Damaris went out blindly, down the staircase and across the vestibule
and halls into the open air.
She had no knowledge of what she did; the serving-men looked at her and
then at each other, and laughed, and whispered some coarse things, but
no one attempted to arrest her steps; on the contrary, they put her
right when she mistook her way in the corridor, and almost shoved her
into the street, where the light of day was fading.
She was strongly made in body and in mind, and in all the tumult of her
thoughts, the sickness of her shame, she did not grow faint, or forget
her road, or fall upon the stones, over which her feet were dragged so
wearily.
She found the streets which led to the station of the West, and sat
down in the waiting-chamber, and heard the roar of Paris go on round
her like the roaring of wild beasts calling for food: that those beasts
had not devoured her was due to him; she did not reproach him or forget
her debt to him, only she wished that he had let her die that night
upon the bridge.
The doors flew open, the bells rang, the crowds hastened; without any
conscious action on her part she was pushed with the others to the
wicket, paid the coins they asked her for, and found her way to a seat
in the crowded waggons.
The train moved. Soon the cold country air of evening blowing through
an open window revived her, and brought her a clearer sense of where
she was, of what had happened. She saw always that cold, still, regal
figure looking down on her with such ineffable disdain; she heard
always that chill, languid, contemptuous voice, sweet as music, cruel
as the knife which severs the cord of life.
'She does not believe,' she muttered again and again. 'She will never
believe.'
Those who were in the carriage with her heard the broken stupid words
said over and over again, while her great eyes looked out, wide opened
and startled, into the shadows of the descending night.
One or two of them spoke roughly to her, being afraid of her; then she
was silent, vaguely understanding that they thought her strange and odd.
She leaned in a corner and shrank from their comments and their gaze.
It was now quite dark; the flickering lamplight seemed to wane and
oscillate before her eyes; she had not touched food or water for many
hours; her throat was dry, her hands were hot, her head felt light; she
had done all she could and had failed. The only thing she had gained
was a knowledge which seemed to eat her very soul away with its shame
and misery.
She was so young that she did not know that if she had patience to live
through this agony it would cease in time, and grow less terrible to
her with every year which should pass over her head. She did not know
the solace that comes with the mere passage of the seasons; to her the
shame, the torture she endured were eternal.
She had taken his money innocently, ignorantly indeed, honestly
believing it to be her own; but she understood now why to his wife she
seemed only a wretched paid creature of hazard; she understood now why
the Princess de Laon had spoken to her as to one of whose avarice and
whose vileness there was no doubt.
To the haughty, frank innocent soul of the child it was such
unspeakable degradation that it seemed to stop the very pulses of life
in her.
She could have torn the clothes off her body because they had been
bought with this money she had ignorantly accepted as her own.
Not for one moment did she do him the wrong that his wife had done
him; she never doubted his motives, or thought that any intention save
that of the kindest and most chivalrous compassion had been at the
root of his generosity to her. Her mind was too intrinsically noble,
her instincts were too pure and untainted by suspicion, for any baser
supposition to attach itself to him in her thoughts, even in the moment
of her greatest suffering.
* * * * *
Only she wished--ah, God! how she wished--that he had left her to die
on the bridge in that summer night.
Intense pride had always been existent beneath her ardent and careless
temperament; the stubborn self-will of the peasant united to the finer,
more impersonal, pride derived from a great race. She had been always
taught to suffice for herself, to repel assistance as indignity, to
hold herself the equal of all living creatures; and now what was
she?--only what Jean Bérarde, had he been living, would have driven
out of his presence as a beggar, only what all the labourers in the
fields of the vale of Chevreuse would have the right to hoot after
as she passed them. Her imagination distorted and her sensitiveness
exaggerated all the debt she owed to Othmar; to herself she seemed
nothing better than any one of those wretched paupers who stretched
their hands out to him as he passed. The shame of it made all the
devotion she bore to him seem a horror, a disgrace, a thing cankered
and corrupt, which he must despise utterly if he knew aught of it. And
what should he know? What should he care? What could she be in his
sight except a friendless, lonely thing, whom he had saved from want,
as he might save any ragged, homeless, child who asked for a sou from
him in the streets.
She loved him with the passion of Juliet, of Francesca, of Mignon, and
she found herself so disgraced in her own sight that nothing she could
ever do, it seemed to her, would make any utterance from her, even of
gratitude, worth the breath spent in speaking it. To him and to his
wife she would be for ever, all their lives long, only a peasant who
had not had strength or courage to earn her own daily bread.
The cold scorn which had gazed at her from the eyes of his wife seemed
to pierce through and through the very core and centre of her life.
She had dreamed of being great in this woman's sight, of compelling
her admiration, her applause, even her envy!--and all the while she
had been nothing more than any dog which lived on the food thrown from
their table.
The train went on through the descending darkness of the night, and
the scent of the wind blowing over grass-lands and wheat-fields came
to her in her trance, and filled her with a strange dumb longing to
be put away for ever in silence under the cool and kindly earth, the
budding leaves, the sprouting corn. The aged hate the thought of death,
and fear and shun it; but for the young it has no terrors, and in their
pain it always beckons, with a smile, to them to rest in the arms of
the great Madre Natura. Death seemed to her the only stream which could
wash her soul white again from the indignity it had, all unconsciously,
accepted. A passion which was hopeless and cruel, and ashamed of
its own force, burned up her young heart like fire. Dead, only, it
seemed to him that she might keep some place in his compassion and his
remembrance without indignity.
She descended at the familiar road-side of Trappes, and passed through
the wicket, and took her way through the country paths she knew so
well. It was not yet a year since they had first brought her there, and
she had laughed with joy to see the country sights and hear the country
sounds once more. Now they only hurt her with an intolerable pain.
The night was dark, and a fine slight rain was falling, but she was
not conscious of it. She found her way by instinct, as a blind dog
finds his; it was long, and went over fields and pastures, but she kept
straight on unerringly, going home, why she knew not, for she felt that
she would never dwell there another day: now that she knew.
Now that she knew, she could not have touched a coin of that silver
and gold which lay in her drawer in her room at Les Hameaux; she would
not have eaten a crust of the bread which had been purchased with it.
She had no idea what she would do; she was alone once more, as utterly
alone as she had been when her solitary boat had been launched on the
world of waters, to reach a haven or to founder as it might. Her only
instinct was to go anywhere on the earth, or under the earth, where the
eyes of Othmar's wife could never find her in their merciless scorn.
Everything had gone from her, all her dreams of a future, all her love
for art and for the poets, all her bright and buoyant courage, all her
innocent and idealised ambitions: they were all gone for evermore;
she was alone without that companionship of a fearless hope which had
sustained her strength upon the lonely seas, and in the hell of Paris.
She had no hope now of any kind; and youth can no more live without
it, than flowers can live without the air of heaven. She was weakened
from fasting, and her brain was giddy; as she walked on over the rough
ground through the chill rain, she thought she was on the island; she
thought her grandfather was calling to her not to loiter, she thought
dead Catherine was stretching out her arms to her, and crying, 'Hasten!
hasten!' She smelt the odour of the orange flowers, she heard the sound
of the sea washing up amongst the pebbles and the sand--'if I could
only die there, if I could only die there,' she thought dully, as she
stumbled through the wet grass and the fields of colza.
Death would be so easy and so sweet, amongst the blue bright rolling
water, in the scented southerly air, under the broad white moon of her
own skies.
She came with a shock to a knowledge that she was entering the village
of Les Hameaux as a peasant driving furiously shrieked to her to move
out of his road, and in the cabins around the lights twinkled as the
people of the house sat at their suppers of soup and bread. Burning
tears rushed to her eyes and fell down her cheeks. She knew that she
would never see the shores of Bonaventure again in life.
She went through the village with weary steps, she was very tired, her
wet clothes clung to her, her face was white and drawn, her hands and
her throat were hot. Some people leaning against the doorposts of their
houses looked at her, and wondered to see her out so late, so wet, so
jaded, and all alone. She went through the hamlet without pausing and
without hearing any of the words called out to her.
Outside the village and on the road to the farm of the Croix Blanche,
there stood a lonely cottage, half hidden in elder trees and built
two centuries before with the stones and rubble of the ruins of Port
Royal. A woman whom she knew dwelt there with four young children: a
widow, very poor, making what living she could from poultry and from
fruit; a laborious, patient, honest, and good soul, always at work in
all weathers, and happy because the four fair-haired laughing children
tumbled after her in the grass or in the dust.
As she passed down the road in the grey film of rain, this woman ran
out of the house to her, weeping piteously, and catching at her clothes
to make her stop.
'My Pierrot is dying!' she cried to her. 'He has the ball in his
throat--he will be dead by dawn--for the love of God send some one to
me. I am all alone.'
Damaris pausing, looked at her stupidly. Indistinctly roused from her
own stupor, she was unconscious for the moment where she was or who
spoke to her. The light through the open doorway streamed out into the
road; she saw the wild eyes, the tearful cheeks, the dishevelled hair
of the wretched mother; she understood by instinct what woe had come
upon the house. Pierrot was the youngest and the prettiest of the four
little children who lived huddled together, and happy under these elder
trees like small unfledged birds in a nest.
'Do not come in, do not come near him,' cried the woman, 'oh, my dear,
it would be death; but send some one who is old and will not mind; the
old never take this sickness--and I have been all alone till I am mad.
My pretty baby--the prettiest, the youngest!'
Damaris looked at her with dull, blind eyes. A strange sense of
fatality came on her; here was death--not death in the clear blue water
which would never more smite her limbs with its joyous blows, and rock
her in the cradle of its waves; but death which would end all things,
which would put her away to rest under the green earth, which would
purify her from greed and from baseness in his sight. She turned and
entered through the doorway of the house.
'I am not afraid,' she said to the woman. 'I will stay with Pierrot.'
The woman strove to draw her back, but she would not be dissuaded from
her choice.
'If God will it, I shall die,' she thought; 'and if I die, then perhaps
she will believe, and he remember me.'