At the very hour when Gregor entered Diana's moonlit tent, the
countess sat at dinner with Andreas.
The small marble table at which they were dining was in a remote
corner of the garden, and the old butler who served them shook his
head patiently over this new whim of his mistress. Since the nook
the countess had chosen was so small as not to admit of a sideboard
of any kind, the man had to make the best of an ivy-clad stump
whereon to place his dishes. In the end, he had contrived everything
in so tasteful and charming a way, that when Olivia led her guest
into the enclosure through an archway cut in the hedge, she smiled
her gratitude and appreciation to her faithful servitor. In her own
peculiar and anarchistic way she was always more courteous and
considerate to her servants than it was customary for women in her
station to be. Consequently she was, as a mistress, at once more
respected and more often cheated than most. As soon as the dessert
had been placed on the table, she made a sign to the butler, who
promptly disappeared within doors. As soon as he had gone, she said:
"You are worried about something."
"Yes."
"What has happened?"
"Othello, I've lost him."
"What, the Great Dane you told me about and have always refused to
bring to see me?"
"Today I did bring him. It's the first time for pretty well a
fortnight that I've taken him for a walk through the town. I've
usually let him out for a run in the hotel park. Well, we got here
at eight. In the vestibule, Othello began snuffing around. I told
him to lie down and wait while I went into the office to see if there
were any letters for me--you know I'm having all my correspondence
sent here because I can't stand the idea of every letter being mauled
about and examined by my worthy Austrian compatriots. I'd hardly
been absent three minutes, yet when I came back Othello was nowhere
to be seen. In all the four years since we have lived together the
dog has never given me the slip before."
"Have you any idea as to where he may have gone?"
Andreas did not answer, and she had a shrewd suspicion that he
guessed the dog's whereabouts. She had all along been wondering why
Andreas was so set against bringing Othello to see her, and guessed
that the dog was associated in his mind with some poignant memory or
other. Could it be that of another woman? She had been too immersed
in her own dreams and yearnings to pursue the matter further. And
now, tonight, when at last they were alone with the chance of
enjoying one another's company undisturbed, was their evening to be
spoilt because of the vagaries of a dog? Resolutely she set herself
to win the man.
During the fifteen years of her married life Olivia had had very few
evenings at her own free disposal. Gregor had been raised to
ambassadorial rank ten years ago, and about the same time he had
resumed his life of adventurous love affairs. This might have given
her the freedom she needed, but she very seldom made use of her
opportunities, far seldomer than her nature might have led one to
suppose. She instinctively shunned the homage of men of aristocratic
birth, people of rank and station. Her womanhood craved for a love
whose impetuous and turbulent waters should flow from inexhaustible
springs of passion. The moment Andreas stood before her, she knew
that his was the poet nature she had been awaiting all these years.
He for his part had been enmeshed in the coils of desire ever since
he had beheld the superb form of this Venetian beauty reclining on
the divan, had seen the passionate curve of the lips and throat, the
golden glory of her hair. He knew in a flash that he was for her and
she for him.
In silence, now, the two sat dreaming, wandering along the highways
and byways of their memories. As Olivia watched the poet's face
emerging into the light of the overhanging lampions and retreating
into the shadows again, she knew that the memories crowding into the
mind of this young man were richer than her own, but that in the
realm of dreams hers was the more abundant recollection.
Andreas gazed at her across the table, and as he gazed, the agitation
which had filled him since Othello's disappearance was gradually
tranquillized. He forgot his trouble. Slowly he stretched his arm
towards her, the back of his hand resting on the marble slab. Slowly
she raised her full round arm and laid her shapely hand in his. They
had never before touched one another. They had studiously avoided
any contact which might raise desires they had no possibility of
assuaging, for both were keenly aware of their own passionate
natures. Now their hearts were filled with fear and hope. For the
first time Andreas felt her hand in his. It lay dry and cool upon
his palm. Slowly he bent forward, and put his lips to her arm. He
was dimly aware that this first kiss was a foretaste of all that was
to follow, and while he, with closed eyes, sank his lips into her
white flesh, she leaned back and gazed earnestly down upon the dark
head of her lover. When, after a long interval, he raised his eyes
to hers, she got up and led him through the green archway and down
towards the river. A wild and overgrown path led them to a crag
whence they could see immemorial cedars stretching columnar arms
skyward out of the immensity of the waters. The undergrowth had
never been cleared in this spot, huge clusters of ferns pushed up
through the tangle, the broom had thickened into veritable bushes,
and cherry laurels, tall and impenetrable, had gathered around the
trunks of the cedar trees. From below came the everlasting lap of
the waters upon the stones, and, amid all these sounds of a primeval
world, could be heard the pulsating paddle of a tiny steamer, far
away, its twinkling lights reflected in the water.
To the poet, as he followed the pale gleam of Olivia's ample
garments, it seemed that he was being led to the gates of death and
that his guide was holding the fateful scales that should seal his
doom. On reaching the top of the rocky eminence Olivia moved slowly
towards the huge trunk of one of the cedars and leaned her back
against it, a smile on her lips such as he had never seen there
before, an expression he could never have expected to behold on this
face, a look half shy and half alluring. Throwing wide his arms he
folded her to him, pressing her against the tree, and pressing the
back of his hands against the rough bark, while with the palms he
felt the soft contact of her body and her hair. When at last the
long kiss came to an end, the name he had spoken at their first
meeting rose to his mind, but the sweet and melancholy gains of this
present hour left no other wish but to utter the word he had
whispered so many times during the last fortnight:
"Olivia!"
All that was woman in her responded to the man in him. She left the
support of the tree and flung herself against him, pulled him to her
in a closer and closer embrace, and pressed her lips to his as she
murmured:
"Andreas!"
Two hours later he was once again in her great blue room. She had
given him the key of a private door into the park and told him how he
might find his way in. Then she had led him back to the house, had
bade him good-night from the top of the wide steps that led down from
the hall, and had sent her household to bed. He had wandered the
streets, savouring his two hours' waiting as only a poet knew how.
Certainty, postponement, security, a strategic device, hours of joy
without end, one final delay, a stream of mixed sensations, coursed
through his blood and flooded his brain, driving him and elating him.
The practical necessity of keeping his eye on his watch so as not to
miss the appointed hour merely served to whet his appetite and to
render his expectations more acute. At last he turned the key in the
rusty lock and groped his way to her room. At the door he came to a
halt. He wished to relish the idea that here, two weeks ago, he had
been ushered in, a stranger, where now he was privileged to enter as
a lover.
The room was unlighted, but in the soft radiance of the moon he could
see Olivia's outline on the shore that lay beyond the blue sea of
carpet. Tonight, in one second, he flew to his haven of love.
Without saying a word she drew him to her, flooding him in the waves
of her long golden tresses. He pushed aside the white cloak that
covered her, his hungry lips devouring the breasts she lifted towards
him.
When, many hours later, Andreas rose from the couch, he shivered with
cold, for he was naked, and Olivia, lying motionless, bade him put on
a robe she had brought from Damascus, and which she loved. The moon
had not set, and in its pale light Andreas in his long
gold-embroidered gown, his raven hair disordered by her loving
fingers, looked like an Arab, dark, slender, and burned by the hot
summer sun. Her head pillowed on her arm, she lay there inert,
gazing up at him. Then he heard the lovely alto voice saying:
"Hafiz!"
"Venetian beauty," was his quick response.
And she: "If I am ever to be loved by a Moor, I would have you for my
Othello."
His face twitched, and she remembered too late what that name must
mean to him. She quickly rose and came towards him:
"Andreas!"
She drew him to the window the better to read his countenance. Like
black lace, the delicate tracery of the trees swayed against the
night sky. The mighty stream flowed on, dreaming its dreams, softly
murmuring to itself, no longer enlivened with the twinkling lights,
while in the blue-black distance the line of the hills on the farther
side of the river rose and fell along the horizon.
"Speak to me, Andreas."
She clasped him, and he, while fondling her hair, looked over and
beyond her to those distant hills where Diana tonight was sojourning.
"What is she doing? Is she gazing forth from her tent over the wide
steppe, oblivious of the man who is kneeling at her feet?"
Olivia's eyes, too, had travelled to those same hills. Like the
sound of distant drums she heard her memories marching by, heard the
mad wooing of the count in the days when he had been her lover, heard
his cynically wanton words as he had, increasingly, become the
husband and nothing more. She saw Diana's compact breasts as the
girl had stood before her dressed in a simple linen frock, saw Diana
standing at her side in this same window, murmuring: "You are
beautiful."
Andreas, too, felt peculiarly lucid. His brain seemed lighted up as
a great hall will be lighted for a festivity. His memories radiated
before him, never had he seen so clearly before. There was the
statue in its niche, the statue of a naked amazon which had so often
lured him to the Vatican last winter. The vision took on life; Diana
herself stepped down from the niche and stood before him, but as he
put out his hand to touch her, the figure of the count came between,
and carried her off, laughing....