Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 651
Yet all the manhood in him told him that to continue to live under the same roof with a woman whose every word was insult to him, would degrade him utterly and for ever in his eyes and in her own. And he had loved her too passionately for it to be possible for him to continue to dwell in that passive enmity, that alienation covered with ostensible cordiality and external courtesy, with which so many men and women deceive society to the end of their lives, and sustain a hollow truce, of which the hatefulness and the untruth are only visible to themselves and to their children. Such insincerity, such hypocrisy, as this, were to him altogether impossible. Sooner than lead such a life, he felt that he would end his days with his own hand, and leave mankind to blame him as they would: they would not blame her.
On her part, unknown to him, she watched him with a new interest, bitter, painful, and more absorbing than any which had ever had power upon her; a feeling of disdain, of scorn, of impatience, of regret, of forgiveness, of tenderness, all inextricably mingled in an emotion stronger than any she had known. When she thought of him as in any way with however much indifference as the lover of Damaris, she was conscious of an intense disgust, of a wondering scorn, which were not wise or cold, or temperate with the judicial severity of her usual judgments, but were merely and strongly human, and born of human emotions. They humiliated her with the consciousness of their own humanity, and the uncontrollable bitterness of the sentiments which they aroused in her. Jealousy it could have scarce been called. For jealousy implies a recognition of equality, a fear of usurpation, and these to her haughty soul were impossible in face of a peasant girl, a déclassée, a waif and stray, with no place in the world save such as Othmar might choose to give her. Jealousy in this sense, jealousy intellectual and moral it was not; but jealousy physical it was. She thought and hated to think of the personal beauty of Damaris; she thought and hated to think of all those summer hours in her own house in which that beauty had been helpless and dependent before him. Like all women who know much of the natures of men, she knew that the senses were often beyond control, when the heart in no way went with them. She had always thought that it would never matter to her whither such undisciplined vagaries might lead him. She had always felt with the disdain of a nature over which physical desires have little power, that wherever his caprice took him there he might go for aught that she would say to restrain him.
She was startled to find that it did pain her, that it did revolt her, to believe that this disloyalty had been done her, that this child had had from him even the slightest, most soulless kind of love.
Her world had never seen her more full of wit, and grace, and brilliancy, than in those days when in her inmost soul she suffered more mental pain and doubt than she had ever known. Life had become touched with humiliation, indignation, emotion of a complex kind, contemptuous anger, and a vague remorse; but it had thereby become to her once more a thing of interest and of vitality, her languor had been startled, her self-love shocked, her whole nature stirred. She gave no sign of it that any one, either foe or friend, could read, but she was conscious that these emotions which she had ridiculed in others could become the dominant forces and tyrannical preoccupation even of her own thoughts and life.
A sensation of failure, of loss, of humiliation, was always with her; not so much for this fact of what she believed to be his infidelity, as for her own consciousness that she herself had been untrue to all the theories and philosophies of her existence, that she had failed to guide their lives into that calm haven of friendship and mutual comprehension which had always seemed to her the only possibly decent grave for a dead passion; and had failed also in this crisis of their fates to preserve that wisdom, patience, and composure, which can alone lend dignity to the woman who sees her power passed away.
All her life long she had woven the most ingenious and elaborate theories as to the failure of men and women to secure fidelity and peace; she had reasoned with perfect philosophy on the causes of that failure, and turned to ridicule that childish passion and that fretful inaptitude with which the great majority meet those inevitable changes of the affections and the character which time brings to all. But now, she herself, having been met with such changes, had done no better, and been no wiser than they all. She had suffered like them, she had made reproaches like them, she had allowed indignation and offence to hasten her into anger which could only gratify her enemies and all the gaping world.
‘Any fool could have done what I have done!’ she thought, with bitter impatience against herself: any fool could have reproached him, and denounced him, and placed him in such a position that out of sheer manliness he had no choice left but to reiterate the untruth once told, and go on in the path once taken.
Yet she knew that were it to be done again, again she would do the same. When she thought of him as the lover of this child, she was only conscious of the mere foolish, irrational, personal, bitterness of emotion which any other feebler woman would have felt.
Had she not said under the oaktrees yonder in her Court of Love, that inconstancy, being only involuntary, should be blamed by none: had she not again and again said and thought that what a woman or a lover cannot keep, they well deserve to lose: had she not quoted from the poets and the philosophers of a thousand years, to prove by a thousand lines of wisdom that it is ‘not under our control to love or not to love:’ and was this not most supreme truth?
Why then in face of the first faithlessness which she had ever known, had she had no better or wiser impulse in her than that of anger? — such stupid, witless, unwise anger, as Jeanne in the kitchens would feel against Jeannot in the stables. What use were the most subtle intellect, the most delicate and penetrating perception, the most intimate and accurate knowledge of human nature, if all these only resulted in producing, under trial, such primitive instincts, and such simple emotions, as would exist in the untutored brain and the rude breast of any peasant woman passing under the trees of the park yonder with her herd of milch cows, or her flock of sheep? If the higher intelligence could not reach a nirvaña of perfect tolerance, of perfect comprehension, of perfect indifference, of what avail were its culture and its pride?
All men were inconstant; she knew that. It was not their fault; they were made so. She believed that, had he told her frankly of his frailties, she would have been perfectly indifferent and indulgent to them. It was the long deception and concealment which had seemed to her so contemptible. ‘Such a coward — such a coward!’ she thought bitterly. Cowardice was to her the one unpardonable sin.
As she and Béthune walked on the seventh evening before dinner through the outer gardens, where these joined the woods, they chanced to see in the distance the same Lubin and Lisette, whom they had seen as lovers two years before, and who had been wedded with many gifts and much gaiety in the August weather a week or two after the sitting of the Court of Love. The man was walking far ahead this time; the woman lagged behind; the cows were the same happy creatures, serene and mild, going through the sun and shadow, pausing to crop a mouthful of sweet grass between the beechen banks; but the lovers were only now a lout who whistled and smoked, a scold who fumed and wept.
‘Let us ask how the idyl ends,’ said the Lady of Amyôt. ‘It is easy to see that it is ended.’
‘Ah, Madame,’ said the woman being interrogated, ‘voilà qu’il regarde déjà la petite Flore!’
Her châtelaine laughed with a certain bitter tone in her laughter.
‘“Voilà qu’il regarde déjà la petite Flore,”’ she repeated; ‘and she is so stupid that she knows no better than to be angry!’
Béthune glanced at her wistfully. After a moment’s silence he said in a low tone:
‘There are those who never look — elsewhere.’
She smiled, knowing his meaning, and touched by the remembrance of his long constancy.
‘Ah, my dear friend,’ she said, with some pang of conscience, ‘I have had too much affection given me in my life, and perhaps I have given too little.’
As she walked back through the gardens, under the long arcades covered with tea roses and the banksian creepers, she thought with that ridicule of herself, as of others, which was always sure to succeed any emotion:
‘Nous voilà en plein mélodrame! — the contrast of the husband’s infidelity makes the lover’s fidelity touch the hard heart of the deserted wife! We are all grouped ready for the stage of the Gymnase!’
She seemed absurd to herself in her anger and her humiliation. She had always been so contemptuous of life when it grew melodramatic, although so impatient of it while it remained dull.
Othmar watched her cross the gardens from where he stood in one of the windows of his library. Under the excuse of many letters to dictate to his secretaries, he had escaped for awhile from his guests.
It was near sunset, the light so clear and cool of earliest spring was shining on the terraces and rose walks, and clipped bay hedges of the garden to the south which had been left unaltered from the Valois time. The peacocks were moving up and down on the grass, the first swallows were wheeling above the glowing colour of the azalea thickets, a light breeze was blowing the spray of the fountains this way and that; he watched her as she came through the dewy green foliage and under the white and yellow tea roses; she wore a gown of white velvet, she had a high ivory handled cane, there was a white greyhound before her, and the graceful figure of Béthune at her side. He saw her gather one of the Maréchal Niel roses above her head, and fasten it in the bosom of her dress; Béthune said something to her; she gathered another and let him take it.
Othmar watched them with a pang.
‘If I died to-morrow I suppose she would give him her hand as she gives him that rose!’ he thought, and the thought was intolerable to him. ‘She thinks me faithless to her, and she does not care; she was angered for an instant; only that; then her days pass on the same; she has all her courtiers and friends about her; she does not need me, or miss me amongst them.’
And he watched her with eyes which studied her incomparable grace, her divine languor, her indolent movements, as though he saw them then for the first time; so great a quickener of sleeping love is the sting of a jealous fear.
But his heart was very weary. She had wounded, insulted, injured him, well nigh beyond forgiveness; she had dishonoured him with the secret observation of his actions and the open accusation of his falsehood. She had had him followed and tracked like a criminal, and had refused to believe his word, which all Europe honoured as the surety of unimpeached truth.
Greater insult surely no woman could do to any man.
And yet, if she would only say one word, he felt that he was ready to forget that she had done so; he was ashamed of his own weakness, but he knew that he would forgive everything: — and he reminded himself of his own offences to her without extenuation, willing to find in blame of himself excuse for herself.
He watched her now as she came slowly and smiling under the trellis of the roses: to look at her it seemed that she had no care, no regret, no desire.
‘And if I went out and shot myself to-night,’ he thought, as he watched the two figures pass on under the trellised roses, ‘she would have called Béthune to console her before the year was out?’
He believed it; but, man-like, the belief only gave her a stronger dominion over him.
He thought of some verses which he had read not long before, written by that poet who, more perfectly than any other, mirrors the dissatisfaction, the wistfulness, the intricate emotions, the unsatisfied passions of our time.
Que n’ai-je à te soumettre, ou bien à t’obéir?
Je te vouerais ma force ou te la ferais craindre:
Esclave ou maître, au moins je te pourrais contraindre
A me sentir ta chose, ou bien à me haïr.
J’aurais un jour connu l’insolite plaisir,
D’allumer dans ton cœur des soifs ou d’en éteindre,
De t’être nécessaire ou terrible, et d’atteindre,
Bon gré, mal gré, le cœur jusque là sans désir.
Esclave ou maître, au moins j’entrerais dans ta vie,
Par mes soins captivée, à mon joug réservée,
Tu ne pourrais me fuir, ni me laisser partir.
Mais je meurs sous tes yeux, loin de ton être intime,
Sans même oser crier, car ce droit, du martyr,
Ta douceur impeccable en frustre ta victime.
For seven years he had been always the nominal, sometimes the actual, possessor of her life, and yet he had never once known whether this woman whom he had possessed had ever had one moment of what could be called love for him! Many women had loved him for whom he had felt nothing; but by one of those strange and melancholy ironies of which life is so full the only women he had loved — the courtezan who had ruined his boyhood, and his wife who had ruined his manhood — had given themselves to him, without love.
He shut the window at which he stood, and turned away with a bitter sigh: — without her life would be for ever valueless to him.
Nadège and her servitor, unconscious of his observation of them, entered the house; it was the moment when people gathered in the conservatories for tea; the most pleasant hour of the twenty-four was spent thus amongst the flowers; often there was music in the music-room adjoining; the children usually came there with their pretty grace and gaiety, their long loose hair, their bright costumes, looking like larger butterflies under the fronds of the palms.
As she went towards her own apartments to rest there a little while before joining her guests and friends in the orchid-houses, one of her confidential servants brought her a note which had been sent by hand from Beaugency, and was marked urgent. She was about to send it unopened to her secretary, for letters wearied her and she seldom read them herself unless their superscription told her that they were of some especial interest, when she saw written in the corner of the envelope the name of Rosselin. She knew that it was the name of the great artist who had been the teacher of Damaris Bérarde.
She took the packet with her to her own rooms and once alone there opened it. There were two letters inside it. One was written in a feeble unformed hand, the words were ill-shaped, and the lines were uneven. The fingers which had traced them had never been very skilful in the management of the pen, being more used to guide the tiller ropes of a boat, or the handle of a scythe.
The characters were ill-writ and very pale, but she could read them; she knew even without reading them, that they came from Damaris; they were brief:
‘When you get this, Madame, I shall not be living. Then I think you will not be angered any more, and you will believe. Do not let him know, because it would pain him. I mean, do not let him learn that I sought this death myself. Perhaps it was wrong, but I saw no other way; I could not live any longer on his charity now that I know. Before, I did not know. I could not bear to live either without seeing him sometimes, and I should never see him. Nothing wants me except the dogs, and they will be happy on the farm here. My master would only be disappointed in me if I lived. The world would not care for me. I should not have any strength in me to make it care. I used to think that I had genius, but it is all dead in me, quite dead now; — perhaps it was only imagination, and the wish to be something I was not, and the mere love I had of the poets. Forgive me that I write to you; I want to beg you to believe. I would have given my life for him, but he never thought of me in that way. I pray you to make him happier. I wish I could have seen him once —— .’
The ill-written words ended abruptly, as though the pen which had written them had suddenly fallen from a hand too weak to hold it any more.
On an outside sheet was written in the fine clear writing of Rosselin:
‘She died last night as the moon rose. I write to you, Madame, instead of to your husband by her desire. You will tell him as much or as little as you choose. I had not seen her for four days. God pardon me for it! I shall never pardon myself. I had left her in anger because I could not persuade her to play before you at Amyôt, and in anger I had stayed away from her. When they sent for me I found her already dying. The woman of the house told me that she had been one day alone to Paris, and what had been done to her there this woman did not know, but on her return she was quite silent, and very feverish and strange. She wandered about the village and the fields, and would scarcely come into the house to bed. At one of the cottages a young child she had often played with was lying ill with diphtheria. Damaris remained day and night with him, and when he was dying kissed him on the mouth: she never confessed it to me, but I believe that she sought death that way, for I think life for some reason or other which I know not had become wholly intolerable to her. She suffered very much. I brought her all the aid that science could give her, but it was of no avail. She had no wish to live, I think. She talked often of her island, and of the sea, and of the boats. Latterly she could not speak at all, then she wrote to you. It is a hideous death: heaven spare you and yours the like. You feel no sorrow for anything they say, but I think you would have been sorry for her. Perhaps it is best so. The world would have broken her heart; it has no place in it for such dreams as hers were. To the last she bade me never to let your husband know. Her last thought was of him. He was very good to her, but a worse man would perhaps have injured her genius less. I know not what passed between her and you. I only know that she had seen you. Whether you said anything which made her despair of living I cannot tell; all she said when she became delirious, which she did become towards the end, was only this always: “She will believe now, she will believe now.” So I suppose you doubted her. I send you the few lines which she wrote three hours before she died when she could scarcely see. I have not read them myself. I think she would not wish me to do so. I am over eighty years old; it is hard to live so long only to see the last thing that one loves perish miserably. But she had genius, and the world hates it, so perhaps after all it is best as it is.’
