When he returned from the south he paused at Amyôt before going on
to Paris. He wanted a day or two to reflect on the future of Damaris
before he saw her again. It was a problem which did not very easily
admit of solution, without oppressing her with a sense of debt and
servitude.
The certainty that her cousin would do nothing to help her brought home
to himself the gravity of his position towards her. He had taken her
from the streets as a kind man will take a stray dog; he had as much
actual right to turn her out to them again as the man would have to
turn out the dog, but his compassion and his chivalry forbade him to
think of such desertion of her. There was that in the loneliness of her
circumstances which touched all the warmest and most pitiful fibres of
his nature, whilst the fact that more or less directly the caprice of
his wife had been the beginning of all her misfortunes, made him feel
that he owed a duty and a debt to her which could only be discharged by
the most honest and sedulous endeavour to do well by her and secure her
future from shipwreck.
But what was that future to be? To seek any counsel from his wife
seemed to him useless. He had seen her more than once moved to strong
interest and expectation by some nascent talent which she had fostered
and sheltered in the sunshine of her favour, in the hothouse of her
world; and he had also seen her intolerant impatience and her profound
oblivion when her anticipations had been unrealised, and that which she
had honoured had proved incapable of rising to the heights of great
achievement. He knew the changes of her temperament too well to be
willing to subject to their fluctuations a proud and sensitive child.
Even if she deigned to notice her again, Damaris could never be more
to her than a mere plaything, and she had a terrible habit of tiring
of her toys in ten minutes. She had had a fanciful idea that the girl
had talents of a high order, and he knew that if her fancy proved at
fault she would become intolerant of the person who had disappointed
her expectations. Mediocrity had always seemed to her the worst of
all offences. The flowers which might unclose at sunrise might never
reach, or never bear if they did reach, the glare of noon. The world is
pitiless, that he knew, and to its wedding feast of fame many crowd,
but few are chosen. And Nadège, he knew too, would be as intolerant as
the world if where she had deigned to believe that genius existed, she
should only find a mere facile and fragile talent, without power to
ascend where she bade it soar, or force to justify her protection of it.
He had not, either, forgotten her suggestion before Loswa's sketch,
that some day he would fall in love with the subject of it. The jest
had annoyed him and offended him.
Some time, no doubt, she would know everything: circumstances would
bring it before her if the world and Damaris ever became acquainted;
and if not, if obscurity became the child's lot, and failure the issue
of her dreams, then it would be better that Nadine, who had no pity for
the one or sympathy with the other, should hear nought of her. He did
not care to dwell himself on the possibilities of the future of one who
seemed to him so ill fitted for the prosaic brutalities of a struggle
for fame: he had temporised with her destiny, and vaguely trusted to
some sequence of fair chances to drift the barque of her life into some
safe haven. Of the pure and chivalrous tenderness for her which he
felt, he would have been ashamed to speak to any living soul: for who
would have believed him?
'How difficult it is to do a little good!' he thought, as he drove
through the deep glades of his own woods, through the cool, dewy,
windless air of a summer evening towards the great castle which had
once known the Valois kings. 'Now, if I wished to do the most brutal,
selfish, hellish thing on earth, how easy it would be! I should find
the whole world conspiring to help me, and should buy souls as easily
as if they were oysters!'
Since his son had been born there, an affection for Amyôt had come
to him. It was his residence of preference; if it had been possible
he would have liked never to leave its vast woods, its sunny shining
courts, its majestic and historic solitudes. The feeling that he was
a new comer there had been soothed away as years had passed; he had
ceased to be haunted by the memories of his fathers' evil deeds; he had
begun to look forward to a race springing from himself which should
ennoble and justify the riches of the Othmars. It had become to him
less an ill-acquired and eternal monument of his ancestors' iniquities
than the cherished birthplace of children who would transmit to the far
future his own conscience and his own honour. But as he came to it now
in its stillness and loneliness, the earlier feeling stole back on him,
as a bitter taste will survive and return when a sweet one has passed
away.
It towered before him in the warm ethereal rose of the sunrise on the
morning of his arrival, one of the greatest of the historical palaces
of a chivalrous and immemorial land; and as the first beams of the
eastern sun caught the glittering vanes of the towers, the gilded
salamanders of the first Francis, he once more recalled with sudden
sharpness and disgust the memory that the Othmars had entered these
mighty stone portals only through the usurer's right-of-way; had
climbed these lofty sculptured towers only by the money-lender's ladder
of gold.
The world of men had forgotten it, or, if they ever remembered it,
did so only with respect and envy as they always jealously and
admiringly chronicle what they call self-made success. But to him it
was humiliating and hateful. Sometimes it seemed to him that, had
he done what his conscience and his manhood required, he would have
refused utterly and always to use this wealth of theirs in any luxury,
would have stripped it off him like a plague-stricken garment, he would
have gone to any personal toil, with hands empty but clean--dreams,
fanatical and foolish dreams, all men would have said, yet dreams
which, followed out, would have had in them a certain nobility, a
certain reality, a certain fulfilment of the ideals of his youth.
As he paced its terraces in the balmy stillness, the gardens
outstretched beneath him in all their beauty, which bloomed and faded
unseen by any eyes save those of the hirelings who tended them, the
remembrance of the dead girl who once had dwelt there beside him in a
summer such as this came back upon him as it did often now since he had
found and read those pathetic records of her short life. A repentant
consciousness whispered that to her those dreams would not have seemed
absurd: with her they would not have been impossible. Yseulte would
have obeyed him had he chosen to change Amyôt to a La Garaye.
He would have seemed to her no more unwise or mad had he stripped
her of all wealth and luxury than Claude of La Garaye seemed to the
woman whose bones lie beside his beneath the weeds and grasses of
the graveyard of Taden. Had he said but one word to her of such a
dedication of their lives, all her unworldly simplicity and courage,
all her childlike optimism and faith, all her heroism, fervour and
superstition, would have made her whole soul kindle at his invitation
as spirit leaps to flame at the first touch of fire. With her it would
have been possible; a life wholly unlike the life of the world, led in
open contradiction of all its opinions, demands and estimates; spent in
entire imaginative atonement for the greeds and the crimes of dead men.
'No, it would not have been possible,' he thought, as these memories
floated through his brain. 'No; for the life of La Garaye two things
are essential, Love and Faith. I had none of the first for her; I have
none of the second either for man or God.'
La Garaye was the outcome of blind unquestioning belief in humanity
and heaven, such belief as can only come over narrow horizons and to
uncultured minds. 'Have Augustine's faith,' says a modern teacher to
a faithless world. But the teacher forgets that the world can no more
return to its abandoned faiths than a man can return to the toys and
the joys of his infancy.
There is a profound melancholy in the solitary musings of every man
or woman whose youth has harboured all the high ideals of a lofty
and pensive enthusiasm, and whose maturity is held down by all the
innumerable habits and demands, usages and necessities of life in the
great world. Society is imperious and irresistible. Out of its beaten
track none of its subjects can wander far or long. Its atmosphere
is pregnant at once with sloth and excitement, and its bonds are
liliputian but indestructible. Society has neither imagination nor
ideality, and when either of these comes into it, it destroys it
unmercifully. There is a potent attraction in it even for those who
believe themselves the least susceptible of such seduction, and the
network of its usages and habits becomes a prison which even the most
unwilling captives learn to prefer to liberty.
It might have been possible once, possible to have given back all those
ill-gotten millions to the hungry multitudes of humanity; possible to
have stripped himself of all pomp and possession and been nothing on
earth save such as his own brain might have had power to make him. It
might have been possible once, but it was now and for ever impossible.
Such thoughts drifted through his mind as he paced the beautiful
rose-colonnades and magnolia-groves of these gardens which had in them
the sadness inseparable from all places which have a history and have
once been peopled by a historic race.
Neither power nor place had any fascination for him, and the meannesses
of mankind wearied him and left his heart barren. When the world
grudges the rich man his 'unearned increment,' it forgets how much
base coin it gives him in revenge for his possessions; it is for
ever seeking to cheat or, at best, to use him; the parasite and the
sycophant are always licking the dust from his path, that, unseen, they
may steal the gold from his pocket; the meanest side of all humanity is
exposed to him; even friendship becomes scarcely distinguishable from
flattery, and the greed, the envy, and the low foibles of his fellows,
though the base toys with which the cynic plays, leave his soul sick
when it is not covered with the cynic's buckler.
Othmar was no cynic, and his knowledge of his fellows had saddened
and oppressed him. This knowledge had not made him serve them less
faithfully, but it had taught him that all such service was utterly
vain, either to secure gratitude or to ennoble society. The world rolls
on, soaked in dulness, in bestiality, in cruelty, in a hideous monotony
of vulgar inventions and crafty crimes and imbecile conventionalities;
it has America instead of Athens, a machine instead of an art, a
Krapotkine instead of a Socrates--and it prates of progress!
Governed by money as men are, things were possible to Othmar which
would have been impossible, or most difficult at least, to many. His
position made a vast number and variety of persons of all classes
known to him; his large liberalities had endeared him to many people
of all kinds, who would have done anything he desired in return
for his benefits; he had always dealt with his fellows with great
kindliness and indulgence, but with perspicuity and intelligence; he
was well served by those who laboured for him, and was seldom betrayed.
Ingratitude and treachery he met with sometimes, but less often than
his own slight estimate of human nature led him to expect, and when
he needed assistance or service he could always find on the instant
instruments adapted to his end. If he had had the instincts of a bad
nature he could have contributed endlessly to the demoralisation of
his fellow-men; with the temperament he possessed he never asked
any return for his benefits or expected any thankfulness for them.
Nevertheless the world was set thick with his debtors, if he believed
that he numbered few friends, and whenever he wanted anything done it
was as easy for him to discover doers of it as it was for the Borgia to
find the hand that would fill the cup, the fingers that would use the
dagger.
One half-hour's thought, as he wandered through the lonely gardens of
his château, sufficed him to dispose of the problem of Damaris's fate.
She must be made to believe, he decided, that her grandfather had left
her enough to keep her from want, and she must be placed somewhere in
safety. As for her genius, if genius she had, it would find its way to
culture as surely as a plant to the light. But meantime she must live:
and live without imagining that she lived on charity. The only way to
make it possible for her to do so would be to induce her to think that
she had not been wholly forgotten by Jean Bérarde. So he reasoned, and
acted on his conclusions without weighing their possible consequences
to himself or her.
He was a man much more truthful than life in the world makes men
usually. A falsehood was contemptible and cowardly in his sight. One of
his most continual contentions with Friedrich Othmar had always been
his refusal to admit that lying was needful in politics and finance;
and in private life his wife laughed at him frequently for his distaste
to those mere social untruths which have become the small change of
society's currency. He disliked all subterfuge, all sophism, all
distortion of fact, and even the harmless falsehood of compliment.
But this single untruth to be told to Damaris seemed so necessary, so
harmless, that it carried with it no odour of dishonesty to him. In no
other way could she be kept from want and danger. Without some such
simple ruse she could never be saved from herself, and from all that
impetuosity and ignorance which would destroy her as surely as a like
enthusiasm destroyed the virgin of Domrémy.
Rich people, who have many connections and dependents, can arrange
circumstances to their liking in many small ways, with a facility which
is sometimes in pathetic contrast with their powerlessness to command
personal happiness and health, human gratitude or human contentment.
To Othmar it was easy to arrange circumstances for those in whom he
was interested, though it was out of his power to make his own life
the thing he would have liked it to be. His wide command of money,
and his great knowledge of men and women, enabled him sometimes to
play the part of _deus ex machinâ_ successfully. He tried to play it
for Damaris: tried, with an honest wish to serve her, and a boyish
disregard of consequences, which would have made his wife, had she
known of them, call him a _berger de Florian_ in pitiless ridicule.
Amongst the many persons who owed him more than a common debt, there
was an old woman whose only remaining grandson, a young student at the
time, had been compromised in the days of the Commune, and would have
been numbered amongst those who were to be shot without mercy, had not
Othmar, who was at Versailles at the time, interceded for and saved
him, being touched by the youth's fine countenance and his entreaty
to be allowed to see his grandmother ere he died. On inquiry and
further knowledge of the lad he had been more and more interested in
him, perceiving that mistaken creeds and distorted ideals had brought
him amongst this sorry company of pillagers and _pétroleuses_. He had
influence enough with M. Thiers to get a free pardon for the youth, on
condition of his leaving France at once. He sent him at his own expense
out of the country, gave him a clerkship in his house at Vienna, and
had the satisfaction of seeing him become in a few years a peaceable
and happy citizen, a diligent and devoted servant.
The old grandmother, by name Reine Chabot, owned and farmed a few
acres of good land near Les Hameaux, in the rich vale of Chevreuse. To
Othmar, who had saved her boy in body and soul, she would have given
body and soul herself. She was a hale and strong woman, of simple
habits and of noble mind. She was a recluse, but not a morbid one,
and her ways and manner of life were similar to those which Damaris
had been used to on the island of Bonaventure. To her he resolved to
confide the girl's charge during her convalescence, or for so long as
she might need a home. He went himself down to the farm, and, almost
before he had spoken, his request was granted and received as an honour.
The dark, stern eyes of the aged woman were soft with moisture as she
joined her brown hands on his, and said with fervour:
'All that I have is yours to command. Did you not do for me and mine
that which was beyond all praise or price?'
'I have found two people who accept my motives as honest ones,' thought
Othmar. 'I shall surely find no more. To expect belief in any action
that has no personal object at the bottom of it is a folly that nobody
but a boy should commit. The child believes in me because she is at the
age of faith and of innocence; and the woman believes me because she
adores me and does not look any further; but nobody else will be so
quick in faith.'
The farmhouse, called the Croix Blanche, was a stout
seventeenth-century building, which had escaped injury during the great
war by some miracle, and was as lonely in its situation as though it
had been five hundred instead of fifteen miles from Paris. In such a
retreat he thought this checked and bruised sea-bird might find as
safe a nest for a season of rest as the lark found there in the long
grass of its meadows. Rural quietude, pure air, good care, and the balm
which lies for poetic temperaments in the mere sense that the country
silences are around them, would do all that was needed, he fancied, to
restore the natural buoyancy and strength of her constitution, and
thither he directed the nuns to take her one afternoon when the shadows
grew long over the grass pastures and quiet woods of that smiling and
pastoral country which stretches around the ruins of what was once
Port-Royal des Champs.
She was in that state of weakness blended with the delicious sense
of returning health which makes life seem like a dream, and all its
scenes pass like dream-pictures. She was filled with a vague sense
of perfect faith and peace, and all that he did for her she accepted
unquestioningly as undoubted good.
When she saw the low grey-stone farmhouse covered with its climbing
roses, its wooden outhouses buried under elder and poplar trees, its
grass lands lying warm in the glow of the afternoon sun, she stretched
out her thin hands to it all as to a friend, and tears of pleasure swam
in her eyes.
'It is the country,' she said under her breath with delight.
All the sweet pungent smell of the turned earth where a labourer dug
in it, all the fresh glad scent of growing leaves and ripening fruits
and grasses browning in the sun, all the familiar sounds, a watch-dog's
bark, a blackbird's song, the hum of bees in the rose bloom, the
distant call of a corncrake in the meadows--they were all dear and
welcome like the voices of friends long unheard. It was the country:
all the strength and the warmth and the force of her youth seemed to
rush back into her veins with the sight and the sounds of it.
For the first time since she had left the island she laughed.
'That is well,' thought the old woman, her hostess, regarding her.
'Those who love the country have clean souls.'
She had not asked or wished to ask any questions concerning her guest.
In her eyes Othmar could do no wrong, and to her gratitude his will was
law. But she had kept her own soul clean all her days, dwelling here
always in these same green peaceful places; and as she looked on the
face of Damaris she was glad, for she saw there three things which are
as beautiful as flowers--innocence, and youth, and ignorance of all
fear and guile.
Damaris slept very soundly that night in a little white room that smelt
of lavender and pressed rose-leaves, and when she awoke in the morning
heard the pleasant sound of mowing scythes, of rippling water, of a
thrush's singing in a blossoming elder bough; and all the young life
in her seemed to arise and grow anew, and become once more as glad to
greet the sun as any bird which wakes at dawn as the first white light
gleams through its house of leaves.
Many quiet and almost happy summer days followed for her, in which she
recovered all her normal strength. The ways and the work of the farm
were familiar and welcome to her, and she scarcely waited to be well
before taking to herself a share of its labours.
The widow Chabot asked her no questions, but she, having no secrets,
soon related the few incidents of her short existence, and heard in
return the narrative of Othmar's actions during the Commune. Taciturn
by temperament, and grave and reserved by habit as the old woman was,
she grew eloquent whenever she spoke of the saviour of the last of her
race, and Damaris, when the day's work was done, and they sat together
in the rose-coloured porch while the spinning-wheels flew round,
never wearied of hearing that tale, and said in her own heart as she
listened, 'How good he is!--how good!'
These summer weeks in Chevreuse were full of rest and solace to her. It
was but a pause, a halt before the heat and stress of life, she knew;
an '_étape_' such as she had seen the dust-covered conscripts on the
march enjoy, resting by the wayside under the trees, where some little
water-spring bubbled up amongst the cistus bushes and the euphorbia
of a Riviera road. But she was at peace in it, and, childlike, hardly
thought of the morrow.
Sometimes she looked far away, when the sun rose, to the east where
Paris was, and wondered if ever there the world would hear of her,
know her, care for her. But it was all vague. Her future was bathed in
golden light, like the green landscape when the sun came out from the
mists of dawn; but it had no distinctness to her, no definite shape or
end. It was mere radiant nebulæ, like the rosy and amber-tinted clouds
which the peasants looking eastward said was Paris, though no roof, or
dome, or spire was visible when the morning broke.
Othmar came to see her rarely, and his visits were brief; but as she
had no vanity and had much gratitude, she was wholly content with such
slight remembrance. He sent her many books and other things which
amused her, and her mind was eager for all kinds of knowledge. She had
great natural intelligence and quickness of perception, and she read
the fine prose and the stately alexandrines of the old French authors
with avidity and delight. Something of the intellectual life of Port
Royal seemed to her fancy still to linger in the air, and make classic
all the rustic paths of this quiet valley.
When she walked over the daisied grass that grew about the ruined
dovecot, Pascal seemed to pace beside her, and as she leaned over the
little brook which finds its way amongst the cresses and the mouse-ear,
she fancied she saw the face of her great master Racine reflected in
its shallow waters.
Her hostess, though a woman of no great culture, yet was learned
enough in the literature of earlier days, and in the associations of
her birthplace, to know every legend and name that are attached to the
stones and the meadows of Les Hameaux. She was no uncongenial companion
to an imaginative girl, for though taciturn, she could have a certain
rude eloquence when strongly moved, and to her reverent and unworldly
mind 'les Messieurs de Port-Royal' were ever present memories, both
saintly and heroic.