at Villefranche and Eza, and she had seen the building yards of Villefranche and St. Tropez, and that was all; her only idea of the great world was of a perpetual fête-day, with the priests always in their broidered canonicals, and the church bells always ringing, and the people always thronging in holiday attire, and going up and down sunny streets noisily and laughing.
That was all she could think of; and yet Imagination, that kindliest of all the ministers of humanity, had told her there must be more than this somewhere; had filled her mind with many dim, gorgeous, marvellous pageantries which grew up for her from the black printed lines of 'Sintram' and 'The Cid.' There must be something better than the Sundays of the mainland—— And yet to leave her island seemed to her like leaving life itself!
All these conflicting thoughts striving together in a mind which was vivid in its fancies and childish in its ignorance moved her to an emotion which she could neither have controlled nor have described; she could find no words with which to answer this great lady, who seemed to her to have thrown open great golden gates before her, and let in a flood of light which dazzled her, streaming on her from unknown skies. And at last she yielded.
'Catherine, I am going on the sea,' she cried, as she ran indoors, blushing to the roots of her hair at the subterfuge, for she was very truthful.
The old woman, invisible for the smoke as she stooped over the great oven, with the handle of its door in her hand, grumbled some cross words which were neither assent nor dissent. Damaris took them as the former, and waited for no more; she passed half her life on the sea, the old servant would find nothing strange in her absence if she were out till sunset.
'You are sure I shall be back by Ave Maria?' she said timidly to her temptress.
'Certainly,' said Nadine, who knew well that it was not possible.
'I am sure I ought not to come,' said the girl wistfully.
Her temptress smiled a little.
'Oh, my dear, if you be as feminine as you look, that consideration will only add la pointe à la sauce.'
Damaris gazed at her with pathetic, impassioned eyes. She did not understand; she said nothing; she only sighed.
'Come,' said the enchantress.
'I think Othmar was right. It is cruel,' murmured Béthune.
'Men are always so timid,' said Nadine with her customary indulgent contempt for them. 'Ignorance is not bliss, my dear friend, although the copybooks say so.—Come, my pretty demoiselle, come and see our enchanted coasts; we will not harm you, and we will only give you a little spray of moly such as Ulysses gathered; and perhaps a magic ring and a wishing-cap, nothing worse.'
The child hesitated still; she knew that she was doing very wrong; she knew that if what she was doing were discovered, her grandfather's chastisement would be pitiless; but curiosity, imagination, interest, were all enlisted on the side of disobedience, and she had a certain turbulence and ardour of self-will in her nature which had brought her many hard words from Catherine, and even blows from Jean Bérarde. All these together conquered her conscience, her judgment, and her prudence; the gates of the enchanted world stood open; she might never pass through them, or see what was beyond them unless she went now.
With that reasoning she sprang down the first ledges of the stone staircase, and as lightly as a kid would have done leaped from one step to the other till she reached the edge of the sea.
She allowed her feet to be guided into the barge, and felt it dance beneath them with a strange thrill; it seemed all to be as unreal as a chapter of 'Sintram;' the lovely lady who wooed and tempted her appeared like a being from another world; the gilded prow, the embroidered flag, the rich awnings fringed with silver wavered before her in the sunlight.
Before she had known what she had actually done, the oars of the men cleft the sunshiny water, letting it flow in streams of diamonds off their blades, and the vessel had already glided away from her home.
Clovis, who was accustomed never to leave the island, but never failed to give voice to his grief when he saw her leave him for the sea, either by swimming or sailing, stood on the strip of sand beneath the rocky steep of Bonaventure and howled in dismal solitude. She put her hands to her ears not to hear him; it seemed as if he reproached and rebuked her.
Soon he became but a little white speck beneath the red sandstone of the cliff, and the boat had reached the side of the stately schooner which awaited them in the midst of gay sunshine and azure water, whilst a flute-player discoursed sweet music from some unseen retreat.
When the island also began to recede from sight she then, and only then, began to realise what she had done.
'C'est Bernardin de St.-Pierre tout pur,' said Nadine, surveying with diversion the amazement and the awe of her captive.
Nothing could be more enchantingly kind than her manner, or more gentle and encouraging in its patience with the girl's stupor and timidity. She had gratified her caprice, she had won her wager, and she was sweet and gracious to the object of it. Obedience had always found her benignant if at times it had found her as quickly oblivious. This had been a little thing indeed; a very little thing; but she would have been irritated if it had escaped or beaten her; would almost have been mortified.
All her world had told her that to bring the girl thither would be a folly if not a cruelty; and for that reason beyond all others she had persevered.
Damaris, seated in the prow of the barge, had the charm for her of representing the triumph of her own will. So might some young slave, hardly acquired, on whom her fancy had been strongly and waywardly set, have represented hers to Cleopatra.
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