Sanchia

“ All nature, in fact, was vocal of Sanchia by day; and at night, presently, she stole white-footed down the slant rays of the moon and fed his soul upon exhalations of her own. Idle as he might have appeared to one who did not know the man—for beyond the routine of his handiwork he did nothing visible—he was really intensely busy. Out of the stores reaped and garnered in those meditative years was to come the substance of his after-life.
But no man in England may live three years in a grass valley unreported; his fame will spread abroad, scattered as birds sow seeds. ”

“ This mysterious, shrouded Sanchia figured in it as the goddess of a shrine—omnipresent, a felt influence, yet never a woman. He spoke her name with a drop of the voice; every act of hers, as he related it, was coloured by sanction to seem the dealing of a divine person with creeping mankind. To Mrs. Germain it was all preposterous; if she had owned the humorous sense it would have been tragically absurd. For what did it amount to, pray, but this, that Jack Senhouse had been in love with a girl who had loved somebody else, had married her choice, and was now repenting it? ”

“ Lady Maria twinkled; but her scrutiny was keen. “I don't think you have explained the gardener,” she told her. Sanchia blushed.
“He's a boy,” was her suggestion: but Lady Maria's comment on that was, “And a bruiser it seems.”
Sanchia smiled gently. “Poor Struan! He was very difficult. He made me furiously angry. What he did was outrageous. But I am sure he is a genius.”
“What!” cried her ladyship. “A genius at gardening? or at thrashing gentlemen?”
Sanchia said simply, “It's extraordinary what he can do with plants. He's certainly a genius there. He's like a plant himself. ”

“ He came to picture the mating of these two—Sanchia the salient, beautiful woman, and his master of the clear, long-enduring, searching eyes, and that strange look of second-sight upon him which those only have who live apart from men, under the sky. It is a look you can never mistake. Sailors have it, and shepherds, and dwellers in the desert. The eye sees through you—into you, and beyond you. ”

“ So she told him, Senhouse, her only friend; and he cried aloud in his agony, “God save her,” while his soul was saying, “Beatrice never shrank from hell, nor ever looked back. No more, God be thanked, does Sanchia.” When the thing was done, and she had gone with unbowed head into the deeps, he had known his hours of desolation; but from that hour she had stood for him “a thing enskied and sainted.” He felt that he was set apart for her worship, and only regretted that Beatrice had had a better poet for the business than Sanchia could ever hope for. ”

“ Sanchia, new to courtship, was quietly elated, and her amusement did nothing to diminish her elation. She had never been wooed before: there had been nothing of the kind in those shuddering days when she and Ingram, trembling in each other's sight, had mutely cried across the waste of London for balm upon their wounds. The flattery of attentions had never been hers, nor the high credit of admiration so respectful as the good merchant's. He esteemed her the fairest and holiest of women, was as timid as a boy in her company, gasped like a fish and grew unmannerly hot ”

“ Their road lay now due west, keeping the ridge—a broad grass track belted rarely by woods on the north, but open on the south to hill and vale in diversity of sun and shade, a billowy sea of grass where no sign of man was to be seen. Sanchia's heart was so light she scarcely touched the ground. She swam the air, not flew. Chevenix pounded in her wake. ”

“ He had far rather deal mentally with the lovely image of Sanchia, as he saw it, than actually with the breathing, palpitating flesh. To picture her longing, straining, trembling—to keep her always so, always holding out her arms, never obtaining what she sought: his bliss lay in that. He knew himself, after much experience of the sort; he had missed so often by blundering in, that now he dared not risk a wreck. Here at last, he told himself, was perfection: let him look to it that he kept it at its perfect poise. He must poise himself to do that, balance himself upon a knife-edge. ”

“ He saw all things flowing towards heaven, which to him was Harmony, Rest, what he called Appeasement. And all this straining and yearning in infinite variety was figured to him in Sanchia, as he discerned, but could not perceive, her presence. He made her out in elemental images, into the contours of the hills read her bountiful shape, into the onslaught of the wind her dauntless ardour. In fire leaped her pride, in the mantling snow her chastity was proclaimed. The rain was her largess, her treasure poured to enrich mankind. All flowers were sacred to her—frail beauty salient from the earth. ”

“ Lady Maria asked, suddenly; and Sanchia blushed again, and presently looked at Lady Maria. “He's always nice to me,” she said, mildly.
“I think,” her ladyship resumed, “I think I like to think of him best in prison;” and then washed him out of her memory as she faced more serious topics.
“It will be much better for you to come to me,” she told Sanchia. “I'm an old woman, and an old tyrant, I daresay, but I'm somebody, you know. And I'm pretty lonely, and happen to want company just now. It will be good that you have a foothold to your name when your Nevile Ingram comes after you. ”

“ I've done that sort of thing—Sanchia knows. Now I must trouble you to advance. I'm sick of life on these terms: you could make life worth living. I must really trouble you: sorry to seem languid, but I am languid. You, with your fine sensibilities, ought to be the first to feel that; but no: you wait, looking exquisite, with eyes like blue-black water, and a mouth, a mouth like a flower. You soft gossamer beauty, I could crush you where you hover; but you won't come and be crushed. Certainly, you are cruel. ”

“ Again Sanchia bit her lips and sat back.
'Dear old pops,' said Helen, going to her father's side and slipping both arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise making free with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result of coming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a new emotion. 'I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is the nicest country in the world, too. ”

“ It was altogether too far to distinguish one man from another. It might even be Longstreet himself. But he knew that she feared it was Jim Courtot, to whom naturally Sanchia would turn at a moment like this; and never from the first did he doubt that it was Courtot.
'It's some one of Sanchia's crowd,' he said with high assumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!'
Helen was frowning meditatively. ”

“ Here are sufficient elements of danger to draw any woman; so Sanchia found herself presently drawn.
He came to Charles Street one evening late in November, to what Lady Maria called a little party. There was an autumn session that year, and London full. To her little party, then, came a solid wedge of three hundred people into rooms capable of holding with comfort fifty.
Chevenix was by Sanchia's side at the top of the stair, chatting pleasantly about every new-comer, when he suddenly stopped. “Hulloa,” he said, “here's Morosine, as smooth as a glass stiletto. He'll amuse you. ”

“ Then Sanchia saw Chevenix, and waited for him.
“Philosophy—what?” the cheerful youth hailed them. “Plain living, hard thinking, what? Upon my soul, you are a pair! Now, Miss Sancie, I can expect the truth from you. What's Glyde preaching? Heresy? Schism? Sudden death?”
“He was talking about women,” Sanchia told him.
“Ah,” the youth mused aloud. “He was, was he? Glyde on Woman. He ought to wait for his beard to grow; then you might listen to him.”
Glyde, who was dumb in company, was hacking into the clods, while Chevenix, to whom he was negligible, pursued his own affair. ”

“ Ingram might rage for her in vain, Chevenix agonise, or quarrel with his host and friend, Mrs. Devereux disapprove to the point of keeping her room; but Sanchia, with front serene, moved from office-table to kitchen, to the garden, to the home-farm, interviewed Mrs. Benson, consulted with the stockman, pored—her head close to Clyde's—over seed-pans and melon borders, was keenly interested, judicial, reflective, pleading, coaxing by turns—seemed, in fact, not to have a perplexity in her fair head. Her health was superb, she never had an ache nor failed of an appetite. ”

“ Like a whiff of thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch things innocent and quiet. The blue beam of your steadfast eyes may turn his own to heaven; a chance-caught, low, sweet tone of your voice may check clamour; an answer may turn his wrath.... You can be picture, form, poem, symphony in one.... Think of it, Sanchia, before you turn away. Think well whether upon that exquisite medium you cannot express your best. ”

“ He will neither heed you nor hear you; his conversation is other-where. And what then would Senhouse do confronted with Sanchia? Would he look beyond her, towards some horizon where she could never stand? Or would he not see in her blue eyes the goal of all his searching—the content of his own? What would he say but “You!” and take her? What she but sigh her content to be taken? Appeasement is holiness, says Senhouse. And what of their holy life thereafter, breast to breast, fronting the dawn? Glyde's heart, purged of his dishonesty, beat at the thought. ”

“ Your seemingly passive martyr is really in an ecstasy. He aims at outraging Nature; begins by despising and ends by dreading it. Nature, however, has ways of revenging herself.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Sanchia soberly.
They walked on together, she by this time very much absorbed. She was not conscious of the shifting crowd, the lifting of hats, the chatter, the yapping dogs that ran in and out of women's skirts. ”

“ To his simple soul a fine day, a fine-fettled river demanded, as of right, a happy mood in man, for whom all things were made. And a fine girl by his side, a good, a brave, a splendid girl—down on her luck—on such a day! What could one do? If, when you began, she choked you off! Wouldn't meet you half-way—bottled it up! And here he was, geared for fishing, and without the heart to wet a line, because of all this misery. Sanchia, sharply in profile to him, from cheek to chin, from shoulder to low breast, all one sinuous, lax, beautiful line, broke in on his rueful meditations. ”

“ Lady Maria Wenman grew to be extremely fond of Sanchia, really as fond of her as she was capable of becoming of anybody. She had been good to travel with, and was good to live with. She found her so reasonable, she said. One could discuss anything without shocking her, or without fear of being made uncomfortable by seeing her discomfort. Lady Maria, in fact, being entirely without prejudice, experienced the little luxury of being able to express herself without trampling.
On her side also, Sanchia sincerely liked her old protectress, and found Charles Street agree with her. ”

“ Lady Maria occasionally made jokes. Here was a girl who understood them.
To the old gentlewoman, who never beat about bushes, but mostly walked through them, Sanchia's bluntness made immediate appeal. Her reply, for instance, to the enquiry, What had induced her to go on with the affair, was a counter-question. “What else could I do?” she had asked, with pencilled brows arched. “I thought it made no difference. I wanted to, you see. What you do is nothing compared with what you want to do.”
“Then why do it, my dear?” said Lady Maria. Sanchia did not blink the answer, “Nevile wanted me. ”

“ I vow to you that you are the only woman with whom I have wished to live, as we might live if you would. I can't make you see, I'm conscious, what I feel about Sanchia—but it's certainly not that. My little dear, can't you trust me?” He looked down, and saw her tears slowly dropping; he was very much moved, knelt by her side. She turned her face away, dangerously moved also. She struggled with her tears, her face contorted, her bosom heaving in riot. Senhouse took her hands, but she wrenched them away and covered her face with them. ”

“ She looked down deeply at her hand; and then she gazed at her sister. “And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!” Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, as it were, crystallised within it. There are moments in one's life when love itself seems lust, and safety the only holy thing. ”

“ Glyde, who had turned very white, compressed his lips and went back to his work—like a machine. Presently a light step made him start, look guardedly up, watch and wait. Sanchia, bare-headed, fresh and debonnaire, came in, like a stream of west wind. Her eyes beamed her health and pleasure. “Oh, Struan,” she said, “do come and see the Susianas. They are on the very point of opening. Do come. There's nobody about. ”

“ Morosine told her, “is everything, the aim, the loyalty, the great surrender. Beside this failure is nothing at all. Do you say that the sapling fails that springs out of a cleft rock and towers—seeking, as we all seek, the sun, the light in heaven? A gale gathers it up and tears it out: over it goes, and lies shattered. Is that failure? How can it be when nothing dies?”
Sanchia, very pale, turned her face to his at last. ”