The first days of February came all too soon for the vague fears of
Yseulte, which throbbed in her as the heart beats in a bird which
feels a captor's hand approaching. All the ridicule of Blanchette
and Toinon, all the good-natured banter of their mother, and all the
endless congratulations of society which rained on her like the almond
blossoms which were falling in showers in the wind, could not make her
otherwise than bewildered and alarmed, and as the time of her marriage
drew closer and closer her terror almost obscured her happiness. No one
would have believed in it; everyone, had they known the secrets of her
shy and silent mind, would have laughed at it as hypocrisy; but with
her it was most real.
Away from Othmar, she adored him; but near him, she dreaded him as
a stranger who was about to lead her into the strangest and most
terrible mysteries of life. But time stays not for the sinking or
the fluttering of any poor human heart, and they brought her from the
dim, cold, misty Breton country back into the gay and crowded world of
Paris; and the great rooms of her cousin's house, filled by brilliant
throngs for the signing of the contract, brought home to her the
inexorable fact that her marriage would itself take place in another
forty-eight hours.
'You are so pale, _fillette_!' said the Duchesse in some impatience.
'One would think that we were forcing your inclinations!'
Yseulte said nothing; she could not have explained the tumult of
agitation which was in her. She was marvellously happy; and yet----
A lover who had loved her would have divined and penetrated all those
mingled emotions, which were unintelligible to herself; but Othmar was
too _distrait_ and too absorbed in thought, wherein she had no share,
to do so. Though she was the centre of the world around her for the
moment, the child remained in an absolute solitude.
Friederich Othmar, studying her with his exquisite power of
penetration, alone perceived her trouble, and thought with pleasure:
'The poets are not quite the fools I deemed them; there _is_ such a
thing as a virginal soul in which the senses do not speak, and to
which the gewgaws of the world say nothing either. I should never have
believed that, but I see it. He has found a pearl, but he will not
care for it. He will absorb it into the acid of his own disappointed
passions, and then will be surprised if it disappear.'
If he had been told a month earlier that he would have had such
sentimental regrets, he would have been wholly incredulous, but
something in the sight of the young girl, in her innocent gravity, with
her wistful, changeful eyes, touched him, as she stood by the table
where the marriage contract was signed. She seemed to him too good to
be wedded with indifference, taught the fever of passion, the suffering
of maternity, and then be forsaken--as she would be.
'I am glad that I did not meet her, or one like her, thirty years ago;
she would have unnerved me,' he thought, as he stooped and wrote his
own name.
Amongst the nuptial gifts had been one of great value from the
Princess Napraxine. It was a gold statuette of Love, modelled by Mercié
and standing on a base of jade and agate. It had all the cruelty and
irony of the modern Italian school in it, for the poor Amorino was
trying to drink out of a gourd which was empty, and the expression
of his disappointed, distressed, pathetic features was rendered with
admirable mockery and skill. He turned his sad eyes ruefully on those
who looked at him; some withered passion-flowers and a little asp were
near his feet. When Othmar saw it, his face darkened; he thought it
a jest at himself, nor had the giver selected it without intention.
Behind the gold Amorino he seemed to see her smiling, serene,
jewel-like eyes, her delicate, contemptuous mouth, which said: '_Va
donc! C'est le vieux jeu!_'
'The only woman that I shall ever love!' he thought with a thrill of
remorse, of shame, and of anger, all in one.
What right had he, while his veins were hot with those unholy fires, to
simulate love for an innocent and virgin life?
The morning came for which Blanchette and Toinon had been longing for a
month; and clothed in palest blue velvet, carrying white bouquets as
large as themselves, they wore at their throats the new diamond lockets
of their ambition, with the miniature of their cousin within each,
for which they cared nothing at all. But the diamonds were as large
and as numerous as ever their hearts could desire. '_Vrai! Il est bon
prince!_' they cried in chorus, as they skipped round each other, and
made the sun sparkle in the jewels, and sang the song of Judic.
Then they went to the church of S. Philippe du Roule, and made their
little naughty faces as grave as mice that see a cat, while the incense
rose and the organ pealed, and the Latin words rolled out sonorously,
and the pale wintry sunshine shone over the brilliant crowd assembled
there for the marriage.
Yseulte herself looked like a slender white lily.
The deep peace and serenity of her convent days had come there with
her; certain instincts of her race kept her still and composed with
the eyes of so many strangers upon her; a dignity that was exquisitely
graceful blended with her childish air; she looked like some young
princess of the Valois time, such as poets and painters still see in
their dreams.
One of those special trains which Blanchette thought the supreme
privilege of marriage bore them without a pause through the wintry
landscapes between Paris and Blois.
The day was fine and windless; there was a scent of spring which
breathed through the leafless poplars and willows, and over the frosted
fields and vineyards, with sweet, vague promise; here and there
burst in to sight, out from a forest glade beside some château, some
gaily-clad hunting party, the last of the season; ever and anon there
was some little town, with its old ruined castle, or its monastic
church, shut in, in leafless orchards. The broad river glistened in
the light under the burden of its many islands, its breaking blocks of
ice drifting on turbid green waters, its flood of mud and melted snow
rolling heavily beneath the colliers and the merchant craft, which made
their way slowly against the floes. In the drear blackened vineyards,
peasants, like pictures by Millet, were at work; sometimes a woman
with faggots on her bowed shoulders straightened herself to watch the
swiftness of the train, or a bluefrocked herd-boy stopped his cattle
at a crossing.
All these pictures passed before the eyes of Yseulte like the panorama
of a dream: the early morning hours had been one long bewilderment to
her; though she had carried herself so bravely, her heart had beaten
all the while like a caught bird's: even now the scent of the incense,
the waves of sound from the organ, the sonorous voice of the great
prelate in its admonitions, seemed to come with her into the still,
brown, fresh country; the sense of some infinite and solemn obligation,
accepted and irrevocable, was upon her.
They had left Paris immediately after the ceremony; and the evening
sun was glowing in the west and lighting the pastoral country with its
leafless woods and glancing rivers as they reached the château.
Amyôt was a place of great beauty and stateliness; it had been built
for François Premier, and had the salamander and the crown carved on
its stones and blazoned on its metal work; it was surrounded by water
like Chenonceaux, and in the sunset-glow its pinnacles and towers and
high steep roof gleamed as if made of gold; it stood on a hill amidst
great woods, overlooking the fruitful valleys and fertile plains which
lie between the Loire and Cher, and in its gardens all the art that
modern horticulture can boast was united to the stately avenues, the
close-shorn turf, the long grey stone terraces with the motto of the
Valois and the fleur-de-lis of France carved upon their pilasters,
which had in their day seen the _mignons_ of Henri II., and felt the
feet of Diane de Poitiers and of Mary Stuart.
Amyôt was a poem, epic and epopee in one; she had never seen it before;
she gazed at it with entranced eyes, glad that her home would be in
such a place; then she looked timidly at Othmar.
He was not looking at her.
She sighed, hardly knowing why, but with a vague sense of neglect and
disappointment. She was in a trance of mingled joy and dread. She saw
the dusky avenue of yews through which they passed, the long lines
of majestic terraces, the sheets of glancing water, the masses of
camellias and azaleas, brought from the hothouses to make the wintry
gardens bloom for that momentous hour, the vast fantastic solemn pile
towering up against the evening skies. She saw them all as in a dream;
she was wondering wistfully in her ignorance whether it were possible
that she had offended him, or possible that already he regretted what
he had done. She shrank a little from him, and sat quite silent as
their carriage rolled under the great stone gateway.
There had been enough in his caresses, in his words, as they had come
thither, to startle her innocent ignorance into some sense of the
meaning and the demands of love, but they had left her dimly alarmed
and troubled, as before some great mystery, and he had soon grown
abstracted, almost indifferent, and had abandoned himself to his own
thoughts.
Amyôt even in its winter silence and sombreness, was a place where
lovers could well forget the world; yews and bay trees made perpetual
verdure around its lawns, and orangeries and palm-houses made ceaseless
summer within its walls; in its halls and galleries old tapestries and
Eastern hangings muffled every sound and excluded every draught; and in
the warm air of its chambers, ceiled with cedar-wood, embossed with the
salamander, and the 'F.' in solid gold, and having embayed windows,
all looking straightway south over the Loire water, the winter's
landscape, seen through its painted casements, was but as a decorative
scene set there for the strong charm of contrast.
They passed through the ranks of the bowing servants, and remained at
last alone in the great suite of drawing-rooms, whose oriel windows
all looked southward. They were rooms hung with pale satins, still
ceiled with cedar, and keeping the Valois crown and arms upon their
gilded carvings and lofty archways. They preserved the style and charm
of the age which had begotten them. She was in harmony with them as
she moved there, the dull red light which preceded evening falling
through the painted panes on the dove-hued velvet and dusky furs of her
travelling-gown, and touching the light gold of her fair hair coiled in
a great knot above her throat.
He, when his servants had retired, kissed her hand with a ceremony
which seemed, even to her innocence, very cold.
'You are at home,' he said gently. 'Here it will be for you to command,
for all to obey.'
She stood before him in one of the embrasures of the windows; the
cream-hued velvet of her travelling-dress trimmed with sable, caught
the rays of the setting sun.
'You are châtelaine of Amyôt,' he added, with a smile. 'Here I shall be
but the first of your servants.'
The words were gracious, and even tender, but they touched her with a
sense of chillness; she felt, without knowing why she felt it, that it
was not with this courteous ceremony that he would have welcomed her if
he had loved her--much.
She said nothing, though she coloured a little as he kissed her hands.
She moved to one of the great windows and looked out a little wistfully
towards the rolling waters, the deep, dark brown forests with their
purple shadows. The dim afternoon light spread over the landscape
without, and through the gorgeous and majestic chambers, which had
once heard the love words of the Valois. She had laid her hat down on
a table near, the lingering glow of the dying day fell on her white
throat, on her cheek with its changing colour, on the knot of orange
blossom fastened amongst the lace at her breast; she thrilled through
all her nerves as she suddenly realised that she was altogether his, to
be used as he chose, never to be apart from him unless by his wish.
She gazed at the scene around her, troubled, perplexed, wistfully,
vaguely alarmed, afraid she knew not of what; whilst he watched her
with a certain futile anger against himself that her loveliness did not
excite him and content him more, a remorseful sense that he was not the
lover she merited and should have won.
A sort of self-reproach moved him as he looked at her in her innocence,
which seemed too holy a thing to be profaned by the grossness of
sensual approach--on the morrow she would not look at him with those
serene, childlike eyes.
It seemed to him almost cruel to rouse that perfect innocence from its
unsuspicious repose.
Before he could speak again she had turned towards him; her lips
trembled a little as she gathered her courage and said aloud what had
been in her thoughts all the day through.
'It will be for me to obey,' she murmured, with the colour deepening in
her cheeks. 'And I will do it always, so gladly: but would you tell
me one thing: did you--I mean--if you had not cared for me a little,
surely you would never have wished----?'
She paused, overcome by the sense of her own hardihood, and her eyes
filled with tears; she longed to say to him, 'Instead of all your
jewels, instead of all this luxury, give me one fond word,' but her
timidity and her modesty would not let her lips frame the supplication.
He was still as a stranger to her--a man whom she had seen scarce a
dozen times.
The question in its timid commencement had said enough: his conscience
shrank from it; he had always dreaded the moment inevitable of the
fatal--
'If this be love, tell me how much.'
'Would you tell me?' she repeated very low, then paused with an
overwhelming sense of her own hardihood and great immodesty.
She made a beautiful picture as she stood before him; the cream-hued
satin falling about her, the warm cedar-wood panels behind her, the red
light of the sunset shed like a glory upon her head and shining about
her feet.
'Who would not love you, dear?' he murmured, with a hesitation of
which her own confusion spared her from being conscious. 'Never doubt
my affection. I have not been as happy as the world thinks me, but if I
be not happy beside you, fate will indeed find me thankless.'
Nor was it altogether untrue; she looked infinitely lovely to him in
that moment, with the tears shining in her upraised eyes, and the blue
veins of her throat swelling where the orange flowers touched them; and
all this was his--his as wholly as the budding primrose in the woods is
the child's that finds it and may pluck and rifle it at will.
An emotion that was more nearly passion than he had hitherto felt for
her moved him as he looked on her.
With a sudden impulse of the joy and mastery of possession, warmer and
more eager than any she had roused in him before, he took her in his
arms and kissed her throat where the orange flowers were fastened, and,
with a tender touch, unloosed them.