Kophetua the Thirteenth

by Julian Stafford Corbett

CHAPTER XXIV. THE SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

"And when he felt the arrow pricke,

Which in his tender heart did sticke,

He looketh as he would dye."

It is not to be denied that in the course of a few weeks Kophetua began to find the hermits' marriage ceremony not a little irksome. It was not that the idea was any the less attractive to his imagination. Their notion of the real meaning of the period of affiance commended itself entirely to his lofty sentiments. He felt it was a reproach to civilisation that a few prayers and ritualistic forms should have been suffered to supplant the long vigil of the betrothal. The matrimonial state of his ideal was one long sacrament of transcendent sanctity, and he had come to believe that only by months of mutual worship and sacrifice could two lives be consecrated together. He grappled the situation with all the fanatical ardour of which a poet alone is capable; but from Penelophon he could get no response.

For hours he talked melodious mysticism to her in the homeliest phrases he could find, but she only looked at him in ever-increasing wonder, till her face grew so troubled that he was compelled to cease and take her soothingly in his arms to pet her like a child. Then she could understand; and, when his lips gently touched her cheek, she crept close to him, and often began to cry quite quietly, to think how far they were apart, though they sat so close. The old stained dress she wore was always tearing on the rocks and brakes, and hung in rags about her. Each new rent seemed to widen the gap; and, though she nestled never so near when his arms closed about her, she felt him growing each day more godlike, and herself sinking deeper back to beggardom.

He strove to make her set him tasks to do for her, and she never could think of anything but a flower for him to fetch or a deer to kill, and always she cried when he was gone, for very shame that such a man should do such work for her.

One day, when he had tried his hardest to make her see with his eyes, and she seemed still more troubled than ever, she had asked for a flower that grew on the cliffs above, knowing it was the best way to please him. So he hastened away with studied devotion, and quickly reached the summit. There he picked the blossom, and hurried down again, keeping steadfastly in his mind the while the wan, ragged figure, with the unkempt hair, that was awaiting him below. Leaping from rock to rock, he soon reached the zigzag path by which he himself had at first descended. As he sprang down into it out of the bushes, he was startled by a little cry, and the sound of a horse's feet.

He looked up to see a vision that made his brain reel. For there before him, upon a splendid Arab, whose alarm she was controlling with matchless grace and skill, sat, more lovely in his eyes than ever, Mlle de Tricotrin. She was dressed in a riding costume of bewitching fashion, and her face was flushed and her eyes glittering in her efforts to quiet the startled horse. Everything about her was in perfect taste, and of the latest mode, and the air seemed redolent with the freshest breath of modern grace and refinement. He was painfully conscious of the impression this sudden meeting had made on him. He felt ashamed to be so caught, then angry at the intrusion, and turned on his heel to go. But another little cry, and a plunge of the horse, arrested him. His new movement had alarmed the frightened animal again. It was backing to the edge of the narrow path, where the precipice sank away to a depth of a hundred feet or more. Setting her lips, Mlle de Tricotrin was courageously trying to check the perilous movement, but in vain. Already her feet overhung the precipice. It was impossible for her to dismount, and Kophetua saw that any attempt to grasp the bridle could only be fatal. In a moment he was at her side. Seizing her by the waist, he dragged her from the saddle, and then, with one frantic plunge, the Arab crashed into the abyss below.

For a little while he was obliged to support her as they stood, fearing she would faint. But she quickly recovered her strength. Then she quietly disengaged herself from his arm, and stood a little aloof.