That there was once a real Prince Rabomirski is beyond question. That
he was Ottilie's father may be taken for granted. But that the
Princess Rabomirski had a right to bear the title many folks were
scandalously prepared to deny. It is true that when the news of the
Prince's death reached Monte Carlo, the Princess, who was there at the
time, showed various persons on whose indiscretion she could rely a
holograph letter of condolence from the Tsar, and later unfolded to the
amiable muddle-headed the intricacies of a lawsuit which she was
instituting for the recovery of the estates in Poland; but her
detractors roundly declared the holograph letter to be a forgery and
the lawsuit a fiction of her crafty brain. Princess however she
continued to style herself in Cosmopolis, and Princess she was styled
by all and sundry. And little Ottilie Rabomirski was called the
Princess Ottilie.
Among the people who joined heart and soul with the detractors was
young Vince Somerset. If there was one person whom he despised and
hated more than Count Bernheim (of the Holy Roman Empire) it was the
Princess Rabomirski. In his eyes she was everything that a princess, a
lady, a woman, and a mother should not be. She dressed ten years
younger than was seemly, she spoke English like a barmaid and French
like a cocotte, she gambled her way through Europe from year's end to
year's end, and after neglecting Ottilie for twenty years, she was
about to marry her to Bernheim. The last was the unforgivable offence.
The young man walked up and down the Casino Terrace of
Illerville-sur-Mer, and poured into a friend's ear his flaming
indignation. He was nine and twenty, and though he pursued the
unpoetical avocation of sub-editing the foreign telegrams on a London
daily newspaper, retained some of the vehemence of undergraduate days
when he had chosen the career (now abandoned) of poet, artist,
dramatist, and irreconcilable politician.
"Look at them!" he cried, indicating a couple seated at a distant table
beneath the awning of the café. "Did you ever see anything so horrible
in your life? The maiden and the Minotaur. When I heard of the
engagement to-day I wouldn't believe it until she herself told me. She
doesn't know the man's abomination. He's a by-word of reproach through
Europe. His name stinks like his infernal body. The live air reeks
with the scent he pours upon himself. There can be no turpitude under
the sun in which the wretch doesn't wallow. Do you know that he killed
his first wife? Oh, I don't mean that he cut her throat. That's far
too primitive for such a complex hound. There are other ways of
murdering a woman, my dear Ross. You kick her body and break her heart
and defile her soul. That's what he did. And he has done it to other
women."
"But, my dear man," remarked Ross, elderly and cynical, "he is
colossally rich."
"Rich! Do you know where he made his money? In the cesspool of
European finance. He's a Jew by race, a German by parentage, an
Italian by upbringing and a Greek by profession. He has bucket-shops
and low-down money-lenders' cribs and rotten companies all over the
Continent. Do you remember Sequasto and Co.? That was Bernheim.
England's too hot to hold him. Look at him now he has taken off his
hat. Do you know why he wears his greasy hair plastered over half his
damned forehead? It's to hide the mark of the Beast. He's Antichrist!
And when I think of that Jezebel from the Mile End Road putting Ottilie
into his arms, it makes me see red. By heavens, it's touch and go that
I don't slay the pair of them."
"Very likely they're not as bad as they're painted," said his friend.
"She couldn't be," Somerset retorted grimly.
Ross laughed, looked at his watch, and announced that it was time for
_apéritifs_. The young man assented moodily, and they crossed the
Terrace to the café tables beneath the awning. It was the dying
afternoon of a sultry August day, and most of Illerville had deserted
tennis courts, _tir aux pigeons_ and other distractions to listen
lazily to the band in the Casino shade. The place was crowded; not a
table vacant. When the waiter at last brought one from the interior of
the café, he dumped it down beside the table occupied by the
unspeakable Bernheim and the little Princess Ottilie. Somerset raised
his hat as he took his seat. Bernheim responded with elaborate
politeness, and Princess Ottilie greeted him with a faint smile. The
engaged pair spoke very little to each other. Bernheim lounged back in
his chair smoking a cigar and looked out to sea with a bored
expression. When the girl made a casual remark he nodded rudely
without turning his head. Somerset felt an irresistible desire to kick
him. His external appearance was of the type that irritated the young
Englishman. He was too handsome in a hard, swaggering
black-mustachioed way; he exaggerated to offence the English style of
easy dress; he wore a too devil-may-care Panama, a too obtrusive
coloured shirt and club tie; he wore no waistcoat, and the hem of his
new flannel trousers, turned up six inches, disclosed a stretch of
tan-coloured silk socks clocked with gold matching elegant tan shoes.
He went about with a broken-spirited poodle. He was inordinately
scented. Somerset glowered at him, and let his drink remain untasted.
Presently Bernheim summoned the waiter, paid him for the tea the girl
had been drinking and pushed back his chair.
"This hole is getting on my nerves," he said in French to his
companion. "I am going into the _cercle_ to play écarté. Will you go
to your mother whom I see over there, or will you stay here?"
"I'll stay here," said the little Princess Ottilie.
Bernheim nodded and swaggered off. Somerset bent forward.
"I must see you alone to-night--quite alone. I must have you all to
myself. How can you manage it?"
Ottilie looked at him anxiously. She was fair and innocent, of a
prettiness more English than foreign, and the scare in her blue eyes
made them all the more appealing to the young man.
"What is the good? You can't help me. Don't you see that it is all
arranged?"
"I'll undertake to disarrange it at a moment's notice," said Somerset.
"Hush!" she whispered, glancing round; "somebody will hear. Everything
is gossiped about in this place."
"Well, will you meet me?" the young man persisted.
"If I can," she sighed. "If they are both playing baccarat I may slip
out for a little."
"As at Spa."
She smiled and a slight flush came into her cheek.
"Yes, as at Spa. Wait for me on the _plage_ at the bottom of the
Casino steps. Now I must go to my mother. She would not like to see
me talking to you."
"The Princess hates me like poison. Do you know why?"
"No, and you are not going to tell me," she said demurely. "_Au
revoir_."
When she had passed out of earshot, Ross touched the young man's arm.
"I'm afraid, my dear Somerset, you are playing a particularly silly
fool's game."
"Have you never played it?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"It would be a precious sight better for you if you had," growled
Somerset.
"I'll take another quinquina," said Ross.
"Did you see the way in which the brute treated her?" Somerset
exclaimed angrily. "If it's like that before marriage, what will it be
after?"
"Plenty of money, separate establishments, perfect independence and
happiness for each."
Somerset rose from the table.
"There are times, my good Ross," said he, "when I absolutely hate you."
Somerset had first met the Princess Rabomirski and her daughter three
years before, at Spa. They were staying at the same hotel, a very
modest one which, to Somerset's mind, ill-accorded with the Princess's
pretensions. Bernheim was also in attendance, but he disposed his
valet, his motor-car, and himself in the luxurious Hôtel d'Orange, as
befitted a man of his quality; also he was in attendance not on
Ottilie, but on the Princess, who at that time was three years younger
and a trifle less painted. Now, at Illerville-sur-Mer the trio were
stopping at the Hotel Splendide, a sumptuous hostelry where season
prices were far above Somerset's moderate means. He contented himself
with the little hotel next door, and hated the Hotel Splendide and all
that it contained, save Ottilie, with all his heart. But at Spa, the
Princess was evidently in low water from which she did not seem to be
rescued by her varying luck at the tables. Ottilie was then a child of
seventeen, and Somerset was less attracted by her delicate beauty than
by her extraordinary loneliness. Day after day, night after night he
would come upon her sitting solitary on one of the settees in the
gaming-rooms, like a forgotten fan or flower, or wandering wistfully
from table to table, idly watching the revolving wheels. Sometimes she
would pause behind her mother's or Bernheim's chair to watch their
game; but the Princess called her a little _porte-malheur_ and would
drive her away. In the mornings, or on other rare occasions, when the
elder inseparables were not playing roulette, Ottilie hovered round
them at a distance, as disregarded as a shadow that followed them in
space of less dimensions, as it were, wherever they went. In the
Casino rooms, if men spoke to her, she replied in shy monosyllables and
shrank away. Somerset who had made regular acquaintance with the
Princess at the hotel and taken a chivalrous pity on the girl's
loneliness, she admitted first to a timid friendship, and then to a
childlike intimacy. Her face would brighten and her heart beat a
little faster when she saw his young, well-knit figure appear in the
distance; for she knew he would come straight to her and take her from
the hot room, heavy with perfumes and tobacco, on to the cool balcony,
and talk of all manner of pleasant things. And Somerset found in this
neglected, little sham Princess what his youth was pleased to designate
a flower-like soul. Those were idyllic hours. The Princess, glad to
get the embarrassing child out of the way, took no notice of the
intimacy. Somerset fell in love.
It lasted out a three-years' separation, during which he did not hear
from her. He had written to several addresses, but a cold Post Office
returned his letters undelivered, and his only consolation was to piece
together from various sources the unedifying histories of the Princess
Rabomirski and the Count Bernheim of the Holy Roman Empire. He came to
Illerville-sur-Mer for an August holiday. The first thing he did when
shown into his hotel bedroom was to gaze out of window at the beach and
the sea. The first person his eyes rested upon was the little Princess
Ottilie issuing, alone as usual, from the doors of the next hotel.
He had been at Illerville a fortnight--a fortnight of painful joy.
Things had changed. Their interviews had been mostly stolen, for the
Princess Rabomirski had rudely declined to renew the acquaintance and
had forbidden Ottilie to speak to him. The girl, though apparently as
much neglected as ever, was guarded against him with peculiar
ingenuity. Somerset, aware that Ottilie, now grown from a child into
an exquisitely beautiful and marriageable young woman, was destined by
a hardened sinner like the Princess for a wealthier husband than a poor
newspaper man with no particular prospects, could not, however, quite
understand the reasons for the virulent hatred of which he was the
object. He overheard the Princess one day cursing her daughter in
execrable German for having acknowledged his bow a short time before.
Their only undisturbed time together was in the sea during the bathing
hour. The Princess, hating the pebbly beach which cut to pieces her
high-heeled shoes, never watched the bathers; and Bernheim did not
bathe (Somerset, prejudiced, declared that he did not even wash) but
remained in his bedroom till the hour of _déjeuner_. Ottilie, attended
only by her maid, came down to the water's edge, threw off her
_peignoir_, and, plunging into the water, found Somerset waiting.
Now Somerset was a strong swimmer. Moderately proficient at all games
as a boy and an undergraduate, he had found that swimming was the only
sport in which he excelled, and he had cultivated and maintained the
art. Oddly enough, the little Princess Ottilie, in spite of her
apparent fragility, was also an excellent and fearless swimmer. She
had another queer delight for a creature so daintily feminine, the
_salle d'armes_, so that the muscles of her young limbs were firm and
well ordered. But the sea was her passion. If an additional bond
between Somerset and herself were needed it would have been this. Yet,
though it is a pleasant thing to swim far away into the loneliness of
the sea with the object of one's affections, the conditions do not
encourage sustained conversation on subjects of vital interest. On the
day when Somerset learned that his little princess was engaged to
Bernheim he burned to tell her more than could be spluttered out in ten
fathoms of water. So he urged her to an assignation.
At half-past ten she joined him at the bottom of the Casino steps. The
shingly beach was deserted, but on the terrace above the throng was
great, owing to the breathless heat of the night.
"Thank Heaven you have come," said he. "Do you know how I have longed
for you?"
She glanced up wistfully into his face. In her simple cream dress and
burnt straw hat adorned with white roses around the brim, she looked
very fair and childlike.
"You mustn't say such things," she whispered. "They are wrong now. I
am engaged to be married."
"I won't hear of it," said Somerset. "It is a horrible nightmare--your
engagement. Don't you know that I love you? I loved you the first
minute I set my eyes on you at Spa."
Princess Ottilie sighed, and they walked along the boards behind the
bathing-machines, and down the rattling beach to the shelter of a
fishing boat, where they sat down, screened from the world with the
murmuring sea in front of them. Somerset talked of his love and the
hatefulness of Bernheim. The little Princess sighed again.
"I have worse news still," she said. "It will pain you. We are going
to Paris to-morrow, and then on to Aix-les-Bains. They have just
decided. They say the baccarat here is silly, and they might as well
play for bon-bons. So we must say good-bye to-night--and it will be
good-bye for always."
"I will come to Aix-les-Bains," said Somerset.
"No--no," she answered quickly. "It would only bring trouble on me and
do no good. We must part to-night. Don't you think it hurts me?"
"But you must love me," said Somerset.
"I do," she said simply, "and that is why it hurts. Now I must be
going back."
"Ottilie," said Somerset, grasping her hands: "Need you ever go back?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Come away from this hateful place with me--now, this minute. You need
never see Bernheim again as long as you live. Listen. My friend Ross
has a motor-car. I can manage it--so there will be only us two. Run
into your hotel for a thick cloak, and meet me as quickly as you can
behind the tennis-courts. If we go full speed we'll catch the
night-boat at Dieppe. It will be a wild race for our life happiness.
Come."
In his excitement he rose and pulled her to her feet. They faced each
other for a few glorious moments, panting for breath, and then Princess
Ottilie broke down and cried bitterly.
"I can't dear, I can't. I must marry Bernheim. It is to save my
mother from something dreadful. I don't know what it is--but she went
on her knees to me, and I promised."
"If there's a woman in Europe capable of getting out of her
difficulties unaided it is the Princess Rabomirski," said Somerset. "I
am not going to let you be sold. You are mine, Ottilie, and by Heaven,
I'm going to have you. Come."
He urged, he pleaded, he put his strong arms around her as if he would
carry her away bodily. He did everything that a frantic young man
could do. But the more the little Princess wept, the more inflexible
she became. Somerset had not realized before this steel in her nature.
Raging and vehemently urging he accompanied her back to the Casino
steps.
"Would you like to say good-bye to me to-morrow morning, instead of
to-night?" she asked, holding out her hand.
"I am never going to say good-bye," cried Somerset.
"I shall slip out to-morrow morning for a last swim--at six o'clock,"
she said, unheeding his exclamation. "Our train goes at ten." Then
she came very close to him.
"Vince dear, if you love me, don't make me more unhappy than I am."
It was an appeal to his chivalry. He kissed her hand, and said:
"At six o'clock."
But Somerset had no intention of bidding her a final farewell in the
morning. If he followed her the world over he would snatch her out of
the arms of the accursed Bernheim and marry her by main force. As for
the foreign telegrams of _The Daily Post_, he cared not how they would
be sub-edited. He went to bed with lofty disregard of Fleet Street and
bread and butter. As for the shame from which Ottilie's marriage would
save her sainted mother, he did not believe a word of it. She was
selling Ottilie to Bernheim for cash down. He stayed awake most of the
night plotting schemes for the rescue of his Princess. It would be an
excellent plan to insult Bernheim and slay him outright in a duel. Its
disadvantages lay in his own imperfections as a duellist, and for the
first time he cursed the benign laws of his country. At length he fell
asleep; woke up to find it daylight, and leaped to his feet in a
horrible scare. But a sight of his watch reassured him. It was only
five o'clock. At half-past he put on a set of bathing things and sat
down by the window to watch the hall door of the Hotel Splendide. At
six, out came the familiar figure of the little Princess, draped in her
white _peignoir_. She glanced up at Somerset's window. He waved his
hand, and in a minute or two they were standing side by side at the
water's edge. It was far away from the regular bathing-place marked by
the bathing cabins, and further still from the fishing end of the beach
where alone at that early hour were signs of life visible. The town
behind them slept in warmth and light. The sea stretched out blue
before them unrippled in the still air. A little bank of purple cloud
on the horizon presaged a burning day.
The little Princess dropped her _peignoir_ and kicked off her
straw-soled shoes, and gave her hand to her companion. He glanced at
the little white feet which he was tempted to fall down and kiss, and
then at the wistful face below the blue-silk foulard knotted in front
over the bathing-cap. His heart leaped at her bewildering sweetness.
She was the morning incarnate.
She read his eyes and flushed pink.
"Let us go in," she said.
They waded in together, hand-in-hand, until they were waist deep. Then
they struck out, making for the open sea. The sting of the night had
already passed from the water. To their young blood it felt warm.
They swam near together, Ottilie using a steady breast stroke and
Somerset a side stroke, so that he could look at her flushed and
glistening face. From the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky to
the light blue of the silk foulard, the blue of her eyes grew magically
deep.
"There seems to be nothing but you and me in God's universe, Ottilie,"
said he. She smiled at him. He drew quite close to her.
"If we could only go on straight until we found an enchanted island
which we could have as our kingdom."
"The sea must be our kingdom," said Ottilie.
"Or its depths. Shall we dive down and look for the 'ceiling of amber,
the pavement of pearl,' and the 'red gold throne in the heart of the
sea' for the two of us?"
"We should be happier than in the world," replied the little Princess.
They swam on slowly, dreamily, in silence. The mild waves lapped
against their ears and their mouths. The morning sun lay at their
backs, and its radiance fell athwart the bay. Through the stillness
came the faint echo of a fisherman on the far beach hammering at his
boat. Beyond that and the gentle swirl of the water there was no
sound. After a while they altered their course so as to reach a small
boat that lay at anchor for the convenience of the stronger swimmers.
They clambered up and sat on the gunwale, their feet dangling in the
sea.
"Is my princess tired?" he asked.
She laughed in merry scorn.
"Tired? Why, I could swim twenty times as far. Do you think I have no
muscle? Feel. Don't you know I fence all the winter?"
She braced her bare arm. He felt the muscle; then, relaxing it, by
drawing down her wrist, he kissed it very gently.
"Soft and strong--like yourself," said he. Ottilie said nothing, but
looked at her white feet through the transparent water. She thought
that in letting him kiss her arm and feeling as though he had kissed
right through to her heart, she was exhibiting a pitiful lack of
strength. Somerset looked at her askance, uncertain. For nothing in
the world would he have offended.
"Did you mind?" he whispered.
She shook her head and continued to look at her feet. Somerset felt a
great happiness pulse through him.
"If I gave you up," said he, "I should be the poorest spirited dog that
ever whined."
"Hush!" she said, putting her hand in his. "Let us think only of the
present happiness."
They sat silent for a moment, contemplating the little red-roofed town
and Illerville-sur-Mer, which nestled in greenery beyond the white
sweep of the beach, and the rococo hotels and the casino, whose cupolas
flashed gaudily in the morning sun. From the north-eastern end of the
bay stretched a long line of sheer white cliff as far as the eye could
reach. Towards the west it was bounded by a narrow headland running
far out to sea.
"It looks like a frivolous little Garden of Eden," said Somerset, "but
I wish we could never set foot in it again."
"Let us dive in and forget it," said Ottilie.
She slipped into the water. Somerset stood on the gunwale and dived.
When he came up and had shaken the salt water from his nostrils, he
joined her in two or three strokes.
"Let us go round the point to the little beach the other side."
She hesitated. It would take a long time to swim there, rest, and swim
back. Her absence might be noticed. But she felt reckless. Let her
drink this hour of happiness to the full. What mattered anything that
could follow? She smiled assent, and they struck out steadily for the
point. It was good to have the salt smell and the taste of the brine
and the pleasant smart of the eyes; and to feel their mastery of the
sea. As they threw out their flashing white arms and topped each tiny
wave they smiled in exultation. To them it seemed impossible that
anyone could drown. For the buoyant hour they were creatures of the
element. Now and then a gull circled before them, looked at them
unconcerned, as if they were in some way his kindred, and swept off
into the distance. A tired white butterfly settled for a moment on
Ottilie's head; then light-heartedly fluttered away sea-wards to its
doom. They swam on and on, and they neared the point. They slackened
for a moment, and he brought his face close to hers.
"If I said 'Let us swim on for ever and ever,' would you do it?"
"Yes," she said, looking deep into his eyes.
After a while they floated restfully. The last question and answer
seemed to have brought them a great peace. They were conscious of
little save the mystery of the cloudless ether above their faces and
the infinite sea that murmured in their ears strange harmonies of Love
and Death--harmonies woven from the human yearnings of every shore and
the hushed secrets of eternal time. So close were they bodily together
that now and then hand touched hand and limb brushed limb. A happy
stillness of the soul spread its wings over them and they felt it to be
a consecration of their love. Presently his arm sought her, encircled
her, brought her head on his shoulder.
"Rest a little," he whispered.
She closed her eyes, surrendered her innocent self to the flooding
rapture of the moment. The horrors that awaited her passed from her
brain. He had come to the lonely child like a god out of heaven. He
had come to the frightened girl like a new terror. He was by her side
now, the man whom of all men God had made to accomplish her womanhood
and to take all of soul and body, sense and brain that she had to give.
Their salt lips met in a first kiss. Words would have broken the spell
of the enchantment cast over them by the infinite spaces of sea and
sky. They drifted on and on, the subtle, subconscious movement of foot
and hand keeping them afloat. The little Princess moved closer to him
so as to feel more secure around her the circling pressure of his arm.
He laughed a man's short, exultant laugh, and gripped her more tightly.
Never had he felt his strength more sure. His right arm and his legs
beat rhythmically and he felt the pulsation of the measured strokes of
his companion's feet and the water swirled past his head, so that he
knew they were making way most swiftly. Of exertion there was no sense
whatever. He met her eyes fixed through half-shut lids upon his face.
Her soft young body melted into his. He lost count of time and space.
Now and then a little wave broke over their faces, and they laughed and
cleared the brine from their mouths and drew more close together.
"If it wasn't for that," she whispered once, "I could go to sleep."
Soon they felt the gentle rocking of the sea increase and waves broke
more often over them. Somerset was the first to note the change.
Loosening his hold of Ottilie, he trod water and looked around. To his
amazement they were still abreast of the point, but far out to sea. He
gazed at it uncomprehendingly for an instant, and then a sudden
recollection smote him like a message of death. They had caught the
edge of the current against which swimmers were warned, and the current
held them in its grip and was sweeping them on while they floated
foolishly. A swift glance at Ottilie showed him that she too realized
the peril. With the outcoming tide it was almost impossible to reach
the shore.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.