When that time had passed she descended the grand staircase and joined
her friends in the conservatories; the tea roses renewed in the white
velvet of her corsage, the great pearls lying on her white soft breast.
No one was aware of anything changed in her manner or aspect. Twice or
thrice she looked nervously at the doors; that was all; she was afraid
of seeing her husband enter.
When he came she looked away from him, and Blanche de Laon, who was
near her, saw a certain tremor on her lips, and thought with victorious
pleasure, though uncertain of the cause: _Ça vous blesse, hein? Ça vous
blesse?_
At the long dinner she was somewhat silent and absorbed, but her world
was used to her caprices, and knew that she was seldom pleased long.
Men endeavoured all the more to amuse her. They thought that they
succeeded. They did not know that instead of the brilliant room, the
faces of her friends, the flowers and fruits of the table, and the
frescoes of the walls, she only saw a little low dark chamber with a
girl dying miserably in it, like a strangled dog, as the moon rose.
She had never believed in sacrifice or in remorse, or if forced to
believe in them she had said with disdain, 'What melodrama!' But she
believed now.
Shame and remorse approached the delicate hauteur of her life and
touched it for the first time. What she had thought so low had humbled
her.
The dinner seemed very long to her, the evening slow to pass; the
burden of the world can be at times as heavy as the travail of the
poor; there were the usual pastimes, and wit, and gaiety; Paul of
Lemberg was there, and the ineffable sweetness of his music thrilled
through the flower-scented air; people laughed low, and played high,
and made love in shadowy corners; it was all pretty, and graceful, and
amusing. But she, amidst it all, only heard a voice which cried to her:
'Why will you not believe?'
She only saw a grave made in dark wet earth, and a girl's body
thrust into it in cruel haste, and sods thrown in one on another on
the lifeless limbs, the dull hair, the disfigured throat; it was
horrible--horrible! Why had she not left her alone in the gay sunshine,
under the orange trees, by the blue water?
With all the pressure and the distraction of society upon her she was
endlessly pursued by the self-accusation which had been brought to her
by those simple lines traced by a dying child.
A consciousness of the supreme good fortune with which fate had always
lightened her own life, came to her, for the first time, with a sense
of unworthiness and ingratitude in herself. A consciousness of the
greatness of the gifts she had received, and of the little she had
given in return, smote her heart with a vague repentance and a vague
fear. What had she done with all those lives which had been put into
her hands, with all the loyalty and the devotion which had been spent
on her oftentimes, without receiving from her even a passing pity in
recognition of it? Would not life tire one day of blessing her, when
she gave no benediction in return?
She had always cared so little, she had been always so indifferent
and so dissatisfied. Would fate not strike her with a rough, wild
justice, if it took from her her children, her husband, her intellect,
her fortune, her beauty? Would not destiny be only fair and honest
if it forced her on her knees beside some death-bed of some creature
well-beloved, and said to her:--
'You have never been content in happiness; henceforward you shall dwell
with sorrow.'
Fear touched her for the sole time in her victorious and indifferent
life; she was afraid lest one day she should stand alone with only the
graves of what had been once dear to her as her companions and her
friends: one day when youth and power and beauty and wit would all be
gone from her:----like the great sovereigns of the world, she shuddered
to remember that she was mortal.
With all her philosophy and epigram, she had discoursed full many a
time of the only cruel certainty life holds: the certainty that _tout
lasse, tout casse, tout passe_. She had played with the dread problems
which Time, the merciless master of the highest, sets before all his
scholars with no solution to them possible to the clearest brains. And
whilst she had toyed with their subtleties, this child had had the
courage to cut the knot and pass away for ever to the eternal night of
nothingness!
Some perception of the utter selfishness of her whole existence smote
her as she sat alone in the stillness of the after-midnight hours.
These children dwarfed her in her own sight. They had been mere
children, both of them, foolish, romantic, unwise, exaggerated: but
they had been in a way sublime. And he had loved neither of them. He
had only loved her who had left his heart empty, his affections cold,
his life dissatisfied and solitary.
For the first time since she had thought at all, a passionate
repentance and regret came on her; a sense of her own cruelty weighed
heavily upon her. Why had she not been more tolerant, more merciful,
more willing to acknowledge that innocence and generosity of which she
had been so unwillingly conscious all the while that Damaris Bérarde
had stood before her? Why had she not been guided by that serenity and
tolerance of judgment on which she had so long prided herself; why had
she crushed to the earth with the weight of her scorn, and her rank,
and her place as his wife, this lonely creature who had loved him so
humbly, so silently, so perfectly?
There was a greatness in her own nature, obscured as it was by the
languors of self-love and the vanities of the world, which forced
her to recognise the greatness of the simple words sent to her. She
herself, in her anger, in her incredulity, in her cruelty, seemed to
her own eyes very poor beside them. She had judged as the common herd
always judged: coarsely, superficially, brutally. No better.
She was humbled in her own eyes. The sentimentalists had conquered
throughout, they had been greater than she!
Poor Mignon, with her heart breaking in a love which she dared not
avow, which no one wanted!
A few kind words might have saved her; might have healed the bruised
child's heart and made it strong for the burden of life; and she had
not spoken those words.
If she had read this story in a book of poems, if she had seen it
unfolded on the scene of a pastoral as of an opera, it would have
touched her; but as it had been in real life she had not cared; because
the living, throbbing, aching nerves had been alive before her she had
not cared; she had turned away, and had left them to bleed to death as
they would--as they might.
A sense of guilt was upon her. She felt as though she had killed some
humble, wounded animal which had crept to her feet for safety. She had
always declared that genius was sacred to her; and now she had dealt
with it as a mere common noxious thing, and driven it away from her to
perish.
'And we are such wretched shallow egotists,' she thought. 'I grieve for
her now, and I know that she has been greater than I shall ever be, and
I know that we have killed her--he and I and the world which had no
place for her; and yet how often shall I remember her, how often shall
I be gentler to others for her sake?--once or twice, whilst the memory
of her is warm perhaps--no more; one has no time.'
Rosselin would remember every hour of all such few days as might remain
to him on earth; but no one else.
'Oh, foolish child,' she thought, 'to die for that! Why not have lived,
and reigned over the souls of men, and put a curb on the slavering
mouth of the fawning world! It is never worth an hour of sacrifice.'
Yet all overwrought, unwise, useless, as such sacrifice was, it had
a nobility in it which awed her, and a generosity which made her own
egotism seem poor and pale beside it.
'Make him happier.'
The unselfish prayer of the dead girl touched her conscience and her
heart as no rebuke would ever have done. She had the power to do so
still; that she did not doubt. He was hers in every way if she chose to
stretch her hand out to him.
A sense of the infinite patience, and fidelity, and devotion of the
great love which he had always borne her from the first hour his
eyes had met hers came to her with the force of a reproach from the
grave itself. His submission to her caprices, his constancy under her
neglect, his instant response to the faintest kindness from her, his
unchangeable tenderness which outlived the many mortal wounds she
dealt to it; all these came to her memory with a sense of her own debt
to them, of their own sweetness and patience, and long suffering. In
him she could if she chose find a friend, whom no fault of hers would
alienate, and no passing of time make weary. She had had too much love
given to her in her life; she saw that she had been too careless of
this, the greatest gift life holds: and death had come too often where
she passed.
The chill of its ghastly presence seemed with her as she moved through
the silent house in the still small hours. This child had had force in
her youth to seek death, but she feared it: she who had feared nothing
on earth or in heaven.
When all the guests were gone to their chambers, and the great house
was still, she did what she had never once done in the years of their
marriage: she went to seek Othmar instead of sending her women to
summon him. She had on her pale rose satin chamber-gown, and even in
that moment, with an impulse of care for her person and its charms,
a coquetry which would never cease in her whilst she had breath, she
paused a moment before one of the mirrors, and glanced lingeringly at
her own reflection, and put some fresh roses in her bosom. Had she been
on her way to the scaffold she would have done the same: had the same
remembrance of her own power to charm.
As she passed one of the great windows of the hall, she looked at the
night without. The moon, which rose late, being on its decline, poured
its whole light over the gardens and the forests beyond. A white owl
flew through the clear air; the shadow of the great palace fell black
over the silvered grass, distant bells for daybreak prayer were ringing
very far away over the hushed country.
And the night before, 'as the moon rose,' Damaris Bérarde had died in
her narrow chamber, in all her beauty and strength, in all the height
of her dreams and hopes, in all the vigorous promise of life which had
been as full and as fair in her as was now the promise of spring in the
woods: and these were all gone for ever and for ever, the body laid in
the earth to perish, and the tender and valiant soul passed away like a
dew that dries up before the heats of the noonday.
'Heaven spare such death to you and yours!'
She remembered the words with the first sense of terror her nature had
ever known. They seemed less like a prayer for good than like a menace
of evil. She thought of the fair lives of her children: not fairer
than had been this other young life which she had first seen under the
starry orange flowers above the edge of the sea.
Why could she not have left her alone?
She passed through the length of the quiet building to her husband's
rooms. He was writing at a writing-table with his back turned to her,
and did not raise his head at the sound of the unclosing door.
But as the sweet rose-scent came towards him on the air, a
consciousness of her presence came with it: he started violently and
rose to his feet. He was very pale as he bowed low before her, then
stood waiting for her to speak. She was silent some moments.
To her temper so imperious, so arrogant, so indifferent, to praise or
blame, it was not without great effort that she could say what she had
come to say.
A strong emotion moved her. She had never believed it possible for her
conscience to pain her, for her heart to ache with self-reproach, as
they did now.
'Make him happier.'
The childish words haunted her. After all, what had she ever given him
in return for the supreme devotion of his life? A few hours of physical
ecstasy; and years of indifference, mockery, and neglect.
'Make him happier.'
To her critical intelligence and satiated mind, happiness in such
simple reading of the word could not exist; it needed faith, it needed
ignorance, it needed youth; it is never possible to those whose
passions demand what nothing mortal can satisfy. Yet some reparation
she knew she might still give to him; some gentleness, some sympathy,
some response. These children who had loved him so well should not have
died wholly in vain.
She leaned towards him, and the fragrance of the roses in her breast
swept with dreamy sweetness over him.
'I came to ask your pardon,' she said in a low voice. 'I wronged you, I
insulted you----'
He bowed low, and his lips, as they touched her hand, were very cold.
'Pardon is no word between you and me,' he said wearily. 'How could you
doubt me? Had I ever lied to you, or to anyone?'
'No: I was wrong.'
Her proud mouth trembled.
'How much or how little shall I tell him?' she thought; 'men are such
children!'
He looked at her with hesitation; and a great and sudden joy touched
his life.
'Do you love me at all, then?' he said with wonder and with doubt.
She smiled a little: her old slight mysterious smile!
'I suppose so--since I doubted you. Love is always blind!'
* * * * *
_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The oe ligature is represented in the text at [oe].
Table of Contents created by the transcriber and placed into the public
domain.
Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies.