Othmar

by Ouida

She sat down, the full afternoon sun falling on her face as it was upraised to him, her hands locked in her lap, her face pensive and grave with many memories.

'When I told him the truth that night,' she began, 'he hurt me a good deal, but more in my heart than in my body. I suppose he did not believe that I had done nothing wrong; anyhow, in going to your house I had disobeyed him. In the morning he took me to the mainland and my clothes with me, and without speaking ever a word, drove me in different vehicles up, up, up into the interior where the hills were, and placed me in a convent of Benedictine nuns up in the mountains above Val de Nieve. There he left me without saying a word to me, though I suppose he explained things to the Sisters. Perhaps he told them I was wicked, for they were very harsh to me, and their discipline was very severe. It was exceedingly cold there after the island, which you know is so warm, and for months there was snow all around, nothing but snow. I felt like a chained dog, and I fretted and raged, and they punished me. It was very miserable. Twice I tried to run away, but they prevented me. Then the better weather came and the very mountains grew green and bore flowers. This gave me a kind of hopefulness, and there were a number of little children in the convent, and I played with them and became less wretched, and I learned many things, for the Sisters were instructed women and taught well, and I had always been fond of books and eager to read them. But how I longed for the sea, and to feel a boat bound under me, and go as I chose it to go! You see I had always been in the open air and on the open sea at my fancy, and that is no doubt why I felt like a chained dog in these stone chambers, with their iron bars and their windows so high that one could only see a hand's-breadth of sky. Why do people live so when there is the air and the earth and the water? I was there half a year, or rather more. Then in the month of October my grandfather came, just before the passes in the mountains were closed with snow, and took me back to Bonaventure.'

Her eyes closed a moment as if to keep in unshed tears. Then she resumed her story.

'He never addressed me except just about things which he could not help, and we crossed the sea and landed at the dear island, and I thought the dogs would have gone mad with joy. Catherine had died whilst I was at the convent, and he had never allowed me to be told. That she should have died in my absence was a great pain to me, because I had known her all my life, and she had been often kind and good though her temper was cross, above all on washing and baking days. But now she was gone, poor soul! Everything else, however, was as I had always known it, and I was so happy to be home I could have kissed all the inanimate things! The goats knew me, too, and one of the hens flew to my shoulder directly. My grandfather let me do whatever I liked all that day, but he never spoke once except to bid me eat and drink. When it was night and I was about to go to bed, for I felt tired, he took me out under the orange-trees; it was a fine night and the air very light and clear, and there was a moon then coming up above the edge of the sea. There he said to me that if I would marry my cousin he would give me the whole island all for my own, and to my cousin the brig and all the money that was saved, and he himself would only keep a room or two and enough for his wants, and my cousin was to take the name of Bérarde. I thanked him, but I said I would not marry my cousin. I might have done if your Lady had never come to me that day, perhaps; I do not know. I said a score of times that I would not; each time I was more resolved than before. Then my grandfather grew like a madman and cursed me horribly, and told me that I had no claim on him; that my father had never married my mother, that the law would allot me nothing. I do not very well understand how, but it seems that I had no legal right there, and that all he had done for me he had done to please my uncle Jules, the one who died of cholera, who had loved my father and so loved me. Now, perhaps, as all my life had been a burden to him and a debt, I ought to have obeyed him and married Louis Roze. Do you think so?'

'No,' said Othmar, with some vehemence. 'No; such a marriage would have been a blasphemy!'

'I did not stay to think, I did not want to think. I said no—no—no—a thousand times no! And then I thought he would have beaten me as he beat me the night you took me home.'

'Beat you? Good God!'

'He had beaten me before when he was in drink, never at any other time. This night he had not drunk. He was quite sober, but he became mad with rage; it was always so with him at any opposition, and he had thought that I should be dull and tame, having been so long in the convent. But I was not. I told him that I would obey him and work for him as long as he lived, because I owed him everything I had ever owned or enjoyed; that I would be his servant, and till the ground, and sail the boat, and fish in the sea, and cut wood, and do all that Raphael did; but that I would never marry my cousin or anyone else. Never—never. So I told him as we stood under the moon together.'

'But, before we saw you, you were willing to make this marriage?'

Damaris coloured more.