among us lest the native population . . . fraught with unpleasant consequences to all, . . . English ladies in the company, . . . Iown that my hand went to my
cutlass. Happily,” he continues in his Eoemtee long- winded style, “these fears seemed, for the moment, groundless and, observing the demeanour of the natives, . . . I came to the conclusion that this demonstration of our skill in the art of pyrotechny was valuable, . . . because it impressed upon them . . . superiority of the British. . . . Indeed, the sight was one of indescribable magnificence. I found myself alternately praising the Lord that he had permitted . . . and wishing that my poor, dear mother. . . . By the Ambassador’s orders, the long windows, which are so imposing a feature of Eastern architecture, for though ignorant in many ways
. were thrown wide; and within, we could see a tableau vivant or theatrical display in which English ladies and gentlemen . . . represented a masque the work of one. . . . The words were inaudible, but the sight of so many of our countrymen and women, dressed
with the highest elegance and distinction . . . moved me to emotions of which I am certainly not ashamed, though unable. . . . I was intent upon observing the astonishing conduct of Lady which was of a nature to fasten the eyes of all upon her, and to bring discredit upon her sex and country, when”— unfortunately a branch of the Judas tree broke, Lieutenant Brigge fell to the ground, and the rest of the entry records only his gratitude to Providence (who plays a very large part in the diary) and the exact nature of his injuries.
General of that name, saw the scene from inside and carries on the tale in a letter, much defaced too, which ultimately reached a female friend at Tunbridge Wells. Miss Penelope was no less lavish in her enthusiasm than the gallant officer. “Ravishing,” she exclaims ten times on one page, “wondrous . . . utterly beyond descrip- tion . . . gold plate . . . candelabras . . . negroes in plush breeches . . . pyramidsofice . . . fountains of negus . . . jellies made to represent His Majesty’s ships . . . swans made to represent water lilies .
birds in golden cages . . . gentlemen in slashed crim- son velvet . . . Ladies’ headdresses at least six foot high . . . musical boxes. . . . Mr. Peregrine said I looked quite lovely which I only repeat to you, my dear- est, because I know. . . . Oh! how I longed for you
all! . . . surpassing anything we have seen at the Pan- tiles . . . oceans todrink . . . some gentlemen over- come . . . Lady Betty ravishing. . . . Poor Lady Bon- ham made the unfortunate mistake of sitting down with- out a chair beneath her. . . . Gentlemen all very gal- lant . . . wished a thousand times for you and dearest Betsy. . . . But the sight of all others, the sinecure of alleyes . . . as all admitted, for none could be so vile as to deny it, was the Ambassador himself. Such a leg! Such a countenance!! Such princely manners!!! To see him come into the room! To see him go out again! And something zmteresting in the expression, which makes one feel, one scarcely knows why, that he has suffered], They say a lady was the cause of it. The heartless mon- ster!!! How can one of our reputed tender sex have had the effrontery!!! He is unmarried, and half the ladies in the place are wild for love of him. . . A thousand, thousand kisses to Tom, Gerry, Peter, and dearest Mew” [ presumably her cat].
From the Gazette of the time, we gather that “‘as the clock struck twelve, the Ambassador appeared on the centre Balcony which was hung with priceless rugs. Six Turks of the Imperial Body Guard, each over six foot in height, held torches to his right and left. Rockets rose into the air at his appearance, and a great shout went up from the people, which the Ambassador acknowledged,
bowing deeply, and speaking a few words of thanks in the Turkish language, which it was one of his accom- plishments to speak with fluency. Next, Sir Adrian Scrope, in the full dress of a British Admiral advanced; the Ambassador knelt on one knee; the Admiral placed the Collar of the Most Noble Order of the Bath round his neck, then pinned the Star to his breast; after which another gentleman of the diplomatic corps advancing in a stately manner placed on his shoulders the ducal robes, and handed him on a crimson cushion, the ducal coronet.”’
At length, with a gesture of extraordinary majesty and grace, first bowing profoundly, then raising himself proudly erect, Orlando took the golden circlet of straw- berry leaves and placed it, with a gesture which none that saw it ever forgot, upon his brows. It was at this point that the first disturbance began. Either the people had expected a miracle—some say a shower of gold was prophesied to fall from the skies—which did not hap- pen, or this was the signal chosen for the attack to begin; nobody seems to know; but as the coronet settled on Or- lando’s brows a great uproar rose. Bells began ringing; the harsh cries of the prophets were heard above the shouts of the people; many Turks fell flat to the ground and touched the earth with their foreheads. A door burst open. The natives pressed into the banqueting rooms.
Women shrieked. A certain lady, who was said to be dying for love of Orlando, seized a candelabra and dashed it to the- ground. What might not have happened, had it not been for the presence of Sir Adrian Scrope and a squad of British bluejackets, nobody can say. But the Admiral ordered the bugles to be sounded; a hundred bluejackets stood instantly at attention; the disorder was quelled, and quiet, at least for the time being, fell upon the scene.
So far, we are on the firm, if rather narrow, ground of ascertained truth. But nobody has ever known exactly what took place later that night. The testimony of the sentries and others seems, however, to prove that the Em- bassy was empty of company, and shut up for the night in the usual way by two a.m. The Ambassador was seen to go to his room, still wearing the insignia of his rank, and shut the door. Some say he locked it, which was against his custom. Others maintain that they heard music of a rustic kind, such as shepherds play, later that night in the courtyard under the Ambassador’s window. A washer-woman, who was kept awake by a toothache said that she saw a man’s figure, wrapped in a cloak or dressing gown, come out upon the balcony. Then, she said, a woman, much muffled, but apparently of the peasant class was drawn up by means of a rope which the man let down to her on to the balcony. There, the
ORLANDO washer-woman said, they embraced passionately ‘like lovers,’ and went into the room together, drawing the curtains so that no more could be seen.
Next morning, the Duke, as we must now call him, was found by his secretaries sunk in profound slumber amid bed clothes that were much tumbled. The room was in some disorder, his coronet having rolled on the floor, and his cloak and garter being flung all of a heap on a chair. The table was littered with papers. No sus- picion was felt at first, as the fatigues of the night had been great. But when afternoon came and he still slept, a doctor was summoned. He applied the remedies which had been used on the previous occasion, plasters, nettles, emetics, etc., but without success. Orlando slept on. His secretaries then thought it their duty to examine the papers on the table. Many were scribbled over with poetry, in which frequent mention was made of an oak tree. There were also various state papers and others of a private nature concerning the management of his es- tates in England. But at length they came upon a docu- ment of far greater significance. It was nothing less, indeed, than a deed of marriage, drawn up, signed, and witnessed between his Lordship, Orlando, Knight of the Garter, etc. etc. etc., and Rosina Pepita, a dancer, father unknown, but reputed a gipsy, mother also un- known but reputed a seller of old iron in the market-
place over against the Galata Bridge. The secretaries looked at each other in dismay. And still Orlando slept. Morning and évening they watched him, but, save that his breathing was regular and his cheeks still flushed their habitual deep rose, he gave no sign of life. What- ever science or ingenuity could do to waken him they did. But still he slept.
On the seventh day of his trance (Thursday, May the roth) the first shot was fired of that terrible and bloody insurrection of which Lieutenant Brigge had detected the first symptoms. The Turks rose against the Sultan, set fire to the town, and put every foreigner they could find, either to the sword or to the bastinado. A few Eng- lish managed to escape; but, as might have been ex- pected, the gentlemen of the British Embassy preferred to die in defence of their red boxes, or, in extreme cases, to swallow bunches of keys rather than let them fall into the hands of the Infidel. The rioters broke into Orlando’s room, but seeing him stretched to all appearance dead they left him untouched, and only robbed him of his coronet and the robes of the Garter.
And now again obscurity descends, and would indeed that it were deeper! Would, we almost have it in our hearts to exclaim, that it were so deep that we could see nothing whatever through its opacity! Would that we might here take the pen and write Finis to our work!
Would that we might spare the reader what is to come and say to him in so many words, Orlando died and was buried. But here, alas, Truth, Candour, and Honesty, the austere Gods who keep watch and ward by the ink- pot of the biographer, cry No! Putting their silver trum- pets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth! And again they cry Truth! and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth, The Truth and nothing but the Truth!
At which—Heaven be praised! for it affords us a breathing space—the doors gently open, as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had wafted them apart, and three figures enter. First, comes our Lady of Purity; whose brows are bound with fillets of the whitest lamb’s wool; whose hair is an avalanche of the driven snow; and in whose hand reposes the white quill of a virgin goose. Following her, but with a statelier step, comes our Lady of Chastity; on whose brow is set like a turret of burning but unwasting fire a diadem of icicles; her eyes are pure stars, and her fingers, if they touch you, freeze you to the bone. Close behind her, sheltering in- deed in the shadow of her more stately sisters, comes our Lady of Modesty, frailest and fairest of the three; whose face 1s only shown as the young moon shows when it is thin and sickle shaped and half hidden among clouds. Each advances towards the centre of the room where
ORLANDO Orlando still lies sleeping; and with gestures at once ap- pealing and commanding, Our Lady of Purity speaks first: f
“T am the guardian of the sleeping fawn; the snow is dear to me; and the moon rising; and the silver sea. With my robes I cover the speckled hen’s eggs and the brin- dled sea shell; I cover vice and poverty. On all things frail or dark or doubtful, my veil descends. Wherefore, speak not, reveal not. Spare, O spare!”
“Tam she whose touch freezes and whose glance turns to stone. I have stayed the star in its dancing, and the wave as it falls. The highest Alps are my dwelling place; and when I walk, the lightnings flash in my hair; where my eyes fall, they kill. Rather than let Orlando wake, I will freeze him to the bone. Spare, O spare!”
Then Our Lady of Modesty speaks, so low that one can hardly hear:
“TI am she that men call Modesty. Virgin I am and ever shall be. Not for me the fruitful fields and the fer- tile vineyard. Increase is odious to me; and when the apples burgeon or the flocks breed, I run, I run; I let
ORLANDO my mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes. I do not see. Spare, O Spare!”
With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands and dance slowly, tossing their veils and singing as they go:
“Truth, come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth. For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown and un- done; you unveil the shameful; the dark you make clear. Hide! Hide! Hide!”
Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies. The trumpets, meanwhile, still blare forth:
At this the Sisters try to cast their veils over the mouths of the trumpets so as to muffle them, but in vain, for now all trumpets blare forth together.
The Sisters become distracted and wail in unison, still circling and flinging their veils up and down.
“It has not always been so! But men want us no longer; the women detest us. We go; we go. I (Purity says this ) to the hen roost. I (Chastity says this ) to the still unravished heights of Surrey. I (Modesty says this ) to any cosy nook where there are curtains in plenty.
“For there, not here (all speak together joining hands and making gestures of farewell and despair towards the bed where Orlando lies sleeping) dwell still in nest and boudoir, office and lawcourt those who love us; those who honour us, virgins and city men; lawyers and doc- tors; those who prohibit; those who deny; those who reverence without knowing why; those who praise with- out understanding; the still very numerous (Heaven be praised) tribe of the respectable; who prefer to see not; desire to know not; love the darkness; those still worship us, and with reason; for we have given them Wealth, Prosperity, Comfort, Ease. To them we go, you we leave. Come, Sisters come! This is no place for us here.”
They retire in haste, waving their draperies over their heads, as if to shut out something that they dare not look upon and close the door behind them.
Weare, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast:—
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but
The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being, since the world beyan, has ever looked more ravishing. His form com- bined in one the strength of a man and a woman’s grace. As he stood there, the silver trumpets prolonged their note, as if reluctant to leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth; and Chastity, Purity, and Mod- esty, inspired, no doubt, by Curiosity, peeped in at the door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which, unfortunately, fell short by several inches. Or- lando looked himself up and down in a long looking- glass, without showing any signs of discomposure, and went, presumably, to his bath.
We may take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain statements. Orlando had become a wom- an—there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing what- ever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory—but in future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his,’ and ‘she’ for “he’-— her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encounter- ing any obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed;
ORLANDO but that was all. The change seemed to have been accom- plished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando herself*showed no surprise at it. Many people, taking this into account, and holding that such a change of sex is against nature, have been at great pains to prove (1) that Orlando had always been a woman, (2) that Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since. But let other pens treat of sex and sexuality; we quit — such odious subjects as soon as we can. Orlando had now washed, and dressed herself in those Turkish coats and trousers which can be worn indifferently by either sex; and was forced to consider her position. That it was pre- carious and embarrassing in the extreme must be the first thought of every reader who has followed her story with sympathy. Young, noble, beautiful, she had woken to find herself in a position than which we can conceive none more delicate for a young lady of rank. We should not have blamed her had she rung the bell, screamed, or fainted. But Orlando showed no such signs of pertur- bation. All her actions were deliberate in the extreme, and might indeed have been thought to show tokens of premeditation. First, she carefully examined the papers on the table; took such as seemed to be written in poetry,
and secreted them in her bosom; next she called her Se- leuchi hound, which had never left her bed all these days, though half famished with hunger, fed and combed him; then stuck a pair of pistols in her belt; finally wound about her person several strings of emeralds and pearls of the finest orient which had formed part of her Ambas- sadorial wardrobe. This done, she leant out of the win- dow, gave one low whistle, and descended the shattered and bloodstained staircase, now strewn with the litter of waste paper baskets, treaties, despatches, seals, sealing wax, etc., and so entered the courtyard. There, in the shadow of a giant fig|tree waited an old Gipsy on a don- key. He led another by the bridle. Orlando swung her leg over it; and thus, attended by a lean dog, riding a donkey, in company of a gipsy, the Ambassador of Great Britain at the Court of the Sultan left Constan- tinople.
They rode for several days and nights and met with a variety of adventures, some at the hands of men, some at the hands of nature, in all of which Orlando acquitted herself with courage. Within a week they reached the high ground outside Broussa which was then the chief camping ground of the gipsy tribe to which Orlando had ~ allied herself. Often she had looked at those mountains from her balcony at the Embassy; often had longed to be there; and to find oneself where one has longed to be
always, to a reflective mind, gives food for thought. For some time, however, she was too well pleased with the change to spoil it by thinking. The pleasure of having no documents to seal, or sign, no flourishes to make, no calls to pay was enough. The gipsies followed the grass; when it was grazed down, on they moved again. She washed in streams if she washed at all; no boxes, red, blue, or green were presented to her; there was nota key, let alone a golden key in the whole camp; as for ‘visiting,’ the word was unknown. She milked the goats; she col- lected brushwood; she stole a hen’s egg now and then, but always put a coin or a pearl in place of it; she herded cattle; she stripped vines; she trod the grape; she filled the goat-skin and drank from it; and when she remem- bered how, at about this time of day, she should have been making the motions of drinking and smoking over an empty coffee cup and a pipe which lacked tobacco, she laughed aloud, cut herself another hunch of bread, and begged for a puff from old Rustum’s pipe, filled though it was with cow dung.
The gipsies, with whom it is obvious that she must have been in secret communication before the revolu- tion, seem to have looked upon her as one of themselves (which is always the highest compliment a people can pay) and her dark hair and dark complexion bore out the belief that she was, by birth, one of them and had
been snatched by an English Duke from a nut tree when she was a baby and taken to that barbarous land where people live in houses because they are too feeble and dis- eased to stand the open air. Thus, though in many ways inferior to them, they were willing to help her to become more like them; taught her their arts of cheese-making and basket-weaving, their science of stealing and bird- snaring, and were even prepared to consider letting her marry among them.
But Orlando had contracted in England some of the customs or diseases (whatever you choose to consider them) which cannot, it seems, be expelled. One eve- ning, when they were all sitting round the camp fire and the sunset was blazing over the Thessalian hills, Orlando exclaimed:
(The gipsies have no word for ‘beautiful.’ This is the nearest. )
All the young men and women burst out laughing uproariously. The sky good to eat, indeed! The elders, however, who had seen more of foreigners than they had, became suspicious. They noticed that Orlando often sat for whole hours doing nothing whatever, except look here and then there; they would come upon her on some hill-top staring straight in front of her, no matter whether the goats were grazing or straying. They began to sus-
ORLANDO pect that she had other beliefs than their own and the elder men and women thought it probable that she had fallen into the clutches of the vilest and cruelest among all the Gods, which is Nature. Nor were they far wrong. The English disease, a love of Nature, was inborn in her, and here where Nature was so much larger and more powerful than in England, she fell into its hands as she had never done before. The malady is too well known, and has been, alas, too often described to need describing afresh,save very briefly. There were mountains;there were valleys; there were streams. She climbed the mountains; roamed the valleys; sat on the banks of the streams. She likened the hills to ramparts, and the plains to the flanks of kine. She compared the flowers to enamel and the turf to Turkey rugs worn thin. Trees were withered hags,and sheep were grey boulders. Everything, in fact, was some- thing else. She found the tarn on the mountain-top and almost threw herself in to seek the wisdom she thought lay hid there; and when, from the mountain-top, she beheld, far off, across the Sea of Marmara the plains of Greece, and made out (her eyes were admirable) the Acropolis with a white streak or two which must, she thought, be the Parthenon, her soul expanded with her eyeballs, and she prayed that she might share the maj- esty of the hills, know the serenity of the plains, etc., etc., as all such believers do. Then, looking down, the red TAs oe
ORLANDO hyacinth, the purple iris wrought her to cry out in ecstasy at the goodness, the beauty of nature; raising her eyes again, she beheld the eagle soaring, and imagined its raptures and made them her own. Returning home, she saluted each star, each peak, and each watch-fire as if they signalled to her alone; and at last, when she flung herself upon her mat in the gipsies’ tent, she could not help bursting out again, How good to eat! How good to eat! (For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication, that they can only say ‘good to eat’ when they mean ‘beautiful’ and the other way about, they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves.) All the young gipsies laughed. But Rus- tum el Sadi, the old man who had brought Orlando out of Constantinople on his donkey, sat silent. He had a nose like a scimitar; his cheeks were furrowed as if from the age-long descent of iron hail; he was brown and keen-eyed, and as he sat tugging at his hookah he ob- served Orlando narrowly. He had the deepest suspicion that her God was Nature. One day, he found her in tears. Interpreting this to mean that her God had pun- ished her, he told her that he was not surprised. He showed her the fingers of his left hand, withered by the frost; he showed her his right foot, crushed where a rock had fallen. This, he said, was what her God did to men.
ORLANDO , When she said, “But so beautiful,” using the English word, he shook his head; and when she repeated it he was angry. He.saw that she did not believe what he be- lieved, and that was enough, wise and ancient as he was, to enrage him.
This difference of opinion disturbed Orlando, who had been perfectly happy until now. She began to think, was Nature beautiful or cruel; and then she asked herself what this beauty was; whether it was in things them- selves, or only in herself; so she went on to the nature of reality, which led her to truth, which in its turn, led to Love, Friendship, Poetry (as in the days on the high mound at home) which meditations, since she could im- part no word of them, made her long, as she had never longed before, for pen and ink.
“Oh! if only I could write!” she cried (for she had the odd conceit of those who write that words written are shared). She had no ink; and but little paper. But she made ink from berries and wine; and finding a few margins and blank spaces in the manuscript of “The Oak Tree,” managed, by writing a kind of shorthand to de- scribe the scenery in a long, blank verse poem, and to carry on a dialogue with herself about this Beauty and Truth concisely enough. This kept her extremely happy for hours on end. But the gipsies became suspicious, First, they noticed that she was less adept than before at
ORLANDO milking and cheese-making; next, she often hesitated before replying; and once a gipsy boy who had been asleep, woke in a terror feeling her eyes upon him. Some- times this constraint would be felt by the whole tribe, numbering some dozens of grown men and women. It sprang from the sense they had (and their senses are very sharp and much in advance of their vocabulary) that whatever they were doing crumbled like ashes in their hands. An old woman making a basket, a boy skinning a sheep, would be singing or crooning contentedly at their work, when Orlando would come into the camp, fling herself down by the fire and gaze into the flames. She need not even look at them, and yet they felt, here is someone who doubts; (we make a rough-and-ready translation from the gipsy language) here is someone who does not do the thing for the sake of doing; nor looks for looking’s sake; here is someone who believes neither in sheep-skin nor basket; but sees (here they looked apprehensively about the tent) something else. Then a vague but most unpleasant feeling would begin to work in the boy and in the old woman. They broke their withys; they cut their fingers. A great rage filled them. They wished Orlando would leave the tent and never come near them again. Yet she was of a cheerful and willing disposition, they owned; and one of her pearls was enough to buy the finest herd of goats in Broussa. 146
Slowly, she began to feel that there was some differ- ence between her and the gipsies which made her hesi- tate sometimes:to marry and settle down among them for ever. At first she tried to account for it by saying that she came of an ancient and civilised race, whereas these gipsies were an ignorant people, not much better than savages. One night when they were questioning her about England she could not help with some pride de- scribing the house where she was born, how it had 365 bedrooms and had been in the possession of her family for four or five hundred years. Her ancestors were earls, or even dukes, she added. At this she noticed again that the gipsies were uneasy; but not angry as before when she had praised the beauty of nature. Now they were courteous, but concerned as people of fine breeding are when a stranger has been made to reveal his low birth or poverty. Rustum followed her out of the tent alone and said that she need not mind if her father were a Duke, and possessed all the bedrooms and furniture that she described. They would none of them think the worse of her for that. Then she was seized with a shame that she had never felt before. It was clear that Rustum and the other gipsies thought a descent of four or five hundred years only the meanest possible. Their own families went back at least two or three thousand years. To the gipsy whose ancestors had built the Pyramids centuries before
ORLANDO Christ was born, the genealogy of Howards and Plan- tagenets was no better and no worse than that of the Smiths and the Joneses: both were negligible. More- over, where the shepherd boy had a lineage of such an- tiquity, there was nothing specially memorable or de- sirable in ancient birth; vagabonds and beggars all shared it. And then, though he was too courteous to speak openly, it was clear that the gipsy thought that there was no more vulgar ambition than to possess bedrooms by the hundred (they were on top of a hill as they spoke; it was night; the mountains rose around them) when the whole earth is ours. Looked at from the gipsy point of view, a Duke, Orlando understood, was nothing but a profiteer or robber who snatched land and money from people who rated these things of little worth, and could think of nothing better to do than to build three hun- dred and sixty-five bedrooms when one was enough, and none was even better than one. She could not deny that her ancestors had accumulated field after field; house after house; honour after honour; yet had none of them been saints or heroes, or great benefactors of the human race. Nor could she counter the argument (Rustum was too much of a gentleman to press it, but she understood) that any man who did now what her an- cestors had done three or four hundred years ago would be denounced—and by her own family most loudly
She sought to answer such arguments by the familiar if oblique method of finding the Gipsy life itself rude and barbarous; and so, in a short time, much bad blood was bred between them. Indeed, such differences of opinion are enough to cause bloodshed and revolution. Towns have been sacked for less, and a million martyrs have suffered at the stake rather than yield an inch upon any of the points here debated. No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happi- ness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party—for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and the exaltation of virtue—But these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water.
“Four hundred and seventy-six bedrooms mean noth- ing to them,” sighed Orlando.
leave the gipsies and become once more an Ambassador seemed to her intolerable. But it was equally impossible to remain for ever where there was neither ink nor writ- ing paper, neither reverence for the Talbots, nor respect for a multiplicity of bedrooms. So she was thinking, one fine morning on the slopes of Mount Athos, when mind- ing her goats. And then Nature, in whom she trusted, either played her a trick or worked a miracle—again, opinions differ too much for it to be possible to say which. Orlando was gazing rather disconsolately at the steep hill-side in front of her. It was now midsummer, and if we must compare the landscape to anything it would have been to a dry bone; toa sheep’s skeleton; to a gigan- tic skull picked white by a thousand vultures. The heat was intense and the little fig-tree under which Orlando lay only served to print patterns of fig-leaves upon her light burnous.
Suddenly, a shadow, though there was nothing to cast a shadow, appeared on the bald mountain-side opposite. It deepened quickly and soon a green hollow showed where there had been barren rock before. As she looked, the hollow deepened and widened, and a great park-like space opened in the flank of the hill. Within, she could see an undulating and grassy lawn; she could see oak trees dotted here and there; she could see the thrushes hopping among the branches. She could see the deer
stepping delicately from shade to shade, and could even hear the hum of insects and the gentle sighs and shivers of a summer’s day in England. After she had gazed en- tranced for some time, snow began falling; soon the whole landscape was covered and marked with violet shades instead of yellow sunlight. Now she saw heavy carts coming along the roads, laden with tree trunks, which they were taking, she knew, to be sawn for fire- wood; and then there appeared the roofs and belfries and towers and courtyards of her own home. The snow was falling steadily, and she could now hear the slither and flop which it made as it slid down the roof and fell to the ground. The smoke went up from a thousand chimneys. All was so clear and minute that she could see a daw pecking for worms in the snow. Then, gradually, the violet shadows deepened and closed over the carts and the lawns and the great house itself. All was swallowed up. Now there was nothing left of the grassy hollow, and instead of the green lawns was only the blazing hill- side which a thousand vultures seemed to have picked bare. At this, she burst into a passion of tears, and strid- ing back to the gipsies’ camp, told them that she must sail for England the very next day.
It was happy for her that she did so. Already the young men had plotted her death. Honour, they said, de- manded it, for she did not think as they did. Yet they
ORLANDO would have been sorry to cut her throat; and welcomed the news of her departure. An English merchant ship, as luck would have it, was already under sail in the har- bour about to return to England; and Orlando, by break- ing off another pearl from her necklace not only paid her passage but had some banknotes left over in her wallet. These she would have liked to present to the gipsies. But they despised wealth she knew; and she had to content herself with embraces, which on her part were sincere.
ITH some of the guineas left from the sale of the tenth pearl of her string, Orlando had bought herself a complete outfit of such clothes as women then wore, and it was in the dress of a young Englishwoman of rank that she now sat on the deck of the Enamoured Lady. It is a strange fact, but a true one that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought. Per- haps the Turkish trousers, which she had hitherto worn had done something to distract her thoughts; and the gipsy women, except in one or two important particu- lars, differ very little from the gipsy men. At any rate, it was not until she felt the coil of skirts about her legs and the Captain offered, with the greatest politeness, to have an awning spread for her on deck that she realised, with a start the penalties and the privileges of her posi- tion. But that start was not of the kind that might have been expected. It was not caused, that is to say, simply and solely by the thought of her chastity and how she could preserve it. In normal circumstances a lovely young woman
edifice of female government is based on that founda- tion stone; chastity is their jewel, their centre piece, which they run mad to protect, and die when ravished of. But if one has been a man for thirty years or so, and an Ambassador into the bargain, if one has held a Queen in one’s arms and one or two other ladies, if report be true, of less exalted rank, if one has married a Rosina Pepita, and so on, one does not perhaps give such a very great start about that. Orlando’s start was of a very com- plicated kind, and not to be summed up in a trice. No- body, indeed, ever accused her of being one of those quick wits, who run to the end of things in a minute. It took her the entire length of the voyage to moralise out the meaning of her start, and so, at her own pace, we will follow her.
“Lord,” she thought, when she had recovered from her start, stretching herself out at length under her awn- ing, ‘‘this is a pleasant, lazy way of life, to be sure. But,” she thought, giving her legs a kick, “these skirts are plaguey things to have about one’s heels. Yet the stuff (flowered paduasoy) is the loveliest in the world. Never have I seen my own skin (here she laid her hand on her knee) look to such advantage as now. Could I, how- ever, leap overboard and swim in clothes like these ? No! Therefore, I should have to trust to the protection of a blue-jacket. Do I object to that? Now do I?” she won-
ORLANDO dered, here encountering the first knot in the smooth skein of her argument.
Dinner came before she had untied it, and then it was the Captain himself—Captain Nicholas Benedict Bar- tolus, a sea-captain of distinguished aspect, who did it for her as he helped her to a slice of corned beef.
“A little of the fat, Ma’am ?”’ he asked. ‘“‘Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your finger nail.” At those words, a delicious tremor ran through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha, hundreds of years ago. Then she had pur- sued, now she fled. Which is the greater ecstasy? The - man’s or the woman’s? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the most delicious (thank- ing the Captain but refusing) to refuse, and see him frown. Well, she would, if he wished it, have the very thinnest, smallest shiver in the world. This was the most delicious, to yield and see him smile. “For nothing,” she thought, regaining her couch on deck, and continuing the argument, “is more heavenly than to resist and to yield; to yield and to resist. Surely it throws the spirit into such a rapture that nothing else can. So that I’m not sure,” she continued, “that I won’t throw myself over- board, for the mere pleasure of being rescued by a blue- jacket after all.”
(It must be remembered that she was like a child, entering into possession of a pleasaunce or toycupboard; her arguments would not commend themselves to ma- ture women, who have had the run of it all their lives.)
“But what used we young fellows in the cockpit of the Marie Rose to say about a woman who threw herself overboard for the pleasure of being rescued by a blue- een ” she said. ““We had a word for them. Ah! I have it. . . .” (But we must omit that word; it was disre- ene in the extreme and passing strange on a lady’s lips.) “Lord! Lord!” she cried again at the conclusion of her thoughts, “must I then begin to respect the opin- ion of the other sex, however monstrous I think it? If I wear skirts, if I can swim, if I have to be rescued by a blue-jacket, by God!” she cried, “I must!” Upon which, a gloom fell over her. Candid by nature, and averse to all kinds of equivocation, to tell lies bored her. It seemed to her a roundabout way of going to work. Yet, she re- flected, the flowered paduasoy—the pleasure of being rescued by a blue-jacket—if these were only to be ob- tained by roundabout ways, roundabout one must go, she supposed. She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. “Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires,”’ she reflected; “for women are not (judging by my own short experi-
ence of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There’s the hair- dressing,” she thought, “that alone will take an hour of my morning; there’s looking in the looking-glass, an- other hour; there’s staying and lacing; there’s washing and powdering; there’s changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; and there’s being chaste year in WEIL OUL eo Aaers ” Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved him- self by the skin of his teeth. “If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,” Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman’s beauty has to be kept covered, lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head. “A pox on them!” she said, realising for the first time, what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsi- bilities of womanhood.