PRINCESS NAPRAXINE
III.
New Three-volume Novels at all Libraries.
DOROTHY FORSTER. By WALTER BESANT.
THE NEW ABELARD. By ROBERT BUCHANAN.
A REAL QUEEN. By R. E. FRANCILLON.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD. By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.
CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W
PRINCESS NAPRAXINE
BY
OUIDA
[Illustration]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1884
[_All rights reserved_]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 34 1
Chapter 35 62
Chapter 36 92
Chapter 37 115
Chapter 38 136
Chapter 39 163
Chapter 40 179
Chapter 41 197
Chapter 42 226
Chapter 43 243
Chapter 44 257
Chapter 45 267
Chapter 46 270
Chapter 47 276
Chapter 48 284
Chapter 49 292
Chapter 50 315
Chapter 51 325
Chapter 52 327
Chapter 53 342
Chapter 54 354
Chapter 55 363
L'Envoi 375
PRINCESS NAPRAXINE.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
When Yseulte had recovered enough to travel, he took her to the Italian
lakes for awhile, to restore her to her usual health and strength,
and distract her thoughts from what had befallen her at Amyôt. With
the beginning of winter they returned, and made their home for awhile
in the great hotel of the Boulevard St. Germain, which he hated, and
where he intended to remain for the briefest time that could suffice
for the fulfilment of those social duties of which Friederich Othmar
never ceased to remind him. There his mother's apartments had been
prepared for his wife, and every grace and attraction that the art and
the taste of the day could add to them had been added, as though the
most solicitous affection had presided over the preparation of them.
All the preferences she had shown in the country had been remembered
and gratified; whatever she had liked best in colour, in treatment, in
art, in flowers, in marble, had been consulted or reproduced in Paris;
and even a large dog to which she had taken a fancy at Amyôt had been
brought thence from the kennels, and was lying before the fire when she
entered.
A much older and far wiser woman would have been persuaded to believe,
as she believed, that in all this delicate _prévenance_ for her
pleasures and her preferences the tenderest love had spoken. She could
not divine the self-reproach of her husband's conscience, which made
him sensible that he perforce denied her so much that was her due,
and made him proportionately eager to atone for that denial by every
material enjoyment and outward mark of affection and of homage. All
those who surrounded him, all his acquaintances, his household, and his
dependents, imagined that he loved his young wife. The person who was
in nowise deceived was Friederich Othmar.
'He is like a Sultan,' thought the old man angrily, 'a Sultan who loads
the women of his zenana with ropes of pearls and emeralds as big as
pigeon's eggs, that they may not perceive that he only visits them
twice a year!'
By the law of the attraction of contrasts, there had arisen a mutual
attachment between her and Baron Fritz: the unscrupulous old man, for
whom as for Turcaret the whole world was composed of shareholders, felt
more reverence and tenderness for Yseulte than he ever felt in his life
for anyone; and she, who only saw his devotion to Othmar, his admirable
manners, his shrewd wit, and his paternal kindness to herself, grew
fond of, and grateful to, him, and was wholly ignorant of that
mercilessness and selfishness which would have immolated all mankind
to the service of his personal ambitions, and to which all morality or
humanity appeared as absurd as they did to Fouquet or to Talleyrand.
Friederich Othmar incessantly strove to inspire her with his own
passion for the House he adored, and though he failed because she
was too thoroughly patrician in all her instincts to easily welcome
such impressions, and was more apt to share her husband's disdain for
all such ambitions, he did succeed in persuading her that the future
content of Othmar himself would depend on the measure of the interest
which he would take in those great fortunes of which he held the key.
'Understand this, my child,' he would say, 'a man in old age never
forgives himself for the occasions which he has let slip in youth;
and every man who in youth is _désœuvré_, pays for it heavily when
age has come. Otho is a clever man, but he has the sickness of his
century; he is indifferent to everything' ('even to you!' he thought
impatiently). 'We call it the malady of the time; I do not know that we
are right. It existed in Petronius Arbiter's, but it had no existence
in our immediate forefathers'. However, you do not care for abstract
discussions; you care for Otho. Well, let us confine ourselves to Otho.
Nowadays, he is still a young man; he thinks he can afford to despise
all things because he has strength, and health, and every form of
enjoyment accessible to him--and he is certainly rich enough to play at
cynicism all day if it amuse him most.'
'He is no cynic,' said Yseulte, quickly.
Baron Fritz smiled.
'A little of Alceste, surely? You read "Le Misanthrope," even at your
convent, I imagine? My dear child, people always desire the fate they
have not. Alfred de Vigny, with his sixteen quarterings, was always
in rebellion against the fate of the poor gentleman; Otho, one of the
richest men in Europe, is always rebelling against his riches as a
chain and a species of dishonour. Now, it is for you to reconcile him
to them; it is for you to persuade him that in the interests of his
House lie those occupations and obligations which will not pall upon
him as he grows older. I have known men weary of love and pleasure,
but I have never known them weary of ambition. Otho scorns vulgar
ambitions, but there are those which are not vulgar. In finance, as
in life, there is no standing still. In his present mood he would be
delighted if ruin were possible to us; it is not possible. Short of a
European war that should last thirty years, nothing can harm us much.
Still, no great house can long stand without a chief who cares for
its welfare and honour. Like Catherine II., "je lis l'avenir dans le
passé." A wise statesman has always the past of the world spread out
before him like an ordnance map for his guidance. So may we also, in
the past history of such houses as our own, see what has led to their
ruin, and so guide ourselves to avoid those evils in our own case.
Now, nothing has been so commonly the cause of _krach_ in financial
establishments as their being afflicted with imprudent or indifferent
members. Otho is not very often imprudent, but he is entirely
indifferent. Certainly,' continued the Baron, with pardonable pride,
'the Maison d'Othmar is too solidly established, too greatly important
to the public life of Europe, to be easily imperilled by a young man's
foibles. Still, I cannot disguise from myself the fact that when I am
no more there will be no check on his eccentricities, no stimulus to
his apathy. He will be ill served because he will at once expect too
much virtue from men, and observe them with too little suspicion. The
ship is sound and safe, and sure to have fair winds, but if the man at
her helm be reading his Horace or his La Bruyère instead of steering
by his chart, the ship may founder in clear weather and calm seas. You
understand me?'
Metaphor was very unusual to him; he only condescended to use it for
sake of making his meaning clearer to the feebleness of a feminine
mind.
'Yes, I understand quite well,' she replied, with a little sigh. 'But I
have no influence; he would think me impertinent; and I am sure no one
will care for the honour of the House more truly than he.'
'Commercially speaking, there are two kinds of honour,' said Friederich
Othmar. 'The fantastic and visionary one he will always maintain,
but the practical one, which lies in doing your utmost for all the
interests centred in yours, he will neglect. If I were to tell him that
we must collapse to-morrow, he would give up everything, down to his
pet edition of Marcus Aurelius, to satisfy our debts; but if I were to
tell him also how many financial schemes and companies would fall with
us, he would only reply that the world would be exceedingly well rid
of so many scoundrels. The honour is safe with him, doubtless, but the
welfare is not. I shall not live for ever; I shall probably only live
a very few years more. You must persuade your husband that his true
duties and pleasures will lie in those ambitions which his fathers
have bequeathed to him. I know that he and you would like to extinguish
the House of Othmar financially, and dwell at Amyôt with no remembrance
of the world. That is a lover's dream. My dear, simplicity and solitude
are impossible in our society; a shepherd's peace is not attainable by
a man whom the world claims. If I were to die to-morrow, and Otho to
remain as indifferent to his own interests as he is now, all that I
have done, all that his predecessors have done, would crumble away in
ten or twenty years like so much soft sandstone in a succession of wet
winters. He would not resent it now, but when he should be fifty years
old he would resent it bitterly; he would never pardon himself. It is
from this possibility that your influence must protect him.'
She hesitated, with a blush upon her face.
'I have no influence,' she said timidly. 'He knows so much better, so
much more than I----'
'Obtain influence over him,' said the old man curtly; 'for if you do
not, someone else will. Nay, my dear, pardon me; do not be hurt by
my plain speaking. Such men as Otho are always influenced by women;
he should be so now by you; he will be so if you will leave off
worshipping him timidly, making him your law and your religion, and
realise that you are an exquisitely lovely woman, with mind enough not
to be the mere toy of any man. You are very young, it is true, but you
have grown ten years in a few months. You must remember that to be in
love is very agreeable, no doubt, but you are not his mistress; you are
his wife. You must not think only of the immediate moment, but of the
far future when he will not be in love with you, _ma belle_, nor you
with him, but when you may still influence him nobly and wisely, and he
may find in you his safest friend.'
Yseulte listened, with a little sigh.
It seemed to her as if all her happy illusions were taking wing,
like the group of amorini which flew away from a weeping nymph on
the ceiling of her room, which had been painted by Bourgereau. They
were seated in one of her own apartments, a very bower of primroses
and white lilac, panelled in the Louis Seize style, with Bourgereau's
charming children in groups within each panel above the satin couches.
Between the curtains, there were glimpses through the windows of the
cedars and wellingtonias of the gardens. Without, it was a chilly
winter's day, but within, it was warm as summer, mellow with soft
colour, fragrant with innumerable flowers; even to this great hotel
of the Boulevard S. Germain, which had always seemed to Othmar the
most oppressive and detestable of all his many mansions, the advent of
Yseulte had brought a grace and light and sweetness as of young and
innocent life, a charm of home to these splendid and desolate suites of
rooms. Her dogs lay on the hearth, her voice called the peacocks in the
lonely gardens, her scores of Beethoven and Schubert and Berlioz lay
open on the grand pianos. Even the look of the great bouquets in the
Japanese bowls and the jars of Saxe and Sèvres was different: her hand
had added a rose there, a fern here; they were flowers which were there
because she loved them, not only because they served for decorations
grouped by skilful servants as mere masses of colour. The great house,
sombre in its Bourbon stateliness, magnificent in its architecture,
but oppressive in its too continual display of wealth, was no longer
'une maison sans musique, une ruche sans abeilles;' it had gained a
charm which was none the less perceptible because undefinable and
impalpable, as the scent of the tea-roses in the tall Sèvres jars. But
Friederich Othmar was more sensible of this than was the possessor of
the house and of her. Friederich Othmar, who had lived for fifty years
and more without perceiving that he had never had, or wished to have,
a home, perceived that his nephew had one and scarcely appreciated it.
Friederich Othmar himself became suddenly alive to the pleasure of
finding something home-like in that corner of her boudoir where she
drew a Japanese screen between him and the draught from the windows,
brought him his cup of green tea, and listened with an interest fresh
and unfeigned to his anecdotes, his reminiscences, and his counsels:
but he found Othmar there less often than he would have wished.
'He will be glad of that _coin du feu_ some day,' he thought angrily;
annoyed by a neglect which Yseulte herself did not perceive. She
had been used to solitude; she was neither vain nor exacting; she
understood that everything could not be in Paris altogether as it had
been at Amyôt; and if she gave a sigh to that necessity, she bravely
and tranquilly accepted it. The great world was about her with its
demands, its solicitations, its tyrannies over time and thought; she
had little leisure for meditation; the Countess Othmar could not escape
the social obligations of her position or avoid its ceremonies and its
courtesies.
She remained much graver and simpler than her contemporaries were; she
cared for none of the noisy amusements of modern fashion; the world
of pleasure seemed to her, on the whole, a little vulgar, a little
tiresome, astonishingly monotonous, even in its feverish search for the
untried and the startling. But at the same time she could not escape
from its demands, and their effects upon her, and the counsels of
Friederich Othmar incessantly reminded her that she could best serve
the honour of the name she bore by making Europe admire and praise her.
It was a counsel which contained the seeds of danger; but he read her
character aright.
'Voilà une qui ne _cascadera_ jamais,' said the Baron to himself in his
tongue of the Boulevards. He was infinitely proud of, and delighted
with her; he gave her the most magnificent presents, bought her the
rarest of jewels. He accompanied her constantly in her drives and to
the opera, and even in the visits which she paid.
'It is Baron Fritz whom Othmar's marriage has reformed!' said a pretty
woman, who had long considered the silver-haired financier as her own
especial prey. He took a paternal pleasure in the admiration which the
rare patrician graces of the girl awoke in that _tout Paris_ which he
had long considered the lawgiver of the universe.
'If you had been Marie Antoinette, there might have been no
revolution,' he said jestingly to her. 'You would never have flirted
with Ferson, nor would you have played at shepherdessing, or worn a
mask in the Palais Royal.'
'I think I should only have thought of France,' she answered.
'Which would not have prevented you from going to the guillotine, I
dare say,' said the Baron. 'Nations are the concentrated distillation
of the ingratitude of men. There is only one thing which one can
always count on with absolute certainty, and that is, the general and
individual thanklessness.'
Nothing was further from his thoughts than to cloud over the trust,
confidence, and faith of her innocent optimism. He spoke as he thought
and felt, and as a long experience of mankind had taught him to do,
without reflecting that he dropped the bitterness of gall into a fair
and limpid spring, which had seen nothing above its waters save the
white lily-cups and the blue heavens.
'She will be robbed right and left endlessly if she be not taught a
little mistrust,' he said to Othmar himself, who replied:
'Let her be robbed of everything rather than of her illusions. This is
the only loss from which we never recover.'
'What an absurd idea!' thought the Baron, who had never cherished any
illusions at all, and had found life exceedingly entertaining and
enjoyable without them.
The practical mind can no more understand the regrets of the meditative
one than a manufacturer, spending his days by choice amidst the roar of
steam wheels and the ledgers of a counting-house, can understand the
artist's anguish when he is shut up in a city garret whence he cannot
see a sunset or a sunrise.
'The woes of the body, I grant, may be too much for one's philosophy,'
the Baron was wont to say. 'With the gout, or neuralgia, or sciatica,
Seneca's self might fail to retain serenity. But the sorrows of
the emotions or of the imagination are so entirely fictitious that
anyone, by the exercise of a little self-control, may put them aside
completely.'
'What! Even the losses of death?' objected some one once.
The Baron smiled:
'Death cannot affect you very greatly unless you have already committed
an act of unwisdom--that is, have already attached yourself to some
other life than your own.'
'Then where is love?' said his interlocutor.
'Where it has always been,' said Friederich Othmar, 'chiefly in the
senses partially in the imagination. When we have both the senses
and the imagination under the control of our temperate judgment, it
cannot disturb us seriously. In my youth, and even in my maturity,' he
continued, with complacence, 'I have dallied with love as well as other
men, but the moment that I felt that any one passion was likely to
exercise undue influence upon me, I withdrew myself from it. To break a
chain is difficult, but never to let it be forged is easy.'
He thought it his duty to put his young favourite on her guard against
all the deceptions and delusions which the world prepares for its
novices; he told her much more than her husband would have done of all
the intricacies and meanings of the varied life which was about her,
gave her the key to many of its secrets, and the hidden biographies of
many of its personages.
'You are in the world, you must understand the world,' he said to her;
'if not, it will be a mere labyrinth to you, and you will be lost in
it. You need not become a _mondaine_ with your heart, but you must
become one with your head, or the _mondaines_ will devour you. It
is not necessary that you should gamble or swear or get into debts
for your petticoats, as they do; but it is necessary that you should
understand the society of your time. At Amyôt you may be a young saint,
as heaven meant you to be, but in Paris you must be able to hold your
own against those who are the reverse of saints. Otho ought to teach
you all this himself, but he will not, so you must listen to me. I have
not been so engrossed in the gold market all my days that I do not
know _la haute gomme_ down to the ground. In my leisure I have always
gone into the world: the boudoir of a pretty woman is always much more
amusing than a card-table or a pistol-gallery. _L'Ecole des Femmes_ is
the one to which every wise man goes.'
He paused, with a consciousness that he had better not pursue that
theme.
'My child,' he resumed, as the carriage rolled down the Bois, 'you
are not seventeen; you are in love with your husband; you sweep your
conscience every morning with a palm-leaf to make sure there is no
little film of a cobweb left in it; you think life is such a simple
and beautiful thing that you have only to get up and go to bed as the
sun does. You hear quantities of compliments, but you pay no attention
to them; you are altogether as innocent as a flower, and you are quite
exquisite like that--it suits you; but, all the same, you cannot go on
like that for ever. Men might let you, for we are not as black as we
are painted, but women will not. It is from women that your sorrows
will come, that your perception of evil will come, that your enemies
will come. Satan, pardon me the word, would take off his hat to you and
pass by on the other side, for he, too, is not as black as he has been
painted. But women will not feel what Satan would feel; they are much
more hard to touch. It is women whom you must try to understand; you
can analyse without imbibing, as chemists do poisons.'
'Must one analyse at all?' said Yseulte, a little wistfully.
Such abrupt and familiar allusions to Satan disturbed the awe in
which she had been reared at Faïel; but she was growing used to the
perception that all the things which she held most sacred were mere
Mother Goose's tales to the world in general, and to understand why
her cousin Clothilde, who had her emblazoned chair at S. Philippe du
Roule and occupied it so regularly, and was so heedful all Lent to
wear the strictest mourning costume without a shred of lace, had yet
not a grain of real religion in her. She began to comprehend what
Blanchette had meant by all her rapturous felicitations, and sometimes
the proud and austere young soul of her was humiliated to think that
these mere material pleasures should have any attraction for her: she
felt that her grandmother's ascetic and haughty teachings would have
condemned such joys as mundane and vulgar. But the pleasure of them
was there, nevertheless, and she was too honest in her self-analysis
to dissimulate before her conscience. Unworldly as temperament and
education alike made her, Yseulte was feminine enough and accessible
enough to such vanities for all the possessions into which she entered
to amuse and please her with their novelty and the sense of power which
they gave. She was but a child in years, and the large households
deferential to her slightest word, the grand equipages ready for her
whim and fancy, the beautiful horses which bore her with the fleetness
of the wind, the vast houses through which she could wander, conscious
that she was the mistress of them all, the innumerable beauties of
art which they contained, the caskets and coffers full of jewels and
baubles, all these things beguiled her time and gratified that pride
which a very young girl always feels in the sudden assumption of
womanhood. She began to understand why all her companions at Faïel
had thought her so fortunate. Her serious and spiritual nature made
her feel a little ashamed at finding so much interest in such earthly
treasures; in her self-examination she reproved herself, and almost
contemned herself. But she was too young not to take such irresistible
delight in all these things as a child takes in butterflies or poppies;
it was delightful to say 'I wish,' and see her wishes accomplished as
by magic; it was charming to give away right and left, as out of a
bottomless purse; it was amusing to command, to confer, to be regarded
as the source of all favours and all fortune, as the people of Amyôt
and the household of Paris regarded her. In time, the delicacy of
her taste, the seriousness of her intelligence, might probably make
these possessions and privileges pall on her; in time she would see
sycophancy where she now saw only devotion, and grow weary of a loyalty
only rooted in self-interest; but, at the onset, life was to her like a
fairy story, her empire was one on which the sun never set and in which
the spring-time never waned.
Othmar never said one word which could have served to disenchant
her. Conscious that he could not give her all the singleness of love
which was her due, he strove to atone for any wrong he did her so by
multiplying around her every physical gratification, and giving her an
unlimited power of self-indulgence.
In this new life she was like a child who stands amidst the
bewilderment of its crowd of New Year presents; sometimes she thought
of herself as she had been six months before, sitting in the shadow of
the stone cloisters at Faïel, in her dust-coloured convent frock, with
the blue ribbon of merit crossing her breast and some holy book open on
her hands, with a kind of wondering pity and strangeness, and a sense
of being herself far, very far, away from any kinship with that sad
grey figure.
That so little of egotism was aroused in her in this hot-house
existence which she led, was due to the generosity and simplicity
of her instincts, on which the contagion of worldly influences had
little power. To send a silver crucifix to Faïel, or a piece of fine
lace to Nicole, still gave her greater pleasure than to wear her own
great diamonds or see the crowds in the Champs Elysées look after her
carriage with its liveries of black velvet and white satin.
Meanwhile she had the natural feeling of every unselfish and generous
nature, that her life was not full enough of thought for others. It was
difficult for her at her age to know what to do, so as to carry out
those theories of self-sacrifice which training and temperament alike
made a religion to her.
Friederich Othmar, when he discovered this, told her, with some
impatience, that the House of Othmar always did what was expected of it
in this respect, and that its women had no occasion to trouble their
heads with such matters.
'Wherever we have been located we have always been good citizens,'
he said, with truth. 'We have always borne our due share of public
expenditure or public almsgiving; perhaps more than our due share.
Myself, I believe that all that sort of charity is a vast mistake. It
is intended as a sop to the wolves, but you cannot feed wolves on sops.
They will always want your blood, however they may lick up your mess.'
Yseulte remembered that S. Francis had proved that even wolves may be
tamed into affection and usefulness; but though she believed firmly in
that legend, she hesitated to put it forward, even as an allegory, as
evidence against the arguments of the Baron. She did not lack courage,
nor even that truest courage, the courage of opinion, but she had been
reared in the old traditions of high breeding, which make contradiction
a vulgarity, and, from the young to the old, an offence.
'I hope you will not make yourself into a sort of Judith Montefiore,'
continued the Baron irritably. 'We are not Jews. Jews must do that
kind of thing to get themselves tolerated. We could forgive them the
Crucifixion, but we cannot forgive them their percentage. Though we are
not Jews, Otho has already done some Quixotic things in the Montefiore
fashion. I hope you will not encourage him to continue them.'
'Tell me what they were,' she said, with the light in her eyes and the
colour in her face.
'Not I,' said the Baron; 'I much prefer to see him smoking à Londrès at
the Jockey.'
'Had he ever any very great sorrow?' she ventured to ask.
'None, my dear, but what he chose to make for himself,' replied
Friederich Othmar, with contempt. 'Do you remember Joubert's regret
that he could not write his thoughts on the bark of trees by merely
looking at them?--well, Otho's griefs are much as baseless. As if,' he
added, 'as if there were any real grief in the world,--except the gout!'
'He is like Obermann, like Amiel,' she said timidly. She had read
passages in the volumes of those dreamy and isolated thinkers in the
library of Amyôt. Friederich Othmar shrugged his shoulders; those names
signified to him the very lowest deeps of human ineptitude and folly.
'Men who were so afraid of disappointment and disillusion that they
would allow themselves to enjoy nothing! It would be as reasonable to
let oneself die of starvation as a preventive of dyspepsia! Such men
do not think; they only moon. The cattle that lie and graze under the
trees have meditations quite as useful. My child,' he added, 'would
you be wise or foolish if you threw all your diamonds into the river
in anger because they were not stars? That is what your husband does
with his life. You must learn to persuade him that the stars are
unattainable, and that the diamonds represent a very fair and fruitful
kingdom if not the powers of the air.'
Yseulte sighed wistfully. She vaguely felt that it was not within her
means to reconcile him with the world and fate; she had not the magic
wand.
'I am always in dread,' continued the Baron, 'that you, with your
religious ideas, and he, with his impatience of his position, will do
something extraordinary and Quixotic; will turn S. Pharamond into a
_maison de santé_, or this hotel into a lazar-house for cancer. I shall
never be surprised at any madness of that sort.'
Yseulte sighed a little.
'But, there is the misery of the world all around us,' she ventured to
say; 'if we could alleviate it, would it not be worth any sacrifice?'
'My dear,' said Baron Fritz, 'when Napoléon gave the opium at Jaffa, he
did more to alleviate suffering than all the philanthropists have ever
done. Yet it has been always brought against him as his worst action. I
went once, out of curiosity, to see the Incurables at the hospital of
la Salpêtrière. Well, if false sentiment did not prevent the treatment
à la Jaffa taking place there, an infinitude of hideous suffering and
of hideous deformity would be mercifully nded. But the world is so
sentimental that it will send several hundred thousand of young and
healthy men to endure all kinds of tortures in war for a question of
frontier, or a matter of national etiquette, but it esteems it unlawful
to kill idiots or drug to death incurables cursed with elephantiasis or
leprosy.'
Yseulte's clear eyes grew troubled; these views of life were perplexing
to her. At Faïel all such contradictions had been simply accepted as
ordained under one unquestioned and divine law; the conversation of
Friederich Othmar depressed and bewildered her, but she could perceive
its reason. It made her reflect; it made her more of a woman, less of
a child. He thought that was for the best. If she were not educated in
some worldly knowledge, the world would make an easy prey of her.
'Otho treats her as if she were an ivory madonnina who would remain
aloof on an altar all her days,' he said to a woman he knew. 'On the
contrary, she is a beautiful creature, about whom all the world will
buzz and sting like bees about a lily. She must be taught not to throw
away her honey. She is just now in the clouds; she is very much in
love with a man who is not in love with her; she is full of ideals and
impossible sentiments. She is half a child, half an angel; but to hold
her own in the world she must be something else--not so angelic and
not so childish,--and she must learn to esteem people at their value,
which is for the most part very small. It would be even well if she
could see Otho as he is; she would take life more easily. She would
not be so likely to fall headlong from a heaven of adoration into a
stone well of disillusion. Truths live at the bottom of these wells, no
doubt, but they are not agreeable, and they give a shock to sensitive
people. A woman is prettier when she is sensitive. It is like piety
or charity--it is an essentially feminine ornament, but it is not a
quality which wears well.'
His friend laughed.
'Do you think Othmar will thank you for so educating his wife?'
'He has never thanked me for anything that I have done,' he replied.
'But that does not prevent me from doing what I consider is my duty, or
is most wise.'
'Say wisdom,' returned the lady. 'That suits you better than duty. Duty
is ridiculous if you do not let _le bon Dieu_ pose behind it.'
'I know people say so,' answered the Baron; 'but it is only an idea. In
practical life agnostics and disbelievers of every sort make just as
good citizens as the pietists.'
With the second week of December there was a great social event in
Paris. The Hôtel Othmar was opened to the world. 'The gates of Janus
unclose,' said one who deemed himself a wit in allusion to a war, then
in embryo, into whose conception and gestation the gold of the Othmar
was considered to enter largely.
The Boulevard S. Germain and all its approaches were like rivers of
light, and the sound of carriage wheels was like the roll of artillery.
'Tout Paris' flocked there, and even the Faubourg disdained not to pass
through those immense gates of gilded bronze, which were nicknamed
of Janus, since the mistress of the salons within was by birth
incontestibly a Comtesse de Valogne.
'Tiens, tiens, tiens!' murmured Aurore de Vannes. 'Is it possible
for twelve months to have so changed a _fillette_ into a goddess!
Really, we were all wrong, and Othmar was right. We all thought her a
_pauvrette_, to be put away in a holy house; he had the sense to see
that she would become superb, and would set him right with all the
Faubourg. The Faubourg was always well inclined to him, because his
grandmother was a de Soissons-Valette, but his marriage has made him
one of them: he is definitely placed for ever. Really, I never gave him
credit for so much foresight when he sent that ivory casket. I thought
it was only a caprice.'
'Othmar cares not a straw for the Faubourg,' said her husband, out of
the pure spirit of contradiction. 'He will never give his millions to
carry on a Holy War or restore the throne. He is more likely to dream
of a great Western empire with its capital at the Golden Horn. He is a
Slavophile.'
'He is wholly indifferent to politics; it is Baron Fritz who is the
political conspirator,' returned the Duchesse. 'Otho is a mere dreamer,
and he used to be a discontented one. Perhaps he is not so now.'
'He does not look especially happy; she does. I confess I should be
sorry for him to become contented; the contemplation of his discontent
has always reconciled me with having nothing myself,' said a great
diplomatist, whose debts were as considerable as his talents.
'If he be not contented----' began the Duc, and paused, conscious that
for him to say anything except a jest of any marriage under the sun
would appear supremely ridiculous to his companions. Yet his admiration
for Yseulte was not dormant, and took a still warmer character as he
saw her in the _grande tenue_ of a woman of the world, with the Othmar
diamonds, long famous and long unseen, on her fair hair and her white
breast.
'She has too many jewels for such a child,' he said irritably. 'She is
covered with them like an Indian idol. That is so like a financier's
love of display!'
'I dare say he has given them to her as you give toys to a child,'
replied the diplomatist. 'Othmar has no faults of display. What has
been almost ridiculous in him has been a simplicity of taste not in
accord with his millions. But his wife is so very handsome that she may
well betray him into some vanities.'
Twelve months had truly made in her that almost magical transformation
which passion can cause in a very young and innocent girl who, from
entire seclusion and absolute ignorance, is suddenly thrown into the
arms of a man whom she has scarcely seen, yet timidly adores. She had
lost her extreme spirituality of expression, but she had gained a
thousand-fold in other ways. Her form had developed, her whole person
had become that of a woman instead of a child; she was many years older
than she had been one short year before, when, in her little quiet
chamber under the woods of Faïel, she had only thought of love as a
mystical religious emotion, and of herself as the betrothed of Christ.
She filled her place, and did the honours of her house with a calm
grace which had nothing of the hesitation or the awkwardness of youth.
He had told her what to do, and she did it with perfect ease, and that
dignity which had so become her when she had curtsied to Melville as a
little child in the old, dusky house in the Ile Saint-Louis. In manner
she might have been a Queen of France for five-and-twenty years. It
was only in the unworn transparency of the fair skin, beneath which
the blood came and went so warmly, the slenderness of the lines of
her form, the childlike naïveté of her smile, that her exceeding
youthfulness was still revealed.
She made no single error; she said little, but she said always what
was needful and becoming; she received each one of her guests with the
phrase that pleased them, with the observances that were due to them;
there was no hesitation or awkwardness in her. Even women who watched
her, as her cousin did, with a malicious wish to find her at fault
somewhere, were forced to confess to themselves that she bore herself
admirably. If she had a defect, it was that she appeared a little cold.
She was always exquisitely courteous; she was never familiar.
'She has the manner of the last century,' said Madame de Vannes, 'of
the last century, before the women of Marie Antoinette rode donkeys and
milked cows.'
To see that baby who six months ago had never spoken to any man except
her confessor, and never worn any ornament except her convent medal,
receiving sovereigns and princes and ambassadors, _de puissance à
puissance_, and wearing diamonds which were ten times bigger, finer,
and in greater profusion than her own, made her very angry, and yet
made her laugh. She had seen many transformations of _fillettes_ into
great ladies, but none quite so rapid, so striking, or so complete as
that of her young cousin into the mistress of the Hôtel Othmar.
'I wish Nadine Napraxine were here this evening,' she thought with that
good-humoured malice which enjoys a friend's annoyance without meaning
any real unkindness.
'All Paris will talk of your ball and much more of you to-morrow,' said
de Vannes during the evening to his wife's cousin. 'Does that please
you as much as it pleases most of them?'
'I shall not think about it,' replied Yseulte, simply.
'But I imagine you read the journals?'
'No, never.'
'Never!' he echoed, incredulously. 'Why is that?'
She hesitated, then answered with a little blush: 'He has told me not;
he thinks they are foolish.'
'Othmar?' asked the Duc, with a laugh. 'Do you obey him as you did the
Mother Superior?'
'Why not?' said Yseulte gently, but coldly.
'Why not!' he said irritably. 'Well, because you should begin as you
wish to go on; you will not care for that state of servitude long; it
would be better never to accustom him to it.'
'Excuse me, my cousin, I see Madame de Tavernes is looking for me,'
said Yseulte, as she went to speak with a Duchesse whose genealogical
tree mounted to the remote ages before the long-haired kings; a stately
and powdered person who had issued from the retirement in which she
usually lived to honour the first great entertainment of the daughter
of Gui de Valogne.
The Duc was rebuffed and annoyed.
'She has learned her _riposte_ already,' he thought, 'and she has
not forgotten the locket. I wonder if he care? If he want to be free
himself, he had better put her on a course of _petits journaux_ at
once. There is no recipe like that for corrupting the mind and debasing
the taste. How handsome she is! What a lovely face--what a lovely
form!--and only seventeen even now! She will be in perfect beauty for
the next ten years. If he be not a very ardent or a very assiduous
husband, he will not be able to keep all that to himself; he will have
many rivals, and he will be sure to be unfaithful himself:--then she
will read the journals and learn how women console themselves.'
At five o'clock that morning her rooms were empty, her guests were
gone, and her woman had undressed her, and put on her a _négligée_
of white silk; her hair was unloosened and fell behind her like a
cascade of gold; all the great jewels were strewn on the table near;
she was looking at her own reflection in the large oval silver-framed
mirror before her; she smiled a little as she did so; her eyes were
luminous, her cheeks were flushed; she was sensible of no fatigue, she
was only elated with her own triumphs. She had had a girlish pleasure
in receiving her cousins in that magnificent house; she had had an
innocent triumph in showing how well she could fill the part of a woman
of the world; she felt like a child who has played a queen's part in
some pageant, and played it well; something of the insidious charm of
the world had begun to steal on her; something of its vanity and of its
rivalry had begun to attract her;--very little, for her nature was too
proud, too pure, and too serious to yield easily to these temptations,
but something nevertheless. Only as yet her one dominant thought was of
him in it all. Had he also been content; had there been nothing that he
could have desired otherwise?
She turned with a smile, half timid still, as he knocked at the door
and entered her chamber. Her attendants withdrew at a sign from him; he
took her in his arms and kissed her.
'I thank you for all your triumphs, dear,' he said kindly. 'They are
mine.'
'Did I really do well?' she said doubtfully, but joyfully.
'Perfectly, perhaps almost too well; Paris will talk too much of you.'
'I forgot nothing?' she asked, still anxiously.
'You forgot nothing, and you looked--much too beautiful for men quickly
to forgive me! No, dear, I do not flatter you; flattery would be absurd
from me to you; I tell you the simple truth.'
'I am glad,' she said simply, 'for I have nothing else to reward you
with for all you have given to me.'
She spoke shyly, for she was always in awe of him a little. Her arm,
uncovered to the shoulder as the loose folds of the sleeve fell away
from it, stole timidly about his throat; in all her caresses there was
the hesitation of a proud and delicate nature blent with the longing
of an ardent love. Habit had not familiarised her with the relation in
which he stood to her; the brutalising intimacy of marriage had not
dwarfed or dulled her ideal and adoration of him. He was still much
less her lover than her lord.
Othmar took the bright gold of her heavy hair in his hand, and drew it
through his fingers.
'On chasse de race,' he said, with a smile. 'You receive a great crowd
as if you had been reared in a court from your babyhood.'
'You told me what to do,' she answered simply. 'It seems very easy;
besides, every one was so extremely kind.'
'The kindness of society,' thought Othmar, 'the kiss of Judas!'
But he did not say so. Let her learn for herself what it was worth, he
thought; the knowledge would come soon enough of itself.
Yseulte's face grew grave as she sat lost in thought.
'I do not think it is right to care for this sort of thing,' she said,
with hesitation. 'It is only a sort of vanity. And then all these
diamonds and these great pearls--they say they are worth millions--I do
not like to wear them whilst there are so many without clothes or food
of any kind; one knows that there is so much misery all about us here
in Paris. Is it right, do you think, to enjoy oneself in this kind of
way? I seem to remember nothing but myself all the day long----'
Othmar smiled and sighed.
'Enjoy, my child, while you can; leave all those grave thoughts for
your older years. If you like to sell your jewels, and give them all to
the poor, you can do it, but wait a few years first; wait to see more
of the world. There is a cruel science, called political economy, which
they certainly did not teach you at Faïel; you must learn something
of that before you try to decide these questions, which have vainly
perplexed every thoughtful man since rich and poor were together on
earth. And now, shut your pretty eyes, and sleep and dream of your
triumphs; they have been very innocent ones, you need not repent them.'
He kissed her again, and left her to her daybreak slumber in the warm
orange-flower-scented air of her bed-chamber; and himself went out into
the chill half-frozen streets of Paris on one of those errands of mercy
of which he never spoke to any human being, and which were the result
of his pity for men rather than of any belief or faith or sympathy that
he had with them. He was one of the few men whom the lawless classes of
Paris have ever respected.
Othmar himself could go unharmed where the police would not have
ventured to go save in force; and in the days of the Commune the worst
leaders of it had put a white cross on the great houses of which he was
master, and spared them from torch and shell for sake of the young man
who was wont to pass through the vilest quarters of Paris, with his
hand ever open and his compassion never denied. They knew that if their
_couches sociales_ could have been an accomplished fact, Othmar himself
would never have wished the old state of things maintained, but would
have accepted the new with indifference and perfect courage, himself
glad to be rid of a burden.
They forgave him his riches for sake of his own contempt for them; his
courage, even his coldness, attracted them. He had no _blague_; he was
entirely sincere; he never attempted to convert them to anything; he
aided them without putting any price on his aid, either of gratitude or
doctrine. They knew that he had neither fear of them nor love for them,
but that he had a profound sense of a common humanity with them, which
was in his eyes as in theirs another name for a common misfortune.
The times were out of joint for him. If he had been created with the
capacity of religious faith, he would have been willingly what François
Xavier or Père Lacordaire were. But he had the clear and critical
intelligence of a man of the world; the fables of faith could not give
him any mental pabulum. He took refuge in pity; it seemed to him that
men were bound to do for one another at least as much as buffaloes do,
which in trouble gather around the wounded ones of the herd.
Melville alone had found out something of what he did; Melville,
who although the sweetest-voiced, softest-handed, of churchmen and
courtiers in salon and boudoir, never feared or failed to descend into
the haunts of iniquity, to grapple with disease and crime. In such
places he and Othmar had met by chance more than once, and on one
occasion Melville had said to him: 'You have more influence than I,
because they do not suspect you; a priest is always suspected of trying
to save souls only to serve his own.'
'If I have more influence than you, they are thankless,' rejoined
Othmar; 'for you certainly love them, and I care nothing for them,
absolutely nothing.'
'Why do you serve them, then?' asked Melville, in surprise.
Othmar sighed impatiently. 'It seems to me that one is bound in honour
when fate has placed oneself beyond temptation;--besides, these reeking
breeding-pens of crime in the midst of our own luxury are horrible;
they are cancers in the very womb of human nature. Your Christianity
has endeavoured to cure them for eighteen centuries, and has always
failed miserably. The cancer grows and grows.'
Few persons save those of the police, who were perforce acquainted with
his movements, were aware of the intimacy and influence he had acquired
with the most wretched and the most dangerous classes of Paris;
the food of _maisons centrales_ and the emigrants of Nouméa. Often
Friederich Othmar wondered within himself whither went the large sums
which his nephew drew and spent without explanation; what he spent on
art and on pleasure was known, but there were often great quantities of
money taken by Othmar, in the exercise of his unquestionable right, for
the use of which all the Baron's ingenuity failed to find an account.
Numberless families redeemed from misery, many youths saved from crime
and the galleys, many grown men aided to begin new lives in other
climes, and many a foul place purged to moral and physical cleanliness,
swallowed up these millions of francs, of which the employment remained
a secret to the argus-eyes of Baron Fritz. There was a nobility about
the indifference of this very rich man to his riches which conquered
the hatred of the poor even amongst the Socialistic arrondissements,
where such hatred was the sole religion recognised. They knew that
Othmar himself was as disdainful of existent society as they were
themselves, and that although fortune had so favoured him, he was
no more content with the arrangement of the world than they were
themselves. They were continually, brutally, ungrateful, but underneath
their gratitude they liked him, and would never have harmed him.
As he walked out now into the misty air of dawn, he recalled the
lovely face, with its sleepy eyelids, of his young wife with a sharp
pang of conscience. Why could he not be content with that innocent and
undivided love?
He recalled with a sense of some great fault in himself how entirely
she was outside his life, how little hold she had upon his passions
or his emotions. She was exquisite, she was purity itself in body
and soul; he realised his own absolute possession of her as he had
never done that of any other woman. He had been, that night, proud of
her grace before the world, charmed by her manner, conscious of her
incomparable distinction; and she was his as entirely as any flower
that he might gather in a field. For him had been her first flush, her
first kiss, her first consciousness of love; and yet, as he walked
through the streets of Paris, leaving her to sink to sleep like a happy
and tired child, he was conscious that his heart was indifferent to
her; that, the mere early inclinations of the senses pacified, she had
no power to rouse in him more than the kindly and indulgent affection
which a child might have called forth by its helplessness and beauty.
He desired earnestly to make her as happy as any creature could be on
earth, and would have denied her nothing which could have helped to
make her so; but he could not command his own passions, and he could
not make her the supreme mistress of them. She was a most lovely and
most innocent creature, who was welcome to enjoy all the greatness
and the grace of life with which he could dower her; she was a young
saint who would bear his children in her breast as innocently as
the peach-blossom bears the fruit; she was at all times both dear
to him and sacred to him; but love for her was not there. He sighed
impatiently as he felt that in all his words and his caresses he acted
a part with her, that perhaps sooner or later, when the world had
taught her better what men were, she would know that, and would be no
longer so easily deceived.
As he had watched her that evening in her serenity, her gracefulness,
her dignity, he had all at once remembered that in the great world
youth grows rapidly, as a flower in a hothouse, that she would be
surrounded by many who would ask no happier task than to enlighten
her ignorance and embitter her confidence, and that if she ever came
to learn and realise that she had owed her marriage partially to his
compassion, and more still to his passion for another woman, her heart
might break under the burden of that bitter knowledge, but her pride
would never pardon the offence.
He began to feel as if he wronged her, though neither by act nor word
had he been untrue to her since her marriage. She was so charming
in every way, so delicate of thought, so graceful in expression, so
intelligent even in her ignorance, so wholly worthy to inspire and
retain the greatest love of a man's life, that he felt guilty before
her, knowing that his pulses beat no quicker when he joined her after
absence, that when her young lips, fresh as roses, touched his own, he
met them without ardour or emotion. He had wished society to attract
her; it seemed to him the quickest and the easiest compensation
that he could offer her. At the root of the willingness with which
he entertained the world, he to whom it was as indifferent as it
was commonplace, was the unacknowledged sentiment that if Yseulte
placed her happiness, as her temperament would lead her to do, in
the inner life, in the affections and in the sympathies, she would
be inevitably most miserable soon or late, since soon or late she
would discover the poverty of his own heart; and his heart was richly
endowed enough by nature to make him ashamed to think that it might
ever be so. Friederich Othmar judged him harshly but justly; his
indulgence and tenderness to her were not those of a lover, but were
the accumulated gifts with which he strove to make her blind to his own
coldness. The more he lived with her, the more he felt as though it
were an unpardonable sin to have no love to give her, and the farther
the possibility of such love receded from him. Esteem, admiration,
tenderness, even affection, may all exist only to make the absence of
love itself the more conspicuous.
As he went through the quiet streets, almost wholly deserted in
the early hour of the morning, and swept by a keen wind, a waggon
thundering along at too rapid a pace for so clumsy a vehicle caught the
wheel of a carriage, which was coming in the opposite direction. The
shock flung the carriage on the kerbstone; one of its two horses fell,
the other struggled like a demoniac; the coachman and servant were
thrown to the ground. Othmar naturally hastened to the spot. He was the
only person in sight. The carriage itself had oscillated violently, but
was not upset; its occupant had opened the door of it before he could
arrive at the spot, and had leaped lightly out, though wrapped in
sable furs from head to foot. When he reached the place, the fur-clad
figure was standing in calm contemplation of the harm which had been
done, and of the struggling horses which the coachman, who had sprung
to his feet, was endeavouring to pacify.
'Othmar, is it you?' said a voice whose clear and sweet vibration sent
the blood to his temples; and the eyes of Nadine Napraxine looked at
him from under the sable lining of her velvet hood.
The waggon had blundered on out of sight, its driver in terror of the
distant figure of a sergeant-de-ville who had now approached the scene.
The fallen men had both found their feet, and the horses were still
throwing themselves from side to side with broken traces and slippery
pavement adding to the difficulty increased by their terror.
Othmar's own _coupé_, which followed him at a distance, had now come
up, and his servants assisted hers. He opened the door of his own
carriage.
'Pray accept it,' he said hurriedly. 'They will drive you where you
wish; I will stay and help your people.'
'My people are idiots,' she said, as she gave them a disdainful glance.
'The waggon was large enough to be seen. I was coming from the Gare du
Nord; my women and the _fourgons_ are behind me. What are you about at
this hour? Does the Countess Othmar allow you to be out so early--or so
late?'
There was a grain of malice in the accent of the words; Othmar coloured
despite himself, yet knew not why. He felt his whole being thrill at
the mere sound of the sweet, cruel, well-remembered tones, and hated
her.
She looked at him as they stood together on the kerbstone of the
deserted and foggy street. She was enveloped in her long fur mantle,
and none of the lines of her figure were traceable: she had no more
contour than an Esquimaux. Yet, nevertheless, that incomparable grace
which belonged to her--as its movement to a bird, as its fragrance to
a flower--seemed to detach itself, and escape, even from the heavy
shapeless covering of the travelling-cloak in which she had been
wrapped throughout her long express journey from Russia hither by way
of Berlin and Strasburg. There was nothing visible of her except her
starry eyes, and yet all the irresistible power which she possessed
made his pulses fast and his thought confused; he strove against his
own weakness, and pressed his offer on her with a cold courtesy.
'Well, I will take it since you wish it,' she said, as she entered his
_coupé_. 'You will say who I am to this sergeant-de-ville, and whatever
else may be necessary, though it is no case for the police since the
waggoner has made good his escape; and if he had not, I certainly
should let him alone. Tell your men my address--you remember it? _Au
revoir!_ I shall come and witness your happiness. Many things from me
to your wife.'
They were only the usual words of commonplace politeness, yet to the
ear of Othmar they were fraught with a thousand meanings. 'C'est le ton
qui fait la musique,' and the tone of these perfectly simple sentences
had for him irony, mockery, menace, and ridicule. Remember her address!
Remember the Hôtel Napraxine! As if to his dying day he would ever
forget the slightest trifle which had ever been associated with her!
His horses started off at a swift trot, and he lost her from sight.
The questions of the police as to the cause of the accident started
him as though someone had spoken to him in his sleep. When the matter
was over, and the disabled carriage had been dragged away by hand, and
the frightened horses led homewards by their coachman, it was too late
to go where he had intended. He returned to his own house, bathed,
dressed, and went to his library; but he could not give his attention
to what he read. Nor when, with the early hours of the forenoon,
various persons came to see him by appointment, could he confine his
thoughts to the subjects under consideration.
At noon he gave his card to a servant, and told the man to go and
inquire at her hotel if the Princess Napraxine had suffered any
inconvenience from the accident of that morning.
The servant brought him back one of the small pale-rose-tinted notes,
folded in three, with the crown embossed in silver, which he knew so
well. The few lines in it said only:
'Merci bien. Vous êtes toujours preux chevalier. Je n'ai rien souffert
du tout. Le Prince vous remerciera.--N. N.'
It was the merest trifle, a thing of no import, such as she wrote by
scores every week to numbers of indifferent people; yet it had a sort
of fascination for him. He could not destroy it; its faint subtle
scent, like that of a tea-rose, recalled so vividly the charm of the
woman who had written it; it seemed to him as if no one but Nadine
Napraxine could have sent that little note, coloured like a sea-shell,
delicate as a butterfly, with its miniature and _mignonne_ writing.
Ashamed of his own weakness, and angry with himself for his own
concessions, he threw it into a drawer of his bureau and turned the key
on it.
He had not seen her for a year, and her spell was unbroken; all he had
done to escape from it was of no avail. One glance of her eyes from
beneath the furs in that bleak, grey, misty daybreak, had sufficed to
re-establish her dominion. He was conscious that life seemed no more
the same to him since that chance encounter; it would be more troubled,
more excited, more disturbed, but it would not be again the dull and
even course which it had seemed to be when he had entered absent from
her.
'I will never see her, except in a crowd,' he said to himself, whilst
he remembered, with self-reproach, the tender caresses of Yseulte,
which left him so calm, and even in his heart so cold!
Of course he had known that the Princess Napraxine, who was more
Parisienne than the Parisiennes, would, sooner or later, return to her
home there; would sooner or later reappear in the society which she had
always preferred to all other. Russia had never held her long, and the
seclusion which both her taste and her irritation had made her seek
after the suicide of Seliedoff could not, in the nature of things, have
lasted longer than one season. Yet the sense that she was there within
a few streets of him, separated only by a few roods of house-roof from
him, affected him with a force altogether unforeseen. He realised in it
that there is no cure in simples for strong fevers, and that the will
of a man is as naught against the dominion of passion. Even that slight
letter, with its odour as of pale rose-buds, had a power over him which
all the loveliness and innocence of Yseulte could not exercise. The
irresistible force of his own emotions humiliated him in his own eyes.
He shrank a little, with almost a sense of guiltiness, as a little tap
came on the panels of the library door, and from behind the tapestry
the fair head of his young wife peeped cautiously.
'May I come in?' she asked, as a child might have done.
He rose with instinctive courtesy and opened the door to her.
It was noonday, and her few hours of sleep had sufficed to banish all
her fatigue, and to make her as fresh, as radiant, and as clear-eyed,
as she had been in the summer woods of Amyôt. She had none of the
languor which late hours cause in later years; she had slept as soundly
as a young fawn tired with its play, and had awakened as refreshed
as a flower that uncloses at sunrise. She wore a long loose gown of
palest blue, opening a little at the throat, with much old lace, of
which the yellow tinge made whiter still the whiteness of her skin. The
gown was of satin, and had gleams and shadows in it as she moved. Her
eyes smiled; her cheeks were flushed from her bath; her entrance had a
childish eagerness.
'Do tell me again that I did well last night,' she said, with a
child's longing for the recapitulation of its innocent triumphs.
He did not look at her as he drew her to him with a mechanical caress.
'You did perfectly,' he answered, absently. 'A great ball is a woman's
Austerlitz, I suppose. Do not let it make you in love with the world.'
'One cannot but like it,' she said, with her habitual truthfulness, a
little wistfully. 'That is what I thought last night; perhaps it is
wrong--when so many suffer----'
'They would not suffer a whit less if you did not give a ball.'
She hesitated, being still shy with him, and afraid of that which she
had never seen, but which she always dreaded, his displeasure.
'But,' she said timidly, 'when one _is_ so very happy, one wants to do
something to deserve it. You have made for me such a perfect life, I
want to give others something out of it. I should like to be useful, to
show that I am grateful; not only to give away money----'
She paused, colouring a little at her own temerity. She did not
express herself very well, because she was so much in earnest, and
so uncertain as to whether it would seem discontented or vain in her
to say so much. In an earlier moment the words would have touched
his heart; he would have probably replied by admitting her into some
association with the efforts of his own life, and some knowledge of his
own desires and regrets for humanity at large. But in that instant he
was only anxious to be alone. He answered a little absently:
'My child, ask your confessor these questions; he will show you many
ways; you think him a good man--I have too many doubts myself to be
able to solve yours.'
He spoke with a certain impatience; the harsher note grated on her
sensitive ear. She felt that her scruples, which were very honest and
sincere, did not meet with the same sympathy from him that they had
received a few hours earlier.
A shadow passed over her face and she was silent.
'My dear,' continued Othmar, a little penitently, a little
inconsistently, 'I have had such doubts as yours all my life, but no
one has ever respected me for them; not even those in whose interest
they tormented me. We cannot be wiser than all the world. If we
stripped ourselves bare to found some community or some universal
asylum, we should only be ridiculed as visionaries or as mischievous
disturbers of the public peace and of the balance of fortune. Charity
has oftener created a proletariat than it has increased prosperity.
These questions have haunted me all my life. When I have found an
answer to them, I will tell you. Until then, enjoy yourself. You are at
the age when enjoyment is most possible and most natural. I wish your
days to be happy.'
He spoke with a certain distraction; he was thinking little of what he
said, much of the eyes which had looked at him from under the gloom of
the fur in the mists of the dawn. He sighed unconsciously as he felt
that this innocent young life beside him was no more to him--hardly
more--than the flower which she wore at her throat. He recognised all
its beauty, spiritual and physical, but only as he might have done that
of a picture he looked at, of a poem he read.
'Enjoy yourself, dear; why not?' he added with kindness. 'You were
made to smile as a primrose is made to blossom, and it is now mid-April
with you.'
He kissed her, and passed his hand carelessly over her hair, then he
glanced at the clock on his writing-table.
'I must leave you, for I have an appointment to keep. What are you
going to do with your day?'
'Blanchette is to come to me. I have not seen her yet. The children are
only now up from Bois le Roy, and Toinon is ill.'
She answered him with a little sigh. She wanted him to understand, and
she could not better explain, how her own intense thankfulness for the
new joys of her life filled her sensitive conscience with a trembling
longing to become more worthy of it all, and to let the light which was
about her stream into all dark places, and illumine them with love and
peace. But she felt chilled, and discouraged, and silenced; and she
had been so accustomed to keep all rebellious thoughts mute, that she
did not dream of pursuing a theme to which he appeared indifferent.
He kissed her hand and left her. She sank down for a moment on the
writing-chair he had occupied before the table, and leaned her forehead
on her hands with the first vague sensation of loneliness which had
ever touched her since her marriage day.
'If my little child had been born alive,' she thought, 'then I should
always have known what duty to do, what use to be----'
It was an infinite trouble to her conscience that in these great
palaces of the Othmars she was as useless in her own sight as any one
of the green palm trees or the rose-hued parrots in the conservatories.
She could give money away, indeed,--almost endlessly; but that did
not seem enough to do; that counted to her as nothing, for it cost
no effort. It hurt her to feel, as she did feel vaguely, that she
was no more the companion of her husband than the marble statue of
Athene which stood at one end of his great library. He was infinitely
indulgent to her. He was perfectly courteous and kind, and generous
even to excess; but he never opened his heart to her, he never made
her those familiar confidences which are the sweetest homage that a
man can render to a woman, even when they display his own weakness or
unwisdom. She had too little experience to be able to measure all that
this meant, all of which it argued the absence; but as much perception
as she had of it mortified her. At Amyôt she had vaguely suffered from
it, but here, in Paris, he seemed very far away from her in thought and
feeling. She felt that she was but one of the ornaments of his house,
as the azaleas and palms were in their great porcelain vases.
To be exquisitely dressed, to be the possessor of some of the finest
jewels in the world, to be told to amuse herself as she chose, to
have the world at her feet, and all Paris look after her as she drove
over its asphalte, would have been enough to most women of her age to
make up perfect happiness; but it was not enough for the girl whose
thoughtful years had been passed under the sad and solemn skies of
Morbihan, and who had the sense of duty and the instincts of honour
inherited from great races who had perished on the scaffold and on the
battle-field. There was a pensive seriousness in her nature which would
not permit her to abandon herself wholly to the self-indulgences and
gaieties of the life of the world. She was too grave and too spiritual
to become one of the butterflies who flirt with folly from noonday till
night. Her chastened childhood in the darkened rooms on the Ile St.
Louis had left a gravity with her which could not easily assimilate
itself to the levity and the licence of modern society, which offended
her taste as it affronted her delicacy.