'Are you very happy?' said Baron Fritz to Yseulte in his occasional
visits to Amyôt. And she answered without words, with a blush and a
smile which were much warmer than words. He saw that she was perfectly
happy, as yet; that whatever thorns might be beneath the nuptial couch,
they had not touched her.
He did not venture to put the same question to Othmar. There were times
when he would no more have interrogated his nephew than he would have
put fire to a pile of powder; he had at once the vague fear and the
abundant contempt which a thoroughly practical, artificial, and worldly
man has for one whose dreams and desires are wholly unintelligible to
him.
'Otho,' he said once to her, 'is like an Eastern sorcerer who holds
the magic ring with which he can wish for anything under heaven; but,
as he cannot command immortality, all his life slips through his
fingers before he has decided on what is most worth wishing for. Do you
understand?'
Yseulte did not understand; to her this sorcerer, if not benignant to
himself, had at least given all her soul desired. He treated her with
the most constant tenderness, with the most generous delicacy, with the
most solicitous care; if in his love there might be some of the heat
of passion, some of the ardours of possession, lacking, it was not the
spiritual affection and the childish innocence of so young a girl which
could be capable of missing those, or be conscious of their absence. To
Yseulte, love was at once a revelation and a profanation: she shrank
from it even whilst she yielded to it; it was not to such a temperament
as hers that any lover could ever have seemed cold.
She did not understand her husband; physical familiarity had not
brought much mental companionship. She adored him; the distant sound
of his step thrilled her with excitement, his lightest touch filled
her with delight; the intense love she bore him often held her silent
and pale with an excess of emotion which she would have been afraid to
render into speech even if she had been able to do so; and she was
utterly unable, for the strength of her own feelings alarmed her, and
the mode of her education had made her reticent.
He was to her as a god who had suddenly descended upon her life, and
changed all its poor, dull pathways into fields of light. That she
gave, or that she might give him, much more than he gave her, never
occurred to her thoughts. That any ardour of admiration, or force of
emotion, might be absent in him towards her, never suggested itself
to her. Such love as he bestowed on her, indifferent though it was in
reality, seemed to her the very height of passion. She could not tell
that mere sensual indulgences mingled with affectionate compassion, may
produce so fair a simulacrum of love for awhile that it will deceive
alike deceiver and deceived.
Othmar knew that nothing tenderer, purer, or nearer to his ideal, could
have come into his life than this graceful and most innocent girl. She
satisfied his taste if not his mind; she was as fresh as a sea-shell,
as a lily, as a summer-dawn; and he felt an entire and illimitable
possession in her such as he had never felt in any living woman; she
was so young, it seemed like drinking the very dew of morning; and yet
he could not have told whether he was most restless or most in peace at
Amyôt.
'Love me a little, dear; I have no one,' he had said to her on the day
of their betrothal, and it had always seemed to him that he had no one;
all his mistresses had never cared for him, but only for the golden god
which was behind him; or, he had thought so. And now, she loved him
with an innocence and a fervour of which he could not doubt the truth;
and he was grateful, as the masters of the world are usually grateful,
for a handful of the simple daily bread of real affection; and she gave
him all her young untouched loveliness in pledge of that, as she might
have given him a rosebud to pluck to pieces. And he felt the sweetness
of the rosebud, he resigned himself to the charm of the dawn, and
endeavoured to believe that he was happy; but happiness escaped him as
the vermilion hues of the evening sky may escape the dreamer watching
for them, who looks too closely or looks too far.
Yet he remained willingly at Amyôt through these winter weeks; as
willingly as though he had been the most impassioned of lovers. Amyôt
was as far from the world, if he chose, as though its pastures and
avenues had been an isle in the great South Ocean; he wished to forget
the world with the ivory arms of Yseulte drawn about his throat: he
would gladly have forgotten that any other woman lived beside this
child, on whose innocent mouth, sweet as the wild rose in spring, he
strove to stay the fleeting fragrance of his own youth.
'No man had ever sweeter physician to his woes,' he thought as he
looked at her in her sleep, the red glow from the angry winter sunrise
touching with its light the whiteness of her sculptural limbs. But what
drug cures for long?
Friederich Othmar often went to the château for a few hours on matters
of business, and was persuaded that the shining metal roofs of the
great Valois house of pleasure sheltered a perfect contentment.
'But you must not remain for ever here,' he said to his nephew. 'They
will give you some foolish name which will run down the boulevards
like magic; they will say you are in love with your wife, or that you
are educating her; we all know what comes of that latter attempt.'
'I stay at Amyôt,' answered Othmar, 'because I like it, because we both
like it.'
'My dear Otho, since you have pleased yourself persistently all your
life, it is improbable that you will cease to do so at an age when most
men are only just able to begin. Amyôt is an historic place, very old,
admirably adapted for a museum; but since it is to your taste, well and
good; only none will comprehend that you stay here _filant le parfait
amour_ for two months. If you continue to do so, Paris will believe
that your wife has a club-foot or a crooked spine.'
'You think she must show the one in a cotillon, or the other in
something _très collant_?' said Othmar.
'Are you afraid of that?' said the Baron, who knew by what means to
attain his own ends.
'I am not in the least afraid,' replied Othmar, with impatience. 'But I
confess Amyôt, with the cuckoo crying in its oak woods, seems a fitter
atmosphere for her than the _endiablement_ of Paris.'
'You could return to the cuckoo. I am not acquainted with his habits,
but I should presume he is a stay-at-home, countryfied person.'
'You do not understand the spring-time,' said Othmar, with a smile.
'It has always seemed to me the most uncomfortable period of the year,'
confessed the Baron. 'It is an indefinite and transitory period, such
as are seldom agreeable, except to poets, who are naturally unstable
themselves.'
'I suppose you were never young?' said Othmar, doubtfully.
'I must have been, pathologically speaking,' replied Friederich Othmar.
'But I have no recollection of it; I certainly never remember a time
when I did not read of the state of Europe with interest: I think, on
the contrary, there was never a time in which you took any interest in
it.'
'Europe is such a very small fraction of such an immeasurable whole!'
'It is our fraction at least; and all we have,' said the Baron; all
the gist of the matter seemed to him to lie in that. 'You would like
to live in Venus, or journey to the rings of Saturn, but at present
science limits us to Earth.'
'Can you not persuade him to take any interest in mankind?' he
continued to Yseulte, as she approached them at that moment. He was
about to leave Amyôt after one of his brief and necessary visits, and
stood smoking a cigarette before his departure in the great central
hall, with its dome painted by Primaticcio.
'In mankind?' she repeated with a smile. 'That is very comprehensive,
is it not? I am sure,' she added with hesitation, for she was afraid of
offending her husband, 'he is very good to his own people, if you mean
that?'
'He does not mean that at all, my dear,' said Othmar. 'He means that
I should be very eager to ruin some states and upraise others, that I
should foment war and disunion, or uphold anarchy or absolutism, as
either best served me, that I should free the hands of one and tie
the hands of another; do not trouble your head about these matters,
my child; let us go in the woods and look for primroses, which shall
remind you of the green lanes of Faïel.'
Yseulte, whose interest was vaguely aroused, looked from one to another.
'If you really can do so much as that,' she said timidly, 'I think I
would do it if I were you; because surely you might always serve the
right cause and help the weak people.'
Othmar smiled, well pleased.
'My dear Baron, this is not the advocate that you wish to arouse.
Remember Mephistopheles failed signally when he entered a cathedral.'
'I do not despair; I shall have Paris on my side,' said the Baron, as
he made his farewells.
The day was bright, and a warm wind was stirring amidst the brown
buds of the trees and forests; the great forests wore the purple
haze of spring; from the terraces of Amyôt, where once Francis and
the Marguerite des Marguerites had wandered, the immense view of
the valleys of the Loire and of the Cher was outspread in the noon
sunlight, white tourelle and grey church spire rising up from amid the
lake of golden air like 'silver sails upon a summer sea.' From these
stately terraces, raised high on colonnades of marble, with marble
statues of mailed men-at-arms standing at intervals adown their length,
the eyes could range over all that champaign country which lies open
like a chronicle of France to those who have studied her wars and
dynasties.
Yseulte loved to come there when the sun was bright as when it was
at its setting, and dream her happy dreams, whilst gazing over the
undulations of the great forests spreading solemn and hushed and
shadowy, away, far away, to the silver line of the vast river and to
the confines of what once was Touraine.
'What do you find to think so much of, you, with your short life and
your blameless conscience?' asked Othmar that day, looking at her as
she leaned against the marble parapet.
She might have answered in one word, 'You,' but love words did not come
easily to her lips; she was very shy with him still.
She answered evasively: 'Does one always think at all when one looks,
and looks, and looks, idly like this? I do not believe reverie is real
thinking; it is an enjoyment; everything is so still, so peaceful, so
bright--and then it cannot go away, it is all yours; we may leave it,
it cannot leave us.'
'You are very fond of the country?'
'I have never been anywhere else, except when I was a little child in
Paris. I love Paris, but it is not like this.'
'No woman lives who does not love Paris; but I think Amyôt suits you
better. You have a Valois look; you are of another day than ours. I
should not like to see you grow like the women of your time; you are a
true patrician--you have no need of _chien_.'
He put a hothouse rose in her bosom as he spoke, and kissed her throat
as he did so. The colour flushed there at his touch. She stooped her
face over the rose.
'I do not think I shall ever change,' she said, hurriedly. 'It seems to
me as if one must remain what one is born.'
'The ivory must; the clay changes,' said Othmar. 'You are very pure
ivory, my love. I robbed you from Christ.'
He was seated on one of the marble benches in the balustrade of the
terrace; she stood before him, while his hand continued to play with
the rose he had put at her breast. She wore a white woollen gown,
which fell about her in soft folds, edged with ermine; a broad gold
girdle clasped her waist, and old guipure lace covered her heart, which
beat warm and high beneath his touch as he set the great crimson rose
against it. In an innocent way she suddenly realised her own charm and
its power which it gave her over any man; she lost her timidity, and
ventured to ask him a question.
'What is it that the Baron wishes you so much to do?' she said, as she
stood before him. 'I did not understand.'
'He wishes me, instead of putting roses in your corsage, to busy myself
with setting the torch of war to dry places.'
'I do not understand. What is it you can do?'
'I will try and tell you in a few words. There are a few men, dear,
who have such an enormous quantity of gold that they can arrange the
balance of the world much at pleasure. One man, called Vanderbilt,
could, for instance, make such a country as England bankrupt if he
chose, merely by throwing his shares wholesale on the market. The
Othmar are such men as this. My forefathers made immense fortunes,
mostly very wickedly, and by force of their own unscrupulousness have
managed to become one of these powers of the world. I have no such
taste for any such power. It is with my indifference that my uncle
reproaches me. He thinks that if I bestowed greater attention to the
state of Europe I could double the millions I possess. I do not want to
do that; I do not care to do that; so a great chasm of difference yawns
for ever between him and me.'
'He loves you very much?'
'Oh, in his way; but I irritate him and he irritates me. We have
scarcely a point in common.'
'Perhaps,' said Yseulte, amazed at her own boldness in suggesting a
fault in him, 'perhaps you have not quite patience with his difference
of character?'
'That is very possible,' said Othmar, himself astonished at her
insight. 'I could pardon anything if he would not speak of the Othmar
as Jews speak of Jehovah. It is so intolerably absurd.'
'But they are your people.'
'Alas! yes. But I despise them; I dislike them. They were intolerably
bad men, my dear; they did intolerably bad things. All this,' he
continued, with a gesture of his hand towards the mighty building of
Amyôt, with its marble terraces and its many towers dazzling in the
sunlight, 'they would never have possessed save through hundreds of
unscrupulous actions heaped one on the other to make stepping-stones
across the salt-marsh of poverty to the yellow sands of fortune. Oh,
I do not mean that Amyôt was not bought fairly. It was bought quite
fairly, at a very high price, by my great grandfather, but the wealth
which enabled him to buy it was ill-gotten. His father was a common
Croat horse-dealer, which is a polite word for horse-stealer, who lived
in the last century in the city of Agram. There are millions of loose
horses in the vast oak woods of Western Hungary and the immense plains
of Croatia, and to this day there are many men who live almost like
savages, and steal these half-wild horses as a means of subsistence.
There were, of course, many more of these robbers in the last century
than in this. Marc Othmar did not actually steal the horses, but he
bought them at a tenth part of their value from these rough men of the
woods and plains when stolen, and the large profits he made by this
illegal traffic laid the foundations of the much-envied fortunes which
I enjoy, and which you grace to-day.'
He had spoken as though he explained the matter to a child, but
Yseulte's ready imagination supplied the colour to his bare outlines.
She was silent, revolving in her thoughts what he had said.
'I would rather your people had been warriors,' she said, with
hesitation, thinking of her own long line of crusaders.
'I would rather they had been peasants,' he returned. 'But being what
they were, I must bear their burdens.'
'Then what is it he wishes you to do that you do not?'
'He wishes me to have many ambitions, but as I regard it, the fortunes
which I have been born to entirely smother ambition; whatever eminence
I might achieve, if I did achieve it, would never appear better than so
much preference purchased. If I had been as great a soldier as Soult,
they would have said I bought my victories. If I had had the talent of
Balzac, they would have said I bought the press. If I had written the
music of the "Hamlet" or the "Roi de Lahore," they would have said that
I bought the whole musical world for my claque. If I could have the
life that I should like, I should choose such a life as Lamartine's,
but a rival of the Rothschilds cannot be either a poet or a leader of a
revolution. The _monstrari digito_ ruins the peace and comfort of life:
if I walk down the boulevard with the Comte de Paris the fools cry that
I wish to crown Philippe VII., if I speak to M. Wilson in the _foyer_
of the Français they scream that there is to be a concession for a new
loan; if the Prince Orloff come to breakfast with me a Russian war is
suspected, and if Prince Hohenlohe dine with me I have too German a
bias. This kind of notoriety is agreeable to my uncle. It makes him
feel that he holds the strings of the European puppet show. But to
myself it is detestable. To come and go unremarked seems to me the
first condition of all for the quiet enjoyment of life, but I have been
condemned to be one of those unfortunates who cannot drive a phaeton
down to Chantilly without the press and the public becoming nervous
about the intentions of M. d'Aumale. Last year, one very hot day, I was
passing through Paris, and I asked for a glass of water at a little
café at the barrière. They stared, and brought me some. When I told
them that I only wanted water, the waiter said, with a smile, "Monsieur
ne peut pas être sérieux! nous avons l'honneur de le connaître." The
world, like the waiter, will not let me have plain water when I wish
for it. I dare say my wish may be perversity, but, at any rate, it is
always thwarted by the very people who imagine they are gratifying me
with indulgences.'
'But some of the people love you,' she insisted. 'Did not the workmen
of Paris give you that beautiful casket the other day? Was it not
bought by a two-sous subscription?'
'That was more a compliment to the Maison d'Othmar than to myself. We
have always been popular in Paris; so was Louis Napoléon--once. We have
much the same titles as he had; we have committed many crimes, and
caused immeasurable misery.'
'Not you,' she said softly.
'I inherit the results,' said her husband.
'But you have done great things,' she said timidly. 'The curé here
was telling me yesterday of all you have done for the poor of Paris.
He says that the hospitals you have founded, the charities you
maintain----'
'The curé knows his way to your heart and your purse! My dear, the
Emperor Napoléon Trois thought that he did a great thing for the poor
of Paris when he pulled down their rookeries and built them fine and
healthy _cités ouvrières_; there was only one thing the Emperor could
not do: he could not make the poor live in them; and the Convalescent
Home he erected at Vincennes did not save him from Sedan, or Paris from
the Commune. We who are rich shall always have the Emperor's fate; we
shall build as much as we like, and spend as much as we like, but we
shall never reach the hearts of the great multitudes, who all hate
us. It is very natural they should. Never say a word about what they
call my charities. They are blunders like the Emperor's, many of which
seem now to be very absurd ones. If I ever come to my Sedan, they
will not be remembered for an hour. The one thing I can do, and will
do, is, that I will prevent, as long as I live, the use of the great
mill of gold which we grind being turned to immoral purposes--such
purposes, for instance, as the oppression of peoples, as the barter
of nationalities, as the supply of the sinews of unjust and unholy
wars, as the many intolerable iniquities which, whilst professing
Christianity, modern statesmen employ under spurious names to most
intolerable ends. So much I can do; and, for doing it, I am thought
a fool. All the rest is wholly indifferent to me. The machine swings
on as it will; it is so admirably organised that it requires little
guidance, and, that little, Baron Friederich gives, whilst I am free,
my dear, to stay at Amyôt and gather you another rose, for I have
spoilt this one.'
He had spoken more gaily, frankly, and fully than was his wont, and
kissed her softly on the throat once more.
Yseulte's thoughts were with his earlier words; her eyes were moist,
and very serious. It was the first time that he had ever alluded before
her to his family or his position; she had never at all understood what
they had meant around her when they had spoken of la Finance; she had
seen that he was _très grand seigneur_, and was treated, wherever he
moved, with the greatest marks of deference. It seemed very strange to
her that so much power and state should be possible without unblemished
descent: it was outside of her creed and her comprehension. If she had
loved him less, it would have shocked her.
'I am sorry,' she said softly, 'it must have troubled you so much. I
understand why you are sometimes sad. It must be like holding lightning
in your hands; and then there is the fear of using it ill----'
'My greatest fault has been to be too careless of it,' he answered.
'To have used my power neither way, neither for good nor ill. I have
comforted myself that I have done no harm;--a negative praise. Come,
let us go and choose another rose for you; or shall we go into the
woods? You like them better. Do not trouble your soul with the gold or
the crimes of the Othmar. You are come to purify both; and you will
make your children in your own likeness out of that consecrated ivory
of which heaven has made you!'
'She is the first woman of them all,' he thought, as they descended the
marble stairs towards the glades of the park, 'the first who has had
any sympathy with me. They have all thought me a fool for not turning
round like the sluggard, and lying drugged in my golden nest. She
understands very little because she does not understand the world; but
she can imagine how all which the vulgar think so delightful drags me
down like a wallet of stones.'
'Yseulte,' he said aloud, 'do you know what all my millions cannot
buy, and what I would give them all to be able to buy? Well, something
like the _mort sur le champ d'honneur_, which was said for a hundred
and fifty years when the name of Philippe de Valogne was called in the
roll-call of the Grenadiers.'
The memory he recalled was one of the most glorious of her race; one
of those traditions of pure honour which are common enough in the
nobility of France. The Counts de Valogne had been behind none in high
courage and lofty codes; and the local history of their province was
studded with the exploits and the martial self-sacrifice whereby they
had continually redeemed their extravagance and their idleness as
courtiers and men of pleasure.
She turned to him with her brightest smile, and her hand touched his
with a gesture caressing and timid.
'He is mine; I will give him to you,' she said, with a child's
abandonment and gaiety. 'I am so glad that I have something to give!'
'You will give his blood to my sons,' said Othmar. 'So you will give it
to me.'