Othmar

by Ouida

'My wife?' asked Othmar, who was absorbed in his own thoughts. 'How can I tell you, my dear? Perhaps she has it because she does not care about it; perhaps because all men seem to her to be fools; perhaps because nature has made her cleverer than we are: how can I tell you? There are persons born into this world with a magnetic power over the minds of others: she is one of them. You have seen it yourself; she was an utter stranger to you, yet she said but two words to you, and you followed her, and all your peaceful, and innocent, and happy life went to pieces like a child's sand-city before the tide of the sea. She can always do that. She has done it a million times. She has done it with this man you speak of; she looked at him once years and years ago, and he has never been free any more. Other women hardly exist for him. He would prefer to be wretched following her shadow, than to be happy where she was not. There are others like him——'

The face of Damaris grew troubled and embarrassed, there was a sound of indignation in her voice as she said: 'But since she is your wife?'

Othmar laughed a little bitterly.

'Ah, my dear child!—you belong to another world than ours. You have seen amongst your fisher-folk and your fruit-sellers a kind of union of labour, which is called marriage, and which makes the woman toil all day for her children and her house, and grow grey on one hearthstone, and live out her life with the sun shining on one narrow field. You do not understand that when a great lady does a man the honour to accept his hand in marriage, she retains her own complete immunity from all obligations whatever; she only remains beside him on the tacit condition that he shall submit to all her terms; she makes his houses brilliant, she amuses herself, and he can do the same if nature have not made him too dull; she has a number of friendships and interests with which he has nothing to do; and if his heart remain unsatisfied, that is nothing to her—he can take it elsewhere.'

There was the bitterness of personal feeling in the words spoken, as if in impersonal generalisation. His hearer did not penetrate all their meanings, but she felt the personal offence and dissatisfaction which were in them, and they filled her with a wistful and sympathetic sorrow. She did not understand. How could people be so rich, so great, so beautiful, have so much power in their hands, and so much love at their command, and yet be for ever so restless, so weary, so dissatisfied? Her heart hardened itself more utterly than ever against this woman who had such empire, and used it with such cruelty; who was so beloved, and so contemptuous of love; who bore his name, dwelt in his houses, could see him when she would, and yet seemed to give him no more rest or kindness than she gave a stranger passing in the street. The reasons of it were all too intricate and too subtle for her mind to be able to guess one half of them. In her own simplicity of phrase she would have said only that he was unhappy, which would not have covered one half, or one tithe of the truth; but that scanty knowledge was enough to make all her own intensity of gratitude and devotion to him yearn with longing to console him, and sink heartsick before its own impotency to do so.

All through the months in which he had been absent, she had thought of him with wistful memories, vague troubled thoughts, of which he was the centre and ideal. The remembrance of his light grave kiss upon her brow had thrilled through her with a magical force, banishing childhood. All her warm and passionate heart, rich as the fruits of her native land, was given to him unasked, unconscious of all it gave. Never in any hour of her empire over him had the woman to whom he had given up all he possessed, his past, his present, and his future, known one single pulse of such love for him as filled the whole nerve and soul and nature of Damaris Bérarde.

She would have gone blindfold wherever he had led. She would have died happy if gathered one moment to his breast.

But as yet she knew it not. As yet her own heart was a sealed book to her. To him it was open; he could read on it what he would; but he was unwilling to read.

'Have we not done her harm enough,' he asked himself, 'that I should do her this last, this greatest? Shall I bind her to me in her youth and her ignorance when I can but give her, what?—an hour of my time, a fragment of my thoughts, the cold hospitality of a heart which has been swept empty by another woman?'

He looked at her where she stood, with the grey light of the pale day powerless to dull or take away the warmth and depth of colour, the strength and grace of outline from the form and face. The shining curls, the luminous eyes, the mouth like the bud of the pomegranate, the warm soft cheeks with the bright blood pulsing in them, they were just what they had been in the sea-wind, and the sun of the south; the pallor and cold of the north had had no dominion over them.