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.'
'But how can one judge, however just, rightfully judge a nation of
millions unless he have the eyes and ears of Vishnou? I think you
really are a despot by nature, but you are so very disputatious that
you are always ready to repudiate your most cherished opinions for
sheer sake of argument. You should have been a sophist.'
'Every question is polygonal. Look at that gleam of light on that sail
and all the rest of the vessel lost in fog--how charming!--it is like
a picture of Aïvanoffsky's. That is what I like in life; nothing said
out, nothing broadly and rudely done, everything _à demi mot_,
everything suggestion, not assertion; that is the only way to exhaust
nothing, not to be wearied.'
'You like impressions, not pictures; that is the new school. Everyone
is not satisfied with it. That there are people to whom these vague
wavy lines, those dim washes of colour, tell little----'
'Oh, the people to whom one must explain! Let them all go where the
sheep of Panurge went.'
'I wish you would condescend for once to explain something,' said Lady
Brancepeth, and paused: Princess Nadine heard with a look of infinite
_ennui_.
'You mean to revenge yourself for having been awakened out of that
dose. I never explain--_enfin!_----tell me what you want.'
Under this slight encouragement Lady Brancepeth gained courage to
plunge straightway into a question which she had long meditated.
'Will you tell me, my dear Nadine, what you mean to do with my
brother?'
Madame Napraxine turned a little round in her ermine and gold brocade,
and looked solemnly in her companion's face.
'My dear Evelyn, you amaze me! Do with him? I? With your
brother?--with Lord Geraldine? What should I do with him? Do you want
me to make a good marriage for him? But you are there to preside over
that; and, besides, he will make one himself--some day.'
'Speak seriously for a moment,' said Lady Brancepeth with impatience.
'You are very clever, and are fond of _demi-mots_; I am a blunt,
stupid woman, and so I like plain ones. It is two years since
Geraldine has had any other thought than yourself. When will you be
merciful and unmagnetise him?'
'Does that depend on me?' said the Princess Nadine, with a little
laugh. 'Do you want me to make a few passes in the air with my hand? I
can do it if you wish, but I doubt the result.'
Lady Brancepeth made an impatient movement.
'Poor Ralph is only one amongst many, I know, my dear; but for that
very reason surely you might spare him? You do not care the least
little atom about him----'
'The least little! I am a Russian, but I do know that is not good
English. I speak better English than you do.'
'You do everything admirably well. You are the most intelligent as you
are the most interesting woman that I know; but you are also the most
heartless,' answered Lady Brancepeth with some heat. 'I am not a
prude; I can understand temptation and the weakness that cedes to it;
I can understand love and the force that it may exercise, and I can
forgive even its follies; but your kind of coquetry I cannot forgive.
It is the exercise of a merciless power which is as chill as a
vivisector's attitude before his victim. You have no sympathy or
compassion; you have only a sort of cynical amusement in what you do;
you make yourself the centre of a man's life with no more effort than
you use that fan; the man is nothing to you, nothing on earth; but you
destroy all his peace, all his future----'
'Dear Wilkes, do not be so tragic!' murmured Princess Napraxine, with
a little yawn. 'I dislike tragedy; I never by any chance go to
Perrin's when they play one. If men are fond of me--as you say----'
'As I say!' ejaculated Lady Brancepeth.
'As you say; it is merely because--as you wisely if ungrammatically
observed--it is because I do not care the "least little atom" about
any one of them. I should have exceedingly liked to care for Platon;
it would have been something new; it would have agreed with my
programme of life; it would have suited me in every way; but _n'aime
pas qui veut_; who _could_ care for Platon? Does anybody ever care for
a good-natured, very big, and entirely uninteresting person who drinks
brandy and grows bald?'
'You beg my question,' retorted Lady Brancepeth; 'you know very well
that I am not talking of your husband.'
'Then you ought to be if you be not! You are a very immoral woman to
recommend me to care for anybody else,' said the Princess with her
soft, quiet little laugh, that was as pretty as the coo of a wood dove
but by no means so harmless.
'You would exasperate a saint,' cried her companion.
'I never met one,' said Nadine. 'The nearest approach to one that I
know is Melville, and I can put _him_ out of temper.'
'I have no doubt you can,' said Lady Brancepeth; 'I think you would
anyone; you do such immeasurable harm, and are all the while as demure
as a rabbit, and as innocent-looking. My dear Princess, you are the
cruellest woman that lives! Flocon de Neige they call you. They might
much more appropriately call you Goutte de Morphine. You enervate, and
you kill, and all the while, what do you care? You care no more than
the morphia does.'
'Did the ball bore you too so dreadfully that you are so very unkind?
A rabbit and morphia! Your similes are mixed, my dear. I am never a
flirt; a flirt is a very vulgar thing. No man lives, I can assure you,
who could say he ever had a word of encouragement from me. That is not
at all my way.'
'No!' said Lady Brancepeth, bitterly, 'your way is merely to look at
men and destroy them, and then laugh a little when they are spoken of:
I never reproached you with ordinary coquetry; I reproach you with
something much more subtle, arrogant, cold, and cruel. There is a gum
of the East advertised which does not kill flies, only attracts them,
so that they cling to it by millions, and hang there stupidly in a
throng till they die. That gum is very like your power over your
lovers; it is just as passive, just as deadly.'
'The gum and I were made as we are by nature. Blame nature. The men
and the flies would do worse if they did not do that. And pray do not
talk about my lovers; I have none.'
'You have no serfs in Russia, but you have moujiks; and it is still
much the same thing, as far as their submission goes.'
'You are really too sarcastic, Wilkes. Was Cri-Cri's champagne bad?
Surely not. But there must be something you have not digested. Perhaps
it is the caviare sandwiches. Here we are, at home. Do go to bed and
dream of your gum, your rabbit, and your bottle of morphine. None of
these things can swim, but I, who am a combination of them, can; and I
shall be swimming under your window whilst you sleep.'
The carriage stopped at the foot of the terrace of La Jacquemerille,
and she descended, aided by Geraldine, who, with her husband, had
arrived a few minutes earlier.
Lady Brancepeth hurried indoors, conscious, with the consciousness of
thirty-five years, that the morning light was not becoming after a
ball. Nadine Napraxine, with the equally conscious immunity of an
exquisite complexion, and of that kind of beauty which is like a
sea-shell, unwound the lace from about her delicate head, and paused
in the doorway, looking seaward.
'I shall not go to bed,' she said, as the rays of the sunrise touched
the gilded pinnacles and vanes of La Jacquemerille. 'I shall go and
get into a peignoir, then breakfast, and then bathe. It is so stupid
to go to bed when the sun is up. Platon, you look like a bear awaked
before he has done hybernating. Did you not get sleep enough in de
Vannes' _fumoir_?'
'I never get sleep enough,' replied Napraxine, good-humouredly but
drowsily; 'and you do a very foolish thing if you stand there,
Princess, in a frost, at seven o'clock, after five hours of the
cotillon!'
'There is no frost; look at the geraniums; and I never take cold; that
is not my malady at all; I am not so silly.'
Napraxine opened his sleepy eyes.
'When you cannot live in Russia because the tubercles on your
lungs----'
'Dr. Thiviers is responsible for the tubercles. One is obliged to say
something civil to get away from a Court. It is always safe to say one
suffers with one's lungs; nobody can ask to look at them. Pray go to
bed, and dream of Nirvana, if you know what it means.'
The Prince obeyed, and disappeared yawning. Geraldine remained, gazing
at this elegant figure on the marble step, with its _sortie du bal_
of ermine and gold silk folded about it, and the face with its hue of
a white tea-rose, which could defy so surely the searching morning
light.
She glanced at him in return, and laughed. 'How droll you look with
your _claque_ and your ulster; you are not harmonious with the
landscape, my friend; and you look sulky. The ball seems to have
disagreed with all of you; yet it was a very good ball, as balls go;
it is impossible to give any variety to a ball. Balls and funerals,
_ça se ressemble trop_.'
She drew the ermine over her pretty chin, the diamonds sparkled in her
hair; the bouquet of gardenias swung in her hand. The eyes of
Geraldine grew very sombre and covetous.
'I am sorry I am a blot on the scene,' he said, moodily. 'Englishmen
are always unpicturesque. I stood still and gazed at you all night,
but no doubt I only looked like a policeman or a fool----'
'Or both,' she murmured, with a smile.
He continued unheedingly, 'While your friend Othmar, who did precisely
the same thing, looked, of course, to you and to everybody, like a
Titian resuscitated.'
'Othmar is not especially like any Titian that I have ever seen,' said
Madame Napraxine, 'but he knows how to stand with grace, which no
Englishman ever did know yet. You are quite right; your people do not
"compose" well, except when they are in the hunting-field, or playing
some very rough game; but you need not _souffler_ for compliments; you
are very good-looking--in your way.'
'Thanks,' muttered Geraldine, in a tone which would have better suited
an imprecation.
Othmar had not danced once with her; he had indeed only moved
reluctantly through a _contre-danse_ with his hostess; but the
unerring instinct of jealousy made the envy of Geraldine fasten on him
rather than on any other of the crowd for whom the ball at Millo had
only meant Princess Napraxine.
'It is a little chilly,' said the Princess as she turned from the open
door.
Geraldine caught her hand which held the fan: 'If you would but
believe all that your life is to us, you would not run such mad risks
as this raw cold fog after a ball! Had I been Platon, I would have
carried you to your room by main force.'
The face of Nadine Napraxine grew very cold.
'You are not Prince Napraxine--happily for myself and yourself; and I
do not like impertinences. Go and smoke, and recover your good
manners.'
'You were kinder to me before Othmar came home!' said Geraldine, with
injudicious reproach.
'You have _very_ bad manners,' said the Princess calmly, as she
gathered up her ermine and drew her flower-laden train over the little
hall and up the staircase.
She smiled as she passed upward.
'How babyish they all are!' she reflected. 'As if to complain of
another man were not the very way to cement a woman's preference for
him,--if she had any preference. That poor boy has no tact; if his
sister had not said anything about him I would send him away; he is a
bore. To be sure, he is here to take Platon off one's hands, and smoke
with him. All men are tiresome when you have known them a month or so;
all human beings are tiresome. Nobody ever tires of me, and I tire of
everybody. Perhaps----'
She remembered that Othmar had alone never tired her; he had been too
romantic, too presuming, too prone to fancy he had rights and wrongs;
but he had never wearied her. Most men were so absurd when they were
enamoured of her, but he was not so; a little too, like Ruy Blas
perhaps a little too inclined to be serious and impassioned, to the
_vieux jeu_ in a word; but still he had kept his grace and kept his
dignity. He kept them still; he would not let her play with him. She
was the one woman on earth for him; but he did not become her slave.
She had her bath and wrapped herself in a loose gown of satin and lace
and went out into the garden with a rose-coloured hood over her head.
It was certainly cold, and the mists had not altogether cleared; but
it was a point of honour with her to do what her physician and her
friends denounced as most dangerous.
'Platon is snoring,' she thought contemptuously, as she glanced over
the closed shutters. 'And I dare say Geraldine snores too, if one only
knew. I dare say they both took soda and brandy. Men are certainly
unlovely creatures. As long as we are young we are a little better
than they; we look pretty asleep, and we don't snore. How _maquillée_
poor Cri-Cri was last night, and then she really throws her heart into
the affair with de Prangins; nothing ever ages a woman like that; and
I am quite sure he does not care a straw about her.'
She walked up and down her terrace, trailing her rose-coloured skirts
over the marble; she was a little sleepy, a little bored; but she
wished to show to her friends that she could dance all night and
breakfast out of doors without more fatigue than a nightingale, after
singing all night, feels as he trips across the grass at sunrise.
She thought, with a little amusement, that, if Geraldine were really
as wasting with despair as he professed to be, he would have been out
of bed still on the mere chance of her reappearance. The various
degrees of passions in her lovers diverted her; she had no vanity; she
could dissect and weigh their emotions with perfect accuracy and
philosophise upon them with a clearness of understanding wholly beyond
the reach of vain woman. Analysis diverted her much more than
conquest. Some had loved her tragically, some had died through her if
not for her; she had had genuine triumphs, great enough and costly
enough to satisfy the pride of anyone; therefore she could amuse
herself very well with the contradiction when somebody, who declared
that he only lived for her, nevertheless drank his claret with relish;
or somebody else, who was for ever at her feet, nevertheless ceased
not to be critical of his cigars.
'Poor Othmar!' she thought now; 'he would stay sleepless in the street
all night on the chance of seeing my shadow on a window blind!'
That was the _vieux jeu_; romanticism which did not suit their world;
which even made her impatient of it as indifferent people are always
impatient of earnestness. But it was fine after all: finer than
Geraldine's sulkiness which let him go to sleep.
The air was very cold, but the morning was fair, and the mists were
lifting higher and higher every moment; as her skirts brushed the bay
hedge it gave forth a sweet odour, snowdrops and hepatica blossomed
under the big aloes, and ground ivy was green about the stems of the
palms; the mountains grew the hue of summer roses under the sun's
approach, then paled into amethyst and pearly grey; it was intensely
quiet, there was no sound but of some unseen gardener sweeping up dead
leaves; the yellow wings of an oriole flashed among the glossy leaves
of a pitosperum.
'The world looks as if God washed it clean every morning,' she
thought. 'It gets soiled before noon. Decidedly it is only the birds
who are innocent enough for the sunrise.'
The latent sadness of the Russian character was in her, beneath her
_insouciance_ and her pessimism and her irony: sometimes she wished
she had not been born to that world in which she lived, where there is
no pause for reflection, but only a continuous succession of
spectacles, excitations, revelries, where no one is ever alone, where
no one has ever time to note a wild flower grow or a sun sink to the
west, where the babble of society is for ever on the ear, and Nature
has no place at all except as a _décor de théâtre_ of which no one
thinks more than the actor thinks of the painted canvas behind him
with its bridge or its garden or its windmill.
'I do believe I should have liked to have been a poor woman and have
married such a man as Millet or Corot,' she thought to herself now as
she walked along the alley of bay that ran parallel with the sea. Then
she laughed at the idea of herself, living in a cottage in a French
wood, without any lace, without any diamonds, without any toilettes,
looking for a dusty footsore artist coming home through the trees to
his _pot au feu_. Somehow the artist in her fancy had the features of
Othmar,--of Othmar, who was a prince of the Bourses and could no more
escape the world than she could!
It scarcely surprised her when she saw him in person, as though her
thoughts had compelled him to come thither. He was alone, in a little
boat, which drifted slowly past the sea-terrace of La Jacquemerille;
his hands rested idly on the oars, and his eyes were looking upward at
the house.
She leaned down through one of the openings of the wall of clipt bay,
and thrust her rose satin hood over the water:
'Is it you, Othmar?' she said to him. 'What are you doing on the sea
at eight o'clock? How astonished you look! Do you wonder what I am
doing in the open air? They are all asleep comfortably, though they
think I am courting death. Row to the stairs; you can breakfast with
me.'
He hesitated, looking up at her with his head uncovered and his eyes
dazzled by the delicate face that was peering forth from the framework
of close-sheared bay boughs.
'Come!' said Madame Napraxine. Her voice could be very imperious, and
was so now.
He obeyed in silence, passed to the landing-place a hundred yards
farther down, and in five minutes' time approached her under the
arched roof of the bay charmille.
'But you were only back from the ball an hour or less!' he said, as he
bowed before her.
'I was not inclined to go to bed; the morning is fine. You are up
betimes, too. When did you leave Millo?'
'I left when you did,' said Othmar, with significance in the brevity
of the reply.
'Then you cannot have breakfasted either. You will breakfast with me;
I was just going back to the house.'
It was precisely the sort of _coup de scène_ which would amuse her;
her husband and Geraldine lounging downstairs, late, cross, and easily
ruffled, to find her alone with their neighbour from S. Pharamond. It
was one of those amusing little incidents which Providence, who, she
was sure, was kind to her, was always sending her to relieve the
monotony of human life.
'What were you doing under the sea wall?' she pursued. 'Is it your
habit, too, never to go to bed? You must have been rowing some time.
We are two sea leagues at least from your place. What did you think of
Cri-Cri's ball? That new figure with the coloured hoops was pretty;
but the Duc leads a cotillon better than anyone.'
'Admirable pre-eminence!' said Othmar. 'I saw you with the coloured
hoops. You made them look as if Ariel had just brought them from
Titania. But I do not think the charm was in the hoops themselves.'
'If you had cared to lead a cotillon, Othmar, you might have been a
happier man.'
'That I do not doubt; the frivolous faculty is a very happy one.'
'At all events, though you despise it, you are indulgent to it. You
gave us superb presents at your own fête. Come in to breakfast. I
would not admit it if Platon were here, but it _is_ cold.'
'And surely it is not very wise to be in the cold after a ball?'
'That is what they all said, so I came. I have not much sympathy with
children, but I do understand why they like to do a thing for no other
reason than that they are told not to do it. My physicians pretend
that morning air is as bad as damp shoes, but I believe they say that
to be agreeable to their patients who turn night into day. It is not
only Molière's doctors who are charlatans. I imagine it is the
perpetual affectation of sympathy which doctors are compelled to put
on which makes them hypocrites. Come into the house.'
He went on in silence beside her along the bay path. He could not
easily talk of trifles with her; she had filled all his life for two
whole years; he loved her as he had loved no other woman. When he had
returned home from the Millo ball, he had bathed and swam in the
little bay of S. Pharamond, and then had rowed himself along the coast
in that vague irresistible desire to pass near where she dwelt which
every true lover feels.
He had resolved to emancipate himself from her power; as he had
watched her through the night he had told himself that to care for her
was to waste life on a baseless and ungrateful dream. Yet, when she
had looked down from her evergreen rampart, and had said 'Come,' he
had been unable to resist.
As he paced beside her now, the delicate perfume of her laces, the
floating, indefinite lines of the rose-satin draperies, the glimpse of
her profile which the hood showed, her slender feet in their
rose-coloured pearl-sewn slippers, which stepped so lightly over the
shining shingle of the paths--one and all they conquered his calmness
and his resolves, as the fumes of new wine mount over the brain and
move the senses. She walked on, provocative as Venus, unattainable as
Una, speaking idly of this thing and of that, knowing very well what
made his answers all at random and his colour changeful. Other women
might need to use all the arts of conquest; might need to woo with
their eyes, to charm with their smiles, to solicit with their glances.
She had no such vulgar fashions; she moved, spoke, looked, as the
moment actuated her, and noticed her lovers hardly more than she
noticed the little dog that ran after her skirts. To exist and to be
seen was enough to secure her more victories than she chose to count.
If she noticed Othmar more than others it was because he had gone away
from her, he had rebuked her, he had appeared to defy her, and he had
dared to tell her he loved her with more reproach, and more bitterness
of soul than any other had ever done. She did not intend to accept his
life, or to give him hers; but she did intend that his should be
unable to detach itself. And all the while she talked to him with that
easy, even kindness, as of a friend, with those light philosophies of
a woman of the world, which were to the passions of a man as ether
spray thrown upon a lava-flood; and she took him into breakfast with
her as though he were her brother.
She occasionally drank her chocolate in a boudoir opening on to the
terrace; a little nest of white satin and looking-glass and Saxe
china; the ceiling was a mirror painted with little doves and flowers;
the carpet was of lambskins; the corners were filled with azaleas,
rose and white, like her gown. She looked only a larger flower as she
sank down on one of the couches. The chocolate was served on Moorish
trays, in Turkish cups, by a little negro who, gorgeous in his dress
and immovable as a statue, was often taken by new comers for an
enamelled bronze cast by Barbédienne, so motionless did he squat
before the door of any room she occupied. Othmar almost envied that
little African menial the right he had to see his mistress pass and
repass a hundred times a day. Nadine, in her nonchalant way, was kind
to the boy.
'He will die of pneumonia,--they always do,' she said now. 'Poor dusky
little beetles, they only live by their hot sand and their hot sun; to
be sure, our houses inside are as hot as Africa, but outside, the east
wind blows, and one day it will blow too much for Mahmoud. I suppose
it would be a terrible thing for civilisation if the East ever again
surged over the West; but the East has very much to avenge, and I am
not sure that civilisation would be any great loss. It has discovered
that man is only a sort of hotbed for bacteria, and that butter can
be made out of river mud, and coffee out of powdered tan.'
She had taken the hood off her head; she was as charming as a child
freshly out of a bath, with her eyes brilliant and her cheeks a little
warmed by the transition from the chill air of early morning to the
room heated to 30° Réaumur. She had tossed herself backwards amongst
the white satin cushions. Her eyes, which were like onyx, dwelt on him
with a gleam of amusement; her beautiful mouth had the smile which was
so enigmatical, so gay, and yet so cold. She had had a different smile
when she had said to little Mahmoud, 'Cover yourself warmly here;
though the sun shines, it is not African.'
'What has that black brat done that you are so merciful to him?' asked
Othmar.
She replied: 'That black brat is a victim of civilisation. I hate
civilisation, as you know. It even adulterates truffles.'
'Did you ever smile so kindly on your own children?'
'I cannot say. I do not count my smiles. That poor little slave is
interesting, he is an exile, and he will die in a year or two; my
children are insufferably uninteresting; they have unchangeable
health, intense stupidity, and will grow up to have every desire
fulfilled, every caprice gratified, and to become that irresponsible,
useless, tyrannical, anachronism--a Russian noble. Perhaps they will
be good soldiers and kill a score of Asiatics. Perhaps they will only
drink brandy, and gamble.'
Othmar did not reply; he was looking at the exquisite grace of her
form, the tea-rose tint of her cheeks. Was it possible that she could
be the mother of two stout, ugly, Tartar-faced boys? It seemed to him
a profanation; a hideous incongruity. He did not like to think of it.
If she had had a child at all it should have been some blossom-like
creature, sharing her own grace as the catkin shares the willow's. The
subtlest charm about her was that ethereality, as of a virginal
goddess, which was blent in her with all the _finesses_ of seduction
and of mind. The boldest man felt that in Nadine Napraxine the senses
had hardly more empire than in the ivory Venus of the Greeks.
The eyes of Othmar dwelt on her now yearningly, sombrely, wistfully.
'It is of no use,' he said, abruptly. 'I did wrong to come here. If
you wish for men who can, whilst they adore you, sit and drink
chocolate and talk epigrams, seek elsewhere; I am not one of them. I
can wear a mask, but it must be of iron, not of velvet.'
'The iron mask was of velvet,' said she, correcting him, unmoved by
the repressed passion in his voice. 'All our illusions vanish under
the electric light of history, and the iron mask is one of them. I
daily expect to hear that Marie Antoinette was never guillotined, but
succumbed at seventy to dropsy at Schönbrunn; we know it is proved
that Jeanne d'Arc married and died, _bonne bourgeoise_, at Orleans,
and her family enjoyed a pension for three generations from the town.
It is very distressing, but it is all proved from the archives. Why
shouldn't you drink chocolate? Perhaps you do not like it. Men like
nothing that has sugar in it, except flattery. Ring. They will bring
you anything else.'
Othmar looked at her without speaking. Something of the impotent rage
against her with which he had left her in Paris awoke in him under the
sting of her ever dulcet tones, in which a little tone of mockery
could be felt rather than heard.
He rose abruptly.
'Have you never loved anyone?' he asked.
She lifted her eyebrows with impatience and astonishment.
'_Vous voila emballé!_ Dear Othmar, I should like you so much if you
would not always revert to that old theme. You are a man of the world,
or you ought to be one. Be amusing, even be instructive if you like; I
do not mind being instructed, but do not be romantic. Nobody is
nowadays; not even the novelists.'
Othmar appeared scarcely to hear her.
'Did you never love anyone?' he repeated.
She laughed a little.
'You speak as if I were forty years old, with a cabinet full of old
letters and faded roses! No; I never loved anybody, not even Platon!'
The notion suggested in her last words tickled her fancy so much that
she laughed outright.
'I suppose,' she continued, 'somewhere in the world there are women
who have loved Platon; but it seems too funny. He is always eating
when he is not drinking; he is always smoking when he is not sleeping;
_admettons, donc_, that Cupid must fly from his presence. How grave
you look. I believe you have something of the Eastern in you, and
think that all women should be prostrate before their husbands. There
is a good deal of that idea among the moujiks; it must be very
agreeable--for the man.'
'Why did you marry him?' said Othmar, gloomily; it hurt his sense of
honour to speak of Napraxine in Napraxine's house; yet he could not
repress the question.
'Oh, my friend, why do girls always marry?' she said, indifferently.
'Because the marriage is there; because the families have arranged it;
because one does not know; because one wishes for freedom, for jewels,
for the world; because one does not care to be a _fillette_,
chaperoned at every step. There are many reasons that make one marry:
it is the thing to do--everyone does it; when a girl sees the young
married women, she sees them flirted with, sought, monopolising
everything; it is like standing behind a shut door and hearing people
laughing and singing on the other side, while you cannot get to them;
besides, Platon did as well as anybody else, he is more good-natured
than most; he never interferes; he is very peaceable----'
'How long ago is it? Five years--six? Why could I not meet you
before?'
She smiled, not displeased.
'It is seven years. Oh, I do not think it would have done at all; you
are too arrogant; we should have quarrelled before a month was out.
Besides, I should have tormented you to do all manner of
impossibilities; with your immense power, I should have expected you
to buy me an empire.'
Othmar was very pale; the possibility of which she jested so airily
was one he could not think of without a mist before his eyes, a
quickening of his heart. He hesitated to say what rose to his lips;
she would only call it _vieux jeu_.
'I think you might be a great man, Othmar, if you were not Othmar,'
she pursued.
'I do not feel the capabilities,' he replied.
'That is because you are what you are,' she answered. 'You are
something like a king of England. A king of England might have all
the talents, but he could never be a great man because his position
binds him hand and foot, and makes a lay figure of him. You are not a
lay figure, but the very fact that you are Otho Othmar prevents your
being anything besides. I think, if I were you, I should buy some
great sunshiny fantastic eastern kingdom, and reign there; you might
lead the life of a Haroum Alraschid, and forget all about our stupid
Europe with its big dinners, its blundering politics, its unreal
religions, and its hideous dress.'
'A charming dream--if you were with me.'
'Oh, no; you would not want me; you would have two thousand slaves,
each more beautiful than the others.'
'All my life I shall want you!'
He spoke under his breath. He was leaning back in his chair; his face
was cold, almost stern, but his eyes were ardent and full of passion.
All night at Millo he had sworn to himself that never again would he
succumb to her influence or allow her to triumph in the power she
possessed over him, but in her presence he was unnerved, and unable to
keep silent. She, lying back amongst her cushions, glanced at him
under her long lashes, and understood very well the strife which went
on in his soul; the pride of manhood which combatted the impulses of
passion; the impetus which could not be resisted, the impatience of
his own weakness which vibrated through his confession.
'What was the use of your going to Mongolia; you could not escape
_me_,' she thought, with a little of that contemptuous indulgence
which she always felt for her lovers' follies, and a little of a newer
and more personal gratification; for Othmar touched a certain chord in
her mind, a certain pulse in her heart, which others had not done.
There was nothing commonplace or trivial in him. There was a vague
power, unused but existent, which commanded her respect. Nadine
Napraxine despised the world too heartily herself not to have sympathy
with the indifference he felt for his own potentialities and
possessions. He was one of the masters of the world, and he only
wished for one thing on earth--herself. There was a flattery in that
which pleased even her, sated with compliment though she was. There
were moments when she thought that if she had met him before, as he
said, there would have been less ennui and more warmth in her life.
'Only we should have been so sure to have tired of each other,' she
reflected. 'People always do; it is the fault of marriage; it compels
people at the onset to see so much of one another that they have
nothing new left with which to meet the future. If you heard the best
of Bach every day, you would get to hate Bach as intensely as you hate
a street organ; the music would still be perfect, but it could not
withstand incessant repetition. We should have been quite idylically
in love for a few months; I am sure we should; but then we should have
each gone our several ways, and in the end he would have been hardly
better than Platon.'
Aloud, however, she only said, with a little smile:
'You should never say things straight out like that, Othmar. You
should never go beyond a suggestion. The world has spoilt you so
greatly that it has let you get blunt. It is a pity. When I talk to
people I always feel as Boucher said he felt when he talked with his
lady-love. "J'aime tout ce qu'elle va dire; je n'aime rien qu'elle
dit." If we could only always remain at the stage when we are just
going to speak!'
Othmar did not reply. His face was very pale; it had a set stern look,
as though he exercised great self-repression. He was angered against
himself for being there; for having let her lead him thither merely to
be made the sport of her subtle and sarcastic intelligence. It seemed
to him that if his passion were unwelcome to her his presence should
be unwelcome too.
She guessed his thoughts with that rapid intuition which is the gift
of such minds as hers.
'Oh, I am not like that,' she said, with some unspoken amusement; 'I
am not startled at a confession like yours, as a horse starts at a
pistol shot. It seems to me that men are never happy unless they are
talking in that kind of way to some woman who does not belong to them.
They are so like children! In Petersburg, last year, I saw Sachs
crying for a sentinel's cartouche-box because he could not have it. He
had all Giroux's shop in his own nursery, but that did not do. You
are like Sachs. Ought I to ring the bell and dismiss you? Why should
I? I do not think so. Only very primitive beings take fright at
declarations. Besides, you made me so many in Paris, and then you went
to the Mongols. I never knew why you went to the Mongols; why did you
go?'
'Wounded brutes always get away somewhere to be unseen as long as
their wound bleeds,' said Othmar, with some bitterness.
'How Sachs cried for that cartouche-box!' she said, as she lit a
cigarette. 'His women scolded him, but I said to them, "Why do you
scold him? He is a male creature; therefore he must weep for what he
cannot get." Some children cry for the moon; a moon, or a
cartouche-box, or a woman, the principle is the same.'
Othmar rose and approached her. He seemed scarcely to have heard her
jest.
'Nadége, hear me a moment,' he said, in a low tone, through whose
enforced calmness there was the thrill of an intense passion. 'You are
not alarmed at declarations; they are nothing to you, you neither
requite nor reject them; they amuse you, that is all. You are used to
do just what you please with men; I understand that you despise them
so far as you deign to think of them seriously.'
'Despise, no!' she said, with a little gesture of depreciation; 'that
is too strong. Why should I despise them for acting according to their
natures? I do not desire cartouche-boxes myself, but I did not despise
Sachs.'
'I told you in Paris,' pursued Othmar, 'that I would not add one to
the list of those whom you have made ridiculous in the eyes of the
world. I will be all to a woman, or nothing to her. You would have let
me swell the cortège that marks your triumphal passage; you would have
let me fill the place that Lord Geraldine occupies now. You would have
allowed me to drive with you, dine with you, come in and out of your
house, take your husband away when he bored you, do everything that
Lord Geraldine is permitted to do now; and you would have repaid me as
you repay him, by a little laugh, a smile now and then, a vague liking
which would have grown, little by little, into contempt! I would not
accept that place in your household. I would not then. I left you,
though it cost me more than you would ever know or pity, for you do
not understand what love is. I went away; I desired to escape from
you. I did escape. I desired also to forget you, but I could not
forget. You are not a woman who can be forgotten; you are like one of
those _miséricordes_ with which they stabbed men in the Valois days,
that look like mere threads of silver sheathed in velvet, and yet can
go home through breast and bone, and kill more surely than swords that
are as high as a man's shoulder----'
He paused a moment; he breathed quickly and heavily; she looked up,
holding her little cigarette suspended:
'I am like a great many things,' she murmured; 'I thought Wilkes
exhausted all possibilities in comparison this morning. Go on! you are
very _entreprenant_, but it rather becomes you; you may go on if you
like.'
He dropped on his knee beside her:
'No, I would not be what Geraldine is; you tolerate him now, to scorn
him immeasurably hereafter. His own weakness will be the measure of
your scorn. He has never dared to say to you what I said to you in
Paris, what I say now: love me, or I will not see your face again,
except as society may compel me to see it in a crowd. Listen, Nadine!
I love you, only you; I never thought to love any woman so; but I love
you as men did in the old times, and there is nothing I will not
surrender to you save my own self-respect. If to meet you, to touch
your hand, to hear your voice, I must come and go like a dog in your
husband's house, petted one day, chidden the next, absurd in my own
sight and emasculated in the sight of others, I will wrench my love
for you out of my life if my life goes with it! Last night I heard
someone who did not know him inquire who Geraldine was; someone else
answered him, "Oh, that is one of Princess Napraxine's _ensorcelés_;
she never looks at him, but he is content to follow her shadow." You
know me very little if you believe I would ever let the world speak of
me like that. I told you in Paris I would never be the trembling valet
of a bloodless Platonism!'
She looked at him, and a gleam of admiration passed into her eyes for
a moment; she breathed a trifle more quickly; she thought to herself:
'He is superb when he looks and speaks like that! _C'est un homme
celui-là!_'
She did not speak, she leaned back amongst her cushions with a little
look of expectancy upon her face; the whole thing pleased her, as some
admirable piece of acting on the boards of the Théâtre Français
pleased at once her eye, her ear, and her taste.
But Othmar was passionately in earnest; all his heart was in his lips,
all his passions had found voice. He could scarcely see her for the
red mist that swam before his eyes, for the tumult of his senses. He
dropped on his knee beside her.
'Nadine,' he murmured, as his forehead touched her hand, 'I have told
you what I will not do; let me tell you what I will do. I will do as
you say, I will buy some sunlit kingdom far away in the heart of Asia,
and I will take you to it and obey every breath of your mouth as my
one divine law. I will turn my back on Europe once and for ever; I
will let men call me a coward, a fool, an infidel; what they will; I
will give all my present and all my future to you and to you alone;
all I possess shall only exist to minister to you; I will be your
slave, body and mind and will; but only _so_--only if you give
yourself to me as absolutely in return, only if you come with me where
nothing of this world which we have known shall pursue us to remind me
that you were ever else than mine.'
His forehead burned her hand as it touched her, his voice was
passionate in its emotion and eloquence, his heart beat so loudly that
it was audible in the stillness around them. For once she was touched,
almost awed; for once the electricity of the passion she excited
communicated something of its fire and thrill to her. She was silent a
few moments, her eyelids closed, her lips parted, she felt a vague
pleasure in the contact of this intense and imperious love. He saw
upon her delicate features a change of colour, a flicker of emotion,
which no one else had ever seen there; but she motioned him farther
away from her with that dislike to any concession and that sensitive
hauteur which but added to her charm.
She smiled a little, but there was an accent which was almost
tenderness in her voice as she said to him: 'C'est de ne rien perdre
de beaucoup prier! You evidently have belief in that saying. It is
to ask a very great deal, but then you would give a great deal in your
turn. Go away now; I will think. No, I shall not answer you; I want
time for thought. Be satisfied that I am not offended, and go. I ought
to be so, I suppose, but I am not. Go.'
'I may come back?'
His heart beat eagerly and exultantly. He was not refused or
dismissed! 'Château qui parle, femme qui écoutee'--the old proverb
drifted through his thoughts, all confused as they were in a tumult of
hope and desire, and triumph and doubt. A moment's hesitation from her
was more concession than a thousand caresses from a humbler woman.
'I may come back?' he repeated, as she remained silent.
'If you like, we shall meet in other places; yes, you may return in a
fortnight--at this time--in this room, then I will tell you.'
'In a fortnight!'--it seemed to him to be ten years.
'Be thankful for so much,' she said, as she gave him the tips of her
fingers. 'Now go. Mahmoud is in the antechamber.'
He kissed her hand with lips that burned like fire, bowed low and
obeyed her. Nadine Napraxine remained motionless, her eyes were
closed, her mouth smiled; she seemed to dream.
THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Table of contents created by Transcriber and placed into the
public domain.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.
Retained idiosyncratic, antiquated and inconsistent spellings.
Variations in hyphenation have been retained as in the original
publication.
Left "pro formâ" as printed on page 256.
End of Project Gutenberg's Princess Napraxine, Volume 1 (of 3), by Ouida