'This room is stifling, it is so small; and yet there are horrible
draughts in it. I dare say the ridiculous walls are not an inch
thick,' said the Princess Napraxine now, as she rose from the
breakfast-table, and drew her delicate skirts, with their undulating
waves and foam of lace, out through the glass doors and over the
marble of the terrace to the sheltered nook in which she had been
sitting before breakfast, where a square Smyrna carpet was placed
under several cushioned lounging-chairs. It was only two o'clock, and
the air was warm and full of brilliant sunshine.
'It is all in dreadful taste,' she said for the hundredth time. 'This
sort of mock-Syrian scenery, mixed up with châlets, villas, and
hotels, has such a look of the stage. It seems made on purpose for
_maquillées_ beauties, dyed and pampered gamblers, and great ladies
who are received nowhere else. Places have all a physiognomy, moral
as well as physical. The Riviera must have been enchanting when there
was only a mule-track as wide as a ribbon between the hills and the
sea from Marseilles to Genoa, but now that the moral emanations of
Monte Carlo and of the _cinq heures_ at all the nondescript houses,
and of the baccarat groups in the clubs which are not as exclusive as
they might be, have spread all along the coast like miasma, the whole
thing is only a _décor de scène_, the very gardens are masquerading as
Egypt, as Damascus, as Palermo. It is all _postiche_.'
'You are very cruel, madame,' murmured Melville.
'That is the only thing you can any of you find to reply when I say
anything that is true!' said the Princess, with triumph.
'The de Vannes are your nearest neighbours,' suggested her husband.
'Did you mean that Cri-Cri is _bien nature_?' she said, with her
little low laugh. 'I fear neither of them will contribute anything to
redeem the character of the place for either _maquillage_ or
gambling----'
'Why would you come to it?' he asked, with all a man's stupidity.
'Why do people ever ask one why one does things?' she interrupted,
irritably. 'One imagines one will like a thing; one gets it; and
directly, of course, one does not like it. That is a kind of general
law. Monsignore Melville will tell us, I suppose, that it is to
prevent us attaching ourselves to the pleasures of this world; but as
it also operates in preventing one's attaching oneself to anybody, as
well as anything, I do not know that the result is as admirable as he
would imagine.'
'I never said----' began Melville.
'Oh, no, but you would say if you were in the pulpit,' she replied,
before he could finish his sentence. 'You would say that even _ennui_
and satiety and depression have their uses if they lead the soul to
heaven; but that is just what they do not do; they only lead to
morphia, chloral, dyspepsia, and Karlsbad. It is quite impossible--it
must be quite impossible, even for you, Monsignore--to consider
Karlsbad as an antechamber to heaven!'
Melville tried to look shocked, but did not succeed well, as he was a
little Rabelaisian and Montaignist at heart, and not intended by
nature for a Churchman.
'What are we going to do?' said the Prince, as he stretched himself in
his chair, and lighted another cigarette.
'Stay where we are,' suggested Geraldine, who desired nothing better,
as a _tête-à-tête_ was a favour never accorded to him twice in
twenty-four hours.
'Oh, not I, indeed!' cried Napraxine, with as much alacrity as was
possible beneath his heavy 'envelope of flesh.' 'I shall go to Monte
Carlo. I have told them to harness. If you like to come----'
At that moment a servant brought him a card. He read what was written
in pencilled lines upon it; then raised his head with a pleased
exclamation.
'_Je vous le donne en mille!_' he cried. 'Nadine, who do you think is
here?'
'A goose with a diseased liver, or a hundred green oysters?' said his
wife, contemptuously. 'I can imagine no lesser source for so much
radiance.'
The Prince, regardless of sarcasm, or tempered to endurance of it by
long habit, answered placidly:
'No; it is Othmar.'
The face of Nadine Napraxine changed considerably; the most astute
observer could not have decided whether annoyance or gratification was
the most visible expression; her eyes lighted with a look different to
the mild amusement with which she had greeted Geraldine.
'Where can he have come from?' continued her husband. 'He was in Asia
a little while ago. One is always so glad to see him. He is so unlike
other people. It is only you, Nadine, who do not appreciate him.'
'He is _poseur_,' said she with languor. 'But I do not know whether
that is reason enough to keep him waiting at the gate?'
'I forgot,' said Napraxine. 'There is no one less _poseur_, I assure
you. Clever as you are, you sometimes mistake. Grégor, beg Count
Othmar to join us here.'
The servant withdrew. Princess Nadine put a large peacock fan between
her and the sun; she yawned a little.
'Seven minutes for Grégor to send down to the gate, seven minutes for
Othmar to come up from the gate, a minute and a half more for him to
traverse the house; we have fifteen minutes and a half in which to
vilify our coming friend, as modern hospitality binds us to do. Let us
begin. We must be stupid indeed if we cannot kill anybody's character
in a quarter of an hour.'
'There is no character to kill,' began her husband.
'Pardon me! No one can say he is characterless. He is a very marked
character.'
'That was not what I meant,' said Napraxine. 'I meant that no one
could say otherwise than good of him. And if there were such a one, he
should not say it before me.'
Nadine Napraxine let her eye rest on her husband with a peculiar
expression, half pity, half derision, which might have given him
plentiful food for reflection, had he been a man who ever reflected.
'Poor Platon! He has all the antique virtues!' she said softly. 'He
even thinks it necessary to defend his acquaintances behind their
backs. _Quel type admirable!_'
'Why do you like Othmar, Prince?' said Geraldine, abruptly. 'I detest
him.'
'Indeed?' said Napraxine, in surprise. 'You must be almost alone,
then. What do you see to dislike?'
Geraldine glanced at his hostess, but she refused to accept the
challenge of his regard. She was looking out to sea with a little
dreamy amused smile.
'I hate all financiers,' said Geraldine, moodily and lamely. '_La
grande Juiverie_ is one gigantic nest of brigands; those men get
everything, whilst we lose even our old acres.'
'Perhaps that is your fault,' said Prince Platon; 'and Othmar, believe
me, has nothing to do with the _Juiverie_; the Othmar are pure Croats;
Croats loathe Hebrews.'
'He is very fortunate, Prince, to have your admiration and your
confidence,' said Geraldine, with a sarcasm, lost on the
pachydermatous placidity of his host.
'I have always liked Othmar since one day, of which I will tell you
when we have more time,' answered Napraxine.
'Please tell us now,' said his wife. 'I have always been curious to
know the affinity between you and Othmar. It is a walrus gambling
with a stag.'
'Am I the walrus? It is an awkward animal,' said her husband
good-humouredly. 'No, the tale can wait; he will be here in a moment.'
'If he were an Admirable Crichton he would be detestable, if only
because he is so hideously rich,' interrupted Geraldine, with
sullenness, 'and the Princess has already spoken of another defect,
the greatest a man can have, to my thinking; he is _poseur_.'
'Pshaw!' said the Prince. 'How? What do you mean? Othmar, I should
say, never thinks of himself.'
'Oh, he is _poseur_, certainly,' said Geraldine, with an undisguised
cruel exultation in the cruel epithet. 'He is a Croesus, and he poses
for simplicity; he is a financier, and he poses as a grand-seigneur;
he is gorged with gold, and he poses as a Spartan on black broth. The
whole life of the man is affectation. His humility is as detestable as
his pride; his liberalities are as offensive as his possessions.'
'_Tiens, tiens!_' murmured Napraxine, taking his cigar out of his
mouth. 'My dear friend, you are under my roof, or at least on my
terrace, so I cannot quarrel with you. I can only ask you kindly to
remember what I said a little while ago, and to spare me again
recalling to you that Othmar also is my friend. You will understand.'
Geraldine coloured slightly, conscious of having been ill-bred, and
muttered sullenly, 'I beg your pardon.' A more tart and stinging
retort was on his lips to the effect that the new comer was the last
man on earth whom his host should welcome, but his awe of the Princess
Napraxine repressed it. She herself gave her husband a glance of more
appreciation than she had ever cast on him, and said to herself, 'The
walrus is the clumsiest and the stupidest of all living creatures, but
it is so honest----' and said aloud:
'Verify your quotations, was the advice given by a dying don to an
Oxford student. Geraldine quoted from me, but he did not stay to
verify what he quoted. I spoke in haste. Othmar is a tiny trifle of a
_poseur_, but it is quite unconsciously; it is the consequence of an
anomalous position. All his instincts refuse to be the Samuel Bernard
of his generation, and he is equally horrified at the idea of
appearing as a Sidonia. If he had only ten thousand francs a year
to-morrow he would be happy and charming. As it is, with his ten
millions or his ten hundred millions, there is always the sense of
that wall of ingots filling up the background, and keeping, as he
thinks, the sunshine out of his life. Occasionally it makes him see
everything yellow, like the jaundice, and to everybody else it makes
him seem a colossus, which is distressing to him, as he is of ordinary
stature.'
'He is even taller than I am,' said her husband.
Princess Napraxine, who had made her little speech languidly, looking
at the sea, and extended full length on her Indian cane chair, said
with a little smile:
'My dear, I spoke metaphorically. I did not mean to underrate your
friend's centimètres. I meant merely to explain that if he do look
occasionally a _poseur_ it is the fault of Europe, which, ever since
he was born, has persisted in worshipping him as one of the
incarnations of Mammon. If he had belonged to _la grande Juiverie_ he
would have been much happier. Jews can swallow any amount of flattery
as they can wear any number of rings. He likes neither.'
'Count Othmar,' announced Grégor, ascending the terrace steps from the
gardens.
The person announced was a man of some thirty years old, with delicate
and handsome features, and an expression at once gentle and cold; his
height was great, and his bearing that of a _grand seigneur_. He
looked weary and dissatisfied; yet his life was one of the most envied
of Europe. He greeted Napraxine with warmth, the Princess with grace
and ceremony; Geraldine and his sister with a rather cold courtesy.
Nadine Napraxine had flushed a little as he kissed her hand; a lovely
faint flush which made her cheeks like two pale-pink sea-shells.
Geraldine noticed that momentary change of colour, and thought
bitterly, 'She never looked like that for _me_!'
Napraxine was not so observant; his hospitable soul was filled with
the pleasure of welcoming his friend, and he felt angered with his
wife because she said so indifferently:
'I wonder you did not stay amongst the Mongols, Othmar. They must be
much more original than we are. They ride all day long, don't they,
over deserts of grass? How enchanting! I wonder you could tear
yourself away.'
'Perhaps it would have been wiser to stay,' said Othmar, with a
meaning which she alone understood. 'But I fear "the world holds us"
too strongly for us to be long content even with a Tartar mare and a
fat sheep's tail. I am fortunate to find you all here. I came from
Egypt; I saw your name in a newspaper, and could not resist driving
over to La Jacquemerille.'
'You have your "Berenice"?'
'Yes; she has behaved very well; we met with a typhoon in the Indian
Ocean, and were nearly lost; but she has been patched up and ran home
bravely. I have left her at Marseilles to be thoroughly overhauled.'
'You will have to try her in a match with Geraldine's "Zostera."'
'I could not hope to compete with Count Othmar,' said Geraldine,
sullenly; for him the skies were overcast, the sun was clouded, the
pretty marble terrace with its gay awnings seemed dark with the gloom
of night.
He hated La Jacquemerille which he had been so eager to persuade his
friends to inhabit: who could have told that this man would drop on
this Mediterranean shore without note of warning, at a moment when he
was supposed to be safe on the sandy steppes of Mongolia? 'As Count
Othmar never, I believe, shot anything in his life, I cannot perceive
what possible attraction any wild life can have for him,' he added
now, in a tone that was aggressive and impertinent.
Othmar glanced at him with a regard which said much, as he replied
simply: 'I have shot the most noxious animal--man; I have never, I
confess, shot wood doves or tame pheasants.'
'Geraldine will shoot doves all the week,' said the Princess, with a
sense that La Jacquemerille had become interesting. She loved to see
men on the brink of a quarrel: sometimes she restrained them from
passing the brink; sometimes she did not; sometimes she helped them
over it with a little imperceptible touch, light as the touch of a
feather, which yet had all the power of electricity.
'That is modern knighthood,' said Othmar. 'I prefer my Mongols.'
'My brother is English,' said Lady Brancepeth, to avert disagreeable
rejoinders; 'he always reminds me of the old French caricature: "It is
a beautiful day; let us go and kill something."'
'Othmar is more English than Croat,' said Napraxine, 'but he does not
kill things, he prefers to paint them.'
'_Crésus doublé de Corôt_,' murmured his wife. 'Othmar, have you
sketched any Mongol ladies? are there such beings? or are they only as
that terrible Dumas has it, _la femelle de l'homme_?'
'Only _la femelle de l'homme_, Madame. They cannot be said to be women
in any civilised sense of that term; they only know the duties of
maternity, and are ignorant of the victories of coquetry. You will
perceive that they are an entirely elementary animal.'
Princess Nadine heard with a little smile; she knew what allusions to
herself were contained in the words.
'You should have married one of them,' she said, slowly moving her big
fan. 'It would have been too picturesque; the owner of two hundred
millions dwelling by choice under a pole and a piece of blue cloth,
and----'
'Cannot you forbear to quote my millions?' said Othmar. 'You would not
reproach a hunchback with his hump.'
'Though it is the only thing which makes him noticeable,' muttered
Geraldine, but the fear of his hostess made him speak too low to be
overheard save by Othmar, who did not deign to notice the insolence.
'You think money is not interesting,' said the Princess Nadine, 'but
you are wrong. It is the Haroun al Raschid of our day. It is the wand
of Mercury. It is the sunshine of life. Only fancy, Othmar, if you
chose you could make the desert blossom like the rose; you could call
up a city like Paris in the centre of your Mongolian steppes; that is
very interesting indeed. Money itself is not so, but when one
considers its enormous influence, its fantastic powers, it is so; it
is even more, it is positively bewitching.'
'When it comes out of anything so fairylike and invisible as the
Prince's salt-crystals it may be,' replied Othmar, 'but not when it is
tainted by commerce. Remember, Princess, your Mercury was the god of
the mart and of the thieves.'
'That was in the Roman decadence.'
'And are we not in a decadence?'
'It is the fashion to say so, but I am not sure. Have we decayed? and,
if we have, from what? The last century contained nothing noble.'
'Even the burning of Moscow belongs to this,' said Othmar, with a bow
to Napraxine, whose grandfather had been one of the foremost generals
at the defence of Moscow, and one of the chief counsellors of that
heroic sacrifice.
'Othmar always remembers what is fine in history and in his friends,'
said the Prince, well pleased. 'He is not like Nadine there.'
'No, indeed,' said Lady Brancepeth; 'she always likes to see that a
great man is a little one somewhere; she will always find out the
speck on the handsome rosy apple, the yellow stain on the ivory, the
rift in the lute--that is her way. She would never have admired Dr.
Johnson, she would have only laughed at his uncouthness and his dishes
of tea, and only seen that he touched all the posts in the streets.'
'I cannot help it if I am observant, and Dr. Johnson certainly would
have bored me,' said the Princess.
'Les délicats sont malheureux:
Rien ne saurait les satisfaire,'
quoted Othmar.
'Then you and I are both profoundly miserable,' said Nadine Napraxine.
'I believe we have never found anything that satisfied either of us.'
'Except, perhaps, each other,' muttered Geraldine, in a smothered
voice, his jealousy conquering his prudence. It was a phrase which no
one heard except his hostess, who was as quick at hearing as Fine
Ears. She did not deign to take any notice of it; it could be punished
at her leisure.
'What an idiot he is,' she thought; 'as if _that_ tone could ever
succeed with _me_!'
She had herself become amused, serene, good-tempered, immediately,
that with the entrance of Othmar the twin masks of tragedy and comedy
had appeared to her prescient eyes to lie upon the stage of the
terrace of La Jacquemerille. The whole place changed to her: the view
was beautiful, the house was quaint and full of colour and variety,
the orange wood was a delightful bit of local colour, the marble
colonnade and the brown wooden balconies were absurd certainly, but
garlanded about with all those sweet American creepers they had a
graceful effect; nowhere else in December would you get roses and
geraniums and white marbles and blue waves, and a thermometer at 20°
Réaumur.
Othmar had brought that dramatic element into her life without which,
despite her really very high intelligence, ennui was apt to descend
upon her. When his eyes encountered that look they became very cold,
and had a challenge in them: the challenge of a man who defies a woman
to make him again the slave of her caprices. Her husband saw nothing
of those glances. Geraldine saw more even than there was to see, and
became moody and dejected. He only roused himself now and then to say
what he thought might be hostile or disagreeable to the new comer. His
remarks were ignored by Othmar, which increased his irritation. The
Princess was amused, as she was, occasionally, at a good theatre, by
the sullenness of the one man and by the coldness of the other. Both
had elements, perhaps, of tragedy and comedy. She felt a sudden
exhilaration and increase of interest, such as a person fond of a
theatre feels when the great actor of the hour makes his entry on the
scene. Geraldine was very useful, she had known him several years: he
was always hopelessly in love with her, timid, devoted, and obedient;
but he had no originality of character to make him very interesting.
He was extremely good-looking, very popular, and very amiable, but he
was commonplace; he had not the wit of his sister. She had admitted
him into her intimacy because he was humble, handsome, and usually so
docile that he seldom irritated her, but he gave no interest to her
life whatever; whereas Othmar--she had scarcely ever confessed it even
to herself--but whilst Othmar had been lost to sight in the wilds of
Asia, society had seemed to her even more stupid than usual.
One had been in love with her for a year; the other two years before
had loved her. There was a considerable difference in the two
passions, which she, with her analytical mind, could perfectly
appraise.
For the one she was quite sure of her sentiment in return. He was
good-looking, agreeable, useful, submissive; he diverted her
sometimes, wearied her occasionally, obeyed her always. She liked him,
and liked better still to tease him. The other had brought into her
life a sense of a stormier emotion than she cared to raise. He had
been more in earnest than she chose to allow; he had loved her
imperiously, ardently, unreasonably; when she had made light of it, he
had left her with indignation and scorn. He had been one of those who
had fought a duel about her, though none but himself and his adversary
had ever known that she was the cause of it, a card at _écarté_ having
served as the colourable pretext. She had never been quite sure what
she had felt for him; admiration in a way, perhaps, but more, she
thought, dislike. But his had been one of the conquests which had most
flattered her. When he had left all his habits and friends and
possessions to plunge into Asian solitudes, she had felt that her
power over him was illimitable. And now he had returned and told her,
with as much chill assertion as a regard could convey, that her power
existed no more for him. She did not care, but the change interested
her, and piqued her.
'Poor Othmar!' she had said often to herself, when remembering the
passages which had passed between them, and thinking of him in Asia;
and now he was back from Asia, and sitting on her garden-terrace at La
Jacquemerille, and was telling her by manner and by glance--perhaps
telling her too persistently and insistantly for it to be entirely
true--that he had vanquished his madness.
It had been a strong if short-lived madness, born first in a
country-house in the Ardennes, in autumn-woods and tapestried
galleries and the stately revelries of a Legitimist party of pleasure,
fanned by her own will into flame in the course of a brilliant, giddy,
insensate winter season in Paris. Then with spring had come the
decisive moment when he had declined to be content any longer with his
position, and he had been lightly laughed at, disdainfully jested
with; and had revolted, and had gone out of Europe after a duel which
had made even her tranquil pulses beat a little quickly in
apprehension of the possible issue.
With her usual consummate tact she had so borne herself that the six
or eight months' devotion, in which Othmar had been the shadow of her
every step, had attracted no injurious notice from her husband or her
world. It was known that he was passionately attached to her, but so
many were so also, that beyond a little more attention than usual,
because he was a more conspicuous person than most, the great world of
Paris only smiled and watched to see if the snowflake melted. It did
not melt, and he went to Asia. The duel had only come out of a trivial
dispute at a club, so every one believed, Prince Napraxine as
innocently as the rest.
It was after the departure of Othmar that her society took to naming
her the _flocon de neige_. It seemed strange, both to men and women,
that Othmar should have been so near her so long and have left no
impression on her life. He had usually a strong influence on those
whom he sought; in this instance he had been the magnetised, not the
magnetiser.
Men always quoted Princess Nadine to their wives as an example to be
followed for the serene indifference with which she flirted all the
year through, yet never was compromised by a breath of calumny. Their
wives sometimes retorted that she had no heart, so could not lose it.
'I promise you I will never be compromised,' she had said to her
father a few months after her marriage; and he, a very easy and
philosophic man of the world, had answered:
'I am sure you mean what you say; but the test of your resolution will
come whenever you shall meet the person who pleases you. At present
you laugh at them all.'
'I do not think I shall ever care,' she had said, with much accurate
knowledge of herself.
Othmar, momentarily lava, had thrown himself in vain against this
indifference; the ice of her temperament had not changed under the
volcanic fires of his. All those airy nothings, that capricious
friendship, that unrecompensed position of servitude which she offered
him, he would have none of, and told her so with passion and force.
'And I will have no melodramatic passions to disturb me,' she had
said. 'They are absurd. They are out of date. They are tiresome.'
Wounded and incensed, he had taken her at her word more completely and
instantly than she had intended; and she had not known whether to
feel regret or relief. She had felt a good deal of triumph. And now he
had returned, unchanged in appearance, handsomer even for that duskier
hue which the desert sun had left on the marble of his features; and
she, and he himself, were silently wondering--was she glad?
He thought she was annoyed; Napraxine thought so too; Geraldine alone,
with a lover's self-paining penetration, felt that life had grown
sweeter and more stimulating to her, that her languid interest in
existence had grown quicker of pulse and more content with its own
atmosphere since her husband had read aloud the name of Othmar on the
pencilled card.
Perhaps, thought he also, with a lover's self-torture, what he had
found in her of indifference, of disdain, of lack of sympathy, had
been due to the absence of the sole person who possessed the power to
touch her dormant emotions.
In reality, Madame Napraxine at that moment felt no more than the
vague expectation and gratification of a spectator at a theatre, who
sees a drama complicate itself, mingled with a certain sense of
curiosity as to why Othmar sought to display to her so conspicuously
his escape from her sorcery. She was not mortified; she was accustomed
to change her adorers into her friends, and she was of a nature too
integrally proud to be capable of small things. She only wondered--and
doubted a little.
Could any one who had loved her once fail to love her all his life?
She thought not. Yet she was not vain.