With the turn of the year and the springing of the crocuses her cousins
had come to Millo. When she was in their presence she was more careful
than at any other time that no one should see in her any pain which
could be construed by them into a reproach against Othmar.
'She grows proud and cold,' said the Duchesse. 'The women of her blood
have always been like that--religious and austere. It is a pity. It
will age her before her time; and it is not at all liked in the world
nowadays--save just at Lent.'
Blanchette, with her keen mysotis-coloured eyes, saw farther than her
mother saw. She did not dare to tease her cousin, or to banter her, but
she looked sometimes with curiosity and wonder in her face.
One day, in a softer mood than was usual with her, she came over the
gardens from Millo and found her way to her cousin. Blanchette liked
to be welcome at S. Pharamond; her shrewd little senses smelt the
fragrance in all wealth which dogs find in the truffle; she was always
asking for things and getting them, and though she was afraid of Othmar
as far as she could be of anyone, she retained amongst her respect for
Yseulte's position her derision for what she termed her romanticism,
her Puritanism, and her habitual ignorance of how to extract the honey
of self-indulgence from the flowers of pleasure. But Blanchette had
all the wisdom of the world in her little fair, curly head, and though
at times her malicious impulses conquered her judgment, she usually
repressed them out of reverence for the many good gifts which fell to
her from her cousin's hands, and those instincts of 'modernity' which
forced her to worship where so much riches were.
She came into the garden salon this day, the one where Melville had
once said to Othmar that to make a home was in the power of any man not
a priest. Her eyes were watchful and her manner important; but Yseulte,
to whom the child's presence was always irksome, though her gratitude
to their mother forced her always to receive the little sisters with
apparent willingness, had not observation enough, or thought enough of
her, to notice those signs. She was alone; it was two hours after the
noon breakfast; Othmar was away, she knew not where; he had gone out
early in the forenoon. She was lost in the weariness of those thoughts
which occupied her unceasingly, when the pretty gay figure of the
child tripped up to her side, and the thin high voice of her began its
endless chatter.
'They were talking about you yesterday after the _déjeuner_,' she said,
after her discursive gossip had embraced every subject and person then
of interest to her, pecking at each one of them furtively, petulantly,
as a well-fed mouse pecks at crumbs of cake. 'They were saying how
beautiful you were; even mamma said that, and they all agreed that if
only you were not so grave, so cold, so almost stiff, nobody would be
admired more than you. But men think you do not care, so they do not
care. It is true,' added Blanchette, studying the face of her cousin
out of the corner of her eye, 'it is true that the Princess Napraxine,
whom they are always so mad about, is just as indifferent too. But
then it is another kind of indifference--hers. She is always provoking
them with it, on purpose. You go through a room as if you were saying a
paternoster under your breath. It is a great difference----'
'It is, no doubt, a great difference,' said Yseulte, with more
bitterness than she was aware of; the idle words struck at the hidden
wound within her. The difference was vast indeed between herself and
the woman whom her husband loved!
Blanchette watched her sharply, herself sitting on a stool at her feet.
'Do you know,' she said, pulling the ears of Yseulte's great dog, 'that
she is coming--indeed, I think, is here? I heard them say so yesterday.
It seems that the Prince bought that little villa and gave it to
her--La Jacquemerille--when they were here two years ago. She is very
rich, you know. Her husband has left her such immense properties, and
then I think she had a great deal of money all of her own, before his
death, from some distant relative, who left it to her because she did
not want it; it is always like that.'
Yseulte rose abruptly. Blanchette could not see her face, but she saw
her left hand, which trembled.
As far as the child liked anyone, she was attached to her cousin; since
her marriage Yseulte had been extremely generous and kind to her, and
the selfish little heart of Blanchette had been won, as far as ever
it could be won, by its affections which were only another form of
selfishness. She had been unable to resist the temptation of telling
her news, and saying what was unkind; and yet in her way she was
compassionate.
'Why are you so very still and grave?' she said now after a pause.
'They say it is because the child died, but that cannot be it; it is
nonsense; you would not care like that. Do you know now what I think?
Do not be angry. I think that you are so unhappy because--because--now
Prince Napraxine is dead, you fancy that she would have been his wife
if you had not been here!'
'Silence!' said Yseulte, with imperative command. Her face grew scarlet
under the inquisitive, searching gaze of the child. She suffered
an intolerable humiliation beneath that impertinent and unerring
examination which darted straight into her carefully-treasured secret,
and dragged it out into the light of day.
'Ah!' said Blanchette, with what was, for her, almost regret and almost
sympathy, 'ah, I was sure of it! I have always been sorry that I said
anything to you that day. But why do you care? If I were you, I should
not care. What does it matter what he wishes? Men always wish for what
they cannot get; I have heard that said a hundred and a thousand times.
And you are his wife, and you have all the houses, and all the jewels,
and all the horses; and all the millions; and as he is always thinking
of her, so people say, he will not mind what you do. You may amuse
yourself just as you like. If I were you, I should go and play at the
tables.'
'Silence! You are insolent; you hurt me; you offend me,' said Yseulte,
with greater passion than she had ever yielded to in all her life. All
the coarse consolations which the world would have given her, repeated
and exaggerated on the worldly-wise lips of Blanchette, seemed to her
the most horrible parody of her own sacred and intolerable woe, so
carefully buried, as she thought, from any human eye.
'It is true,' said the child, offended and sullen. 'Everyone knew he
never loved you; he always loved her. Even in Paris last year----. But
what does it matter? You have got everything you can want----'
But Yseulte had left her standing alone in the golden-coloured
drawing-room of S. Pharamond, with the irises and roses so gaily
broidered on the panels of plush.
Blanchette shrugged her shoulders as she glanced round the room. 'What
idiots are these sensitives!' she thought, with wondering contempt.
'What can it matter? She has all the millions----'
The mind of the little daughter of the latter half of the nineteenth
century could go no farther than that.
She had all the millions!
She had meant, quite sincerely, to give sympathy and consolation, but
she could not help fashioning both in her own likeness.
Yseulte, with a feverish instinct to reach solitude and the open air,
left her tormentor within the house, and hastily covering herself,
passed out into the gardens of S. Pharamond, and walked farther and
faster than her physical strength, which had not been great since the
birth of her child, was well fitted to bear. She longed thirstily for
the grey skies and the moist air of Faïel, for the cold dusky seas
of the north-west and the dim far-stretching lands. The light, the
buoyancy, the glitter, the dry clear atmosphere of those southern
shores, oppressed her and fevered her. If she had not altogether lost
the habit of confidence in her husband, she would have said to him, 'I
sicken of all this drought and cloying sweetness. Let me go where the
west wind blows; where the northern billows roll; where it is cold, and
dusk, and green, and full of shadows; where it does not mock one's pain
with light and laughter!'
But she had lost that habit utterly: she never spoke of anything she
felt or wished; she accepted all the days of her life as they came to
her.
'I have nothing of my own,' she thought; 'I have no right to wish for
anything.'
He had made this place hers; he always spoke of it as hers; it was,
indeed, her own inalienably; but she did not feel it to be so. It
was only a part of his wide charity to her--the charity which she had
thought was love.
She walked far, she scarcely knew herself where, taking her way
mechanically through the grounds and into the fields and orange woods
adjoining them, following the windings of the paths which wound upward
between the great gnarled trunks of olives and beneath their hoary
branches. As she ascended under the forest of olives, which was part
of the lands of S. Pharamond, she could see below her a broad hunting
road, cut in old times by the Maison de Savoie, neglected by the
Commune, but kept in preservation by Othmar himself. She heard a sound
of horses' hoofs, and instinctively looked down; between the network
of olive boughs she saw a low carriage, drawn by three black ponies
abreast, and harnessed in the Russian manner, their abundant manes
streaming on the wind as they dashed headlong down the steep incline.
They were followed by two outriders in liveries of deep mourning.
The woman who drove them looked upward, and made a slight salutation
with a smile.
It was Nadine Napraxine.
In another instant the turn of the road hid them from sight, and the
beat of the galloping hoofs was lost in the sound of a little torrent
which fell down through the red bare rocks above, and fed with its
moisture the beds of violets beneath the olives.