Othmar

by Ouida

This love of books had been a bond of sympathy between him and Othmar ever since one night in the green-room of the Français, when they had spoken of fifteenth-century Virgils; and to him the thoughts of Othmar had turned more than once since the problem of Damaris and her destiny had come before him. There was no one in all Europe who could discern the gold from the pinchbeck in human talent with such precision; no one who could more unerringly discriminate between the aspirations of genius and its capabilities, between the mere audacities of youth and the staying powers of true strength.

An absurd reluctance to speak of her, of which he was ashamed, and for which he would have assigned no definite reason even to himself, had made him indisposed to seek his old friend on such a subject; but it seemed to him, now that her soul was apparently set on the career which his wife's careless praise had suggested to her, no other way of life was so possible for her, or so likely to afford her interest, occupation and independence.

He had seen the life of the stage near enough to loathe it. The woman whom he had adored with all a boy's belief and passion, and who had been hired by his father's gold to do him the cruel service of destroying all belief in him, had been an actress, famous for the brief day of splendour which beauty without genius can gain in the cities of the world. He hated to imagine that the time might come when this child, full now of ideals of heroisms, of innocence and of faithfulness, might grow to be such a woman as Sara Vernon had been! Sara Vernon, who had now turned saint and dwelt in the odour of good works on her estates in Franche-Comté: the estates which had been his father's purchase-money of her.

But it seemed to him that he had no right to let his personal prejudices, his personal sentiments or sentimentality, stand between Damaris and any possibility of future independence, of future happiness which might open out before her through her natural gifts. He felt nothing for her except a great compassion and a passionless admiration, and he had a sense of indefinite self-blame and of infinite embarrassment for the position towards her into which circumstances had drifted him. It was not possible to retreat from it: he had become her only friend, her sole support; but the sense that to the world, and perhaps even to his wife, his too impulsive actions would bear a very different aspect, haunted him with a feeling which was foreboding rather than regret.

'Ah! my friend!' said Rosselin in some surprise, as he passed through the gate. 'Is it possible you are in Paris while Sirius reigns over the asphalte? It is charming and gracious of you to remember a decrepit old gardener. Come and sit by me in the shade here, and Pierre shall bring you the biggest of the nectarines. If Virgil could have tasted a nectarine! There may be doubts about every other form of progress, but there can be no manner of doubt that we have improved fruits since the Georgics, and wines.'

Othmar answered a little at random, and accepted the nectarine. The quick regard of Rosselin read easily that there was something in the air graver than their usual talk of rare editions and coming book-sales which his visitor desired to say to him, and with a sign dismissed the old servant to the strip of kitchen garden on the other side of the house.

Othmar made his narrative as brief, his own share in it as small, and the facts as prosaic as he could; but he could not divest them of a tinge of romance which he was ill-pleased to discover to the shrewd comprehension of the great artist who listened to him.

'Do what I will, tell it all how I may,' he thought angrily, 'how ridiculous I shall look to him, playing knight-errant like this!'

And as he related the story of Damaris to Rosselin he seemed in fancy to hear the voice of his wife behind him commenting in her delicate suggestive tones on his own exaggerated share in it. What she would say, and what the world would say, seemed to him to be said for both in the momentary smile which passed over Rosselin's face.