Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/293

 . 6, 1862.] ‘Pshaw!’

“I looked into my husband’s face; it was flushed. He had evidently taken a great deal of wine. He would not have spoken with so little caution under other circumstances. He was excited, and my sudden arrival perplexed him. I was so inexperienced that the shock of finding my grave distinguished husband one of a bacchanalian circle dispelled my illusions about him at once. He was cast down from his pedestal for ever. The reaction from almost childlike respect to almost profound contempt was so great, that I was more indignant, more impetuous than I should otherwise have been.

“I wrung my hands.

‘Nonsense, I abhor scenes; you must, you shall return.’

‘Never.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘I will not return.’

‘Your vanity has turned your head; you speak treason, and you think treason—return, you shall.’

‘You shall not force me back where my honour is perilled.’

‘Your honour is my honour.’

“At these words the door was opened gently, and a woman with fair face, and blonde hair streaming in ringlets over her uncovered shoulders, small and light as a fairy, glided in. I knew her face. She was an actress whose name had been often coupled with my husband’s, before his marriage.

‘What is all this, Ferdinand?’ she said; ‘the coffee is cold. Excuse me,’ turning to me, ‘I did not see you;’ and turning to him, asked in a low voice who I was.

“Before my husband could recover the vexation into which this apparition had thrown him, I was gone.

‘I understand him now,’ I said, and drawing my mantle round me, was down-stairs and half-way to the old Palazzo on the Palatine Hill before I again drew breath. The storm of passionate indignation with which I rushed through the moonlit streets of Rome had no grief in it. It is a sad awaking to real life, when an uncontrollable sense of wrong gives us the measure of our being. Like all persons of strong imagination, however, I somewhat exaggerated the wrong, and gave it a premeditation which was false. I imagined I had been left in Vienna purposely to free my husband from his conjugal duties, and that this woman was the cause. The truth was, I was left in Vienna because it was foreseen that my influence with the Emperor would become paramount. The Emperor himself had wished it—for I was too much in the habit of clinging to my husband for him to find it possible to make any impression on me, while the one I was always watching and thinking of, stayed beside me.

“My husband had not the deliberate villany of wishing me to be the Emperor’s mistress. He had a certain faith in my principles, but he hoped there was enough of a coquette’s instinct in my nature, to lead me to encourage, flatter, and profit by the feeling I had excited, without succumbing to it. How many women do this daily! It was friendship. And in the name of friendship a married woman can give herself so large a margin, she can take so much and give so little, if she be virtuous (virtuous, God help me!), that he anticipated the realisation of his most ambitious dreams through the Imperial favour bestowed on me. He was more contented, however, to be absent during this comedy, though it was to be performed ‘en tout bien et en tout honneur.’ On returning to Rome he met with a former love, and had compensated to himself for his enforced celibacy by enjoying a great deal of the society of his bachelor friends and connections. I was not, however, jealous in the common acceptation of the word. I cared nothing for that blue-eyed little fairy. I would not have wronged her for worlds; but the door of my heart was closed against my husband for ever!

“My brother’s astonishment, when he saw me enter the room in which he was writing was extreme. I trembled from head to foot as I related to him what had happened. He listened to me thoughtfully. He saw that my pride, my sense of right, my self-respect had been outraged; but that this was not a grief which had cut at my heart-strings. He knew—he knew, alas!

“He was kind. A room was prepared for me, my own old girlish room, and I was left to repose.

“What emotions of regret, tenderness, foreboding overcame me as I recognised the old familiar objects, the simple furniture, the faded tapestries. Eager, ardent, and impulsive as when I had last slept in that bed, what a world of thought, and what a difference of position separated me from the girl who had knelt before yonder image of the Virgin, and slept on this couch. I sobbed myself to sleep.

“I heard afterwards that my brother had sought my husband, and remonstrated strongly with him—on what? That he had not remained with me at Vienna, till my favour had been consolidated, my savage prudery softened, my girlish straight-lacedness corrected. Both the Churchman and the Ambassador, the brother and the husband, were prepared to take advantage, in the furtherance of their own selfish aims, of the magic wand which the poor beauty of the wife and the sister was to have proved.

“The next morning they both sought me. I was calmer, but I was steadfast; to Vienna I would not return without my husband.

‘You must remain here, then.’

‘Never!’ I said.

‘Never, Santa?’

‘Never. I should be disgraced—slandered—betrayed.’

“He bit his lip.

‘You will not return to Vienna—you will not stay here?’

‘I will return to Vienna with you.’

‘After this escapade I should be disgraced, I think. Listen to me,’ he said, and he talked fast and eagerly for him; ‘your vanity and inexperience have led you to make mountains of mole-hills. The Emperor admires you, so do many, why should they not? Why should I grudge your smiles to others, when your heart is mine? The influence you would have obtained by a