by Ouida
The old woman, invisible for the smoke as she stooped over the great oven, with the handle of its door in her hand, grumbled some cross words which were neither assent nor dissent. Damaris took them as the former, and waited for no more; she passed half her life on the sea, the old servant would find nothing strange in her absence if she were out till sunset.
‘You are sure I shall be back by Ave Maria?’ she said timidly to her temptress.
‘Certainly,’ said Nadine, who knew well that it was not possible.
‘I am sure I ought not to come,’ said the girl wistfully.
Her temptress smiled a little.
‘Oh, my dear, if you be as feminine as you look, that consideration will only add la pointe à la sauce.’
Damaris gazed at her with pathetic, impassioned eyes. She did not understand; she said nothing; she only sighed.
‘Come,’ said the enchantress.
‘I think Othmar was right. It is cruel,’ murmured Béthune.
‘Men are always so timid,’ said Nadine with her customary indulgent contempt for them. ‘Ignorance is not bliss, my dear friend, although the copybooks say so. — Come, my pretty demoiselle, come and see our enchanted coasts; we will not harm you, and we will only give you a little spray of moly such as Ulysses gathered; and perhaps a magic ring and a wishing-cap, nothing worse.’
The child hesitated still; she knew that she was doing very wrong; she knew that if what she was doing were discovered, her grandfather’s chastisement would be pitiless; but curiosity, imagination, interest, were all enlisted on the side of disobedience, and she had a certain turbulence and ardour of self-will in her nature which had brought her many hard words from Catherine, and even blows from Jean Bérarde. All these together conquered her conscience, her judgment, and her prudence; the gates of the enchanted world stood open; she might never pass through them, or see what was beyond them unless she went now.
With that reasoning she sprang down the first ledges of the stone staircase, and as lightly as a kid would have done leaped from one step to the other till she reached the edge of the sea.
She allowed her feet to be guided into the barge, and felt it dance beneath them with a strange thrill; it seemed all to be as unreal as a chapter of ‘Sintram;’ the lovely lady who wooed and tempted her appeared like a being from another world; the gilded prow, the embroidered flag, the rich awnings fringed with silver wavered before her in the sunlight.
Before she had known what she had actually done, the oars of the men cleft the sunshiny water, letting it flow in streams of diamonds off their blades, and the vessel had already glided away from her home.
Clovis, who was accustomed never to leave the island, but never failed to give voice to his grief when he saw her leave him for the sea, either by swimming or sailing, stood on the strip of sand beneath the rocky steep of Bonaventure and howled in dismal solitude. She put her hands to her ears not to hear him; it seemed as if he reproached and rebuked her.
Soon he became but a little white speck beneath the red sandstone of the cliff, and the boat had reached the side of the stately schooner which awaited them in the midst of gay sunshine and azure water, whilst a flute-player discoursed sweet music from some unseen retreat.
When the island also began to recede from sight she then, and only then, began to realise what she had done.
‘C’est Bernardin de St.-Pierre tout pur,’ said Nadine, surveying with diversion the amazement and the awe of her captive.
Nothing could be more enchantingly kind than her manner, or more gentle and encouraging in its patience with the girl’s stupor and timidity. She had gratified her caprice, she had won her wager, and she was sweet and gracious to the object of it. Obedience had always found her benignant if at times it had found her as quickly oblivious. This had been a little thing indeed; a very little thing; but she would have been irritated if it had escaped or beaten her; would almost have been mortified.
All her world had told her that to bring the girl thither would be a folly if not a cruelty; and for that reason beyond all others she had persevered.
Damaris, seated in the prow of the barge, had the charm for her of representing the triumph of her own will. So might some young slave, hardly acquired, on whom her fancy had been strongly and waywardly set, have represented hers to Cleopatra.
CHAPTER XI.
Othmar was leaning over the balustrade of the sea-terrace as the vessel returned. He looked and saw the captive from Bonaventure. A sort of vague pity mingled with irritation as he did so. Why had Nadine brought this hapless child from her safe sea silences and solitudes? It was a jest, but the jest was cruel; as cruel as that which ties the little living bird on to the bouquet that is tossed from hand to hand in jests of Carnival.
The poor sea-born curlew would do well enough left to its own nest upon the rocks, but once taken prisoner its day was done.
There were moments when the caprices of her wayward and dominant will irritated him; when her profound indifference to the consequences of any action which amused herself, and compromised others, repelled him by its coldness. What could this poor little peasant be to her? A toy for five minutes, a plaything sought out of mere contradiction, and destined to be cast aside ere the day was done!
He watched the graceful shape of the schooner as it bore down upon the coast with a sense of regret as from some definite misfortune which might have been averted by exercise of his own will. But he had never used his will in any opposition to his wife.
Wisely or unwisely, he had never made the slightest opposition to her desires or even her fancies. Begun in the blind adoration of a lover, the habit of deference to her had continued with him, not out of feebleness or uxoriousness, but out of that gradual growth of custom which is one of the most potent influences of life. She had power over him to make him relinquish many a project, abandon many a desire, but this power was not reciprocal; it seldom or never is so between two human beings. The old proverb, that of any twain one is booted and spurred and the other saddled and bridled, has a rough truth in it.
Othmar knew nothing of, and cared as little for, this girl whose face looked with so frank an audacity, so wistful an innocence, out of the brilliant drawing of Loswa. But he was sorry that she was not let alone. He had suffered many a bitter moment, even since his marriage, from the uncertainty of his wife’s moods, from the mutability of her fancies. Constant in his own tastes, and very unwilling to wound others, her rapid changes from interest to weariness, and her profound indifference for the bruises she gave to the amour propre of her fellow-creatures, frequently troubled and distressed him. He was often kind to persons he disliked, to compensate them for her unkindness, or to prevent them from perceiving it.
Nadine, he knew, would think this poor child of no more account than the briar-rose to which he had likened her; but to him it seemed wanton and cruel to have disturbed the peacefulness of her life, merely as a child casts a stone at a bird, and then runs on, not even looking to see whether the bird be bruised or has fallen.
‘Life is but a spectacle,’ she had once said to him. ‘When you go to the Gymnase do you distress yourself as to whether the actors catch cold at the wings or take a contagious disease in a cab as they go home? Of course you do not? Then why not view life in the same manner? People bore us or please us; that is all we are concerned with. We do not follow them home in fact; we need not, even in imagination.’
But Othmar did not agree with her. Life seemed to him much more often tragedy rather than comedy; he could not divest himself of a compassion for the players, with which much fellow-feeling mingled.
‘Since I married him he has become very amiable,’ she once said jestingly. ‘It is due to the spirit of contradiction which always exists in human nature, and which is never so strongly developed as in marriage.’
It was a jest; but there was a truth in the jest. Often he felt so much irritated at his wife’s indifference, that it stimulated him to more interest or sympathy than he would
otherwise have felt on many subjects and in many persons.
As he saw the yacht approach the sea-wall now, he turned away impatiently and went into the house to his books. He did not choose to assist at the festive procession which was conducting this poor little wild goat of the cliffs to be offered upon the altars of caprice and flattery.
As if, he thought, a life out of the world were not such an enviable thing that we should be as afraid to destroy it as we are afraid to break a Tanagra statuette!
Meanwhile, unretarded by his displeasure, the schooner approached as nearly as the draught of water would permit, and the boat from it landed Damaris Bérarde at the foot of the rose-marble stairs. Béthune would have assisted her, but she sprang from the boat to the landing-stair with the assured and graceful agility of one who passed all her life in the open air, and was practised in the free exercise of all her muscles. Her eyes gazed in delighted wonder at the beauty of the place.
‘It is like Alcina’s palace,’ she said with a quick breath of admiration.
‘What do you know of Alcina?’ asked her hostess, amused.
‘I have read Ariosto,’ she answered, and then, with her extreme care for perfect truthfulness, added, ‘I mean I have read his poems, translated.’
‘It is rather your island which is like Alcina’s,’ said her hostess.
Then they led her through the gardens, which seemed all a maze of rose, of yellow, and of white from the innumerable thickets of azalea which were in bloom. Here and there, out of their gorgeous glow of colour, there rose the white form of a statue or the white column of a fountain. The sun was still high in the west; the gardens seemed to laugh like children in its warmth.
It was all so beautiful, so magical, so strange; the child whose imagination had been fed on poets’ fancies, and had grown unchecked in an almost complete solitude, expected some marvellous message, some wondrous destiny to meet her there on this threshold of a new life.
She found herself the centre of attention and of homage; everyone looked at her, spoke to her, strove to gain her notice. A vague fancy came into her mind — perhaps she was a king’s daughter after all, like the Goose Girl in Grimm’s stories, of whom Melville had told her once. Anything would have seemed possible to her, and nothing too incredible to happen at the close of this astonishing day.
They led her into the house, which was entered from the garden through conservatories filled with Asiatic and South American plants and gaily peopled by green paroquets and rose-crested cockatoos, and scarlet cardinals, which flew at their will amongst the feathery foliage.
They were all kind to her; full of compliment and of thoughtfulness for her; even her hostess took trouble to interest her, to explain things to her, to make her feel that she was welcome and admired. In her serge frock and her thick shoes, with her rope of pearls twisted round her throat, and her face in a rose glow of surprise and of innocent vanity and pleasure, she sat the centre of their interest, their approval, and their praise. She was a very picturesque figure with her short blue rough gown and her scarlet worsted cap. She had twisted her big pearls round her throat, and she had slipped on her Sunday shoes. She was tall, and lithe, and erect; she looked astonished, but not intimidated. If a smile were exchanged between them at her expense she did not see it, and if they looked at her much as they would have done at a ouistiti or a topaza pyra from wild woods, she was unconscious of it.
The whole scene was enchantment to her eyes. Her natural sense of the beauties of form and of colour was at once soothed and excited by the beauty of these chambers, which had all the subdued glow of old jewels. It was still daylight, but rose-shaded lamps were burning there, and shed a mellow hue over all the brilliant colours. They brought her tea, and ices, and bonbons, things all as strange to her as they would have been to a savage from South Sea isles.
Her ignorance, her simplicity, her frank surprise amused them, and the natural shrewdness and pertinence of her replies stimulated them with the sense of a new intellectual distraction. But when they pressed her to recite, she grew shy and silent. She was not a machine to be set in action by pressure of a spring; and a certain suspicion that she had only been brought here as a plaything dawned upon her; the idea suddenly came to her that these great people were amusing themselves with her ignorance and astonishment, and when once that sting of mortified doubt had come into her mind, peace fled, and pride kept her mute and still.
Other persons came in, pretty women, and handsome men; there was a murmur of laughter and a confusion of voices in all the rooms. She began to feel less at her ease, less satisfied, less sure of her own self. Some of the new-comers stared at her and sauntered away laughing; her one little hour of triumph was already over; she had been seen, she had ceased to be a novelty.
But it was too late to repent. She could not ask such strangers to retrace their steps for her; and she felt by intuition that this lovely sovereign, with her delicate face and her gracious smile, could have become as chill as the north wind and as terrible as the white storms, were she offended by caprice or ingratitude.
Damaris had strong natural courage, and all the hardiness of a resolute and defiant youth; but she felt a vague fear of Nadine Napraxine, which only served to intensify the fascination by which she was subdued in her presence.
Her hostess still spoke kindly to her from time to time, but soon ceased to think much about her: having once been captured and brought thither, she had ceased to be an object of great interest.
It was five o’clock; more people had driven over from other villas; great ladies, with their attendant gentlemen. There were the usual laughter and murmurs of conversation, and general buzz of voices; the rose-shaded lamps were shining through the daylight; the sounds of a grand piano magnificently played came from the music-room; the air was full of the scent of roses and gardenias, of incense and perfume. Damaris, after a few glances cast at her, a few smiles caused by her, was forgotten and left to herself. Her head turned; her breath seemed oppressed in this atmosphere so different to her own; she felt lonely, ashamed, miserable; she shrank into a corner behind some palms and gloxinias, it was the saddest fall to pride and expectation.
Othmar and Béthune, watching her, both thought, ‘She has found out she is only a plaything, and she is resentful.’ Othmar thought, in addition, ‘If only she knew how very little time she will even be as much as that!’
They saw without surprise, but with contempt, that Loswa, through whose imprudence she was there, avoided her, was evidently ashamed to seem acquainted with her, and devoted himself assiduously to two or three of the great ladies. Loswa wished to show her that if he had sought her for sake of his art, he had better interests and occupation than a little peasant in knitted stockings could afford him. In himself he was angered against her for the slightness of the impression he had made on her, and the indifference with which she had treated him after he had honoured her by taking her for a model.
‘She is a little sea-mouse that came up in Miladi’s deepwater net to-day,’ he said with a slighting laugh to the great ladies who asked him about her.
Damaris overheard, and her child’s heart burnt with rage and scorn against them.
‘He broke bread with me yesterday, and he ridicules me to-day!’ she thought, with her primitive islander’s notions as to the sanctity of the rites of hospitality. She hated this soft-eyed, soft-voiced man, who had made an effigy of her with his colours, and had brought to her these cruel strangers, who had in a single hour made such havoc of her peace. And they had told her that she should be back at Ave Maria, and it was now night; deep night, she thought it; for she did not know that though these rooms were all lit artificially, and the windows had now been long closed, behind these thick draperies of golden plush the last glow of daylight had scarcely then faded from the western skies.
What would they think on the island? — and what would Catherine and Raphael do?
No one now noticed her since they had ceased to stare at her as a young ba
rbarian; no one now remembered her, sought her, or cared for her; she seemed likely to pass the whole afternoon in a corner, undisturbed and unremembered, like a little sea-mouse, as he called her, too insignificant even to be expelled!
On her island nothing could have daunted her, silenced her, troubled her; she was mistress there of the soil and of herself; she was proud and intrepid as any sovereign in her own tiny kingdom; but here all her courage deserted her; she only realised how utterly she was unlike all these people around her; she was only conscious of the rude texture of her gown, of the rough wool of her hose, of the sea-brown on her hands and arms, of the red on her cheeks blown there by the wind and the weather.
All these women were delicate and pale as the waxen bells of the begonia, as the creamy column of the tuberose.
She had been innocently vain, unconsciously proud of herself; everybody had told her she was handsome, and her own sense had told her that she was born with finer mind and higher organisation than were possessed by those who were her daily companions. And now she felt that she was nothing — nothing — only an ignorant and common peasant. She was well enough at Bonaventure, but she was a poor little savage here.
Suddenly there was a general murmur of excitation and a general movement of personages, and from where she had been placed she saw the mistress of the house going forward to greet a young man who had entered as various voices had exclaimed:
‘Prince Paul is come!’
They all surrounded this new-comer with murmurs of ardent congratulation. He was the Rubenstein of the great world, a rare and most sympathetic genius, and, ce qui ne gâte rien, he was the son of a grand duke, though he held it as a much higher title that he had been also the pupil of Liszt and the beloved of Wagner. He was one of the innumerable cousins which Nadine could claim here, there, and everywhere in the pages of the Almanach de Gotha, and he was a person whose visits were always agreeable to her.