Othmar. Ouida
anyone could paint dew on a cobweb it would be Loswa,' a great critic had said one day. 'Have you never seen dew on a cobweb? It is the most beautiful thing in the world, especially when a sunbeam trembles through it.'
His present hostess had a high opinion of his powers, mingled with a certain depreciation of them. 'Perhaps it is only a trick,' she admitted; 'but it is a divine trick—a trick of Hermes.'
He leaned now over the balustrade of the terrace of St. Pharamond, the warmth of the western sun shining on his fair curls and straight profile.
'A coxcomb can never be a genius,' murmured the Duc de Béthune, glancing towards him with sovereign contempt and dislike.
'You are always very porté against poor Loris,' returned his hostess with a smile. 'Yes, he has genius in a way, the same sort of genius that Watteau had, and Coustou and Boucher; he should have been born under Louis Quinze; that is his only mistake.'
'He is a coxcomb,' repeated Béthune.
'He seems so to you, because all your life has been filled with grave thoughts and strong actions. All artists are apt to seem mere triflers to all soldiers. Who is that girl he is looking at?—what a handsome face!'
She raised herself a little on her elbow, and looked down over the balustrade; a small boat with a single red sail and two women under it were passing under the terrace; one of them was old, brown and ugly, the other was young, fair, and with golden-brown hair curling under a red woollen fisher's cap. The water was shallow under the marble walls of St. Pharamond; the boat was drifting very slowly; there was a pile of oranges and lemons in it as its cargo; the elder woman, with one oar in the water, was with her other hand counting copper coins into a leathern bag in her lap; the younger, who steered with a string tied to her foot, was managing the sail with a practised skill which showed that all maritime exercises were familiar to her. When she sat down again she looked up at the terrace above her.
She had a beautiful and uncommon countenance, full of light; the light of youth, of health, of enjoyment; she wore a gown of rough dark-blue sea-stuff much stained with salt water, and the sleeves of it were rolled up high, showing the whole of her bare and admirably moulded arms. The memories of Melville and of his hostess both went back to the day when they had seen another boat upon those waters with the happy loveliness of youth within it.
Loris Loswa, full of outspoken admiration, exhausted all his epithets of praise as he watched the little vessel drift by them, slowly, very slowly, for there was no wind to aid it, and the oar was motionless in the water.
'Stay, oh stay!' he cried to the boat, and began to murmur the 'Enfant, si j'étais roi——'
'If you were a king you could hardly do better than what, I am quite sure, you will do as it is,' said Nadine. 'Find out where she lives, and make her portrait for next year's Salon. She is very handsome, and that old scarlet cap is charming. Let us recompense her for passing, and astonish her.'
As she spoke she drew a massive gold bracelet off her own arm, and leaning farther down over the marble parapet, threw it towards the girl. Her aim was good; the boat was almost motionless, the bracelet was very weighty; it fell with admirable precision where it was intended to fall—on the knees of the girl as she sat in the prow behind the pile of golden fruit.
'How astonished and pleased she will be!' said Loswa. 'It is only you, Madame, who have such apropos inspirations.'
Even as he spoke the maiden in the boat had taken up the bracelet, looked at it a moment with a frown upon her face, then without a second's pause had sprung to her feet to obtain a better attitude for her effort, and with a magnificent sweep of her bare arm upward and backward cast the thing back again on high on to the balustrade, where it rolled to the feet of its mistress.
Without waiting an instant, she plucked the oars up, one from the hand of the old woman the other from the bottom of the boat, and with vigorous strokes drove her sluggish old vessel past the terrace wall, never once looking up, and not heeding the cries of her companion. In a few moments, under her fierce swift movements, the boat was several yards away, leaving the shallow water for the deeper, and hidden altogether from the gaze of her admirers by the red sail flaked with amber and bistre stains, where wind, and sun, and storm had marked it for their own.
'What has happened?' said Melville, who had not understood the episode of the bracelet, rising and coming towards them.
'We are in Arcadia, Monsignor!' cried Nadine. 'A peasant girl rejects a jewel!'
'Is she a peasant? I should doubt it,' said Béthune.
Melville looked through one of the spy-glasses.
'No, no! It is Damaris Bérarde,' he said as he laid it aside. 'She is by no means a peasant. She is a great heiress in her own little way, and as proud as if she were dauphine of France.'
'Damaris! What a pretty name!' said Loswa. 'It makes one think of damask roses, and she is rather like one. Where does she live, Monsignor?'
'She lives with her grandfather on a little island which belongs to him. He is a very well-to-do man, but a great brute in many ways; he is not cruel to the girl, but were she to cross his will I imagine he would be. Krapotkine is his hero and Karl Marx his prophet; he is the most ferocious anarchist. You know the sort of man. It is a sort very common in France, and especially so in the South. Did you give her a jewel, Madame Nadège? Ah, that was a very great offence! She must have been mortally offended. When that child is en fête she has a row of pearls as big as any in your jewel-cases.'
'She looked a poor girl, and I thought I should please her,' said Nadine, with impatience. 'Who was to tell that the owner of pearls as big as sparrows' eggs was rowing in a fruit-boat, bare-armed and bare-headed?'
'Where did you say that she lived?' asked Loswa, curious and interested.
'Oh, on an island a long way off from here,' said Melville, regretting that he had spoken of this source of dissension.
'Take me to that island, Monsignor,' murmured Loris Loswa in his ear.
'Oh, indeed no,' said the priest hastily. 'You are a "cursed aristocrat;" the old man would receive you with a thrust of a pike.'
'I would take my chance of the pike,' said Loswa, 'and I would assure him that the future lies with the Anarchists, for I believe it, and I would not add that I also think that their millennium will be most highly uncomfortable.'
'Will you take me to that island, Monsignor?' said Nadine. 'It will not be favourable to fashionable impressionists like Loris.'
Loswa coloured a little with irritation; he had not thought she would overhear his request. He was, besides, despite his vanity, always vaguely sensible that her admiration of his powers was tinged with contempt.
'You, Madame!' cried Melville, cordially wishing that the island of Damaris Bérarde was far away in the Pacific in lieu of a score of leagues off the shores of Savoy. 'Would I take the world incarnate, the most seductive and irresistible of all its votaries, into a convent of Oblates to torture all the good Sisters condemned to eternal seclusion? That poor little girl is a little recluse, a little barbarian, but she is happy in her solitude, in her sauvagerie. Were she once to see the Countess Othmar she would know peace no more.'
'She must see many very like me if she live a mile or so off these shores,' said Nadine, dismissing the subject with indifference. 'I am sure it is she who is to be envied if she can find any entertainment in rowing about in a boat full of oranges. I would do it this moment if it would amuse me, but it would not. That is the penalty of having sophisticated and corrupted tastes. How old is your paragon?'
'Did I say she was a paragon? She is a good little girl. Her age? I should think fifteen, sixteen; certainly not more. Her birth is rather curious. Her mother was an actress, and her father the master of a fruit-carrying brig; dissimilar enough progenitors. Her father was drowned, and her mother died of nostalgia for the stage; and Damaris was left to the care of her grandfather, the fierce old Communist I have described to you. However, he is not so terrible a bigot after all, for he allowed her to be taught by the Sisters at the Villefranche