Othmar. Ouida
said Loswa.
'Out of the books?'
'Yes, beside the dreamland of the books. All the earth is not peopled with shipwrights and skippers. There is a world——'
He hesitated, for he was afraid of alarming her; it seemed to him that, were she displeased, she would send him spinning down the cliff with short ceremony.
'There is a world where life is always en fête, where women are treated not as goods and chattels and beasts of burden, but as sovereigns and sorceresses; where you yourself——'
'I shall never go there,' she said, abruptly interrupting him. 'Do not talk about it. It makes me restless. I feel as I do when I look over there.'
She pointed northward, where the unseen shore was.
'I see the sun shine on the mountains, and I see a dazzle of gold, a gleam of white, a long low line under the blue of the hills, and I know that is what they call the world, the big world; but I never land there; it is not for me.'
'Let me take you,' he said softly.
'No,' she said with petulance and resolution. 'Grandfather does not allow me ever to see the mainland without him; he says it is accursed, that the people are all mad. And now, as you have eaten and drunk all you will, it will be best that you should go: he may return any time, and he does not love strangers.'
'But I may come back and bring you your portrait?'
Her eyes smiled, but she said carelessly, 'That can be as you like. You are very welcome to what you have had. I will show you the way to the shore, though I dare say you would find it again by yourself.'
He endeavoured to linger, but she gave him no leisure to do so. She escorted him to the edge of the steep descent, and there bade him a decided adieu.
Loswa, with all his grace and ease and habits of the world, felt at a loss before this child. He would have kissed her hand in farewell, but her arms were folded on her chest as she stood on the rock above him, and nodded to him a good-humoured good-bye; cheerfully, indifferently, as any boy of her years might have done.
'It is easy to see that you come from Paris!' she called after him, watching his descent along the passerelle with a kindly little laugh at the hesitation of his steps.
'Let her marry Gros Louis!' he thought angrily as that clear childish laughter echoed through the sunlit air from above his head. 'I have her portrait—that is all that matters.'
What a feature of the next year's Salon would be that brilliant, bold head when it should be hung in the full light of a May day, for all Paris to gaze upon, marked 'D'après Nature,' and signed Loswa!
He soon, despite his indolent limbs, which were more used to the boulevards than the sand and the shingle, regained his boat, and pushed it in deep water.
Damaris Bérarde stood above on the brow of the cliff, amongst the olive-boughs and the great leaves of the fig-trees, looking towards that pale golden far-off shore where 'the world' was a world with other men than Raphael and Gros Louis, with other fruits than the round orange and the black olive, with other music than the tinkle of the throat-bells of the goats.
CHAPTER IX.
Two days later Loswa entered the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond, bearing with him a covered panel, which, after his ceremonious salutation of his hostess, he uncovered and placed on an unoccupied easel before her.
'Ah! my charming sea-born savage!' said Nadine as she approached it.
It still looked only a sketch, but it is a very sincere man who will display a sketch without touching it up and embellishing it, and Loswa was not sincere in that way, or in many others. He had copied his original drawing done upon the island, enlarging and improving it, and, though the portrait had the look of an impromptu creation, an impression vivid and masterly, it was in reality the product of many hours of painstaking labour and elaborate thought. Produced however it might be, it was one of the most brilliant studies which had ever come from his hand. It was not idealised or made artificial; it was the head of the girl as he had seen it in the full light of the morning on Bonaventure. The eyes had the frank, fearless, childish regard which hers had, and the whole face seemed speaking with courage, ardour, health, and imagination.
There was a chorus of admiration from all the great people who were there; it was her jour, and the rooms were full. Anything drawn by Loswa instantly elicited the homage of that world of fashion in which his powers were deemed godlike, and this sketch had qualities so rare and true that even his enemies and hostile critics would have been forced to concede to it a great triumph of art.
'You have succeeded,' said Nadine, as she put out her hand to him with a smile. 'You were right and I was wrong. You have painted the portrait without spoiling it by any affectations. No living painter could have done it better, and few dead ones.'
Loswa inclined his graceful person to the ground before her, and murmured his undying gratitude for the condescension of her praise.
'Tout de même, elle me le paiera,' he thought, remembering the words she had spoken to him on the sea-terrace.
'And how did Perseus find Andromeda?' she asked. 'It must be a story to be told in verse in the old fashion. Relate it!'
'There has been very little romance about it,' said Loswa, 'and Andromeda, alas! is contentedly going to marry a boat-builder, stout, ugly, and old!'
'My dear Loris, that will be for you to prevent,' said Nadine, still gazing at the sketch. 'I have never seen a face with more character or more suggestion. C'est un type, as the novelists say. If she do marry the boat-builder, he will have a stormy existence. There are daring and genius in her face. Come—sit there and narrate your adventures with her.'
Never unwilling to be the hero of his own stories, Loswa seated himself where she bade him, and, becoming the centre of a circle of lovely ladies, he embellished and heightened the narrative of his expedition to Bonaventure as he had done the sketch, making his own part in it more romantic, and the reception of Damaris warmer than either had been. He had a very picturesque fashion of speech, and the little incident, under his skilful treatment, obtained the grace and the colour of a story of Ludovic Halévy's. The portrait could not open its lips and contradict him. Only his hostess thought to herself, with amusement: 'I wonder how much of all that is true!'
Whilst he was talking and drawing towards a close in his admirably-coloured narrative, Melville and Othmar together entered the room behind him, and the former caught the name of his favourite of the isle.
He listened in silence till Loswa paused to take breath at the end of a sentence; then, with a very angry gleam in his clear eyes, he interposed:
'So, M. Loswa, you have found the latitude and longitude of Bonaventure without a pilot! Your portrait on that easel is very like, but I confess I do not recognise the same verisimilitude in your narrative.'
Loswa, who had paused to meditate on the end of his adventure, which he felt could not be told with the tame finale which it had had in real life, was disconcerted, and for a moment silent.
'I have seen your heroine this morning,' pursued Melville; 'I am distressed to disturb your romance, but she is not the mingling of Gretchen and Graziella you have just described. I left her busied in feeding the pigs.'
'I dare say Gretchen and Graziella both fed pigs,' said Loswa with some ill-humour. 'At least, Monsignor, you will admit that I have proved to the Countess Othmar that I was capable of making a study of the betrothed of Gros Louis.'
'That is feeding the pigs with pearls indeed,' said Nadine.
'The pigs are a better destiny than many another,' said Melville.
'You cannot seriously think so?'
'I do, indeed. If you had seen the dark side of life, Madame,