By the time they had returned next day from a ramble along the
cliffs, Wilhelm had completely won over the heart of the boy, while
Maria had conquered his own. A youth with a taste for adventure,
inclined to search out the bizarre and the unfamiliar in nature and
in man--this native of the South German highlands, born far from the
sea, had during his first sea voyage gained acquaintance with some of
the marvels of sea life, and (immune to the conventional pleasures of
a voyage) had adapted himself to what conformed with his own
predisposition. Having read in a story of sea life something about
great lizards, he felt sure that they would have their habitat on the
very coast where fate had now beguiled him. And in truth they were
there where he expected to find them. It was as if a benevolent
deity were unwilling to disappoint the young innocent in any of his
hopes.
Indeed, Wilhelm was never disappointed. His youth had been passed
alternately in the company of artists, of persons temporarily
visiting the town, and of the peasants in his village at home, the
peasant folk from whom he had sprung. He had never made any claims
on life, for his wishes were visionary ones, incapable of realization
in the world of every day. Half musician, and half poet, he wandered
penniless through life and through many a countryside. One day he
would rise from board with tourists in Florence, for his charming
personality and a talent for acting as guide often made him one of a
cheerful company for weeks at a stretch; the next day he would find
hospitable welcome in a peasant's shanty at Carreggi, because he had
sat down to teach the cottar's children to play the lute. He was
usually deferential where women were concerned, so long as they were
not ugly or old; and he was content if he could merely stroke a
gloved hand while driving along in a carriage. But with English
girls, who wanted all they could get from love without running any of
the risks, he was not backward; indeed he was more cruel at times
than he realized, for he would indite little poems full of innuendoes
and ambiguities, which of an evening he read aloud to the parents and
admirers of the young ladies. Back again in his native hills, he had
no scruples in passing the night with a village maid, for he had a
nice appreciation of the different spheres into which his birth and
upbringing brought him.
Maria made a strong appeal to his nature, partly because she was
still almost a child, but also because of her maidenliness. He toyed
with these two aspects with delicate hands, and found Clemens a
useful buffer in his manipulations. The lad himself was wont to feel
that he and the girl were much of an age, but since Wilhelm, who was
their senior, made proposals which in the ordinary course Clemens
would have disdained as childish and lacking in dignity, the boy was
willing to lend himself to his guest's suggestions lest, by refusing,
he should appear babyish. Maria, on the other hand, so recently
emerging from her childhood, was thrown back into that period by
these light-hearted games; she lent herself agreeably to the
stranger's will, telling herself it was all a huge joke, and
Wilhelm's homage no more than that of a nice boy. So it was that the
three of them crept in and out of damp caves, and the imp in Wilhelm
so arranged matters that shoes and stockings had to be discarded, and
that he should give a hand to the girl as they scrambled barefoot
over the stones. Maria blushed, and that was balm to Wilhelm's
heart. Clemens grasped the significance of no more than a part of
this by-play; but he understood enough to make him react in boyish
fashion. He would try to frighten her by suddenly disappearing--but
he never stayed so long away as to give Wilhelm time to snatch a
kiss. The knight in Clemens and his position as heir to these
estates and as cousin made him fully conscious of his
responsibilities.
That same forenoon Diana sat with Olivia in the spacious
sitting-room, a square, vaulted chamber in one of the towers, giving
from three sides on to the sea, but with its windows usually
shuttered in conformity with the countess's preference for a dim
light. Wanton sunbeams, however, defied her precautions, and took
advantage of every crack and hole in the blue painted wood to send
their radiant shafts across the darkness--a symbol of her own soul,
as Olivia liked to think.
Leaning on her elbow as was her habit, her limbs stretched out on the
wide ottoman, Olivia looked over to where Diana sat. Her ardent eyes
burned with increasing fire, the longer she was condemned to gaze
upon the arena of the passions. These two women had little use for
the small change of conversation.
"You are quite brown, Diana; and yet you spent the whole winter in
town, cooped up in rooms."
"It's the sea. I've been three weeks cruising."
"In twenty years, living upon this coast, I remained white."
"And is it not lovelier to be white and to have golden hair?"
"Atalanta!"
Olivia sank back upon the divan, gazing up towards the vaulted
ceiling, for she wanted to call forth again the vision of the Diana
she had seen that evening in Berlin, a vision which had seemed to
express the fullest possibilities of the young woman's being. But to
conjure up this picture she must not have Diana's actual form before
her eyes.
"To be able to personify a goddess," she murmured, "to discover thus
early one's own essential shape, and to be able to fill out its
structure unto completion.... O blessed freedom...."
Diana was thinking: "How fiercely she strives and seeks; yet she is
excluded from the realm of enjoyment so soon as her dreams become
reality!"
"Have not you, too, since then gained something of freedom?" Diana
asked.
With unwonted alacrity, Olivia replied passionately:
"Not as freedom! They all have a home; Maria, her hopes; my mother,
this castle; Scherer, his newspapers; the Russian, his ideas; and
Gregor--well, he wavered between deeds and adventures, and was at
home in both. But you have chosen the world! Yes, you, Diana, among
all the persons I have met, you alone are worthy to regard the great
dome of the firmament (at which I have so often gazed as at something
vacuous and inimical) as the roof of your ancestral home. That is
why you are so fond of the stars!"
She spoke angrily and moodily, her eyes turned earthward, her chin
resting in her palms as she leaned upon her elbows.
"Are not dreams, too, a home?" asked Diana softly.
"I want to get away; it is high time I did so; indeed, there is not a
moment to be lost. How well I understand Herr Franklin's erratic
behaviour. He refuses any longer to let his fancy roam; he is
resolved to be up and doing, accomplishing something visible and
tangible--though deep in his inner self he knows well enough that it
is vanity and deception, and less than a dream.... Well, I too want
a home; love shall be my roof-tree, and then, quaffing one final
draught, I shall sink back into my dreams as if I had never forsaken
them!"
She rose while she was yet speaking, and, quite contrary to her wont,
paced up and down the room. Suddenly she stood still, surprised at
the sound she heard. Diana was laughing! It was a quiet, short,
two-syllabled ripple of laughter, and was repeated a second, then a
third time. Olivia wanted to scold. Then, taking heart, for the
little metallic music gave her back her courage, she stepped up to
Diana and said:
"You are laughing, O most wise Diana, and that does not become a
youthful huntress!"
She stood before Diana, leaning forward, her two hands on the arm of
the chair, her face very near that of the seated woman. Diana looked
up, unperturbed; nor did she try to still the laughter that was still
lighting her countenance.
"You have at last spoken as I have so long been hoping to hear you
speak, my beautiful Olivia." And as the words fell from her lips she
was thinking: I should like to kiss her now; but then she'd be
furious or she'd withdraw into her shell.
Slowly Olivia raised her head with its heavy crown of golden hair,
and, as she stood before her guest, she said irrelevantly:
"I believe I want to have more children."
"I've been thinking the same thing ever since I met you again."
Olivia had opened her heart to Diana with unwonted candour. She,
like Diana, was not a woman who could make friends with other members
of her sex. And yet, today, she had confided in another woman!
Diana's tranquil statement made Olivia feel that here was a person of
superior strength, and, forgetting her own preoccupations for a
moment, she asked:
"And what about yourself--do you still hesitate?"
Behind the question, Diana sensed a growing distrust, and she said to
herself: "It's just as well I did not kiss her just now!" Still, she
did not shirk an answer:
"I have never gone against nature, and I have always felt that those
above, who guard me and protect me, will not deal harshly with me."
"Do you believe in the saints?" asked Olivia, somewhat awed, and
coming a step nearer.
"In the gods," corrected Diana softly.
"Is this Russian a believer?" asked Olivia, once more without
transition.
"I fancy he loves no one but himself."
"No one but himself," echoed Olivia, and Diana felt instinctively
that the countess was comparing him with her own self, and was
applying the words to herself.
"And the prince?"
Olivia seemed to be questioning the oracle.
"The prince appears to be a believer, after his fashion. Perhaps he
is the first knight who is not at the same time a robber!"
Olivia's mind, awakened to fresh issues, because for the first time
in her life she had spoken her thoughts out frankly, did not take in
Diana's last words. Again she spoke irrelevantly.
"All these men are more or less in love with you! And yet you can
cruise about alone with them on a ship. If I did not know what you
had done with Gregor, I'd fancy you were as cold as the sea."
Diana got up.
"Let us clearly understand one another," said she resolutely. "Not
one of these men is of so much account to me that, if the 'Excelsior'
sailed tomorrow, he might not stay behind in this castle for all I
cared."
The unusual bluntness with which she spoke was deliberate for she
wished to adapt herself to Olivia's unsocial prejudices. But Olivia,
whose heart had beat tumultuously since first she had thrust aside
the veils of her inner sanctuary that morning, again did the
unexpected, for she seized Diana's hand, saying:
"There is but one person to my knowledge who should not sail away in
the 'Excelsior' tomorrow. Give me your promise! Clemens, too, is
uneasy at the thought that you and Wilhelm may go away."
"Clemens will forget me in this affection for Wilhelm; and you will
do the same in your love for Clemens. He is handsome and chivalrous,
and in a short while will become your admirer!"
Olivia turned her face away.
"He'll learn about love from a serving-wench in a year or two!"
There was a knock at the door, and, when Olivia petulantly cried
"Come in," Eduard appeared upon the threshold.
"That sounded more like 'Go away,' as in the _Magic Flute_! This dim
religious light is also quite in keeping."
"Come in, Prince, come in," cried Olivia, still impatiently.
"Yes, do come in," added Diana. "The countess was just deploring the
fact that Clemens before long will learn about love from a
serving-wench."
"What is a dutiful son to do, seeing that in the castles of the
mighty the only females he meets with are young women of noble birth
(who are taboo so far as illicit experience is concerned), and
serving-wenches?"
"It's all a matter of nerves, Prince. So far as my own feelings are
concerned I should prefer, in this case, that it should be a girl of
noble birth!"
"But suppose he should promise you," said Eduard teasingly, "to lead
her to the altar, the more or less, let it be less, pure
serving-wench: you would have to embrace this peasant as a daughter,
Countess."
"I am not your Russian friend, Prince Eduard," retorted Olivia coldly.
"Of course a confirmed bachelor has no right to discuss such matters
as the upbringing of children," Eduard continued. "Just as if the
mere fact of becoming a father instantly conferred the necessary
knowledge! Should I, nevertheless, venture to express an opinion
before you ladies I should say: I, as the mother of a handsome boy,
would, as soon as he was seventeen, or, for greater security, when he
was sixteen years of age, request the handsomest among my women
friends to initiate the youngster into the mysteries of Venus."
Olivia turned towards him with animation:
"How often have I not had the same idea. But our social institutions
sap a woman's strength of mind, so that she cannot venture on such a
course--though she may often have dreamed she had the courage as she
sat alone in the gloaming."
She glanced over to where Diana stood in her short linen dress, which
shimmered white in the shadowy room. The prince, too, under shelter
of the darkness, shot a meaning look at Diana, implying that she
alone had been in his thoughts as he spoke, and that he, Prince
Eduard, was the lad of sixteen under the alias of Clemens, Count of
Münsterberg. Diana well understood the meaning which underlay his
words, and, facing the eyes of those who, with silent eloquence,
obviously looked upon her as a predestined victim chosen as a
sacrifice upon the altar of beauty, she felt that they were trying to
rivet chains upon her, to force a line of action upon her, instead of
leaving her to follow the magnetic promptings of her own nature.
As if in answer to these challenging eyes, she suddenly turned about
towards the window near which she was standing, and, with an
impetuous gesture, flung the shutters wide. A cataract of light came
flooding into the room. Olivia turned away her eyes; Eduard stood
there, blinking his, as if frightened.
"High tide," cried Diana. "The wind is blowing fresh from the
nor'east, and there's a heavy swell. It's not so very hot yet.
Come, Olivia! You promised you'd come along for a bathe!"
An hour later, Wilhelm's little group joined company with Scherer and
Kyril, who had been spending the early hours of the forenoon aboard.
They all made for the sheltered cove at the foot of the cliff whereon
the castle was perched. The party as it assembled for the morning
dip was not so much at its ease as the candour of some of its members
and the education of the others might have led one to suppose.
Olivia and Maria, in their rather full bathing costumes, looked more
mundane than the former wished or the latter suspected herself to
appear. The men were used to the water and were all of them
swimmers. Wilhelm, to whom sea bathing was a new experience,
hesitated at the edge of the waves; from time to time he would assume
the most comical postures as he hunted for crabs or starfish in the
shallow pools; he would exclaim with delight at his finds, so
absorbed in his discoveries that even Maria slipped from his mind,
and he became wholly unconscious of the presence of women. The
prince's ironical habit of mind led him to make mischievous comments
anent the other men's figures to Olivia as she lay basking in the sun
while her niece cuddled down at her side rather bashfully. Scherer
was his usual courteous self, holding himself gallantly, but not
failing to appreciate the contrast between the voluptuous curves of
Olivia's form and the slender grace of the maiden at her side--though
Maria's figure proved to be more developed than he had supposed, and
better in keeping with her full young lips. But his gaze did not
linger; he soon betook himself to the task in hand, striking out
through the water with virile energy.
Diana, Kyril, and Clemens simultaneously disappeared beneath the
waves, and simultaneously their heads bobbed up again, greatly to the
surprise of all three of them, for they had not seen one another
enter the water. Indeed, Diana, in her closely fitting dress had
sped so swiftly down the shore that hardly any had caught a glimpse
of her as she flashed by. All three appeared for the first time to
be in their appropriate element. Eduard, who was not a practiced
swimmer, and who, moreover, was more amused by the erotic play of
word and look afforded him on the shore, gave up trying to emulate
the trio almost before he had begun. Scherer soon followed suit, and
Wilhelm's world for the moment consisted entirely of marine fauna.
A sentiment of twofold liberation had invaded Diana's whole being
after the ambiguous words spoken in the darkened room. The sea
appeared to her pure, and free from all impulsive contamination, a
mirror of light, and she was glad and not a little proud to be able
to leave the mockers behind her on the beach. Clemens dived and
somersaulted, excited to exhibit his prowess by the proximity of a
young and beautiful woman, who watched his feats with gay, admiring
eyes. In boyish merriment he splashed water at her, invited her to
dance, kicked up his heels, spluttered, and cried out jubilantly amid
the foam. At last his antics nearly deprived him of voice, so that
his joyous screams became fainter.
In Kyril, Diana was surprised to find the perfect swimmer. For the
third time she was to witness this man doing something in which he
excelled; and for many seconds her thoughts went back to the evening
when he played the 'cello with so masterly a cunning. Although her
alert intelligence loved to pit itself against the intelligence of
men, and gained by the rivalry, it was the physical quality of the
male, that which was perceptible by the senses, which stirred her
blood; and for this reason she was apt to decide her attitude towards
a man before ever he had opened his lips to speak. To withstand the
strength of the waves as they flooded towards the land, impelled
forward by the breeze from the north-east, to know when to yield and
when to push through them; now to be carried on the crest of a billow
without striking a stroke, and to let one's body be drawn into the
furrow of the wave; without a word, to shoot through the next when it
threatens to break over one's head; now to lie on one's back,
propelling oneself forward with the legs alone; now again diving
through the mighty swells, resisting their weight, judging their
dimensions, so as not to emerge prematurely--how well Diana knew the
art! Her admiration for the Russian's mastery was far greater than
the man himself would have tolerated had he guessed that it existed.
And yet, with the instinct of a man aware of his own prowess, Kyril
had felt beforehand that while bathing he would show to advantage in
the eyes of this extravagant, luxury-loving creature, and thus win
the admiration which she seemed to withhold from his intellectual
gifts. It was for this reason that he had once before, when they
visited Leucas, proposed a bathe. On that occasion the elements had
made it impossible to carry out, for the wind seemed likely to drop
at any moment, and they wished to profit by every instant it lasted
in order to sail among the Ionian islands. In so far as he was aware
that under present circumstances he was pleasing to Diana, his own
regard for her increased; for, ever since he had first clapped eyes
on her, the evening when she had posed as Atalanta, and then again
when he had seen her playing the fine lady in Scherer's drawing-room,
he had been puzzled to know what to make of her. The instinctive
urge of his being towards her beauty, though veiled by his revolt
against her whole personality, had never been quenched; and now, for
the first time, in this particular hour, his fanatical mind was able
to grasp the reason for her beauty: only now, when he saw this body,
constrained on board to a quietude he had little appreciation of,
bestirring itself in movements fraught with meaning and purpose, did
he realize the aim towards which it had been moulded. And, as the
realization burst upon him, his instincts and thoughts, his theories
and the imperious call of his manhood, surged over her lithe, bronzed
limbs in an irresistible flood.
He swam out to sea, almost unaware of what he was doing, defying the
surges, ever farther from the shore, as if enticing her to follow.
Clemens, his young arms tired by his exertions, could swim no
farther. He called to her to stop; but the lady he had been squiring
through the watery element, gave the boy the go-by, and followed the
man whose rhythmic progress allured her. Those left behind on the
shore were anxious, but their cries of warning merely served to
stimulate the rivalry and ambition of the two water sprites.
Eduard's uneasiness was of a double kind; how he reproached himself
at this moment for not having spent more of his life at the seaside!
He strained his eyes to the utmost, shading them with his left hand,
filled with mortification and a growing jealousy, vainly endeavouring
to calculate the distance between the two heads that bobbed in and
out of the water. Scherer was engaged on similar calculations.
Neither could see how Kyril, suddenly disappearing when Diana was no
more than a couple of strokes away, swam beneath her, his eyes open
in the water; how his strong arm clasped her body as she floated
inert on the surface, how he rose and drew her tightly towards him in
a mighty embrace, and continued swimming with his legs alone. His
teeth flashed, the pressure of his arm became more intimate, his eyes
glowed ardently, his hand sought and held her left breast, and Diana,
after her first cry of alarm, abandoned herself to the sea and to the
man, her curls tossed by the wind and sprayed by the waves.
Motionless, she waited for him to release her from his bold embrace.
Then he turned his face shoreward, relaxed his hold, and the two,
side by side, swam slowly and silently towards land.