by Ouida
The face of Damaris clouded. She was silent, occupying herself with guiding the vessel through the surf which broke on the broad shell beach of Bonaventure.
The mists were white and soft, the head of the cliffs was invisible in the tender silvery fog; she could hear the voices above her of Clovis and Brunehildt. The boat was run ashore, and she leaped out before Othmar could aid her.
‘You are vexed with me,’ he said with a smile. ‘But, indeed, my dear, it would be a life-long regret to me if, through any suggestion or persuasion of my wife’s, you were brought into a life which failed to answer your ideal of it, and rendered you unfitted to return to the simplicity and quiet of this happy little place. There are neither knights nor lions nowadays for Una. She must defend herself in a bitter warfare in which her sex is only a weapon against her, while her enemies are without scruple. Adieu, you will prefer to go up alone.’
She turned quickly, and looked up at him with a contrite, timid little smile.
‘I have no doubt you are right, only — one dreams things — sometimes. I ought to thank you so much: you have been very good to me.’
‘Not at all. I have had a charming night upon the sea, and am your debtor.’
Then he begged her to keep the little gold compass in memory of that evening, raised his hat, and left her.
‘Can you manage the boat alone?’ she cried to him in anxiety.
‘Quite well,’ said Othmar, as he pushed it through the surf.
When he was some roods from the shore he looked back; he saw the figure of Damaris still standing where he had left her, the silvery green mass of the olive-clothed cliffs rising behind her till they were lost in the hovering clouds of mist. The barking of the dogs came faintly over the sea, and a bell tolled from above the daybreak call to work.
‘I have done what I can,’ thought Othmar, ‘but the poison is there. No antidote, even if it succeed, can ever make the blood quite what it was before the virus entered. And what are ambition and discontent but as the bite of a snake when they seize on a woman — a child?’
Then he went back over the calm blue water, while with every moment the white light in the east spread further, and the mists lifted and the winds dropped, and soon in all its glory rose the sun.
To this man, whose youth had been full of high ideals, which his manhood had found it utterly impossible for him to fulfil, there was something which touched him profoundly in all youth which, as once his own had done, looked forward to the world as to some field of combat, where the fair flowers of faith and of justice would possess a magical strength like the lilies and roses wherewith the nymphs smote Rinaldo.
To the eyes of men, Othmar appeared the most enviable of all persons; to the society around him, as to the multitudes to whom he was but one of the great names which govern the destinies of nations, it seemed that few living beings had ever enjoyed so complete a happiness and prosperity as did he. But in the bottom of his own heart there was a latent bitterness, which was disappointment. He could not have said where or how precisely this sense of failure came to him, in the midst of what was absolute success and entire fruition of all his wishes. Yet it was there. It is the accompaniment of all power and of all possession. Contentment looks from a narrow lattice on a tiny garden bounded by a high box hedge. Culture has the vast horizon of the universe and finds it small, it can measure the stars, and sighs to wander beyond their spheres. Dissatisfaction is the shadow which goes with all light of the intelligence. The uncultured mind can be content; the cultured, never.
CHAPTER XIV.
Damaris went slowly from the cliffs through the moonlight; her heart was heavy. She had had a great temptation, a great joy, a great disillusion, and a great grief, each following close on the heels of the other in the short space of a few hours.
She came back to her poor little isle with something of that remorse, that dejection, that sense of all the golden fruits being but ashes at the core, with which the great ones of earth, after reaching the highest heights of power or of fame, will come back to their lowly village birthplace and think with a sigh, ‘Could I but be as once I was!’
The night seemed far severed from the day which had heralded it as if by long years: never more could she rise in the daybreak quite the same child who had leaped to the lattice, and laughed at the sunrise on the sea, that morning.
She did not reason on the change in her, nor understand it, but she felt it.
When the little velvet-hided calf has been branded in the stock-yard with the cruel iron, never more (though turned loose again) will it frolic the same in the prairie grass unwitting of pain or ill.
She took her way slowly over the head of the cliff across the breadth of pasture where a few days before she had led Loswa. There was a dusky crouching figure waiting in the shadow of the orange-boughs; it was that of old Catherine the servant, who sprang towards her and gripped her arm with both hands.
‘He is come home!’ she said in a loud, terrified whisper.
‘My grandfather!’
Bold though she was by nature, her lips and cheeks grow cold and her heart stood still.
‘Who else!’ cried the old woman roughly. ‘For who else would I keep out of my bed at such an hour to watch for you? Where have you been all the while?’
‘I have been with the lady.’
Her voice sounded very dull and hopeless; it melted the heart of the peasant who loved her.
‘Well, well, you have had your will and your vanity, and have paid for them both!’ she said, less harshly. ‘Poor little fool! It is your mother’s light blood working in you, I suppose; you’re not to blame. They are to blame who bred you. I have watched for you ever since I gave him his supper. He asked where you were. I said you were asleep. He has had a good deal of brandy. If you get in by the scullery door, and take your shoes off, and go softly up the stairs, he will not hear, and nobody knows you have been away save Raphael and myself. That is why I waited outside, to stop and tell you that you might creep in unseen.’
Damaris stooped her tall head and kissed the woman’s withered cheek:
‘That was like you, dear Catherine!’
‘More fool I, perhaps. I will punish you come morning, never fear. But I should be loath for you to see Bérarde to-night. Get in.’
Seeing that Damaris did not move, she pushed her by the shoulder.
But the words which Othmar had spoken were echoing in the ear, and sounding at the conscience, of the girl, bearing a harvest which he had never dreamed of when he had uttered them. There was that in them which had aroused all the courage and exaggerated sentiment of her mind and character.
The instincts of heroism, always strong in her, and that instinct to martyrdom ever dear to anything of womanhood, rose in her with irresistible force.
‘If Count Othmar ever heard that I did not tell, he would think it so mean and so false,’ she pondered, while the eager grip of the woman’s fingers closed on her and tried to pull her to the open side-entrance of the house.
She resisted.
‘No, no; not so, not so; not in secret,’ she muttered. ‘I wish to see my grandfather. Let me pass.’
‘Are you mad?’ screamed Catherine, dragging her backward by her skirts. ‘He is hot with brandy, I tell you; you know what brandy makes him; if he knows you have been off the island he will beat you. Has he not beaten you before, that you should doubt it?’
‘I do not doubt,’ said Damaris. ‘But it is only just that he should be told ——
‘I owe him everything, you know,’ she added, ‘and I did wrong to go away from home in his absence.’
‘Wrong! of course you did wrong. But you would listen to nobody, you were so taken up with those fine folks. Of course you did wrong, but since the harm is done, and it is of no use to cry over spilt milk and broken eggs, get you into your bed; your grandfather will never know anything. Raphael and I, be sure, shall not tell. Get in and hold your own counsel. In the morning it will all be as one.’
/> ‘No, it would not be fair,’ said Damaris.
Her face was very pale, but the exaltation of a romantic devotion to honour had come upon her, and gave her a strength not her own. She passed the figure of Catherine in the entrance of the scullery, and walked with firm steps through the stone passages, between the crowded bales of oranges and lemons, straightway into the great kitchen, where Jean Bérarde sat. The light from an oil lamp which swung from the rafters shone on his strong, harsh, brown features, his grizzled eyebrows, his white beard; the broad-leaved hat he had drawn over his face threw a dark gloom over the upper part of his features, and added to the natural hardness and fierceness of their expression. He had been running smuggled brandies successfully in his brig, a sport very dear to him, though prudence made him but seldom indulge in it; he had been drinking a good deal, and though not wholly drunk his temper was in readiness for any outbreak, like flax soaked in petroleum. He looked up from under his heavy brows at Damaris as she entered; the light and shadows were wavering before his sight, but he recognised her.
‘The woman said you were a-bed,’ he muttered with a great oath. ‘What do you mean — up at this time of night?’
The exaggerated scruples and the overwrought exaltation of the child made her brave to answer him. She came up quite close to him and looked at him with shining, steady eyes:
‘I am only now come home,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have done wrong; I have been out all day.’
Jean Bérarde rose to his feet unsteadily, and towered above her, a rude, savage, terrible figure; his breath, hot as the fumes of burning spirit, scorched her cheek.
‘Out!’ he echoed. ‘Out! — without my leave? Out where?’
She looked at him without flinching. Only she was very pale.
‘They came and asked me — the ladies and gentlemen — and I wished so much to go. I have never seen at all how those people live, and when I got there the hours went on, and I could not get back until he, Count Othmar, was kind enough to bring me home in his own boat, and he rowed himself all the way; and he said that it would not be right for me to hide such a thing from you, because, though I have done no harm, yet I have disobeyed you — —’
She paused, having made her confession; she breathed very quickly and faintly; her eyes looked up at him with an unspoken prayer for pardon.
In answer, he lifted his arm and struck her to the ground.
CHAPTER XV.
Othmar did not see his wife on the following day until the one o’clock breakfast, and then saw her surrounded with her friends.
When everyone had gone to their rooms after midnight he ventured to visit her in her own apartments. Her women were there; she did not as usual dismiss them; she looked at him with something of that expression which used to chill the soul of Platon Napraxine.
‘My dear friend,’ she said coldly as he greeted her, ‘do not speak to me again as you spoke yesterday evening. It is not what I like.’
‘I regret it if I spoke improperly,’ replied Othmar. ‘I was not conscious that I did. You had made a promise, and I reminded you of it. I was not aware there was any grave offence in that.’
‘C’est le ton qui fait la musique. Your tone was offensive. You may remember that I do not care to be reminded of anything when I forget it.’
‘There is nothing praiseworthy in your sentiment,’ said her husband unwisely; ‘and it seemed to me that a promise made to a poor child, who could not enforce its fulfilment — —’
She laughed unkindly.
‘You kept my promise for me. I believe you accompanied her yourself. I dare say she preferred it. Really, my dear Otho, what can this trivial matter concern either you or me? The girl has gone back to her island. Let her stay there and marry her cousin.’
‘I wish she may. But I doubt whether she will do so now.’
‘Because you sailed with her across the sea? It was very wrong of you, though probably very natural, if you took the occasion to conter fleurettes!’
‘I do not care for those jests from you to me. It is what you yourself have said to her which will have probably poisoned her contentment for the rest of her days.’
She yawned a little behind her hand and gave him a sign of dismissal.
‘Pray let me hear no more about her,’ she said coldly. ‘And if you will forgive me for saying so — I am tired — good-night.’
‘Will you not send away your women?’ said Othmar in a low tone, with a flush of irritation on his face.
‘No, thanks — good-night.’
He hesitated a moment, mastering a great anger which rose up in him; then he touched her hand coldly with his lips and left the room.
‘If she thinks she will be able to treat me as she did that poor humble dead fool — —’ he thought with mortified impatience.
With the waywardness of human nature he wished for that mere human fondness which probably, he knew, had he had it, would have soon tired and palled on him.
As he went out from her presence now, he thought, he knew not why, of the girl Damaris. What warmth on those untouched lips! what deep wells of emotion in those darksome eyes! what treasures of affection in that faithful and frank heart! Poor little soul! — and the best he could wish her was to live in dull content beside Gros Louis.
Nadine heard the doors close one after another, as he left her apartments, with a little smile about her mouth.
‘How easy it is to punish them,’ she thought; ‘and to think there are women who do not know how!’
The power of punishment was always sweet to her; it seemed to her that when a woman had lost it she had lost everything that made life worth living. She had not heard that he had accompanied Damaris home himself because she had not inquired about it, but she had guessed that he had done so. It was a silly thing to have done, exaggerated, quixotic; but then he had those coups de tête at intervals; he had always had them in great things and small; they made him poetic and picturesque, but occasionally they made him absurd. He seemed to her to have been absurd now; he could have sent the girl home with a gardener or a servant, with anybody who could handle a boat, if she must have gone home at all: she herself did not see the necessity. But a vague irritation against Damaris came into her as she sank to sleep between her sheets of lawn.
Une sensitive, une entêtée! If there were any two qualities wearisome to others were they not those? No one was allowed to be either nervous or headstrong in her world. When she came in contact with either fault she was annoyed, as when gas escaped or a horse was restive.
‘She has talent, and I would have aided her,’ she thought, ‘but since she is obstinate and thankless, let her marry Gros Louis and have a dozen children and forget all about Esther and Hermione. The world, on the whole, wants olives and oranges more than actresses, good or bad. Myself, I never understand why one should wish to see a play represented at all when one can read it; it argues great feebleness of imagination to require optical and oral assistance.’
The next day, however, when she saw Othmar she said to him with her most gracious grace and that charm with which she could invest her slightest word:
‘I think you were right, my friend, and I was wrong, about that poor little girl on her island. I did not behave very well to her. I sought her, and ought to have made her of more account. Shall I go and see her again, or what shall I do to make her amends?’
Othmar kissed her hand.
‘That is like yourself! You are too great a lady to be cruel to a little peasant. As for amends to her, I think the kindest thing you can do now is to let her forget you, and, with you, the ambitions which you suggested to her.’
She looked at him with penetration, amusement, and a little scepticism.
‘She is very handsome; do you wish her to forget you?’ she said with a smile. ‘I am sure you must have told her you will go and see her again.’
Othmar was annoyed to feel himself a little embarrassed.
‘I told her I would see her again some time, but
I did not say whether this year or next.’
His wife laughed.
‘I was sure you did! Well, then, you can go and see her at once, and take her some present from me.’
‘If you will allow me to say so, I think a present will only painfully emphasise the difference of cast between you and her.’
‘You have des aperçus très fins sometimes! That is a very delicate one, and perhaps correct, though a little pedantic. Well, go and see her, and say anything in my name that you think will smooth her ruffled feathers and restore her peace. I think we should have another Desclée in her; but perhaps you are right, that it will be better to let her marry her ship-builder. Wait; you may take her this book from me. That cannot offend her.’
She took off her table a volume of the ‘Légendes des Siècles,’ an édition de luxe, illustrated by great artists, bound by Marius Michel, illustrated by Hédouin, and published by Dentu, and in the flyleaf of it she wrote, ‘From Nadège Fedorevna Platoff, Countess Othmar.’ Then she gave it to her husband.
‘I am certainly not going there to-day, nor for many days,’ he said as he took it.
She smiled as she glanced at him.
‘Are you sure you are not? Well, take it when you do go.’
‘I shall go, if at all, only as your ambassador.’
‘That is rather prudishly and puritanically put. Why should you not say honestly that the girl is very pretty, and that you like to look at her! I assure you it will not distress me.’
‘I could not hope that it would,’ said Othmar rather bitterly, as Paul of Lemberg entered the room.
There were times when the serene indifference to his actions which his wife displayed found him ungrateful; times when he almost wished for the warmth of interest which the impatience of jealousy would have shown. Jealousy is an odious thing, a ridiculous, an intolerable, a foolish and fretful and fierce passion, which is as wearing to the sufferer from it as to those who create it; and yet, unless a woman be jealous of him, a man is always angrily certain that she is indifferent to him. Jealousy is a flattery and a homage to him, even whilst it is an irritation and an annoyance: it assures him that he is loved even whilst it wears and whittles his own love away. But jealousy was a thing at once foolish and fond, humiliating and humble, which was altogether impossible to the serenity and the security of the proud self-appreciation in which his wife passed her existence.