"No, his beard was dark. You have his brows, I think."
Ursula ceased and became self-conscious. She at once
identified herself with her Polish grandfather.
"And did he have brown eyes?"
"Yes, dark eyes. He was a clever man, as quick as a lion. He
was never still."
Lydia still resented Lensky. When she thought of him, she was
always younger than he, she was always twenty, or twenty-five,
and under his domination. He incorporated her in his ideas as if
she were not a person herself, as if she were just his
aide-de-camp, or part of his baggage, or one among his surgical
appliances. She still resented it. And he was always only
thirty: he had died when he was thirty-four. She did not feel
sorry for him. He was older than she. Yet she still ached in the
thought of those days.
"Did you like my first grandfather best?" asked Ursula.
"I liked them both," said the grandmother.
And, thinking, she became again Lensky's girl-bride. He was
of good family, of better family even than her own, for she was
half German. She was a young girl in a house of insecure
fortune. And he, an intellectual, a clever surgeon and
physician, had loved her. How she had looked up to him! She
remembered her first transports when he talked to her, the
important young man with the severe black beard. He had seemed
so wonderful, such an authority. After her own lax household,
his gravity and confident, hard authority seemed almost God-like
to her. For she had never known it in her life, all her
surroundings had been loose, lax, disordered, a welter.
"Miss Lydia, will you marry me?" he had said to her in
German, in his grave, yet tremulous voice. She had been afraid
of his dark eyes upon her. They did not see her, they were fixed
upon her. And he was hard, confident. She thrilled with the
excitement of it, and accepted. During the courtship, his kisses
were a wonder to her. She always thought about them, and
wondered over them. She never wanted to kiss him back. In her
idea, the man kissed, and the woman examined in her soul the
kisses she had received.
She had never quite recovered from her prostration of the
first days, or nights, of marriage. He had taken her to Vienna,
and she was utterly alone with him, utterly alone in another
world, everything, everything foreign, even he foreign to her.
Then came the real marriage, passion came to her, and she became
his slave, he was her lord, her lord. She was the girl-bride,
the slave, she kissed his feet, she had thought it an honour to
touch his body, to unfasten his boots. For two years, she had
gone on as his slave, crouching at his feet, embracing his
knees.