by Ouida
There was something of the dumb obstinacy of the Breton in her, and much also of the Breton force of heroism; the heroism which does not speak, but bears and acts, immovable and uncomplaining. That great strength of endurance enabled her now to recover her self-control by the time that she was forced to meet Othmar again, and to go into her drawing-rooms at eight o’clock before the hour of dinner, with no trace of what she had suffered upon her except in the pallor of her face and the dark shade beneath her eyes.
‘Are you feeling ill, my dear child?’ said her husband, as he met her. ‘I hear you have not been out to-day, and you had many engagements?’
She murmured some vague answer; — she had been lying down; her head ached.
He answered her with some tender expressions of regret, and inquired no more. Her health was delicate and fluctuating at that moment; he supposed that it was natural that she had such occasional hours of depression.
They chanced to be alone at dinner that evening, which was unusual. Neither of them spoke many words. When he addressed her it was with the utmost kindliness and gentleness of tone, but he said little, and his own preoccupation prevented him from noticing how constrained were her replies, how forced her smiles.
She observed, with a cruel tightening of her heart, that he never alluded to the death of his friend Napraxine.
When dinner was over, she said to him very calmly:
‘There are several engagements for tonight too, but if you will allow me, I will stay at home. I am a little — tired.’
‘Certainly, my dear,’ he said at once. ‘Never go into the world but when it amuses you; and your health is of far more value than any other consideration. Shall I call your physicians?’
‘Oh no; it is nothing. I am only a little fatigued,’ she said hurriedly; and as he stooped to touch her cheek with his lips she turned her head quickly, and for the first time avoided his caress.
He was too absorbed in his own thoughts even to observe the significance of the involuntary gesture. He led her to the doors of her own apartments, kissed her hand, and left her.
‘Sleep well,’ he said kindly, as he might have spoken to a sick child.
But to Yseulte it seemed that she would never sleep again.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
For some days his world spoke only of the death of Platon Napraxine in the full vigour of his manhood. Men regretted him honestly, and many women mourned for him as sincerely, if with less disinterestedness. His body was taken to Zaraizoff, and there consigned to rest amidst the dust of his ancestors with all the pomp and splendour of a funeral, barbaric and gorgeous, like every other ceremony of his country. His mother and his little sons were there; his wife was absent. She had withdrawn herself to a secluded château in the Lake of Geneva, which had been the property of her father, and no one had access to her.
What did she feel? No one could know; scarcely could she have told, herself, so entangled and so conflicting were the emotions by which she was swayed. Two sentiments alone were distinct to her amidst the uncertainty of her thoughts; the one was regret that her last words had been to him words impatient and unkind; the other an intense rage against herself that by one involuntary question she had betrayed herself to Prince Ezarhédine. It had been the solitary moment in all her life in which anxiety had conquered her composure, and her perfect self-control had failed her.
After the day which brought the dead body of Napraxine to his house, and bore him up that beautiful staircase, where his heavy tread and his unlovely presence had so often seemed so unwelcome and so out of place, she had seen no one save those great ecclesiastics and high functionaries who were perforce admitted to her presence. Cards, dispatches, and letters were piled a foot deep in her ante-chamber, but she took no heed of any; her secretary had one formal reply with which he was instructed to receive one and all. Of the thousands who knew her throughout Europe, Othmar alone sent no word and made no sign.
She understood his silence.
She made no affectation of a woe she could not feel or be expected to feel; all the world had known how profound had been her indifference for her husband, and how often intolerant had been her dislike of him. But all that good taste and good breeding could dictate in respect to his memory she did; and she withdrew herself absolutely from the sights and sounds of the world in accordance with the severe usages of his country and with the tragic fate to which he had succumbed. For once her serenity had received a shock which, momentarily at least, affected and dispelled it; for once her languid observation of the ways of life and of death had been quickened to a dual feeling of mingled rejoicing and remorse. The sense of her own liberty was lovely to her, slight as had been the pressure of the bonds she wore; but her recognition of Platon Napraxine’s character had never been so just or so warm as now when his living presence, his physical personality were no longer there to offend her taste and fret her patience. All the dispositions of his testament, all the entire trust they showed in her, all the immense possessions he bequeathed to her, touched her with that consciousness of magnanimity and generosity in this despised nature which had at times visited her during his lifetime, but had always been repulsed. Had it been possible for him to have returned to earth, he would have been as intolerable to her as before; but dead, — knowing that never more would he importune or trouble her with his unwelcome tenderness, — she remembered him with contrition and almost with remorse. The consciousness that never had she given him even one kind word in return for all his royal gifts and loyal worship hurt her sense of honour; when she remembered that the only praise she had ever accorded to him had only been part of a scene of dissimulation with which she had lulled his just suspicions, all the courage and candour which were natural to her rose up in her conscience and accused her of ingratitude and of treachery. Nor did she shrink from the meâ culpâ which her self-reproach exacted. She had never been a coward before her own conscience if her egoism had often made her sleep serenely, deaf to its voice. She did not disguise to herself that she had been neither merciful nor just to the dead man, neither worthy of his unquestioning confidence nor of his unmeasured devotion. She remembered many a time when a kind word would have cost her nothing and would have been so much to him. But, then, if she had spoken it, he would not have understood; he would have presumed on it; he would have imagined that it gave him every privilege; he had always been so stupid; he had never been able to understand à demi-mot — there had been no choice but to use the whip and chain to this poor blundering, fawning, loving hound, who would not otherwise comprehend how intolerable were his offered caresses.
Now the ‘big dog’ was dead and could never more offend.
Perhaps she had been harsh, she thought — sometimes.
In the solitude of the slow-coming chilly spring of the Canton de Vaud, Nadine Napraxine was left alone with her own thoughts. She remained in the strictest seclusion, willing to concede so much to the usages of her nation and the tragedy of his death. The isolation seemed very strange to her, accustomed as she was to have the most brilliant of societies, the most solicitous of courtiers, the most witty of associates, for ever about her. Her life had been always dans le mouvement, always seeking, if not always finding, distraction, always filled with the voices and the laughter of the world. In this complete solitude, where only her household were near her and there was no other sound than the fall of water, the burr of bees, the rush of a distant avalanche falling down the mountain side, or the lilt of a boatman’s song echoing from the lake, it seemed to her as if it were she — or all the world — who was dead.
It had been suggested to her that she should have her children there, but she had rejected the idea instantly.
‘Now that I am free,’ she thought, ‘for heaven’s sake, let me forget the hours of my captivity if I can.’
They were well cared for; they should always be well cared for; she would never allow their interests to be neglected or their fortunes to be imperilled; but the sons of Platon Napraxine c
ould never be more to her than the issue of a union she had loathed, the living records of a time of intense humiliation and disgust. Her retirement was not nominal; no guests passed her gates except those members of her husband’s family and of her own whom it was impossible to refuse to see. Even they could not tell whether she rejoiced or grieved. She was serene and impassible; she never said a syllable which could let any light in upon her own emotions; when she spoke, if it were not with her usual malice, it was with all her usual skill at phrases which revealed her intelligence and hid her heart. She omitted none of the observances which Russian etiquette required from one in her position, and at the long religious services in honour of the dead she was careful to render the respect of her presence, though they meant no more to her than the buzzing of the bees in the laburnum and acacia flowers.
The tedious days passed monotonous and alike.
For the first time in her life she submitted to ennui without revolt; and if in the dewy silent evenings of the early summer she went down to the steps which overlooked the lake, and leaned there, and drew in the breath of the mountain air with a new invigorating sense of freedom from a burden which had for ever galled her, though she had borne it so lightly, no one was offended by that exhilaration, for no one was witness of it; even as no one, either, ever knew how in such evening musings as these an angry cloud would come upon her face and an impatient regret stir at her heart as she thought — why had not Othmar had patience?
She remembered him with a restless and unwilling tenderness.
The knowledge of how his name had escaped her to Ezarhédine was constantly present to her mind, and the recollection fretted and irritated her with all the mortification of a strong pride indignant at its own self-betrayal. Ezarhédine would, no doubt, relate the story of her momentary weakness to her friends and his. She had no belief in the discretion of men; they had their views and principles of honour, no doubt, but she had never known these remain superior to the impulses of their indiscretion or their inquisitiveness; they were always talkative as gossips round a market fountain, curious as children before a case of unpacked toys.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Whilst she was thus withdrawn from the world in the observance if not in the regrets of mourning, Othmar left Paris for the seclusion of the château of Amyôt.
The summer and the autumn months seemed to both him and Yseulte long and cruel; all the beauty of Amyôt in the blossoming hours could not make their life there happy to either of them. Since the death of Napraxine a great constraint had come between them. Each of them was sensible of thoughts and of emotions which neither would, or could, confide in the other.
Friederich Othmar came and went between Paris and the great Renaissance château, but he was powerless to alter what he deplored. There was not even any definite thing of which he could speak. There was no fault ever to be found in the gentleness and courtesy of Othmar to his wife; and there was no alteration in the deference and the docility which she always showed to him. Only there was something wanting: there was no spontaneity; there was no sympathy; there was none of that unspoken gladness which exhales from all real happiness as its fragrance from the rose. The wise old man said to himself, impatient and regretful, ‘Why did Napraxine die? But for that, time would have been her friend. He would have grown used to her sweet presence, and habit would have brought content. But now! — —’
Now, he knew that with every day which dawned, with every night which fell, Othmar brooded, night and day, over his lost future, destroyed by his own rash haste.
All his mind was with Nadine Napraxine, and it fretted him at times almost beyond endurance that he could see her and hear of her no more, know no more of her than all her world knew, or than the chronicles of the hour stated for public information. It seemed to him as it did to her, as if the strangest silence had fallen on the earth. He loved her infinitely more than he had ever done, intense and unscrupulous as had been the passion which she had aroused in him. She was entirely free; and he — he who had adored her — dared not even enter her antechamber or go where he could see her shadow fall upon the ground she trod!
The silence and the self-effacement of Yseulte were the most dangerous anodynes which he could have had. He dreamed his life away in visions of joys which never could be his, and the resignation of his young companion allowed him to dream on unroused.
Friederich Othmar saw his increasing preoccupation, his growing love of solitude, his impatience when he was recalled by force to the things of actual life, and he could have gnashed his teeth with rage and sorrow.
‘He will never live out his years away from his sorceress,’ he thought; ‘and when they meet again, she will do what she chooses with him. If she like to make him the ridicule of Europe, he will accept his fate and deem it heaven. Whilst Yseulte — Yseulte, — before she is twenty, will be widowed in fact and left to the consolation of some little child, plucking the daisies on the sward here at her feet.’
To Friederich Othmar love had ever seemed the most puerile of delusions, the most illogical of all human fallacies, but now it took a deadlier shape before him, and he began to comprehend why poets — interpreters of human madness as they were — had likened it to the witch’s mandrake, to the devouring sea, to the flame which no power can quench, to all things terrible, irresistible, and deadly as death.
Occasionally an impulse came to Yseulte to tell everything to Melville, who was not her confessor, but who had known all her people so well in their days of trial and adversity; but her pride repressed the instinct of confidence. Besides, she thought drearily, she knew well all that Melville would answer — the only reply, indeed, which would be possible to him in such a case — he would exhort her to patience, to hope, to trust in heaven and in her husband. The originality of his character would not be able to escape from the platitudes of custom; he would only say to her what she could say to herself, ‘Be courageous and be calm; time often heals all woes.’
Sometimes, too, she thought wistfully that if she bore a living child perhaps she would reach some higher place in her husband’s heart.
She had heard it often said that children formed a tie between those who were even indifferent to each other. At least — at least, she reflected, and strove to solace herself with this hope, — as the mother of a living child of his, she would be something in his house more than a mere form to wear his jewels and receive his indifferent caresses. Perhaps, she thought, if her eyes looked up at him from his child’s face, he might grow to care for her a little. At least she would be something to him that Nadine Napraxine was not. It was a desolate kind of consolation to be the only one within reach of a girl scarce eighteen years old; a sadly forlorn and wistful hope; but it was something to sustain her in the midst of her perfect isolation of thought and suffering, and it prevented her abandonment to despair. She had one of those natures to which tenderness is more natural than passion; her character was of that gentle and serious kind which enables a woman to endure the desertion of her lover if the arms of a child are about her. And so she awaited the future patiently, without much trust in its mercies, yet not without courage and not wholly without hope.
‘She looks very ill,’ said the most observant of all her friends, Friederich Othmar, more than once to her husband. But Othmar replied that it was only the state of her health, and the elder man protested in vain.
‘You think a girl of those years can be satisfied with bearing your children and being left alone in beautiful houses as a cardinal bird is shut up in a gilded cage?’ he said irritably.
‘She is certainly not left alone,’ replied Othmar with annoyance; ‘and I believe that she is precisely of that docile and religious temperament which will find the greatest enjoyment of existence in maternity. There are women formed for that kind of self-sacrifice beyond all others. She is one of them.’
‘It is not the only sacrifice to which she is condemned!’ muttered Friederich Othmar, but he feared to do more harm than good if he expl
ained himself more clearly.
‘Has she been complaining to you?’ asked her husband with increasing anger.
‘She would never complain,’ returned his uncle positively. ‘Besides, my dear Otho, whatever we may all think of you, to her you are a demi-god, the incarnation of all mortal and immortal excellences. She would as soon strike the silver Christ that hangs over her bed as consent to see a flaw in your perfections!’
Othmar only replied by an impatient gesture.
Both irritation and self-reproach were aroused in him, but they did no more than disquiet and annoy him. He saw no means by which he could be kinder, or gentler, or more generous, to Yseulte than he was already. Love was not his to command. He could not help it if day by day an unsatisfied passion gnawed in him for an absent woman, and if day by day the fair face of his young wife receded farther and farther from him into the shadowy distance of a complete indifference. All which he could compel himself to render, — consideration, deference, kindness, attention, — all these he poured out upon Yseulte with the utmost liberality. What was missing was not in his power to give. He felt with a shudder that the longer time went on, the more their lives passed together, the greater would grow the coldness he felt for her. He recognised all her sweetness and grace; he was not ungrateful for the affection she bore him; he admired the many delicate beauties of her mind and character. But she was nothing to him; she never would have the power to quicken his pulses by one second. She was all that purity, honour, and spirituality of thought could make her; but she had no place in his heart. He had even to struggle hard with himself at times not to let the sense of her perpetual presence there become almost an offence to him. He was a generous man, and he had always striven to be just, but he knew that he failed to be just to her because of the fret and fever of his own thoughts, which left him no peace, but kept repeating for ever the same burden: ‘The woman you love is free now. O fool! O fool!’