Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 522
‘I desire to offend her,’ said Sabran, with a vibration of intense passion in his voice. ‘No; I will not write to her. She is a woman who has studied Talleyrand; she would hang you if she had a single line from your pen. If I wrote, God knows what evil she would not twist out of it. She hates me and she hates my wife. It must be war to the knife.’
Greswold bowed and went out, asking no more.
Sabran passed the next three hours in a state of almost uncontrollable impatience.
It was the pleasant custom at Hohenszalras for everyone to have their first meal in their own apartments at any hour that they chose, but he and Wanda usually breakfasted together by choice in the little Saxe room, when the weather was cold. The cold without made the fire-glow dancing on the embroidered roses, and the gay Watteau panels, and the carpet of lamb-skins, and the coquettish Meissen shepherds and shepherdesses, seem all the warmer and more cheerful by contrast. Here he had been received on the first morning of his visit to Hohenszalras; here they had breakfasted in the early days after their marriage; here they had a thousand happy memories.
Into that room he could not go this morning. He sent his valet with a message to his wife, saying that he would remain in his own room, being fatigued from the sport of the previous day. When they brought him his breakfast he could not touch it. He drank a little strong coffee and a great glass of iced water; he could take nothing else. He paced up and down his own chambers in almost unendurable suspense. If he had been wholly innocent he would have been less agitated; but he could not pardon himself the mad imprudences and follies with which he had pandered to the vanities and provoked the passions of this hateful woman. If she refused to go he almost resolved to tell all as it had passed to his wife, not sparing himself. The three or four hours that went by after Greswold had left him appeared to him like whole, long, tedious days.
The men came as usual to him for his orders as to horses, sport, or other matters, but he could not attend to them; he hardly even heard what they said, and dismissed them impatiently. When at last the heavy, slow tread of the old physician sounded in the corridor, he went eagerly to his door, and himself admitted Greswold.
The Professor spread out his hands with a deprecating gesture.
‘I have done my best. But may I never pass such a quarter of an hour again! She will not go.’
‘She will not?’ Sabran’s face flushed darkly, his eyes kindled with deep wrath. ‘She defies me, then?’
‘She evidently deems herself strong enough to defy you. She laughed at me; she spoke to me as though I were one of the scullions or the sweepers; she menaced me as if we were still in the Middle Ages. In a word, she is not to be moved by me. She bade me tell you that if you wish her out of your wife’s house you must have the courage to say so yourself.’
‘Courage!’ echoed Sabran. ‘It is not courage that will be any match for her; it is not courage that will rid one of her; she knows the difficulty in which I am. I cannot betray her to her husband. No man can ever do that. I cannot risk a quarrel, a scandal, a duel with the relatives of my wife. I cannot put her out of the house as I might do if she had no relationship with the Vàsàrhely and the Szalras. She knows that; she relies upon it.’
‘My lord,’ said the physician very gently, ‘will you pardon me one question? Is the offence done to the Countess von Szalras by Madame Brancka altogether on her side? Are you wholly (pardon me the word) blameless?’
‘Not altogether,’ said Sabran, frankly, with a deep colour on his face. ‘I have been culpable of folly, but in the sense you mean I have been quite guiltless. If I had been guilty in that sense, I would not have returned to Hohenszalras!’
‘I thank you for so much confidence in me,’ said Greswold. ‘I only wanted to know so far, because I would suggest that you should send for Prince Egon and simply tell him as much as you have told me. Egon Vàsàrhely is the soul of honour, and he has great authority over the members of his own family. He will make his sister-in-law leave here without any scandal.’
‘There are reasons why I cannot take Prince Vàsàrhely into my confidence in this matter,’ said Sabran, with hesitation. ‘That is not to be thought of for a moment. Is there no other way?’
‘See her yourself. She imagines you will not, perhaps she thinks you dare not, say these things to her yourself.’
‘See her alone? What will my wife suppose?’
‘Would it not be better frankly to say to my lady that you have need to see her so? Pardon me, my dear lord, but I am quite sure that the straight way is the best to take with our Countess Wanda. The only thing which she might very bitterly resent, which she might perhaps never forgive, would be concealment, insincerity, want of good faith. If you will allow me to counsel you, I would most strongly advocate your saying honestly to her that you know that of Madame Brancka which makes you hold her an unfit guest here, and that you are about to see that lady alone to induce her to leave the castle without open rupture.’
Sabran listened, stung sharply in his conscience by every one of the simple and honest words. When Greswold spoke of his wife as ready to pardon any offences except those of falseness and concealment his soul shrank as the flesh shrinks from the touch of caustic.
‘You are right,’ he said with effort. ‘But, my dear Greswold, though I am not absolutely guilty, as you were led for a moment to think, I am not altogether absolutely blameless. I was sensible of the fatal attraction of an unscrupulous person. I was never faithless to my wife, either in spirit or act, but you know there are miserable sensual temptations which counterfeit passion, though they do not possess it; there are unspeakable follies from which men at no age are safe. I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind, and throw the blame upon a woman; but it is certain that the old answer is often still the true one, “The woman tempted me.” I am not wholly innocent; I played with fire and was surprised, like an idiot, when it burnt me. I would say as much as this to my wife (and it is the whole truth) if it were only myself who would be hurt or lowered by the telling of it; but I cannot do her such dishonour as I should seem to do by the mere relation of it. She esteems me as so much stronger and wiser than I am; she has so very noble an ideal of me; how can I pull all that down with my own hands, and say to her, “I am as weak and unstable as any one of them”?’
Greswold listened and smiled a little.
‘Perhaps the Countess knows more than you think, dear sir; she is capable of immense self-control, and her feeling for you is not the ordinary selfish love of ordinary women. If I were you I should tell her everything. Speak to her as you speak to me.’
‘I cannot!’
‘That is for you to judge, sir,’ said the old physician.
‘I cannot!’ repeated Sabran, with a look of infinite distress. ‘I cannot tell my wife that any other woman has had influence over me, even for five seconds. I think it is S. Augustine who says that it is possible, in the endeavour to be truthful, to convey an entirely false impression. An utterly false impression would be conveyed to her if I made her suppose that any other than herself had ever been loved by me in any measure since my marriage; and how should one make such a mind as hers comprehend all the baseness and fever and folly of a man’s mere caprice of the senses? It would be impossible.’
Greswold was silent.
‘You do not see how difficult even such a confession as that would be,’ Sabran insisted, with irritation. ‘Were you in my place you would feel as I feel.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Greswold. ‘But I believe not. I believe, sir, that you underrate the knowledge of the world and of humanity which the Countess von Szalras possesses, and that you also underrate the extent of her sympathy and the elasticity of her pardon.’
Sabran sighed restlessly.
‘I do not know what to do. One thing only I know — the wife of Stefan Brancka shall not remain here.’
‘Then, sir, you must be the one to say so or to write it. She will heed no one except yourself. Perhaps it is natural. I am nothing more in the sight of a great lady like that than Hubert or Otto would be. She does not think I am of fit station to go to her as your ambassador.’
‘You would disown her if she were your daughter!’ said Sabran, with bitter contempt. ‘Well, I will see her; I will say a word to the Countess von Szalras first.’
‘Say all,’ suggested Greswold.
Sabran shook his head and passed quickly through the suite of sleeping and dressing chambers to the little Saxe salon, where he thought it possible that Wanda might still be. He found her there alone. She had opened one of the casements and was speaking with a gardener. The autumnal scent of wet earth and fallen leaves came into the room; the air without was cold, but sunbeams were piercing the mist; the darkness of the cedars and the yews made the airy and brilliant grace of the eighteenth-century room seem all the brighter. She herself, in a sacque of brocaded silk, with quantities of old French lace falling down it, seemed of the time of those gracious ladies that were painted on the panels. She turned as she heard his step, a red rose in her fingers which she had just gathered from the boughs about the windows.
‘The last rose of the year, I am afraid, for I never count those of the hothouses,’ she said, as she brought it to him.
He kissed her hand as he took it from her; he suddenly perceived the expression of distress and of preoccupation on his face.
‘Is there anything the matter?’ she asked; ‘did you overstrain yourself yesterday on the hills?’
‘No, no,’ he said quickly; then added, with hesitation: ‘Wanda, I have to see Madame Brancka alone this morning. Will you be angered, or will you trust me?’
For a moment her eyebrows drew together, and the haughtier, colder look that he dreaded came on her face; the look which came there when her children disobeyed or her stewards offended her, The look which told how, beneath the womanly sweetness and serenity of her temper, were the imperious habit and the instincts of authority inherited from centuries of dominant nobility. In another instant or two she had controlled her impulse of displeasure. She said gravely, but very gently:
‘Of course I trust you. You know best what you wish, what you are called on to do. Never think that you need give explanation, or ask permission to or of me. That is not the man’s part in marriage.’
‘But I would not have you suspect—’
‘I never suspect,’ she said, more haughtily. ‘Suspicion degrades two people. Listen, my love. In Paris I saw, I heard more than you thought. The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. I neither suspected you nor spied upon you. I left you free. You returned to me, and I knew then that I had done wisely. I could never comprehend the passion and pleasure that some women take in hawks only kept by a hood, in hounds only held by a leash. What is allegiance worth unless it be voluntary? For the rest, if the wife of my cousin be a worse woman than I think, do not tell me so. I do not desire to know it. She was the idol of my dead brother’s youth; she once entered this house as his bride. Her honour is ours.’
A flush passed over her husband’s face. ‘You are the noblest woman that lives,’ he said, in a hushed and reverent voice. He stooped almost timidly and kissed her; then he bowed very low, as though she were a queen and he her courtier, and left her.
‘That devil shall leave her house before another night is down!’ he said in his own thoughts, as he took his way across the great building to Olga Brancka’s apartments. He had the red autumn rose, she had gathered in his hand as he went. Instinctively he slipped it within his coat as he drew near the doors of the guests’ corridor; it was too sacred for him to have it made the subject of sneer or of a smile.
Wanda remained in the little Watteau room. A certain sense of fear — a thing so unfamiliar, so almost unknown to her — came upon her as the flowered satin of the door-hangings fell behind him, and his steps passed away down the passages without. The bright pictured panels of the shepherds in court suits, and the milkmaids in hoops and paniers, smiling amidst the sunny landscapes of their artificial Arcadia; the gay and courtly figures of the Meissen china, and the huge bowls filled with the gorgeous deep-hued flowers of the autumn season; the singing of a little wren perched on a branch of a yew, the distant trot of ponies’ feet as the children rode along the unseen avenues, the happy barking of dogs that were going with them, the smell of wet grass and of leaves freshly dropped, the swish of a gardener’s birch-broom sweeping the turf beneath the cedars — all these remained on her mind for ever afterwards, with that cruel distinctness which always paints the scene of our last happy hours in such undying colours on the memory of the brain. She never, from that day, willingly entered the pretty chamber, with its air of coquetry and stateliness, and its little gay court of porcelain people. She had gathered there the last rose of the year.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
He was so passionately angered against the invader of his domestic peace, he was so profoundly touched by the nobility and faith of his wife, that he went to Olga Brancka’s presence without fear or hesitation, possessed only by a man’s natural and honest indignation at an insult passed upon what he most venerated upon earth.
One of his own servants, who was seated in the corridor, in readiness for the Countess Brancka’s orders, flung wide the door which opened into the vestibule of the suite of guest-chambers allotted to this most hated guest, and said to his master:
‘The most noble lady bade me say that she waited for your Excellency.’
‘The brazen wretch!’ murmured Sabran, as he crossed the ante-chamber, and entered the small saloon adjoining it; a room hung with Flemish tapestries, and looking out on the Szalrassee.
Olga Brancka was seated in one of the long low tapestried chairs; she did not move or speak as he approached; she only looked up with a smile in her eyes. He wished she would have risen in fury; it would have made his errand easier. It was difficult to say to her in cold blood that which he had to say. But he loathed her so utterly as he saw her indolent and graceful posture, and the calm smile in her eyes, that he was indifferent how he should hurt her, what outrage he should offer to her. He went straight up to where she sat, and without any preface said, almost brutally:
‘Madame Brancka, you affected not to understand my message through Greswold; you will not misunderstand me now when I repeat that you must leave the house of my wife before another night.’
‘Ah!’ said Olga Brancka, with nonchalance, moving the Indian bangles on her wrist, and gazing calmly into the air. ‘I am to leave the house of your wife — of my cousin, who was once my sister-in-law? And will you tell me why?’
Sabran flushed with passion.
‘You have a short memory, I believe, Countess; at least your lovers have said so in Paris,’ he answered recklessly. ‘But I think if your remembrance could carry you back to the last evening I had the honour to see you in your hotel, you will not force me to the brutality and coarseness of further explanation.’
‘Ah!’ she said tranquilly once more, in an unvaried tone, clasping her hands behind her head and leaning both backward against the cushions of her chair, whilst her eyes still smiled with an abstracted gaze. ‘How scrupulous you are about trifles. Why not about great things, my friend? What does Holy Writ tell us? One strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. I have heard a professor of Hebrew say that the Latin translation is not correct, but — —’
‘Madame,’ said Sabran sternly, controlling his rage with difficulty, ‘pardon me, but I can have no trifling. I give you time and occasion to make any excuses that you please; but once for all, you will leave here before nightfall.’
‘Ah!’ said Olga Brancka, for the third time; ‘and if I do not choose to comply with your desire, how do you intend to enforce it?’
‘That will be my affair.’
‘You will make a scene with my husband? That will be theatrical and useless. Stefan is one of those men who are always swearing at their wives in private, but in public never admit that their wives are otherwise than saints. Those men do not mind being cheated, but they will never let others say that they are so: amour-propre d’homme.’
Sabran could have struck her. He reined in his wrath with more difficulty every moment.
‘I have no doubt your psychology is correct, and has taught you all the weaknesses of our idiotic sex,’ he said bitterly. ‘But you must pardon me if I cannot spare time to listen to your experiences. The Countess von Szalras is aware that I have come to visit you, and I tell you frankly that I will not stay more than ten minutes in your rooms.’
‘You have told her?’
A wicked gleam flashed from under her half-shut eyelids.
‘I would have told her — told her all,’ said Sabran, ‘but she stopped me with my words unspoken. What think you she said, madame, of you, who are the vilest enemy, the only enemy, she has? That if you had graver faults than she knew she wished not to hear them. You were her relative, and once had been her brother’s wife.’
His voice had sternness and strong emotion in it. He looked to see her touched to some shame, some humiliation. But she only laughed a little languidly, not changing her attitude.
‘Poor Wanda!’ she said softly, ‘she was always so exaggerated — so terribly moyen âge and heroic!’
The veins swelled on his forehead with his endeavour to keep down his rage. He did not wish to honour this woman by bringing his wife’s name into their contention, and he strove not to forget the sex of his antagonist.
‘Madame Brancka,’ he said, with a coldness and calmness which it cost him hard to preserve, ‘this conversation is of no use that I can see. I came to tell you a hard fact — simply this, that you must leave Hohenszalras within the next few hours. As the master of this house, I insist on it.’
‘But how will you accomplish it?’
‘I will compel you to go,’ said Sabran, between his teeth, ‘if I disgrace you publicly before all my household. The fault will not be mine. I have endeavoured to spare you; but if you be so dead to all feeling and decency as to think it possible that the same roof can shelter you and my wife, I must undeceive you, however roughly.’
