by Ouida
She glanced at him anxiously, seeing how motionless he lay there, with his head turned backward on the cushions.
‘I am afraid you are weak still from that wound,’ she said, as she rose and approached him. ‘Greswold assures me it has left no trace, but I am always afraid. And you look often so pale. Perhaps you exert yourself too much? Let the wolves be. Perhaps it is too cold for you? Would you like to go to the south? Do not think of me; my only happiness is to do whatever you wish.’
He kissed her hand with deep unfeigned emotion. ‘I believe in angels since I knew you,’ he murmured. ‘No; I will not take you away from the winter and the people that you love. I am well enough. Greswold is right. I could not master those horses if I were not strong; be sure of that.’
‘But I always fear that it is dull here for you?’
‘Dull! with you? “Custom cannot stale her infinite variety.” That was written in prophecy of your charm for me.’
‘You will always flatter me! And I am not “various” at all; I am too grave to be entertaining. I am just the German house-mother who cares for the children and for you.’
He laughed.
‘Is that your portrait of yourself? I think Carolus Duran’s is truer, my grand châtelaine. When you are at Court the whole circle seems to fade to nothing before your presence. Though there are so many women high-born and beautiful there, you eclipse them all.’
‘Only in your eyes! And you know I care nothing for courts. What I like is the life here, where one quiet day is the pattern of all the other days. If I were sure that you were content in it — —’
‘Why should you think of that?’
‘My love, tell me honestly, do you never miss the world?’
He rose and walked to the hearth. He, whose life was a long lie, never lied to her if he could avoid it; and he knew very well that he did miss the world with all its folly, stimulant, and sin. Sometimes the moral air here seemed to him too pure, too clear.
‘Did I do so I should be thankless indeed — thankless as madmen are who do not know the good done to them. I am like a ship that has anchored in a fair haven after press of weather. I infinitely prefer to see none but yourself: when others are here we are of necessity so much apart. If the weather,’ he added more lightly, ‘did not so very often wear Milton’s grey sandals, there would be nothing one could ever wish changed in the life here. For such great riders as we are, that is a matter of regret. Wet saddles are too often our fate, but in compensation our forests are so green.’
She did not press the question.
But the next day she wrote a letter to a relative who was a great minister and had preponderating influence in the council chamber of the Austrian Empire. She did not speak to Sabran of the letter that she sent.
She had not known any of that disillusion which befalls most women in their love. Her husband had remained her lover, passionately, ardently, jealously; and the sincerity of his devotion to her had spared her all that terrible consciousness of the man’s satiety which usually confronts a woman in the earliest years of union. She shrank now with horror from the fear which came to her that this passion might, like so many others, alter and fade under the dulness of habit. She had high courage and clear vision; she met half-way the evil that she dreaded.
In the spring a Foreign Office despatch from Vienna came to him and surprised and moved him strongly. With it in his hand he sought her at once.
‘You did this!’ he said quickly. ‘They offer me the Russian mission.’
She grew a little pale, but had courage to smile. She had seen by a glance at his face the pleasure the offer gave him.
‘I only told my cousin Kunst that I thought you might be persuaded to try public life, if he proposed it to you.’
‘When did you say that?’
‘One day in the winter, when I asked you if you did not miss the world.’
‘I never thought I betrayed that I did so.’
‘You were only over eager to deny it. And I know your generosity, my love. You miss the world; we will go back to it for a little. It will only make our life here dearer — I hope.’
He was silent; emotion mastered him. ‘You have the most unselfish nature that was!’ he said brokenly. ‘It will be a cruel sacrifice to you, and yet you urge it for my sake.’
‘Dear, will you not understand? What is for your sake is what is most for mine. I see you long, despite yourself, to be amidst men once more, and use your rare talents as you cannot use them here. It is only right that you should have the power to do so. If our life here has taken the hold on your heart then, I think you will come back to it all the more gladly. And then I too have my vanity; I shall be proud for the world to see how you can fill a great station, conduct a difficult negotiation, distinguish yourself in every way. When they praise you, I shall be repaid a thousand times for any sacrifice of my own tastes that there may be.’
He heard her with many conflicting emotions, of which a passionate gratitude was the first and highest.
‘You make me ashamed,’ he said in a low voice. ‘No man can be worthy of such goodness as yours; and I — —’
Once more the avowal of the truth rose to his lips, but stayed unuttered. His want of courage took refuge in procrastination.
‘We need not decide for a day or two,’ he added; ‘they give me time; we will think well. When do you think I must reply?’
‘Surely soon; your delay would seem disrespect. You know we Austrians are very ceremonious.’
‘And if I accept, it will not make you unhappy?’
‘My love, no, a thousand times, no; your choice is always mine.’
He stooped and kissed her hand.
‘You are ever the same,’ he murmured. ‘The noblest, the most generous — —’
She smiled bravely. ‘I am quite sure you have decided already. Go to my table yonder, and write a graceful acceptance to my cousin Kunst. You will be happier when it is posted.’
‘No, I will think a little. It is not a thing to be done in haste. It will be irrevocable.’
‘Irrevocable? A diplomatic mission? You can throw it up when you please. You are not bound to serve longer than you choose.’
He was silent: what he had thought himself had been of the irrevocable insult he would be held to have offered to the emperor, the nation, and the world, if ever they knew.
‘It will not be liked if I accept for a mere caprice. One must never treat a State as Bela treats his playthings,’ he said as he rang, and when the servant answered the summons ordered them to saddle his horse.
‘No; there is no haste. Glearemberg is not definitely recalled, I think.’
But as she spoke she knew very well that, unknown to himself, he had already decided; that the joy and triumph the offer had brought to him were both too great for him eventually to resist them. He sat down and re-read the letter.
She had said the truth to him, but she had not said all the truth. She had a certain desire that he should justify her marriage in the eyes of the world by some political career brilliantly followed; but this was not her chief motive in wishing him to return to the life of cities. She had seen that he was in a manner disquieted, discontented, and attributed it to discontent at the even routine of their lives. The change in his moods and tempers, the arbitrary violence of his love for her, vaguely alarmed and troubled her; she seemed to see the germ of much that might render their lives far less happy. She realised that she had given herself to one who had the capacity of becoming a tyrannical possessor, and retained, even after six years of marriage, the irritable ardour of a lover. She knew that it was better for them both that the distraction and the restraint of the life of the world should occupy some of his thoughts, and check the over-indulgence of a passion which in solitude grew feverish and morbid. She had not the secret of the change in him, of which the result alone was apparent to her, and she could only act according to her light. If he grew morose, tyrannical, violent, all the joy of their life would be
gone. She knew that men alter curiously under the sense of possession. She felt that her influence, though strong, was not paramount as it had been, and she perceived that he no longer took much interest in the administration of the estates, in which he had shown great ability in the first years of their marriage. She had been forced to resume her old governance of all those matters, and she knew that it was not good for him to live without occupation. She feared that the sameness of the days, to her so delightful, to him grew tiresome. To ride constantly, to hunt sometimes, to make music in the evenings —— this was scarcely enough to fill up the life of a man who had been a viveur on the bitumen of the boulevards for so long.
A woman of a lesser nature would have been too vain to doubt the all-sufficiency of her own presence to enthral and to content him; but she was without vanity, and had more wisdom than most women. It did not even once occur to her, as it would have done incessantly to most, that the magnificence of all her gifts to him were title-deeds to his content for life.
Public life would be her enemy, would take her from the solitudes she loved, would change her plans for her children’s education, would bring the world continually betwixt herself and her husband; but since he wished it that was all she thought of, all her law.
‘Surely he will accept?’ said Mdme. Ottilie, who had returned from the south of France.
‘Yes, he will accept,’ said his wife. ‘He does not know it, but he will.’
‘I cannot imagine why he should affect to hesitate. It is the career he is made for, with his talents, his social graces.’
‘He does not affect; he hesitates for my sake. He knows I am never happy away from Hohenszalras.’
‘Why did you write then to Kunst?’
‘Because it will be better for him; he is neither a poet nor a philosopher, to be able to live away from the world.’
‘Which are you?’
‘Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the people she — —’
‘Reigns over,’ added the Princess. ‘Admit, my beloved, that a part of your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!’
Wanda von Szalras smiled. ‘Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.’
‘Men are always like Horace,’ said the Princess. ‘They admire rural life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.’
At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before coming into his wife’s presence. He would no more have gone to her with the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.
When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with vivacity:
‘Well! you accept, of course?
‘I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.’
The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the carpet.
‘Wanda is a hermit,’ she said; ‘she should have dwelt in a cave, and lived on berries with S. Scholastica. What is the use of leaving it to her? She will say No. She loves her mountains.’
‘Then she shall stay amidst her mountains.’
‘And you will throw all your future away?’
‘Dear mother, I have no future —— should have had none but for her.’
‘All that is very pretty, but after nearly six years of marriage it is not necessary to faire des madrigaux.’
The Princess sat a little more erect, angrily, and continued to tap her foot upon the floor. His wife was silent for a little while; then she went over to her writing-table, and wrote with a firm hand a few lines in German. She rose and gave the sheet to Sabran.
‘Copy that,’ she said, ‘or give it as many graces of style as you like.’
His heart beat, his sight seemed dim as he read what she had written.
It was an acceptance.
‘See, my dear Réné!’ said the Princess, when she understood; ‘never combat a woman on her own ground and with her own weapon — unselfishness! The man must always lose in a conflict of that sort.’
The tears stood in his eyes as he answered her ——
‘Ah, madame! if I say what I think, you will accuse me again of faisant des madrigaux!’
CHAPTER XXIII.
A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna, and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands for finesse and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and splendour it required.
He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his nerve, his self-command, his insouciance; he was once more capable of honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must always exist, sub rosa, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul Zabaroff, his father’s legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked moujik in the isba of a Persian peasant.
Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
‘To return so to Russia!’ he thought, with rapture. All the ambition that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better moments be sometimes thought, ‘I am only the husband of the Countess von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;’ and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless and ill at ease.
He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate, dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely’
s, might not confront him with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly, that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life; not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed of constancy.
‘What beasts we are!’ he thought, as he left Damn’s at the flush of dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly degenerated into an orgie. ‘Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is always hers and my love.’
Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty life led there under the show summits of her hills.
He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment’s caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.