturbed him.

  She did not want to disturb him.

  He was puzzled. His own ecstatic, deadly love for her had received

  a check. He was out of the reckoning.

  He watched her when she was with the Count. Then she seemed so

  meek--so maidenly--so different from what he had known of her. She

  was so still, like a virgin girl. And it was this quiet, intact

  quality of Virginity in her which puzzled him most, puzzled his

  emotions and his ideas. He became suddenly ashamed to make love to

  her. And because he was ashamed, he said to her as he stood in her

  room that night:

  'Daphne, are you in love with the Count?'

  He was standing by the dressing-table, uneasy. She was seated in a

  low chair by the tiny dying wood fire. She looked up at him with

  wide, slow eyes. Without a word, with wide, soft, dilated eyes she

  watched him. What was it that made him feel all confused? He

  turned his face aside, away from her wide, soft eyes.

  'Pardon me, dear. I didn't intend to ask such a question. Don't

  take any notice of it,' he said. And he strode away and picked up

  a book. She lowered her head and gazed abstractedly into the fire,

  without a sound. Then he looked at her again, at her bright hair

  that the maid had plaited for the night. Her plait hung down over

  her soft pinkish wrap. His heart softened to her as he saw her

  sitting there. She seemed like his sister. The excitement of

  desire had left him, and now he seemed to see clear and feel true

  for the first time in his life. She was like a dear, dear sister

  to him. He felt that she was his blood-sister, nearer to him than

  he had imagined any woman could be. So near--so dear--and all the