Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  This visit was unexpected, and was, therefore, all the more welcome. In the reception of Paul of Lemberg she altogether forgot her poor little bit of seaweed off Bonaventure, and everyone did the same.

  Othmar, coming through his rooms to welcome his new and unlooked-for visitor, who was a great favourite with himself, caught sight of the figure so unlike all others there, which was seated forlorn and alone on a low couch, with a group of palms and some draperies of Ottoman silks behind her.

  ‘So soon abandoned!’ he thought with compassion. ‘Poor child; she looks sadly astray. She is very handsome — as handsome as Loswa’s sketch,’ he thought also, with a few swift glances at her.

  When he too had greeted Prince Paul he turned to his wife and said in an undertone:

  ‘Have you forgotten another guest whom you have left there all alone?’

  She looked fatigued and annoyed at the suggestion.

  ‘My dear Otho, go and console her; you were always a squire of distressed damsels.’

  Othmar turned away and passed back through the apartments to the place where he had seen Damaris.

  ‘Poor little déclassée!’ he thought pitifully. ‘You have no power to amuse them for more than five minutes. It was cruel to bring you away from your own orange and olive shadows into a world with which you have no single pulse in common!’

  With his gentlest manner he addressed her:

  ‘May I present myself to you, mademoiselle? My wife, I understand, persuaded you to favour us by leaving your solitudes. I am afraid we have not much to offer you in return.’

  Damaris was silent. She was grateful for the kindness, but she was too offended and pained by the position in which she had been placed to be easily reconciled to herself.

  ‘You are Count Othmar?’ she asked abruptly.

  She was thinking of the story told her, when she was a child, by Catherine.

  ‘That is what men call me,’ said he. ‘Believe me, I am your friend no less than my wife is so, and I am most happy to see you beneath my roof. I first made your acquaintance through Loswa’s sketch.’

  ‘He was not honest about that,’ she said angrily.

  Othmar smiled.

  ‘No artists are honest when they are tempted by beautiful subjects. He will make you the admiration of all the Paris art world next year.’

  She did not reply at once. Then she repeated:

  ‘It was not honest. I did not think he was going to show it, and bring people to me.’

  ‘No; in that I think he took unfair advantage of your hospitality.’

  ‘That is what I mean. I shall not let him ever go back.’

  ‘Poor Loswa! The punishment will perhaps be greater than the offence.’

  She was again silent. She knew nothing of the light give and take of social intercourse. To her the things of life were all very serious.

  He felt an extreme compassion for her, and with great patience, kindness, and tact, strove to overcome her half-fierce shyness. He talked to her in a way which she could understand and of things she knew; of the life of the sea, of the fruits and their seasons, of dogs and their ways, of old poets and simple writers such as she loved and reverenced. Little by little her sullenness gave way, her face lightened with its natural smile; she felt confidence in him and spoke to him with that candour and directness which were as common to her as its blue tint to the sea-water; but all the while she thought with sinking heart:

  ‘I wonder if I might ask him how late the hour is? I wonder if I might tell him how much I do want to go home?’

  But she did not dare to do so; she thought it would be rude.

  Othmar placed before her some volumes of Doré’s illustrations to beguile her time, and rejoined his wife, who was still occupied with the Prince of Lemberg. He was at all times one of her favourites, and he had just come from Vienna, and had many chroniques scandaleuses of that patrician court to tell.

  ‘What is to be done with this unhappy child?’ Othmar said to her somewhat sternly. ‘She is miserable and dépaysée.’

  ‘I sent you to amuse her,’ replied Nadine. ‘If you did not — —’

  ‘You must allow me to say,’ returned Othmar, ‘that it was not worthy of you to bring that poor little peasant here, only to neglect her and make her miserable. I should have thought you were too great a lady to commit such a — will you pardon me the word? — such a vulgarity.’

  She was not as angry as he had expected; she even smiled; but she remained as indifferent.

  ‘Vulgarity is indeed a terrible charge! I do not think anybody ever brought it against me before. I thought she was very well entertained. I supposed Loswa took care of her. He is responsible for her.’

  ‘No,’ said Othmar, ‘we are responsible. She is in our house, and she came here by your invitation; on your insistence. There is surely the law of hospitality — —’

  ‘Among savages,’ said his wife, amused. ‘I believe it exists somewhere still on the Red River, or amongst the Red Indians; I am not sure which. We know nothing about it. We only invite people because we think they will amuse us, and we usually find that they do not. I fancied this girl would be amusing, but she is not at all so here. She is dull, and she is frightened.’

  ‘What else could you expect?’

  ‘I expected — I do not know what I expected. Genius should not be abashed by mere tables and chairs.’

  ‘Perhaps she has no genius. Even if she have any, to be stared at and laughed at by a number of strange people may be sufficiently embarrassing. I confess that I think you have done a very cruel thing.’

  She laughed. When men are angry they amuse immeasurably a clever woman whose temper is serene. And it seemed such a trifle to her.

  ‘Pending your arrangements for her future,’ said Othmar after a pause of excessive irritation, ‘where is she to be this evening? The second gong has sounded.’

  She gave a little gesture of impatience.

  ‘How very tiresome you are! Can she not go to the servants?’

  ‘In my house? Certainly not. I will have no guests sent to the servants’ hall. This young girl is as well born as any other of your visitors.’

  ‘How odd you are! You will make me insist on separate establishments if you develop such quaint notions! I am sure she would be infinitely happier with the maids, and she would run no risk of becoming déclassée.’

  ‘It is the only time in my life that I have found your expressions in bad taste,’ said Othmar as he turned to leave the room.

  She laughed: ‘You had better take her into dinner yourself.’

  ‘I shall do so if she will come.’

  The door closed on him, and she looked after him with a frown of impatience and a smile of astonishment.

  What a fuss about a little fisher-girl! she thought. As if the girl could not go to the maids — go to the nurseries — go to the still-room — anywhere, anywhere. What could it matter?

  She was accustomed to see her playthings no more when once they had passed an idle hour for her. Why could not somebody take away this one? She would not have been here had it not been for Loswa. It was all Loswa’s fault, no one else’s. And who could tell that the girl would be such a dumb, stupid, frightened creature? On the island she had had force and courage and talkativeness enough.

  Why would Otho always take everything au grand sérieux? He should have lived on that island.

  He was quite capable of taking her in to dinner, though there were high ladies of every degree staying in the house! And she hated the idea of his making himself ridiculous. She would override all customs and conventionalities herself when she chose, but she was too thoroughly a woman of the world not to regard a social solecism, a drawing-room blunder, with much more horror than she would have felt for greater crimes. Anything which made an absurd story for society was to her detestable.

  ‘Murder all your enemies to three generations, like a Montenegrin,’ she would say à propos of such matters, ‘but never make a fault in
precedence at your table.’

  Othmar meanwhile dressed very hurriedly, and hastened to the drawing-rooms before they could fill again. The latent chivalry of his temper was active; he would have been capable for the moment of any eccentricity to show his honour for this forlorn child.

  ‘What wretched artificial creatures we all are!’ he thought. ‘No wonder, when any natural life comes amongst us, it feels dazed and astray.’

  The existence he led looked to him for the instant supremely absurd. The instincts towards wider freedom and plainer habits, and higher thoughts than those possible in his society, had always been in him from his youth, though they had found no issue and no sympathy; and in his marriage he had tightened around him the bondage of the world.

  The brilliant rooms were deserted when he re-entered them: here and there a servant moved, attending to a lamp or carrying away a stray teacup; there was no one else.

  In his gentlest tones he again addressed Damaris:

  ‘We are about to go to dinner,’ he said to her kindly; ‘will you do me the honour to accompany me?’

  No hunted antelope could have looked more terrified than she.

  ‘Dinner,’ she echoed. ‘I dined at noon.’

  ‘But you can dine again? The sea air always gives one an appetite. You must not starve like this in my house.’

  ‘I could not! I could not!’ she said with tremulous lips. She glanced in an agony of dread through the rooms where all those gay people were. The idea of dining with them appalled her more than it would have done to find herself on a wrecked vessel, in the midst of the winds and waves. What would they think of her? What errors would she not make? What could she know of their manners and fashions?

  ‘I could not! I could not!’ she repeated, her colour changing a dozen times a minute.

  He endeavoured to persuade her, but found that it only caused her more pain. After all, he reflected, it was natural enough that she, who had never been at any table save her own, should be appalled at the prospect of dining before a score of fine ladies and gentlemen.

  He was sorry for her. He knew the rapidity with which his wife’s caprices altered and her preferences evaporated. He had seen so many please her, for an hour, to weary her immeasurably whenever they afterwards presumed to recall to her the fact of their existence.

  ‘Well, you shall do as you please in this house,’ he said to her. ‘Remain here, and I will tell them to bring your dinner to you.’

  ‘Indeed — indeed I want nothing,’ she protested; ‘I could not eat.’

  She was about to say to him much more than that; to say that the sun had set, the night had come, the hours were passing fast — but she could not find courage. After all, what was she? — a stupid, ignorant little sea-born savage in the eyes of all these people.

  She remained where she was, silent, and miserable, yet watching with curious eyes the pageant so new to her of the lighted salons, the lovely ladies, the pretty procession that passed out of the drawing-rooms as they went to dinner. Could these be human beings who lived always like this? She wondered — she envied — and yet she longed for her own free life on the waves, under the olives, climbing with the goats, diving with the gannets, rocking in the orange-boughs with the thrush and the greenfinch. It was beautiful here, magical, marvellous, incredible; yet she wanted fresh air, she wanted free movement; like a mountain-born rose shut up in a hothouse, she felt suffocated in this sultry and perfumed air.

  CHAPTER XII.

  As Othmar had promised, a servant brought to her, served on silver and Japanese porcelain with damask, which she took to be satin, a repast of which the dishes succeeded each other in bewildering rapidity, and looked so ethereal and pretty that it seemed to her quite grievous to break them up and eat them. The fairies themselves might have feasted off these tempting viands, and her appetite, which was the robust one of youth, proved to her that it is possible to dine at noon and yet be ready to dine again at eight. She had satisfied her hunger, however, long before the full complement of the services had been brought to her, and the fruit and bonbons best pleased her childish tastes. She gained courage to leave her corner and come from beyond the palms and move timidly about the rooms, looking now at this picture, now at that statue, and ever confronted by her own likeness in the mirrors, and beholding it with impatience. She touched the flowers embroidered on the plush of the chairs, astonished that the blossoms were not real. She looked with wonder at the grand piano, marvelling that out of its painted panels and ivory keyboard such melodies as she had heard could have been drawn. She gazed at the figures on the Gobelin tapestries in entranced delight, and, with the unerring selection of a nature instinctively artistic, paused enraptured before the marble copy by Clésinger of the Vatican Hermes.

  She who had never seen anything but Bonaventure and the fisher-people’s cabins on the mainland, and the little dusky shops where the fruit was sold, was dazzled by the beauty of St. Pharamond within and without. Everything around her was strange and wonderful; the very flowers were unfamiliar; gorgeous blossoms to which she could give no names.

  But when she caught sight of her own figure in the mirrors, standing amidst all the glow and delicacy of colour of these marvellous chambers, she seemed to herself barbarous, incongruous, grotesque, a blot upon the scene, a savage set amidst civilisation. All the flatteries which had been poured out to her ear had passed by her, making little impression. There were the mirrors, which were truer counsellors than he; they showed her that she was not as these people were. She did not think she had any beauty at all, she only saw that she had none of this grace which was around her, that she was like a bit of ribbon weed from the sea amongst lilies and lilac.

  She was so interested and so absorbed that she was startled as by a blow when she saw the double doors at the end of the drawing-rooms thrown open by a man with a silver chain and a white wand, and the figure of her hostess appeared led by the Prince of Lemberg and followed by all the ladies and gentlemen who had dined with her that evening.

  With the swift movement of a hunted thing Damaris drew back behind a screen of plush embroidered like the walls and chairs and couches with silken garlands of spring flowers.

  No one was thinking of her.

  Even Othmar passed by the spot where he had left her without looking for her. He was talking to a very tall slight blonde woman, who was the Princesse de Laon, and had been Blanchette de Vannes. They all went by the screen and passed on into the farthest room of all, where the Erard stood. Damaris, like a forsaken child, crouched down on the stool she had found there, and the big hot tears forced themselves from under her eyelids. It was foolish, she knew; unreasonable, no doubt; but the most piteous sense of mortification and of insignificance was upon her, like a heavy hand crushing her down into the earth.

  At Bonaventure, despite the harshness at any disobedience with which she was treated by her grandfather, she had been in much a spoilt child; the few people on the island were all her ministers and servants. On the rare occasions when she visited the mainland, everyone treated with reverence and flattery the heiress to Jean Bérarde’s wealth and acres; even when these great people had come to her they had praised her talent, they had suggested wild hopes to her, they had given her honeyed words; unconsciously she had expected something very great to happen to her when she should be seen at this house where her presence was said to be so desired — to realise that she was nothing here, less than the servants, who at least had their place and their duties in it, was the most cruel of disillusions.

  Overcome by the unusual warmth and closeness of the atmosphere, which sent her blood to her temples and filled her with a strange drowsiness, she let her head fall back upon the cushion of her couch and fell asleep. She dreamed strange things. There was nothing to distract her. The servants glanced at her contemptuously and let her alone; they had no orders about her, and in the house of Nadine no one ever dared to act without orders.

  The perfumed air, the dry warmth from the calo
rifères, the profound stillness, invited slumber; and she slept on as soundly as any tired child that throws itself upon a primrose bank on an April day.

  She was roused by a sound of sweet notes like the voices of her nightingales when they sung under the orange-leaves.

  In the farthest room of all, where the pianoforte stood, Paul of Lemberg had begun to play; melodies of Tristan and Isolde thrilled through the silence to her ear and awakened her in her hiding-place. She who had never heard any such music in her life listened with a surprised sense of delight so intense that it was also pain. The delicate rain of harmonious notes falling one on another, the strange mystery with which the chords of the instrument repeat and concentrate all the sighs of passion and the woes of feeling, all the inexplicable and marvellous humanity and sympathy with which all perfect music is filled, were heard by her for the first time in their most exquisite forms. She listened entranced, awed, and penetrated with an ecstasy which was as sharp as suffering. She forgot where she was. When silence followed she was weeping bitterly; all the wounds of her heart at once deepened a thousandfold, yet healed by a touch divine.

  All the longing, all the dreams, all the vague desires and unsatisfied fancies which had been in her mind and heart untold to anyone, and misunderstood even by herself, burned to obtain utterance in this the first music she had ever heard. She crouched in her corner unseen; a servant, who had placed a lamp behind the screen, had been too discreet in his office, and too contemptuous of herself, to disturb her. She sat still on her low stool, and listened as the harmonies succeeded each other from the distance.

  Paul of Lemberg was in the mood to recall a thousand memories and invent a thousand fancies in music, and his companions were capable of giving him that comprehension and appreciation which the finest scientific knowledge of the tonic art alone can render.

  In the pauses which at times ensued, the conversation was animated and absorbing; they spoke of music, always of music, and Othmar, whose greatest interest had always been found in music, forgot as well as others the guest whom his house sheltered.