Othmar

by Ouida

Othmar, unaware of his companion's reflections, was lost in thought himself. He felt that he had resigned the direction of her life into Rosselin's hands, and had no right to dispute with her guide the course which he deemed most desirable for her. He had sought the counsels and the assistance of a man of genius in a moment of extremity, and he felt that he had no title to dissent from whatever the vast experience of such a man might consider wisest on her behalf. He knew that she could not continue to dwell at Les Hameaux, unseen save by the dogs and the birds and the mild eyes of the cattle, if ever those desires for art and for fame which tormented her were ever to have any fruition. If he had had the power to close the gates of solitude on her he would not have used it; he would have felt that he had no right so to use it.

He was conscious that he had no title to stand between her and any career which might become possible for her. Since his last visit to her he had felt that he himself occupied too large a place in her life; that his memory coloured all her thoughts too deeply and too warmly; that her whole existence might be his utterly in any way he chose if he would take that gift as easily as a man may gather a half-open rose in the freshness of morning.

He had no vanity of any sort. The many women who had offered themselves to him in his life for sake of the riches which were behind him had taught him humility rather than vanity, for they had been so plainly idolatrous, not of him but of his possessions. He had always doubted his power to make himself beloved for himself alone, and he would willingly have put it to the proof, like the Lord of Burleigh, had it been possible. But even he, little self-appreciation as he had, yet could not doubt that with the life of this child whom he had saved from the streets he could do whatsoever he chose. Every expression of her ingenuous nature, every glance of her innocent eyes, every impulse of her ardent and untrained nature, told him that he could, with the first moment he chose, render himself wholly master of her whole existence. He was the god of her dreams and the providence of her waking thoughts. Had he had less charm for women than he possessed, he would still scarcely have failed to become, through circumstance, the one person dominant over all her mind and senses. Without any self-deception, he could not but be aware that he could become her lover when he chose. Gratitude, imagination, all the fervour of waking passions stirring in a southern nature as the juices of the vine stir in its tender flowerets; all the favour of opportunity and of circumstance, which idealised her relations with him; and all the impressionability of the first years of a youth early matured under the heat of Mediterranean suns; all these were combined together to make of him the adoration and the arbiter of her life. And he—what had he to give in return for all that glory of the daybreak of the soul? Not even, as Rosselin had thought, les cendres tièdes d'un feu éteint.

He had wider thought and bolder judgment than the timid and narrow laws which a vast majority of mediocrities had been able to impose on a sheepish world. Could he have rendered her such feeling as she was ready to give to him, could he have given her the warmth of a genuine passion, the sincerity and the undivided force of a great emotion, he would not have considered that he sacrificed her to himself if he had kept her in eternal isolation.

Great natures and great affections do not need the companionship or the suffrages of the world. Its narrow and hollow laws mean nothing to them, and its opinions mean as little. Love is not love if it have any remembrance of either.

But he could not give her this, or anything like this. The great devotion of his life for the woman who had become his wife had left his heart empty, yet shut to any other visitant. That immeasurable and intense passion had been to him so supreme in its dominance, so voluptuous in its ecstasies, that all other love after it seemed pale as dead flowers beside living ones.

Men sometimes say to women that they have never loved but once, and those women if they know what men's lives are laugh, as well they may. Yet the meaning of the words is true enough, and not a mere form of phrase.

In the life of every man of higher soul than the vast majority there is some one passion which stands out unrivalled in his memory amidst a host of fleeting fancies, hot desires, dull affections, passing pastimes, which also have in their time been called love by him wrongly. In that one great passion he has attained, enjoyed, realised what he can never reach again; what no woman who lives will ever be able to make him feel again; and in this sense he is not untruthful when he says that he has only loved but once.

Such a love Othmar had known for the one woman who, despite the enemy Time, and the decaying worm of custom, had still, through her very mutability, cruelty, and negligence, retained a power to wound him and a power to delight him which no living creature could ever rival with him. Even when the chill of her own indifference now spread itself to his own emotions, and he felt life, as it were, grow cold and wintry around him, memory was there to tell him of the sorceries of the past, and even love was still there, which watched her wistfully, and would still have obeyed her sign had she made one.

What then had he to give Damaris?