CHAPTER X - FLOWERS AND LOVE

While she is thus alone - oblivious of everything but the necessary rearrangements of her plan as to admit Zillah into the active working of her scheme, and so employ her to cause confusion by making her part appear to be at cross purposes with that of Casca, if the two should attempt collusion against herself - we may pause to become better acquainted with the lady to whom we have been introduced at, what she would consider, an inauspicious moment. In the drama of life, however, the great crowd of witnesses are not all confined to the orchestra stalls and dress circle, there are competent and lynx-eyed critics hiding in the shadows of unsuspected corners, whose testimony may have a damaging weight in the verdict of the future, and those who aim at high rewards must not forget that the secrets of the dressing room may be analysed and separated in the fierce glow of the footlights. Wherever there is a risk detection is challenged. The care with which we guard our guilt most frequently betrays its presence, and Lais must take her chance. In the game of life she apprehends a prize-a goal, and takes her place to solve the problem how to successfully reach it. We are interested in watching the methods, of which we are justified in forming our own Opinion as they unfold.

In herself she has a most captivating personality. The orphan child of Queen Sazone's twin sister and an Assyrian general who forfeited his life and possessions as the penalty of real or supposed treason, she possessed more of her father's daring ambitious spirit than the quiet content of her mother. This was easily read from the soft, glossy profusion of raven hair, the coal black restless eyes, in which a determined green light flashed, as her enthusiastic blood rushed to tinge the olive cheeks. Slightly taller than her cousin, almost perfectly modelled, and a carriage at will either graciously majestic or imperiously despotic, at sight she was far more queenly than Vedrona.

But all the contrast was not to be found in her appearance. The souls of the two women possessed an equally marked dissimilarity. They touched in the matter of sex, only at once to separate and never meet again.

The gods, however, did not appear to favour the desire of Lais to reconstruct her plans, since Casca had not passed out of sight before the rippling laughter of Vedrona fell upon her ears, and an instant later brother and sister entered the fernery hand in hand, the latter still beaming with smiles as she regarded an assortment of mutilated flowers she displayed for the inspection of Lais.

“May the attendant gods grant all peace to my sister,” was the salutation of Glarces.

Lais turned over languidly as he greeted her. She had hurriedly thrown herself upon the soft bed of moss, and assumed a pose of abstracted meditation. “Is that you, Glarces?” she enquired, “I am afraid I had almost lost myself while waiting.”

“Why did you not join us in the garden?”

“For the same reason that prevented me meeting you at home. I am a woman, and were I in Vedrona's place should wish to have you to myself, at least occasionally. So, much as I esteem your company, I sacrificed myself this morning, and thought I would join you here.”

“And I did you the wrong to think you had a less noble cause,” apologised the easily satisfied Vedrona.

“Did you?” she replied airily. “Well, I am not surprised. I am not often in the self-immolating mood. So I can readily forgive you.”

“Still we have trespassed on generosity by leaving you so long alone,” said Glarces. “but Vedrona has been in one of her argumentative moods - I need not say any more.”

“Lais will never believe that.”

“I shall not trouble about it one way or the other, my children, since I have scarcely been alone so much as I suggested. In fact, perhaps, I was not quite so disinterested in my action as I have led you think. I had a second reason for what I did. The wedding last night proved to be a veritable bag of Fortunatus in its surprises, and before I saw you I was anxious to compare notes with Casca. I had not finished with him before your Iberian beauty walked into my net. Vedrona, do you know, I find we have misunderstood that girl. She turns out to be a sort of princess in disguise, able to tell a most romantic story of her capture. Not that I believe one word of it - but she really possesses the most remarkably inventive genius I ever met with. Can tell an impromptu tale perfectly, and unless you are warned against her ingenious art of fabrication will convince you of the truth of the most unheard-of things. Even I fell into her trap beautifully, until an unguarded word lifted the veil, and I convicted her. Now I understand the girl, I think. She is a most delightful companion when you have once conquered her reserve, but you must remember her stories are all invented, and I don't think she is capable of speaking the consistent truth.”

“Then our pity is wasted on your supposed loneliness?” queried Glarces.

“I only wish you had been present to share my enjoyment, and when the girl left I had scarcely time to compose myself before you arrived.”

“Then your waking astonishment and supposed weariness at waiting was an attempt to imitate her skill in deception. Don't try that, my sister; you will never succeed in that direction.”

“If ever I seriously contemplate such a hazard, my beloved brother, it will be undertaken when you are away on a long journey, or your keen perception would destroy all my hopes.”

“He is in a most captious mood, to-day, Lais. Don't humour him, or I shall never be able to tell you what he has done. At the expense of missing your own pleasure, I do wish you had been with us from the beginning. You are able to deal with him better than I”

“And has he been so very much himself as to be particularly noticeable?”

“No ! he has been unlike himself in an extraordinary degree this morning, and developed an entirely new and original character.”

“Does that surprise you? Why, I should be more concerned to see him consistently maintain an old one. Men cannot be consistent, my dear, no matter how honestly they attempt it; the virtue is absolutely foreign to masculine nature.”

“But Glarces is not ‘men’,” she appealed, in resentment of his being classed with the common herd.

“No! He is singular - very! More so, I am afraid, than we give him credit

“I think I can divine that my sister's pleasant entertainment with Zillah took the form of a lesson in sarcasm.” Glarces volunteered, turning from the ferns which had attracted his attention.

“Your skill as a magician will never make you famous, if your power of divination fairly represents it,” Lais replied, somewhat elate in that she had been able to induce him to reply. “All women have been naturally endowed with the gift of sarcasm as a necessary protection against a man's possible brute force. But what is this new phase of his most complex character, Vedrona?”

“You will scarcely believe it, but he actually grew excited in an argument about flowers.”

Lais looked at him with quizzical incredulousness. “What! Glarces excited? Never!”

“I can assure you he did.”

“Glarces, can you hear such a charge and not deny it?” “Are you wishful for me to do so?”

“Not for the world - I would much rather hear you confess its truth.”

“And suppose I were to do that. I should only illustrate the truth of that for which I so often contend - that the best informed - whether it be man or woman - only know in part, and therefore we ought to be intellectually modest and open to instruction. There are yet more unfathomed secrets in nature and men than the wisest philosopher has dared to suspect.”

“What a tempting arena in which to fight an argumentative duel! but I am not to be drawn, my brother”

“Neither do I wish to tempt you,” he replied: “Your bag of Fortunatus is waiting, and I know how curious you are to discover its wealth to Vedrona.”

“Then Vedrona must be content to curb her curiosity for the present. My one chief attraction just now, as ever, is Glarces. Now, Vedrona, I will hear your story.”

“What if I forbid her to speak of such foolishness?” Lais laughed with unaffected glee; but the Princess looked doubtfully from one to the other, for Glarces' will was an inviolable law to her, and if he really forbade the continuance of the subject Lais might insist, but Glarces would have his way.

As for the Prince, he had but one idea in his mind that morning - to relieve his sister of all despondent feelings and doubts. In the pursuit of this desire he had more than once already deliberately astonished her, and was still prepared to continue his most unusual course, with greater zest than before, since he discovered that her serious suspicions regarding Lais were as ill-founded as the rest of her fears. He was happy - strangely, mysteriously happy - in this freedom to which he had abandoned himself. It was almost like a return to the old days the which his sister had been so sorrowfully lamenting. It did him good to see the two make common cause against himself. The scene was one to increase the pleasure of the gods, and he was loath to end it.

“Well, if you did forbid her to speak, I should at once be convinced that you had been truly guilty of some foolishness, and with the recognition that you had already committed one blunder in so doing, I should appeal to her by our joint love toward you to tell me, and so save you from the error of a second. Now, Vedrona, to your story.”

“You know his usual indifference to flowers?”

“Does he really know of the existence of such insignificant trifles?”

Glarces evidently had no further desire to take part in the discussion, but had turned his attention to some newly arrived ferns.

“He is scarcely so bad as that,” Vedrona gently remonstrated. “With all his faults he is not blind.”

“Well, have your way; I am not inclined to be too exacting. It is enough for me that you will admit he has any imperfections.”

“We were scarcely at the foot of the steps before he caught sight of something and bounded away like a hound chasing a hare.                                                                                                                                     

Then, in an alarming excitement, for him, he called to me to follow, and all for - what do you imagine?”

“I should be afraid to surmise.”

“To see a flower - a crocus! But that is not all. Before I actually understood what he wanted, he was away again, in his admiration of a chamomile, then an iris, a tulip and a lily; all of which he almost savagely tore from their roots - breaking, bruising, and destroying - and crushed them carelessly until he gave them to me in this condition.” exhibiting the wretched confusion of petals, leaves, and stalks she carried in her hand.

“I thought you had an admiration for flowers,” he replied from the depth of the retreat.

“Are these flowers?” she enquired; “or do you wish me to understand that I am only worthy of the wreckage and ruins of their original beauty?”

He returned from his study as she spoke.

“Not even the gardens of Velia are able to produce flowers worthy to lay at your feet, my beloved; earth has no possibility of growing such desirable beauty. But if so - if my spoiling these simple blooms grieves and surprises you, what shall be the feelings of the gods if I should hand back your love to them, crushed, maimed, and with the loss of its innocent purity.”

“I see, I see!” exclaimed Lais. “At length, I begin to understand the mystery! All this is intended as another illustration - of what, Glarces?”

“That love is a stewardship entrusted to us by the gods to be protected and preserved, rather than appropriated, desecrated, and destroyed before perfection is attained.”

Lais laughed long and heartily.

“What do you know of love, you splendid specimen of an iceberg? No, no! Glarces, I have told you a hundred times, and now I tell you again, that some subjects legitimately belong to man - philosophy, politics, war, science, and such things; others are the peculiar province of women - love, poetry, music, and kindred matters; and some few, such as magic, gardening, literature, and the arts, may be divided. In the baths and gymnasium you are at perfect liberty to indulge every fancy of your lordly mind, but when you attempt to introduce philosophy into love I object, and if necessary will rise in rebellion. Love and reason are like oil and water-unmixable.”

“Are you not confusing love and passion?” he asked quietly.

“Passion!” she returned warmly, “why will you persist in calling every impulse passion, and love nothing but a frigid, stagnant, and placid insensibility? I hate the injustice of your false reasoning, and the metaphors, void of analogy, by which you have imposed upon Vedrona, to make your fallacies appear as the incarnate truth of all the gods in Elysium. I know different, and refuse to be deluded by your sophistries. Men and women are not flowers or trees, without conscious dependence one on the other. The one nature of humanity the gods have wisely divided into the two sexes, giving to each of us reasoning powers and responsibilities in the selection of suitable counterparts to complete our own selves, and afterwards produce an ever ascending type of being.”

“Perfectly true, my sister, but why do you refuse to recognise that there are two contrary influences at work in the selection of that suitable counterpart and completion of ourselves - love and passion? I do not deny the law nor the responsibility. I only insist on the desirability of assurance that the selection is made in accordance with love and not of passion - that the union may produce the higher type rather than hinder

“But your desire is to produce nothing. Your preposterous ideas of love and women would result in universal suicide, and make a second generation impossible.”

“Now you arrogate to yourself the understanding of all the secrets of nature, and forget that she is able to accommodate herself to every possible necessity.”

“I suppose you would allow the gods to co-operate with nature.”

“In such a union you have the perfect desirability after which I aspire for the human race.”

“But we have already had that, and the result is man and woman as we find them to-day. Now, my dear Glarces, you can get no further, and for myself I am satisfied with things just as I find them, without troubling either the gods or nature again in the matter. If Vedrona is content to be worshipped at a distance - ah, well! I am not altogether an angel at present, and only wish to fill a woman's place and duties. But you may rest assured that the time and circumstance will come that will rouse you from your foolish dreams, and I love you both too well to allow the occasion to slip by without my assistance. Till then you may enjoy your childish ideas. Farewell.”

“Farewell, Lais, and peace.”