by Ouida
Aloud he said, with anger to her:
‘What has come to you? If you do not mean to become an artist, and a great artist, adieu! My hours are not likely to be so many on earth that I can afford to waste them. What ails you? Your voice is dull; your face is no mirror for your words. You are not listening. If you have tame moments like this, do not dream of ever moving the world. It is a block of stone; you cannot stir it without putting out all your strength. And even then it will roll back and roll on to you if you relax your efforts. If you give yourself to art you may be great in it, I think; but if you love anything — any person — better than art, do not touch it. Go, and be an ordinary woman like the rest.’
The words were harsh. The tears started to her eyes as she heard them, and a hot colour rose over her face and throat. She was silent.
‘She never speaks of him. How fine that is!’ thought Rosselin. ‘Most female creatures at her years babble of what fills their thoughts, as birds chatter of the spring in April.’
Aloud he said:
‘You will not do any good to-day. You look ill, and you are restless. Come with me to Paris; I will show you something which will interest you — and the weather is fine though cold. Let us walk to Magny.’
She went with him in silence.
The day was drawing to a close as the train sped through the dark fields of winter and entered Paris. A city was always terrible and hateful to her. She loved air and light and the solitude of sea and land. Crowds hurt her, and the labyrinth of streets had never ceased to oppress and to bewilder her. She felt amidst the walls and roofs as a young eagle feels barred up in a cage. He talked to her of many things with that picturesque detail with which his great knowledge of the city and of the world filled his conversation. He endeavoured to interest and distract her; he strove to amuse and arouse her. But he felt that he succeeded but indifferently. Her thoughts were not with him; she was silent and she was nervous.
When night fell he took her with him to the Théâtre Français; not for the first time. It was the night of a première of a great dramatist. The house was filled with the choicest critics of Paris; the most famous actors occupied the classic stage. Behind the grating of the hidden box to which he led her she could see without being seen. Before this she had been only taken to rehearsals in the daytime; she had never seen a great theatre in the full blaze of one of its gala nights. It blinded and oppressed her. She longed for the coolness, for the shadows, for the dewy stillness of the country. The pungent scents, the blazing lights, the multitude of faces, the hum of voices, made her afraid; afraid as she had not been all alone in the hours of night adrift in her boat on the sea.
‘Watch and listen and learn,’ said Rosselin. ‘You may be on this stage one day, or on none.’
She did not reply: the new play had begun; the most famous players in Paris acted with that exquisite grace and ease which characterise them; the play was witty and brilliant; each scene had its separate success, each phrase its separate charm. Rosselin himself, vividly interested and keenly critical, gave all his attention to the stage, and for the time forgot his companion. When the curtain fell upon the first act he turned to speak to her; he was startled to see that her face was pale as death, and her eyes, wide open and fascinated, were fastened on the opposite side of the house. He looked where she was looking, and saw a great lady with a bouquet of orchids lying on the cushion before her, and several gentlemen in her box behind her.
‘Ah, Madame Nadine!’ murmured Rosselin. ‘She does not often deign to honour a first night, even when it is Sardou’s. She is going to some great ball afterwards, I suppose, for look at her diamonds, and she has her Russian orders on. Voilà une véritable grande dame!’
Damaris gazed at her without a word; her eyes were strained, her very lips were pale, she breathed quickly and painfully, the theatre seemed to circle round and round her, and across its intense light of all the many faces there she saw but this one. When the second act began she had no ears for it and no consciousness of what was said or done in it. She never once looked at the stage. Her eyes remained rivetted on the wife of Othmar; the voices of the actors were a mere dull babble to her: when the audience laughed she knew not why they laughed, when they applauded, she had no knowledge why they did so; all she saw was that delicate colourless beauty on the other side of the house with the great jewels shining on it like stars.
She looked, and looked, and looked till her eyes swam and her heart grew sick.
This was the woman whom he loved, this great lady leaning there with that look of utter indifference on her face, with that slight smile as this man or the other entered her box, with the diamonds shining in the whiteness of her breast, with her uncovered shoulders gleaming white as snow; a hothouse flower in all the rarity, the languor, the perfection, which the hothouse gives. The same sense which had come to her in the drawing-rooms of St. Pharamond came again to the child; a sense of rudeness, of rusticity, of inferiority, of coarseness in herself as contrasted with that patrician elegance, that pale and languid loveliness, that marvellous charm of the world and of its highest form of culture.
‘What can I look like to him!’ she thought with humiliation. ‘Beside her I must seem to him like some rude peasant — —’
All that she had felt vaguely before the mirrors of St. Pharamond came back upon her embittered, intensified, made conscious. She realised the immense distance that there was between her and Othmar as she saw his wife. She realised the grace and splendour of this life in the world which they led. She realised the passion which she had given to her. She realised that she herself could only stand outside his life, like a beggar outside his gates.
When the curtain fell again, Rosselin looked at her with impatience.
‘You looked at that woman always, never at the stage,’ he said angrily. ‘She is a great lady; leagues above you, leagues beyond you; you have nothing in common with her. But one day you may force her to hear you in this very house if you choose. Will you choose?’
‘She will not care,’ said Damaris.
Tears were standing in her eyes; the sense of an infinite loneliness, and of a great inferiority, were on her. What would it matter if she ever became famous yonder on those classic boards? That great lady would come and see her for an hour — smile or censure — then forget. The dreams which she had nurtured of compelling the admiration of the world, seemed to dissolve like a mirage before the mere presence of Othmar’s wife. ‘She would not care,’ she said wearily.
To this patrician she would always be a half-barbarian and uncultured creature. The heart of the child asked with longing to go back to her old life in the sunny air by the blue water, with the homely people, with the simple wants, with the sound of the birds in the leaves, and the feel of the wind on the sea. But she knew that never could she go back so any more.
If her feet were to travel thither, her soul would not go.
The passion of the world, the aims of ambition, the heartsickness of jealousy and desire were all in her; where they have passed the soul is for ever a stranger to peace, even as where fire has burnt the soil of a green field, grass will grow no more.
‘Why did she not let me alone?’ she thought.
Between the second and the third acts, Rosselin left her to go to the foyer, where he had been for so many years so conspicuous a figure, and so dreaded a critic.
‘Fasten the door after me, and if a thousand people should knock, let no one in until you hear my voice,’ he said to her, drawing the door behind him.
Left to herself she drew back into the deepest shadow of the little den she occupied, and gazed as she would at the woman who had been destiny to her. She saw numerous gentlemen come and go in her box, make their reverence to her, linger if they were permitted, or withdraw and give place to others. Nadine had changed her position so that her profile only was now turned towards the house. She leaned her elbow on the cushion, and her cheek on her hand, a butterfly of emeralds sparkled under her shoulder; s
ometimes her face was hidden by the fan of white ostrich feathers, sometimes she furled the fan and let it lie unused beside the orchids.
Damaris watched her with the strange fascination of fear and of wonder, of hatred and admiration, which had moved her in the salons of St. Pharamond. All the words which Othmar had spoken a few days before, were sounding in her ears. Her simple and candid thoughts were beginning to gain something of the complexity, of the weariness, of the pain of his. She understood why he had loved this woman so much that, empty though his heart might be, it would remain untenanted. Innocent as Mignon, she yet watched her rival with something of the passion of Adrienne Lecouvreur.
‘She is his, he is hers — and she does not care!’ thought the child, in whom the ignorance of childhood still lingered, blent with the awakening strength and heat of a tropical nature.
As the curtain rose for the third act, Othmar himself entered his wife’s box. Damaris shrank farther and farther back against the wall, though she knew well that the keenest eyes could not find her out in her obscurity. Her breath came hard and fast like a panting hare’s; the great tears rose to her eyes; she suddenly realised what this world was which held him so closely. She saw his wife give him the same slight smile that she gave to others: no more. She saw him bend before her with the same low bow the others gave; she saw him converse with the gentlemen near him; from time to time he glanced round the house. Once or twice his wife turned her head and spoke to him as she spoke to the others. To this child who had the heart of Juliet, the soul of Heloise, the conventionalities of the world seemed like the frost of death.
‘She is his; he is hers: and she does not care!’
That was all she could think of as she watched them across that sea of light. The wit of the play amused him, and Othmar looked less weary and more animated than usual. To her he appeared happy.
Rosselin called thrice to her through the door before she heard him and let him enter.
‘You should not dream like that when you are at the Français. You should study. What more admirable lessons can you have?’ he said angrily. ‘Poets may dream if they like. They speak best in their trances. Those who would only interpret them must never dare to do so. Have I not told you so a score of times? There is nothing poetic about the stage; it is all hard, prosaic, literal. If you will dream go and bury yourself under green leaves, under yellow corn; do not come to the theatres of the world.’
Damaris for once did not even hear him. He looked across the house and saw Othmar.
‘Come,’ he said to her, ‘you will miss the last train that pauses at Trappes if you do not come away now. Never will they forgive me for leaving before the close! But that will not matter much. They know I am old; they can think I am ill. Come, or you will be too late.’
‘Wait a little,’ said Damaris, in a shamed, hushed voice; her face grew red as she spoke.
Rosselin glanced impatiently at the box on the other side of the house. He said nothing; he waited, artist as he was in all the fibres of his nature; his eyes and his ears and his art were all with Got, with the Coquelins, with the moving and speaking persons of the stage: yet a little corner of his heart ached still for the child.
‘What wretchedness she prepares for herself!’ he thought with pity and sorrow combined. ‘She will never be a great artist, because with her feeling will always take the mastery. You are only a great artist if when you suffer, though you suffer horribly, you can study what you feel, you can make your own heart strings into a lyre. If you cannot do that, you are only a creature that loves another. Ah, my dear! No one ever conquered the world so!’
He let her alone until the piece was over; the box of the Countess Othmar had been vacated some moments before the termination of the last act. He did not speak to her whilst he hurried her through private passages and into the frosty air of the streets.
‘Cover yourself well, it is cold,’ was all he said as he took her with gentle steps over the pavement which his feet had trodden so many thousands of times, in the hurry of youth, in the ecstasy of triumph, in all the alternations of a manhood tossed up and down upon the stormy seas of public favour and of public caprice. All that network of streets about the Français was as dear to him as the banks of Doon to Burns, as the green wood and ways of Milly to Lamartine, as the sweet meads and streams of Penshurst to Philip Sydney.
Damaris walked on beside him, her head bent, her face covered. The tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks.
‘Let me do what I would,’ she thought, ‘she would not care.’
Rosselin took her home to his own little house that night, for it was too late to return to Les Hameaux. He made her seat herself by his fire; he dried the damp of the night on her hair and her clothes; he would have made her eat of his preserved nectarines and drink of his choice wines which were sent by his friends. But she would not touch anything. She sat lost in thought.
All she saw was that beautiful woman; all she heard was the voice of Othmar saying, ‘I have so loved her that I shall never love any other woman ever again.’
No doubt it was so: she could understand. Only he seemed to go away from her, herself, utterly and for ever; to glide out of her life as the ships she had used to watch from her balcony, as the nightingales sang under the moon, used to pass away further and further, till the great distance and the shadows of night swallowed them up and they were no more seen, and all the wide sea was empty.
Rosselin watched her sadly.
‘Poor Mignon,’ he thought. ‘Who shall transform her to a Mademoiselle Mars? How does the gymnast teach his child to stand and catch the metal ball, to tread and hold the rope in air. He works and kneads the tender flesh till it grows hard, he strains the soft limbs till they become like steel, he bends and twists and forces, and forges the immature sinews and tendons till they are like cords to resist, and in every separate muscle there almost seems a separate brain. When their nature has been driven out and the body has become an iron machine the teacher has succeeded. Who shall do for her mind and her heart what the gymnast does to his son’s limbs and spine? And will ever anybody do it? Will she ever be Mars — be Rachel? Will she ever fling her soul away and keep only her body and her brain? And if she do not do that what success will she ever have?’
In that kind of cruelty with which the true artist would always emulate any living thing to art, he almost wished that Othmar were a man with less honour and less compassion, more license and more selfishness.
‘If he would break her heart and rouse her hatred how much art would gain,’ he thought. ‘She would pass through the fire like Goethe’s dancing girl, and come out of it immortal.’
He knew the weakness of love, and he knew the strength of genius.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, as the wood-fire gleamed and murmured. ‘You dream too much of Othmar. I understand he was your saviour; he is your hero, your saint, your god: all that is inevitable; and he is a man whom women will always love, because he has a great grace and gentleness about him, and his discontent and sadness are in picturesque contrast with his magnificent and enviable fortunes. But he will never love you, my child: just because he has so loved that woman, that his heart has grown cloyed, yet cold; great passions always leave that kind of satiety behind them. And then the world holds him, a hundred thousand invisible threads bind him; if he had the heart left for it, which he has not, he would not have the time to turn back; his life is fixed, such as it is, and he and the world are wedded together, though it may not be the spouse he would have chosen. Do not either live for him or die for him. What will she say if you do either? That you are a love-sick fool. I do not talk to you as moralists would talk, because I do not believe in conventional morality; it is an absurdity, like all conventional things. No doubt your old friend Melville would speak much better than I do, but I speak honestly, and according to my lights. You have wished, and the wish has seemed to me natural, to compel recognition of your own powers from the person who first caused you to leave the happ
y obscurity of your life. You have said that you wish her to see you can have a greatness she has not. It is a personal motive, and art is best served by impersonal motives. Still it seems to me natural. I can understand it. But to do this you must be strong, you must be bold, you must be true to yourself. You must not be overcome because you see her looking like the great lady she is. There is only one thing which the wife of Othmar respects, it is genius; she respects that because her intellect appreciates, and her gold cannot buy, it. Prove to her that it is in you, and she will respect you. If you died for her lord to-morrow, she would only say that you had forgotten you were not upon the stage. I seem to speak harshly and roughly. Ah, my dear, my heart is neither; but I wish to save you from your own heart if I can. You are all alone, and you are scarcely more than a child, and the world, the world, is a beast.’
She did not answer; her head was bent down on her arms, and her face was hidden; all he could see was the hot flush on the ivory of her throat, and the curling hair which was made golden by the ruddy light from the leaping flames.
All her dreams and aspirations and ambitions seemed all huddled together, bruised and colourless, like a heap of child’s toys broken and faded.
‘She would not care!’ that was all she thought. If the world were to give her fame, what would the best that she could ever reach seem to the unreachable disdain of that other woman? No more than the gleam of a glow-worm may seem to the planet on high.
A rude sun-browned wench of the sea and the land, good to row through blue water, and mow down green billows of grass: that was all she would ever seem to Othmar’s wife.