She remembered all that it had said. She saw as though it were written
in letters of fire the fact that her husband would leave her for ever
if another would stoop to accept the gift of his life. She saw the
terrible, inexorable humiliation of the truth that she would only owe
his fidelity, his presence, and his endurance of her in the future, to
the forbearance of Nadine Napraxine.
There was no place left in her mind for reason or hope to hide in; it
was all a blank desolation.
The pride, which was the strongest instinct in her, and the gratitude
which was the strongest motive, were all that were left alive in the
dull stupor which had overspread her brain. The one told her that every
hour which Othmar spent beside her would be but as an alms cast to
her by her rival; the other told her that her existence was the sole
barrier between the man to whom she owed obedience, love, and fealty,
and the joys which he coveted, the fate which he desired. Not alone was
she herself as nothing in his life; but she was his gaoler, his burden
of burdens, his one unchangeable regret and calamity. He had sought her
out of mercy, generosity, kindliness; and now she was for ever in his
path of life like a black shadow which hid the sunshine from his house.
She had known this, or most of this, for many months, but its cruel
indignity, its dreadful truth, had never looked to her all that it
looked now as she realised that pity for her unloved loneliness which
made her rival relinquish her hold on her husband's life and refuse
to accept the dishonoured allegiance which he offered. She saw in
those few words, which had been written for Othmar's eyes alone, the
finer impulses of generosity, the higher instincts of compassion,
which had impelled Nadine Napraxine to remember her and to spare her
when her husband had been willing to sacrifice her as the forest doe
was sacrificed of old upon the altars of love. She did not blame him
or hate him; she loved him always with the same loyalty, the same
grateful, mute, and timid devotion. But all her life revolted in
her at the thought that she would owe his enforced constancy to the
intercession of the woman he adored; that she herself was nothing more,
would for ever be nothing more, than as the clog of wood upon the
captive's foot, keeping his steps for ever in one cheerless path. She
did not reason; a stupor of horror had fallen upon her; she was only
conscious of this one fact, that whilst she lived Othmar would suffer.
Inherent in her nature was the heroism of a race which had never
feared death or danger, and the pride, sensitive as a nerve laid bare,
which made pity intolerable, charity insult, life without self-respect
unendurable. A delirium of shame was upon her. There was only alive
in her one consciousness--that she would never consent to live to be
a torture to him, never endure to be outstripped in generosity and in
renunciation by the enemy of her life. She had loved him with all the
tenderness and loyalty of her nature; she had done all she could to pay
him back in gratitude and affection the immeasurable gifts she owed to
him; but she had long known that she had failed, that she had no power
to console or to beguile him. She was only a weariness to him, a chain
upon his liberties, a companion undesired and irremovable, a thing
useless and joyless, which, being lost, would be never missed and never
regretted.
Nay, the gates of life closing for ever on herself would let the light
of the future stream in, white and fair, across his path.
Her mind was dulled and her whole being strung to unnatural excitation;
the many months in which she had shut her unuttered sorrow in silence
in her own breast had in a manner disturbed the balance of her mind.
That solitude in thought and absence of sustaining sympathy, which may
be as bracing as the north wind to older or sterner lives, had to her
youthfulness and timid susceptibility been fatal as the north wind is
to the shyly-flowering spring. She had lost all hold on proportion
in her lonely grief; she had become morbidly self-absorbed, and grew
in her own sight a useless and undesired burden. All which remained
distinct to her were her pride, which revolted from acceptation of
her rival's intercession in her favour, and the piteous sense that no
devotion, no sacrifice, no effort on her part could ever make her
more in her husband's existence than a weight, a weariness, a thing
undesired and unloved. The unselfishness and the loftiness of her
instincts now served her worse than any fault or feebleness would
have done. So long as she lived nothing, she knew, could serve him or
release him. The patience and the piety which her confessor ceaselessly
put before her as the eternal and unfailing panacea of woe could do
nothing to give him happiness whilst she was there beside him; only her
vacant place, her stiff dead limbs, her forgotten grave--these alone
could be the precursors of any joy or liberty for him.
She did not reason thus, but she was moved by the knowledge of it, as
one groping in the dark is guided by his touch. For the moment that
sublime insanity of self-sacrifice was on her which has sent all the
martyrs of the world to self-sought death.
By that which she believed divine law she knew that she was forbidden
to loose the cord of life. To forestall the summons of God was to her
implicit faith a guilt so dark that it would cast its shadow athwart
all eternity. But as her people had flung themselves by choice upon
the pikes of the revolutionists rather than outlive their king, so she
was willing now to cast herself into the jaws of death rather than
outlive the loss of hope, the loss of honour.
In her sight all his gifts, all his embraces, all the possessions
with which he had dowered her, were but so much dishonour, being only
the alms of pity and of charity, the forced atonement of a chill
indifference. To live one other hour beneath his roof and by his
side seemed to her, in all the dim, blind stupor of her thoughts, an
indignity before which any death were blessed. She had the silent
resolution and the endurance, meek yet dogged, of her Breton blood;
these held her outwardly calm and restrained, while the delirium of
self-sacrifice drove her headlong to her fate. She had never loved him
more than she loved him at that moment. She had clearness of memory and
strength of devotion enough to think, even in those terrible instants,
of the only ways in which she could spare him pain. If he knew that her
death was self-sought, remorse would be with him all his days.
'He shall not know; he shall not know,' she whispered to the sunny air
and to the crimson blossoms.
She stooped and tore the letter of Nadine Napraxine into small pieces,
and cast them down amongst the shrubs. Then with slow, unsteady steps
she took the familiar paths which led through the gardens to the hills.
There were no tears in her eyes; a flame-like force of self-destruction
burned in her and scorched up all natural fear. Even the frightful
guilt which her creed made her believe she was about to take upon her
soul could not appal or arrest her. Even the human yearning in her
which impelled her to turn back once and look upon his face and hear
his voice,--if only from some distant place, as strangers might look
and hear,--she had strength in her to resist and repel. Seeing him, she
would betray herself; he would suspect; her death would be a burden to
him as her life had been. She wished him to be happy, never to think of
her save now and then with kindness.
Fortitude and self-denial were stronger in her than any other thing,
and hushed down the natural revolt of aching passions.
'I will give him my life, since it is all I have to give,' she thought:
she was his debtor for so much, but thus her debt would be paid.
She went slowly, but steadily, up the familiar way in the glad light
of the afternoon hours. With the swift, unstudied instincts of a mind
feverish and confused, but holding fast to one central and immovable
idea, she had remembered at once the means by which she could reach her
end and make her death seem the result of accident; she had remembered
a crumbling tower on the flower-farm of her fostermother, where the
owls built and the pigeons mated, and where again and again as a child
she had been forbidden to risk life and limb on its rotten stairway and
its ancient stones, but obstinately had sat for many an hour, seeming
close to the blue sky, looking down on the olive and orange woods, and
calling to the birds wheeling above her head.
One false step there--then silence. Who would ever know?
The sun was near its setting as she reached the hedge of aloes marking
the boundary of S. Pharamond. She passed through them, and crossed a
field or two where the red tulips were glowing beneath the tall wheat;
then she reached the farm of Nicole Sandroz. No one was in sight: the
man was away in the town of Villefranche, the women were at work in the
rose fields. No one saw her save the old dog of the house, who gave
her a mute welcome, creeping out with stiffened limbs from his niche
in the wall. From the hill side on which the house stood, the turrets
and terraces of Millo, the towers and woods of S. Pharamond, the green
oasis of their gardens and the blue sea shining beyond, spread out
before her gaze in all the glow and glory of the sunset hour. The
golden light suffused all the visible world in its effulgence, and the
mountains northward were violet as the cup of an anemone flower. She
looked a moment: then closed her eyes and turned away, lest the fair
sight of the earth at evening should weaken and unnerve her.
She entered the dwelling-place and ascended the stairway leading to
the tower, relic of an ancient time when the low white-walled building
had been fortified and armed against the pirates of the sea and the
freelances of the land. She climbed the broken steps of stone, which
her young feet had so often trodden with the careless light tread of
the kid, and its heedlessness of danger. Every now and then a narrow
slit in the masonry of the tower let in the golden light of the world
without and let her see the smiling sunlit fields. A strong shudder
shook her at such times from head to foot, but she did not pause until
she had reached the platform of the tower. It was worn and broken,
many fissures yawned in it, the unused nests of birds cumbered it,
the battlements which had once protected it were almost levelled with
its floor; the stones which remained were lose and uneven. She paused
upon the summit, and the glory of the evening light was all about her
and upon her; the deep blue heavens seemed very near. Though it was
daylight still there were stars clear and large above her head. The
world lay soundless and serene; no echo from it reached her through
those depths of air.
Her eyes dwelt upon the place of her home.
The circling pigeons flew around her, the wind of their wings fanned
her cheek. She kneeled down and made the sign of the cross.
'God receive my soul!' she murmured. 'It is guilt--but there is no
other way.'
Then she rose, and, with a step which never paused or faltered, she
walked to the edge of the undefended roof. She looked once more
southward to where the house of Othmar lay, once upward to the vault of
azure air.
Then she stepped forward into the void below, threw her arms outward as
a bird spreads its wings, and fell, as a stone falls through the empty
air.
* * * * *
A little while later the women coming there, called by the howling of
the old house-dog, found her lying quite dead upon the turf beneath.
Death had been merciful and had not mutilated her, her face was calm
and had not been bruised or wounded: her head had struck upon a stone,
and she had died without any lingering pain or conscious death-throe.
The birds were flying startled and distressed above the summit of the
tower. The sun had set.
Her last wish was fulfilled.
No one dreamed that her death had been sought by her own will. The
loosened masonry told its tale, and no one doubted what it said.
She had accomplished that supreme sacrifice which is content to be
unguessed, unpitied, and, attaining to the martyr's heroism, puts aside
the martyr's crown.
L'ENVOI.
In a year from that time Nadine Napraxine sat in her white boudoir in
her house in Paris.
It was the eve of her marriage with Othmar. She was lying indolently
amongst her white cushions; her eyes were thoughtful, her mouth was
smiling.
'If one could only feel all that rapture which he feels, how charming
life would be!' she mused, with her old sceptical wonder at the ardour
and the follies of men.
Passion was for once acceptable to her, but it was still scarcely
shared; she still surveyed and analysed its forces with a vague
astonishment, a lingering derision. Love had reached her more nearly
and enveloped her more warmly than she had ever believed that it
would do; yet there remained beneath it the smile of her habitual
raillery, the doubt of her habitual incredulity. Her life had obtained
the fruition of all its desires, and the future was hers in perfect
triumph, so far as any human knowledge can possess it. Yet, in the
vague melancholy which floated like a little cloud at times upon her
careless and amused mockery of herself, she thought more than once of
the device emblazoned on the wall of Amyôt, _Nutrio et extinguo_--it is
the motto of all human passions.
'Yes, this is love, no doubt,' she said to him this day; 'it is even
ecstasy--as yet. But shall we never know the recoil? Shall we never
tire? Will there be no reaction, no fatigue, no level lengths of habit
and of tedium? Who can keep always at this height?'
'We shall--for ever!' murmured her lover, with the intensity of his
adoration for her trembling on his lips. 'To doubt it is to doubt me!'
'No,' said Nadine Napraxine, with her fleeting mysterious smile. 'No; I
do not doubt you at all; I only doubt myself--and human nature!'
She sighed a little, even as she smiled. She, who had divined so much
more of the truth than the blunter perceptions of a man had ever
suspected, she, with that melancholy presage and superstitious sadness
which were dormant in her blood, thought, with a passing chill of dread:
'Our joy is like the basil plant of Isabella. It blossoms out of death!'
THE END.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Table of contents created by Transcriber and placed into the public
domain.
Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.
Retained idiosyncratic, antiquated and inconsistent spellings.