As Othmar leaned against the side of the yacht and let his eyes dwell
on her face, unseen by him so long, his regard let something of the
emotion which he felt escape him, and betrayed that the chill
indifference with which he had met her again had been but the mere
mask of pride, though it might be a mask which he would be strong
enough always to wear in her presence.
'Yonder is S. Pharamond,' he said, conscious of his momentary loss of
self-control, as he pointed to some round towers which rose above
woods of ilex trees and magnolias. 'If you would allow them to land me
there instead of at Nice I should be grateful, and perhaps you would
honour me with landing too: the house is somewhat neglected, as I have
been away so long; but they will be at least able to give you a cup of
tea.'
'With pleasure, if Wilkes likes it,' said the Princess, as she joined
her friend. 'I never knew you had a place upon this coast; surely you
never named it when--when I knew you first?'
'Most likely not,' said Othmar, 'I have been seldom there. It was a
favourite house of my father's in his rare moments of leisure, but I
have never cared for the air or for the world of Nice. I have lent it
sometimes to my friends.'
'What do you not lend to your friends? In that respect you have made
yourself honey, and the flies have eaten you without hesitation.'
'If the honey be not in the hive it ought to be eaten. There is a
landing-place in my grounds, and the house is not more than a quarter
of a mile distant, if such a distance do not alarm you. I know that
you are no great pedestrian, Princess.'
'Why should one be when there are so many more agreeable modes of
progression? _On ne doit jamais se punir pour rien._'
'I have walked twenty miles for my own pleasure very often,' said Lady
Brancepeth, who approached them.
'Oh, but you are English; we were just saying that all English people
are like beavers, you must be sawing and drilling and building and
dragging something or other all through the length of your days. I
could walk, I think I could walk right across Russia, if there were
any wise object to be obtained by it, but simply to walk, as a mad dog
runs, from a sort of blind impulsion!--no, that is beyond me.'
'You are such a curious union, Nadine, of languor and energy, of
indifference and of potentialities,' began her friend.
'My energy is latent,' she said, interrupting her. 'I do not waste it
on every-day trifles, as you waste yours. You always use forty-horse
power to boil an egg or make a box of wax matches. That is an English
idea of energy.'
'Your grandmother, the Princesse d'Yssingeaux, was English by birth.'
'So was Othmar's mother. That is why he and I have something of the
beaver in us, but calmed, controlled, kept in reserve; we do not waste
our time and timber damming up threads of water, but we shall be ready
if an inundation occur.'
'Othmar, perhaps,' said Lady Brancepeth.
'I have a great deal more energy than he,' said Nadine Napraxine, with
a smile, as she leaned back in the wicker lounging-chair, looking as
indolent as a Turkish woman, and as delicate and useless as a painted
butterfly.
The schooner in twenty minutes' time landed them at a creek, with a
little marble quay, shadowed by great pines and eucalyptus trees;
there was a pavilion on the small pier, a pretty kiosque all white and
blue and gold, with twisted pillars and Moorish arabesques.
'Remember, nothing here is of my taste or choice,' said Othmar; 'I
have not been at the place for ten years. Would you like to rest? They
can bring your tea to you; or would you come up to the house at once?'
'_Va pour le château_,' said Nadine Napraxine; 'I never care for the
preface of a story.'
'I fear you will find it a dull story,' said he, as they left the quay
and passed up a steep path, always under the shadow of the trees.
'What a misfortune for him that he inherited so much! It prevents him
enjoying any thing,' she said to Melville; who replied, a little
drily:
'I do not think it is what he inherited which prevents his enjoyment,
Princess; it is more probably what he encountered and sighed for
vainly. Life holds many of these ironies.'
'If I were he,' she continued, ignoring the reply, 'I should care for
nothing but that power which he, in common with other great
capitalists, possesses. To be able to make a war possible or
impossible by the mere inclining of your wand of gold--that must be
the most interesting of all possible kinds of influence.'
'Yes, the financier is the modern Merlin, but then there is
Vivien----'
'In Mr. Tennyson's poem, not out of it,' said Princess Nadine,
sceptically; but she knew very well that Vivien was then walking under
the shade of her own great red parasol, with its group of
humming-birds embroidered on its left side.
The pathway ascended steeply through the woods, bordered with datura
and geranium, which were still blossoming gaily; here and there was a
wooden bench, a majolica seat, a little statue; the ground was of
shining shingle; it had been kept in perfect order, awaiting its
owner, for ten years. After about a quarter of a mile it ended on a
level space of the red rock up which it had climbed. Here had been
laid out a fairy-like and fantastic garden, lawns, palms, fountains,
walls of shrubs, and groves of camellias and azaleas, spreading before
a château, which was, in architecture, a miniature Maintenon, and in
position stood high enough to look over the sea in front of it.
'What a delicious place!' said Nadine; 'and in a month or two, when
all those azaleas flower--if I had known you had owned such a bijou, I
would have told you to lend it to us. It makes La Jacquemerille a mere
trumpery toy.'
'I would lend you nothing,' said Othmar, in her ear; 'I would have
given you everything--once.'
Then he added aloud, 'This is somewhat trumpery also, I fear; modern
things are so apt to have that look. They are like the _articles de
Paris_, which cost enormously, but are only plush and ormolu after
all. However, Viollet le Duc built this house; so it may be a little
better than its neighbours. Only I should like statelier and simpler
gardens myself; I should like high box hedges and old-fashioned
plants. But I suppose they would not go with the Mediterranean.'
'You like anything simple and homely; you will have to marry Margot,
or Phoebe, or Grethel, off a farm,' said the Princess, with some
contempt. She was a hothouse flower herself, and despised thyme and
dog-roses.
'I might do worse,' said Othmar, as he ushered them into the house,
which contained some wonderful china, some admirable modern pictures,
some fine statuary, and more French luxury than its master cared to
have surround him.
'It is exquisite,' said the Princess, after wandering through it, and
returning to a room opening on the gardens; a room hung with tawny
plush, embroidered with white roses and blue irises. The chairs and
couches matched the walls, a gilt cornice ran round the oval ceiling,
which was painted _in tempera_ with the story of Undine. 'How many
more houses have you, Othmar, standing like so many open empty caskets
waiting for you to put the jewel of life into them? Really, how many
have you? Come, tell me!'
'I have too many,' said Othmar. 'But excess always carries its own
retribution; amongst them all I have no home; none that I feel
home-like. I can imagine what it is--a _chez soi_ that one cares about
and desires to return to--but I do not possess it.'
'Make it,' said Melville; 'that is always in the power of every man
who is not a priest.'
'I suppose it is,' said Othmar. 'But it has never seemed very easy to
me. The fire of the hearth is like the coal from the altar: it comes
from heaven, and can scarcely be commanded.'
He glanced as he spoke at Nadine Napraxine, who was lying back against
the golden gleams of the plush of her couch; she had a tea-rose in her
hand which she had plucked from the gardens. She looked dream-like and
ethereal. She had on her lips that little smile which meant so much
and yet said nothing, and was half compassion and half disdain, and
partially, also, amusement. If she had been mistress here and in all
his other houses, he thought, each one of them would have been Eden
to him. But that had not been Melville's meaning.
At that moment his servants brought in the tea noiselessly and
quickly: little Saxe cups, frosted cakes, forced strawberries,
appearing on great old plateaux of gold,--as though he had been served
there every day instead of having been absent ten years.
'Really, Othmar, you have a little of the Haroun Alraschid, though you
do not care for your throne,' said Melville: 'who would have imagined
that returning from Asia last night you would have tea all ready made
for your friends?'
'My friends reconcile me to my house,' said Othmar; 'you will leave
almost a perfume of home behind you, these rooms will seem lonely no
more.'
'The rooms are quite perfect,' said Princess Nadine, 'but still I
think we will have our tea out of doors; the sun is still brilliant.
We have now and then little fits of rurality; when we have those we
sit on a terrace and take tea; that is as near rusticity as we care to
go.'
She walked through one of the doorways into the air as she spoke.
To Othmar the golden-coloured room with its white roses and blue
irises seemed to grow dark as she left it.
As she passed out to the gardens his people brought him a note; it was
inside a silver-grey envelope, with a silver _couronne_ upon it, and
on a silver-grey card was written a very pressingly worded invitation
to dinner the following night with his neighbours the Duc and Duchesse
de Vannes. They had just heard of his arrival; they would have a few
people; they begged him not to be formal, &c. &c. The château nearest
to him was Millo, their favourite winter retreat; a gorgeous and
fantastic place, with many a gilded cupola and shining dome which
caught the sunshine from the sea, amidst groves of magnolia and woods
of ilex. He had not been to Millo for ten years. When he had been last
there the Duc had been just married to a famous beauty, and he had
known them very well in Paris ever since that time. They were not
people for whom he cared much: Alain de Vannes was a sporting man, and
his wife was one of the leaders of fashion, with half a hundred lovers
given to her, rightly or wrongly, by report. They were, however,
legitimist in politics to the backbone. Neither of their families had
ever pandered to Emperor or Elysée, and they were, despite their easy
morals and their profound indifference to each other, exceedingly
exclusive, and, with all their nonchalance, even arrogant.
'It must be a strange house for that poor little girl,' he thought as
he threw the card aside, and remembered the Greuze face in the
Venetian red boat. Millo was not more than a mile off him, at one
point their woods and his joined, and looking from his terrace any day
he could see the gilded minarets and the varicoloured tiles of their
villas shining in the light against billows of dark evergreen foliage.
'How soon they know you are here!' said Nadine Napraxine, as he spoke
of the invitation to her. 'You will go, of course; you cannot have any
engagements?'
'Will you be there?'
'I do not know; yes, perhaps. I never make up my mind until the last
hour. People say it is cruel when they have dinners; it leaves a place
blank; but how can you be sure what you wish to do until the moment
comes? I detest dinners. When we have really become civilised we
shall each of us eat in solitude, or, at the least, each behind his
own screen. Why should one of the unloveliest of the operations of
nature be performed in public? The flowers, and the plate, and the
footmen cannot really embellish it; indeed, they only make it the more
grotesque.'
'How droll you are, Nadine!' said Lady Brancepeth. 'You have certainly
a monopoly of singular ideas.'
'I wish my ideas were general,' answered the Princess. 'When the world
has really refined itself it will look on our eating in society as we
look now on savages eating with their fingers. Some of our friends
cannot even have a little love affair but they must go and eat prawns,
and quails, and _petits fours_ together in a café; and if a hero comes
home from a war anywhere his countrymen at once make him eat and drink
in public by way of showing their respect for him. The whole thing is
absurd. The only creature that is not offensive when it eats is a
bird. Just one little dive in a rose, or under a vine-leaf, and it has
breakfasted. But we!----'
'When a very pretty woman eats a strawberry, the bird is not very much
her superior,' murmured Melville.
'Reverend father,' said the Princess, 'you have no business to know
whether one is pretty or not. Fruit, perhaps, does keep something of
the golden age about it; but our dinners!--were I a man I would never
see the woman I admired taking her share of diseased livers, tortured
fish, slaughtered songsters. They are fond of writing nowadays about a
higher humanity which will succeed to ours; but my idea of it would be
that it should be fed like Fénelon's islanders by only breathing sweet
odours. That would be even better than the bird's dip in the rose.'
'Then you will not go to Millo?' persisted Othmar.
'Who knows what one may do in twenty-four hours?'
The servants had carried the gold trays out into the garden after her.
Melville and Lady Brancepeth, who were more comfortable in the embrace
of their plush couches, returned within-doors; Othmar drew his chair
nearer to hers, and offered her a cigarette.
'Rurality always wants this consolation, Princess,' he said, as he did
so.
'Thanks; not till I have finished my strawberries. They are delicious.
How do you manage your households? If we go home unexpectedly anywhere
we always find the servants away, the major-domo drunk, the house
topsy-turvy, and not a thing to eat within twenty miles. How did you
keep them at this point of perfection?'
'They are never sure that I may not arrive at any moment. If servants
be not ready at any hour of the day or night they are not worth their
salt. Then I have very faithful stewards----'
'One marvel does not explain another. The fidelity is perhaps more
astonishing than the perpetual readiness.'
'I reward fidelity; most people limit themselves to accepting it. If
you do not pay your servant well he will help himself.'
'I am sure we pay--pay endlessly. Platon spends Heaven knows what on
the servants, but he gets only a mob of rogues, who rob him right and
left.'
'I have no right to suppose the Prince less wise than myself; but
perhaps there is other payment as well as money in which he does not
deal. I let the humblest man in my service have plenty of hope; there
is no moral tonic so bracing; each of them knows that he may rise if
he only deserve it. Then, again, I am heedful to have my
house-stewards men of high character; a house-steward is one's
viceroy--one cannot be too careful in choosing him.'
'I should never have supposed you cared about those things, Othmar,'
she said, in much surprise, as she stared at him, a strawberry held
uneaten against her lips.
'One must think about them or be at war with one's conscience,' he
answered. 'That is the tedium of life; its duties are so inexorable
and so wearisome.'
'Is an easy conscience absolutely necessary to you?'
'No; I could easily imagine circumstances under which a guilty one
would make me carry it lightly.'
A gleam of the old passionate emotion which she had once known in him
passed for a moment into his eyes with gloom and fire mingled. He
repressed it; he did not wish her to believe that she had still the
power over his life which she actually possessed. He heard her voice
saying always, 'I will have no melodramatic passions to disturb me;
they are absurd, they are out of date, they are tiresome.'
And she had said it out of no virtue, only out of sheer shallowness
and indifference.
'That is a very shocking sentiment,' she said demurely now, as she ate
another strawberry. 'At least, one is bound to say so; Monsignore in
there would certainly say so. Indeed, from Monsignore's point of view,
one would certainly think it so; but as all we modern people, whatever
church we ostensibly belong to, are all so completely of one mind that
we know we are only automata, made up of nerve-centres and different
gases, I do not see why we should necessarily have consciences at all,
do you? Why should we have one any more than the zostera from which I
named that yacht?'
'Only because the zosteræ have no traditions of a conscience, all men
have.'
'All men? Savages have not, primitive races have not; and how should
we know whether the zostera has or has not? She may have a very
perfect system of ethics, sitting on her rocks in reach of the tide--I
should think, indeed, she had a sort of Buddhism.'
'You named that yacht?' he said abruptly.
'Yes; Geraldine had her built last year. He is not like you; he has
not a superstition that one is bound to go on sailing in the same ship
all one's life, however old-fashioned she may grow.'
'Lord Geraldine has many superiorities over me. He has the patience to
play at Platonic cicisbeism as children play for counters,' said
Othmar, with a brusque contempt.
'That is neither a well-bred speech nor a true one,' said Nadine
Napraxine very calmly, as she set down her cup.
'Its breeding I cannot defend, its truth I do,' he answered coldly.
'There are men who can spend their lives carrying a woman's fan, and
ask for nothing more at her hands; they have merits, no doubt, but
they are not those which I appreciate.'
'Poor Ralph! if he heard you!' she said, with a little yawn which she
could not control, though she tried to stifle it with a cigarette.
'He thinks himself far more manly than you because he shoots fur and
feather, and you do not kill anything--except a man now and then!'
'I may yet add to the list of the latter,' said Othmar.
'The Mongolians have made you very savage,' she said, as she lighted
the cigarette. 'And you used to be so gentle.'
'I used to be many things that I have ceased to be since the twentieth
of April a year and eight months ago,' said Othmar.
She had forgotten the date which he remembered so accurately, the date
of the day on which they had parted in her own room in Paris, with the
smell of the lilac of the avenue coming in through the open windows,
and the sunset rays, as they came through the rose-coloured blinds,
touching her fair face, and the curl of her long dark lashes, and the
beautiful mouth with the little cruel languid smile on it as she had
said, 'I will have no melodramatic passions to disturb me.'
She looked at him now with the demure un-selfconsciousness of a child.
'Ah! I never could remember dates,' she murmured. 'I was the despair
of all my governesses, I had such a bad memory.'
'It is convenient sometimes,' said Othmar, a little bitterly. Why were
all those past hours written on his remembrance as the chisel writes
on stone, whilst she had shaken off their memories as a bird shakes a
summer rain off its wings?
'And how,' he added with an effort, 'with such a defective brain as
you describe, have you become one of the most cultured women of
Europe? Does forgetfulness of--dates--enhance the power of acquiring
other knowledge?'
'I think it leaves the brain freer,' she answered, in that serene way
which she had with her when she was intending that a man should never
forget her whatever she might choose to forget.
'No doubt,' he said impatiently. 'No doubt learned women have never
been very tender ones.'
'Learned! what a terrific word. Would you call a mere poor frivolous
_mondaine_ like me by the same word that described Lady Jane Grey and
Mrs. Somerville? I know a few languages; I had _bonnes_ of every
nation when I was a baby; and I have read Schopenhauer and Herbert
Spencer, and I assure you that one bored me as much as the other. But
learned! would a _bas bleu_ eat your strawberries or smoke your
cigarettes?'
'Or take all my heart and my soul out of me?' he thought, as he
answered, 'No; certainly your one great science, Madame, was never
learned either in the nursery, or out of Schopenhauer and Herbert
Spencer. It is the perfection of high art; and you, like all supreme
artists, cannot pause to remember what your studies may cost to your
subjects.'
She did not ask him what art or science he meant; she lighted a second
cigarette and said, in her sweetest voice, 'I do not think you are
quite so even-tempered as you used to be, Count Othmar. Look, the sun
is low; it is time to be going homeward. What are Monsignore and
Evelyn doing? Will you call them, please?'
'Stay yet a little while; I have not seen you for so long,' he
murmured, ashamed and irritated at his own weakness in letting the
words escape him.
'Naturally you have not,' she said, with a gay laugh, 'since you have
been in Asia and I in Europe. Why did you go to Asia? People do not do
that sort of thing nowadays. If they be annoyed they walk down to
their club and play hard, or they ride a horse at a steeplechase, and
in a week they think no more about it. And why did you have that duel
with de Sénélac? It was very imprudent. I had told you I could not
bear that kind of melodrama. Nobody knew certainly, but that was only
because they were all stupid; any one might have known. And Sénélac
never left his bed for six months; and have you heard that he will
limp, they say, for ever?'
Othmar, with a gesture, intimated that the misfortune of his late
adversary was a matter of utter indifference.
'If you be sorry that he limps,' he said impatiently, 'be sorry that
you gave him your bouquet to carry. Princess, you are very fond of
psychological studies, but you do not like to be reminded of what
others pay for them. You know well enough what men suffer for you, and
through you, but you do not choose ever to blame yourself for making
them do so. The world has not changed; the mode of expression may
have altered, but men feel as they felt in the days of David or of
Æschylus. Love is what it was then, a mere passing pleasure or pain to
many, but to some the herald of heaven or of hell, the begetter of
heroism or of crime.'
'My dear Othmar, pray excuse me,' said Nadine Napraxine, 'you talk
beautifully, you always did, but I cannot stay to hear you when the
sun is just going down, and we have only a yacht that crawls to take
us home to dinner. It is my fault that it crawls: he would have had a
steam one if I had not prevented him. I detest smoke and machinery,
but still certainly without them one crawls. Monsignore, will you come
if you have finished talking about the Little Sisters of the Poor?'
Othmar's face grew cold, a sombre displeasure darkened his eyes, he
drew back and let Melville join Madame Napraxine. He himself walked
beside her friend down the path through the woods talking, but not
sensible of what he said, watching the red sunshade with its
embroidered humming-birds pass before him under the boughs.
As they neared the quay he took from the hands of one of his men two
bouquets of gardenias and orchids, and offered them to the two ladies;
they were in pretty cornucopiæ of silvered wicker-work. Any one would
have thought that there had been the preparation of a week for this
afternoon visit.
'You are _bon prince_,' said Madame Napraxine as she took her orchids,
'why will you pretend to be a barbarian? The little graceful amenities
of the world become you, and you do them so well, though you do them
so seldom; why will you make yourself _un homme de foyer--manqué_? It
is much nicer,' she added in a low murmur, 'to give me a bouquet than
to shoot another man for carrying one.'
He did not answer. Her jests jarred on him.
When they reached the quay the sun was setting, the boat was waiting,
the sailors immovable, their oars held straight in the air.
'Adieu, Othmar!' said the Princess Nadine gaily. 'Your château is
marvellous, your orchids are exquisite, and your tea was enchanting;
we will leave you all alone in your poetic solitude, and when you
want prose and society you will come to La Jacquemerille.'
'Will you not honour me again?' he said, angry at his own weakness.
'Would you not dine with me to-morrow night? Or the day after
to-morrow? I think the Prince would come.'
'Oh! Platon would come certainly,' said Nadine Napraxine, with a
smile; 'you are his especial friend. He shall come to you alone; then
you can talk to him as much as you like about the burning of Moscow
and--and--all those other dates for which you have so admirable a
memory!'
She would say no more than that, and her musical slight laugh
tantalised his ear as the boat was pushed off in the deep blue water,
and the seamen bent above their oars.
Otho Othmar leaned against the marble balustrade and watched them row
away towards the schooner, with an anger in which vain regrets and
baffled desires were mingled disconsolately. He remained there till
the sun was gone down, and the white canvas of the yacht had passed
out of sight round a bend of the shore.
When he retraced his steps to his solitary house, he saw a tea-rose
lying beside the gilded garden chair which she had occupied as she ate
her strawberries. It was the one which she had gathered and dropped.
He picked it up and put it in his coat.
'_Quand on aime on n'a que vingt ans_,' he thought with scorn for
himself.
He entered the golden drawing-room, wrote a formal note of invitation
to the Prince and Princess Napraxine, and said to one of his servants,
'Send a messenger over with this letter the first thing in the morning
to the villa that is called La Jacquemerille.' Yet he had come from
Asia with the firm resolve to show the Princess Napraxine that he had
conquered all passion for her; and he was not on the whole a weak
man.