Nadine Napraxine kept her promise to Othmar. She did for him what she
had done for no other human being; she meditated on his entreaties as a
thing which might possibly be granted by her. She looked for a little
while through the play and the glow of his impassioned words as through
some painted window into some agreeable land whither, perchance, she
might travel.
The very sternness and daring of his manner of demand had its
attraction for her. None of her courtiers had wooed her quite in
that way: some had been too timid, some too submissive, some too
worldly-wise. The insane desire to fly with her from the world to some
far-away, semi-barbaric, mysterious Eden of his own making had never
been so boldly and uncompromisingly set forth to her by any lover as
now by Othmar. It had a certain fascination for her even while the
philosophy and irony in her ridiculed the idea. It responded to the
vague but very real dissatisfaction with which life, as it was, filled
her. She was tired of the routine of it. Everyone said the same thing.
Its very triumphs were so monotonous that they might just as well have
been failures. Half her provocation and cruelty to men arose from a
wish which she could not resist, to find something vivid and new to
interest her. She succeeded in causing tragedies, but she did not
succeed in being interested in them herself.
Othmar did interest her--in a measure.
He had done so from the first moment that she saw him coming in--tall,
slight, grave, with great repose and more dignity than most men of his
day--through the vague light, _entre chien et loup_, into the hall of
a country house in the green heart of the Ardennes, where she and her
hosts and a great party, wearing the russet and gold and pale blue of
their hunting clothes, were waiting for the signal of the _curée_ from
the terraces without.
He had interested her then and always in a degree; but only in a degree.
'It certainly cannot be love that _I_ feel,' she said to herself,
with regret. 'I am glad when he comes because he--almost--excites
me, but I am glad when he is gone because he--almost--disturbs me. I
can imagine certain follies being possible to me when he is here, but
they never quite become possible. If I were sure they would become
so, and in becoming so be agreeable to me, I would go away with him.
But--but--but----.'
The objections seemed many to her, in a way insuperable; they lay in
herself, not in him, and so appeared never to be removed.
She respected him because he would have scorned one of those intrigues
screened under conventional observances, of which the world is so
full. If she could have entirely persuaded herself that his life was
absolutely necessary to hers, she would not have hesitated to let
society become aware of the truth. She had no grain in her of the
hypocrite or of the coward.
But she was not sure: and to break up your life irrevocably, to throw
it into a furnace and fuse it into a wholly new shape, to fling your
name to all the hounds who fed on the offal of calumny, and then
to find, after all this _Sturm und Drang_, that you had only made
a mistake, and were only a little more bored than before!--this
possibility seemed to be at once so dreary and so ridiculous that she
did not dare to put it to the proof. Her own potential weariness in the
future to which he wooed her, rose before her in a ghastly shape and
barred the way.
She pondered on the matter fully and sincerely for some days: days
in which nothing pleased her: days in which her riding-horse felt
her spurs, and her friends her sarcasms: days in which her toilettes
had little power to interest her; Worth himself seemed worn out; her
admirable tire-woman did nothing well; and her husband seemed to her
to have grown heavier, stouter, stupider, more Kalmuck, and more
intolerable than ever during the hours of breakfast and dinner, which
were the only hours weighted by his presence. In those few hours she
felt almost persuaded to take her lover at his word. Platon Napraxine
was so densely, so idiotically, so provocatively unalarmed and secure!
He would have tempted almost any woman to make him suddenly awake to
find himself ridiculous.
'He would howl like a wounded bear!' she thought contemptuously, 'and
then somebody would bring him brandy, and somebody would mention the
tables, and somebody would talk about Mdlle. Chose, and he would be all
right again. He is too stupid to feel. There are prairie dogs, they
say, which hardly know when they are shot or beaten; he has got the
soul of one of them. Because I have married him he is convinced that I
shall never leave him;--_la belle raison_! There are so many men like
that. They marry just as they buy a cane; they put the cane in the
stand; it is bought and it cannot move; they are sure it will always be
there. One fine day some one comes and takes it; then they stare and
they swear because they have been robbed.'
This time of uncertainty and doubt, which was to Othmar fraught with
such wild alternations of hope and of fear, which now swung him in his
fancy high as heaven and now sunk him deep in the darkness of despair,
was to her a period rather of the most minute analysis and of the
most subtle self-examination. In the _naïveté_ of her profound and
unconscious egotism she never once considered his loss or gain: she was
entirely occupied with the consideration of her own wishes. Everything
bored her; would she, if she took this step, which to most women would
have looked so big with fate, be less bored--or more? This seemed to
her the one momentous issue which trembled uncertain at the gate of
choice.
She considered it thoughtfully and dispassionately. She was not
troubled by any moral doubts, or any such reasons for hesitation as
would have beset many women of more prejudices and of less intelligence
than herself. All these things were _le vieux jeu_. She was far too
clear-sighted and too highly-cultured to be scared by such bogies as
frighten narrow minds. She saw no sanctity whatever in the marriage
ties which bound her to Platon Napraxine. You might as well talk of
a contract for eggs and butter, or an operation on the Bourse being
sacred! No human ordinances can very well be sacred, and we cannot
be sure there are any divine ones, logically, all the probabilities
are that there are none; so she certainly would have said had anyone
challenged her views on such a subject.
In a manner, this crisis of her life amused her like a comedy. The
unconsciousness of her husband whilst the unseen cords of destiny were
tightening about him; the revolt and impatience of Othmar, conveyed to
her by many a restless glance and half-uttered word as they passed each
other in his drawing-rooms or in those of others; the ignorance of her
lovers and her friends; and her own meditations as to the many comments
that the world would make if ever it knew: all these diverted her.
What alone troubled her was her own pride. Would she ever be able to
endure any loss of that? '_Je serai honnête femme_,' she had said to
her father in her childhood, and when she had repeated the words in her
womanhood her mind had been made up not so much by coldness, chastity,
or delicacy as by hauteur. She could not have endured to feel that
there were any doors in Europe which could be shut in her face, or that
she could not shut her own whensoever and against whomsoever she might
choose.
His term of probation came to an end one morning when the day had
nothing of winter save its date; a morning rosy and golden, with
distant mists transparent as a veil, and the mild air soundless and
windless amongst the mimosa and eucalyptus groves of the grounds of La
Jacquemerille. For once Nadine Napraxine condescended to be true to an
appointment; whilst the day was still young and all the lazy world of
the modern Baiæ still dozed or, at the utmost, yawned itself awake, she
moved, with that lovely languor which was as much a portion of her as
the breath she drew, along the sea-terrace of her house, and smiled to
see Othmar already standing at the foot of the sea-steps.
'What children men are!' she thought, with that ridicule which the
ardour of her lovers was always most apt to awake in her, as he bent
over her hand and pressed on it lips which trembled.
'It must be really delightful,' she continued in her own reflections,
'to be able to be so very eager and so very much in earnest about
anything. Instead of abusing us, men ought to be infinitely thankful
to us for giving them emotions which do, for the time at least eclipse
those of baccarat and of pigeon-shooting. In a moment or two he will be
inclined to hate me, but he will be very wrong. He will always be my
debtor for fifteen days of the most exquisite agitation of his life.
Twenty years hence he will look back to this time, and say, "_Oh, le
beau temps quand j'étais si malheureux!_"'
Whilst she so mused she was saying little careless, easy phrases to
him, pacing her terrace slowly, with her great mantle of iris-coloured
plush, lined with silver-fox fur drawn close about her, and its
hood about her face, like its spathe around the narcissus. She was
serene, affable, nonchalante; he was silent, and deeply agitated; so
passionately eager for his fate to be spoken, that he could find no
light sentences with which to answer hers.
'He looks very well in that kind of excitement,' she thought, as she
glanced sideways at him. 'He is poetic in it, instead of being only
awkward, like poor Ralph. Really, if one could only be sure of one's
self----'
She amused herself awhile by keeping him upon the terrace, on which all
the windows of the house looked, and where regard for her must perforce
restrain him from any betrayal of his own emotions. She felt as if she
held in leash some panting, striving, desert animal which she forced to
preserve the measured pace and decorous stillness of tamed creatures.
At length, compassion or prudence made her relent, and enter the
little oriental room where his eloquent avowals had been made a
fortnight before. She closed the glass doors, threw off her furs, and
stood in the subdued light and the heated air of the room, cool, pale,
delicate as the April flower which she resembled, long trailing folds
of the primrose-coloured satin which formed her morning _négligé_
falling from her throat to her feet in the long lines that painters
love; one great pearl fastened a few sprays of stephanotis at her
throat. She sank into a chair which stood against a tree of scarlet
azalea set in an antique vase of brass. She was one of those women
who naturally make pictures of themselves for every act and in every
attitude.
The moment they were secure from observation Othmar knelt at her feet
and kissed her hands again; his eyes, uplifted, told their tale of
rapture, hope, fear, and imploring prayer more passionately than any
words. He would have cut his heart out of his breast if she had bidden
him.
She glanced down on the agitation which his features could not conceal
with a sense of that wonder which never failed to come to her before
the intensity of feeling with which she inspired others.
'When I really do nothing to make them like that!' she reflected for
the hundredth time before the tempest which she raised almost without
endeavour.
Othmar had recovered his presence of mind, though none of his
tranquillity; his words, impetuous, persuasive, at times broken by the
force of his emotion, at times eloquent with the eloquence natural
to passion, fell on her ear uninterrupted by her. She listened, much
as she might have listened to the sonorous swell of the _Marche au
Supplice_ of Berlioz, or any other harmony which should have pleased
her taste if only by contrast of its own vehemence and strength with
the serenity of her own nature. She listened, without any sign of
any sort, save of so much acquiescence as might be indicated by the
gentleness of her expression and the passiveness with which she left
her hand in his. He believed her silence to be assent.
'This is what I have always fancied might conquer me,' she thought,
whilst his ardent protestations and entreaties held her for the moment
pleased and fascinated. 'And yet, I do not know. To leave the world, to
be always together, to go, heaven knows where, into a sort of Mahometan
paradise--would it suit me? I am afraid not. The idea pleases one in
a way, but not quite enough for that. Always together, and alone--one
would tire of an angel!'
So still she was, as these thoughts drifted through her mind, so
unresistingly she let his forehead, and then his lips, lie on her hand,
that he believed himself successful in his prayer. He lifted his eyes
and looked at her with a gaze full of rapturous light, of adoration and
of gratitude.
'Oh, my love! my love!' he murmured. 'Never shall you regret an hour
your mercy to me!'
His lips would have sought hers as his words ended in a sigh, the
lover's sigh of happiness, but she moved and disengaged herself
quickly, and motioned to him to rise. On her mouth there was the slight
smile he knew so well--the smile that was the enemy of men.
'My dear friend,' she said, in her melodious voice, sweet as the
south wind, and never sweeter than when it uttered cruel truths to
ears that were wounded by them, 'I will do you the justice to grant
that I quite believe you care very much for me' (he made an indignant
gesture); 'well, that you love me _un peu, beaucoup, passionnément_, as
the convent girls say to the daisies. But I am equally convinced that
you do not understand me in the least. I understand myself thoroughly.
We are all enigmas to others, but we ought to be able to read our own
riddle ourselves. I can read mine; many people never can read theirs
all their lives long, and that is why they make so many mistakes.
Now, I do know myself so very well. I know that no kind of sin, if
there really be such a thing as sin, would frighten me much. I think
my nerves would stand even a crime without wincing, if it were a bold
one. If the world threw stones at me, it would amuse me. I cannot
fancy anybody being unhappy about it. Therefore you will comprehend me
when I say that it is not any kind of commonplace nonsense about doing
anything wrong which moves me for a moment, but,--I have thought of it
all very much and very seriously, and really with a wish to try that
other kind of life you speak of, but--I cannot go with you!'
She said it as quietly and as lightly as if she were saying that she
could not drive with him to the Col di Guardia that morning. She was
smiling her pretty, slight, mysterious smile, which might have meant
anything, from pity to derision. She had a sprig or two of the leafless
calycanthus in her fingers, which she played with as she spoke. He
hated the fragrance of that winter blossom ever afterwards.
'You cannot? You cannot?' he murmured almost unconsciously. 'And why?'
He did not well know what he said, the paralysis of a sudden and
intense disappointment was upon him; he forgot that he had no right to
interrogate her, that no faintest breath of promise from her had ever
given him title to upbraid her; the noise as of a million waves of
stormy seas was surging in his ears.
'Why?' she repeated, with the same serenity, and with a kind of
indulgence as to a wayward, imperious child. 'Oh, for so many
reasons!--not at all, believe me, from any kind of hesitation about
Platon; he would do very well without me, though he would try to kill
you, I suppose, because men have such odd ideas; besides they are
always fretting about what the world thinks, just as when they play
billiards they think about the opinion of the _galerie_; no, not for
that, believe me; that is not my kind of feeling at all; but I have
thought over it all very much, and I have decided that it would not
do--for me. I should be irritable and unhappy in a false position,
because I should have lost the power to shut my doors, other people
would shut theirs instead; I should be quite miserable if I could not
be disagreeable to persons whom I did not care to know, and no one
in a false position ever dares be that; they smile, poor creatures,
perpetually, like so many wax dolls from Giroux's. Of course the moral
people say it is the loss of self-respect which makes them so anxious
to please, but it is not that: it is really the sense that it is of no
use for them to be rude any more, because their rudeness cannot vex
anybody. I quite understand Marie Antoinette; I should not mind the
scaffold in the least, but I should dislike going in the cart. "_Le roi
avait une charrette_," you remember.'
Othmar had risen; as she glanced up at him, even over her calm and
courageous temperament, a little chill passed that was almost one of
alarm. Yet her sense of pleasure was keener than her fear: men's souls
were the chosen instrument on which she chose to play; if here she
struck some deeper chords than usual, the melody gained for her ear.
Profound emotions and eager passions were unknown to her in her own
person, but they constituted a spectacle which diverted her if it did
not weary her--the chances depended upon her mood. At this moment they
pleased her; pleased her the more for that thrill of alarm, which was
so new to her nerves.
Othmar did not speak: all the strength which was in him was taxed to
its breaking point in the effort to restrain the passionate reproaches
and entreaties which sprang to his lips, the burning tears of bitter
disillusion and cruel disappointment which rushed to his sight and
oppressed his breath. What a fool, what a madman, he had been again to
throw down his heart like a naked, trembling, panting thing at her feet
to be played with by her.
'How well he looks like that!' she thought. 'Most men grow red when
they are so angry, but he grows like marble, and his eyes burn--there
are great tears in them--he looks like Mounet-Sully as Hippolytus.'
Once more the momentary inclination came over her to trust herself to
that stormy force of love which might lead to shipwreck and might lead
to paradise; there were a beauty, a force, a fascination for her about
him as he stood there in his silent rage, his eyes pouring down on her
the lightnings of his reproach; but the impulse was not strong enough
to conquer her; the world she would have given up with contemptuous
indifference, but she would not surrender her own power to dictate to
the world.
Her soft tranquil voice went on, as a waterfall may gently murmur its
silvery song while a tempest shakes the skies.
'I know you think that love is enough, but I assure you I should doubt
it, even if I did--love you. Rousseau has said long before us that
love lacks two things,--permanence and immutability; they seem to me
synonymous, and I do not think that their absence is a defect; I think
it even a merit. Yet, as they _are_ absent, it cannot be worth while to
pay so very much for so very defective a thing.'
'God forgive you!' cried her lover in passionate pain. 'You betray me
with the cruelest jest that woman ever played off on man, and you think
that I can stand still to hearken to the pretty tinkling bells of a
drawing-room philosophy!'
'You do not stand still,' she answered languidly, 'you walk to and fro
like a wounded panther in a cage. I have in no way betrayed you, and I
am not jesting at all. I am saying the very simplest truth. You have
asked me to do a momentous and irrevocable thing; and I have answered
you truthfully that I should not shrink from it if I were convinced
that I should never regret it. But I am not convinced----'
'If you loved me you would be so!' he said in a voice which was choked
and almost inaudible.
'Ah!--if!' said Nadine Napraxine with a smile and a little sigh. 'The
whole secret lies in that one conjunction!'
His teeth clenched as he heard her as if in the intolerable pain of
some mortal wound.
'Besides, besides,' she murmured, half to herself and half to him, 'my
dear Othmar, you are charming. You are like no one else; you please
me; I confess that you please me, but you could not ensure me against
my own unfortunate capacity for very soon tiring of everybody, and,--I
have a conviction that in three months' time _I should be tired of
you_!'
A strong shudder passed over him from head to foot, as the words struck
him with a greater shock than the blow of a dagger in his side would
have given. He realised the bottomless gulf which separated him from
the woman he adored,--the chasm of her own absolute indifference.
He, in his exaltation, was ready to give up all his future and fling
away all his honour for her sake, and would have asked nothing more of
earth and heaven than to have passed life and eternity at her feet; and
she, swayed momentarily towards him by a faint impulse of the senses
and the sensibilities, yet could draw back and calmly look outward into
that vision of the possible future, which dazzled him as the mirage
blinds and mocks the desert-pilgrim dying of thirst; she, with chill
prescience could foresee the time when his presence would become to
her a weariness, a chain, a yoke-fellow tiresome and dull!
She looked at him with a momentary compassion.
'Dear Othmar, I am quite sure you have meant all you said,' she
murmured softly. 'But, believe me, it would not do; it would not do for
you and me, if it might for some people. I am not in the least shocked.
I think your idea quite beautiful, like a poem; but I am certain it
would never suit myself. I tire of everything so quickly, and then you
know I am not in love with _you_. One wants to be so much in love to
do that sort of thing, we should bore one another so infinitely after
the first week. Yes, I am sure we should, though I know you are quite
sincere in saying you would like it.'
Then, still with that demure, satisfied, amused smile, she turned
away and lifted up the Moorish chocolate pot and poured out a little
chocolate into her cup.
'It has grown cold,' she said, and tinkled a hand-bell which was on the
tray to summon Mahmoud.
Othmar, who had sprung to his feet and stood erect, seized her wrist
in his fingers and threw the bell aside.
'There is no need to dismiss me,' he said in a low tone. 'Adieu! You
can tell the story to Lord Geraldine.'
His face was quite colourless, except that around his forehead there
was a dusky red mark where the blood had surged and settled as though
he had been struck there with a whip.
He bowed low, and left her.
She stood before the Moorish tray and its contents with a sense of cold
at her heart, but her little self-satisfied smile was still on her
mouth.
'He will come back,' she thought. 'He came back before; they always
come back.'
She did not intend to go with him to Asia, but she did not, either,
intend to lose him altogether.
'He was superb in his fury and his grief,' she thought, 'and he meant
every word of it, and he would do all that he said, more than he said.
Perhaps it hurt him too much, perhaps I laughed a little too soon.'
She was like the child who had found its living bird the best of all
playthings, but had forgotten that its plaything, being alive, could
also die, and so had nipped the new toy too cruelly in careless little
fingers, and had killed it.