Othmar

by Ouida

The swift shrill voice of her temptress still went on in her ear.

'Perhaps you wonder what business it is of mine, why I mix myself up in it, why I care what your lover does. Well, I care nothing at all for him; he may have a harem as large as Versailles for aught I care, but I hate her; I have always hated her. She is insolent, she is arrogant, she has that power over men still which it irritates one to see, and she killed my cousin. You may have heard of Othmar's first wife and of her death. I was fond of my cousin; she was of a type so rare—so rare!—one that one never sees now; she was only a child, and she took her own life because Othmar loved this woman who is his wife now; she thought she would make him happy in that way—poor little sweet generous fool! So she died by the sea there, in that country of yours. I was sorry then; I am angry still; I have always said that I would live to see this other woman humiliated and abandoned as she was humiliated and abandoned. And that is why I will be your friend; openly, freely, I cannot be so, but I will do all I can in my world to make you great, and I can do a great deal, because great you must be. She will not care if he only make love to you à la derobée under these ash trees. You are nothing now; you are only a little peasant whom it has pleased him to set in a dovecot—it does not matter to her even if she knows of it. But, if you triumph in the sight of all Paris, then it will wound her. If you be a second Desclée as she prophesied for you, so Loris says, then it will make her bitterly mortified if she sees herself deserted for you.'

She paused to take breath after the rapid, voluble, unstudied sentences which had followed each other so fast and in so impressive a whisper off her lips.

Damaris made no word in reply. She listened as though she were made of wood or stone; her full curved lips were pressed close together, her eyes were sombre and had a dusky ominous gleam in them, the only expression on her face was that of a vague, half-stupid bewilderment which left her companion in the same doubt as before, as to whether she were stupid or feigning.

'If she have no more intelligence than this,' Blanche de Laon thought, impatiently, 'how can they think to make her famous for all her beauty? To be sure, great artists are sometimes great imbeciles.'

She leaned still nearer till her eyes seemed to plunge themselves into those of Damaris; she had drawn off her gloves, and her thin small hands with their glittering rings were clasped on her riding whip where it lay on the table in front of her; her voice rose swifter and shriller as she resumed her argument.

'You do not understand your own forces,' she said, with the impatience of a keen intelligence baffled by a slow one. 'You do not see that now—now—now is the moment for you to do everything you choose, to get everything you wish; if you let time go by, Othmar will refuse you a piece of pinchbeck where now he would give you a river of diamonds. If you waste your best years living in obscurity to please him, he will recompense you by leaving you to obscurity all the rest of your days. Men never appreciate sacrifice. If he cannot do better for you than a room or two in a farmhouse, what use is it to you that he is worth millions of millions as he is? You are only a handsome child, only a handsome peasant; but if you come into the world you will be a beautiful woman. You will lead men any way you like, and he will love you all the more because he will be afraid of his rivals.'

Suddenly she rose and stood erect.

'I know what you mean,' she answered, with the vibration of a great passion in her voice 'At first I did not know. I think you cannot understand. He saved me from the streets, as a man may a dog. He has been as an angel to me. He does not care for me except in pity. He loves her. I would give my body and my soul to him if he wished for them. But he does not. He is not mine in any way, nor will he ever be. You do not understand. If I could make him happy for one hour I would burn in hell for all eternity with joy. But I have not the power. I am nothing to him, nothing; no more than the world is to me. You do not understand—go, go.'

Her voice lost its intensity of expression, and sank exhausted at the close; the colour faded from her face; she leaned against the wall with a sense of sudden weakness on her.