Victoria Cross

“ It had been so far a dream of enchantment, their life on board that boat. Day by day, and night by night, this floating up and up the magical, golden river, between ever-changing vistas of loveliness, of palm grove and date plantations, of rose and azure-tinted hills, of deep green bands of the cultivated fields, of burnished stretches of glittering desert, brought to the girl's mind sometimes a sense of unreality.
"One never is so perfectly happy in one's life, for long," she often thought. "The gods must begin to envy me soon, as the Greeks would say, and strike me down." ”

“ Regina looked at Everest, and a sudden fury like the hot smoke of a fire rose over all her brain. A panting thirst after something not defined stirred in all her blood, and then came the query, like a voice in a dream: "Why not end this? Why not kill her?" She could do it so easily now as she stood there, a perfect mark for Regina, who could pierce a cactus leaf through the exact centre at twenty yards. She was very near to Everest, it was true, but Regina knew her aim so well—that calm white oval against the green. ”

“ Regina scrambled to her knees, raised her rifle, took aim and fired, over the body of the girl, straight at the snowy breast of the lioness. There was a roar of agony and rage and the beast was upon her. Her bullet had found its heart, but it still had strength and time to take its vengeance. Without pain, for the girl was above the region of pain in that excitement that knows neither suffering nor fear, she felt its teeth close cruelly on her shoulder and break it, and its claws sink deep into her breast and back and tear the flesh. ”

“ Out of the beautiful youth he had been at eighteen, Nature had built up through all these years one of her masterpieces, and it seemed that she was so pleased with it, now that it had reached its perfection, that even she, fidget though she is, always doing and undoing, was loath to begin her task of pulling it all to pieces.
Regina gazed and gazed upon him in silence that was thrilled through and through with joy, for to the artist there is no delight more keen than looking on what is beautiful and perfect, and Everest asked her with a little smile of what she was thinking. ”

“ If they came upon a lion he would shoot, the sporting chance was equal there, the danger shared, the game well able to look after itself; but with the taking of the beautiful innocent life which abounded all round them he would have nothing to do. Regina revolted utterly from it, and would never visit the large tent at the back of the camp where the antelope were hung and the flamingo flung in heaps, dead and dying together, their exquisite plumage making it seem as if a sunset cloud had fallen there. ”

“ Everest, the only person who had seen them, had said so, but that would have made no difference to her. She would not have believed it unless her own intuitive knowledge had told her so. Sometimes she had done bad work, but she had known it instantly, and destroyed it, as relentlessly as the all-wise animals destroy their ill-made or imperfect offspring. All that had survived was fit to live, and she sat in the centre of her pictures, looking from one to the other in a glow of delight.
Genius comes into the world not to learn, but to teach, and that is what the commonplace mind cannot grasp. ”

“ Just at that moment Everest came to the tent door and stood by her, and the east flung its glory over them both, irradiating their faces in glowing light.
"It is the springtime now," murmured Regina softly. "I wish we could be in the enchanted garden again together in a dawn like this."
"I do not mind where I am as long as you are with me," he answered, drawing her close to him. "Love like yours makes of the whole world an enchanted garden." ”

“ Regina would be guiltless and Sybil for ever unable to mar her life again.
But as there is a magnetic pole which draws all magnets to itself, so in this world there is that great indefinable Force of the Right which draws all noble natures always to itself. Where they see the Good and the Right gleaming ahead of them, there they must follow, though stones cut their feet and thorns tear their flesh. The Right, through everything, pulls them to itself. And it drew Regina's feet swiftly over the threshold of the tent now. ”

“ She knew that somewhere in the world there must be men who possessed beauty and strength and grace and intellect, all that she loved; and one of these would call up in her that same wild elation, that keen rush of adoration, the vivid joy, that she felt under the sky at sunset, when it arrayed itself in its most glorious colours, or in the garden, when the roses poured over her their fragrance, or in Exeter [Pg 26] Cathedral, when the roll of melody from the organ seemed to catch up her breathless soul and carry it away to unknown spheres. ”

“ Day after day passed slowly by over the white tent in the desert, where such terrible, physical suffering struggled hour by hour to dominate the spirit of happiness—in vain. Regina lay in pain and was content, and Everest, torn with anxiety, harrowed by the sight of suffering he could not assuage, passing sleepless nights and long weary days at her bedside, was yet happy too. So strange a witch, so essentially a coquette is Happiness! Men spread nets for her feet and prepare chains to bind her airy wings, and just when they fancy she is securely bound to them they look round and she is gone! ”

“ This seemed their song to the girl, and the white doves took it up and echoed it, and the thrushes warbled it in their passionate throats, and the nightingales in the dark parts of the garden trilled out in warm melody the same notes: "Wait for it, worship it, live for it, die for it," and the girl heard it, with a wonderful elation and triumph filling her, for she knew that whatever gift the gods might have denied her in this life they had bestowed the supreme one of all—the power to love, and to inspire love. ”

“ They lull us, soothe us and shut us in with rosy mists and lead us gently along soft, golden ways.
Sometimes all night she could not sleep for the joy of thinking of the morrow, and all the morning she could not read, nor paint, nor play for thinking of the afternoon and looking forward to the moment when she might take her way through the sleepy Rectory garden to the highroad and the sea.
Love is always wonderful, and to a woman always beautiful and entrancing, no matter what the guise in which it comes, or what the time or circumstances. ”

“ She wondered if it were usual, this harmony of wish and desire, of thought and expression, of outlook and view between two people, if it were usual for women to feel that adoration for the lover or husband they chose that she felt for Everest, so that his mere entering the room gave her joy, his smile upon her a passionate delight, the sound of his voice an excited pleasure, while his desire for herself carried her away to a paradise of which afterwards her brain could hardly realise or reconstruct in memory the ecstasy. ”

“ The great beast's growling turned to long moans, slowly its teeth and claws relaxed. Then suddenly it rolled clear from her and lay still.
Regina picked herself up and stood, the blood pouring from her shoulder and chest, but the dauntless soul, strong and unbroken, determined to conquer.
With her left and uninjured arm she drew the girl's body up to her and walked forward, strong in that last great gush of vitality that Nature gives, opening all those reserves for which there is no future need.
Half-an-hour later, as the dawn came up over the ridge, she reached the camp. ”

“ The man fell back, and Everest went forward quite alone to the complaining beast, who on seeing him approach, and fearing some new form of torture from a fresh enemy, burst into a fresh series of its anguished cries. When he was a little distance from it, Everest stopped and began to talk to it in Arabic, in low caressing tones, and all the crowd stood silent, wide-eyed and staring, and Regina watched him, her heart beating and swelling with love and delight in him. After a few moments the camel's shrieks fell to moans and groans, and finally to silence. ”

“ Man's voice being human is not attuned to sing fittingly of what is divine. Men realise that life comes from love, but how many realise that also all the decoration of life comes from it! Even if we could exist without love, with it we must give up the beauty of women, the fragrance of flowers, the melody of birds, the charm of the human voice, the power of the brain. ”

“ She had no other thought than to please him, to yield to his empire. At any cost, at any sacrifice of herself, at the price of her life, if necessary, she was dedicated, consecrated to him; worship, adoration was in her face and in her heart as she looked up at him. It is the spontaneous impulse in all virgin love, and those women who have not felt it for their lovers have missed love's soul.
Everest bent down and kissed her, and in all her after years Regina could never recall a higher pinnacle of joy to which she had climbed than was reached in that first kiss. ”

“ They would want to come here too, and then all the peace and beauty I enjoy would be spoiled. Do you see?"
"Perfectly," said Everest, smiling, as they turned from the sea to the scented shades of the garden.
"This place has always been for you alone and now it is to be for us alone. We will share it with no one and tell nobody of our comings and goings."
He spoke lightly, jestingly, but both felt that the pact they had made was a serious one, a pact for companionship in hidden solitude in this magic, intoxicating place. ”

“ Imperceptibly he had grown interested in Sybil's playing and singing after dinner; her quaint, inconsequent prattle in its novelty amused him, though he quite well recognised it would be intolerable once its newness had worn off, her face from its great beauty of line had always pleased him immensely, her ardent kiss, with those exquisitely carved scarlet lips, had shaken his reason, and so from out of all these had grown gradually desire, which is merciless, blind, relentless, savage, quick in its onward rush, rapid in its disappearance as any desert lion. ”

“ His hair had not a single white strand in it, nor had the dark moustache that flowed in a straight line across his face, not pulled downwards nor twisted up, and of which some of the threads glowed with a red-gold sheen on their blackness, if the sun struck across them. Very few lines marked the clear, warm tan of the skin; the teeth were even, perfect, untouched by dentistry. Life and experience had added power and intellect to the face, had deepened the mental charm without, as yet, taking from its physical beauty. ”

“ To be loved is nothing, to love is something, to love and be loved is everything. Critical and sensitive about every point in another, as she was, so that the least deviation from her standard of beauty or intellect would have spoiled the perfection of her feeling, she could find nothing wanting in Everest; in all her dearest dreams and visions no ideal had ever been invested with greater charm than the living man now had for her. ”

“ Often returning from the garden, through the sweet-scented meadows in the long, light evenings, those calm evenings of the English summer which seem to carry madness to the blood of youth, after a long and happy afternoon spent with him, it seemed to her as if her head was light with joy, as if her brain or heart must burst with the excited happiness of loving and being loved by such a man as this. ”