WITH what a world of excellent intentions Otto entered his wife’s cabinet! how fatherly, how tender! how morally affecting were the words he had prepared! Nor was Seraphina unamiably inclined. Her usual fear of Otto as a marplot in her great designs was now swallowed up in a passing distrust of the designs themselves. For Gondremark, besides, she had conceived an angry horror. In her heart she did not like the Baron. Behind his impudent servility, behind the devotion which, with indelicate delicacy, he still forced on her attention, she divined the grossness of his nature. So a man may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken at his captive’s odour. And above all, she had certain jealous intimations that the man was false and the deception double. True, she falsely trifled with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with her vanity. The insolence of his late mimicry, and the odium of her own position as she sat and watched it, lay besides like a load upon her conscience. She met Otto almost with a sense of guilt, and yet she welcomed him as a deliverer from ugly things.
But the wheels of an interview are at the mercy of a thousand ruts; and even at Otto’s entrance, the first jolt occurred. Gondremark, he saw, was gone; but there was the chair drawn close for consultation; and it pained him not only that this man had been received, but that he should depart with such an air of secrecy. Struggling with this twinge, it was somewhat sharply that he dismissed the attendant who had brought him in.
‘You make yourself at home, CHEZ MOI,’ she said, a little ruffled both by his tone of command and by the glance he had thrown upon the chair.
‘Madam,’ replied Otto, ‘I am here so seldom that I have almost the rights of a stranger.’
‘You choose your own associates, Frederic,’ she said.
‘I am here to speak of it,’ he returned. ‘It is now four years since we were married; and these four years, Seraphina, have not perhaps been happy either for you or for me. I am well aware I was unsuitable to be your husband. I was not young, I had no ambition, I was a trifler; and you despised me, I dare not say unjustly. But to do justice on both sides, you must bear in mind how I have acted. When I found it amused you to play the part of Princess on this little stage, did I not immediately resign to you my box of toys, this Grunewald? And when I found I was distasteful as a husband, could any husband have been less intrusive? You will tell me that I have no feelings, no preference, and thus no credit; that I go before the wind; that all this was in my character. And indeed, one thing is true, that it is easy, too easy, to leave things undone. But Seraphina, I begin to learn it is not always wise. If I were too old and too uncongenial for your husband, I should still have remembered that I was the Prince of that country to which you came, a visitor and a child. In that relation also there were duties, and these duties I have not performed.’
To claim the advantage of superior age is to give sure offence. ‘Duty!’ laughed Seraphina, ‘and on your lips, Frederic! You make me laugh. What fancy is this? Go, flirt with the maids and be a prince in Dresden china, as you look. Enjoy yourself, MON ENFANT, and leave duty and the state to us.’
The plural grated on the Prince. ‘I have enjoyed myself too much,’ he said, ‘since enjoyment is the word. And yet there were much to say upon the other side. You must suppose me desperately fond of hunting. But indeed there were days when I found a great deal of interest in what it was courtesy to call my government. And I have always had some claim to taste; I could tell live happiness from dull routine; and between hunting, and the throne of Austria, and your society, my choice had never wavered, had the choice been mine. You were a girl, a bud, when you were given me — ’
‘Heavens!’ she cried, ‘is this to be a love-scene?’
‘I am never ridiculous,’ he said; ‘it is my only merit; and you may be certain this shall be a scene of marriage A LA MODE. But when I remember the beginning, it is bare courtesy to speak in sorrow. Be just, madam: you would think me strangely uncivil to recall these days without the decency of a regret. Be yet a little juster, and own, if only in complaisance, that you yourself regret that past.’
‘I have nothing to regret,’ said the Princess. ‘You surprise me. I thought you were so happy.’
‘Happy and happy, there are so many hundred ways,’ said Otto. ‘A man may be happy in revolt; he may be happy in sleep; wine, change, and travel make him happy; virtue, they say, will do the like — I have not tried; and they say also that in old, quiet, and habitual marriages there is yet another happiness. Happy, yes; I am happy if you like; but I will tell you frankly, I was happier when I brought you home.’
‘Well,’ said the Princess, not without constraint, ‘it seems you changed your mind.’
‘Not I,’ returned Otto, ‘I never changed. Do you remember, Seraphina, on our way home, when you saw the roses in the lane, and I got out and plucked them? It was a narrow lane between great trees; the sunset at the end was all gold, and the rooks were flying overhead. There were nine, nine red roses; you gave me a kiss for each, and I told myself that every rose and every kiss should stand for a year of love. Well, in eighteen months there was an end. But do you fancy, Seraphina, that my heart has altered?’
‘I am sure I cannot tell,’ she said, like an automaton.
‘It has not,’ the Prince continued. ‘There is nothing ridiculous, even from a husband, in a love that owns itself unhappy and that asks no more. I built on sand; pardon me, I do not breathe a reproach — I built, I suppose, upon my own infirmities; but I put my heart in the building, and it still lies among the ruins.’
‘How very poetical!’ she said, with a little choking laugh, unknown relentings, unfamiliar softnesses, moving within her. ‘What would you be at?’ she added, hardening her voice.
‘I would be at this,’ he answered; ‘and hard it is to say. I would be at this:-Seraphina, I am your husband after all, and a poor fool that loves you. Understand,’ he cried almost fiercely, ‘I am no suppliant husband; what your love refuses I would scorn to receive from your pity. I do not ask, I would not take it. And for jealousy, what ground have I? A dog-in-the-manger jealousy is a thing the dogs may laugh at. But at least, in the world’s eye, I am still your husband; and I ask you if you treat me fairly? I keep to myself, I leave you free, I have given you in everything your will. What do you in return? I find, Seraphina, that you have been too thoughtless. But between persons such as we are, in our conspicuous station, particular care and a particular courtesy are owing. Scandal is perhaps not easy to avoid; but it is hard to bear.’
‘Scandal!’ she cried, with a deep breath. ‘Scandal! It is for this you have been driving!’
‘I have tried to tell you how I feel,’ he replied. ‘I have told you that I love you — love you in vain — a bitter thing for a husband; I have laid myself open that I might speak without offence. And now that I have begun, I will go on and finish.’
‘I demand it,’ she said. ‘What is this about?’
Otto flushed crimson. ‘I have to say what I would fain not,’ he answered. ‘I counsel you to see less of Gondremark.’
‘Of Gondremark? And why?’ she asked.
‘Your intimacy is the ground of scandal, madam,’ said Otto, firmly enough — ‘of a scandal that is agony to me, and would be crushing to your parents if they knew it.’
‘You are the first to bring me word of it,’ said she. ‘I thank you.’
‘You have perhaps cause,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps I am the only one among your frie............