by Ouida
It was useless. All the strength she possessed was already spent. The feebleness of fever still sang in her ears and trembled in her blood. She was sick and faint, and very thirsty.
She struck timidly at a little cottage door, and asked to rest the night there.
The woman glanced at her and slammed to the door. At another and yet another she tried; but at neither had she any welcome; they muttered of the hospitals and drove her onward. Finally, tired out, she dropped down on the curled hollow of an old oak stump that stood by the wayside, and fell asleep, seeing to the last through her sinking lids that cloud of light where the great city lay.
The night was cold; the earth damp; she stretched her limbs out wearily and sighed, and dreamed that Thanatos touched her with his asphodels and whispered, “Come.”
CHAPTER IX.
When she awoke she was no longer in the open air by the roadside, and the gray of the falling night about her, and the wet leaves for her bed. She was in a wide painted chamber, sweet with many roses, hung with deep hues of violet, filled with gold and color and sculpture and bronze, duskily beautiful and dimly lighted by a great wood fire that glowed upon andirons of brass.
On the wall nearest her hung all alone a picture, — a picture of a girl asleep in a scarlet blaze of poppies, above her head a purple butterfly, and on her breast the Red Mouse of the Brocken.
Opposite to it, beside the hearth, watching her with his small brilliant eyes, and quite motionless, sat the old man Sartorian, who had kept his faith with her, though the gods had not kept theirs.
And the picture and the reality grew confused before her, and she knew not which was herself and which her painted likeness, nor which was the little red mouse that gibbered among the red flowers, and which the little old man who sat watching her with the fire-gleams bright in his eyes; and it seemed to her that she and the picture were one, and he and the mouse were one likewise; and she moaned and leaned her head on her hands and tried to think.
The heat of the chamber, and the strong nourishment which they had poured down her throat when she was insensible of anything they did to her, had revived the life in her. Memory and sense returned slowly to her; what first awakened was her one passionate desire, so intense that it became an instinct stifling every other, to go on her way to the city that had flashed in its golden glory on her sight one moment, only the next to disappear into the eternal night.
“Paris!” she muttered, mechanically, as she lifted her face with a hopeless, bewildered prayer.
“Tell me the way to Paris,” she muttered, instinctively, and she tried to rise and walk, not well knowing what she did.
The old man laughed a little, silently.
“Ah-h-h! Women are the only peaches that roll of their own accord from the wall to the wasp’s nest!”
At the sound of his voice her eyes opened wide upon him; she knew his face again.
“Where am I?” she asked him, with a sharp terror in her voice.
“In my house,” he said, simply. “I drove by you when you lay on the roadside. I recognized you. When people dream of immortality they generally die in a ditch. You would have died of a single night out there. I sent my people for you. You did not wake. You have slept here five hours.”
“Is this Rioz?” She could not comprehend; a horror seized her, lest she should have strayed from Paris back into her mother’s province.
“No. It is another home of mine; smaller, but choicer maybe. Who has cut your hair close?”
She shuddered and turned paler with the memory of that ghastly prison-house.
“Well; I am not sure but that you are handsomer, — almost. A sculptor would like you more now, — what a head you would make for an Anteros, or an Icarus, or a Hyacinthus! Yes — you are best so. You have been ill?”
She could not answer; she only stared at him, blankly, with sad, mindless, dilated eyes.
“A little gold!” she muttered, “a little gold!”
He looked at her awhile, then rose and went and sent his handwomen, who took her to an inner chamber, and bathed and attended her with assiduous care. She was stupefied, and knew not what they did.
They served her tenderly. They bathed her tired limbs and laid her, as gently as though she were some wounded royal captive, upon a couch of down.
She had no force to resist. Her eyes were heavy, and her senses were obscured. The potence of the draught which they had forced through her lips, when she had been insensible, acted on her as an anodyne. She sank back unconsciously, and she slept again, all through the night and half the day that followed.
Through all the hours she was conscious at intervals of the fragrance of flowers, of the gleams of silver and gold, of the sounds of distant music, of the white, calm gaze of marble fauns and dryads, who gazed on her from amidst the coolness of hanging foliage. She who had never rested on any softer couch than her truss of hay or heap of bracken, dreamed that she slept on roses. The fragrance of innumerable flowers breathed all around her. A distant music came through the silence on her drowsy ear. For the first time in her life of toil and pain she knew how exquisite a pleasure mere repose can be.
At noon she awoke, crying aloud that the Red Mouse claimed her soul from Thanatos.
When her vision cleared, and her dream passed away, the music, the flowers, the color, the coolness, were all real around her. She was lying on a couch as soft as the rose-beds of Sybaris. About her were the luxuries and the graces amidst which the rich dwell. Above her head, from a golden height, a painted Eros smiled.
The light, on to which her startled eyes opened, came to her veiled through soft, rosy hues; the blossom of flowers met her everywhere; gilded lattices, and precious stones, and countless things for which she knew neither the name nor use, and wondrous plants, with birds like living blossoms on the wing above them, and the marble heads of women, rising cold and pure above the dreamy shadows, all the color, and the charm, and the silence, and the grace of the life that is rounded by wealth were around her.
She lay silent and breathless awhile, with wide-open eyes, motionless from the languor of her weakness and the confusion of her thoughts, wondering dully, whether she belonged to the hosts of the living or the dead.
She was in a small sleeping-chamber, in a bed like the cup of a lotos; there was perfect silence round her, except for the faint far-off echo of some music; a drowsy subtle fragrance filled the air, the solemn measure of a clock’s pendulum deepened the sense of stillness; for the first time in her life she learned how voluptuous a thing the enjoyment of simple rest can be. All her senses were steeped in it, lulled by it, magnetized by it; and, so far as every thought was conscious to her, she thought that this was death — death amidst the fields of asphodel, and in the eternal peace of the realm of Thanatos.
Suddenly her eyes fell on a familiar thing, a little picture close at hand, the picture of herself amidst the poppies.
She leapt from her bed and fell before it, and clasped it in her arms, and wept over it and kissed it, because it had been the work of his hand, and prayed to the unknown gods to make her suffer all things in his stead, and to give him the desire of his soul. And the Red Mouse had no power on her, because of her great love.
She rose from that prayer with her mind clear, and her nerves strung from the lengthened repose; she remembered all that had chanced to her.
“Where are my clothes?” she muttered to the serving-woman who watched beside her. “It is broad day; — I must go on; — to Paris.”
They craved her to wear the costly and broidered stuffs strewn around her; masterpieces of many an Eastern and Southern loom; but she put them all aside in derision and impatience, drawing around her with a proud loving action the folds of her own poor garments. Weather-stained, torn by bush and brier, soaked with night-dew, and discolored by the dye of many a crushed flower and bruised berry of the fields and woods, she yet would not have exchanged these poor shreds of woven flax and goats’ wool against imperial robes, for, poor tho
ugh they were, they were the symbols of her independence and her liberty.
The women tended her gently, and pressed on her many rare and fair things, but she would not have them; she took a cup of milk, and passed out into the larger chamber.
She was troubled and bewildered, but she had no fear; for she was too innocent, too wearied, and too desperate with that deathless courage, which, having borne the worst that fate can do, can know no dread.
She stood with her arms folded on her breast, drawing together the tattered folds of the tunic, gazing at the riches and the luxury, and the blended colors of the room. So softly that she never heard his footfall, the old man entered behind her, and came to the hearth, and looked on her.
“You are better?” he asked. “Are you better, Folle-Farine?”
She looked up, and met the eyes of Sartorian. They smiled again on her with the smile of the Red Mouse.
The one passion which consumed her was stronger than any fear or any other memory: she only thought —— this man must know?
She sprang forward and grasped his arm with both hands, with the seizure of a tigress; her passionate eyes searched his face; her voice came hard and fast.
“What have you done? — is he living or dead? — you must know?”
His eyes still smiled:
“I gave him his golden key; — how he should use it, that was not in our bond? But, truly, I will make another bond with you any day, Folle-Farine.”
She shuddered, and her hands dropped from their hold.
“You know nothing?” she murmured.
“Of your Norse god? nay, nothing. An eagle soars too high for a man’s sight to follow, you know — oftentimes.”
And he laughed his little soft laugh.
The eagles often soared so high — so high — that the icy vapors of the empyrean froze them dead, and they dropped to earth a mere bruised, helpless, useless mass: — he knew.
She stood stunned and confused: her horror of Sartorian was struggling into life through the haze in which all things of the past were still shrouded to her dulled remembrance — all things, save her love.
“Rest awhile,” he said, gently. “Rest; and we may — who knows? — learn something of your Northern god. First, tell me of yourself. I have sought for tidings of you vainly.”
Her eyes glanced round her on every side.
“Let me go,” she muttered.
“Nay — a moment yet. You are not well.”
“I am well.”
“Indeed? Then wait a moment.”
She rested where he motioned; he looked at her in smiling wonder.
She leaned on one of the cushioned couches, calm, motionless, negligent, giving no sign that she saw the chamber round her to be any other than the wooden barn or thatched cattle-sheds of the old mill-house; her feet were crossed, her limbs were folded in that exquisite repose which is inborn in races of the East; the warmth of the room and the long hours of sleep had brought the natural bloom to her face, the natural luster to her eyes, which earlier fatigue and long illness had banished.
He surveyed her with that smile which she had resented on the day when she had besought pity of him for Arslàn’s sake.
“Do you not eat?” was all he said.
“Not here.”
He laughed, his low humorous laugh that displeased her so bitterly, though it was soft of tone.
“And all those silks, and stuffs, and laces — do they please you no better?”
“They are not mine.”
“Pooh! do you not know yet? A female thing, as beautiful as you are, makes hers everything she looks upon?”
“That is a fine phrase.”
“And an empty one, you think. On my soul! no. Everything you see here is yours, if it please you.”
She looked at him with dreaming perplexed eyes.
“What do you want of me?” she said, suddenly.
“Nay — why ask? All men are glad to give to women with such a face as yours.”
She laughed a little; with the warmth, the rest, the wonder, the vague sense of some unknown danger, her old skill and courage rose. She knew that she had promised to be grateful always to this man: otherwise, — oh, God! — how she could have hated him, she thought!
“Why?” she answered, “why? Oh, only this: when I bought a measure of pears for Flamma in the market-place, the seller of them would sometimes pick me out a big yellow bon-chrétien, soft as butter, sweet as sugar, and offer it to me for myself. Well, when he did that, I always knew that the weight was short, or the fruit rotten. This is a wonderful pear you would give me; but is your measure false?”
He looked at her with a curious wonder and admiration; he was angered, humbled, incensed, and allured, and yet he was glad; she looked so handsome thus with the curl on her quiet lips, and her spirited head fit for a bronze cast of Atalanta.
He was an old man; he could bear to pause and rightly appreciate the charm of scorn, the spur of irony, the good of hatred. He knew the full value of its sharp spears to the wonder-blooming aloe.
He left the subject for a happier moment, and, seating himself, opened his hands to warm them by the wood fire, still watching her with that smile, which for its very indulgence, its merry banter, she abhorred.
“You lost your Norse god as I prophesied?” he asked, carelessly.
He saw her whole face change as with a blow, and her body bend within itself as a young tree bends under a storm.
“He went when you gave him the gold,” she said below her breath.
“Of course he went. You would have him set free,” he said, with the little low laugh still in his throat. “Did I not say you must dream of nothing else if once you had him freed? You would be full of faith; and unbar your eagle’s prison-house, and then, because he took wing through the open door, you wonder still. That is not very wise, Folle-Farine.”
“I do not wonder,” she said, with fierce effort, stifling her misery. “He had a right to do as he would: have I said any otherwise?”
“No. You are very faithful still, I see. Yet, I cannot think that you believed my prophecy, or you — a woman — had never been so strong. You think I can tell you of his fate? Nay, on my soul I know nothing. Men do not speak his name. He may be dead; — you shrink? So! can it matter so much? He is dead to you. He is a great man, but he is a fool. Half his genius would give him the fame he wants with much greater swiftness than the whole ever will. The world likes talent, which serves it. It hates genius, which rules it. Men would adore his technical treatment, his pictorial magnificence, his anatomical accuracy; but they will always be in awe of his intensity of meaning, of his marvelous fertility, of his extraordinary mingling of the chillest of idealisms and the most unsparing of sensualities, — but I talk idly. Let us talk of you; see, I chose your likeness, and he let me have it — did you dream that he would part with it so lightly?”
“Why not? He had a million things more beautiful.”
He looked at her keenly. He could measure the superb force of this unblenching and mute courage.
“In any other creature such a humility would be hypocrisy. But it is not so in you. Why will you carry yourself as in an enemy’s house? Will you not even break your fast with me? Nay, that is sullen, that is barbaric. Is there nothing that can please you? See here, — all women love these; the gypsy as well as the empress. Hold them a moment.”
She took them; old oriental jewels lying loose in an agate cup on a table near; there were among them three great sapphires, which in their way were priceless, from their rare size and their perfect color.
Her mouth laughed with its old scorn. She, who had lost life, soul, earth, heaven, to be consoled with the glass beads of a bauble! This man seemed to her more foolish than any creature that had ever spoken on her ear.
She looked, then laid them — indifferently — down.
“Three sparrow’s eggs are as big, and almost as blue, among the moss in any month of May!”
He moved them away, ch
agrined.
“How do you intend to live? he asked, dryly.
“It will come as it comes,” she answered, with the fatalism and composure that ran in her Eastern blood.
“What have you done up to this moment since you left my house at Rioz?”
She told him, briefly; she wanted to hide that she had suffered aught, or had been in any measure coldly dealt with, and she spoke with the old force of a happier time, seeking rather to show how well it was with her that she should thus be free, and have no law save her own will, and know that none lived who could say to her, “Come hither” or “go there.”
Almost she duped him, she was so brave. Not quite. His eyes had read the souls and senses of women for half a century; and none had ever deceived him. As he listened to her he knew well that under her desolation and her solitude her heart was broken — though not her courage.
But he accepted her words as she spoke them. “Perhaps you are wise to take your fate so lightly,” he said to her. “But do you know that it is a horrible thing to be alone and penniless and adrift, and without a home or a friend, when one is a woman and young?”
“It is worse when one is a woman and old; but who pities it then?” she said, with the curt and caustic meaning that had first allured him in her.
“And a woman is so soon old!” he added, with as subtle a significance.
She shuddered a little; no female creature that is beautiful and vigorous and young can coldly brook to look straight at the doom of age; death is far less appalling, because death is uncertain, mystical, and may still have beauty.
“What do you intend to do with yourself?” he pursued.
“Intend! It is for the rich ‘to intend,’ the poor must take what chances.”
She spoke calmly, leaning down on one of the cushioned benches by the hearth, resting her chin on her hand; her brown slender feet were crossed one over another, her eyelids were heavy from weakness and the warmth of the room; the soft dim light played on her tenderly; he looked at her with a musing smile.
“No beautiful woman need ever be poor,” he said, slowly spreading out the delicate palms of his hands to the fire; “and you are beautiful — exceedingly.”