Fatal Glamour by Paul Delany Read Free Book Online

her friends Evelyn Radford and Dorothy Osmaston. Noel would come down from Bedales to be under her older sister’s watchful eye. For Rupert, the meeting with Noel was an enchantment, by which he could slough off his old self and start afresh. He shared his secret with Jacques:
    I was lost for four days – I went clean out of the knowledge of anyone in England but two or three – I turned, and turned, andcovered my trail; and for three-four days, I was, for the first time in my life, a free man, and my own master! Oh! the joy of it! Only three know, but you shall . . . For I went dancing and leaping through the New Forest, with £3 and a satchel full of books, talking to everyone I met, mocking and laughing at them, sleeping and eating anywhere, singing to the birds, tumbling about in the flowers, bathing in the rivers, and, in general, behaving naturally. And all in England, at Eastertide! And so I walked and laughed and met a many people and made a thousand songs – all very good – and, in the end of the days, came to a Woman who was more glorious than the Sun and stronger than the sea, and kinder than the earth, who is a flower made out of fire, a star that laughs all day, whose brain is clean and clear like a man’s and her heart is full of courage and kindness; and whom I love.
    This is about as far as one can get from the languid aesthete of three years before, but Rupert’s new attitude was no less suspect. Suspect even to himself, since he went on to assure his correspondent that he was “not unlike the R.B. you used to find, as you say, learning Ernest Dowson by heart.” 30 What is he up to this time, one wonders: learning by heart to be a Child of Nature? Rupert in the role of Pan is not altogether convincing, especially when he prances in constant fear of the Ranee, who waits for him suspiciously in her boarding-house at Sidmouth – and expects him to arrive from the west rather than from the east, requiring more subterfuge on Rupert’s part.
    What were the real emotions of those four days at Bank? Pictures show us Rupert in boots and Norfolk jacket (made popular by George Bernard Shaw), looking more hearty and less conscious of the camera than usual. His hair is shorter, too – perhaps because he expects to confront the Ranee before long. Noel, in her Bedales tunic, looks down with a shy smile; she is at the opposite end of the group from Rupert, with Margery planted warily in the middle. In fact, things were not so quiet as they look in the picture. The trouble, which would fester for years, was that Rupert had succeeded too well in pretending an interest in Margery. She had fallen in love with him, and Noel’s presence must have seemed an irritation and a stumbling block. Meanwhile, Noel was slipping away for soulful meetings with Rupert among the great trees that surrounded their cottage.
    On Rupert’s side, there are two revealing poems inspired by the days at Bank. One is really his first breakthrough into serious and mature poetry: “Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire / Of watching you.” The speaker, who has died before his beloved, finally sees her arrive in the underworld:
    Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
    Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam –
    Most individual and bewildering ghost! –
    And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
    Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.
    The beloved, whom he has never possessed in life, acknowledges his gaze, but does not respond to it. Her aloofness, we suspect, is just what makes her lovable. “The Voice” gives their relation a darker outcome. It begins at twilight, with the poet brooding on his love:
    Safe in the magic of my woods
    I lay, and watched the dying light.
    And there I waited breathlessly,
    Alone; and slowly the holy three,
    The three that I loved, together grew
    One, in the hour of knowing,
    Night, and the woods, and you –
    But