Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/321

 . 13, 1862.] possible from the frankness, the transparent unreserve, the careless ease of friendship. I should as soon have thought of adorning myself to look well in my own eyes or in Ida’s, as in those of Rupert. Every woman in love is a coquette with the man she loves. And what is the sin of the coquette? That she wears this expression for several, and gives a promise she does not intend to fulfil. After such an intimacy as ours he must suppose me the worst, the most shameless, or the most foolish of women to imagine such a thing for a moment. He knows me too well.’

‘You think so; he may appreciate the powers of your mind, he may be aware of your vehement, impatient disposition, he may like your cheerful temper, your demonstrative nature, which knows neither reticence nor art, but he will never understand your soul. Some men can never understand some women. They have no standing point from which they can measure them. I tell you—Beware, Santa!’

“ days after this I heard a conversation which shocked me. We had a few guests staying at the Schloss; the Chanoinesse was ill; I had done my best for their entertainment. Rupert was absent on a visit to the Serranos. Now he had somewhat recovered, his absences were frequent, but Ida was usually left with me.

‘They seem a very happy ménage,’ said one lady to another who had a large family of daughters, and had been disappointed that one was not Rupert’s wife.

‘It is shameful of the Chanoinesse to permit it,’ said another. ‘A woman separated from her husband—quite a revolutionary, strong-minded woman—to occupy a young man like that, the heir of this magnificent property! She might obtain a divorce and marry him.’

‘Their studies are of a kind—’

“And the silence was filled up, I imagine, with the most expressive gestures of disgust.

‘She is handsome,’ said a man, ‘but is not a woman to my taste.’

‘One of those women who wear us out or themselves. However, Rupert tells me—’

“They passed on, and I heard no more.

“I was shocked; not so much, God forgive me! at the accusation, as at the idea that Rupert had spoken about me to that man. I smiled at the notion of my being distasteful to him. I suppose no woman in the world has cared less for pleasing for pleasing’s sake than I. Kindness I could give to all, but I was too pre-occupied to lay myself out for the sake of winning attention. The only beings one can please without seeking to please are children; their unconscious instinct always directs them unfailingly to those who really love them. All children liked me. Ida loved me with all the warmth of her little heart. My child! my child!—for so she was, if there be truth in love or devotion. How the wound of our separation bleeds still, and will bleed for ever!

“I was grave as I went home. My life had already borne fair blossoms never destined to ripen into fruit. I had seen how my filial, my sisterly, my conjugal love had all perished: either they had fallen from the tree of my life, rudely torn down by the storm of death, or nipped by the frost of life, and I began to tremble for what remained; but here surely was fulfilment. These could not fail me. I was wrong. I was to be stripped bare of all, that I might expiate my folly and presumption, in choosing my own path, in neglecting the duties which belonged to me, to take others which were not mine. My heart was to be emptied, for I had poured away the bitter draught of isolation which God had given me to drink, and I had refilled it with a sweet but pernicious liquid, from an alien source. I had swerved from a positive duty, and presumptuously taken on myself others for which I was not fit. The alien path I had chosen was as full of briers and thorns as the one which had been allotted to me; moreover, it led to an abyss.

“I mentioned nothing to Rupert on his return. I felt a little chilled towards him. He may have thought me captious, but he was cuirassed against all impressions from me. I had not the power to pain him; besides the sponge was not squeezed dry, and could not yet be thrown aside. He had senses and a brain, he had a nervous irritability which gave him the appearance at times of intense sensibility, but there was a sterility in his heart. His whole career has borne the impress of this imperfection on it. All things find their level. Men may be successful, but if there be a want of heart in themselves, their very success wears the stamp of this failure. But alas! why do I talk of failures, whose whole life was a failure?

“Soon after this time I was made anxious and unhappy by the illness of the Chanoinesse. Always suffering and ill, the flickering flame was now about to expire. She increased in tenderness for me, and I felt pained to the heart in thinking how often I had neglected her. Rupert was continually absent now, and we were left much together.

‘Oh, Santa!’ she would say tenderly to me, ‘I wish I could know you sheltered from the storm that I see coming. The shadows are drawing darkly over the sky, and my death will be the signal for the tempest to fall. You have given your gold for copper, your flowers for thorns—you have held out your hand to give support to another, and you will be cast away yourself.’

“I wondered afterwards if she had had any communication with Rupert. I soothed her as well as I could. She went on:

‘I know you better than you do yourself. You enjoy little things intensely, you have such a vocation for happiness, that sorrow is more keenly felt by you than by most. You place yourself in antagonism with it—you wrestle with it as with a mortal foe—and you think you will overcome it; but even if you do so, you will remain wounded, maimed, mutilated.’

‘I know I am not patient,’ I said; ‘it is right I should be taught patience.’

“God knows the tears of months were to teach me that lesson. I am delaying the catastrophe—my heart beats as I now write, with the dead, dull pain which came upon me then, and has never left me, since I knew I was to see Ida no more!