by Ouida
War-worn Europe has little left that is more beautiful than that grand tranquil solitary forest-ride with that azure water for its goal and crown.
The Attersee is very lovely, blue as the Mediterranean; radiantly, wonderfully blue; sweeping away into the distance to the Schaffberg range, with white-sailed boats upon it, and here and there, alas! the trail of a steamer as the vessels go to and from Unterach and Steinbach and Nussdorff.
At Weissbach the meadows go close down to the water, meadows of that rich long flower-filled grass that is the glory of Austria and grows all about the little white stone quays; the boats come up to the edge of the meadows, and the rowers, or those who sail in them, land in that knee-deep grass, under the shade of beech trees. There is a little summer inn on the shore, with balconies and hanging creepers; it is modest and does not greatly hurt the scene; the hills rise sheer and bold above it. A little higher yet are the mountains of the Hochlaken and Hoellen ranges, where you can shoot, if you will, the golden eagle and the vulture.
Corrèze, beguiled by the beauty of the road, followed it leisurely, till it led him to the Attersee in some two hours’ time. There he dismounted and strolled about. It was not very often that he had leisure for long quiet hours in the open air, but he always enjoyed them; he felt angry with himself that in this pure atmosphere, in this serene loveliness, he remained dissatisfied and ill at ease — because he was alone.
Do what he would he could not forget the grand troubled eyes of Vere, and the accent of her voice when she had said, “It was not my fault that I sank!”
“Nothing could ever be her fault,” he thought, “yet what could they do to her so quickly? what force could her mother use?”
He left the mare in the inn-stable for rest, and wandered up into the higher slopes of the hills, leaving the lake with its boats that came and went, its meadows, dotted with human butterflies, its little landing-place with flags flying. “The forest-road is grander,” he said, and told his groom to lead the horse back after him when it was rested; he meant to return to Ischl on foot. Fifteen miles of woodland on a summer afternoon is more charming out of saddle than in it.
“With a horse one must go so terribly straight,” he thought to himself; “it is the by-paths that are the charm of the forest; the turning to left or to right at one’s whim; the resting by the way, the losing oneself even, and the chance of passing the night under the stars; the pleasure of being young again at our old école buissonière. All that is inevitably lost when one rides.”
So he turned his back on the blue Attersee, and walked home along the dale, that seemed a path of green and gold as the sunbeams of afternoon shone through the trees.
There is a part that is mere moorland, where the pines have been felled and the heather grows alone; the sandy road track runs between the lilac plumes, lying open to the light for a little while before it plunges again into the deep sweet shadows of the forest growth. On the crest of that more open part he saw two human figures and a dog; they were dark and colourless against the bright afternoon light, yet, in an instant, he recognised them — they were the figures of Vere and of a Russian servant.
In a few moments he could overtake them, for they moved slowly He hesitated — doubted — said to himself that he would do best to turn back again whilst he was still unseen. At that moment Vere paused, looked behind her to see the sun going towards its setting above the mountains, and saw also himself.
He hesitated no more, but approached her.
He saw that delicate colour, that was like the hue of the wild rose he had once given her, come into her face; but she gave him her hand simply and cordially, and he bowed over it with his head uncovered.
“You have been to the lake, Princess? So have I; but the forest is better. The Attersee has too many people by it, and I saw a funnel in the distance — all illusion was destroyed.”
“The steamers make the tour of it, unhappily. But this forest road is perfect. I send my ponies on to wait for me by the Chorynsky-clause — and you?”
“I have left my horse, or rather Duke Ludwigs horse, to follow me. She is a young mare, and needs ones attention, which spoils the pleasures of the wood. What a grand country it is! If it did not rain so often it would be Arcadia. Are you strong enough to walk so far, madame?”
The “madame” hurt him to say, and hurt her to hear. She answered, a little hurriedly, that she liked walking — it never hurt her — in Paris she could walk so little, that tired her far more. And Corrèze, unasked but unrepulsed, strolled on beside her; the grim white-bearded servant behind them.
She was dressed with perfect simplicity in something cream-hued and soft, but he thought that she looked lovelier than she had done even in her jewels and her nenuphars at night.
“O gioventu, primavera della vita!” he thought. “Even a tyrant like the Muscovite cannot altogether spoil its glories.”
They had come now into the fragrant gloom of the forest, where the trees stood thick as bowmen in a fight in olden days, and the mountains rose behind them stern and blue like tempest-clouds, while the silence was full of the fresh sound of rushing waters.
Loris was darting hither and thither, chasing hares, scenting foxes, starting birds of all species, but never going very far afield from his mistress.
They walked on almost in silence — the woodland had that beauty amidst which idle speech seems a sort of profanation — and Corrèze was musing:
“Shall I tell her the truth, and frighten her and disgust her, and never see her face again, except across the gas-glare of the Grand Opéra? Or shall I keep silence, and try and deserve her trust, and try and be some shield between her and the world they have cast her into; and become in time, perhaps, of some aid and service to her? One way is selfish and easy; the other—”
He knew himself, and knew women, too well to be blind to any of the dangers that would befall both in the latter course; but an infinite compassion was in him for this young and beautiful woman; a deep tenderness was in him for her — mournful and wistful — quelling passion. He for ever reproached himself that he had not followed his impulse, and cast prudence to the winds, and stayed by the grey northern sea and saved her, whilst yet there had been time, from the world and from her mother.
They paced onward side by side.
The old man-servant followed with a frown on his brows. He knew Corrèze by sight, he had seen all Petersburg wild with adoration of their idol, running before his sledge, and strewing flowers and evergreens on the frozen earth in his honour; but he did not think it fitting for a mere foreign singer to walk side by side with the Princess Zouroff. Nevertheless, he kept respectfully his due distance behind them, marvelling only whether it would lie within his duty to tell his master of this strange summer day’s stroll.
“Madame de Sonnaz is not with you to-day?” Corrèze was saying as he roused himself from his meditation.
Vere answered him: “No. She has many other friends in Ischl; she is with the Archduchess Sophie.”
“Ah! You like Madame de Sonnaz? Of course you do, since you travel together.”
“She offered to come with me. M. Zouroff accepted for me. It was very kind of her.”
“Bah! And that is the way they trick you, and you never dream of their shame!” thought Corrèze, as he merely said aloud, “The duchesse is very witty, very charming; she must be an amusing companion — when she is in a good humour!”
“You do not like her? You seemed as if you did yesterday.”
It was a little reproach that unconsciously escaped her. His gallantries and his persiflage at the breakfast had hurt her too much for her to so soon forget them.
“I like her as I like all her world,” said Corrèze. “I like her with my intelligence infinitely; with my heart, or what does duty for it, I abhor her.”
“You separate intelligence and feeling then?”
“By five thousand leagues! Will M. Zouroff join you here?”
“He will meet us at Vienna; Madame de
Sonnaz is going to stay with me at Svir.”
“You will be long in Russia?”
“Oh, no; the two next months, perhaps.”
“But so much long travel; does it not tire you, since you are not strong?”
“I think I am strong enough. It is not that; I am tired — but it is of being useless.”
She would have said joyless and friendless too, but she knew that it was not well for any lamentation to escape her which could seem to cast blame upon her husband or ask pity for herself.
“I am as useless as the lace I make,” she said more lightly, to take weight off her words. “There is so much routine in the life we lead; I cannot escape from it. The days are all swallowed up by small things. When I was a child, and read of the old etiquette of Versailles, of the grand couvert and the petit couvert, and the très petit couvert, and all the rest of the formal divisions of the hours, I used to think how terrible it must have been to be the king; but our lives are much the same, they are divided between petits couverts and grand couverts, and there is no other time left.”
“Yes, our great world is much like their great world — only with the dignity left out!” said Corrèze, as he thought:
No head but some world genius should rest
Above the treasures of that perfect breast.
..Yet thou art bound —
O waste of nature! — to a shameless hound;
To shameless lust...Athene to a Satyr!
“And how did they make her take the Satyr?” he mused. “She is not a reed to be blown by any wind, nor yet a clay to be molded by any hand. What force did Miladi Dolly use?”
“It is very difficult to be of much use,” Vere said once more as she walked on; “they say one does more harm than good by charity, and what else is there?”
“Your own peasantry? In those Russian villages there must be so much ignorance, so much superstition, so little comprehension of the value of freedom or morality—”
“My husband does not like me to interfere with the peasantry; and, besides, I am so rarely in that country. The little I can do, I do in Paris. Ah!” She interrupted herself with a sudden remembrance, and a smile beamed over her face, as she turned it to Corrèze. “I know Père Martin and his daughter; how they love you! They told me everything. What simple good creatures they are!”
Corrèze smiled too.
“They are like the public — they over-estimate me sadly, and their enthusiasm dowers me with excellencies that I never possessed. How came you to find that father and daughter out, Princess? I thought they lived like dormice.”
She told him the little tale; and it drew them together, and made them more at ease one with another by its community of interest, as they moved slowly down the woodland road through the leafy dusky shadows. For in the heart of each there was a dread that made them nervous. She thought always: “If only he will spare me my husband’s name.” And he thought: “If only she would never speak to me of her husband!”
Memories were between them that held them together, as the thought of little dead children will sometimes hold those who have loved and parted for ever.
He longed to know what force, or what temptation, had brought her to this base and joyless marriage; but his lips were shut. He had saved her from the insult of Noisette, but he thought she did not know it; he went yearly to hear the lark sing on the head of the cliff where he had gathered her rose, but he thought she knew nothing of that either. Yet the sense of these things was between them; and he dared not look at her as he went on down the mountain road.
She was thinking always of his bidding to her, when she had been a child, to keep unspotted from the world. She longed to tell him that she had not stooped to the guilt of base vanities when she had given herself to Sergius Zouroff, but her lips were shut.
“I must not blame my mother, nor my husband,” she thought. Her cheeks burned as she felt, since he had saved her from the outrage of the Kermesse, that he must know the daily insults of her life. She was troubled, confused, oppressed; yet the charm of his presence held her like an incantation. She went slowly through the grand old wood, as Spensers heroines through enchanted forests.
“You said that you like Madame de Sonnaz?” he asked again abruptly.
“She is very agreeable,” she said, hesitatingly; “and she is very good-natured to me; she reminds me of many things that I displease Prince Zouroff in; mere trifles of ceremonies and observances that I forget, for I am very forgetful, you know.”
“Of little things, perhaps; thoughtful people often are. Big brains do not easily hold trifles. So Madame de Sonnaz plays the part of Mentor to you about these little packets of starch that the beau monde thinks are the staff of life? That is kind of her, for I think no one ever more completely managed to throw the starch over their left shoulder than she has done!”
“You do not like her?”
“Oh! one always likes great ladies and pretty women. Not that she is pretty, but she has du charme, which is perhaps more. All I intended to say was, that she is not invariably sincere, and it might be as well that you should remember that, if she be intimate enough with you to give you counsels—”
“My husband told me to always listen to, and follow what she said. He has, I believe, a great esteem for her.”
Corrèze swore an oath, that only a foxglove heard, as he stooped to gather it. There was a great disgust on his mobile face, that she did not see, as he was bending down amongst the blossoms.
“No doubt,” he said briefly; “esteem is not exactly what the Duchesse Jeanne has inspired or sought to inspire; but M. Zouroff possibly knows her better than I can do—”
“But is she not a good woman?” Vere asked, with a little sternness coming on her delicate face.
Corrèze laughed a little; yet there was a great compassion in his eyes as he glanced at her.
“Good? Madame Jeanne? I am afraid she would laugh very much if she heard you. Yes; she is very good for five minutes after she has left the confessional — for she does go to confess, though I cannot imagine her telling truth there. It would be trop bourgeoise.”
“You speak as if she were indeed not good!”
“Good? bad? If there were only good and bad in this world it would not matter so much,” said Corrèze a little recklessly and at random. “Life would not be such a disheartening affair as it is. Unfortunately the majority of people are neither one nor the other, and have little inclination for either crime or virtue. It would be almost as absurd to condemn them as to admire them. They are like tracks of shifting sand, in which nothing good or bad can take root. To me they are more despairing to contemplate than the darkest depth of evil; out of that may come such hope as comes of redemption and remorse, but in the vast, frivolous, featureless, mass of society there is no hope. It is like a feather bed, in which the finest steel must lose point and power!—”
“But is the Duchesse de Sonnaz characterless? Frivolous, perhaps, but surely not characterless?” said Vere, with that adherence to the simple point of argument and rejection of all discursiveness which had once made her the despair of her mother.
“See for yourself, Princess,” said Corrèze suggestively. “What she has, or has not, of character may well become your study. When we are intimate with any person it is very needful to know them well; what one’s mere acquaintances are matters little, one can no more count them than count the gnats on a summer day; but about our friends we cannot be too careful.”
“She is not my friend; I have not any friend.”
There was a loneliness and a melancholy in the simplicity of the words that was in pathetic contrast with that position which so many other women envied her.
Tender words, that once said could never have been withdrawn, and would have divided him from her for ever, rose to the lips of Corrèze, but he did not utter them; he answered her with equally simple seriousness:
“I can believe that you have not. You would find them perhaps in a world you are not allowed t
o know anything of; a world of narrow means but of wide thoughts and high ideals. In our world — I may say ours, for if you are one of its great ladies I am one of its pets and playthings, and so may claim a place in it — there is very little thought, and there is certainly no kind of ideal beyond winning the Grand Prix for one sex, and being better dressed than everybody, for the other. It is scarcely possible that you should find much sympathy in it; and, without sympathy there is no friendship. There are noble people in it still here and there, it is true, but the pity of modern life in society is that all its habits, its excitements, and its high pressure, make as effectual a disguise morally as our domino in Carnival ball does physically. Everybody looks just like everybody else. Perhaps, as under the domino, so under the appearance, there may be great nobility as great deformity; but all look alike. Were Socrates amongst us he would only look like a club-bore, and were there Messalina she would only look — well — look much like our Duchesse Jeanne.”
Vere glanced up at him quickly, then reddened slightly, and rose from the bench.
“What a baseness I am committing to speak ill of a woman who gave me her smiles and her strawberries,” thought Corrèze. “Nevertheless, warned against Madame Jeanne she must be, even if she think me ever so treacherous to give the warning. She knows nothing; it would be as well she should know nothing; only, if she be not on her guard, Jeanne will hurt her — some way. The mistress of Zouroff will never forgive his wife, and Casse-une-Croûte would pardon her more readily than would the wife of Duc Paul. Oh God! what a world to throw her into! The white doe of Rylstone cast into a vivisectors torture trough!”