Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 645
CHAPTER XLVII.
Blanche de Laon that morning rode her English horse slowly down one of the unfrequented roads in the Bois de Boulogne, and beside her paced the handsome Tunisian mare of Loris Loswa. They were good friends, although, or rather because, they went for their loves and their vices elsewhere than to each other. He was conscious of the use it was to him to be caressed and favoured by this pre-eminent leader of la jeunesse crâne; and she found in him a suppleness, a malice, and an ingenuity, in tormenting and in defaming, which made him an ever amusing and an often useful companion to a lady who had no better sport than the harassing of her friends and acquaintances.
Loswa was acutely sensible of the necessity which exists for any artist who would continue famous and fashionable to make his court to the new sovereigns of the great world, as turn by turn they succeed to their leadership. The obligations of old loyalties and the memories of old favours did not weigh a feather with his wise and self-loving nature; a woman’s influence was the measure of her beauty in his eyes, and had Helen’s self been sur le retour she would have commanded no smile from him. He saw in the Princesse de Laon an influence which would grow with every fear for the next decade, so entirely were her qualities those which her generation most admires and fears. Therefore to no one was he in semblance more devoted, and no one had he flattered more ingeniously, and immortalised more frequently with all the most delicate homage of his art, though in his secret thoughts he denounced as detestable the irregular colourless impertinent features of her minois chiffonné, and her myosotis-coloured insolent eyes which stared so arrogantly and so inquisitively on all living things.
‘It is a vile type,’ said Loswa in his own mind. ‘It is a vile type, all this jeunesse du monde. It is without grace and without seduction; it is insolent and noisy; it is over-dressed and over-drawn; it screams and it gambles; it wears the gowns of Goldoni’s Venice with the head-dresses of the Directoire; it empties the bazaars of Japan into its salons of Louis Quinze; a vile type, with nothing in it of the great lady, and nothing of the honest woman, only a diable d’entrain which carries it away as a broomstick carries a witch!’
But, all the same, he was not willing to be left behind in the excursions of the broomstick, and was very conscious that unless cette jeunesse made him one of them, he would cease to be the painter whom fashion loved. It is so easy to become old-fashioned! so easy to become one of that joyless and disregarded band— ‘les vieux!’
Therefore to all the young beauties, even if he owned them hideous, he was careful to pay devoted court, and to none more, since none were so powerful as she, than to Blanchette de Laon. His last portrait of her was then upon his easel half finished; a study of pale tints, with her pale face seen above a necklace of opals, with a great mass of lemon-coloured chrysanthemum around and below, one of those dexterous and daring violations of conventional art of which he possessed the secret; and in it he had flattered her so delicately, yet so immoderately, that her museau de chatte had become actually beautiful in his treatment of it.
‘That is what one wants when one goes to be painted,’ she had said herself with cynical honesty.
She and he, good friends always and better friends still of late, rode now side by side through the solitude of a rarely-used alley of the Bois, and spoke in confidential tones together, as her perfect figure in its dark cloth habit seemed one with the perfect English hunter which she rode. She was not fond of any country sports, but she rode admirably, and knew that riding displayed all the graces of her form.
‘You are sure it is the girl of the island?’ she asked.
‘Quite sure,’ answered Loswa. ‘Madame Nadège asked me some questions, you gave me a hint, Lemberg spoke of some new protégée of Rosselin’s. I inquired about the theatres, at the Conservatoire; I imagined this hidden miracle was the future Desclée of Bonaventure. I found out that she lived near Magny, and was visited by Othmar; Magny is not the North Pole that they should deem it unvisitable; I went there unseen myself, and a farm labourer pointed out to me “la demoiselle:” she was at a distance from me, walking by the river, but I recognised her at a glance. One might have guessed it before. When she disappeared from the island it was Othmar who knew where she went.’
‘It is very droll!’ said Blanchette, showing her white small teeth in a grin of genuine appreciation. ‘And do you suppose his wife knows?’
‘Béthune knows, by his look the other day, and he will tell her: he will be only too glad de lui donner une dent against Othmar.’
‘I have told her something,’ said Blanche de Laon; ‘though I did not know who it was I knew that there was an interest at Chevreuse; I saw him walking in the fields there: but is the girl truly a genius?’
Loswa smiled.
‘Who shall say? But the chère amie of a rich millionaire will always find a public to swear that she is so. They already speak amongst artists of her coming début, and it is easy to see the value which is attached to the millions behind her. There is very little known about her, but that fact is known of Othmar’s interest in her, and no doubt it will make it easy for her to appear on some great theatre.’
‘They say she is first to appear at Othmar’s own house.’
‘That will be very clever, but very dangerous. Madame Nadège is not a person with whom on peut plaisanter. I should doubt her condescending to condonation of that kind.’
Blanchette laughed.
‘He is very indulgent to her about Béthune. He may surely expect the usual equivalent in return.’
Loswa was irritated.
‘He knows well enough that Béthune is nothing to her; Béthune has worshipped her for fifteen years. I admit that; but he has had his pains for his payment; she lets him follow her about, but it is only pour rire.’
Blanchette laughed and flicked her horse’s throat with her little white switch.
‘You speak as if you were jealous! You always admired that cold woman. To return to the coming Desclée. Paris already talks of her, you say?’
‘It is not my fault if it do not,’ she thought.
‘Vaguely, yes,’ answered Loswa. ‘It has an expectation of some new talent which has what all talent in our generation requires: a prop of gold behind it.’
‘Have you discreetly whispered that it is one with the original of a sketch of a fishing girl?’
Loswa smiled.
‘I have caused it to be whispered, of course; we never say those things ourselves.’
‘Where does Othmar hide her at present, do you say?’
‘At a farmhouse at Les Hameaux. He is not magnificent in his maintenance of her; it is a very simple place, and she lives very simply there.’
‘That is just like a very rich man. Besides, Othmar always has a taste for black bread and bare boards. You know at one time he actually dreamed of breaking up the whole network of the Othmar power, and stripping himself of everything, and living like St. Vincent de Paul. That was before those children were born; their mother would certainly never take the vow of poverty! Well, shall you and I ride down to Magny some morning and see this prodigy of genius and simplicity? You can recall yourself to her, and you can present me. We will represent ourselves as inspired by what we have heard from Rosselin.’
Loswa hesitated. Othmar was not a man whom he cared to cross. Yet he had a desire to see again the face which he had sketched on Bonaventure, and he had a vague idea that by going thither he might in some way learn something which would enable him to pay off that old score which had so long cherished against Othmar’s wife. He had had a restless and hopeless passion for her years before; he had served and flattered her docilely because he held at its just value the great power of her social influence; he had been of use to her in a thousand ways at her château parties and in her Paris entertainments; he had always been docile and devoted, and ingenious to please, and submissive under offence, but all the same, at the bottom of his heart there was a bitter rancour against her for her blindness to his charms; for her criticism of his talents; for her constant careless treatment of him as a mere décor de fête, as a mere amateur; and if he could see her pride hurt or her indifference penetrated, he felt that he would be happier and better satisfied. A thousand slighting words which she had spoken out of caprice, and forgotten as soon as they were uttered, had remained written on his memory and unforgiven. He would not have quarrelled with her openly for his life; he was too sensible of the pleasure of her acquaintance, the charm of her presence, the value of her goodwill; but if he could have helped unseen to put any thorns under the rose leaves of her couch, he would have done so willingly; he would have even chosen thorns which were poisoned.
‘Yes, we will go and see her,’ said Blanchette, as their horses paced under the boughs. ‘It is always amusing to be the first to inspect a person the world is going to be asked to admire. On peut la dénigrer si bien!’
‘But,’ suggested Loswa, with hesitation, ‘if we dénigrer here, we shall please Madame Nadège. Is that what you wish to do? I think if we go at all we must, on the contrary, go to befriend, to admire, to assist the new talent.’
Blanche de Laon gave him a little approving caress with her whip.
‘You are a clever man, Loris,’ she said with appreciation. ‘We will go to-morrow — no, the day after to-morrow,’ she added. ‘I will meet you at St. Cyr; the horses shall be sent there by train; I often send mine by train to places where I wish to ride; send yours also. We will go early because it is a long way. The day after to-morrow I know that Othmar will be at Ferrières; there is a great breakfast; he cannot escape from it; there will be no fear of meeting him in Chevreuse.’
‘But are you sure what we shall accomplish when we reach there?’
‘You will finish the sketch begun on the island, and I shall forestall the dramatic criticism of Francisque Sarcey.’
‘Othmar will not like it.’
‘Othmar need not know it. My dear Loris, do you suppose that by feeding her on buttermilk, and hiding her under a thatched roof, he secures the primitive virtues in his idealised peasant? You may be sure she already tells him nothing that she does not choose to tell. On n’est pas femme pour rien!’
Loswa rode on in silence awhile, then he said with a smile:
‘I have an idea, which, if we could realise it, might possibly prove amusing. You will recollect that there are to be dramatic representations at Amyôt next week when the Princes are there?’
Blanchette nodded assent.
‘And Madame Nadège,’ continued Loswa, ’is always very solicitous for the success of her theatre; she spares nothing at any time on that kind of entertainment; and the representations of next week are to be really royal; all the greatest artists are engaged for them. I have always a good deal to do with arranging these things for Amyôt; and I know that it is most likely that the Reichenberg, who is to play there, will not have recovered the chill which she caught yesterday at La Marche. If she should not, shall we substitute Damaris Bérarde? I need not appear in the matter; I can send the director of Amyôt to Rosselin, and in any way we should have an entertaining scene not included in the programme. If the new wonder succeed, the Lady of Amyôt will not be pleased, and will undoubtedly quarrel with her husband; if, on the contrary, the girl should turn nervous, or hysterical, or passionate, and forget her rôle, it will be diverting enough, and in any case will embarrass Othmar himself. I think in either event we should have a droll ten minutes.’
Blanche de Laon showed her white teeth in an approving smile.
‘You are always ingenious,’ she said. ‘But if Othmar be already desirous of making the girl appear under his wife’s patronage, perhaps your scheme would only gratify him? What then?’
‘He is only desirous of that because he thinks that his wife does not know of Les Hameaux; but we will take care that she does know; and I think she may be trusted to resent it. She does not care a straw for him, but she cares immeasurably for her own dignity, her own influence, her own empire.’
Blanchette nodded again.
‘We will see what the new star is like, first,’ she answered. ‘It is not a mere handsome nobody with a turn for the stage who will excite her jealousy: she is too proud to be easily jealous.’
‘The girl is magnificent,’ said Loswa, as he thought. ‘Jealousy is always alive, even if love has been dead a century.’
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The day after the morrow they kept their word to each other. She descended at the little station of St. Cyr, and found her horse and groom and those of Loswa waiting for her. Loswa and she bade their men stay at the station there, and rode themselves through the country ways which lie between St. Cyr and Les Hameaux. That if anyone chanced to see them their meeting would look like an assignation, did not trouble the thoughts of the Princesse de Laon for an instant; there were far too many much more weighty imputations which she incurred daily to allow so trivial a possible charge as this would be to have any terrors for her. She delighted in the creation of scandal, in the risks of equivocal positions; and challenged both the admiration of her husband and the long-suffering of her world with the most daring and shameless of provocations. She knew that to those who dare much, much is forgiven; she knew that the world would never quarrel with her. It feared her tongue too greatly.
It was scarcely noonday when they reached the quiet fields which stretched around the Croix Blanche. There were the greenness and freshness of very earliest spring in all the land; little birds were flying and twittering, with thoughts of coming nests, to be hidden away under orchard blossoms, and the sheep were cheerfully cropping the short grass which covered the ruins of Port Royal. All these things and the memories which went with them said nothing to Blanchette; all she knew of spring was the dates of the various races, and all she knew of history was that it gave you travesties for costume balls.
They left their horses in charge of a labouring servant, who was sitting resting under one of the ash trees to eat his noonday bread, and then, crossing the courtyard, pushed their way without ceremony past the dairy-wench who tried to stop them and learn their errand, and so, without either announcement or apology, opened the door at the head of the wooden stair and found themselves in the chamber of Damaris.
She was sitting reading at a table, the white dogs lay at her feet; a great volume was open on the table before her, her head leaned on her hand, which was hidden in the masses of her close-curling hair. As she started at the unclosing of the door and rose to her feet, and restrained the dogs with a gesture, the intruders upon her privacy were both astonished to see the development which her beauty had taken since the night two years before when she had stood, bewildered and astray, like a young night-hawk brought into a lighted house from the shadows of night, in the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond. She did not speak; she remained motionless, her hand on the head of the male dog; she recognised Loswa instantly, with a sense of pain and of regret that he had found her there; his companion she was not conscious of ever having seen before.
‘Here is Loris Loswa, whom you will remember, and I am Madame de Laon,’ said Blanchette, advancing towards her, with her abrupt familiarity, her eyes roving all over the place and coming back to fasten themselves with envy on the beautiful lines of the girl’s throat and bosom.
‘We are come to see you,’ she continued, ‘because you will be a celebrity very soon; Rosselin is going to bring you out at the Français or the Odéon; you will have no trouble; everything is arranged; Othmar’s name is enough, and your story will please Paris when it is in a romantic mood. It is romantic sometimes, despite the naturalists. You are very handsome, my dear, very; you have an antique type, and what blood and what health there are in you! — enough to make a million of our anémiques! Why do you go on living in this hole among pigeons and dogs? I should have thought he would have given you an hotel in the Avenue Joséphine or the Boulevard Hausmann before now!’
Damaris looked at her from under bent brows; she did not understand, but she had a sense of offence in the way she was addressed; this great lady seemed to her rudely familiar, brusquely intimate; she did not like her tone, her face, her manner; and the use of Othmar’s name bewildered her. She was silent because she had no idea at all what she should reply.
Loswa tried to propitiate her.
‘I have not forgotten my day on the island,’ he said to her, ‘nor all your goodness to me. Is it true that you are going to dazzle all Paris in “Dona Sol” as you charmed us on that island with “Esther”? Why does Rosselin delay to give the world so much pleasure, and why does he keep you so hidden?’
Damaris heard with impatience and anger.
‘I do not suppose I shall ever play Dona Sol,’ she said abruptly; ‘and if I did, most likely Paris would laugh, and you first of all.’
‘Paris does not laugh at handsome people,’ said Blanche de Laon, cutting short the flattering protestations of Loswa. ‘Not, at least, till it gets tired of their good looks. But it is quite true, is it not, that you are being taught by Rosselin to rival Bernhardt?’
‘I do not know as to rivalry,’ said Damaris, with constraint and displeasure. ‘If I ever follow art I shall endeavour to be as true to it and as far from imitation of others as I can. M. Rosselin is very kind and patient with me.’
Blanchette smiled.
‘You are very grateful. Be sure he finds as much interest in training you as you can find in being trained! I should think you might dispense with study — with such a face as yours, and such a friend as Otho Othmar!’
Damaris coloured angrily.
She resented the intrusion of this stranger, whose impertinent and familiar manners offended her, and seemed to her a personal insolence. At Loswa she did not look. His presence was unwelcome to her, and brought back the memories of Bonaventure so strongly that it was with difficulty that she kept the tears from rising to her eyes. How far away it seemed, that sunny noonday, when she had made him welcome to her little balcony amongst the orange boughs and the lemon leaves! And then how basely he had repaid her and betrayed her, and brought his friends to laugh at her, as he had brought this woman of fashion now!
Blanche de Laon that morning rode her English horse slowly down one of the unfrequented roads in the Bois de Boulogne, and beside her paced the handsome Tunisian mare of Loris Loswa. They were good friends, although, or rather because, they went for their loves and their vices elsewhere than to each other. He was conscious of the use it was to him to be caressed and favoured by this pre-eminent leader of la jeunesse crâne; and she found in him a suppleness, a malice, and an ingenuity, in tormenting and in defaming, which made him an ever amusing and an often useful companion to a lady who had no better sport than the harassing of her friends and acquaintances.
Loswa was acutely sensible of the necessity which exists for any artist who would continue famous and fashionable to make his court to the new sovereigns of the great world, as turn by turn they succeed to their leadership. The obligations of old loyalties and the memories of old favours did not weigh a feather with his wise and self-loving nature; a woman’s influence was the measure of her beauty in his eyes, and had Helen’s self been sur le retour she would have commanded no smile from him. He saw in the Princesse de Laon an influence which would grow with every fear for the next decade, so entirely were her qualities those which her generation most admires and fears. Therefore to no one was he in semblance more devoted, and no one had he flattered more ingeniously, and immortalised more frequently with all the most delicate homage of his art, though in his secret thoughts he denounced as detestable the irregular colourless impertinent features of her minois chiffonné, and her myosotis-coloured insolent eyes which stared so arrogantly and so inquisitively on all living things.
‘It is a vile type,’ said Loswa in his own mind. ‘It is a vile type, all this jeunesse du monde. It is without grace and without seduction; it is insolent and noisy; it is over-dressed and over-drawn; it screams and it gambles; it wears the gowns of Goldoni’s Venice with the head-dresses of the Directoire; it empties the bazaars of Japan into its salons of Louis Quinze; a vile type, with nothing in it of the great lady, and nothing of the honest woman, only a diable d’entrain which carries it away as a broomstick carries a witch!’
But, all the same, he was not willing to be left behind in the excursions of the broomstick, and was very conscious that unless cette jeunesse made him one of them, he would cease to be the painter whom fashion loved. It is so easy to become old-fashioned! so easy to become one of that joyless and disregarded band— ‘les vieux!’
Therefore to all the young beauties, even if he owned them hideous, he was careful to pay devoted court, and to none more, since none were so powerful as she, than to Blanchette de Laon. His last portrait of her was then upon his easel half finished; a study of pale tints, with her pale face seen above a necklace of opals, with a great mass of lemon-coloured chrysanthemum around and below, one of those dexterous and daring violations of conventional art of which he possessed the secret; and in it he had flattered her so delicately, yet so immoderately, that her museau de chatte had become actually beautiful in his treatment of it.
‘That is what one wants when one goes to be painted,’ she had said herself with cynical honesty.
She and he, good friends always and better friends still of late, rode now side by side through the solitude of a rarely-used alley of the Bois, and spoke in confidential tones together, as her perfect figure in its dark cloth habit seemed one with the perfect English hunter which she rode. She was not fond of any country sports, but she rode admirably, and knew that riding displayed all the graces of her form.
‘You are sure it is the girl of the island?’ she asked.
‘Quite sure,’ answered Loswa. ‘Madame Nadège asked me some questions, you gave me a hint, Lemberg spoke of some new protégée of Rosselin’s. I inquired about the theatres, at the Conservatoire; I imagined this hidden miracle was the future Desclée of Bonaventure. I found out that she lived near Magny, and was visited by Othmar; Magny is not the North Pole that they should deem it unvisitable; I went there unseen myself, and a farm labourer pointed out to me “la demoiselle:” she was at a distance from me, walking by the river, but I recognised her at a glance. One might have guessed it before. When she disappeared from the island it was Othmar who knew where she went.’
‘It is very droll!’ said Blanchette, showing her white small teeth in a grin of genuine appreciation. ‘And do you suppose his wife knows?’
‘Béthune knows, by his look the other day, and he will tell her: he will be only too glad de lui donner une dent against Othmar.’
‘I have told her something,’ said Blanche de Laon; ‘though I did not know who it was I knew that there was an interest at Chevreuse; I saw him walking in the fields there: but is the girl truly a genius?’
Loswa smiled.
‘Who shall say? But the chère amie of a rich millionaire will always find a public to swear that she is so. They already speak amongst artists of her coming début, and it is easy to see the value which is attached to the millions behind her. There is very little known about her, but that fact is known of Othmar’s interest in her, and no doubt it will make it easy for her to appear on some great theatre.’
‘They say she is first to appear at Othmar’s own house.’
‘That will be very clever, but very dangerous. Madame Nadège is not a person with whom on peut plaisanter. I should doubt her condescending to condonation of that kind.’
Blanchette laughed.
‘He is very indulgent to her about Béthune. He may surely expect the usual equivalent in return.’
Loswa was irritated.
‘He knows well enough that Béthune is nothing to her; Béthune has worshipped her for fifteen years. I admit that; but he has had his pains for his payment; she lets him follow her about, but it is only pour rire.’
Blanchette laughed and flicked her horse’s throat with her little white switch.
‘You speak as if you were jealous! You always admired that cold woman. To return to the coming Desclée. Paris already talks of her, you say?’
‘It is not my fault if it do not,’ she thought.
‘Vaguely, yes,’ answered Loswa. ‘It has an expectation of some new talent which has what all talent in our generation requires: a prop of gold behind it.’
‘Have you discreetly whispered that it is one with the original of a sketch of a fishing girl?’
Loswa smiled.
‘I have caused it to be whispered, of course; we never say those things ourselves.’
‘Where does Othmar hide her at present, do you say?’
‘At a farmhouse at Les Hameaux. He is not magnificent in his maintenance of her; it is a very simple place, and she lives very simply there.’
‘That is just like a very rich man. Besides, Othmar always has a taste for black bread and bare boards. You know at one time he actually dreamed of breaking up the whole network of the Othmar power, and stripping himself of everything, and living like St. Vincent de Paul. That was before those children were born; their mother would certainly never take the vow of poverty! Well, shall you and I ride down to Magny some morning and see this prodigy of genius and simplicity? You can recall yourself to her, and you can present me. We will represent ourselves as inspired by what we have heard from Rosselin.’
Loswa hesitated. Othmar was not a man whom he cared to cross. Yet he had a desire to see again the face which he had sketched on Bonaventure, and he had a vague idea that by going thither he might in some way learn something which would enable him to pay off that old score which had so long cherished against Othmar’s wife. He had had a restless and hopeless passion for her years before; he had served and flattered her docilely because he held at its just value the great power of her social influence; he had been of use to her in a thousand ways at her château parties and in her Paris entertainments; he had always been docile and devoted, and ingenious to please, and submissive under offence, but all the same, at the bottom of his heart there was a bitter rancour against her for her blindness to his charms; for her criticism of his talents; for her constant careless treatment of him as a mere décor de fête, as a mere amateur; and if he could see her pride hurt or her indifference penetrated, he felt that he would be happier and better satisfied. A thousand slighting words which she had spoken out of caprice, and forgotten as soon as they were uttered, had remained written on his memory and unforgiven. He would not have quarrelled with her openly for his life; he was too sensible of the pleasure of her acquaintance, the charm of her presence, the value of her goodwill; but if he could have helped unseen to put any thorns under the rose leaves of her couch, he would have done so willingly; he would have even chosen thorns which were poisoned.
‘Yes, we will go and see her,’ said Blanchette, as their horses paced under the boughs. ‘It is always amusing to be the first to inspect a person the world is going to be asked to admire. On peut la dénigrer si bien!’
‘But,’ suggested Loswa, with hesitation, ‘if we dénigrer here, we shall please Madame Nadège. Is that what you wish to do? I think if we go at all we must, on the contrary, go to befriend, to admire, to assist the new talent.’
Blanche de Laon gave him a little approving caress with her whip.
‘You are a clever man, Loris,’ she said with appreciation. ‘We will go to-morrow — no, the day after to-morrow,’ she added. ‘I will meet you at St. Cyr; the horses shall be sent there by train; I often send mine by train to places where I wish to ride; send yours also. We will go early because it is a long way. The day after to-morrow I know that Othmar will be at Ferrières; there is a great breakfast; he cannot escape from it; there will be no fear of meeting him in Chevreuse.’
‘But are you sure what we shall accomplish when we reach there?’
‘You will finish the sketch begun on the island, and I shall forestall the dramatic criticism of Francisque Sarcey.’
‘Othmar will not like it.’
‘Othmar need not know it. My dear Loris, do you suppose that by feeding her on buttermilk, and hiding her under a thatched roof, he secures the primitive virtues in his idealised peasant? You may be sure she already tells him nothing that she does not choose to tell. On n’est pas femme pour rien!’
Loswa rode on in silence awhile, then he said with a smile:
‘I have an idea, which, if we could realise it, might possibly prove amusing. You will recollect that there are to be dramatic representations at Amyôt next week when the Princes are there?’
Blanchette nodded assent.
‘And Madame Nadège,’ continued Loswa, ’is always very solicitous for the success of her theatre; she spares nothing at any time on that kind of entertainment; and the representations of next week are to be really royal; all the greatest artists are engaged for them. I have always a good deal to do with arranging these things for Amyôt; and I know that it is most likely that the Reichenberg, who is to play there, will not have recovered the chill which she caught yesterday at La Marche. If she should not, shall we substitute Damaris Bérarde? I need not appear in the matter; I can send the director of Amyôt to Rosselin, and in any way we should have an entertaining scene not included in the programme. If the new wonder succeed, the Lady of Amyôt will not be pleased, and will undoubtedly quarrel with her husband; if, on the contrary, the girl should turn nervous, or hysterical, or passionate, and forget her rôle, it will be diverting enough, and in any case will embarrass Othmar himself. I think in either event we should have a droll ten minutes.’
Blanche de Laon showed her white teeth in an approving smile.
‘You are always ingenious,’ she said. ‘But if Othmar be already desirous of making the girl appear under his wife’s patronage, perhaps your scheme would only gratify him? What then?’
‘He is only desirous of that because he thinks that his wife does not know of Les Hameaux; but we will take care that she does know; and I think she may be trusted to resent it. She does not care a straw for him, but she cares immeasurably for her own dignity, her own influence, her own empire.’
Blanchette nodded again.
‘We will see what the new star is like, first,’ she answered. ‘It is not a mere handsome nobody with a turn for the stage who will excite her jealousy: she is too proud to be easily jealous.’
‘The girl is magnificent,’ said Loswa, as he thought. ‘Jealousy is always alive, even if love has been dead a century.’
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The day after the morrow they kept their word to each other. She descended at the little station of St. Cyr, and found her horse and groom and those of Loswa waiting for her. Loswa and she bade their men stay at the station there, and rode themselves through the country ways which lie between St. Cyr and Les Hameaux. That if anyone chanced to see them their meeting would look like an assignation, did not trouble the thoughts of the Princesse de Laon for an instant; there were far too many much more weighty imputations which she incurred daily to allow so trivial a possible charge as this would be to have any terrors for her. She delighted in the creation of scandal, in the risks of equivocal positions; and challenged both the admiration of her husband and the long-suffering of her world with the most daring and shameless of provocations. She knew that to those who dare much, much is forgiven; she knew that the world would never quarrel with her. It feared her tongue too greatly.
It was scarcely noonday when they reached the quiet fields which stretched around the Croix Blanche. There were the greenness and freshness of very earliest spring in all the land; little birds were flying and twittering, with thoughts of coming nests, to be hidden away under orchard blossoms, and the sheep were cheerfully cropping the short grass which covered the ruins of Port Royal. All these things and the memories which went with them said nothing to Blanchette; all she knew of spring was the dates of the various races, and all she knew of history was that it gave you travesties for costume balls.
They left their horses in charge of a labouring servant, who was sitting resting under one of the ash trees to eat his noonday bread, and then, crossing the courtyard, pushed their way without ceremony past the dairy-wench who tried to stop them and learn their errand, and so, without either announcement or apology, opened the door at the head of the wooden stair and found themselves in the chamber of Damaris.
She was sitting reading at a table, the white dogs lay at her feet; a great volume was open on the table before her, her head leaned on her hand, which was hidden in the masses of her close-curling hair. As she started at the unclosing of the door and rose to her feet, and restrained the dogs with a gesture, the intruders upon her privacy were both astonished to see the development which her beauty had taken since the night two years before when she had stood, bewildered and astray, like a young night-hawk brought into a lighted house from the shadows of night, in the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond. She did not speak; she remained motionless, her hand on the head of the male dog; she recognised Loswa instantly, with a sense of pain and of regret that he had found her there; his companion she was not conscious of ever having seen before.
‘Here is Loris Loswa, whom you will remember, and I am Madame de Laon,’ said Blanchette, advancing towards her, with her abrupt familiarity, her eyes roving all over the place and coming back to fasten themselves with envy on the beautiful lines of the girl’s throat and bosom.
‘We are come to see you,’ she continued, ‘because you will be a celebrity very soon; Rosselin is going to bring you out at the Français or the Odéon; you will have no trouble; everything is arranged; Othmar’s name is enough, and your story will please Paris when it is in a romantic mood. It is romantic sometimes, despite the naturalists. You are very handsome, my dear, very; you have an antique type, and what blood and what health there are in you! — enough to make a million of our anémiques! Why do you go on living in this hole among pigeons and dogs? I should have thought he would have given you an hotel in the Avenue Joséphine or the Boulevard Hausmann before now!’
Damaris looked at her from under bent brows; she did not understand, but she had a sense of offence in the way she was addressed; this great lady seemed to her rudely familiar, brusquely intimate; she did not like her tone, her face, her manner; and the use of Othmar’s name bewildered her. She was silent because she had no idea at all what she should reply.
Loswa tried to propitiate her.
‘I have not forgotten my day on the island,’ he said to her, ‘nor all your goodness to me. Is it true that you are going to dazzle all Paris in “Dona Sol” as you charmed us on that island with “Esther”? Why does Rosselin delay to give the world so much pleasure, and why does he keep you so hidden?’
Damaris heard with impatience and anger.
‘I do not suppose I shall ever play Dona Sol,’ she said abruptly; ‘and if I did, most likely Paris would laugh, and you first of all.’
‘Paris does not laugh at handsome people,’ said Blanche de Laon, cutting short the flattering protestations of Loswa. ‘Not, at least, till it gets tired of their good looks. But it is quite true, is it not, that you are being taught by Rosselin to rival Bernhardt?’
‘I do not know as to rivalry,’ said Damaris, with constraint and displeasure. ‘If I ever follow art I shall endeavour to be as true to it and as far from imitation of others as I can. M. Rosselin is very kind and patient with me.’
Blanchette smiled.
‘You are very grateful. Be sure he finds as much interest in training you as you can find in being trained! I should think you might dispense with study — with such a face as yours, and such a friend as Otho Othmar!’
Damaris coloured angrily.
She resented the intrusion of this stranger, whose impertinent and familiar manners offended her, and seemed to her a personal insolence. At Loswa she did not look. His presence was unwelcome to her, and brought back the memories of Bonaventure so strongly that it was with difficulty that she kept the tears from rising to her eyes. How far away it seemed, that sunny noonday, when she had made him welcome to her little balcony amongst the orange boughs and the lemon leaves! And then how basely he had repaid her and betrayed her, and brought his friends to laugh at her, as he had brought this woman of fashion now!
