Immediately that the dinner was over Othmar made his excuses and left
Millo to take the night express to Paris. When once she knew that he
was absent, she lost all fear.
Her innocent love was at that stage when the presence of a lover
is full of trouble and alarm, and the happiest hours are those in
which his absence permits its dreams to wander about her memory
undisturbed. When he was there he was still, to her, a stranger whose
gaze embarrassed her, whose touch confused her, whose association
with herself was unfamiliar and unreal; but, away from him, there was
nothing to check or dismay those spiritual and poetic fancies which had
lodged their ideal in him. No one of those around her would ever have
imagined that she had these fancies, or would have understood them in
the slightest degree; they only thought that she was very naturally
enraptured to be chosen by a very rich man, and did not doubt that in
her mind she was musing, as Blanchette had suggested, on the colour of
her liveries, the number of her horses, the places of her residence,
and the prospect of her jewels.
Baron Fritz, who made her blush with the fervour of his compliments,
and was so delighted with her that he could not cease from gazing at
her as though she were a water-colour of Copley Fielding's, was alone
sufficiently sympathetic, despite all his seventy years of cynicism,
to perceive that the things of this world had little place in her
thoughts, and he thought to himself as he looked at her:
'Will Otho be wise enough to appreciate all that? He will have the
carnation in its bud, the peach in its flower; he will make just
what he pleases of them; the worse will be if he should leave them
altogether alone: then the carnation will unfold, the peach will ripen
and come out into fruit unnoticed, and if he be an ingrate, they will
both come to their perfection for someone else--which will be a pity.
The child is in love with him--_parbleu!_--he does not deserve it; he
only cares for his Russian woman, his hothouse narcissus; he only
wants to cure himself of Nadine Napraxine; as if one blush of this
child's cheek were not worth a century of Madame Napraxine's languor!'
And he felt a passing regret that he was not forty years younger and in
the place of his nephew.
After dinner he seated himself beside Yseulte, and talked to her of
Othmar, of his boyhood, of his talents, of his opportunities, and of
his destinies, with so much tact and so much skill that she was moved
to an affectionate gratitude towards the speaker and to a sense of
infinite awe before all the ambitions and responsibilities with which
he filled her future.
'She is a baby, but she is not a fool,' thought the wise old man. 'When
the love fever has passed, we shall make of her just what we want,
provided only that she has influence over Otho. But will she have
any? In marriage there is always one who rules the other: "_un qui se
baisse, et l'autre qui tend la joue_": and it is always the one who
_cares_ who goes under.'
Even as he had eaten his truffles and drunk the fine wines grown on
the de Vannes' estates in Gironde, he had been more troubled by an
impersonal anxiety than he had ever allowed himself to be in the whole
course of his existence. The child had sat opposite to him, looking
so youthful beside the faces, more or less _maquillées_, of the women
around her, with her soft surprised eyes, happy as those of a child
that wakes from sleep, and her colour coming and going, delicate and
warm: 'And he will not stay here to see, just because the desire for
another woman is in him like a fly in the ear of a horse!' had thought
the Baron impatiently. He guessed very accurately that the departure of
Othmar was due to a restless unwillingness to face the fate which he
had voluntarily made for himself.
He himself had had no heed of Othmar's marriage except as a means of
legally continuing his race; his only notion of a woman was Napoleon's,
that she should bear many children; but as he looked at Yseulte de
Valogne, something kinder and more pitiful stirred in his selfish old
heart; she seemed to him too good to be sacrificed so; he understood
that there would be other things than money and children which this
sensitive plant would want; and worldly, unemotional, and unprincipled
as he was, Baron Fritz was the only person present who divined
something of the dreams which she was dreaming and felt a compassionate
regret for them, as for flowers which opened at dawn to die perforce at
noonday.
About eleven o'clock in the evening, when Yseulte was beginning to
feel her eyelids grow heavy, and was thinking wistfully of her little
white bed amidst the murmur of conversation unintelligible to her and
the stare of inquisitive eyes, she heard with a little thrill of an
emotion quite new to her the voice of the groom of the chambers, which
announced Madame la Princesse Napraxine.
Jealousy she was too young, too simple, and too innocent to know; but a
strange eagerness and an unanalysed pain moved her as she saw the woman
whom they said that Othmar loved.
'Is that really Madame Napraxine?' she said in a low voice to the
Baron, who was beside her.
'Who has told you of Madame Napraxine?' he thought, as he answered her:
'Yes! that is the name of the lady coming in now; she is a famous
European beauty, though to my taste she is too slender and too pale.'
The girl did not reply; her eyes followed the trail of Princess
Nadine's pale primrose-coloured skirts laden with lace, and fastened
here and there with large lilies and lilac. Before that inimitable
grace, that exquisite languor and ease, that indescribable air of
indifference and of empire and of disdain which made the peculiar power
of Nadine Napraxine, the poor child felt her own insignificance, her
own childishness, her own powerlessness; she fancied she must look
rustic, awkward, stupid: she grew very pale, and her throat swelled
with pain under her lover's pearls.
'It is too early for you to have that adder in your breast,' thought
Friederich Othmar, as he watched her. 'What a coward he was to go away,
instead of standing his ground beside you! After all, why is everyone
so afraid of this Russian woman?'
Aloud, he only said: 'The Princess is coming to you; courage, _mon
enfant_. A woman of the world is certainly an alarming animal, but you
will have to meet many such, and you will be one yourself before very
long.'
'_Fillette_, come and be presented to Mme. Napraxine; she wishes it,'
said her cousin at that moment in her ear. The girl shrank back a
little, and the colour came into her face; she rose, nevertheless,
obediently.
Nadine Napraxine came half-way to meet her, with an indulgent little
smile, of which the compassion and disdain penetrated the inmost soul
of Yseulte with a cruel sense of inferiority. Yet had she not been so
humble and so embarrassed she might have seen a look of surprise in the
eyes of her rival. Nadine saw at a glance that in this child there was
no 'Sainte Mousseline' to be easily derided and contemned.
'How beautiful a woman she will be in a year or two!' she thought, with
that candour which was never lacking in her in her judgments of her
greatest foes. 'He is going to possess all that, and he only sighs in
his soul for me!--what fools men are!'
While she so thought, she was still smiling as she came to meet Yseulte
with that slow, soft, indescribable grace of which she had the secret.
'I am an old friend of Count Othmar's; you must let me be yours in the
future,' she said with gracious kindliness. 'Shall I offend you if I
venture to say that I am sure he is a very happy and fortunate person?
I dare say I shall please you better if I say that he deserves to be
so.'
The girl could not have found words to answer to save her life.
Instinctively she made her grand eighteenth-century curtsy in
acknowledgment. She was very pale; her heart seemed to sink within her
as she realised all the charm of this her rival.
Mme. de Vannes murmured a few amiable words, and left them opposite
to one another; the girl trembled despite herself, as those indolent
lustrous eyes scanned her with merciless investigation and smiled at
her embarrassment.
It was her first experience of that obligation, so constant in the
world, to meet what is dreaded and disliked with suavity and compliment.
'I am a great friend of your cousin, too,' continued Nadine Napraxine,
with all the amiable condescension of a woman of the world to a child.
'We shall be sure to meet constantly in the years to come, which will
leave you so young and make us so old! Where have you lived? In an old
Breton convent? I wish I had lived in a Breton convent too! Come and
sit by me and talk to me a little. Do you know that I am here to-night
on purpose to see you. I had a tiresome dinner, all of Russian people,
or I should have come here earlier.'
She drew the girl down beside her on a sofa with that pretty
imperiousness of which women as well as men often felt the charm and
the command. She was most kindly, most gentle, most flattering, yet
Yseulte suffered under all her gracious compliments as under the most
poignant irony. She answered in monosyllables and at random; she was
ill at ease and confused, she looked down with the fascination of a
bird gazing at a snake on the hand which held hers, such a slender hand
in its tan-coloured glove and with its circles of _porte-bonheurs_
above the wrist, and its heavy bracelets crowding one another almost to
the elbow.
She would not have spoken more than Yes or No to save her life, and she
said even these in the wrong places; but Nadine Napraxine did not make
the mistake of thinking her stupid, as less intelligent women would
have done.
She studied her curiously whilst she continued to speak those amiable
and careless nothings which are the armoury of social life; toy weapons
of which the young know neither the use nor the infinite value. She had
all the kindly condescension, the good-humoured, amused indulgence,
of a grown woman of the world for a schoolgirl; by dates she was only
seven years older than Yseulte de Valogne, but in experience and
knowledge she was fifty years her senior.
'_Elle est vraiment très bien_,' she said, as she turned away from the
girl and took the arm of Friederich Othmar. 'At present she is like a
statue in the clay, like a sketch, like a magnolia flower folded up;
but Othmar will change all that. You must be so glad; his marriage must
have been such an anxiety to you. Suppose he had married a Mongol! What
would you have done?'
'It was not precisely of the Mongol that I was most afraid, Madame,'
replied the Baron. 'Do you think too that a marriage is a termination
to anyone's anxieties? Surely, the dangerous romance begins afterwards
in life as in novels.'
'It would be very dull reading in either if it did not,' said Madame
Napraxine. 'But we will hope that Mademoiselle and your nephew will
read theirs together, and eschew the dangers; that is possible
sometimes; and she will have one great advantage for the next five
years; she will be handsomer every year.'
'It will be a great advantage if he find her so, but perhaps only
others will find her so; marriage does not lend rose-coloured
spectacles to its disciples,' thought the Baron, as he answered aloud,
'There can be no one's opinion that he could value as much as he is
sure to do that of Madame Napraxine.'
'I imagine my opinion matters nothing at all to him,' she answered,
with her enigmatical smile. 'But when I see him I shall certainly be
able to congratulate him with much more truth than one can usually
put into those conventionalities. Mademoiselle de Valogne is very
beautiful.'
The Baron sadly recalled the saying of that wise man who was of opinion
that it makes little difference after three months whether your wife
be a Venus or a Hottentot; but he did not utter this blasphemy to a
lovely woman.
The girl remained on her sofa gazing wistfully after this _élégante_
who had all the knowledge which she lacked, and who impressed her so
sadly with an indefinite dull sense of inferiority and of helplessness.
She put her hand up to her throat and felt for his pearls; they seemed
like friends; they seemed to assure her of his affection and of the
future. People thought she was proud of them because they were so
large, so perfect in colour and shape, so royal in their value; she
would have been as pleased with them if they had been strings of
berries out of the woods, and he had sent them with the same message
and meaning.
She watched Nadine Napraxine with fascinated eyes; wondering where
was the secret of that supreme seduction which even she, in her
convent-bred simplicity, could feel was in her. In the few words which
had been addressed to her she was dimly conscious that the other
disdained her as a child, and derided Othmar as a fool.
Madame de Vannes roused her from her preoccupation with a tap of her
fan.
'How grave you look, _fillette_,' she said with some impatience. 'You
must never look like that now you are in the world. Everyone detests
grave people. If you cannot always smile, stay in your convent.'
'I beg your pardon,' murmured Yseulte, waking from her meditation with
a little shock. 'I did not know--I was thinking----'
'That is just what you must not do when you are in society. What were
you thinking of? You looked very sombre.'
The girl coloured and hesitated, then she said very low:
'The other day--the day of the casket--you said he loved her--was it
true?'
She glanced across the room at Nadine Napraxine as she spoke.
'Did I say so?' answered the Duchesse, with annoyance at herself.
'Then I talked great nonsense. But how was I to know then that he was
thinking of you? Listen to me, _fillette_,' she continued, with more
real kindness in her tone than the girl had ever heard there. 'You
will hear all kinds of scandals, insinuations, stories of all sorts in
the world that you will live in; never listen to them, or you will be
perpetually irritated and unhappy. People say all sorts of untruths
out of sheer idleness; they must talk. M. Othmar must certainly have
some very especial esteem for you, or why should he choose you out of
all womankind for his wife? That is all you have to think of; do not
perplex yourself as to whom he may, or may not, have loved beforehand.
All your care must be that he shall love no one else afterwards.
You are tired, I think; go to bed, if you like: you can slip away
unnoticed. You are only a child yet.'
Yseulte went at once, thankful for the permission, yet looking
wistfully still at the delicate head of Nadine Napraxine, as it rose
up from a collar of emeralds. Madame de Vannes passed to the music
room, where a little operetta was being given, with a vague compassion
stirring in her.
'I am sure the old Marquise could not have given her more moral
advice than I,' she thought, 'but I am afraid the silly child will
have trouble, she is so old-fashioned. Why cannot she marry the man,
and enjoy all he will give her, without perplexing herself as to
what fancies he may have had for other people? What does it matter?
She will have to get used to that sort of thing. If it be not Nadine
who makes her jealous, it will be someone else; but one could not
tell her that. How right I was not to send Blanchette and Toinon to
a convent! The holy women make them so romantic, so emotional, so
_pleurnicheuses_!'
At the same moment Nadine Napraxine said, when she had left her and was
speaking to Melville of her:
'She is very interesting. She will have plenty of character; he thinks
that he is marrying a child; he forgets that she will grow up, and that
very rapidly. Marriage is a hothouse for women who are young. I was
married at her age; in three months' time I felt as old--as old--as old
as I do now. Nobody can feel older! You are sixty-five, you say, and
you are so young. That is because you are not married and can believe
in Paradise.'
'You mean that I hope for compensation?' said Melville, with his
pleasant laugh.
'Or that you keep your illusions. There is so much in that. People who
do are always young. I do not think I ever had any to lose!'
'It is great emotions which make happy illusions, and I believe you
have never permitted those to approach you?'
'I have viewed them from afar off, as Lucretius says one ought to see a
storm.'
'I do not doubt you have seen them very often, Princess,' said
Melville, with significance. 'But as you have not shared them, they
have passed by you like great waves which leave no mark upon the
smoothness of the sand on which they break.'
'Perhaps,' she said, while her mind reverted to the scene of which her
boudoir had been the theatre three days before; then she added a little
abruptly: 'You know Mlle. de Valogne well--you are interested in her?
What do you think of her marriage?'
'I have known her from the time she was four years old,' replied
Melville. 'I have seen her at intervals at the convent of Faïel. I am
convinced she has no common character; she is very unlike the young
girls one sees in the world, who have had their course of Deauville,
Aix, and Biarritz. She is of the antique French patrician type; perhaps
the highest human type that the world has ever seen, and the most
capable of self-restraint, of heroism, of true distinction, and of
loyalty. I fancy Elizabeth de France must have been just such a girl as
is Yseulte de Valogne.'
'What eulogy!' returned his companion, with a little incredulous
accent. 'I have always wondered that your Church did not canonize
the Princess Elizabeth. But you do not tell me what you think of the
marriage.'
Melville smiled.
'I might venture to prophecy if the success of a marriage depended on
two persons, but it depends on so many others.'
'You are very mysterious; I do not see what others have to do with it.'
'And yet,' thought Melville, 'how often you have stretched out your
delicate fingers and pushed down the most finely-wrought web of human
happiness--just for pastime!'
Aloud he said: 'If she and he were about to live their lives on a
desert island, I am convinced they would be entirely suited to each
other. But as they will live in the world, and perforce in what they
call the great world, who shall presume to say what their marriage
will become? It may pass into that indifferent and amiable friendship
which is the most usual issue of such marriages, or it may grow into
that direct antagonism which is perhaps its still commoner result; on
the other hand, it may become that perfect flower of human sympathy
which, like the aloe, blossoms once in a century; but, if that miracle
happen, such flowers are not immortal; an unkind grasp will suffice to
break them off at the root. On the whole, I am not especially hopeful;
she is too young, and he----'
'And he?' said Nadine Napraxine, with a gleam of curiosity in her
glance.
'I am not his confessor; I doubt if he ever confess--to his own sex,'
replied Melville; 'but if I had been, I should have said to him: "My
son, one does not cure strong fevers with meadow-daisies; wait till
your soul is cleansed before you offer it to a child whom you take from
God." That is what I should have said in the confessional; but I only
know Othmar on the neutral ground of society. I cannot presume to say
it there.'
'You are too serious, Monsignore,' said Nadine, with her enigmatical
smile. 'Marriage is not such a very serious thing, I assure you. Ask
Platon.'
'Prince Napraxine is exceptionally happy,' said Melville, so gravely
that she laughed gaily in his face.
Meanwhile Yseulte dismissed the maid, undressed herself slowly, kissed
the pearls when she had unclasped them; and, kneeling down under her
crucifix, said many prayers for Othmar.
She was soon asleep, like a tired child, and she had his note under her
pillow; nevertheless, she dreamed of Nadine Napraxine, and her sleep
was not the pure unbroken rest that she had always had before. Once she
awoke in a great terror, her heart beating, her limbs trembling.
'If he did not love me!' she cried aloud; then the light of the lamp
fell on the open casket, on the necklace of pearls. They seemed to say
to her, 'What should he want with you, unless he loved you?'
She fell asleep again, and with a smile on her face.