CHAPTER EIGHT

At the very hour when Gregor entered Diana's moonlit tent, the countess sat at dinner with Andreas.

The small marble table at which they were dining was in a remote corner of the garden, and the old butler who served them shook his head patiently over this new whim of his mistress. Since the nook the countess had chosen was so small as not to admit of a sideboard of any kind, the man had to make the best of an ivy-clad stump whereon to place his dishes. In the end, he had contrived everything in so tasteful and charming a way, that when Olivia led her guest into the enclosure through an archway cut in the hedge, she smiled her gratitude and appreciation to her faithful servitor. In her own peculiar and anarchistic way she was always more courteous and considerate to her servants than it was customary for women in her station to be. Consequently she was, as a mistress, at once more respected and more often cheated than most. As soon as the dessert had been placed on the table, she made a sign to the butler, who promptly disappeared within doors. As soon as he had gone, she said:

"You are worried about something."

"Yes."

"What has happened?"

"Othello, I've lost him."

"What, the Great Dane you told me about and have always refused to bring to see me?"

"Today I did bring him. It's the first time for pretty well a fortnight that I've taken him for a walk through the town. I've usually let him out for a run in the hotel park. Well, we got here at eight. In the vestibule, Othello began snuffing around. I told him to lie down and wait while I went into the office to see if there were any letters for me--you know I'm having all my correspondence sent here because I can't stand the idea of every letter being mauled about and examined by my worthy Austrian compatriots. I'd hardly been absent three minutes, yet when I came back Othello was nowhere to be seen. In all the four years since we have lived together the dog has never given me the slip before."

"Have you any idea as to where he may have gone?"

Andreas did not answer, and she had a shrewd suspicion that he guessed the dog's whereabouts. She had all along been wondering why Andreas was so set against bringing Othello to see her, and guessed that the dog was associated in his mind with some poignant memory or other. Could it be that of another woman? She had been too immersed in her own dreams and yearnings to pursue the matter further. And now, tonight, when at last they were alone with the chance of enjoying one another's company undisturbed, was their evening to be spoilt because of the vagaries of a dog? Resolutely she set herself to win the man.

During the fifteen years of her married life Olivia had had very few evenings at her own free disposal. Gregor had been raised to ambassadorial rank ten years ago, and about the same time he had resumed his life of adventurous love affairs. This might have given her the freedom she needed, but she very seldom made use of her opportunities, far seldomer than her nature might have led one to suppose. She instinctively shunned the homage of men of aristocratic birth, people of rank and station. Her womanhood craved for a love whose impetuous and turbulent waters should flow from inexhaustible springs of passion. The moment Andreas stood before her, she knew that his was the poet nature she had been awaiting all these years.

He for his part had been enmeshed in the coils of desire ever since he had beheld the superb form of this Venetian beauty reclining on the divan, had seen the passionate curve of the lips and throat, the golden glory of her hair. He knew in a flash that he was for her and she for him.

In silence, now, the two sat dreaming, wandering along the highways and byways of their memories. As Olivia watched the poet's face emerging into the light of the overhanging lampions and retreating into the shadows again, she knew that the memories crowding into the mind of this young man were richer than her own, but that in the realm of dreams hers was the more abundant recollection.

Andreas gazed at her across the table, and as he gazed, the agitation which had filled him since Othello's disappearance was gradually tranquillized. He forgot his trouble. Slowly he stretched his arm towards her, the back of his hand resting on the marble slab. Slowly she raised her full round arm and laid her shapely hand in his. They had never before touched one another. They had studiously avoided any contact which might raise desires they had no possibility of assuaging, for both were keenly aware of their own passionate natures. Now their hearts were filled with fear and hope. For the first time Andreas felt her hand in his. It lay dry and cool upon his palm. Slowly he bent forward, and put his lips to her arm. He was dimly aware that this first kiss was a foretaste of all that was to follow, and while he, with closed eyes, sank his lips into her white flesh, she leaned back and gazed earnestly down upon the dark head of her lover. When, after a long interval, he raised his eyes to hers, she got up and led him through the green archway and down towards the river. A wild and overgrown path led them to a crag whence they could see immemorial cedars stretching columnar arms skyward out of the immensity of the waters. The undergrowth had never been cleared in this spot, huge clusters of ferns pushed up through the tangle, the broom had thickened into veritable bushes, and cherry laurels, tall and impenetrable, had gathered around the trunks of the cedar trees. From below came the everlasting lap of the waters upon the stones, and, amid all these sounds of a primeval world, could be heard the pulsating paddle of a tiny steamer, far away, its twinkling lights reflected in the water.

To the poet, as he followed the pale gleam of Olivia's ample garments, it seemed that he was being led to the gates of death and that his guide was holding the fateful scales that should seal his doom. On reaching the top of the rocky eminence Olivia moved slowly towards the huge trunk of one of the cedars and leaned her back against it, a smile on her lips such as he had never seen there before, an expression he could never have expected to behold on this face, a look half shy and half alluring. Throwing wide his arms he folded her to him, pressing her against the tree, and pressing the back of his hands against the rough bark, while with the palms he felt the soft contact of her body and her hair. When at last the long kiss came to an end, the name he had spoken at their first meeting rose to his mind, but the sweet and melancholy gains of this present hour left no other wish but to utter the word he had whispered so many times during the last fortnight:

"Olivia!"

All that was woman in her responded to the man in him. She left the support of the tree and flung herself against him, pulled him to her in a closer and closer embrace, and pressed her lips to his as she murmured:

"Andreas!"

Two hours later he was once again in her great blue room. She had given him the key of a private door into the park and told him how he might find his way in. Then she had led him back to the house, had bade him good-night from the top of the wide steps that led down from the hall, and had sent her household to bed. He had wandered the streets, savouring his two hours' waiting as only a poet knew how. Certainty, postponement, security, a strategic device, hours of joy without end, one final delay, a stream of mixed sensations, coursed through his blood and flooded his brain, driving him and elating him. The practical necessity of keeping his eye on his watch so as not to miss the appointed hour merely served to whet his appetite and to render his expectations more acute. At last he turned the key in the rusty lock and groped his way to her room. At the door he came to a halt. He wished to relish the idea that here, two weeks ago, he had been ushered in, a stranger, where now he was privileged to enter as a lover.

The room was unlighted, but in the soft radiance of the moon he could see Olivia's outline on the shore that lay beyond the blue sea of carpet. Tonight, in one second, he flew to his haven of love. Without saying a word she drew him to her, flooding him in the waves of her long golden tresses. He pushed aside the white cloak that covered her, his hungry lips devouring the breasts she lifted towards him.

When, many hours later, Andreas rose from the couch, he shivered with cold, for he was naked, and Olivia, lying motionless, bade him put on a robe she had brought from Damascus, and which she loved. The moon had not set, and in its pale light Andreas in his long gold-embroidered gown, his raven hair disordered by her loving fingers, looked like an Arab, dark, slender, and burned by the hot summer sun. Her head pillowed on her arm, she lay there inert, gazing up at him. Then he heard the lovely alto voice saying:

"Hafiz!"

"Venetian beauty," was his quick response.

And she: "If I am ever to be loved by a Moor, I would have you for my Othello."

His face twitched, and she remembered too late what that name must mean to him. She quickly rose and came towards him:

"Andreas!"

She drew him to the window the better to read his countenance. Like black lace, the delicate tracery of the trees swayed against the night sky. The mighty stream flowed on, dreaming its dreams, softly murmuring to itself, no longer enlivened with the twinkling lights, while in the blue-black distance the line of the hills on the farther side of the river rose and fell along the horizon.

"Speak to me, Andreas."

She clasped him, and he, while fondling her hair, looked over and beyond her to those distant hills where Diana tonight was sojourning. "What is she doing? Is she gazing forth from her tent over the wide steppe, oblivious of the man who is kneeling at her feet?"

Olivia's eyes, too, had travelled to those same hills. Like the sound of distant drums she heard her memories marching by, heard the mad wooing of the count in the days when he had been her lover, heard his cynically wanton words as he had, increasingly, become the husband and nothing more. She saw Diana's compact breasts as the girl had stood before her dressed in a simple linen frock, saw Diana standing at her side in this same window, murmuring: "You are beautiful."

Andreas, too, felt peculiarly lucid. His brain seemed lighted up as a great hall will be lighted for a festivity. His memories radiated before him, never had he seen so clearly before. There was the statue in its niche, the statue of a naked amazon which had so often lured him to the Vatican last winter. The vision took on life; Diana herself stepped down from the niche and stood before him, but as he put out his hand to touch her, the figure of the count came between, and carried her off, laughing....