Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida | Page 9

mankind, how poor
and trite and trivial looked those laws! What could I dare to say to her
of shame? Ah! if it had only been for any other's sake! But he,--perhaps
he did not lie to her; perhaps he did only hear the nightingales with her
beside him; but how soon their song would pall upon his ear, how soon
would he sigh for the poisonous kiss of the serpents! I knew! I knew!
I stood heart-broken in the warm light that was falling through the

casement and streaming towards her face. What could I say to her?
Men harder and sterner and surer in every way of their own judgment
than I was of mine no doubt would have shaken her with harsh hands
from that dream in which she had wandered to her own destruction.
No doubt a sterner moralist than I would have had no pity, and would
have hurled on her all the weight of those bitter truths of which she was
so ignorant; would have shown her that pit of earthly scorn upon whose
brink she stood; would have torn down all that perfect, credulous faith
of hers, which could have no longer life nor any more lasting root than
the flowering creeper born of a summer's sun, and gorgeous as the
sunset's hues, and clinging about a ruin-mantling decay. Oh yes, no
doubt. But I am only weak, and of little wisdom, and never certain that
the laws and ways of the world are just, and never capable of long
giving pain to any harmless creature, least of all to her.
She seemed to rouse herself with effort to remember I was there, and
turned on me her eyes that were suffused and dreamful with happiness,
like a young child's with sleep.
"I must have seemed so thankless to you: you were so very good to
me," she said, with that serious sweetness of her rare smile that I had
used to watch for, as an old dog watches for his young owner's--an old
dog that is used to be forgotten, but does not himself forget, though he
is old. "I must have seemed so thankless; but he bade me be silent, and
I have no law but him. After that night when we walked in Nero's fields,
and I went home and learned he loved me;--do you not see I forgot that
there was any one in all the world except himself and me? It must
always be so--at least, so I think. Oh, how true that poem was! Do you
remember how he read it that night after Mozart amongst the roses by
the fire? What use was endless life and all the lore of the spirits and
seers to Sospitra? I was like Sospitra, till he came; always thinking of
the stars and the heavens in the desert all alone, and always wishing for
life eternal, when it is only life together that is worth a wish or a prayer.
But why do you look at me so? Perhaps you do not understand. Perhaps
I am selfish."
This was all that it seemed to her--that I did not understand. Could she

see the tears of blood that welled up in my eyes? Could she see the
blank despair that blinded my sight? Could she see the frozen hand that
I felt clutching at my heart and benumbing it? I did not understand; that
was all that it seemed to her.
She was my Ariadnê, born again to suffer the same fate. I saw the
future: she could not. I knew that he would leave her as surely as the
night succeeds the day. I knew that his passion--if passion, indeed, it
were, and not only the mere common vanity of subjugation and
possession--would pall on him and fade out little by little, as the stars
fade out of the grey morning skies. I knew, but I had not the courage to
tell her.
Men were faithful only to the faithless. But what could she know of
this?
"Thinking of the stars and of the heavens in the desert all alone! Yes!" I
cried; and the bonds of my silence were unloosed, and the words rushed
from my lips like a torrent from between the hills.
"Yes; and never to see the stars any more, and to lose for ever the peace
of the desert--that, you think, is gain! Oh, my dear! what can I say to
you? What can I say? You will not believe if I tell you. I shall seem a
liar and a prophet of false woe. I shall curse when I would bless. What
can I say to you? Athene watched over you. You were of those who
dwell alone, but whom the gods are with. You had