Nadine Napraxine meanwhile rolled home in the pale light of the winter morning, which had dawned over a quiet sea and a peaceful country. She was neither fatigued nor exhilarated by a ball which had been one of those long triumphs to which she was so well used. She looked as calm, as cool, as delicate of hue, as any Lenten lily that opens between the snow and the moss on an April morning. She was one of those women who can go through incredible fatigue, whether of pleasure or of travel, without any personal traces of it.
Whilst her companion, Lady Brancepeth, nodded and slumbered, she looked out at the landscape over which the sun was slowly dawning, driving before its rays the white mists which stretched over sea and mountain. There were people moving in it: women came down the steep stone ladders of their fields bearing heavy loads of oranges or of vegetables; mule carts plodded along the cactus-lined paths; fishermen were pushing boats into deep water; church bells were ringing. She, with her delicate and acute perception of what was beautiful, found pleasure in watching the simple hardy figures which were seen for a moment and then disappeared beneath the mist, in hearing the bells answer one another ringing across the white clouds that were touching the earth.
‘What does it feel like,’ she wondered, ‘to sleep sound all night on a bit of sacking, and get up in the dusk, and go into the wet fields and labour? What do these people think about? What do sheep think about, or oxen? It must be much the same thing. Wilkes, what do field-labourers think about?—you have got ever so many at home, you ought to know.’
Lady Brancepeth felt cross at being aroused and cross at having been asleep:
‘Think about?’ she murmured; ‘oh, I don’t know; beer, I believe with us, beer and bacon; here I should say francs, nothing but francs, probably. What put them in your head? And there are no labourers here in our sense of the word, you know; it is most of it la petite culture, you know. I never believe it is good for the soil, certainly not in the long run; it can’t be; they get everything out, they put nothing in. Of course they think only of the market of the day; they don’t think of the future, those people. That will be always the upshot of peasant proprietors, they will always ruin the soil.’
Nadine Napraxine laughed:
‘What a fine thing it is to be an Englishwoman; you think of political economy and of ‘the soil’ the very moment that you wake out of a doze! I suppose the earth will certainly last our time; what does the rest matter?’
‘You are so—so—so egotistic and autocratic, Nadine.’
The Princess laughed:
‘Oh, I don’t know; I don’t think so. I like a despotism, I was born under it; it saves so much trouble, and one big despot is very much easier to deal with than a score of little ones, especially when you stand well at his Court. It is always better to be judged by a judge instead of a jury, but simpletons will not see that.’