by Ouida
She gave him a little careless smile, nodded a good-night, and would have gone onward, but he stopped her timidly.
‘Give me one of those,’ he said, as he touched the knot of tea-roses which were fastened at her breast.
‘What nonsense!’ she said impatiently, with much real irritation, as she mused, ‘If he play the lover, I shall not keep my patience!’
Her cloak parted and fell a little off one arm. His eyes dwelled passionately on the whiteness of her shoulder, with the great diamonds sparkling on it, and the jewelled butterflies trembling as though they took the blue veins for azure flowers.
With an obstinacy which he had never dared to show to her before he drew away one of the tea-roses.
‘Do not be angry,’ he murmured.
She shrugged her shoulders with sovereign indifference and contempt, and passed up the stairs.
He looked after her with dim longing eyes.
No shadow of any sort had been upon him throughout that sunny day — the last day of April.
The next morning he went with a perfectly light heart to the garden outside Paris which had been chosen as the scene of his encounter with the Duc de Prangins. He had fought many duels in his time; he was a fine fencer, though of late he had neglected to keep his hand in practice, and he was a man always of the coolest and most stolid courage. He had no kind of apprehension of the result; he had taken no measures in case he should fall; it seemed so entirely impossible; besides, all his affairs were in order, all his vast wealth was disposed of with legal accuracy and care in documents which were safe in their iron safes in the muniment room of Zaraizoff; he went to his appointment with no more thought or apprehension than he would have gone to the ‘tir aux pigeons.’
He lighted a large cigar and stood chatting with his friends to the last moment. Now and then he put his hand in his coat; it was to feel for the little rose he had taken from her the day before; but his friends could not know that.
For some moments after the rapiers crossed the duel was bloodless; a mere display of even and perfect science on each side; but at the third encounter his guard was broken; the sword of the Duc de Prangins entered his left side and passed straight through the left lung out beneath the shoulder; his adversary could not draw it back; with the blade transfixing his breast thus, Platon Napraxine fell heavily to the ground. When they endeavoured to raise him he looked at them, and his lips moved; it was only the hoarsest murmur, but it said once, twice, thrice— ‘Do not tell her! Do not tell her! Do not tell her!’
They let him lie where he was; they gathered about him pale and in silence. They all knew he was a dead man.
For one moment he looked up at the blue morning sky where the clouds were drifting and a flock of swallows was circling with gay buoyant movement; there were all the odours of spring on the air, and the grass which he lay on was yellow with kingcups and white with daisies. With his right hand he feebly made the sign of the cross on his breast; then he thrust the same hand within his coat once more, and with a terrible shuddering, choking sigh his last breath passed away. When they unloosened his lifeless fingers they found them clasped on a faded tea-rose.
‘Who will tell Princess Napraxine?’ said the men around him, with white lips, to one another.
The man who had killed him, throwing on his great-coat in haste, said with a cruel smile:
‘She will have a Te Deum in every church in Paris. You waste your pity.’
CHAPTER XLV.
Nadine Napraxine had just quitted her bathroom, and was taking her chocolate, when her women, vaguely frightened and so venturing to disobey her, brought her word that Prince Ezarhédine begged to see her for a few moments on an urgent matter. It was noon. She was never visible until three in the daytime in Paris. She was at first indignant at such an insolence, then made curious by such an intrusion. Ezarhédine had been one of her husband’s familiar associates, but he had never been an intimate friend of her own.
‘What can he want?’ she said irritably. ‘Send M. Valisoff to him.’
Valisoff was her own secretary.
But when her servants insisted, contrary to all their usual timid obedience to her rules, her inquisitiveness was excited; she consented to receive the unbidden and ill-timed visit. She cast about her a loose gown of cream-hued China crape, embroidered with pansies and primroses, put her feet into slippers which were embroidered like it, and with her beautiful arms seen through the loose sleeves, and her eyes still suffused with the languor of her morning sleep, she passed out into the small salon adjoining her dressing-chamber.
Prince Ezarhédine, ushered in there, bowed to the ground, and then stood looking at her strangely. He was very pale, and there was a tremor about his mouth.
‘Madame,’ he murmured, and then paused; his voice could not be commanded.
She, with her wonderful and instantaneous penetration into the minds of those who spoke to her, divined his mission in that one moment in which his eyes met hers. She went a step nearer to him, herself looking like some Aurora of the Italian painters, with her white floating flower-embroidered robes and her loose hair bound by an amethyst-hued ribbon.
‘What have you come to tell me?’ she said, in a strange, low voice. ‘Is my husband — dead?’
Ezarhédine bowed in silence.
She shuddered slightly from head to foot; her eyes opened wide with an expression of great terror; her lips turned white. She sat down on the nearest seat, and motioned to him to be seated by her.
‘Has he fought with Othmar?’ she said hoarsely, so low that her words were scarcely intelligible.
‘With Othmar? No, madame,’ Ezarhédine answered in surprise; and told her with whom he had fought and how he had died.
She heard in perfect silence; but the colour had returned to her lips.
‘Poor Napraxine; he died for her sake, and it is only of Othmar that she thought,’ mused Prince Ezarhédine as he left her house when his painful mission was over.
CHAPTER XLVI.
Othmar was in his own house that day at two o’clock looking at a portrait, by Cabanel, of his wife, which had been sent home in the forenoon, and which had been left standing in the salon, where she passed most of her hours. The portrait was one of the triumphs of that elegant master. He had painted her in a gown of white velvet, with her favourite peacocks near, and some high shrubs of red azaleas to lend her the contrast of rich colour. The whole composition was a masterpiece of softness, brilliancy, and sunshine. Othmar stood looking at it and speaking of it to the Baron and to Yseulte when Alain de Vannes was ushered into the room, and, scarcely pausing for the usual ceremonies of salutation, said abruptly to him: ‘You have heard the news of the morning? Napraxine is dead.’
The Duc had calculated the effect of his abrupt speech. Othmar, on whose features the full light was falling from a window of which the curtains had been drawn back for the examination of Cabanel’s portrait, changed colour violently, and his whole face expressed the force of conflicting emotions with which he was moved. Yseulte watched him, fascinated with a vague terror; she had never seen him violently moved under the influence of any strong feeling.
Friederich Othmar, alone retaining his calmness, answered in amazement: ‘Napraxine! Napraxine dead! Are you certain? I saw him last night at midnight; he was in full health and spirits.’
‘Nevertheless he is dead,’ said De Vannes, keeping his gaze on Othmar; and he related the circumstances of the duel.
Othmar listened in profound silence; he had recovered his self-control, but the colour had not returned to his face.
‘What was the cause?’ asked Friederich Othmar, when he had heard all that there was to hear.
Alain de Vannes shrugged his shoulders.
‘De Prangins had spoken jestingly of the Princess — and someone else. Napraxine heard of it through some lamentable indiscretion; he insulted the old Duke; and the result is what I have said. He was run through the lungs and died in a few moments. De Prangins relieved
Madame Napraxine of a troublesome lad in young d’Ivrea; he has now done her a still greater service by ridding her of the only ennui in her life which she was sometimes compelled to endure. I do not know who told her what had happened, but the body of Napraxine has already been taken to his house. The duel was fought in a private garden at Versailles.’
Then he paused, having no more to say, and, like a good orator, being unwilling to destroy by detail and diffuseness the effect of his unexpected statement.
Othmar muttered a few sentences of conventional regret and turned away to where the picture stood. Yseulte followed him with wistful eyes. She felt that the news had shocked and startled him strangely, but she was afraid to seem to have remarked his agitation. After a few moments he made some trivial excuse, and left the room.
Friederich Othmar resumed his occupation of examining Cabanel’s work through a lorgnon: people whom he knew died every day; it was not such a simple event as that which could cause him any excitement, and Platon Napraxine, though a very great person in his own way, had no place in the public life of Europe.
The Duc de Vannes approached Yseulte.
‘My cousin,’ he said with gentle mockery, ‘was poor Napraxine such a favourite of yours that you look so stricken with sorrow? If I had known that my intelligence would have caused such regret, I would have been less precipitate in relating it.’
Yseulte coloured; she was conscious that it was her husband’s emotion, not hers, at which he jested.
‘Death is always terrible,’ she murmured, not knowing what to say. ‘And Prince Napraxine always seemed so well, so strong, so full of health — —’
De Vannes laughed a little grimly.
‘Poor Napraxine had only one vulnerable point — his heart; some gossiper pecked at that as jays peck at fruit; and this is the end. You know he adored his wife, most unfortunately for himself; she is called the Marie Stuart of our day, and to complete the parallel, it was necessary for her to be the cause of her husband’s death.’
‘But — she must suffer now?’ said Yseulte, her golden eyes dim and dark with feeling.
‘Suffer?’ echoed Alain de Vannes. ‘I see you do not know Madame Napraxine, though you meet so often. The long strict Russian mourning and all the religious rites will weary her terribly. Beyond that, she will not be much distressed, and she will have many — consolations.’
‘She has children,’ said Yseulte.
The Duc smiled.
‘It was not of her children that I was thinking,’ he said with meaning.
Friederich Othmar turned round from his examination of the portrait.
‘My child,’ he said to Yseulte, ‘will you pardon me if I remind you that your horses have been waiting a long time, and that the matinée at Princess Hohenlohe’s will be more than half over. M. le Duc will be kind enough to excuse the hint; he is always so amiable.’
Yseulte, who was still obedient with the unquestioning submission of her childish days, rose and bade adieu to her cousin, then went to her own apartments.
Friederich Othmar turned to the Duke:
‘Shall we walk down the boulevard together?’ he suggested, whilst he thought to himself, ‘That fox shall not get at her ear if I can help it.’
While Alain de Vannes assented and they sauntered down the staircase of Othmar’s house, the Duc said with a pleasant little laugh:
‘Ah, my dear Baron, if this duel had taken place with the same results fifteen months ago my little cousin would not have been mistress here!’
‘Who knows?’ said Friederich Othmar, vaguely, with that bland indifference which was his favourite mask and weapon.
CHAPTER XLVII.
As Yseulte went to her own room her way led her past the great cedar-wood doors of her husband’s library, that retreat where he passed so many of those hours of meditation and of pain, — such hours as in old days led men of his nature to the isolation of the cloister. He had always told her that she was free to enter there; but the delicacy of her temper had always made her use the privilege but rarely; so rarely, that he had ceased ever to be afraid of her entrance in moments when the lassitude or the dejection of his life overcame him and made him little willing to meet her gaze. Now, as she passed by the door, a wistful impulse moved her to see him, to speak to him, to be spoken to by him. She had an instinctive feeling that this news of Napraxine’s death had caused him a greater shock than she could comprehend or measure; all the affection, the adoration, which she bore him went out to him in this incomprehensible sorrow.
‘If he would only tell me’ — she thought.
Inspired by that longing for his confidence, she opened the door. Othmar sat at his writing-table, and his head was bowed down on his arms; his back was to her, but his whole attitude expressed extreme weariness, exceeding sorrow. When he sprang to his feet at the sound of the opening door, she saw that his eyes were wet with tears. He suppressed both his emotion and his irritation as best he could, and said to her gently:
‘Do you want me, my dear? Wait a moment; I will be with you.’
He turned from her as if to sort some papers on his table. She did not advance; she stood looking at him with a scared, colourless face: a truth had come into her mind swift and venomous as an adder. She thought suddenly:
‘If I were not here — she could be his wife — now.’
The secret of his uncontrollable emotion at the tidings of Napraxine’s death was laid bare to her in one of those flashes of thought which light up the brain as lightning illumines the landscape. She murmured some vague words and left the room: her long training in silence and self-suppression gave her strength to repress the cry which rose to her lips.
Othmar scarcely heeded her departure or heard her answer: his own pain and restless rebellion against the fate which he had made for himself absorbed him.
‘Poor innocent child!’ he thought once with self-reproach. ‘She must never know; it was I who sought her — I must keep her in her illusions as best I may.’
He did not know that her illusions had been killed in that moment of cruel certainty, as once in the church of S. Pharamond his orchids and azaleas had perished in a single night of frost.
She told her people to have the horses taken back to the stables: she felt unwell; she would not go out that morning; then she locked herself in her own apartments. She could not face that world of Paris, which would be speaking all the day of one theme, — the death of Prince Napraxine.
It was the last day of April; the sunshine was streaming through the gardens of the great hotel, and through her open windows there came the scent of opening lilac buds and blossoming hawthorn boughs. Like the year and the earth, she was in the early sweetness of her youth; yet old age hardly knows a more chill and cruel sense of loneliness and desolation than was with her now as she lay, face downward, on her bed, and sobbed her youth away. With instantaneous and merciless force the truth had broken in upon her at last; she suddenly realised that she had no place in the heart of Othmar, and was but a burden on his life. She realised that she had been taken in pity, wedded in generosity and compassion, but without one passing gleam or throb of love. She marvelled that she could have been so blind before. All the memories which thronged upon her brought with them a thousand inexorable witnesses of the truth. The knowledge of the world which she had learned of late was like a lamp shedding its cruel rays on every damning fact.
For long she had known, she had felt, that her husband cared only for one woman upon earth, and that woman not herself. But never until now had the conviction come to her of how cruelly and eternally she barred the way between him and his happiness and his desires. The weakness and the defects of the early training which she had received now told upon her character, making her shut close in her own soul all she suffered, and enabling her to keep perfect silence on all she had discovered. Without that acquired habit of reserve, her natural candour and trustfulness would have impelled her to give some confidence, to receive some counsel, in her di
re distress, would have even brought her to her husband’s side. But the pride which was in her blood was united with the power of self-repression engendered by the teachings she had received. In any sorrow which had not also been humiliation, in any fault which had been her own, not his, she would have thrown herself at Othmar’s feet and confessed all that she felt. But this was impossible to her now; the words would have choked her; she could not say to him: ‘I know I am only a pensioner on your pity and your generosity;’ she could not say to him, ‘I know that I stand between you and one whom you loved before ever you saw me.’ More undisciplined and less delicate tempers might have found some refuge in such passionate lamentation and revelation, but to Yseulte de Valogne such outbursts of reproach were impossible; they would have been contrary to every habit of her young life, to every tradition of the order and of the race from which she sprang. ‘The vulgar cry out when they are hurt,’ her grandmother had said once to her during the siege of Paris; ‘but for us — there are only two things possible — either vengeance or silence.’
Those words came back upon her mind as she lay upon her bed, whilst the sweet fresh winds of the spring-time blew the scent of the lilac and hawthorn across her chamber. Vengeance there could be none for her; he had been her saviour, her protector, her kindest friend, her lover, whom she adored with all the ignorant, innocent, mute worship of first love; there only remained the alternative — silence.