CHAPTER TWO

By the time they had returned next day from a ramble along the cliffs, Wilhelm had completely won over the heart of the boy, while Maria had conquered his own. A youth with a taste for adventure, inclined to search out the bizarre and the unfamiliar in nature and in man--this native of the South German highlands, born far from the sea, had during his first sea voyage gained acquaintance with some of the marvels of sea life, and (immune to the conventional pleasures of a voyage) had adapted himself to what conformed with his own predisposition. Having read in a story of sea life something about great lizards, he felt sure that they would have their habitat on the very coast where fate had now beguiled him. And in truth they were there where he expected to find them. It was as if a benevolent deity were unwilling to disappoint the young innocent in any of his hopes.

Indeed, Wilhelm was never disappointed. His youth had been passed alternately in the company of artists, of persons temporarily visiting the town, and of the peasants in his village at home, the peasant folk from whom he had sprung. He had never made any claims on life, for his wishes were visionary ones, incapable of realization in the world of every day. Half musician, and half poet, he wandered penniless through life and through many a countryside. One day he would rise from board with tourists in Florence, for his charming personality and a talent for acting as guide often made him one of a cheerful company for weeks at a stretch; the next day he would find hospitable welcome in a peasant's shanty at Carreggi, because he had sat down to teach the cottar's children to play the lute. He was usually deferential where women were concerned, so long as they were not ugly or old; and he was content if he could merely stroke a gloved hand while driving along in a carriage. But with English girls, who wanted all they could get from love without running any of the risks, he was not backward; indeed he was more cruel at times than he realized, for he would indite little poems full of innuendoes and ambiguities, which of an evening he read aloud to the parents and admirers of the young ladies. Back again in his native hills, he had no scruples in passing the night with a village maid, for he had a nice appreciation of the different spheres into which his birth and upbringing brought him.

Maria made a strong appeal to his nature, partly because she was still almost a child, but also because of her maidenliness. He toyed with these two aspects with delicate hands, and found Clemens a useful buffer in his manipulations. The lad himself was wont to feel that he and the girl were much of an age, but since Wilhelm, who was their senior, made proposals which in the ordinary course Clemens would have disdained as childish and lacking in dignity, the boy was willing to lend himself to his guest's suggestions lest, by refusing, he should appear babyish. Maria, on the other hand, so recently emerging from her childhood, was thrown back into that period by these light-hearted games; she lent herself agreeably to the stranger's will, telling herself it was all a huge joke, and Wilhelm's homage no more than that of a nice boy. So it was that the three of them crept in and out of damp caves, and the imp in Wilhelm so arranged matters that shoes and stockings had to be discarded, and that he should give a hand to the girl as they scrambled barefoot over the stones. Maria blushed, and that was balm to Wilhelm's heart. Clemens grasped the significance of no more than a part of this by-play; but he understood enough to make him react in boyish fashion. He would try to frighten her by suddenly disappearing--but he never stayed so long away as to give Wilhelm time to snatch a kiss. The knight in Clemens and his position as heir to these estates and as cousin made him fully conscious of his responsibilities.

That same forenoon Diana sat with Olivia in the spacious sitting-room, a square, vaulted chamber in one of the towers, giving from three sides on to the sea, but with its windows usually shuttered in conformity with the countess's preference for a dim light. Wanton sunbeams, however, defied her precautions, and took advantage of every crack and hole in the blue painted wood to send their radiant shafts across the darkness--a symbol of her own soul, as Olivia liked to think.

Leaning on her elbow as was her habit, her limbs stretched out on the wide ottoman, Olivia looked over to where Diana sat. Her ardent eyes burned with increasing fire, the longer she was condemned to gaze upon the arena of the passions. These two women had little use for the small change of conversation.

"You are quite brown, Diana; and yet you spent the whole winter in town, cooped up in rooms."

"It's the sea. I've been three weeks cruising."

"In twenty years, living upon this coast, I remained white."

"And is it not lovelier to be white and to have golden hair?"

"Atalanta!"

Olivia sank back upon the divan, gazing up towards the vaulted ceiling, for she wanted to call forth again the vision of the Diana she had seen that evening in Berlin, a vision which had seemed to express the fullest possibilities of the young woman's being. But to conjure up this picture she must not have Diana's actual form before her eyes.

"To be able to personify a goddess," she murmured, "to discover thus early one's own essential shape, and to be able to fill out its structure unto completion.... O blessed freedom...."

Diana was thinking: "How fiercely she strives and seeks; yet she is excluded from the realm of enjoyment so soon as her dreams become reality!"

"Have not you, too, since then gained something of freedom?" Diana asked.

With unwonted alacrity, Olivia replied passionately:

"Not as freedom! They all have a home; Maria, her hopes; my mother, this castle; Scherer, his newspapers; the Russian, his ideas; and Gregor--well, he wavered between deeds and adventures, and was at home in both. But you have chosen the world! Yes, you, Diana, among all the persons I have met, you alone are worthy to regard the great dome of the firmament (at which I have so often gazed as at something vacuous and inimical) as the roof of your ancestral home. That is why you are so fond of the stars!"

She spoke angrily and moodily, her eyes turned earthward, her chin resting in her palms as she leaned upon her elbows.

"Are not dreams, too, a home?" asked Diana softly.

"I want to get away; it is high time I did so; indeed, there is not a moment to be lost. How well I understand Herr Franklin's erratic behaviour. He refuses any longer to let his fancy roam; he is resolved to be up and doing, accomplishing something visible and tangible--though deep in his inner self he knows well enough that it is vanity and deception, and less than a dream.... Well, I too want a home; love shall be my roof-tree, and then, quaffing one final draught, I shall sink back into my dreams as if I had never forsaken them!"

She rose while she was yet speaking, and, quite contrary to her wont, paced up and down the room. Suddenly she stood still, surprised at the sound she heard. Diana was laughing! It was a quiet, short, two-syllabled ripple of laughter, and was repeated a second, then a third time. Olivia wanted to scold. Then, taking heart, for the little metallic music gave her back her courage, she stepped up to Diana and said:

"You are laughing, O most wise Diana, and that does not become a youthful huntress!"

She stood before Diana, leaning forward, her two hands on the arm of the chair, her face very near that of the seated woman. Diana looked up, unperturbed; nor did she try to still the laughter that was still lighting her countenance.

"You have at last spoken as I have so long been hoping to hear you speak, my beautiful Olivia." And as the words fell from her lips she was thinking: I should like to kiss her now; but then she'd be furious or she'd withdraw into her shell.

Slowly Olivia raised her head with its heavy crown of golden hair, and, as she stood before her guest, she said irrelevantly:

"I believe I want to have more children."

"I've been thinking the same thing ever since I met you again."

Olivia had opened her heart to Diana with unwonted candour. She, like Diana, was not a woman who could make friends with other members of her sex. And yet, today, she had confided in another woman! Diana's tranquil statement made Olivia feel that here was a person of superior strength, and, forgetting her own preoccupations for a moment, she asked:

"And what about yourself--do you still hesitate?"

Behind the question, Diana sensed a growing distrust, and she said to herself: "It's just as well I did not kiss her just now!" Still, she did not shirk an answer:

"I have never gone against nature, and I have always felt that those above, who guard me and protect me, will not deal harshly with me."

"Do you believe in the saints?" asked Olivia, somewhat awed, and coming a step nearer.

"In the gods," corrected Diana softly.

"Is this Russian a believer?" asked Olivia, once more without transition.

"I fancy he loves no one but himself."

"No one but himself," echoed Olivia, and Diana felt instinctively that the countess was comparing him with her own self, and was applying the words to herself.

"And the prince?"

Olivia seemed to be questioning the oracle.

"The prince appears to be a believer, after his fashion. Perhaps he is the first knight who is not at the same time a robber!"

Olivia's mind, awakened to fresh issues, because for the first time in her life she had spoken her thoughts out frankly, did not take in Diana's last words. Again she spoke irrelevantly.

"All these men are more or less in love with you! And yet you can cruise about alone with them on a ship. If I did not know what you had done with Gregor, I'd fancy you were as cold as the sea."

Diana got up.

"Let us clearly understand one another," said she resolutely. "Not one of these men is of so much account to me that, if the 'Excelsior' sailed tomorrow, he might not stay behind in this castle for all I cared."

The unusual bluntness with which she spoke was deliberate for she wished to adapt herself to Olivia's unsocial prejudices. But Olivia, whose heart had beat tumultuously since first she had thrust aside the veils of her inner sanctuary that morning, again did the unexpected, for she seized Diana's hand, saying:

"There is but one person to my knowledge who should not sail away in the 'Excelsior' tomorrow. Give me your promise! Clemens, too, is uneasy at the thought that you and Wilhelm may go away."

"Clemens will forget me in this affection for Wilhelm; and you will do the same in your love for Clemens. He is handsome and chivalrous, and in a short while will become your admirer!"

Olivia turned her face away.

"He'll learn about love from a serving-wench in a year or two!"

There was a knock at the door, and, when Olivia petulantly cried "Come in," Eduard appeared upon the threshold.

"That sounded more like 'Go away,' as in the _Magic Flute_! This dim religious light is also quite in keeping."

"Come in, Prince, come in," cried Olivia, still impatiently.

"Yes, do come in," added Diana. "The countess was just deploring the fact that Clemens before long will learn about love from a serving-wench."

"What is a dutiful son to do, seeing that in the castles of the mighty the only females he meets with are young women of noble birth (who are taboo so far as illicit experience is concerned), and serving-wenches?"

"It's all a matter of nerves, Prince. So far as my own feelings are concerned I should prefer, in this case, that it should be a girl of noble birth!"

"But suppose he should promise you," said Eduard teasingly, "to lead her to the altar, the more or less, let it be less, pure serving-wench: you would have to embrace this peasant as a daughter, Countess."

"I am not your Russian friend, Prince Eduard," retorted Olivia coldly.

"Of course a confirmed bachelor has no right to discuss such matters as the upbringing of children," Eduard continued. "Just as if the mere fact of becoming a father instantly conferred the necessary knowledge! Should I, nevertheless, venture to express an opinion before you ladies I should say: I, as the mother of a handsome boy, would, as soon as he was seventeen, or, for greater security, when he was sixteen years of age, request the handsomest among my women friends to initiate the youngster into the mysteries of Venus."

Olivia turned towards him with animation:

"How often have I not had the same idea. But our social institutions sap a woman's strength of mind, so that she cannot venture on such a course--though she may often have dreamed she had the courage as she sat alone in the gloaming."

She glanced over to where Diana stood in her short linen dress, which shimmered white in the shadowy room. The prince, too, under shelter of the darkness, shot a meaning look at Diana, implying that she alone had been in his thoughts as he spoke, and that he, Prince Eduard, was the lad of sixteen under the alias of Clemens, Count of Münsterberg. Diana well understood the meaning which underlay his words, and, facing the eyes of those who, with silent eloquence, obviously looked upon her as a predestined victim chosen as a sacrifice upon the altar of beauty, she felt that they were trying to rivet chains upon her, to force a line of action upon her, instead of leaving her to follow the magnetic promptings of her own nature.

As if in answer to these challenging eyes, she suddenly turned about towards the window near which she was standing, and, with an impetuous gesture, flung the shutters wide. A cataract of light came flooding into the room. Olivia turned away her eyes; Eduard stood there, blinking his, as if frightened.

"High tide," cried Diana. "The wind is blowing fresh from the nor'east, and there's a heavy swell. It's not so very hot yet. Come, Olivia! You promised you'd come along for a bathe!"

An hour later, Wilhelm's little group joined company with Scherer and Kyril, who had been spending the early hours of the forenoon aboard. They all made for the sheltered cove at the foot of the cliff whereon the castle was perched. The party as it assembled for the morning dip was not so much at its ease as the candour of some of its members and the education of the others might have led one to suppose. Olivia and Maria, in their rather full bathing costumes, looked more mundane than the former wished or the latter suspected herself to appear. The men were used to the water and were all of them swimmers. Wilhelm, to whom sea bathing was a new experience, hesitated at the edge of the waves; from time to time he would assume the most comical postures as he hunted for crabs or starfish in the shallow pools; he would exclaim with delight at his finds, so absorbed in his discoveries that even Maria slipped from his mind, and he became wholly unconscious of the presence of women. The prince's ironical habit of mind led him to make mischievous comments anent the other men's figures to Olivia as she lay basking in the sun while her niece cuddled down at her side rather bashfully. Scherer was his usual courteous self, holding himself gallantly, but not failing to appreciate the contrast between the voluptuous curves of Olivia's form and the slender grace of the maiden at her side--though Maria's figure proved to be more developed than he had supposed, and better in keeping with her full young lips. But his gaze did not linger; he soon betook himself to the task in hand, striking out through the water with virile energy.

Diana, Kyril, and Clemens simultaneously disappeared beneath the waves, and simultaneously their heads bobbed up again, greatly to the surprise of all three of them, for they had not seen one another enter the water. Indeed, Diana, in her closely fitting dress had sped so swiftly down the shore that hardly any had caught a glimpse of her as she flashed by. All three appeared for the first time to be in their appropriate element. Eduard, who was not a practiced swimmer, and who, moreover, was more amused by the erotic play of word and look afforded him on the shore, gave up trying to emulate the trio almost before he had begun. Scherer soon followed suit, and Wilhelm's world for the moment consisted entirely of marine fauna.

A sentiment of twofold liberation had invaded Diana's whole being after the ambiguous words spoken in the darkened room. The sea appeared to her pure, and free from all impulsive contamination, a mirror of light, and she was glad and not a little proud to be able to leave the mockers behind her on the beach. Clemens dived and somersaulted, excited to exhibit his prowess by the proximity of a young and beautiful woman, who watched his feats with gay, admiring eyes. In boyish merriment he splashed water at her, invited her to dance, kicked up his heels, spluttered, and cried out jubilantly amid the foam. At last his antics nearly deprived him of voice, so that his joyous screams became fainter.

In Kyril, Diana was surprised to find the perfect swimmer. For the third time she was to witness this man doing something in which he excelled; and for many seconds her thoughts went back to the evening when he played the 'cello with so masterly a cunning. Although her alert intelligence loved to pit itself against the intelligence of men, and gained by the rivalry, it was the physical quality of the male, that which was perceptible by the senses, which stirred her blood; and for this reason she was apt to decide her attitude towards a man before ever he had opened his lips to speak. To withstand the strength of the waves as they flooded towards the land, impelled forward by the breeze from the north-east, to know when to yield and when to push through them; now to be carried on the crest of a billow without striking a stroke, and to let one's body be drawn into the furrow of the wave; without a word, to shoot through the next when it threatens to break over one's head; now to lie on one's back, propelling oneself forward with the legs alone; now again diving through the mighty swells, resisting their weight, judging their dimensions, so as not to emerge prematurely--how well Diana knew the art! Her admiration for the Russian's mastery was far greater than the man himself would have tolerated had he guessed that it existed.

And yet, with the instinct of a man aware of his own prowess, Kyril had felt beforehand that while bathing he would show to advantage in the eyes of this extravagant, luxury-loving creature, and thus win the admiration which she seemed to withhold from his intellectual gifts. It was for this reason that he had once before, when they visited Leucas, proposed a bathe. On that occasion the elements had made it impossible to carry out, for the wind seemed likely to drop at any moment, and they wished to profit by every instant it lasted in order to sail among the Ionian islands. In so far as he was aware that under present circumstances he was pleasing to Diana, his own regard for her increased; for, ever since he had first clapped eyes on her, the evening when she had posed as Atalanta, and then again when he had seen her playing the fine lady in Scherer's drawing-room, he had been puzzled to know what to make of her. The instinctive urge of his being towards her beauty, though veiled by his revolt against her whole personality, had never been quenched; and now, for the first time, in this particular hour, his fanatical mind was able to grasp the reason for her beauty: only now, when he saw this body, constrained on board to a quietude he had little appreciation of, bestirring itself in movements fraught with meaning and purpose, did he realize the aim towards which it had been moulded. And, as the realization burst upon him, his instincts and thoughts, his theories and the imperious call of his manhood, surged over her lithe, bronzed limbs in an irresistible flood.

He swam out to sea, almost unaware of what he was doing, defying the surges, ever farther from the shore, as if enticing her to follow. Clemens, his young arms tired by his exertions, could swim no farther. He called to her to stop; but the lady he had been squiring through the watery element, gave the boy the go-by, and followed the man whose rhythmic progress allured her. Those left behind on the shore were anxious, but their cries of warning merely served to stimulate the rivalry and ambition of the two water sprites. Eduard's uneasiness was of a double kind; how he reproached himself at this moment for not having spent more of his life at the seaside! He strained his eyes to the utmost, shading them with his left hand, filled with mortification and a growing jealousy, vainly endeavouring to calculate the distance between the two heads that bobbed in and out of the water. Scherer was engaged on similar calculations.

Neither could see how Kyril, suddenly disappearing when Diana was no more than a couple of strokes away, swam beneath her, his eyes open in the water; how his strong arm clasped her body as she floated inert on the surface, how he rose and drew her tightly towards him in a mighty embrace, and continued swimming with his legs alone. His teeth flashed, the pressure of his arm became more intimate, his eyes glowed ardently, his hand sought and held her left breast, and Diana, after her first cry of alarm, abandoned herself to the sea and to the man, her curls tossed by the wind and sprayed by the waves. Motionless, she waited for him to release her from his bold embrace. Then he turned his face shoreward, relaxed his hold, and the two, side by side, swam slowly and silently towards land.