The Quest of the Golden Girl [28]
day. Nor were poets and romancers from over sea--in their seeming simple paper covers, but with, oh, such complicated and subtle insides!--absent from the court which Nicolete held here in the greenwood. Never was such a nest of singing-birds. All day long, to the ear of the spirit, there was in this little library a sound of harping and singing and the telling of tales,--songs and tales of a world that never was, yet shall ever be. Here day by day Nicolete fed her young soul on the nightingale's-tongues of literature, and put down her book only to listen to the nightingale's- tongues outside. Yea, sun, moon, and stars were all in the conspiracy to lie to her of the loveliness of the world and the good intentions of life. And now, thus unexpectedly, I found myself joining the nefarious conspiracy. Ah, well! was I not twenty myself, and full of dreams!
CHAPTER V
'T IS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE
Thus it was that we lunched together amid the books and birds, in an exquisite solitude a deux; for the ringer of the silver bell had disappeared, having left a dainty meal in readiness--for two.
"You see you were expected," said Nicolete, with her pretty laugh. "I dreamed I should have a visitor to-day, and told Susan to lay the lunch for two. You mustn't be surprised at that," she added mischievously; "it has often happened before. I dream that dream every other night, and Susan lays for two every day. She knows my whims,--knows that the extra knife and fork are for the fairy knight that may turn up any afternoon, as I tell her--"
"To find the sleepless princess," I added, thinking at the same time one of those irrelevant asides that will go through the brain of thirty, that the woman who would get her share of kisses nowadays must neither slumber nor sleep.
A certain great poet, I think it was Byron, objected to seeing women in the act of eating. He thought their eating should be done in private. What a curiously perverse opinion! For surely woman never shows to better advantage than in the dainty exercises of a dainty repast, and there is nothing more thrilling to man than a meal alone with a woman he loves or is about to love. Perhaps, deep down, the reason is that there still vibrates in the masculine blood the thrilling surprise of the moment when man first realised that the angel woman was built upon the same carnivorous principles as his grosser self.
That is one of the first heart-beating surprises that come upon the boy Columbus, as he sets out to discover the New World of woman; and indeed his surprise has not seldom deepened into admiration, as he has found that not only does woman eat, but frequently eats a lot.
This privilege of seeing woman eat is the earliest granted of those delicate animal intimacies, the fuller and fuller confiding of which plays not the least important part, and ever such a sweet one, even in a highly transcendental affection. It is this gradual humanising of the divine female that brings about the spiritualising of the unregenerate male.
In the earliest stages of love the services are small that we are privileged to do for the loved one. But if we are allowed to sit at meat with her,--ever a royal condescension,--it is ours at least to pass her the salt, to see that she is never kept waiting a moment for the mustard or the pepper, to cut the bread for her with geometrical precision, and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we dare to pour out for her the sacred wine.
Yes! for sure I was twenty again, for the performance of these simple services for Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish pleasure such as I had never expected to feel again. And did she not make a knight of me by gently asking if I would be so kind as to carve the chicken, and how she laughed quite disproportionally at my school-boy story of the man who, being asked to carve a pigeon, said he thought they had better send for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood pigeon.
And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us were weaving their spells. Even
CHAPTER V
'T IS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE
Thus it was that we lunched together amid the books and birds, in an exquisite solitude a deux; for the ringer of the silver bell had disappeared, having left a dainty meal in readiness--for two.
"You see you were expected," said Nicolete, with her pretty laugh. "I dreamed I should have a visitor to-day, and told Susan to lay the lunch for two. You mustn't be surprised at that," she added mischievously; "it has often happened before. I dream that dream every other night, and Susan lays for two every day. She knows my whims,--knows that the extra knife and fork are for the fairy knight that may turn up any afternoon, as I tell her--"
"To find the sleepless princess," I added, thinking at the same time one of those irrelevant asides that will go through the brain of thirty, that the woman who would get her share of kisses nowadays must neither slumber nor sleep.
A certain great poet, I think it was Byron, objected to seeing women in the act of eating. He thought their eating should be done in private. What a curiously perverse opinion! For surely woman never shows to better advantage than in the dainty exercises of a dainty repast, and there is nothing more thrilling to man than a meal alone with a woman he loves or is about to love. Perhaps, deep down, the reason is that there still vibrates in the masculine blood the thrilling surprise of the moment when man first realised that the angel woman was built upon the same carnivorous principles as his grosser self.
That is one of the first heart-beating surprises that come upon the boy Columbus, as he sets out to discover the New World of woman; and indeed his surprise has not seldom deepened into admiration, as he has found that not only does woman eat, but frequently eats a lot.
This privilege of seeing woman eat is the earliest granted of those delicate animal intimacies, the fuller and fuller confiding of which plays not the least important part, and ever such a sweet one, even in a highly transcendental affection. It is this gradual humanising of the divine female that brings about the spiritualising of the unregenerate male.
In the earliest stages of love the services are small that we are privileged to do for the loved one. But if we are allowed to sit at meat with her,--ever a royal condescension,--it is ours at least to pass her the salt, to see that she is never kept waiting a moment for the mustard or the pepper, to cut the bread for her with geometrical precision, and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we dare to pour out for her the sacred wine.
Yes! for sure I was twenty again, for the performance of these simple services for Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish pleasure such as I had never expected to feel again. And did she not make a knight of me by gently asking if I would be so kind as to carve the chicken, and how she laughed quite disproportionally at my school-boy story of the man who, being asked to carve a pigeon, said he thought they had better send for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood pigeon.
And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us were weaving their spells. Even