A few days later Rosselin, going to Les Hameaux for his usual
recitation with her, found Damaris feverish, restless and despondent.
She had lost, for the time at least, that buoyancy and enthusiasm which
were the most prominent qualities of her nature; she seemed to him
listless and taciturn, her eyes had a brooding pain in them, and she
took little interest in the studies of the day.
Rosselin heard from the woman of the house that Othmar had been there
that week.
'It will end as such things always end,' he thought impatiently. 'All
the fine sentiments on his side will not enable him to cast nature
out of him; and to her, of course, he must seem an angel from another
world. He has stood between her and all the misery of life. A dog
which he had saved in such a way would adore him. He is a man, too,
made to charm a poetic nature, because there is so much of the poet in
him, and a melancholy which is in pathetic contrast with his wealth
and power. One can always understand that women love Othmar; what one
cannot understand is that his wife cares for him so little. And yet,
why should I say so? All the world over one sees familiarity bring
indifference, security create neglect.'
Aloud he said, with anger to her:
'What has come to you? If you do not mean to become an artist, and a
great artist, adieu! My hours are not likely to be so many on earth
that I can afford to waste them. What ails you? Your voice is dull;
your face is no mirror for your words. You are not listening. If you
have tame moments like this, do not dream of ever moving the world. It
is a block of stone; you cannot stir it without putting out all your
strength. And even then it will roll back and roll on to you if you
relax your efforts. If you give yourself to art you may be great in it,
I think; but if you love anything--any person--better than art, do not
touch it. Go, and be an ordinary woman like the rest.'
The words were harsh. The tears started to her eyes as she heard them,
and a hot colour rose over her face and throat. She was silent.
'She never speaks of him. How fine that is!' thought Rosselin. 'Most
female creatures at her years babble of what fills their thoughts, as
birds chatter of the spring in April.'
Aloud he said:
'You will not do any good to-day. You look ill, and you are restless.
Come with me to Paris; I will show you something which will interest
you--and the weather is fine though cold. Let us walk to Magny.'
She went with him in silence.
The day was drawing to a close as the train sped through the dark
fields of winter and entered Paris. A city was always terrible and
hateful to her. She loved air and light and the solitude of sea and
land. Crowds hurt her, and the labyrinth of streets had never ceased to
oppress and to bewilder her. She felt amidst the walls and roofs as a
young eagle feels barred up in a cage. He talked to her of many things
with that picturesque detail with which his great knowledge of the city
and of the world filled his conversation. He endeavoured to interest
and distract her; he strove to amuse and arouse her. But he felt that
he succeeded but indifferently. Her thoughts were not with him; she was
silent and she was nervous.
When night fell he took her with him to the Théâtre Français; not for
the first time. It was the night of a _première_ of a great dramatist.
The house was filled with the choicest critics of Paris; the most
famous actors occupied the classic stage. Behind the grating of the
hidden box to which he led her she could see without being seen. Before
this she had been only taken to rehearsals in the daytime; she had
never seen a great theatre in the full blaze of one of its gala nights.
It blinded and oppressed her. She longed for the coolness, for the
shadows, for the dewy stillness of the country. The pungent scents,
the blazing lights, the multitude of faces, the hum of voices, made
her afraid; afraid as she had not been all alone in the hours of night
adrift in her boat on the sea.
'Watch and listen and learn,' said Rosselin. 'You may be on this stage
one day, or on none.'
She did not reply: the new play had begun; the most famous players in
Paris acted with that exquisite grace and ease which characterise them;
the play was witty and brilliant; each scene had its separate success,
each phrase its separate charm. Rosselin himself, vividly interested
and keenly critical, gave all his attention to the stage, and for the
time forgot his companion. When the curtain fell upon the first act he
turned to speak to her; he was startled to see that her face was pale
as death, and her eyes, wide open and fascinated, were fastened on the
opposite side of the house. He looked where she was looking, and saw a
great lady with a bouquet of orchids lying on the cushion before her,
and several gentlemen in her box behind her.
'Ah, Madame Nadine!' murmured Rosselin. 'She does not often deign to
honour a first night, even when it is Sardou's. She is going to some
great ball afterwards, I suppose, for look at her diamonds, and she has
her Russian orders on. _Voilà une véritable grande dame!_'
Damaris gazed at her without a word; her eyes were strained, her very
lips were pale, she breathed quickly and painfully, the theatre seemed
to circle round and round her, and across its intense light of all the
many faces there she saw but this one. When the second act began she
had no ears for it and no consciousness of what was said or done in
it. She never once looked at the stage. Her eyes remained rivetted on
the wife of Othmar; the voices of the actors were a mere dull babble
to her: when the audience laughed she knew not why they laughed, when
they applauded, she had no knowledge why they did so; all she saw was
that delicate colourless beauty on the other side of the house with the
great jewels shining on it like stars.
She looked, and looked, and looked till her eyes swam and her heart
grew sick.
This was the woman whom he loved, this great lady leaning there with
that look of utter indifference on her face, with that slight smile as
this man or the other entered her box, with the diamonds shining in the
whiteness of her breast, with her uncovered shoulders gleaming white as
snow; a hothouse flower in all the rarity, the languor, the perfection,
which the hothouse gives. The same sense which had come to her in
the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond came again to the child; a sense
of rudeness, of rusticity, of inferiority, of coarseness in herself
as contrasted with that patrician elegance, that pale and languid
loveliness, that marvellous charm of the world and of its highest form
of culture.
'What can I look like to him!' she thought with humiliation. 'Beside
her I must seem to him like some rude peasant----'
All that she had felt vaguely before the mirrors of St. Pharamond came
back upon her embittered, intensified, made conscious. She realised the
immense distance that there was between her and Othmar as she saw his
wife. She realised the grace and splendour of this life in the world
which they led. She realised the passion which she had given to her.
She realised that she herself could only stand outside his life, like a
beggar outside his gates.
When the curtain fell again, Rosselin looked at her with impatience.
'You looked at that woman always, never at the stage,' he said
angrily. 'She is a great lady; leagues above you, leagues beyond you;
you have nothing in common with her. But one day you may force her to
hear you in this very house if you choose. Will you choose?'
'She will not care,' said Damaris.
Tears were standing in her eyes; the sense of an infinite loneliness,
and of a great inferiority, were on her. What would it matter if she
ever became famous yonder on those classic boards? That great lady
would come and see her for an hour--smile or censure--then forget.
The dreams which she had nurtured of compelling the admiration of the
world, seemed to dissolve like a mirage before the mere presence of
Othmar's wife. 'She would not care,' she said wearily.
To this patrician she would always be a half-barbarian and uncultured
creature. The heart of the child asked with longing to go back to her
old life in the sunny air by the blue water, with the homely people,
with the simple wants, with the sound of the birds in the leaves, and
the feel of the wind on the sea. But she knew that never could she go
back so any more.
If her feet were to travel thither, her soul would not go.
The passion of the world, the aims of ambition, the heartsickness of
jealousy and desire were all in her; where they have passed the soul is
for ever a stranger to peace, even as where fire has burnt the soil of
a green field, grass will grow no more.
'Why did she not let me alone?' she thought.
Between the second and the third acts, Rosselin left her to go to the
foyer, where he had been for so many years so conspicuous a figure, and
so dreaded a critic.
'Fasten the door after me, and if a thousand people should knock, let
no one in until you hear my voice,' he said to her, drawing the door
behind him.
Left to herself she drew back into the deepest shadow of the little den
she occupied, and gazed as she would at the woman who had been destiny
to her. She saw numerous gentlemen come and go in her box, make their
reverence to her, linger if they were permitted, or withdraw and give
place to others. Nadine had changed her position so that her profile
only was now turned towards the house. She leaned her elbow on the
cushion, and her cheek on her hand, a butterfly of emeralds sparkled
under her shoulder; sometimes her face was hidden by the fan of white
ostrich feathers, sometimes she furled the fan and let it lie unused
beside the orchids.
Damaris watched her with the strange fascination of fear and of
wonder, of hatred and admiration, which had moved her in the salons
of St. Pharamond. All the words which Othmar had spoken a few days
before, were sounding in her ears. Her simple and candid thoughts were
beginning to gain something of the complexity, of the weariness, of the
pain of his. She understood why he had loved this woman so much that,
empty though his heart might be, it would remain untenanted. Innocent
as Mignon, she yet watched her rival with something of the passion of
Adrienne Lecouvreur.
'She is his, he is hers--and she does not care!' thought the child,
in whom the ignorance of childhood still lingered, blent with the
awakening strength and heat of a tropical nature.
As the curtain rose for the third act, Othmar himself entered his
wife's box. Damaris shrank farther and farther back against the wall,
though she knew well that the keenest eyes could not find her out in
her obscurity. Her breath came hard and fast like a panting hare's; the
great tears rose to her eyes; she suddenly realised what this world was
which held him so closely. She saw his wife give him the same slight
smile that she gave to others: no more. She saw him bend before her
with the same low bow the others gave; she saw him converse with the
gentlemen near him; from time to time he glanced round the house. Once
or twice his wife turned her head and spoke to him as she spoke to
the others. To this child who had the heart of Juliet, the soul of
Heloise, the conventionalities of the world seemed like the frost of
death.
'She is his; he is hers: and she does not care!'
That was all she could think of as she watched them across that sea of
light. The wit of the play amused him, and Othmar looked less weary and
more animated than usual. To her he appeared happy.
Rosselin called thrice to her through the door before she heard him and
let him enter.
'You should not dream like that when you are at the Français. You
should study. What more admirable lessons can you have?' he said
angrily. 'Poets may dream if they like. They speak best in their
trances. Those who would only interpret them must never dare to do so.
Have I not told you so a score of times? There is nothing poetic about
the stage; it is all hard, prosaic, literal. If you will dream go and
bury yourself under green leaves, under yellow corn; do not come to the
theatres of the world.'
Damaris for once did not even hear him. He looked across the house and
saw Othmar.
'Come,' he said to her, 'you will miss the last train that pauses at
Trappes if you do not come away now. Never will they forgive me for
leaving before the close! But that will not matter much. They know I am
old; they can think I am ill. Come, or you will be too late.'
'Wait a little,' said Damaris, in a shamed, hushed voice; her face grew
red as she spoke.
Rosselin glanced impatiently at the box on the other side of the house.
He said nothing; he waited, artist as he was in all the fibres of his
nature; his eyes and his ears and his art were all with Got, with the
Coquelins, with the moving and speaking persons of the stage: yet a
little corner of his heart ached still for the child.
'What wretchedness she prepares for herself!' he thought with pity and
sorrow combined. 'She will never be a great artist, because with her
feeling will always take the mastery. You are only a great artist if
when you suffer, though you suffer horribly, you can study what you
feel, you can make your own heart strings into a lyre. If you cannot do
that, you are only a creature that loves another. Ah, my dear! No one
ever conquered the world so!'
He let her alone until the piece was over; the box of the Countess
Othmar had been vacated some moments before the termination of the last
act. He did not speak to her whilst he hurried her through private
passages and into the frosty air of the streets.
'Cover yourself well, it is cold,' was all he said as he took her with
gentle steps over the pavement which his feet had trodden so many
thousands of times, in the hurry of youth, in the ecstasy of triumph,
in all the alternations of a manhood tossed up and down upon the stormy
seas of public favour and of public caprice. All that network of
streets about the Français was as dear to him as the banks of Doon to
Burns, as the green wood and ways of Milly to Lamartine, as the sweet
meads and streams of Penshurst to Philip Sydney.
Damaris walked on beside him, her head bent, her face covered. The
tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks.
'Let me do what I would,' she thought, 'she would not care.'
Rosselin took her home to his own little house that night, for it was
too late to return to Les Hameaux. He made her seat herself by his
fire; he dried the damp of the night on her hair and her clothes; he
would have made her eat of his preserved nectarines and drink of his
choice wines which were sent by his friends. But she would not touch
anything. She sat lost in thought.
All she saw was that beautiful woman; all she heard was the voice of
Othmar saying, 'I have so loved her that I shall never love any other
woman ever again.'
No doubt it was so: she could understand. Only he seemed to go away
from her, herself, utterly and for ever; to glide out of her life as
the ships she had used to watch from her balcony, as the nightingales
sang under the moon, used to pass away further and further, till the
great distance and the shadows of night swallowed them up and they were
no more seen, and all the wide sea was empty.
Rosselin watched her sadly.
'Poor Mignon,' he thought. 'Who shall transform her to a Mademoiselle
Mars? How does the gymnast teach his child to stand and catch the metal
ball, to tread and hold the rope in air. He works and kneads the tender
flesh till it grows hard, he strains the soft limbs till they become
like steel, he bends and twists and forces, and forges the immature
sinews and tendons till they are like cords to resist, and in every
separate muscle there almost seems a separate brain. When their nature
has been driven out and the body has become an iron machine the teacher
has succeeded. Who shall do for her mind and her heart what the gymnast
does to his son's limbs and spine? And will ever anybody do it? Will
she ever be Mars--be Rachel? Will she ever fling her soul away and keep
only her body and her brain? And if she do not do that what success
will she ever have?'
In that kind of cruelty with which the true artist would always emulate
any living thing to art, he almost wished that Othmar were a man with
less honour and less compassion, more license and more selfishness.
'If he would break her heart and rouse her hatred how much art would
gain,' he thought. 'She would pass through the fire like Goethe's
dancing girl, and come out of it immortal.'
He knew the weakness of love, and he knew the strength of genius.
'Listen to me,' he said, as the wood-fire gleamed and murmured. 'You
dream too much of Othmar. I understand he was your saviour; he is
your hero, your saint, your god: all that is inevitable; and he is
a man whom women will always love, because he has a great grace and
gentleness about him, and his discontent and sadness are in picturesque
contrast with his magnificent and enviable fortunes. But he will never
love you, my child: just because he has so loved that woman, that his
heart has grown cloyed, yet cold; great passions always leave that
kind of satiety behind them. And then the world holds him, a hundred
thousand invisible threads bind him; if he had the heart left for it,
which he has not, he would not have the time to turn back; his life
is fixed, such as it is, and he and the world are wedded together,
though it may not be the spouse he would have chosen. Do not either
live for him or die for him. What will she say if you do either? That
you are a love-sick fool. I do not talk to you as moralists would talk,
because I do not believe in conventional morality; it is an absurdity,
like all conventional things. No doubt your old friend Melville would
speak much better than I do, but I speak honestly, and according to
my lights. You have wished, and the wish has seemed to me natural, to
compel recognition of your own powers from the person who first caused
you to leave the happy obscurity of your life. You have said that you
wish her to see you can have a greatness she has not. It is a personal
motive, and art is best served by impersonal motives. Still it seems to
me natural. I can understand it. But to do this you must be strong, you
must be bold, you must be true to yourself. You must not be overcome
because you see her looking like the great lady she is. There is only
one thing which the wife of Othmar respects, it is genius; she respects
that because her intellect appreciates, and her gold cannot buy, it.
Prove to her that it is in you, and she will respect you. If you died
for her lord to-morrow, she would only say that you had forgotten you
were not upon the stage. I seem to speak harshly and roughly. Ah, my
dear, my heart is neither; but I wish to save you from your own heart
if I can. You are all alone, and you are scarcely more than a child,
and the world, the world, is a beast.'
She did not answer; her head was bent down on her arms, and her face
was hidden; all he could see was the hot flush on the ivory of her
throat, and the curling hair which was made golden by the ruddy light
from the leaping flames.
All her dreams and aspirations and ambitions seemed all huddled
together, bruised and colourless, like a heap of child's toys broken
and faded.
'She would not care!' that was all she thought. If the world were to
give her fame, what would the best that she could ever reach seem to
the unreachable disdain of that other woman? No more than the gleam of
a glow-worm may seem to the planet on high.
A rude sun-browned wench of the sea and the land, good to row through
blue water, and mow down green billows of grass: that was all she would
ever seem to Othmar's wife.
'Tell me what you wish,' she said in a low tone. 'If I can I will do
it.'
The voice of Rosselin shook a little as he answered, 'My child I want
you to do what she cannot. These people have all things; they have ease
and mirth, and soft beds, and minds without care, and great riches,
and great palaces, and great powers, but there are two things which
often escape them, and ofttimes the poor have the one and now and then
they are born to the other. I mean that great consoler of the humble,
content, and that great redresser of injustice, genius. You have the
latter. In your sea-gull's nest the Muses found you. Oh, child, be
grateful! You are richer than the kings who ruled here in Paris--if
only you knew your riches!'
She looked up at him suddenly, pushing her troubled curls out of her
eyes.
'If I spoke before her my throat would dry up--my voice would be
strangled in it. If I were to do well, she would never care. If I were
to fail, she would smile. I should see her smile in my grave. He loves
her you know, he loves her so much, but she has made his heart numb in
him with her indifference and her scorn.'
He was awed and amazed at such intensity of dread in a nature which had
always seemed to him bold as the winds, and resolute and headstrong.
'Yes,' he said, almost brutally. 'If you fail she will smile, she will
laugh; she knows nothing of failure. But you will not fail. Only the
weak fail. You are strong. You will not let that woman think that you
threw away your genius for love of her lord!'
They were words which were hard and rough and brutal; but they seemed
to him the wisest words that he could speak. She was a child with a
passionate heart half broken; unless that heart were torn out and
trodden under her foot, he thought that she would never walk straight
to where the laurels, the bitter laurels, grew.
He meant to do well; he spoke according to his light; but he was only a
man and childless, and forgot a little what easily bruised things the
hearts of some women are when they are very young, and have hot blood
in their veins, and are all alone in a world which feels to them as the
stony road of the moorland feels to the shot doe when there is many a
long mile to be covered between her and the herd.
She turned her head from him quickly, and he saw the dark red flush
which stained her throat.
She did not answer. The words brought no solace to her. Her heart was
empty. He saw the great tears roll slowly down her cheeks. He realised
that the hilt of this two-edged sword which he held out to her was too
cold a pillow for so young a breast.