A few mornings later, after his noonday breakfast, Alain de Vannes
sauntered out into the rose gardens of his wife, having seen there the
figure of his wife's young cousin in her demure grey dress with the
cape of sable, which he was just then in the mood to think the
prettiest female garb in the world. He went up to her with easy and
good-humoured courtesy, as became her kinsman and her host.
'My cousin,' he said tenderly, 'you have no trinkets and pretty
things, as a little lady of your years should have. I believe there
are all that are left of the Valogne jewels waiting for you in strong
coffers, but meantime here is a little bird that will whisper to you
pretty things if you will listen to him. You may wear a dove, you
know, at the convent itself. It is the bird of the Holy Spirit.'
And with that he gave her what he had telegraphed for from Paris, a
locket of blue enamel rimmed with pearls, and a dove, made of pearls,
flying on it; it hung from a thick gold chain.
She was so astonished that she could not speak.
The Duc watched her with amusement. 'Pardieu!' he thought, 'it is much
more entertaining to give to the _ingénue_ than to the _belle petite_.
What wonder, what delight, what innocent gratitude!--and the others
only box your ears if the diamonds be not big enough or the emeralds
do not please them. Really we are fools.'
Yseulte meanwhile had not spoken yet; what moved her so intensely was
not the gift of the medallion itself, splendid though it was, but the
idea that anyone had had so much remembrance of her. She had scarcely
had more notice than a careless bow or a brief '_bon jour_' from her
cousin's husband in all her life, and now, he brought her this
magnificent present! And yet, how much sooner she would have had
Othmar remember to go and hear her sing!
'Well, _mignonne_,' said the Duc gaily. 'You look as if you were not
sure whether you were in earth or in heaven. _We_ are not, when we
look at you.'
'It is most good of you; it is most beautiful,' she said, with
hesitation. 'That you should have thought of me is so kind; but I fear
I ought not to wear it; you know in two years' time I am to enter the
Carmelite communion.'
'Nonsense! It is the bird of the Holy Spirit,' said de Vannes, with an
ambiguous smile. 'I think you may wear it when you are an abbess--if
ever you be an abbess. Ah, my child, it is a cruel thing to doom you
to the religious life; only ugly women should go there, and you are so
handsome, _fillette_,--you will be so handsome!'
'Oh, no!' she said, quickly; she blushed very much; she had been
always told that it was a sin to think of any physical charms, and yet
she had enough of the instincts of a beautiful woman in her to take an
unconscious delight in the whiteness of her limbs, the thickness of
her hair, the smile of her own eyes from a mirror.
'Oh, yes!' said de Vannes, still with that smile which vaguely hurt
her. 'You will be marvellously handsome, Yseulte; I think that is the
chief reason why the ladies wish you in the cloister! It was certainly
the reason why they would not take you to Othmar's last night. To be
sure you are not in the world, but in the country they might have made
an exception; you are seen in our drawing-rooms.'
She lifted her eyes with eager appeal. 'Did he ask me? Did he think of
me?' she said, under her breath.
The keen glance of the Duc flashed over her face, and grew harsh and
suspicious.
'Because he spoke to you once,' he thought, 'I suppose, though you be
a young saint in embryo, you are not proof against his millions! You
are all alike after all, you women, even in the bud.'
Aloud he said: 'Yes; I believe Othmar bade my wife bring you. Perhaps
she thought it was too much like the great world for you; it was a
brilliant affair--all done for the Princess Napraxine.'
'Who is the Princess Napraxine?' she asked, surprised at her own
temerity.
'She is the lady of Othmar's dreams,' said de Vannes, with an unkind
satisfaction. 'You are sure to see her here sometime. What did you
think of him the other night? You know, I suppose, that he could buy
up all France if he chose.'
'I did not know,' she murmured. 'Nicole, I think, said that he was
rich.'
'Rich!' echoed the Duc, with derision. 'That is not a word to describe
Othmar. He has about a million millions, and he would probably be
happier if he were the blind beggar of the Pont Neuf. His millions do
not do anything for him with Nadine Napraxine, and it is only for
Nadine Napraxine that he exists.'
Then he paused; the respect for _la jeune fille_, by which the most
dissolute of his countrymen is restrained from long habit, making him
repress the sentence he had on his lips; that momentary flush and
light of happiness at being remembered by Othmar which he had seen on
his young cousin's face had made him bitter against his neighbour and
friend, and he would willingly have continued his sarcasms on a man
who, with all the world at his feet, cared only for another man's
wife, who laughed at him.
Yseulte listened with serious and wistful eyes; she did not know
enough of his meaning, nor enough of the sympathy which had attracted
her towards Othmar, to understand why she felt a vague pain at hearing
these things said of him mingled with a delighted gratitude that he
had remembered her. It was not to have gone to his party that she
cared for, but to be remembered by him.
The children and their governesses approached her at that moment, and
the Duc somewhat hurriedly turned away.
'Do not let these fools see your locket,' he said quickly, meaning by
that epithet the wise women who educated his daughters. 'If Cri-Cri
notice it, tell her, of course.'
Yseulte, surprised at the injunction, looked at him in wonder; but she
saw so much irritation in his expression that, being accustomed to
obey the orders of others without comment, and to be taught that
silence was one of the first of duties, she put his gift in her pocket
as the children approached, and their father, with a petulant word or
two, turned away, lighting a cigar.
'What was _petit papa_ saying to you?' cried the little sisters in a
breath.
They were pretty children, with clouds of hair and saucy peevish
little faces. They wore sailor dresses, made very short at the knee
and showing legs very shapely though too thin. Blanchette was blonde;
Toinon was a little darker and rosier. Blanchette was the more elegant
and the more witty by far; Toinon was the sturdier and the naughtier.
But Toinon had still something of childhood left in her; Blanchette
had lost every atom of hers years before, though she was only ten
years old now. Toinon loved horses, dogs, boats, and _le sport_
generally; Blanchette only cared for smart frocks, things which cost a
great deal of money, scandal which she overheard, and which fascinated
her in proportion as it was unintelligible to her, and the sense that
she was looked at admiringly as she drove behind the ponies in the
Bois or walked, with a court of small boys behind her, down the planks
at Trouville.
Between her two cousins and Yseulte de Valogne there was a great gulf
fixed, that gulf into which there has fallen so much of the innocence
of youth, of the grace of good manners, of the charm of girlhood, and
of the obligation of nobility; that gulf over which modern society
dances so lightly, blind and indifferent to all it has lost.
'What was _petit papa_ saying?' cried Blanchette and Toinon in one
breath, their eyes wide open with curiosity and sparkling with
suspicion.
Yseulte hesitated; she scarcely knew what to say, and a kind of
oppression came upon her with the sense of the gift and the secret
which she had to keep and conceal.
'He was telling me that I was invited--there--last night,' she said,
as she looked across at the trees of S. Pharamond; 'but they thought
me not old enough,' she added, with an unconscious sigh.
Blanchette turned up her little delicate nose in the air.
'_Grande nigaude, va!_' she said contemptuously. 'You will never be
anything but a big baby, you! When I am as old as you, I shall have
been married a whole year to a crown prince, and have gone to all the
theatres, and read all the newspapers--every one!'
'But she will never see a newspaper, and never go to a theatre;
never, never, never,--a big never!' cried Toinon, who was two years
younger than Blanchette, as she clapped her hands and capered.
'She does not care, she is such a stupid,' said Blanchette, with all
the superiority of measureless scorn.
'Papa was giving you something: what did he give you?' said Toinon.
'He said you were handsome the other night to mamma, I heard him.
Mamma was angry.'
'Mamma did not care,' said Blanchette. 'If it had been the Marquis
Raymond!'----
Then the little sisters laughed.
Yseulte with difficulty escaped from her little tormentors, and
wandered alone through the pretty grounds; while the closed shutters
of the villa of Millo showed that her cousin and her house-party were
still sleeping after the cotillon with which Othmar's party had
closed; an improvised and unexpected cotillon, for which,
nevertheless, there had been all manner of admirable surprises,
marvellous novelties, and costly presents.
When she was quite alone she took out her pearl medallion and looked
at it with all a child's rapture at a toy and something of a woman's
pleasure in a jewel. The kindness of her cousin de Vannes overwhelmed
her. She had known him now and then, as she passed the doors of the
billiard-room, or watched the drag roll out of the courtyard, give her
a careless, good-tempered nod and a lazy word or two, but never any
more notice than that, which was as much as Blanchette and Toinon ever
received from him. At such times as he had come down to Bois le Roy or
Millo, when she was there, she had heard of him as a man only devoted
to horses and dogs, to sport of all sorts, to his stag-hounds and
boar-hounds and otter-hounds, to his coach and his stud and his great
_chasses_; she knew that he was a very grand gentleman in Paris, and
at Bois le Roy--despite all revolutions--was a kind of king. And he
had thought about her so much that he had bought her a locket! She
could scarcely believe it.
She sat in a little nook made by magnolias that overhung the sea, and
saw the sun shine on her dove of pearls, and wondered if she would
dare to wear it; would the Duchess approve of it? There was only one
thing which disturbed her, it was his recommendation to silence;
there had been a look in his eyes, too, when he had said, 'You are
very handsome, _fillette_,' which haunted her with a vague uneasiness.
She was too utterly innocent to be alarmed by it, but a certain
instinct in her shrank from the remembrance of that regard. It was the
first look of sensual admiration which had been ever given her, and
though he had added 'Of course you must tell Cri-Cri,' he had said it
grudgingly, as though he would willingly, if he could have ventured to
do so, have bidden her keep his gift a secret from his wife.
'Are you counting your jewels, Mademoiselle de Valogne?' said the
voice of Othmar. 'Leave that until you are thirty years older and need
their aid.'
Without any thought of her he had been strolling on the rocks above
the little harbour which belonged equally to S. Pharamond and to
Millo. He had been bathing and swimming, and was returning to his
house, when he caught sight of her seated beneath the magnolias.
Yseulte coloured, and rose to her feet, dropping the medallion in her
surprise as his voice startled her from her meditation. Othmar picked
it up and returned it to her.
'What a happy trinket to hold your thoughts so long,' he said as he
did so. 'I have been watching you for a quarter of an hour, and you
have never ceased to look at that most fortunate jewel.'
'My cousin, the Duc de Vannes, gave it to me a moment ago,' she
answered him, vexed that he should suppose she could care so much for
any trifle.
'De Vannes!' echoed Othmar in some surprise; 'I did not know he had so
much good taste in the selection either of his gifts or their
recipients. It is a very pretty medallion,' he added, noticing her
look of distress and of bewilderment. 'The dove is admirably done; I
hope it will be an emblem of the peace which will always remain with
you.'
She did not speak; the quick sensitiveness of her instincts made her
feel the satire of his felicitations, and become conscious that for
some reason or another he disapproved the gift which she had received.
'I have never had any present before from anyone,' she said simply,
'so it is a great pleasure to me. I do not mean only because it is
pretty----'
'But because of the affection it represents? I understand,' said
Othmar, while he thought to himself, 'That _goailleur_ de
Vannes!--must he even bring his indecencies to Millo and try and
corrupt a poor helpless child? The man would not spend twenty francs
out of mere good nature, nor look at her twice out of mere
compassion.'
He looked at her himself now where she sat under the magnolia
branches; and it seemed to him as if she were the dove and he saw the
hawk descending. Alain de Vannes could be seductive when he chose; he
was good-looking and extremely distinguished, was accustomed to
conquest, and had that charm of manner which the habit of the world
and the society of women make second nature. If his fancy had lighted
on his wife's cousin he would not be likely to pause because she was
penniless, lonely, and consecrated to a spiritual life.
'One ought to put her on her guard, and yet, who could venture to do
that,' he thought; he, at all events, had no title to do so, and if
he had, he could not willingly have been the first to tell her that
under the roses there were vipers, that behind the dew and the sunrise
there were evil fires burning.
'Will you stay long at Millo?' he asked abruptly.
'I came here for two months,' she said. 'We were all sent away,--there
was fever; I have been here often before. I am very fond of Millo.'
'Why would they not let you honour me last night?'
'I do not go into the world at all. I never shall.' She hesitated a
moment, then added timidly, 'It was very kind to think of me.'
'It would not be easy to forget you,' said Othmar with a sincerity
which surprised himself. 'I wish you had been with us; yours is the
age for _sauteries_ and enjoyment. I should like to see you at your
first ball.'
'I shall never go to a ball. It would not be thought right.'
'And do you never rebel against so harsh a destiny?'
She coloured to her eyes as she answered almost inaudibly,
'Sometimes--yes--but then I know that it is I who am wrong and they
who are right.'
'Who are they?'
'The Mother Superior; my uncle, de Creusac, by his will; my cousin
Aurore; everyone that I belong to at all: my grandmother especially
desired it.'
'It makes one wish all the world were agnostic!'
'What did you say?'
Agnostic was not a word she had been allowed to hear.
'I say that it is a cruel thing to force on you such a choice. At
least you should be allowed to know what you do, ere you do it. You
should see what the world is like before you renounce it. I can fancy
that women tired, sorrow-laden, unlovely, unloved, feeble of health,
may be glad of the refuge of religious life; but you!----'
'Do you think one should only give God what is weary and worn out?'
she said softly. 'Surely one should give one's best?'
Othmar was touched by the words and the tone. To him, whose boyhood
had been filled with spiritual faiths and hopes, and whose manhood
had the pain of knowledge that all these gracious myths and wistful
desires were but mere dreams, there was the echo of remembered
adorations, of exquisite unreasoning beliefs, in the simple answer
which bespoke that faith in heaven which a child has in its mother,
unquestioning, undoubting, implicit in obedience and in trust.
Beside the cultured mind of the woman he loved, with its fine
scepticism, its delicate ironies, its contemptuous rejections, its
intellectual scorn, no doubt this simple, narrow, unintelligent faith
was foolish and childish, and out of date; yet it touched him; in
Yseulte de Valogne it had an unconscious heroism, a beautiful repose,
which lifted it out of the cramped rigidity of creeds and the apathy
of ignorance.
There were beneath her gravity and spirituality a warmth, a vitality,
a latent force, which seemed to him to cry aloud for enjoyment and
expansion. Sooner or later all that teeming life slumbering in her
would awake and demand its common rights; no creature perfectly
organised and full of health and strength can forego the natural joys
of human existence without suffering a thousand deaths. As yet, no
doubt, she was as innocent, as ignorant, of the tyranny of the senses,
as any shell that lay at the bottom of the blue waters yonder. She
might have fallen from heaven that day for aught she knew of all
which, in her unconsciousness, she was ready to renounce. But any hour
that divine innocence might be destroyed by a word, banished at a
touch. Alain de Vannes, or any other, might choose to find sport in
waking and in slaying it; and then, how unhappy she would be! How like
a bird freshly captured, and beating itself to death against the bars!
It was only in France that a high-born and beautiful girl could be
sacrificed thus because she had no dower. Everywhere else women
without dowers were sought and taken in marriage every day. As if a
few hundred thousand francs were needful to make youth, and
loveliness, and purity, and high lineage, acceptable to men!
'You know my cousin the Duc very well?' she said timidly after a long
silence.
'We have lived in the same world; I have not been intimate with him.'
'Do you think he would be very vexed if I asked Nicole--that is, my
foster-mother--to sell this locket for me?'
'I fear he would not be best pleased. Why should you wish to sell it?'
She hesitated, then answered: 'I want to buy the vicar that new gown
he wants so much. He will never spend a centime on himself, and his
gown has been mended and mended and mended; it is all a patchwork, and
even that is dropping to pieces, and the bishop's visitation is near
at hand. I thought the value of this locket would buy a priest's gown,
if my cousin de Vannes would not be angry.'
'That is a pretty thought of you; it would certainly buy many
_soutanes_,' said Othmar. 'But I think Alain would not be at all
pleased if you sold his present; and I told you the other day that I
will give the curé a new gown myself with the very utmost pleasure.
You say that I belong to his parish.'
She smiled; nevertheless, she hesitated to accept his offer.
'You must have so many things to give. Nicole says that people are
always asking you for things.'
'They do not always get them,' replied Othmar, with a smile. 'If they
wished only for such useful and harmless things as _soutanes_, they
should always have their wish.'
'Are you so immensely rich then?' she asked him, opening widely her
golden-brown eyes, which looked as if the sunshine was always shining
in them.
'To my misfortune,' said Othmar, annoyed. Could not even a child of
sixteen out of a convent forget his riches? Was it possible she too
was going to ask him for something?
She looked at him gravely.
'I wonder you do not build a cathedral,' she said, after a pause.
'A cathedral!' he echoed, in surprise. 'I would if I had the faith of
those who used to do so.'
'It is what I would do if I had money,' said she, still very gravely.
'I would build one in the heart of a forest, with the deer and the
birds all round it; not jammed up amongst streets and crowds like
Nôtre Dame or Chartres.'
Then a sudden sense came over her that she was violating all the rules
of propriety by which her life was ordered in thus speaking out her
thoughts to one who was almost a stranger; in tarrying at all by the
side of a man who was of no parentage to her. She rose, a little
hurriedly, but with the stately grace which was natural to her; the
grace of old Versailles and Marly.
'I think I must go back to the house,' she said, with a little
shyness. 'My cousin does not like me to be alone, or to talk to
anyone----'
'The Duchesse will not object to me,' said Othmar, with the same smile
as he had had when using the same words a few days before. 'Besides,
Mademoiselle, you are in another world than your convent. At Millo men
are not thought dragons and tigers. We are poor creatures, indeed, but
harmless; more injured than injuring. Do not be so alarmed. I want you
to tell me a great deal more about our vicar. Where am I to get his
measure for his gown? Will he be surprised with it? Will you not let
me send it to you that you may take it to him? I should be ashamed to
do so. I have never been inside his church, even to hear you sing.'
'No, you never came yesterday!' she said, with a sigh, innocently
revealing that she had remarked his absence with regret.
'To my shame and loss, I did not. I had my uncle with me all the day,
and at night a dinner, a concert, and the _sauterie_, to which I hoped
you would have been brought.'
'But I cannot dance,' said the child, blushing very much as she made
the humiliating confession.
'So much the better,' said Othmar, inconsistently, 'I am sure,
however, that you would dance with admirable grace if you danced at
all. Anyone who moves well can dance well.'
This time the colour in her cheeks was that of pleasure at his praise.
She was silent, looking at him a little wistfully, recalling what De
Vannes had said of the Princess Napraxine.
The kindliness of his tone, its mingling of familiarity and reverence,
melted her reserve and disarmed her shyness. There had been that in
the compliment of Alain de Vannes which had startled and alarmed her;
but in the almost paternal gentleness and friendliness of Othmar's
words there was nothing to do so. He had little to her of the
chillness and languid irony which often frightened even women in him,
whilst he had all the graceful courtesy of a man polished by all the
habits of the great world, and accustomed to that pre-eminence which
gives supreme ease of manner. To her Othmar seemed a hero, a king, an
ideal among men; when her cousin had said to her that this person, so
powerful, so great, and so rich, was also unhappy, he had said the
only thing needed to complete his fascination for her and to make him
the master of her dreams.
He bowed low before her with a sense of something holier than was
often met with in this world, and looked after her as she sped over
the lawns to the house.
'A beautiful creature, with a tender heart in her breast,' he thought.
'Why could I not meet her and find my heaven in possessing her,
instead of caring only for a woman who has no more passion or pity
than those Mexican aloes?'
As he walked home the remembrance of Nadine Napraxine seemed like a
little adder growing in his heart, and the large eyes of Yseulte de
Valogne seemed to look into his soul with their golden sun-rays. He
was passionately in love with the one, bitterly, angrily,
resentfully, in love; for the other he felt an extreme pity, a
sympathy, which with propitious circumstances might become affection,
an admiration of the senses which might with time be heightened to
desire, an inclination to take her in his arms and save her from her
fate as he might have taken up a wounded bird to save it from the
trap.