Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  ‘Decidedly,’ she mused, ‘the voix de la nature says nothing at all to me. Is it because I have no heart, as they say? I do not think the heart has much to do with that kind of thing. I suppose I am cold, as they all cry out against me. Of all of them, there is no one I should care to see coming through those shadows; he would disturb me. The passions are coarse things. It is disgusting that there should not be two ways of love, one for Dona Sol and one for Manon Lescaut — for one’s self and one’s maid. But there are not. On se rend, ou on ne se rend pas; but when the submission is made Nature makes no difference between Cleopatra and a camp-follower.’

  She sighed a little, inconsistently. She disdained alike the solicitations of the senses and the pleasures of the affections, and yet she was conscious of a certain coldness and emptiness in her life; she was not prepared to confess that what she needed was love, but a vague impression of solitude came upon her. She remembered the lips of Othmar pressed upon her wrist, how they had burned, how they had trembled!

  Was it possible that the keenest joys of life lay, after all, in those follies which her temperament and her philosophies had classed with contempt amongst the excesses of wantons and the exaggerations of poets?

  The purest maiden in her cloister could not have been colder than was Nadine Napraxine; to her the indulgence of the senses only meant an intolerable humiliation, an ignominious outrage; maternity itself had only been to her a long and hated and revolting burden, a sign of unendurable degradation, which offended all her pride and all her delicacy. The satyr had always seemed to her a much juster emblem of such instincts than any winged amorino.

  ‘D’un être inconnu le contact passager’

  could not rouse any desire or any sentiment in her.

  And yet there were occasionally moments, fleeting ones it is true, when in the sublimated egoism of her indolent, ironical, artificial life, she had a vague impression of some possible passion which yet might arouse her to acknowledge its force; a tempestuous fancy swept over her, as a storm-wind may sweep over a parterre of tulips and azaleas, for stronger emotions, hotter enmities, dearer attachments, keener strife, than those which the polished inanities of her own sphere could yield to her. The emotion lasted with her very little time, but whilst it was there the eyes of Othmar always looked in memory into hers.

  She who at will forgot everything had never forgotten the sound of his voice as he had pleaded with her. It had ever since haunted her with a vague imperfect sense of something missed, something lost, something in her own life incomplete and unattainable. She had not a doubt but that in time they would have wearied each other — fatigue was the inevitable shadow of all love — yet she had a pathetic regretfulness as for life incomplete, undeveloped, unshared, whenever she remembered that hers and his might have been passed together.

  It had been only a sentiment; it never had risen to the form of desire, or ached with the pain of passion; but it had been a sentiment, vague, almost poetic; a wild flower of feeling which seemed of strange growth in the hot-house culture of her intelligence, and the rarified chill air of her many philosophies.

  She had sometimes said to herself, ‘I could have loved him.’ In self-communion the conditional mood is never parted by more than a hair’s breadth from the present. There were moments in the ironical, indolent, artificial life which usurped her time and thoughts in which she almost regretted that decision which had banished Othmar from her side and given him to another. The regret was as nearly a movement of the heart as she was capable of; but it was much besides that; it was the inquisitiveness of a désœuvrée incredulous that life could hold any great emotions for her; it was the impulse of a contemptuous courage to break through social laws which it despised; it was the desire of a woman lonely amidst her triumphs to find that key to the enjoyment of existence which, in some way or another, had slipped through her hands, and had never been discovered in its hiding-place.

  ‘If I had been quite sure that he would have contented me!’ she thought more than once.

  If she had been quite sure, she would have surrendered everything, paused at nothing; it was neither daring nor generosity which were wanting in her; but she had not been sure, since she was never sure of herself!

  CHAPTER XL.

  A fortnight afterwards, the Prince and Princess Napraxine issued cards for a dinner, to meet the Emperor of all the Russias. The invitation came to the Hôtel Othmar at noon, as Yseulte sat at breakfast; she coloured a little as she saw it, and passed it across the table to her husband with a dozen other invitations. He glanced at them, put them aside, and spoke of something else. She hesitated a few minutes, then said timidly:

  ‘Am I to accept it?’

  ‘Accept which of them?’

  ‘The Princess Napraxine’s.’

  He looked up with some displeasure at her tone; he answered quickly:

  ‘Assuredly. Why not? You cannot leave it open as you do for a ball or a reception.’

  She did not venture to say why. She coloured more and more, and remained silent.

  ‘You have no plea for refusing invitations since you are not ill and are seen everywhere,’ he said coldly. ‘Besides, I thought you were acquiring the tastes of the world.’

  She did not speak. She could not say to him: ‘I cannot bear to be the guest of Madame Napraxine, because they tell me you have loved her as you never have loved me.’

  Othmar glanced at her, and imagined what was in her thoughts. ‘Perhaps that meddlesome Melville has talked to her,’ he thought, with the ready suspicion of a man of the world of an ecclesiastic. He said, a little impatiently:

  ‘My dear child, do not conceive animosities against people, or you will spoil your own sweetness of temper and make yourself disliked by your own sex. And do not fret yourself with imaginary antagonisms, which are altogether unworthy of you. When we are living in the world, we must abide by its rules of courtesy. I am wholly at a loss to imagine why you should be unwilling to accept this invitation; but as you are seen everywhere in this your first Paris winter, you cannot without rudeness refuse it. This is the only good that I have ever seen come out of society, that it compels us to subordinate our own inclinations to certain definite laws of good breeding. Pray do not grow fretful; it was your beautiful serenity that I first admired, and loved.’

  He hesitated a moment before the last word.

  ‘I will remember,’ she said gently; but without much effort she would have burst into tears.

  He saw the effort, and it irritated him. He knew that he ought to have said to her, ‘Follow your inclination and refuse, if you like.’ But her wish to refuse it had annoyed him, and hurried him into a command to accept it from which he could not recede. And the charm of Nadine Napraxine was upon him, and had broken down all his wiser resolutions.

  He looked across the table at Yseulte. She was as fair as the dawn, certainly; but she had no power over him; she did not beguile his time, or stimulate his wit, or stir his intellect; she did not, even after twelve months of possession, move his senses. She was a lovely child, most obedient, tender, and spiritual; but — she was not the mistress of his thoughts. She never had been, she never would be so.

  ‘How stupid men are!’ thought Nadine Napraxine that night. ‘She is worth very much more than I am; she is both handsome and lovely; she is as harmless and guileless as a dove, and she adores him, a great deal too much; yet, perhaps one ought to say therefore, he cares nothing on earth for her; he will love me as long as his life lasts; he would do so even if I had the tremendous penalty-weight, as the racing-men say, of being his wife. I really do not know why it is that the noblest sort of women do not excite love. I wonder why it is? I asked my father once; he said, “Because the devil dowers his own daughters.” But that explains nothing; we all know there is no devil; there are women — and women. That is all.’

  As those thoughts drifted dreamily through her mind she was conversing all the while about classic music with a potentate who was no mean dilettant
e in melody, and she was looking down her table at the young face of Yseulte with a vague sort of pity which she could scarcely have explained, — such pity as in the gladiatorial arena some trained and irresistible retiarius might have felt at seeing some fair brave youth enter with the shield that was to be so useless and the sword that was so soon to fail; a pity which might be quite sincere, though it might never go so far as mercy. The faint jealousy which she had felt when, walking amongst the moonlit fields of Zaraïzoff, she had thought of Amyôt, had faded altogether the moment that she had met Othmar again. She knew, as women always know such things, that her power over him was unaltered and unalterable by any will of his own.

  ‘When I choose,’ she thought, ‘he will leave her and she will break her heart. She will know nothing about such reprisal as a Parisienne should take; she will never be a Parisienne; she will always be a patrician of the vieille souche, which is quite another thing; she will always be an innocent woman, with a soul like a lily. She is afraid of me, and she dislikes me; she tries to hide it all she can, but she does not know how. Platon admires her; that is what he ought to have married; I dare say she would never have found him ugly or clumsy; he would have been her husband — that would have been enough to make him sacred; there are women like that. She adores Othmar, but she knows nothing about him; he is a little like Hamlet, and she is as much puzzled as Ophelia. Of course she would have worshipped any man who had prevented her being buried in a convent; she is as full of life as a lime-tree in flower. She is longing to look at me always, but she does not dare. She is quite beautiful, quite, but all that is no use to her. He knows it, but he does not care for it. He will keep her in his house and have children by her, but he will care no more for her than for Mercié’s Andromache, that stands in his vestibule. Whether you are Venus or a Hottentot matters so little if a man do not love you; if you do not know how to make him love you. They always say a modest woman never does know how; but I do not think I am especially immodest, yet I know — —’

  The disjointed thoughts drifted through her mind without interfering with the current of her conversation. Metaphysicians may dispute the existence of two simultaneous trains of thought, but women know their possibility.

  Her enigmatical victorious smile came on her lips as that consciousness soothed and stimulated her.

  She had too much honour to make any deliberate project to seduce him from his allegiance. Her coquetries might be less merciful than many more guilty, but they had never ceased to be innocent in the world’s conception of the term. The coldness with which Othmar had reproached her was still one of the most definite of her qualities. It was the amulet of her magic, the secret of her power. She was as yet a perfectly passionless woman, and as such ruled the passions of men.

  ‘So, Othmar, like every one else, you find that marriage leads to the world, not to the hidden doves’ nest of the poets?’ said Nadine Napraxine after dinner, when her rooms had filled an hour before midnight, and her imperial guest had gone and left her free.

  ‘I am afraid it is impossible to avoid following the mould of the society we live in,’ replied Othmar. ‘The hope of being original is one of the many illusions which we leave behind us with time.’

  ‘I confess that I am a little disappointed in you,’ she continued, with the smile of malice which he knew so well. ‘I should have thought you would have had courage to live your own life, to avoid beaten paths, and to keep your lovely arum lily from the Breton woods out of our forcing-house. Allow me to say it in all simplicity and sincerity, she is most lovely. All Paris envies you.’

  Othmar’s face flushed as he bowed in acknowledgment. He did not reply. Though the habits of the world had taught him many such lessons, he found it hard to appear unmoved beside the woman he loved, and discuss with her that other whom he had wedded. She understood quite well the unwillingness and the embarrassment which he felt, and they made her but the more tenacious in pursuit of the subject she had selected.

  ‘Heavens!’ she thought, ‘what children of Nature men always remain! They are unmanned if they meet a woman who recalls a love scene ten years old, whilst a woman would not move an eyelash if she encountered a score of lovers she had forsaken — no! — not if she had hired bravoes to kill them, and they knew it!’

  Aloud she said, in her sweetest voice: ‘I remember you were always so haunted with ideals. You must certainly have realised the most spiritual and the purest of them now. When I heard people say that you were going to shut yourself up in your country house in the Orléannais, it seemed to me perfectly natural, perfectly fitting; you never cared for society. Why should you contaminate your young wife with it? I thought you were going to show us that an idyllic life was still possible. We are all sad sceptics, but we should have believed you. Why did you lose so good an opportunity? To live in Paris, to receive and be received; any one can do that; toute la gomme does it; Amyôt ought to have given you something better.’

  ‘To live in the country needs a clear conscience,’ replied Othmar impatiently, not very well knowing what he said.

  ‘I hope you have murdered nobody,’ said his tormentor. ‘Really, without compliment, I should have thought you were one of the few men who could have lived in the country without ennui. You love books, you like your own company, and you are not enamoured of that of others. Besides, it is really a pity to bring that young angel, — that clear-eyed saint, — into our feverish world. She will only lose that lovely complexion, and perhaps her health as well, learn a great deal of folly, and feel thirty years old before she is twenty. Why do you do it? It is heartless of you. Amyôt is her world.’

  He did not attempt to reply.

  She had spoken with sincerity, though her motive in speaking was not so sincere as her sentiment. Nadine Napraxine, who herself often regretted the premature womanhood which the manner of her childhood had brought so early to her, who often sighed restlessly, if disdainfully, for that innocence of mind, that freshness of heart which she had never enjoyed — the blue cornflower of Louise of Prussia, the green fields of Eugénie de Guerin, — felt at that moment the impulse of compassion which she expressed. It seemed to her, momentarily at least, cruel to have brought any creature so youthful and so easily contented by simple things, as Yseulte was, into the furnace of the world, where all simple tastes and fancies perish like a handful of meadow daisies cast into a brazier.

  ‘And to have brought her near me!’ she thought, with the singular union of disdain and of compassion with which she had looked for the first time at the face of the child in the salons of Millo. Whilst he remained silent she looked at him a little curiously, a little contemptuously; with no pity whatever for him.

  ‘One day, when I was ten years old, I was in my father’s study,’ she continued with apparent irrelevance. ‘I was very tiresome; he was dictating to three secretaries alternately, and I tormented him with questions. He was so good to me that he could never bear to turn me out; but he threw me an illustrated copy of “Gil Blas.” I became as quiet as a mouse. I was entranced, delighted; I never spoke for two hours — but I do not know that I was the better for it afterwards. “Gil Blas” is not amongst the moral tales of children. I suppose he did not think of that; he only wanted to get rid of me.’

  Othmar coloured with anger and self-consciousness. He knew very well that she meant to imply that he sent his wife into the world as Count Platoff had given his daughter ‘Gil Blas.’ Conscience would not allow him a disclaimer, even if a sense of ridicule in her reminiscences, apparently so ill-timed, had permitted him to make one.

  ‘I do not know that I was any the better,’ continued Nadine Napraxine in the same even, dreamy tones. ‘But I do not know that I was any the worse. Everything depends on temperament. Oh yes, much more than on circumstance, let them say what they will. Temperament is like climate, a thing unalterable. All the forces of men will not make the Nile desert cold, or the Baltic shores tropical. It is so delightful to think that something escapes the carpenteri
ng of man! Do you know, when an earthquake asserts itself or a mountain kills people, I can never help saying to myself with pleasure— “Ah-ha! there is something left, then, that they cannot explain away, or regulate, or measure with their pocket-rule, and what a comfort that is!”’

  She laughed a little, leaning back in her chair, slowly moving a fan which Watteau had painted for Larghillière.

  ‘Madame Napraxine,’ answered Othmar bitterly, ‘has always occupied in life the position which Juvenal thought so enviable; she has always watched the tempest and the shipwreck from her own safe couch behind her casement.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she murmured, with a little sigh of self-satisfaction. ‘It is so easy not to go out in bad weather.’

  ‘May one not be overtaken by it?’

  ‘Not if one have a good aneroid.’

  ‘Let us leave metaphor,’ she continued, after a pause; ‘I know you believe in something like the Greek Erinnys; but you may believe me that there is nothing of the kind. We all make our own fates, or our temperaments make them for us. Destiny does not stalk about amongst us unseen, but irresistible, as I know you think it does. I believe there is nothing which befalls us, from a catarrh to a catastrophe, which, if we choose to be honest with ourselves, we may not trace to our own imprudence.’

  ‘You cannot judge; you have never — —’

  ‘Never had a cold? Oh, indeed I have. If you were to listen to de Thiviers, I am a person on whom the most southerly wind should never be allowed to blow, for fear of its blowing through me and annihilating me; as for catastrophe — —’