Othmar, as he left La Jacquemerille, forgot the boat in which he had
come thither. He walked mechanically through the house, and out by the
first gate which he saw before him. He was in that state of febrile
excitation in which the limbs move without the will in an instinctive
effort to find outlet to mental pain in bodily exertion. The gate he
had passed through opened into a little wood of pines, whence a narrow
path led upward into the hills above. With little consciousness of
what he did, he ascended the mule-road which rose before him, and the
chill of the morning air, as it blew through the tops of the swaying
pines, was welcome to him. He had that cruel wound within him which a
proud man suffers from when he has disclosed the innermost secrets of
his heart in a rare moment of impulse, and has seen them lightly and
contemptuously played with for a jest.
He had gone through life receiving much adulation but little sympathy,
and giving as little confidence; in a moral isolation due to the
delicacy of his own nature and to the flattery he received, which had
early made him withhold himself from intimate friendships, fearing to
trust where he would be only duped.
To her, in an unguarded hour, he had shown the loneliness and the
longing which he felt, he had disclosed the empty place which no powers
or vanities of the world could fill; he had staked the whole of his
peace on the caprice of one woman, and he knew that, in the rough
phrase which men would have used to him, he had been made a fool of
in return; he had betrayed himself, and had nothing in return but the
memory of a little low laughter, of a tranquil voice, saying: '_Tout
cela c'est le vieux jeu!_'
He never knew very well how that day of the 2nd of January passed
with him. He was sensible of walking long, of climbing steep paths
going towards the higher mountains, of drinking thirstily at a little
woodland fountain, of sitting for hours quite motionless, looking down
on the shore far below, where the blue sea spread in the sunlight,
and the towers of S. Pharamond were mere grey points amidst a crowd of
evergreen and of silvery-leafed trees.
There was an irony in the sense that he could have purchased the
whole province which lay beneath his feet, could have bought out the
princeling who reigned in that little kingdom under old Turbia, as
easily as he could have bought a bouquet for a woman, could have set
emperors to war with one another by merely casting his gold into the
scales of peace, could have created a city in a barren plain with as
little effort as a child builds up a toy village on a table, and yet
was powerless to command, or to arouse, the only thing on earth which
he desired, one whit of feeling in the woman he loved!
It was late in the afternoon when he took his way homeward, having
eaten nothing, only drunk thirstily of water wherever a little brook
had made a well amongst the tufts of hepatica in the pine woods. He was
a man capable of a spiritual love; if she had remained aloof from him
for honour's sake, but had cared for him, he would not have demurred
to her choice, but would have accepted his fate at her hands and would
have served her loyally with the devotion of a chivalrous nature.
All the passion, the pain, as of a boy's first love, blent in him
with the bitter revolts of mature manhood. He believed that Nadine
Napraxine had never intended more than to amuse herself with his
rejection; he believed that for the second time he had been the toy of
an unscrupulous coquette. Whatever fault there might be in his love for
her, it was love--absolute, strong, faithful, and capable of an eternal
loyalty; he had laid his heart bare before her, and had meant in their
utmost meaning all the words which he had uttered, all the offers which
he had made. Despite his knowledge of her, he had allowed himself to
be beguiled into a second confession of the empire she possessed over
him, and for the second time he had been not alone rejected, but gently
ridiculed with that quiet amused irony which had been to the force
and heat of his passion like a fine spray of ice-cold water falling
on iron at a white-heat. She had not alone wounded and stung him: she
had humiliated him profoundly. If she had rejected him from honour,
duty, or love for any other, he would have borne what men have borne
a thousand times in silence, and with no sense of shame; but he was
conscious that in her absolute indifference she had drawn him on to the
fullest revelation of all he felt for her, only that her ready satire
might find food in his folly, and her fine wit play with his suffering,
as the angler plays the trout. She seemed to him to have betrayed
him in the basest manner that a woman could betray a man who had no
positive right to her loyalty. She had known so well how he loved her.
He had told her so many times; unless she had been willing to hear the
tale again, why had she bidden him come there in that charmed solitude
in the hush and freshness of the early morning? When women desire not
love, do they seat their lover beside them when all the world sleeps?
He had been cheated, laughed at, summoned, and then dismissed; his
whole frame thrilled with humiliation when he recalled the smiling
subdued mockery of her voice as she had dismissed him.
He had been willing to give her his life, his good repute, his peace,
his honour, his very soul; and she had sent him away with the calm,
cool, little phrases with which she would have rejected a clumsy valser
for a cotillon!
He had little vanity, but he knew himself to be one of those to whom
the world cringes; one of those of whom modern life has made its
Cæsars; he knew that what he had been willing to surrender to her had
been no little thing; that he would have said farewell to the whole
of mankind for her sake, and would have loved her with the romantic
devoted force and fealty of a franker and fiercer time than his own;
and she had drawn him on to again confess this, again offer this, and
all it had seemed to her was _vieux jeu_, an archaic thing to laugh at,
to yawn at, to be indulgent to, and tired by, in a breath!
He was a very proud man, and a man who had seldom or never shown what
he either desired or suffered, yet he had laid his whole heart bare to
her; and she, the only living being who had either power over him, or
real knowledge of him, had looked at him with her little cool smile,
and said, 'In three months I should be tired of you.'
If, when the knight had killed his falcon for his lady, she had scoffed
at it and thrown it out to feed the rats and sparrows he would have
suffered as Othmar suffered now. He had killed his honour and his pride
for her sake, and she had held them in her hands for a moment, and then
had laughed a little and had thrown them away.
Where he sat all alone he felt his cheeks burn with the sense of an
unendurable mortification. At this moment, for aught he knew, she, with
her admirable mimicry and her merciless sarcasm, might be reacting the
scene for the diversion of her companions! Passion was but _vieux jeu_;
it could expect no higher distinction than to be ridiculed as comedy by
a witty woman. Did not the universe only exist to amuse the languor of
Nadine Napraxine?
The world, had it heard the story, would have blamed him for an unholy
love, and praised her for her dismissal of it; but he knew that he had
been as utterly betrayed as though he had been sold by her into the
hands of assassins. She had drawn him on, and on, and on, until all his
life had been laid at her feet, and then she had looked at it a little,
carelessly, idly, and had said she had no use for it, as she might
have said so of any sea-waste washed up on the sea-steps of her terrace
with that noon.
Of course the world would have praised her; no doubt the world would
have blamed him; but he knew that women who slay their lovers after
loving them do a coarser but a kinder thing.
It was almost dark as he descended the road to S. Pharamond, intending
when he reached home to make some excuse to his uncle and leave
for Paris by the night express or by a special train. The path he
took led through the orange-wood of Sandroz, which fitted, in a
triangular-shaped piece of ground, between the boundaries of his own
land and that of Millo. Absorbed as he was in his own thoughts, he
recognised with surprise the figure of Yseulte as he pushed his way
under the low boughs of the orange trees, and saw her within a yard of
him. She was with the woman Nicole.
She did not see him until he was close to her, where she sat on a low
stone wall, the woman standing in front of her. When she did so, her
face spoke for her; it said what Nadine Napraxine's had never said.
The emotion of joy and timidity mingled touched him keenly in that
moment, when he, with his millions of gold and of friends, had so
strongly realised his own loneliness.
'_She_ loves me as much as she dare--as much as she can, without being
conscious of it,' he thought, as he paused beside her. She did not
speak, she did not move; but her colour changed and her breath came
quickly. She had slipped off the wall and stood irresolute, as though
inclined to run away, the glossy leaves and the starry blossoms of the
trees consecrated to virginity were all above her and around her. She
glanced at him with an indefinite fear; she fancied he was angered by
the return of the casket; he looked paler and sterner than she had ever
seen him look.
He paused a moment and said some commonplace word.
Then he saw that her eyes were wet with tears, and that she had been
crying.
'What is the matter?' he said, gently. 'Has anything vexed you?'
'They are sending her away,' said Nicole Sandroz, with indignant tears
in her own eyes, finding that she did not reply for herself. 'They are
sending her to the Vosges, where, as Monsieur knows very well, I make
no doubt, the very hares and wolves are frozen in the woods at this
month of the year.'
'Are you indeed going away?' he asked of Yseulte herself.
She did not speak: she made a little affirmative gesture.
'Why is that? Bois le Roy, in this season, will be a cruel prison for
you.'
'My cousin wishes it,' said the girl; she spoke with effort; she did
not wish to cry before him; the memory of all that her cousin had said
that morning was with her in merciless distinctness.
Nicole broke out in a torrent of speech, accusing the tyrants of Millo
in impassioned and immoderate language, and devoting them and theirs to
untold miseries in retribution.
Yseulte stopped her with authority; 'You are wrong, Nicole; do not
speak in such a manner, it is insolent. You forget that, whether I am
in the Vosges or here, I equally owe my cousin everything.'
She paused; she was no more than a child. Her departure was very cruel
to her; she had been humiliated and chastised that day beyond her power
of patience; she had said nothing, done nothing, but in her heart she
had rebelled passionately when they had taken away her ivory casket.
They had left her the heart of a woman in its stead.
Othmar was ignorant that his casket, fateful as Pandora's, had been
returned, but he divined that his gift had displeased those who
disposed of her destiny, and had brought about directly or indirectly
her exile from Millo.
'When do you go?' he asked abruptly.
'To-morrow.'
As she answered him the tears she could not altogether restrain rolled
off her lashes. She turned away.
'Let us go in, Nicole,' she murmured. 'You know Henriette is waiting
for me.'
'Let her wait, the cockered-up Parisienne, who shrieks if she see a pig
and has hysterics if she get a spot of mud on her stockings!' grumbled
Nicole, who was the sworn foe of the whole Paris-born and Paris-bred
household of Millo. But Yseulte had already moved towards the house.
When she had gone a few yards away, however, she paused, returned, and
approached Othmar. She looked on the ground, and her voice trembled as
she spoke: 'I ought to thank you, M. Othmar--I do thank you. It was
very beautiful. I would have kept it all my life.'
'Ah!' said Othmar.
He understood; he was moved to a sudden anger, which penetrated even
his intense preoccupation. He had meant to do this poor child a
kindness, and he had only done her great harm.
Yseulte had turned away, and had gone rapidly through the orange-trees
towards the house.
'She is not happy?' said Othmar to her foster-mother, whose tongue,
once loosed, told him with the eloquence of indignation of all the
sorrows suffered by her nursling. 'And they will make her a nun,
Monsieur!' she cried; 'a nun! That child, who is like a June lily. For
me, I say nothing against the black and grey women, though Sandroz
calls them bad names. There are good women amongst them, and when one
lies sick in hospital one is glad of them; but there are women enough
in this world who have sins and shame to repent them of to fill all
the convents from here to Jerusalem. There are all the ugly ones too,
and the sickly ones and the deformed ones, and the heart-broken; for
them it is all very well; the cloister is home, the veil is peace,
they must think of heaven, or go mad; it is best they should think of
it. But this child to be a nun!--when she should be running with her
own children through the daisies--when she should be playing in the
sunshine like the lambs, like the kids, like the pigeons!'----
Othmar heard her to the end; then without answer he bade her good-day,
and descended the sloping grass towards his house.
'They say he has a million a year,' said Nicole to herself, as she
looked after him. 'Well, he does not seem to be happy upon it. The lads
that bring up the rags on their heads from the ships look gayer than
he, all in the stench and the muck as they are, and never knowing that
they will earn their bread and wine from one day to another.'
She kicked a stone from her path, and hurried after her nursling.
Othmar went quickly on to his own woods. 'They could not even let
her have that toy,' he thought with an emotion, vague but sincere,
outside the conflict of passion, wrath, and mortification which Nadine
Napraxine had aroused in him. He saw the sudden happiness, so soon
veiled beneath reserve and timidity, which had shone on the girl's face
as she had first seen him under the orange boughs. He saw her beautiful
golden eyes misty with the tears she had had too much courage to
shed; he saw her slender throat swell with subdued emotion as she had
approached him and said shyly, 'I would have kept it all my life.'
All her life,--in the stone cell of some house of the Daughters of
Christ or the Sisters of St. Marie!
'To love is more, yet to be loved is something,'
he thought. 'What treasures for one's heart and senses are in her--if
one could only care!'