Othmar

by Ouida

It seemed to him impossible to tell her that for weeks his house had been the home of Damaris Bérarde without awaking all those ironies and all that disdain which were always so very near the surface in her nature that they were displayed upon the slightest provocation. He would certainly seem to her to have behaved with needless exaggeration, with uncalled-for chivalry. Paris was wide enough to furnish other asylums than his own house; his means were large enough and powerful enough to have obtained friends for a desolate girl without becoming her chief friend himself. Away from the pathos and charm of Damaris's fate, of her perfect trust in himself, and of her childish courage and candour of character, what he had done seemed even to him, himself, unnecessarily personal in its care of her. He did not regret it; he would not have done less if he had had to do it again; yet he was conscious that to induce his wife to see his actions in the light in which he honestly saw them would be difficult, probably impossible.

This day drifted by, and another, and another; and the name of Damaris did not pass his lips.

She had for him the sanctity of innocence, of youth, and of supreme misfortune; he felt that he could not trust himself to have her made the target for the silver arrows of his wife's wit. True, there might be moments in which she would be so compassionate and generous, that the calamities of the child whom she had tempted from her safe solitudes would find in her a frank and generous friend. But Othmar knew women too well not to know that she would only have been so had he himself had nothing to do with the fate of this waif and stray; if she, and not himself, had found her adrift in the streets of Paris.

'She would doubt my motives and ridicule my endeavours,' he thought, and the fear of her slight, chill laughter was strong upon him. He knew that she would be unsparing in her sarcasms upon himself, even if she should chance to feel any remnant of her momentary interest in the future Desclée of her prophecies.

He could not forget the coldness and scorn with which she had treated his regret and remorse at Amyôt; he could not forget the aching sense of loneliness and loss with which she had allowed him to leave her presence on the night when he had told her of the little verses which he had found in the closed chambers of Yseulte. He almost resented with a sense of weakness and unworthiness in himself, the empire which she possessed over his senses, the self-oblivion into which she had the power to draw him when she chose.

He was sensible that he lost all dignity in her eyes, because he was so willing to forgive, so easy to be recalled, so spaniel-like in his too meek acceptance of her slights, and too eager gratitude for her capricious tenderness.

The first hours passed of that dominion which she could always exercise over him at will, the sense of his own weakness returned to him with humiliation. He was conscious that he must appear unmanly and feeble to her, since he allowed her to play with him thus at her whim and pleasure. At Amyôt she had been unkind, disdainful, contemptuous; if he condoned her cruelty, and accepted her commands, did he not seem to her no higher than the Siberian greyhound which it was her fancy one moment to adorn and caress, and which the next was abandoned and forgotten?

He knew that a lover may obey the varying shades of his mistress's temper without unmanliness, but that in marriage such humility and obedience on the man's side are fatal to his peace and self-respect. If he had had the strength of character from the first to resist her influence, and enforce his own, he might have had empire over her; now he felt that he would never gain it, that on her side alone was all that immense power of command, and of superiority, which in human love always remains with the one who loves least. He had too long allowed her to treat him as she treated her hawk in the falconry-parties at Amyôt, whistling the bird to her wrist and casting it off down the wind with wanton unstable fancies, for him now to take that place in her esteem, and that dignity in her sight, which he had lost through his too fond and too submissive idolatry of her. He had only of late grown conscious of this, and the sudden perception of his own error was full of bitterness and useless regret.

'He resents the power I have over him,' she thought, 'and he is thinking of something which he does not say.'