Othmar

by Ouida

'She may break her heart over broken illusions.'

The words haunted Othmar's memory as he left the cottage at Asnières. Yes, that was often the death of the strongest, death mental and moral if not death physical.

What he had done for her had secured her future from want, had given her a safe home for so long as she would be content with it; but how much more was there for which no prescience could provide, from which no friendship could secure her! With her ardent temperament, her ignorance of life, her poetic and unwise impulses, how much would her heart ask and her imagination demand! She would not, could not, lead the passionless life of passionless natures. Whom would she love? Would love only be for her the Charon who took her through a river of hell to the shores of death, as he had been to Aimée Desclée?

Or would she leave behind her all those beautiful faiths and fancies, all those innocent ardours and tender thoughts, as the year leaves behind it the blossoms of spring, the young green of April: and would she become famous and flattered, leading the world in a leash, and putting her foot on the necks of her lovers?

He liked one vision as little as the other.

Either way the sea-bird of Bonaventure would be no more; either way the child who had gone away from him in the moonlight under the silver shadows of the olive-trees and of the mists of dawn would be as dead as though she were in her grave. Would the time ever come when she would say to him, 'Why did you not let me die on the stones of Paris instead of keeping life in me for this?' Or would time give her that brazen disk of which Rosselin had spoken, and with it the heart of bronze which all must have instead of a heart of flesh and blood if they would go triumphant through the heat and pressure of the world? Rosselin had said aright, that the disk of brass would spoil the fair white statue, and the heart of bronze, the heart of the mockers of men, the heart of Venus Lubetina, would it ever be hers?

He went home to his own house, where he was expecting his wife's return that evening. He went into his own rooms and looked at the sketch made by Loris Loswa. The sight of it troubled and disturbed him. He had a sense of wrong doing upon him of which, when he searched his own conscience, he could with honesty declare himself blameless. He had put her as much out of his own hands as it had been possible to do, and the simple ruse by which he had been able to provide for her maintenance seemed as innocent as any pretence by which the motherless lamb can be persuaded to eat or the unfledged bird to let itself be befriended by gentle hands. Still it had been a subterfuge; it had been an untruth; and he hated the merest shadow of falsehood. His detestation of it had been the constant subject of Friederich Othmar's ridicule and sarcasm, and the elder man had in vain argued with him a thousand times, to endeavour to prove to him that it is, in the hands of a skilled casuist, at once the most forcible and the most delicate of weapons. He had always refused to admit its virtues; it seemed to him a craven and contemptible thing, however dressed up with wit and wisdom.

That Blanchette de Laon had seen him at Chevreuse had kept him from returning thither, and it also made him feel the absolute necessity of acquainting his wife with all he had done for Damaris before Rumour, with her hundred tongues, and women, with their devilish ingenuity in exaggeration and suggestion, should have bruited the tale abroad in some guise wholly unlike the truth of it. If he could by good fortune place the story before her in such a light that it would move her finer and more generous impulses, then all would be well. But this was so doubtful; the quixotism of his own conduct would be the first thing which would strike her, and she would probably be unsparing in her ridicule of it. Besides, the reception of his narrative would wholly depend on her mood, on the trifles of the moment, on the facts of whether or no she were in a sympathetic and kindly humour. Any trifle would do to determine that: if the rooms were not heated enough, if the flowers in them were not those she liked, if the costumes of the coming season seemed ugly to her, or if she had caught a slight chill on her journey—any one of these things, or anything similar to them, would make any appeal to her generosity and sympathy worse than useless.

He had been so long accustomed to study the barometer of her caprices that he dreaded its mutability. He knew that there were in her instincts and elements of nobility, even of greatness, which, could she have been cast on troublous times and dire disasters, would have made her rise to sacrifice, even to heroism. As it was, in her perpetual self-gratification, her unlimited power of command, her bed of unruffled roses, and her atmosphere of incessant adulation, all the capriciousness and egotism of her nature were encouraged and nursed to overweening growth.

In the depths of her nature were those finer qualities which will always respond to the appeal of higher emotions in moments of extremity or the hours of great calamity or of great peril. She would have had the dignity of Marie Antoinette before the Convention, the courage of Anne de Montfort before Philippe de Valois, the strength of Maria Theresa before Europe. But nothing less than the inspiration of such supreme hours of life could have penetrated the indifference of her temperament, and the trivialities and the frivolities of modern existence could never do so for an instant.