by Ouida
Sabran and his wife both remained standing, he leaning his arm on the scroll work of the great stove, she playing with the delicate ears of one of the hounds. Madame Brancka alone sat and leaned back in her low seat, quite content; she was aware that she was unwelcome, and that her presence was an embarrassment and worse. But the sense of the wrong and cruel position in which she placed them was sweet and pungent to her; she was refreshed by the very sense of dilemma and of danger which surrounded her. She had her vengeance in her hand, and she would not exhaust it quickly, but tasted its savour with the slow care and patient appetite of the connoisseur in such things. She had a Chinese-like skill in patiently drawing out the prolonged pangs of an ingeniously invented martyrdom.
‘Why do you both stand?’ she said, looking up at him between her half-closed lids. ‘Are you standing to imply to me as we do with monarchs, ‘This house is yours whilst you are in it?’ I am much obliged, but I should sell it at once if it were really mine. It is a splendid, barbaric solitude, like Taróc. We have not been to Taróc this year. Stefan says Egon lives altogether with his troopers and grows very morose. You hear from him sometimes, I suppose?’
To Sabran it seemed as if her half shut black eyes shot forth actual sparks of fire, as she spoke the name which he could never hear without an inward spasm of fear.
‘Of course I hear from Egon,’ said his wife. ‘But he writes very briefly; he was never much of a penman. He prefers a rifle, a sword, a riding-whip.’
‘I hear you have called the last child after him? Where are the boys? They cannot be in bed. Let me see them. It is surely their hour to be here. Réné, ring, and send for them.’
His brow contracted.
‘No; it is late,’ he said abruptly. ‘They would only weary you; they are barbaric, like the house.’
He felt an extreme reluctance to bring his children into her presence, to see her speak to them, touch them; he was longing passionately to seize her and thrust her out of the doors. As she sat there in the full light of the many wax candles burning around, sparkling, imperturbable, like a coquette of a vaudeville, with her rose satin, and her white taffetas, and her lace ruff, and her pink coral necklace and ear-rings, and a little pink coral hand upholding her curls in the most studied disorder, she seemed to him the loath-liest thing that he had ever seen. He hated her more intensely than he had ever hated anyone in all his life; even more than he had hated the traitress who had sold him to the Prussians.
‘Pray let me see the children; I know you never dine till eight,’ she was persisting to his wife, who knew well that she was entirely indifferent to the children, but who was not unwilling for their entrance to break the constraint of what was to her an intolerable trial. She did ring, and ordered their presence. They soon came, making their obeisances with the pretty grave courtliness which they were taught from infancy; the boys in white velvet dresses, while their sister, in a frock of old Venetian point, looked like a Stuart child painted by Vandyck.
‘Ah, quels amours!’ cried Olga Brancka, with admirable effusion, as they kissed her hand. Sabran turned away abruptly, and muttering a word as to some orders he had to give the stud-groom, left the chamber without ceremony, as she, with an ardour wholly unknown to her own daughters, lifted the little Ottilie on her knee and kissed the child’s rose-leaf cheek.
‘What lovely creatures they are,’ she said in German; ‘and how they have grown since they left Paris. They are all the image of Réné; he must be very proud. They have all his eyes — those deep dark-blue eyes, like jewels, like the depths of the sea.’
‘You are very poetic,’ said Wanda; ‘but I should be glad if you would speak their praises in some tongue they do not understand. The boys may not be hurt; but Lili, as we call her, is a little vain already, though she is so young.’
‘Would you deny her the birthright of her sex?’ said Madame Brancka, clasping her coral necklace round the child’s throat. ‘Surely she will have lectures enough from her godmother against all feminine foibles. By the way, where is the Princess?’
‘My aunt is with the Lilienhöhe.’
‘I am grieved not to have the pleasure,’ murmured Madame Brancka, indifferently, letting Ottilie glide from her lap.
‘Give back the necklace, liebling,’ said Wanda, as she unclasped it.
‘No, no; I entreat you — let her keep it. It is leagues too large, but she likes it, and when she grows up she will wear it and think of me.’
‘Pray take it,’ said Wanda, lifting it from the child’s little breast. ‘You are too kind; but they must not be given what they admire. It teaches them bad habits.’
‘What severe rules!’ cried Madame Brancka. ‘Are these poor babies brought up on S. Chrysostom and S. Basil? Is Lili already doomed to the cloister? You are too austere; you should have been an abbess instead of having all these golden-curled cupidons about you. Where is the youngest one, Egon’s namesake?’
‘He is in his cot,’ said Gela, who was always very direct in his replies, and who found himself addressed by her.
Meantime Bela took hold of his mother’s hand and whispered to her, ‘Mütterchen, she is rude to you. Send her away.’
‘My darling,’ answered Wanda, ‘when people laugh in our own house we must let them do it, even if it be at ourselves. And, Bela, to whisper is very rude.’
‘Egon is so little,’ continued Gela, plaintively. ‘He cannot read; I do not think he ever will read!’
‘But you could not when you were as small as he?’
‘Could I not?’ said Gela, doubtfully, to whom that time seemed many centuries back.
‘And Lili, can she read?’ said Madame Olga, suppressing a yawn.
‘Oh yes,’ said Gela; ‘at least, two-letter words she can; and me, I read to her.’
‘What model children!’ cried Madame Brancka, with a little laugh. ‘And the naughty boy who was in a rage because he was not permitted to go to Chantilly? That was Bela, was it not? Bela, do you remember how cruel your mother was, and how you cried?’
Bela looked at her, with his blue eyes growing as stern and cold as his father’s.
‘My mother is always right,’ he said gallantly. ‘She knows what I ought to do. I do not think I cried, meine gnädige Frau; I never cry.’
‘Even the naughty boy has become an angel! What a wonderful disciplinarian you are, Wanda! If your children were not so handsome they would be insufferable with their goodness. They are very handsome; they are just like Sabran, and yet they are not at all a Russian type.’
‘Why should they be Russian? We have no Russian blood,’ said their mother, in surprise.
Madame Brancka laughed a little confusedly, and fluttered her feather screen.
‘I do not know what I was thinking of. Réné always reminds me of my old friend Paul Zabaroff; they are very alike.’
‘I have seen the present Prince Zabaroff,’ said Wanda, wondering what the purpose of her guest’s words were. ‘He was not, as I remember him, much like M. de Sabran.’
‘Oh, of course he was not equal to your Apollo,’ said Madame Brancka, winding Ottilie’s long hair round her fingers.
‘You have had enough of them; they must not worry you,’ said their mother, and she dismissed the children with a word.
‘In what marvellous control you keep them,’ said Madame Olga. ‘Now, my children never obeyed me, let me scream at them as I would.’
‘I do not think screaming has much effect on anyone, young or old.’
‘It paralyses a man. But I suppose a child can always out-scream one?’
‘Probably. A child never respects any person who loses their calmness. As for men, you are better versed in their follies than I.’
‘But do you and Réné absolutely never quarrel?’
‘Quarrel! My dear Olga, how very bürgerlich an idea.’
‘Do you suppose only the bourgeois quarrel?’ said Madame Brancka. ‘Really you live in your enchanted forest until you forget what the world is like,
’ and she began an interminable history of the scenes between a friend of hers and her husband and her family, a quarrel which had ended in conseils judiciaires and separation. ‘It is a cruel thing that there is not one law of divorce for all the world,’ she said with a sigh, as she ended the unsavoury relation. ‘If Stefan and I could only set each other free, we should have done it years and years ago.’
‘I did not know your griefs against Stefan were so great?’
‘Oh, I have no great griefs against him; he is bon enfant: but we are both ruined, and we both detest each other; we do not know very well why.’
‘Poor Mila and Marie!’
‘What has it to do with them? They are happy at Sacré Cœur, and when they come out they will marry. Egon will be sure to portion them; we cannot. We are not like you, who will be able to give a couple of millions to Lili without hurting her brothers.’
‘Lili’s dot is far enough in the future,’ said Lili’s mother, who, very weary of the conversation, saw with relief the doors open, and heard Hubert announce that dinner could be served. By an opposite door Sabran entered also, a moment later. The dinner was tedious to both him and her; they alike found it an almost intolerable penance. Their guest alone was gay, ironical, at her ease, and never at a loss for a topic. Sabran looked at her now and then with absolute wonder coming over him as to whether he had not dreamed of that evening in Paris, alone beside her, with the smell of the jasmine and orange-buds, and the moonbeams crossing her white throat, her auburn curls. Was it possible that a woman lived with such incredible self-control, insolence, shamelessness? There was not a shadow of consciousness in her regard, not a moment of uneasiness in her manner. Except the one passing faint flush which had come on her face at his words of greeting, there was not a single sign that she was other than the most innocent of women. The impatience, the disgust, the amazement which were in him were too strong for his worldly tact and composure altogether to conquer them; his eyes were downcast, his words were studied or irrelevant, his discomposure was evident; he felt as reluctant to meet the gaze of his wife as of his enemy. In vain did he endeavour to sustain equably the airy nothings of the usual dinner-table conversation. He was sensible of an effort too great for art to cover it; he felt that there was a strange sound in his voice, he fancied the very men waiting upon him must be conscious of his embarrassment. If he could have turned her out of the house he would have been at peace, for, after all, her offences were much greater than his own; but to be compelled to sit motionless whilst she called his wife caressing names, broke her bread, and would sleep under her roof, was absolute torture to him.
When they went back again to the white room he sat down at the piano, glad to find a temporary refuge in music from the embarrassment of her presence.
‘He cannot have spoken to Wanda?’ she thought, uneasy for the first time, as she glanced at Sabran, who was playing with his usual maestria a concerto of Schubert’s. With the plea that her long post journey had fatigued her, she asked leave to retire when half an hour had elapsed, filled with scientific and intricate melody, which had spared them the effort of further conversation. Her host and hostess accompanied her to the guest-chambers, with the courtesy which was an antique custom of the Schloss, as of all Austrian country-houses. Their leave-taking on the threshold was cold, but studied in politeness; the door closed on her, and Sabran and his wife returned along the corridor together.
His heart beat heavily with apprehension: he dreaded her next word. To his relief, to his surprise, she said simply to him:
‘It is very early. I will go and write to Rothwand about the mines. Will you come and tell me again all you said about them? I have half forgotten. Or if you would rather do nothing to-night, I have other letters to look over, and I will go to my own room.’
‘I will come there,’ he said; and though he was well used to her strong self-control and forbearance, he felt amazed at the force of these now, and was moved to a passionate gratitude. ‘Any other woman,’ he thought, ‘would have torn me asunder to know what there has been between me and her guest. She does not even speak; and yet God knows how she loves me! She trusts me, and she will not weary me, nor importune me, nor seem to suspect me with doubt. Who shall be worthy of that? How can I rid her house of this insult? The other shall go; she shall go if I put her out with public shame before my servants. Would to heaven that to kill such as she is were no more murder than to slay a vicious beast or a poisonous worm!’
He followed his wife into the octagon-room, where all her private papers were. There were details of a mine in Galicia which were disquieting and troublesome; on the previous day they had agreed together what to do, but before she had answered her inspector, fresh details had come in by the post-bag, whilst he had been chamois-hunting. She sat down and handed him these fresh reports.
‘I do not think there is anything that will alter your decisions,’ she said. ‘But read them, and tell me, and I will then write.’
He drew the documents from her, and began to peruse them, but his hand shook a little as he held the papers; his eyes were not clear, his mind was not free. He laid them down and looked at her; she was seated near him. She was paler than usual and her face was grave, but she seemed quite absorbed in what she did, as she added figures together, and made a quick précis of the reports she had received. Her left hand lay on the table as she wrote; on the great diamond of the bague d’alliance, the only gift which he had presumed to offer her on their marriage, the light was sparkling; it looked like a cluster of dewdrops on a lily. He took that hand on a sudden impulse of infinite reverence, and raised it to his lips.
She looked at him, and a mist of tears came into her eyes which were tears of pleasure, of relief, of restrained emotion comforted; the gesture gave her all the reassurance that she cared, to have; she was sure then that Olga Brancka had never made him false to his honour and hers. She said nothing to him of what was foremost in the minds of both. She held the value of silence high. She thought that there were things of which merely to speak seemed a species of dishonour. A single word ill-said is so often the ‘little rift within the lute which makes the music dumb.’
She went to rest content; but he was none the less ill at ease, disturbed, offended, and violently offended, at the presence of his temptress under the roof of Hohenszalras. It was an outrage to all he loved and respected; an outrage to which he was determined to put an end. The only possible way to do so was to see his guest himself alone. He could not visit her in her apartments; he could not summon her to his; if he waited for chance, he might wait for days. The insolence which had brought her here would probably, he reasoned, keep her here some time, and he was resolved that she should not pass another night in the same house with his wife and his children.
Long after Wanda had gone to sleep he sat alone, thinking and perplexing himself with many a scheme, each of which he dismissed as impracticable and likely to draw that attention from his household which he most desired to avoid. He slept ill, scarcely at all, and rose before daybreak. When he was dressed he sent his man to ask Greswold to come to him. The old physician, who usually got up before the sun, soon obeyed his summons, and anxiously inquired what need there was of him.
‘Dear Professor,’ said Sabran, with that gracious kindliness which always won his listener’s heart, ‘you were my earliest friend here; you are the tutor of my sons; you are an old man, a wise man, and a prudent man. I want you to understand something without my explaining it; I do not desire or intend the Countess Brancka to be the guest of my wife for another day.’
Greswold looked up quickly: he knew the character of Stefan Brancka’s wife, he guessed the rest.
‘What can I do?’ he said simply. ‘Pray command me.’
‘Do this,’ said Sabran. ‘Make some excuse to see her; say that the chaplain, or that my wife, has sent you, say anything you choose to get admitted to her rooms in the visitors’ gallery. When you see her alone, say to her frankly, brutally if you like, th
at I say she must leave Hohenszalras. She can make any excuse she pleases, invent any despatch to recall herself; but she must go. I do not pretend to put any gloss upon it; I do not wish to do so. I want her to know that I do not permit her to remain under the same roof with my wife.’
The old physician’s face grew grave and troubled; he foresaw difficulty and pain for those whom he loved, and to whom he owed his bread.
‘I am to give her no explanation?’ he said doubtfully.
‘She will need none,’ said Sabran, curtly.
Greswold was mute. After a pause of some moments he said with hesitation:
‘By all I have heard of the Countess Brancka, I am much afraid she will not be moved by such a message, delivered by anyone so insignificant as myself; but what you desire me to do I will do, only I pray you do not blame me if I fail. You are, of course, indifferent to her certain indignation, to her possible violence?’
‘I am indifferent to everything,’ said Sabran, with rising impatience, ‘except to the outrage which her presence here is to the Countess von Szalras.’
‘Allow me one question, my Marquis,’ said Greswold. ‘Is our lady, your wife, aware that the presence of her cousin’s wife is an indignity to herself?’
Sabran hesitated.
‘Yes and no,’ he answered at last. ‘She knew something in Paris, but she does not know or imagine all, nor a tithe part; of what Madame Brancka is.’
‘I go at once,’ said the old man, without more words, ‘though of course the lady will not be awake for some hours. I will ask to see her maids. I shall learn then when I can with any chance of success get admittance. You will not write a word by me? Would it not offend her less?’