Damaris went slowly from the cliffs through the moonlight; her heart
was heavy. She had had a great temptation, a great joy, a great
disillusion, and a great grief, each following close on the heels of
the other in the short space of a few hours.
She came back to her poor little isle with something of that remorse,
that dejection, that sense of all the golden fruits being but ashes
at the core, with which the great ones of earth, after reaching the
highest heights of power or of fame, will come back to their lowly
village birthplace and think with a sigh, 'Could I but be as once I
was!'
The night seemed far severed from the day which had heralded it as if
by long years: never more could she rise in the daybreak quite the same
child who had leaped to the lattice, and laughed at the sunrise on the
sea, that morning.
She did not reason on the change in her, nor understand it, but she
felt it.
When the little velvet-hided calf has been branded in the stock-yard
with the cruel iron, never more (though turned loose again) will it
frolic the same in the prairie grass unwitting of pain or ill.
She took her way slowly over the head of the cliff across the breadth
of pasture where a few days before she had led Loswa. There was a dusky
crouching figure waiting in the shadow of the orange-boughs; it was
that of old Catherine the servant, who sprang towards her and gripped
her arm with both hands.
'He is come home!' she said in a loud, terrified whisper.
'My grandfather!'
Bold though she was by nature, her lips and cheeks grow cold and her
heart stood still.
'Who else!' cried the old woman roughly. 'For who else would I keep out
of my bed at such an hour to watch for you? Where have you been all the
while?'
'I have been with the lady.'
Her voice sounded very dull and hopeless; it melted the heart of the
peasant who loved her.
'Well, well, you have had your will and your vanity, and have paid
for them both!' she said, less harshly. 'Poor little fool! It is your
mother's light blood working in you, I suppose; you're not to blame.
They are to blame who bred you. I have watched for you ever since I
gave him his supper. He asked where you were. I said you were asleep.
He has had a good deal of brandy. If you get in by the scullery door,
and take your shoes off, and go softly up the stairs, he will not hear,
and nobody knows you have been away save Raphael and myself. That is
why I waited outside, to stop and tell you that you might creep in
unseen.'
Damaris stooped her tall head and kissed the woman's withered cheek:
'That was like you, dear Catherine!'
'More fool I, perhaps. I will punish you come morning, never fear. But
I should be loath for you to see Bérarde to-night. Get in.'
Seeing that Damaris did not move, she pushed her by the shoulder.
But the words which Othmar had spoken were echoing in the ear, and
sounding at the conscience, of the girl, bearing a harvest which he had
never dreamed of when he had uttered them. There was that in them which
had aroused all the courage and exaggerated sentiment of her mind and
character.
The instincts of heroism, always strong in her, and that instinct
to martyrdom ever dear to anything of womanhood, rose in her with
irresistible force.
'If Count Othmar ever heard that I did not tell, he would think it so
mean and so false,' she pondered, while the eager grip of the woman's
fingers closed on her and tried to pull her to the open side-entrance
of the house.
She resisted.
'No, no; not so, not so; not in secret,' she muttered. 'I wish to see
my grandfather. Let me pass.'
'Are you mad?' screamed Catherine, dragging her backward by her skirts.
'He is hot with brandy, I tell you; you know what brandy makes him;
if he knows you have been off the island he will beat you. Has he not
beaten you before, that you should doubt it?'
'I do not doubt,' said Damaris. 'But it is only just that he should be
told----
'I owe him everything, you know,' she added, 'and I did wrong to go
away from home in his absence.'
'Wrong! of course you did wrong. But you would listen to nobody, you
were so taken up with those fine folks. Of course you did wrong, but
since the harm is done, and it is of no use to cry over spilt milk and
broken eggs, get you into your bed; your grandfather will never know
anything. Raphael and I, be sure, shall not tell. Get in and hold your
own counsel. In the morning it will all be as one.'
'No, it would not be fair,' said Damaris.
Her face was very pale, but the exaltation of a romantic devotion to
honour had come upon her, and gave her a strength not her own. She
passed the figure of Catherine in the entrance of the scullery, and
walked with firm steps through the stone passages, between the crowded
bales of oranges and lemons, straightway into the great kitchen,
where Jean Bérarde sat. The light from an oil lamp which swung from
the rafters shone on his strong, harsh, brown features, his grizzled
eyebrows, his white beard; the broad-leaved hat he had drawn over his
face threw a dark gloom over the upper part of his features, and added
to the natural hardness and fierceness of their expression. He had been
running smuggled brandies successfully in his brig, a sport very dear
to him, though prudence made him but seldom indulge in it; he had been
drinking a good deal, and though not wholly drunk his temper was in
readiness for any outbreak, like flax soaked in petroleum. He looked
up from under his heavy brows at Damaris as she entered; the light and
shadows were wavering before his sight, but he recognised her.
'The woman said you were a-bed,' he muttered with a great oath. 'What
do you mean--up at this time of night?'
The exaggerated scruples and the overwrought exaltation of the child
made her brave to answer him. She came up quite close to him and looked
at him with shining, steady eyes:
'I am only now come home,' she said in a low voice. 'I have done wrong;
I have been out all day.'
Jean Bérarde rose to his feet unsteadily, and towered above her, a
rude, savage, terrible figure; his breath, hot as the fumes of burning
spirit, scorched her cheek.
'Out!' he echoed. 'Out!--without my leave? Out where?'
She looked at him without flinching. Only she was very pale.
'They came and asked me--the ladies and gentlemen--and I wished so
much to go. I have never seen at all how those people live, and when I
got there the hours went on, and I could not get back until he, Count
Othmar, was kind enough to bring me home in his own boat, and he rowed
himself all the way; and he said that it would not be right for me to
hide such a thing from you, because, though I have done no harm, yet I
have disobeyed you----'
She paused, having made her confession; she breathed very quickly and
faintly; her eyes looked up at him with an unspoken prayer for pardon.
In answer, he lifted his arm and struck her to the ground.