by Ouida
When at length Lemberg rose and drank a cup of coffee, and lit a cigarette, and proceeded to faire la cour to the Princesse de Laon, and four violins in a quatuor of well-known artists were tuning to fill up the blank of silence he had left, Othmar, with a pang of compunction, recalled the hours during which the child had been neither seen nor sought by any one of them. It had been half-past eight when they had gone into dinner; it was now past eleven o’clock.
He went through his drawing-rooms hastily, looking for her in every place, and failing to find her. At length, when he was about to inquire for her of his household, he saw a shadow behind the embroidered screen, and moving the screen aside, discovered her in her solitude.
‘My dear child!’ he exclaimed, ashamed at his own neglect of her, ‘where have you been? I have not seen you for hours. What a dull evening you have passed!’
The tears were dry on her cheeks, but they had left her eyes humid and heavy; her face had grown very pale.
‘I have heard all that,’ she said with a little gesture towards the distant music-room. ‘I did not think there was anything as beautiful in the world.’
‘Une sensitive!’ thought Othmar, recalling his wife’s half-unkind and half-compassionate expression as he answered. His knowledge of such sensitive natures induced him now to observe with an instinct of pity the trouble visible on the young girl’s face. She had an isolated, pathetic, bewildered look which touched him, and with it there was an expression of anger and hurt pride. No child lost at dark in a wood where it had strayed through disobedience, was ever more bewildered, lonely, or punished for its sin, than she was in those radiant drawing-rooms, surrounded with the light laughter and the, to her, unintelligible chatter in which she had no share; oppressed by this overheated, over-perfumed air in which she felt stifled and sick, abashed, and yet angered by the neglect and obscurity to which they had abandoned her.
‘I fear you want to go home, my dear,’ he said compassionately. ‘Is it not so?’
She hesitated, then answered curtly: ‘Yes.’
‘How long have you been asked, or have you promised, to stay with us?’
‘She said I should go back by sunset.’
‘My wife said so?’
‘Yes.’ She paused, then added with a tremor of terror in her voice, ‘If I be out when he comes home my grandfather will kill me.’
‘But he will know you have been safe here with us?’
She shook her head. ‘That will make no difference, Monsieur. You do not know him. Of course it is all my fault; I did wickedly — —’
‘You did, as I understand it, a natural childlike piece of disobedience; you ought not certainly to have been tempted by others to do it, but as your grandsire will learn whom you have been with, I cannot see that he can be so very greatly angered, even if you should stay here all night.’
‘You do not know him,’ said Damaris.
She was nervous and pale; her hands played restlessly with the pearls at her throat; her beautiful eyebrows were drawn together in anger and distress. She did not say so, but more than once her shoulders had felt the stroke of Jean Bérarde’s heavy cudgel.
‘He must know our name very well,’ added Othmar. ‘It will surely be voucher enough to him that you have passed your time in safe keeping —— ?’
‘You are “aristos.” He hates you.’
He smiled; he had seen many of these red Republicans who hated him furiously in theory, yet were never averse to worshipping the golden calf of the Maison d’Othmar.
‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘do you think that you will be punished cruelly if you should be here all night? Are you sure that your grandfather will not be open to reason?’
‘You do not know him, or you would not ask.’
‘No; I do not know him, and so I have no right to form any opinion. But I see that what you do know of him makes you miserable at the idea of his anger. Well, then, home you must go in some manner. Our promise to you must in some way or other be kept. Wait a moment here, and I will return to you.’
Damaris looked after him with interest and gratitude. Young though she had been when the death of Yseulte had moved the hearts of the whole people on those shores, something of its sadness and of its tragedy had reached her, and still remained in memory with her like the echo of some melancholy song heard at evening in the shade of the olive-woods. They had been mere names to her, but they had been names of pathos and of meaning, like the names of Athalie, of Ondine, of Calypso, and of Helen — names attached to a story, leaving a recollection, suggesting something outside common life and ordinary fate.
‘I suppose he has forgotten her long ago,’ she thought as she looked at him as he passed through the salons.
Othmar approached his wife, and waited impatiently until there was a pause in the conversation buzzing around her. Then he bent towards her:
‘Nadège, did you really promise this child from Bonaventure that she should go home at sunset?’
‘Yes, I think I did. What of it?’
‘Only that I thought you always kept your word, and I find you have not done so.’
There was that in his tone which irritated her extremely; she thought he spoke to her as if she were a person at fault whom he reproved. Those nearest her could hear every word he uttered. She turned away from him with her coldest manner:
‘Tell the girl that she may sleep here; the women will see to it. She can say that she has my commands.’
Othmar did not reply; he moved aside and let her pass on to the room where they were playing baccarat. Had they been alone he would have said what he thought; as it was, he went out of his drawing-rooms and across the gardens to the boathouse on the quay.
The yacht could find no anchorage there, and was gone to Villefranche. No sailors remained there in the night-time; even the keeper of the boats did not sleep there. All the pretty painted toys were locked up in the boathouse, and the keeper had the keys, he could not even get at one of them.
‘This is the use of being master of the place!’ he said to himself with natural irritation. It had never chanced before at St. Pharamond that anyone had ever wanted to go on the sea after twilight.
He retraced his steps to the house and called two of his servants, and gave them orders to break open the door of the boathouse and take out the Una boat as the lightest and swiftest.
Then he returned to where Damaris awaited him.
‘You are not afraid to go on the sea in an open boat?’ he asked her. ‘The water is like glass, and there is a full moon.’
‘Afraid — on the sea!’
She could have laughed at the idea; the sea was her comrade and playfellow, and had never harmed her. She was no more afraid of its storms than of Clovis’s teeth.
‘Then you shall go home,’ he said briefly. ‘Come with me.’
‘I can go home?’ she exclaimed in ecstasy.
‘Yes, if you are not afraid of an open boat; there are no other means.’
‘Oh, I can sail it myself! I steer with my foot, and sail very well.’
‘You shall not go wholly alone,’ said Othmar with a smile. ‘I regret that to speed the parting guest is the only form of old-fashioned hospitality which it is possible for me to show you.’
Damaris hesitated a moment.
‘Must I not say farewell to Madame?’
‘Madame is occupied,’ he said as curtly. ‘Come, my dear. Unless you are sure you would not sooner stop here and return in the morning?’ he added. ‘My wife bade me say she would be happy if you would so decide.’
‘Oh no!’ said Damaris, with terror in her eyes. ‘I could not, I dare not! My grandfather may be home at sunrise.’
‘Come, then,’ said Othmar.
She needed no second bidding, but willingly followed him through the gardens to the landing-place of the little harbour. The moon was brilliant; the cedars and other evergreen trees spread their boughs over the marble balustrades; the aloes and cacti raised their broad spears and show
ed their fantastic shapes in the clear white light; there was a marble copy of the Faun which laughed at the stars; the waves were gently rippling over the last stair, the sea spread smooth as a lake as far as the eye could reach; the lights of Villefranche glittered in the darkness in the curve of the shore; the air was fragrant with the scent of millions of violets and of the tall bay thickets under which they bloomed.
Othmar paused involuntarily.
‘How seldom we look at the night!’ he said with an unconscious sigh.
‘It is so beautiful here!’ she said with a sigh which echoed his, but had a very different emotion for its source as she looked with timidity at the marble Faun. She had never seen a statue before; she was not sure what its meaning was, but the sweet laughing face whose lips seemed to move in the moonlight bewitched her.
‘It is as beautiful on your island, no doubt,’ he answered, ‘and far more natural. This place is almost wholly conventional.’
The word said nothing to her; she had never heard it before. She was gazing at the marble statue.
‘What does that mean?’ she said with hesitation.
‘It means youth — the treasure you have,’ said Othmar. ‘Do not want any other. They have tried to teach you discontent. They have been very wrong. You have not been happy here.’
‘No — not quite,’ she said, afraid to seem ungrateful, yet obliged to tell the truth.
‘No; you have felt remorse; you have been wounded by neglect; and you have been allured by the artificial and the insincere. Take warning: the world would give you just what this house has given you.’
The Una boat was at the foot of the stairs; its little sail was spread, there were cushions and shawls inside it; the men of the household whom Othmar had summoned had made everything ready, and waited there.
‘Tell your lady,’ he continued to his men, ‘that I am gone on the sea; shall be back probably before dawn.’
Then he waved them aside and launched his boat into deep water.
Othmar gave his hand to Damaris; she touched it, but vaulted into the boat without his aid. When she saw that he followed her she grew scarlet, and her large eyes opened with that look of amaze which so well became her.
‘You — you — —’ she stammered, and could utter no other word.
‘Certainly,’ said Othmar. ‘Since you have been deceived into coming to my house, I will at least see you safely back to your own.’
She was still so astonished that she could form no protest and shape no thanks.
‘You must steer,’ he said to Damaris as he handled the sail.
She still said nothing, but she took the tiller-ropes. The little vessel glided easily through the peaceful waves; the wind, by a favouring chance, blew lightly from the north-west; it plunged with the grace and swiftness of a gannet into the silvery moonlight and the phosphorescent water.
Othmar gave his companion a little gold compass set at the back of a watch.
‘You must guide our course,’ he said to her. ‘Bonaventure is as unknown to me as Japan to Marco Polo.’
‘I shall make no mistake,’ she said, finding her voice for the first time since she had seen him enter the boat. ‘I have steered on Sundays from Villefranche home. But — but — I cannot bear to trouble you; it is not right.’
‘You give me a charming moonlight sail,’ said Othmar; ‘and you will show me a terra incognita. I am immeasurably your debtor. But for you I should still be indoors in warm rooms with artificial light and an artificial laughter round me. One can have enough of that any evening.’
‘If I did not like it I would not have any of it,’ said Damaris, with her natural manner returning to her.
‘I am not sure that I do not like it,’ said Othmar; ‘and, at all events, the person I most wish to please likes it. That must be sufficient for me.’
Damaris looked at him; she did not say anything. She was thinking of that day when she had gathered the daffodils, and the swallows had flown about her head, and the old woman Catherine had said: ‘Holy Virgin, to think she was so unhappy!’ Were they all unhappy, these great people, although they had everything on earth that they could want or wish?
Life outside the island seemed to be a terrible perplexity.
‘Mind how you steer,’ said Othmar, as in the multiplicity and gravity of her thoughts they drifted perilously near the troubled water churning in the wake of a steam yacht. With prompt dexterity and coolness she corrected her oversight in time.
‘There are few things more delightful than being at sea at night when the moon is bright, and the vessel is small enough to make one very near the water,’ he said, as they pursued their course and he aided the passage of the boat with the oars. ‘Just like this, between the sea and sky, with all those stars above, and all the silent night around one — one ought to be a poet to be worthy to enjoy it, or able to put the charm of it into fitting words.’
‘Yes.’
She had felt herself what he said so often, and she too had never been able to find speech for that deep delight, that nameless melancholy, which came to her with the solitude of the sea at night.
He looked at her as she sat at the tiller with the moonlight falling full upon her face, and making it older and more spiritual than it had been by day. So she would look when years had saddened her, chastened her, etherealised her, taken from her the boylike buoyancy of her spirit, the frank audacity of her childhood. Or rather, no; — she would not look like that, she would have wedded Gros Louis, have had sturdy, healthy, riotous children plucking at her skirts; have grown heavier, stouter, coarser, duller; have ceased to care about the moonlight on the sea; have heeded only the sea’s harvest of tunny, crawfish, cod, and haddock. Poor Galatea, whom the Polyphemus of a common marriage would bind upon her rock with all the greedy waves of common cares leaping at her and licking her with unkind tongues! Yet there was no fate better for Galatea than her rock; he was persuaded of it; he wished her to be so persuaded.
CHAPTER XIII.
As the boat went smoothly and fleetly over the calm water, through the silvery night, beneath the immense vault of the starry heavens, he talked to her with kindly gentleness, and heard from her all there was to hear of her short life and of her great love for Bonaventure.
The course they took was almost wholly free of vessels; some heavy brig, fish or fruit laden, alone crossed their path, and the great green or red lights of the steamships were always afar off. The navigation of their little vessel did not so engross either of them that they had not leisure to converse, and Damaris, in the dusk of the night, in the familiar sea breeze and sea scent, in the motion of the boat which was as welcome and soothing to her as the rocking of its nurse’s arms to a child, felt an exhilaration which restored her spirits and loosened her power of speech. She ceased to be afraid of the chastisement she would receive at Bonaventure, and she felt a confidence in the kindness and the protection of her companion which was very different to the flattered vanity and fascinated awe which his wife had aroused in her.
That he was a grand seigneur did not affect her with any sense of diffidence, both because the granddaughter of Jean Bérarde had been reared in an utter indifference to such divisions of rank, and also because in her own heart she fondly nourished the legend of her own pure descent. The sea lords of the mountain above San Remo were as true and near to her in her belief as Hugh Lupus to the Grosvenors, as Hugues Capet to Don Carlos.
It had been eleven o’clock when they had left the quay of St. Pharamond. It was dawn when they came in sight of the island; its grey olive-crowned side fused softly with the silvery dusk which preceded the sunrise. There was no sail in sight, except in the offing to the eastward some score of barques looking no larger than a flock of sea-swallows: they were those of a coral fleet.
‘Is that your little kingdom?’ asked Othmar, looking towards the cloudlike isle which seemed to float between the sea and sky. ‘Well, it must be a charming life all alone there amidst the waters, far away from t
he world and all its fret and fume. You must be happy there?’
‘Oh yes,’ she answered rather doubtfully, without the spontaneous whole-heartedness which had characterised her replies to Loswa. ‘But, you see — there is a good deal of the fret and the fume — because we trade with the mainland, and when prices are bad my grandfather is out of temper. It is not like Fénelon’s island at all.’
‘Even if not, be sure it is happier to be on it than amidst the world,’ said Othmar, anxious to undo what his wife and her friends had done. ‘The pastoral life is the best there is, and when it is joined to the liberty of a seafaring life, it seems to me to be perfect.
‘I believe, at least I know,’ he continued with some hesitation, ‘that my wife spoke to you of your talents, and of all they might do for you in that bigger world which is to you only “the mainland.” Perhaps they might do much, perhaps they might do nothing; that world is very capricious, and its rewards are not always just. Poets are charming companions, but they are not infallible guides. Fate has given you a safe home, a tranquil lot, a sure provision. Do not tempt fortune to desert you by showing it any ingratitude. I fear my words seem very cold and dull ones after the gorgeous flatteries you have heard, but they at least are wise as I see wisdom for you; and, believe me, they are well meant.’
He spoke with earnestness as the boat approached the island, and, with the sail lowered, drifted lightly before the wind towards the beach.
‘Will you tell your grandfather?’ asked Othmar, as they neared the isle.
‘Do you think that I ought?’ she said in a very low voice, in which was an unspoken supplication.
‘I think you ought,’ he answered. ‘Do not begin your life with a secret.’
She was silent.
‘Surely,’ he continued, ‘he will not be very angry when he knows that you were so much pressed by the Countess Othmar, and that I have myself brought you home. He will be sure you have been as safe as with himself. I will come and see you again some day.’