by Ouida
Othmar continued with an effort, leaning against the side of the shut casement grown dark with the descending gloom of coming night.
‘I cannot make you comprehend, my dear, with how great a passion I have loved her. You may have heard of one who bore my name before her, one who died on your own shores. She was lovely in body and soul, and had no fault that ever I saw, and would have died for me — did die for me, perchance — and to her I was without any love, always because my whole soul was set upon another woman. And that other is now my wife. And her, I tell you, I have loved in such wise that I believe no other love worthy the name will ever arise in me again. I do not say that it is impossible, for no man knows; — but so I think. She has disdained the place she took, and has left it empty, but no other can fill it after her. She has made that impossible — —’
The tears rose to his eyes as he spoke. He could not think of the woman he had worshipped, and whose heart he thought had never had one pulse of actual love for him, without a pain which overmastered him. He had never spoken of all he felt for her to any living being throughout the years in which her influence had reigned over his life.
Damaris looked at him in the deepening shadows which hid her own face. A passionate pain communicated itself to her as she listened.
‘Is it she who does not care, then?’ she asked. Her voice was hurried and had a tremor in it.
‘God knows!’ said Othmar. ‘No; I think she does not.’
He sighed wearily; his reserve once broken through, it was a kind of solace to him to speak out aloud the disappointment mute for so long, for so long unconfessed even to himself.
‘It is not her fault,’ he continued; ‘nature made her so. We all seem to her weak and sensual fools. Her own mind is so cultured and so hypercritical that men far greater than I am would seem to her poor creatures. She needed a Cæsar to share his empire with her, and she would have laughed even at him because his laurels could not have covered his scanty locks! She would have always seen his baldness, never his greatness. She is made like that. She does not care; why should she? We care for her. But that is no reason. Perhaps she would regret it if the children she has had by me died, but if I died to-morrow I doubt if the world would look dark to her. It certainly would not look empty!’
He spoke bitterly, with truth and irony so intermingled in his unconsidered words, that it was far beyond the powers of his inexperienced hearer to distinguish between them; all she felt was that he was unhappy, yet that his soul was set irrevocably upon this woman who had wedded him only to torment, to elude, to disappoint, to humiliate him.
She did not know enough of men and women and their passions to understand all that he meant in all its fulness of mortification, but she could understand that he suffered with a kind of suffering for which it was impossible for anyone to console him, and which severed him from herself by a vast and cruel distance of which she became suddenly sensible as she had never been before. His presence was sweet to her with a sweetness which was akin to anguish; the sound of his voice thrilled through all her being, the touch of his hand was a magnetism over her, charming her to a sense of ecstasy in which she lost all power of will: but she was powerless to banish for an hour the remembrance of this other woman, she had no sorcery which could undo and replace the magic of the past; she did not think this or feel this because her thoughts and her feelings were all confused and inarticulate, but it was so, and an immense consciousness of loneliness and impotency weighed like lead upon the warmth and the buoyancy of her soul.
She was nothing to him.
They were alike silent, standing in the dusky windows with the cold dark country in its wintry silences stretched without.
‘It is best she should know!’ he thought with a sense of cruelty and ingratitude. It seemed to him terrible that she should waste all the treasures of her lovely youth, of her fresh emotions, of her original thoughts, of her awaking passions, upon one who could not give her even one single heart’s beat of love in answer. He stooped and kissed her on her shining curls.
‘Good-night, my child,’ he said with pitying tenderness. ‘Good-night. Think of me as your friend, always your friend, and if you see me seldom believe that it is not due to want of sympathy, but only because — because — —’
He paused, seeking for words which could render his meaning clear to her without wounding her by too plain and blunt a warning against her own heart.
‘Because I meet you too late to be able to care for you,’ he thought; ‘because I have nothing to give you worth your dreams and your youth; because I would give you more if I could, but I cannot; because my heart is like a shut grave, it is too full of its own dead to be able to let in the living!’
But he could not say this, it would have been too harsh; so he said nothing. He kissed her once more on her soft thick hair gently and coldly, and left her, while the darkness of the night gathered around her, and over the silent fields the last snow of the winter began to fall, drifting noiselessly before a northern wind.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
That night he received a letter from Melville, written in answer to the one in which he had told him the story of Damaris. Melville was far away in Asia at a Jesuit mission station in the snowy mountains, and his reply had taken many months to cross the Chinese plains and seas.
‘What you tell me,’ he wrote, ‘of a child whom I knew so happy on her little island has startled and does distress me greatly. Was it any other than yourself who were her friend, I should be not only distressed but very apprehensive. She is of that ardent, impetuous, imaginative temperament which can be led to any madness if misled by its dreams or by its affections. I shall for ever blame myself that I did not see her before my departure for Asia. But I left the South of France for Rome very hurriedly, and thence came at once to these strange lands to examine and report on the state of all the Catholic missions of the far East to the Vatican. I had not a moment for any personal memories or personal farewells.
‘I would that I were in Europe, but it will be impossible for me to execute my errand under another year. You will do, I know, all that is chivalrous and generous by her, but what I fear is that thus doing it you will inevitably become the angel and ideal of her poetic fancy. Let me urge on you to see her yourself as little as is consistent with necessity and common kindness, and to have her as much as possible occupied by intellectual pursuits and interests. You will not be offended with me that I say thus much. The vulgar successes of such easy seduction will have no attraction for you, and I am sure that the share which your wife originally had in thus bringing about her misfortunes will make this child altogether sacred to you.
‘The dramatic art may be the only career, as you say, which is open to her. I remember that she was for ever reading plays and poems, and could recite her favourite passages with pathos and with fire. It is not what one would choose for her, but if she enter upon it, it may occupy her and save her from herself. I have no churchman’s prejudice against that or any art. My time, when in Paris, has been largely spent amongst great artists, and I have found in them many great qualities of the mind and heart which might go far to balance before any judge the freedom and the passions of their unconventional lives. I believe the character of Damaris to be in every way that of an artist. That resistance to all inherited destiny, and to all habitual surroundings, always marks out the one who is born to separate himself or herself from the common herd, and she had this very strongly. Hardy, and loving all country things and seafaring ways, as she did, there was yet always in her something which was unlike her destiny, something restless, daring, and dreamful, something which, wherever it is found, presages woe or fame. She has at all times attracted me greatly, for from her earliest years she has had that about her which suggests the possession of genius, and there is in her that union of the peasant and the patrician which has before now made the most original, and most psychologically interesting, characters on the earth. Tell me more and at once of what you expect from h
er future, if she be not, indeed, as yet too young for its horoscope to be securely cast. I will write to her direct. Meantime receive my thanks for all that you have already done to save this poor sea-gull astray in a city, and believe in my respect and esteem. Of course you have told Madame Nadège: what does she say?’
Othmar read the letter sitting in the solitude of his library in the small hours of the waning night; and a pang, which was almost that of conscience, smote him as he did thus read. He had done nothing indeed to forfeit the esteem of the writer; nothing which made him unworthy of the writer’s confidence; yet a vague sense that he had been unwise in all which he had meant for kindness, and wrong in the reticence which had sprung from his own selfish sensitiveness, oppressed him with a useless self-reproach. How could he tell Melville that his wife knew nothing of the presence of Damaris Bérarde at Chevreuse, without appearing to him to have become that mere vulgar seducer which Melville would have thought it the grossest of insults to suppose him?
CHAPTER XL.
The next day Othmar called upon Rosselin, and without preface said to him abruptly:
‘You had better tell the Duc de Béthune all I have told you about your pupil. I do not know whether he will believe it or not, but it is wholly intolerable for us to allow him to suppose, as he may suppose from appearances, that there are relations between myself and her which have no existence in fact.’
Rosselin listened and made no reply.
Othmar continued with impatience.
‘I do not know what he thinks, but he probably thinks something entirely and grossly unjust to her. He is a man of honour: he will respect confidence if it be placed in him.’
‘Why not tell him yourself? He is, I believe, very intimate in your houses.’
‘He is no especial friend of mine. He is often at my house, it is true, but personally I have no intimacy with him whatever.’
Rosselin hesitated; then he summoned his courage and said frankly:
‘Pardon me, but it is not the Duc de Béthune or any other man who has any concern with the position which you have created for yourself and for my pupil; the only person for whom it can have any vital interest, or who can exercise any influence over it, is the Countess Othmar, to whom you will not speak of it.’
Othmar coloured; he was greatly annoyed. He was conscious also that Rosselin was right in what he said.
‘If my wife heard of her from others, I would tell her how she came there,’ he said, with some embarrassment. ‘But I can assure you that though M. de Béthune might believe in the facts as you know them, she would not do so. She never believes in any single motives. She would suppose that I tried to gloss over with sentiment a mere vulgar amour.’
‘Men’s natures,’ he added, bitterly, ‘are often as simple, and straight, and frank as a dog’s, because, like dogs, we are stupid and trustful; but the mind of a woman of culture is far too critical in its survey and too intricate in its own motives ever to accredit us with the intellectual honesty we possess. It is a quality so stupid that it seems to women as incredible as it is uninteresting.’
Rosselin grew in his turn impatient.
‘You, too, appear to me,’ he said bluntly, ‘to be too fond of Pascal’s esprit de finesse, jugement de sentiment. Intellectual analysis is very interesting no doubt, but I never knew it serve in the least to solve the prosaic difficulties of active life. You cannot govern circumstances with theories.’
In himself he thought:
‘You create a position in the frankness of your generosity which you perceive becomes equivocal in its aspect to others; you earnestly desire to prevent its appearing so; yet you do not take the one measure which would secure to it immunity from suspicion.’
‘I have an idea,’ he continued aloud, ‘that the best way to test her talents and prepare the world for the appreciation of them, would be for her to recite at some great house, to be seen and heard by some choice audience. Why not in yours? Why not to your friends?’
‘In mine? To my acquaintances?’
‘Why not? It is, in my opinion, the easiest and most propitious way in which a beginner can try her powers. It is less alarming than a public stage, and the verdict given is more discriminating, and of greater value afterwards. The majority of neophytes have no such chance possible. They may go where they can; begin in the provinces; take anything they can get. But when it can be done, there is no question but that to make an entry into the world in the best society is an immeasurable benefit to any aspirant. It is to be famous at once if successful; whilst, if unsuccessful, the failure is passed over as the caprice of the host in whose house the neophyte is tried. As you are disposed to do anything for her, it seems to me that it would cost you little to ask Madame Nadège to permit the representation of some saynete, or some short piece like the “Luthier de Crémone,” at one of her great winter entertainments. She likes novelty; and I believe she often has dramatic representations both in Paris and at Amyôt.’
‘She has them, certainly,’ said Othmar with some constraint.
Rosselin looked from under his eyelids at him.
‘Then what objection is there? You have said that Madame your wife, first of all of us, saw something like genius in Damaris Bérarde. She would not refuse to allow her prophecy to be proved true under her own auspices.’
‘No; I do not suppose that she would refuse.’
‘If you would dislike that she should be asked, that is another matter,’ said Rosselin with some impatience, whilst to himself he thought, ‘You have made a secret of this thing, and you find what a burdensome and stupid thing a secret is, especially when it is one that circumstances are certain to take out of our hands, whether we will or no.’
‘I have no dislike to your project,’ replied Othmar with hesitation; ‘but,’ he added more frankly, ‘I must tell you that my wife is not in the least likely to take interest twice in the same person; and I must also tell you, as I did some months ago, that she knows nothing of the present existence of your pupil. If you like to tell her, do so; I give you free permission.’
‘I?’ echoed Rosselin. ‘My dear friend, if such a great lady saw a superannuated old actor enter her presence she would surely order her lackeys to turn him out unheard. I never spoke to Madame Nadège in my life, though rumour has made me feel well acquainted with her.’
‘She always treats genius with respect. It is, perhaps, the only thing she does respect — —’
‘Are you sure she does not think it escaped from Bicêtre? Most grandes dames do.’
‘No; she has too much intellect herself. She is a grande dame, but she is much more besides. She admires talent wherever she finds it; only she thinks that she finds very little.’
‘There she is right enough; there is any quantity of mere facility, of mere imitativeness, in our time, but there is very little which deserves a higher name.’
‘And you believe that Damaris Bérarde has more than mere talent?’
‘Yes, I believe it. I may be wrong, but I have never been wrong in such judgments, though it seems pretentious to say so. It is because I believe that she has this, that I am anxious for the world to first hear of her in such a way that she may be spared the vulgar and tedious novitiate which is generally unavoidable before a dramatic career; and also I should like to command for her such an audience as may become a title of honour to her, and a protection against false tongues. It is inevitable that your name has been, or will be, associated with hers. Modern life is one huge glass-house. If she be first seen at your house, in your salons, calumny can scarcely attach to your friendship for her. Pardon me if I speak with too intimate a candour. If I said less, I should feel myself almost dragged into the base collusion of a Sir Pandarus.’
Othmar grew pale with anger; he was unaccustomed to familiarity, and the words seemed to him wanting in delicacy and in respect.
‘You are very hopeful!’ he said bitterly, ‘and wonderfully trustful, my good friend, if you imagine that in the world we
live in she would be secured from slander by being seen in my drawing-rooms. The only thing they would say, if they were in the mood to say anything, would be that I deceived my wife into facilitating my amours. Society is not so easily persuaded of innocence as you appear to think, whilst it is thoroughly persuaded of the Countess Othmar’s indifference to myself!’
In the impulse of his anger he said what he would not have said in a cooler moment. He was greatly irritated at all which was implied in Rosselin’s latest words, and the allusion to his wife’s indifference to his actions escaped him almost involuntarily.
‘I regret if I offend you,’ said Rosselin, whose keen eyes read his feelings in his face. ‘I say what it seems right to me to say. I know the world has always mauvaise langue, I know it as well as you can do, but there are limits to its impudence. I do not believe that the lowest knave of it all would ever dare to say that you passed any insult on your wife. It has been too well aware of your devotion to her. However, let us abandon my idea. We can find some other way, perhaps; the preparation I have given my pupil has been short, and perhaps immature. She can wait awhile without injury. You have said, I think, that she has means enough of her own to live on as she lives now?’
‘She has means enough. Yes.’
‘Without wasting her little substance? I suppose her grandfather did not leave her much?’
‘She has quite sufficient income for her wants; I believe they are very simple.’
He spoke impatiently and rose. Rosselin, whose tact was always of the acutest kind, understood the hint and changed the subject.
Left to himself, the anger of Othmar soon grew less, and the courtesy of his nature made him regret his impatience with a man double his years and not his equal in station; one, moreover, who had only spoken honestly thoughts which were blameless.