The following morning Loris Loswa rose much earlier than his wont,
and went out of the gilded gate of the pretty little villa which he
had taken for the season at St. Raphael; a coquettish place with
large gardens and trellised paths overhung with creepers; and down
below, a small cutter ready for use in a nook of the bay where the
aloes and the mimosa grew thickest. It all belonged to a friend of
his, who was away in distant lands to escape his creditors, and by
whose misfortunes Loswa had profited with that easy egotism which had
been so advantageous to him throughout his life, and which looked so
good-natured that no one resented it. He descended this morning to the
shore by the winding cactus-lined path which led down to it, and asked
the sailors if they knew of an island called Bonaventure. They knew
nothing about it; they, however, consulted the admiralty maps and found
it: a tiny dot some leagues to the south-westward.
A fisherman who was on the beach at the time told him more. He knew
the island, everybody knew it; but nobody ever was allowed to land
there; its owner was an odd man, morose and suspicious; the demoiselle
was good and kind; the islet belonged to Jean Bérarde, who owned every
inch of it. He would leave it to the girl of course. It was small,
but of very considerable profit. Loswa listened with impatience,
and told his skipper to make for the isle as fast as he could. He
himself knew nothing of the sea, and hated it; but he was _piqué au
jeu_. Melville had almost forbidden him to go thither, and the great
lady who had ridiculed him had doubted his power to paint the picture
of a peasant-girl. The irritation of antagonism had aroused all the
obstinacy and all the capricious self-will of an undisciplined and vain
nature.
'To Bonaventure!' he said with triumph, as in the glad and cloudless
morning air his little vessel danced over the waves, the great seagulls
wheeling and screaming in her wake. There were a buoyant sea and a
favouring breeze.
Loswa detested both sea and country, and was never at heart content off
the asphalte of the boulevards. But since it would have looked very
vulgar to spend his whole winter in Paris, he selected the south coast
usually for the colder months, because the world went with him there,
because he saw so many faces that were familiar, and because on this
shore so thickly set with châlets and villas, so artificially adorned,
so trimmed, and trained, and levelled, and planted by architect and
landscape gardener, it was possible for him to forget that he was not
in Paris; the very sea itself, so blue, so tranquil, so idly basking in
broad light and luminous horizons, seemed like the painted sea of an
operetta by Lecocq.
Besides, though he had no pleasure in rural or maritime things, found
no joy in solitude and no consolation in nature for the loss of the
movement of the world, he could not have been the fine colourist he was
without possessing a fine sense of colour, and the power to appreciate
beautiful lines, and all the changeful effects of light and shade. He
did not see Nature as Millet or Corot saw it, but as Lancret or Coypel
saw it. It was only a background for a nymph or a goddess to him as
to them; but he was not insensible to the forms which made up that
background: the sunlit vapour, the blue mountain, the golden woodland,
or the shadowy lake.
The sea was full of life: market-boats, fishing-boats, skiffs of all
kinds, with striped curved lateen sails, were crossing each other on
it. There were a few yachts, French, English, American, at anchor
in the bays, in waiting for the cup-races; there were some merchant
ships afar off, brown-canvased brigs bearing in from Genoa or Ajaccio,
and the ugly black smoke of a big steamer here and there defaced the
marvellous blue and rose of the air at the birth of day. The sea was
buoyant but not rough, his light cutter few airily as a curlew over the
azure plain. There were mists to the southward, lovely white mists,
airy and suggestive as the veil of a bride, but they floated away
before the sun, so rapidly as the day grew on, that the bold indented
lines of Corsica became visible, bathed in a rosy and golden warmth.
He had enough soul in him to feel the beauty of the morning though he
had been playing baccarat at the club till an hour or two previously;
to be conscious of the charm of this full clear sunrise which bathed
the world of waters in its radiance, of the silver-shining wings of the
white gulls dipping in the hollow of the wave, of the grandeur of the
land as he looked back at it with its semicircles of snow-capped hills
towering to the skies. But he would not have cared for them had there
been no human interest beside them.
After sailing steadily some two hours or so they sighted, and in
another two hours neared, a little island which was certainly the
one marked on the French chart as Bonaventure, lying all alone far
out to the south-west. Loswa did not need the positive assertion of
his crew to tell him that he had arrived at his desired goal. It was
small, conical-shaped, high, and steep, with a broad reef of sand to
the northward. It rose aloft in the air, grey with olives, green with
orange-trees. No habitation was visible upon it; but on the sand there
was drawn up high and dry an old boat with a sail of Venetian red
stained brown by wear and tear.
The island had evidently been made fruitful at the cost of many
centuries of labour; the natural rock of it was terraced with many
ridges rising one above another, each planted with productive trees;
the soil had no doubt been carried up load by load with infinite
trouble; but the effect of the whole was luxuriant and picturesque, as
the conelike mass of verdure, here silver-grey and there emerald green,
towered upward in the thin sun-pierced vapours of the early day.
The soundings showed deep water almost up to the rock itself.
'I am going to sketch,' said Loswa to his skipper as he pointed to the
level strip of sand. 'Let me land there.'
Their assertions that no one ever did land there he disregarded. A
small boat was rowed up to the strip of beach, and he got out, bidding
his sailors wait round the edge of a jutting rock, which would give
them shade as the day should advance.
He glanced at the old red coble drawn up on the shore. It was the same
he had seen three days before; he felt sure of it by its colour and its
build.
He looked about him and around him for a means of ascent, and saw
a zigzag path that wound up through the hanging orchards of olive,
of lemon, and of orange, and higher still the rope-ladder called
_passerelle_, so often used in the Riviera to climb steep rocks. The
air was full of the intense perfume of the trees, which were starred
all over with their white blossoms. He thought of Sicily, where you
have to shut your door against the fragrance of the fields in spring,
lest you should faint and sleep for ever from their fragrance.
The path and the _passerelle_ would certainly, he reasoned, lead up
to any house there might be at the summit. He slung his sketching
things over his shoulder and began to mount the crooked rocky road
of moss-grown stone with cyclamen growing in its crevices, and the
rose-hued flowers of the leafless cereus springing up here and there.
But he was not allowed to ascend unchallenged; high above him there
was a rustling sound, then a deep angry growl, and in a moment or two
a great white Pyrenean dog showed himself, stared down at him with
frank hostility, and bounded headlong from ridge to ridge underneath
the boughs, with full intent to reach him and devour him. But a voice
called aloud: 'Tò, tò, Clovis!' and Loswa smiled. He knew he had
succeeded.
Through the labyrinth of branches, springing after the dog, came the
girl who had thrown back the gold bracelet to the lady of St. Pharamond.
'The dog will not hurt you whilst I am here,' she called out to him.
'But he might kill you if I were not. Do you want my grandfather? Why
have you landed here? It is private ground. He has gone to Grasse for
two days to see an oil merchant.'
Loswa felt that he could not have timed his visit more felicitously.
'Good heavens! what a handsome child,' he thought, as he bowed to her
with his easy grace and that eloquent glance which had power to stir
the most languid pulses of his patrician sitters.
'I landed in hopes that I might be allowed to paint the view from this
exquisite little spot,' he said with well-acted hesitation in his
manner. 'A friend of mine, who is, I think, a friend of yours too, a
priest of the name of Melville, has spoken to me so often of the beauty
of your island.'
Standing above him, holding the big dog by the collar, she smiled at
the name of Melville, and came a few steps nearer with more confidence.
She never for a moment doubted the entire truth of what he said.
Her blue-and-brown-striped linen gown was but a wisp; it had been
drenched through in its time with sea-water, and had the stains of
grasses, and dews, and sands, and fruits upon it; it was bound round
her waist by a leathern belt, and its short sleeves were pulled up to
the shoulder, as they had been the day before. But no artist would
have wished for a better dress, and even a sculptor would not have
desired to remove it from the limbs that it clung to so closely that
it hid nothing of their perfect shape and the curves of the throat
and breast that had the indecision and softness of childhood with the
fulness of feminine growth. Her hair was tucked away under a red fisher
cap, a veritable _bonnet rouge_; and her large brilliant eyes, of an
indescribable colour, were shining, as if the sun was imprisoned in
them, under level, dark delicate eyebrows. Her skin was fair, her hair
auburn. He thought he had seen nothing so perfectly lovely in all his
life: it was a living Titian, a virgin Giorgione.
'Anyone who knows Monsignor Melville is welcome to Bonaventure,' she
said frankly. 'It is a pity my grandfather is away. He does not like
strangers, but a friend of Monsignor's would not seem so to him. No one
has ever been here to paint anything before. What is it you want to
paint--the house?'
Loswa knew that he had done a dishonourable thing, and a mean one, in
using Melville's name as a passport to a place where Melville would
never have allowed him to go had he known it; but, like everyone else,
having begun on a wrong course he went on in it. He had succeeded so
well at the commencement that he would not listen to that delicacy of
good breeding which represented conscience to him.
'Do not be afraid of Clovis. He will not hurt you now he sees that I
speak to you; he is so sensible. Will you come now or another day?' she
asked him with the frankness of a boy.
'We have a Latin poet who tells us that to-day alone is our own,' said
Loswa with a smile. 'I will come now at once, and most gladly. Clovis
is a grand dog and a good guard for his young mistress,' he added;
thinking to himself, 'how lovely she is, and she knows it no more than
if she were a sea anemone on the shore; and she looks at me and speaks
to me with no more embarrassment than if I were but the wooden figure
of a ship!'
'I will come up most gladly,' he said again, with more ardour than he
showed in a duchess's drawing-rooms. 'It is so very kind of you. I am
sure the view from the summit must be magnificent. I fear though,' he
added, with hypocritical modesty, 'that it will be beyond my powers.'
'I hope not. I shall like to see anyone paint,' she said with
cordiality; and added, a little ashamed, 'I have never seen anyone
paint; I have heard of such a thing of course, and there are the
pictures in the churches and chapels which one knows were painted by
men; but I have no idea of how it is done.'
'You should have been shown by Raphael himself,' said Loswa.
'Raphael?' she echoed. 'Oh no, he is our fruit-packer; he would not
know how to do it any better than I do,' she said as she turned and
began to ascend to show him the way.
'Can you climb?' she added, looking at him doubtfully. 'I mean climb
where it is like a stone wall?'
She had taken him under her protection and into her favour, but he
felt that he would have preferred to this frank innocent friendliness
a certain hesitation and embarrassment such as would have indicated a
different kind of sentiment as possible. She was as kind to him, as
simple and frank and candid with him, as if he were any old fisherman
that she had known from her birth. It was not what he desired, yet it
had a certain charm; it was so childlike, so honest, so free from all
affectation or self-consciousness, or lurking suspicion or intention of
any sort.
'Clovis is so good,' she pursued, all unconscious of his reflections.
'His wife (she is called Brunehildt) had four puppies yesterday. Two
were drowned; it was such a pity! I am going to give one of the two
left to Monsignor; he is always fond of dogs. Take care how you come
up, it is very steep; for me I am used to it. I run up and down a dozen
times a day; but a person not used to it may slip.'
It was, indeed, steep, and often there were ledges of rock in the way
which had to be jumped over or scrambled over in any handiest fashion,
whilst on others the perpendicular face of the cliff could only be
ascended by the rope-ladder so often in use in the Riviera; but Loswa,
in an indolent way, was athletic; he had in his youth been skilled in
gymnastic exercises, and though now enervated by his life in cities,
he kept apace with her, and soon had gained the level summit of the
island, a broad green tableland planted with olives and oranges, with
here and there a great stone pine, relic of the wild pine woods which,
before the _petite culture_ had stepped thither with axe and spade, had
clothed doubtless the whole of Bonaventure down to the water's edge.
There was some ground planted with cabbages and artichokes, some place
where maize would be planted later in the season, but the chief of the
land was orchard; and in the midst of it stood a long, low whitewashed
house, with pink shutters and a tiled roof.
'Now look!' she said, with a little pride in her voice as she stretched
her hand out to the northward view.
Everywhere far below them, stretching out to infinite indefinite
horizons, was the blue sea studded with various sails; and the
beautiful coast stretched likewise away into endless realms of
sparkling light; the range of the mountains rose blue and snow-crowned
behind that fairy shore; and this enchanted paradise was always there
to call men's thoughts to nature, and they in it only thought of the
hell of the punters, the caress of the _cocotte_, the shining gold
rolling in under the croupier's rake!
Familiar as he was with this sea and land, he could not restrain an
exclamation of wondering admiration.
'No wonder you have become the beautiful thing you are, looking on
all that beauty from your birth!' he said in an impulse of frank
admiration, mingled with his habitual language of flattery.
The girl laughed.
'Do you think I am beautiful? Everybody always says that. But
grandfather grumbles; he says it is the devil's gift. Myself, I do not
know; the flowers are beautiful, but I do not think that human beings
are so.'
'And you have grown up like a flower----'
'How did you know about me?' she interrupted him. 'Did Monsignor
Melville speak so much of me? He was with my uncle in his last illness,
you know, and whenever he is on this coast he comes to us. You like the
view?' she continued with satisfaction and a sense of possession of it.
'Yes; it is good to see, is it not? But I am happier when I am down on
the shore.'
'Indeed! Why?'
'Because there one only wants to swim, and here one wants to fly. Now,
one does swim; one cannot fly.'
'To covet the impossible is the only divine thing in man,' said he with
a smile. 'It is just because we have that longing to fly that we may
hope we are made to do something more than walk.'
'Do you mean that discontent is good?' she said with surprise.
'In a certain measure, perhaps.'
'Content is better,' she said sturdily.
'I hope you will always be blessed with it. It is like a swallow, it
brings peace where it rests,' said her guest with a little sigh; and
he thought: 'My lady yonder is never content; it is the penalty of
culture. Will this child be so always in her ignorance? Will she marry
the skipper of a merchant-ship or the owner of an olive-yard, and live
happily ever afterwards, with a tribe of little brown-eyed children
that will run out into the road with flowers for the carriages? I
suppose so; why not? Melville said in her little way she was an
heiress. Of course, all the louts that own a fishing-coble or an acre
of orange-trees will be eager to annex her and her island.'
She was walking by his side under the gnarled olives which had been
stripped a month before of their black berries. She was looking at him
frankly, curiously, with doubtful glances.
'I am afraid you are of the _noblesse_,' she said, abruptly stopping
short within a yard of the house.
'What makes you think that?' he said, aware that he received the
prettiest of indirect compliments which a much flattered life had ever
given him.
'You look like it,' she answered. 'You have an air about you, and your
linen is so fine, and your voice is soft and slow. It is only the noble
people who have that kind of music in their voices.'
'I wish I were a peasant if it would please you better,' he said
gallantly.
She answered very literally:
'That is nonsense. You cannot wish such a thing; no one ever wishes to
go down. And, for myself, I do not mind; it is my grandfather who hates
the aristocrats.'
'So I have heard,' said Loswa. 'But he is out to-day, you say. Will you
not let me sketch this superb view?'
'Yes, if you like. I never saw anyone paint, as I told you; I shall be
glad to see it. But will you not come in and eat and drink something
first? I have heard that the nobles, when they are not dressing and
dancing, are always eating and drinking.'
'Nothing more cruel was ever said of them by all their satirists,'
answered Loswa. 'It will be very kind indeed if you will give me a
glass of water; I need nothing else.'
'You shall have some of Catherine's cakes,' said the girl, 'and some
coffee and a fresh egg. Catherine--she is our servant--makes beautiful
cakes when she is not cross. Why are people who are old so often cross?
Is it the trouble of living so long that makes them so? If it be that,
I would rather die young. I think one ought to be like the olive-trees;
the older they are the better fruit they bear.'
Then she called aloud, 'Catherine! Catherine! here is a stranger who
wants some breakfast,' and ran across the bit of rough grass before the
house, where cocks and hens, pigeons and rabbits, a tethered ass and a
pet kid, were enjoying the fine morning together in harmony.
An old woman in a white cap showed herself for a moment in the doorway,
grumbled inarticulately, and disappeared.
'She is gone to get it,' said Damaris. 'She is very cross, as I tell
you, but she is very good for all that. I have known her all my life.
Her honey is the best in the country. She always prays for the bees. My
grandfather does not know it, but when it is swarming time she says a
paternoster over each hive, and the honey comes so yellow, so smooth,
so fine; its taste is like the smell of thyme. Come through the house
to my terrace; you shall have your breakfast there.'
He followed her through the house, an ugly whitewashed place, with
nothing of grace or colour about it, though cleaner than most such
dwellings are upon the mainland; it smelt sweetly, too, from the flood
of fragrant, orange-scented air which poured through past its open
doors, and the odour from the bales of packed oranges which were stored
in its passages and lumber-rooms, awaiting transport to the beach
below. In the guest-chamber there was some old oaken furniture of which
he recognised the age and value, and some chairs of _repoussé_ leather,
which would have fetched a high price; but it was all dreary, dull,
stiff, and the figure of the girl, with her brilliant, luminous beauty,
and her vividly-coloured clothes, looked like a pomegranate flaming in
a dusky cellar.
'Come out here,' she said to him, and led him out on to a little
terrace.
It was whitewashed, like all the stone of the house, but it was gay
and bright. Its gallery was covered with a Canadian vine still red; it
seemed to hang above the sea, so steeply did that side of the island
slope downward beneath it; it had some cane chairs in it and a little
marble table, a red-striped awning was stretched above it.
'This is all mine,' she said, with pride. 'You shall eat here. Take
that long chair: it came off one of the great ships that go the voyages
to India; the mate of the ship gave it me. I made that awning myself
out of a sail. I bring my books here and read. Sometimes I sit here
half the night instead of going to bed--that is, when the nightingales
are singing in the orange-trees. My grandfather will always have the
house-door shut and bolted by eight o'clock, even in summer. So I come
here; it seems such folly to go to bed in the short nights, they are as
bright as day. The time to sleep then is noon. You rest, and I will go
and bring Catherine, and your breakfast.'
He caught her hand as she was about to go away.
'Pray, stay,' he murmured. 'It is to hear you talk that I care; I want
nothing else, not even that glass of water; I only made it an excuse to
come into your house.'
She drew her hand from him and frowned a little.
'Why should you make an excuse? If you had said you wished to come I
would have let you; if you do not want to eat there is nothing to come
for; I am never indoors except to eat, or if it rain very heavily.'
Then she went, and he dared not detain her lest he should alarm her.
She seemed to him like a bird which alights near a stranger so long as
there is no movement, but at a single sound takes flight. Left alone he
sat still in the chair she had assigned to him, and gazed over the sea;
there was nothing except sea visible from this little terrace.