Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 517
It was now June.
The Paris of the world of fashion was soon about to take wing, to disperse itself to country-houses, sea-shores, and foreign baths; to change its place, but to take with it wheresoever it should go all its agitation, its weariness, its fever, its delirium, and its intrigues. Olga Brancka saw the close of the season approach with regret yet expectation. She knew that Sabran must escape her or succumb to her; and she had a bitter, enraged sense that the power of his wife was stronger over him than her own. ‘Il faut brusquer la chose,’ she said again and again to herself. She grew reckless, imprudent, and was tempted to discard even that external decency which her station in the world had made her assume. She would have compromised herself for him with any publicity he might have chosen to exact. But she had never been able to beguile him into any sort of declaration. When he most felt the danger of her attraction, when he was nearest forgetting honour and decency, nearest submitting, the memory of his wife saved him. He recovered his coolness; he drew back from the abyss. Once or twice she was tempted to throw the name of Vassia Kazán between them and watch its effect; but she refrained — she knew so little!
‘You will not take me to Romaris?’ she said, for the hundredth time, one evening, as they rode towards St. Germain’s.
He laughed.
‘Cousinette! if you and I went off to Finisterre you will confess that we should make a pretty paragraph for the papers, and Count Stefan would have a very good right to run me through the lungs.’
‘Stefan!’ she echoed, with contempt. ‘It would be the first time he ever —— Besides, you have had duels; you are not afraid of them; and, yet again, besides I do not see what harm we should do if we looked at your chouans and chasse-marées for a few days. No one need even know it.’
She spoke quite innocently, but her black eyes watched him with the ‘Teufelinne’ cunning and passion. He caught the look. He put his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat, where a letter of his wife’s was lying.
‘It is out of the question,’ he said, almost rudely. ‘I have no wish to furnish Figaro with so good a jest. Romaris,’ he added, with a smile, ’is of course at your service, like all I possess, if you are so bent upon seeing its desolation. But you must pardon my receiving you by deputy, in the person of the curé, who is seventy years old and is the son of a fisherman.’
She cut her mare across the ears with a fierce gesture and galloped away from him. Sabran as he galloped after her thought with a vague apprehension, ‘Why does she dwell on Romaris? Does she suspect that I abhor the place? Can she have seen anything in my looks or in my words that has raised any doubts in her?’ But he told himself that this was impossible. As she rode her heart swelled with rage and mortification. There were many men in the world who would have been happy to go at her call to Breton wilds, or any other solitude; and he refused her, bluntly, coldly, because away there in the heart of Austria a woman, who was the mother of his children, span, and read, and said her prayers, and led her stupid, blameless, stately life! He escaped her just because that woman lived! All that hot, cruel caprice which she called love fastened upon him, and swore that it would not be denied. She had a sense of a grand white figure which stood for ever betwixt him and her. She brought herself almost to believe that it was Wanda von Szalras who wronged her.
Two nights later she was present at the last night of a gay comic opera which had made all Paris laugh ever since the first fogs of winter; a dazzling little opera, with a stage crowded by Louis Treize costumes, and music that went as trippingly as a shepherdess’s feet in a pastoral. Sabran went to her box after a dinner-party which he had given to a score of men. She looked well, in a gown of many shades of yellow, which few women could have braved, but which suited her night-like eyes and her pearly skin; she had deep yellow roses, natural ones, in her bosom and hair.
‘I am flattered that you wear my yellow roses,’ he murmured.
‘If you had sent me white ones you would have outraged the spirit of Wanda.’
He made an impatient movement.
‘When are you going home?’ she said, suddenly.
‘Soon!’ he answered, with the same impatience.
‘Soon means anything, from an hour to a year. Besides, you have said it for the last six weeks.’
‘Do you go to Noisettiers?’
‘Of course I go to Noisettiers; you can come there if you please. I am more hospitable than you.’
He was silent. Noisettiers was a little place on the Norman coast, which Stefan Brancka had given to her on his marriage; a pleasure-house, with Swiss roofs, Cairene windows, Italian balconies and a Persian court, which was bowered amongst lime-trees and filbert trees, near Villeville, and had been the scene of much riotous midsummer gaiety when she had filled it with Parisians and Russians.
‘You are always too good to me,’ murmured Sabran, in the meaningless compliment of usage, as other men entered her box. But she knew by the coldness of his eyes, by the slightness of his smile, that he would no more go to Noisettiers than to Romaris.
‘If Wanda had only remained here,’ she thought angrily, opening and shutting her tortoiseshell fan, ‘he would have done whatever I had chosen. Men are mere children; thwart them and they pine.
‘I suppose,’ she said aloud to him, ‘you will have your own house-parties at Hohenszalras, as stiff as a minuet, crammed with grand dukes and grand duchesses, all decorum and dignity, all ennui and etiquette? By-the-by, are you restored again to the Emperor’s good graces?’
‘It is not likely that I shall be so,’ replied Sabran, who always dreaded the subject. ‘If ever I be so fortunate I shall owe it to the influence Wanda possesses.’
‘Why did you offend him?’ she said, bending her inquisitive glance upon him.
‘All sovereigns are offended when not obeyed. We have discussed this so often. Need we discuss it again in a theatre?’
‘You are very impenetrable,’ she said. ‘Your rule of conduct must follow the lines of M. de. Nothomb’s ‘il ne faut jamais se brouiller, ni se familiariser, avec qui que ce soit: c’est le secret de durer.’
‘M. de Nothomb only meant his rule to apply to his own sex,’ replied Sabran. ‘With yours, unless a man be either familiarisé or brouillé, his life must be dull and his experience small.’
‘Which will you be with me?’ she said, with significance. ‘The choice is open.’
He understood that the words contained a menace.
‘I am your cousin and your humble servitor,’ he said with gallantry, giving his place up to a young Spanish noble.
‘Take me home,’ she said to him an hour later, before the last scene of the opera. ‘Come to supper. I told them to have ortolans and bisque. One is always hungry after a theatre, and we must have a last long talk, since you go to your duties and I to my sea-bathing.’
He desired to refuse; he dreaded her inquisitiveness and her solicitation; but she had a magic about her, she subdued him to her side even while he mentally resisted it. The fleshly charm of the ‘Teufelinne’ was potent as he wrapped her cloak about her and touched the yellow roses as he fastened it. Almost in silence he entered her carriage, and drove beside her to her house. She was silent also, affecting to yawn and be tired, but by the gleam of the lamp he saw her great black eyes glowing in the darkness, as he had seen those of a jaguar in the forests of America glow, as it watched to seize a sleeping lizard or unweary capybara.
The few streets were soon traversed by her rapid Russian horses, and together they entered the little hotel, with its strong perfume of orange flowers and jessamine from the garden about it. The midsummer stars were brilliant overhead; he looked up at them, pausing on the threshold.
‘You are thinking how they shine on Wanda?’ she said, with the laugh he hated. ‘Probably they do nothing of the kind. I dare say she is wrapped in fog and cloud: those are the joys of the heights.’
The little supper was perfectly prepared, and served with a fine claret and some tokayer; the lights burned mellowly in the transparent gourds; the windows were open, the moonlight touched the great gold birds, the silver lilies on the walls. She had studied how to live and how to please. She held that love was born as much out of scenic effects as of the senses. In her own way she was a true artist. She had left him a few moments to change her attire to a tea-gown, which was one cloud and cascade of lace from head to foot; the yellow roses still nestled at her breast.
Stretched on a divan of oriental stuff, she put out her hand for a cigar he lighted for her, and said with a little smile:
‘You cannot say I do not know how to live.’
A brutal response rose to his lips; she did not know how to bridle her life: but he could not say it. He murmured a compliment, and added: ‘What a supreme artist the theatre has lost by your being born with a Countess’s couronne!’
‘Yes,’ she said, with her eyes on the rings of smoke that her crimson lips parted to send upward. ‘Sometimes when Stefan does not give me liberty, or Egon does not pay my accounts, I make them both tremble by a threat that I will go on the stage. I should certainly draw all Paris and all Vienna too. But perhaps it is too late; in a few more years I shall have to marry my daughters. Can you realise that? I am sure I cannot. Now it will suit Wanda perfectly to do that, and her daughter is not three years old; she is always so fortunate.’
He listened impatiently.
‘If we left Wanda’s name alone it might be better. Did you bring me to supper to talk of her?’
‘No; she is your Madonna, I know. One must not be sacrilegious, but one cannot always worship. You do not touch the tokayer; it came from the Kaiser; you are always so abstemious — you irritate me.’
She poured out some of the wine, into a jewel-like goblet of Venice, and gave it him and made him drink it. She sat up on her divan and leaned towards him; the breeze from the garden stirred the laces of her gown and made the golden roses nod.
Wine openeth the heart of man,’ she cried gaily. ‘Open yours and tell me frankly why you refused to go to Russia? We are not in a theatre now.’
‘Are we not?’ he said, with the smile which she feared as her greatest foe. ‘Whether or not, I fear I must refuse to please you; the matter lies between me and — the Emperor.’
She remarked the hesitation which made him pause before the last word.
‘Between him and Egon,’ she thought; but after all, what was the secret to her except as a means of influence over him. She believed that she had here present subtler and surer methods of influence which could attain their end without coercion.
She ceased to pursue the theme, and grew gentle and winning; she felt that he was on the defensive. He had come weakly enough into the very heart of temptation, but he was on his guard against her sorceries. Lying back amongst her cushions she amused him with that gay and discursive chatter of which she had the secret, and which imperceptibly induced him to relax his vigilance and to feel her charm. There was that about, her which made all scruples seem ridiculous; there was a contagion of levity and mockery in her which awakened in him the cynicism of earlier years, and made him only heed the marvellous force of seduction of which she was mistress.
‘You ought to be ambitious,’ she continued softly. ‘I think you might achieve any eminence if you chose to seek it.’
‘Surely I have enough blessings from fortune not to tempt it by that last infirmity?’
‘You mean you have married a very rich aristocrat,’ she said drily. ‘Oh, yes; you have made one of the finest marriages in Europe; but that is not quite the same thing as “winning off your own hand.” It is a lucky coup, like breaking the bank at roulette, but it cannot give you the same feeling that a successful soldier or a successful politician has, nor the same eminence. Indeed, I am not sure that your wife’s possession of every possible good and great thing has not prevented you gathering laurels for yourself. You have dropped into a nest lined with rose-leaves; to have fallen on the rocks might have been better. Do you know,’ she added, with a little smile, ‘if I had been your wife I should have given you no rest until you had become the foremost man of the empire. I should not have cared about horses and peasants and children; but I should have loved you.’
He moved uneasily, conscious of the implied satire upon his wife, conscious also of a vibration of intense passion in the last words. He remained silent.
He knew well that had she been his wife, she would have been as false to him as she was false to Stefan Brancka. But the words sent a thrill through him half of emotion, half of repugnance. There was little light on the divan where she reclined, the dewy darkness of the garden was behind her; he could see the outlines of her form, the glister of rings on her hands, and jewels at her throat, the shine of her eyes watching him ardently.
His heart beat with a certain excitation; he vaguely felt that some hour of fate had come.
They were as utterly alone as though they had been in a desert; no one of her household would have ventured to approach that room without a summons from her. A little drummer in silver beat twelve strokes upon his drum, which was a clock. A nightingale was singing in the Cape jessamine beneath one of the casements. The light was low and soft, so faint that the moonbeams could be seen where they strayed over the cranes and lilies on the wall. She said to herself once more: ‘Il faut brusquer la chose.’ If she let him go now he would escape her for ever.
Ever and again there came to him the memory of his wife, but he shrank from it as he would have shrunk from seeing her in a gambling den. It seemed almost a profanity to remember her here. He longed to rise and get away, yet he desired to remain. He knew that every moment increased his danger, and yet he prolonged those moments with irresistible pleasure. Every gesture, glance, and breath of this woman was provocative and alluring, yet he thought as he felt her power always the same thing— ‘ihr seyd eine Teufelinne.’ Willingly he would have embraced her and then killed her, that she might no more haunt him and do no more harm on earth.
As he sat with his face half averted from her she gazed at him with her burning, covetous eyes; the droop of his eyelids, the curves of his lips, the fairness of his features all seemed to her more beautiful than they had ever done; the very disquiet and coldness that were in them only allured her the more. She leaned nearer still and took his wrist in her fingers.
‘Come to Noisettiers,’ she murmured.
‘No,’ he said, sharply and sternly, but he did not withdraw his hand.
‘Why not?’ she said, with her whole person swayed towards him as by an irresistible impulse. ‘Why do you affect to be of ice? You are not indifferent to me. You only obey what you think a law of honour. Why do you try to do that? There is only one law — love.’
He strove to draw away from him, but feebly, the clinging of her warm fingers. The caress of her breath on his cheek, the scent of the roses in her breast intoxicated him for the instant. She bent nearer and nearer, and still held him closely in her slender hands, which were as strong as steel.
‘You love me?’ she murmured, so low that it scarce stirred the air, and yet had all the potency of hell in it. A shudder went over him;. the baseness of voluptuous impulse and the revulsion of conscious shamefulness shook his strength as though it were a reed in the wind. For a moment his arms enclosed her, his heart beat against hers; then he thrust her away from him and rose to his feet.
‘Love, you? No, a thousand times, no!’ he said with unutterable scorn. ‘You are a shameless temptress; you can rouse the beast that lies hid in all men. I despise you, I detest you — I could kiss you and kill you in a breath; but love! — how dare you speak the word? Mine is hers; I am hers: if I sinned to her with you I would strangle you when I awoke!’
All the fierceness and the barbaric strength of the blood of desert and of steppe broke up in him from underneath the courtesy and calm of many long years of culture. He was born of men who had slain their mistresses for a glance, and ravished; their captives in war, and yielded them to no release but death, and his hereditary instincts broke the bonds of custom and of habit, and spoke in him now as a wild animal breaks its bars and leaps up in frank brutality of wrath. He thrust her backward and backward from him, rose to his feet, wrenched aside with rude hand the eastern stuffs that hung before the door, and left her presence and her house before any power of voice or movement had come back to her.
As he pushed past the waiting servants in the vestibule, and went through the courtyard and the gateway, he looked up once again at the stars shining overhead.
‘Wanda! Wanda!’ he said with a deep breath, as men may call in their extremity on God.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Within half an hour he had given a few orders to his major-domo, and had taken a special train to overtake the express, already for on its way that night towards Strasburg. No steam could fly as fast as his own wishes flew. Never had he felt happier than as the train rushed across the windy level country of the north-east, bearing him back to the peace and tenderness and honour which waited for him at Hohenszalrasburg. He was content with himself, and the future smiled on him. He slept soundly all that night, undisturbed by the panting and oscillating of the carriage, and visited by tranquil dreams. He did not break the journey till he reached S. Johann. The weather in the German lands was wild and rough. The sound of the winds and rushing rains brought the remembrance of that year of the floods which had been the sweetest of his life. Amidst the Austrian Alps the cold was still keen, and the brisk buoyant air and the strength, that seems always to come on winds that blow over glaciers and snow-fields were welcome to him, like a familiar and trusty friend. The servants who met him in answer to his message, the horses who knew him and whinnied with pleasure, the summits of the Glöckner, on which a noon-day sun was shining, all were delightful to him: he thought of the Catullian ‘laugh in the dimples of home.’
