Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 7/Santa; or, A woman's tragedy - Part 4
SANTA; OR, A WOMAN’S TRAGEDY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “AGNES TREMORNE,” &c.
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CHAPTER V.
“For ten years I lived with the Chanoinesse Landsberg. My life was as monotonous as could well be conceived. The Chanoinesse was infirm in health, and was obliged for weeks to be alone. Hers was a melancholy page in the history of woman. Here, however, is not the place to relate it.
“Both pride and inclination prevented me from making any steps to return to my husband. I was immoveable in my resolution. I would not return to Vienna without him, and I told him I considered our separation a final one. After a while he ceased to urge my return. My face was forgotten at court, and he remained in Rome. I gave myself up entirely to study; I read, I wrote, I improved myself in every way. I did not repine at my lot—but I felt there was a want—I passionately thirsted for happiness. I used to wake at night and find the tears rolling down my cheeks; some sweet, seductive dream had beguiled me in sleep. I had not found out that, after all, my sorrow, my joy, my life itself, was a selfish one.
“Matured in mind and body, I was still as inexperienced as a child. I could have discussed the deepest questions on the most recondite subjects, yet a peasant of twenty, who had loved and held a child on her knee, was more versed in the mysteries of the soul, and had more really developed her being than I, whom Rupert Rabenfels called a Muse.
“As I approach the most painful event of my life, a dread comes over me. I fear to disturb the memories of the past, lest I should come upon the calcined heart among the ashes. My greatest error and my greatest sorrow are here.
“Rupert Rabenfels was a great nephew of the Chanoinesse Landsberg, and a nephew of my husband’s. The son of a brother who had died young. In the event of Count Rabenfels leaving no heirs, Rupert was his heir. An entire difference of education, tastes and opinions had divided uncle and nephew. I had never seen him at Vienna; but, during the first years of my residence at Schlos-stein, he came occasionally to visit us. He had married very young, and had lost his wife. Three years after my arrival he brought his little motherless Ida, his only child, to stay with us. A most friendly feeling had always existed between Rupert and his ‘aunt,’ as he termed me, during these brief visits, but nothing more. During my first enjoyment of independence, I had occupied myself so entirely with studies, that books were the realities of my life, and persons took a very secondary position with me. But, after the first six or seven years, I became wearied, and, as I said before, I yearned to love and be loved. The arrival of this lovely little creature was a boon to me. How very happy it made me! How ceaselessly I watched over her and tended her in all her little childish ailments. She was a very delicate child. I have watched night after night beside her bed; I have held her in my arms for hours when no other place gave her repose; in short, I lived, moved, breathed but for her. When I rose in the morning I devised some service for her by which I could consecrate the day; when I closed my eyes at night, it was with the remembrance of her dear face asleep on its pillow, charming my last conscious thought.
“About this time I received a letter from my husband—a letter which should have touched and softened me. It prayed for my return; it expressed the most unqualified regret for the past, and offered love, devotion, happiness, for the future. I was inexorable. I said I could not and would not forgive. I said that with will, knowledge and courage, a woman could live alone. I should do so. Friendship would console me for the privation of love, and I had friends at Schlos-stein whom I had elected and chosen for myself, with whom I had cast my lot, and I should abide by them. I do not think I should have been so hard, had it not been that I felt it impossible to leave Ida. The strongest feeling of my nature, a capacity for maternal love, was called out for the first time, and I was resolved to indulge it to its full extent.
“This was the turning-point of my life. Rupert was staying at the Schloss at the time. He saw me thoughtfully perusing the letter. The Chanoinesse told him my husband wished for my return.
“He looked eagerly up, and his dark face flushed.
“‘You return?’
“‘No.’ I paused.
“‘You are happier here?’
“‘Yes, with Ida.’
“‘But Ferdinand would allow you, I have no doubt, to take Ida back with you. He seems so sincerely anxious to make you happy,’ said the Chanoinesse.
“‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Rupert, ‘no child of mine shall ever live under the same roof as Count Ferdinand. Ida stays here.’
“Those words settled the question. I could not, would not part from Ida. I was as wrong in this resolve as I had been right in the determination of preferring a solitary, dull, but safe home at the Schloss to a luxurious, flattering, perilous one at Vienna. My sense of having been right there, blinded me to the wrong here. The retribution for this act of self-pleasing—this refusal to fulfil a positive duty—was, as you will see, not long delayed.
“The Chanoinesse ridiculed me without ceasing for my love for Ida. She was one of those positive persons who would place limits to everything. As Ida was not my own child, my immoderate love for her seemed unnatural. What cared I? I let her talk, and held Ida only the closer to my heart. Ida had been with us two years when a few lines from Rupert told us that he was coming for a visit of greater length than usual. He had met with an accident, and thought he had lamed himself for life. He came for rest and to recruit his strength. The Chanoinesse was indignant. She suspected the most extraordinary motives for this visit, though she never approached the right one, but could not avoid receiving him. I was jealous for Ida’s sake, lest he should withdraw some portion of her love for me; otherwise I looked forward with pleasure to the arrival of an inmate who would have more mental sympathy with me than I had hitherto met with.
“He arrived. My love for his child was a great tie between us. He and I were naturally thrown much together. We differed entirely in many opinions, but our tastes were alike. Personally, perhaps, no two persons—both handsome—could have pleased each other less; nevertheless, we were attracted to each other.
“It was a peculiarity in my fate that I was always thrown among ambitious people; my husband, my brother, and now this Rupert, who possessed more ambition than anyone I ever knew. At first, however, I was only aware of it as the aspiration of a noble nature. He studied me narrowly, and did me the honour to think I could be of considerable use to him. His keen eyes perused my face and watched my gestures. He listened to my conversation, he read to their depths both mind and heart, and saw exactly how he could ‘exploiter’ both. I must say, however, not from selfish motives entirely.
“He belonged to one of those secret societies which have so long existed in Germany, Italy, and France, who work together for the redemption of nations. His indomitable industry, his cool intellect, his powers of physical endurance, made him one of its most valuable members. It was in an expedition in its service that he had met with the accident which had lamed him. When he arrived he was almost helpless. There was something peculiarly touching to me in the equanimity with which he bore the pain and the privation which it imposed. A strong healthy man, in the bloom and pride of youth, condemned to months of inactivity, naturally appealed to my womanly compassion. During these months I devoted myself to him. Ida would play round the couch on which he lay, while I nursed him as I had nursed her; or she would sit on my knee with her soft cheek against mine while I read to him.
“For the first time I met with an intelligence which could direct, deepen, and stimulate my own. Rupert soon found that I possessed certain powers which would be useful to him, and he hesitated not to make use of them. A certain ruthlessness, I find, always takes possession of those engaged in secret plots and conspiracies. It is possible that the inadequacy of the means to the great cause they propose to themselves, obliges them to be somewhat unscrupulous, in the use of them. In my lonely life I had cherished dreams such as all Italians cherish. The independence of Italy, its restoration to its place in the scale of nations, its social regenerations, were watch-words to me. I listened to him with avidity, and with an ardour which delighted him. I worked at his bidding for the cause to which he had devoted himself. I laboured in a manner which surprised him. We were always together. I confess, to my shame, that between the care of his child, ministering to his own helplessness, and assisting in the arduous correspondence, plans, designs, &c., which occupied him, I saw little or nothing of the Chanoinesse. I neglected a clear, plain duty for a Quixotic one imposed by myself; but the self-indulgence which thus veiled itself in an appearance of self-sacrifice, was punished as it deserved.
“Rupert had a dramatic facility in assuming any character which answered to the ideal formed in his own mind, of what he ought to be on any given occasion. This differed according to his mood or his purpose. He could be all that was gentle, refined, and tender, or all that was hard, cynical, I might almost say brutal; but the griffe du tigre was not at once perceived by me sous la patte de velours.
“Nothing at first, however, could be gentler, more like a brother in his relations with a loved and trusted sister. Such an influx of affection as I drew, first from Ida and then from her father, was a boon which to me, who had led hitherto so isolated and unloved a life, seemed inestimable. I was lifted at once into a region of warmth and light out of frozen darkness. The injudicious affections of women are often blamed. Blindness, and a moral perversity of choice, are imputed to us, when our love is fixed on an unworthy object. This may be true in the sense of love proper; there, a personal instinct ought to adjust the moral balance, but in a maternal or sisterly love the rule fails. We love the creatures God has placed near us, and the love itself is such a noble expansion of our whole being, that the merits of the being so loved are transfigured. As the poet says—
Who cares to see the fountain’s very shape,
And whether it be a Triton’s or a Nymph’s
That pours the foam, makes rainbows all around?
So was it with me. My love for Ida seemed to be increased by my love for her father; my love for Rupert flowed into and exalted my love for his child. I was the companion of both, and towards both I felt a mother’s yearning. It was the purest, sweetest, most unselfish feeling of my life. With what joy I found the gift in myself, the capacity for such a love. A man who possesses what he has supposed hitherto to be a barren estate, when he sees the first glimmering of the ore which proclaims a gold mine, may have a similar feeling. It seemed almost fabulous that such a felicity should be mine. I, who was childless, had a child—I, who was brotherless, had found a brother.
“‘Santa,’ said Rupert to me one day, ‘if this life could only continue, what great things we should do. Two such forces, (is not mind a force?) acting in union, might move a world.’
“‘Why should it not continue?’ I asked.
“He scrutinised my countenance keenly.
“‘How totally unlike your sex you are in everything! Above it or below it?’ He muttered the last question, but I heard it.
“‘Above it by all means,’ I answered, laughingly.
“‘Have you never loved, Santa? Has love never knocked at that self-sustained heart?’
“‘Love never knocks at a door which is closed. It must be open for him to seek to enter.’
“My answer was a quotation from a favourite book.
“‘Never! Shall you never love?’
“I shrunk back.
“‘I would have loved my husband; as it is, I seek nothing henceforth in life, but a friend’s hand to hold—a child’s brow to kiss.’ I stooped to Ida, who was standing near me, and clasped her in my arms.
“Another day he asked me if I did not regret my gay life in Vienna.
“‘Regret? when all my nature there was dormant, and here is developed. I have exchanged emptiness for fulness—barrenness for wealth. A friend, a child, whose love can fill my heart—a noble cause to serve—what need I more?’
“Again the same searching look met mine, and seemed to read my heart.
“What a golden friendship I dreamed of! so secure did I feel, that the insurmountable obstacles which divided us would give stability and security to our affection, and place it on a height above all the fever and transitoriness of passion. I dreamed of being the friend of Rupert here and hereafter;—of loving his wife, should he ever marry again, of cherishing Ida as mine, of following from my retirement his brilliant and successful career, of receiving occasional visits from him and his, in the far future years, which would be the Sabbaths of my life, and give him repose after the fatigues and labours of his. Fool, fool, that I was! His heart was too cold—his principles too wavering, to be capable of steadfast feeling or enduring affection.
“His nature ignored all affections but one. He could enjoy a kind of ‘camaraderie’ with many, but this was all inspired and enjoyed by the head, the heart was capable but of one sentiment. Madame Serrano, my brother’s first love, whose beauty and witchery had increased with every year, had inspired him with the only emotion of which he was capable. A sentiment which she irritated in every way; fed, but did not satisfy; encouraged, but did not return. It was to be near her that he came to us. She had taken a house in our neighbourhood. She was the most accomplished coquette in the world, with a soft suggestive manner which every man could interpret as he liked best. She was not deceitful, but she had that sympathetic organisation, and that strong inherent love of pleasing, which gave her power to invest herself, at the moment, with the character which was most attractive to the one whom she wished to please. I heard a great deal of her from Rupert; he and her husband were first cousins, and though I was directly opposed to her in character and manner, conceived a great admiration for her. I believe she was, in truth, a gentle and amiable person; that to seek to win the love and admiration of all, was as natural to her as for a flower to turn to the light, and I am quite certain she did not measure the wrong she did. She imagined that he could limit himself to the harmless feeling for her, which she entertained for him, and which their relationship sanctioned. She could not conceive the bitterness of the unsatisfied longing she excited. It was like a child playing with gunpowder, but the explosion did not injure herself. Had she only deprived me of Rupert, I could have joyfully forgiven her, but with Rupert I lost my Ida!
“I am speaking of all these things, however, with the lucidity which after-experience gave me. At the time—though I had a confused and mystic apprehension of evil—I had moments and hours of exquisite happiness. No human beings can develop themselves without being the happier for it. Growth is the most felicitous condition of humanity. ‘Yes,’ I thought, in my proud foolish heart, ‘now my life is as it should be. I have linked it to a public aim, and I have scope for those energies and abilities, which equally belong to both men and women. My heart is rich in the affections I have chosen for it. If all women could know, will, and dare, they would be free and happy. Why abide by the fate chosen for us when we were too young to choose for ourselves? Development is the duty of all.’ So it is, but not a one-sided development. With the mind, the soul should grow; and I had forgotten that the human soul can only develop in conformity with the will of God. For our mind’s sake let us give free scope to the artistic tendencies we may possess; but side by side with this is the plain duty, to know mercy and walk humbly with God.
“There was, however, an under-current of discomfort and mortification in this life. I was continually receiving anonymous letters, in which I was, by turn, threatened, accused and warned. In these letters, I was told, I was considered in love with Rupert;—it was proved to me that all suspected it, and that he himself was careless who knew it. It was pointed out to me that however confidential and intimate our relations might be in private, in public he lost no opportunity of slighting me, and showing his want of respect and esteem for me,—that my husband was aware of my conduct, &c. I would tear up these letters, generally, with great indifference and contempt. Some, however, struck home. They were artfully managed, and with a knowledge of both Rupert’s character and mine, and the arrows reached their aim.
“Like all persons who are much absorbed in themselves, Rupert was peculiarly neglectful of little courtesies and ordinary conventionalities. For any advantage to his secret pursuits he would not have hesitated to ask me to do the most extraordinary things. We often sat up all night in the library, writing, discussing, making out accounts. I have ridden thirty miles from the Schloss at a late hour (I was a practised and intrepid rider) to bear some message or give some letter for emissaries, bound on various errands,—traversed Italy, France and Germany, in every direction. My pride—the greatest fault in my character—had certainly been offended by accidental neglects, which were probably unintentional on his part, but which cut not the less deep. Sometimes I would expostulate severely; he would answer carelessly, and that was all. Except, however, for these trifling vexations, my life was a paradise, for Ida was blooming into health and beauty at my side. Yet I was conscious that a few grains of dust had accumulated between the leaves of the book of friendship we held between us. The book itself was soon to be cast aside.
“The Chanoinesse was unsparing in her comments. She disliked her nephew, and was jealous of my affection for him. She did not understand it. She was not cognisant of the political secret which bound us together, and, judging from externals, thought I was losing myself from pure benevolence.
“‘My dearest Santa,’ she would say to me, ‘I tell you, beware of Rupert! I know him; he will throw you aside when he has done with you.’
“‘No, dear aunt, he has a true regard and affection for me; besides, what of him? Let him leave me, Ida—I ask for no more.’
“‘True regard! true fiddlestick! He is not capable of friendship for a woman. He may deceive himself in thinking he has a friendship for a woman he loves, but he has no feeling whatever for a woman he cannot love; and you, Santa, are a woman he never could love—you are antipathetic to him, I can see.’
“I laughed.
“‘Personally, perhaps; but I am quite sure we have strong mental sympathies, and what does it signify? I have no wish but to be his friend. Were it not for Ida, to whom as a woman I can be of more service than if I were a man, I should wish to be a man for Rupert’s sake, I could help him more. I would rather be his brother than his sister, for instance. But, after all, it matters little, as affection like ours is sexless.’
“‘Dear Santa, I feel sure that you are sexless in his eyes from his want of personal attraction towards you, and from the very uses to which he puts you, but I am not so sure seeing the strong affection for him which is impressed in all you do and say, that he conceives that he is sexless in yours.’
“I started up.
“‘You are entirely, absolutely wrong. Under ordinary circumstances such a mistake might be made—men are vain and women are imprudent—but I cannot believe that any man of Rupert’s experience would fall into such an error. If not error, it would be the excess of baseness. Listen to me,’ I said, and I held both her hands and looked into her eyes, and made her look into mine; ‘I do not pretend to much heart experience, my life has been a peculiar one, but I am quite sure that in love, properly so called, there is a timidity, a consciousness, a coquetry, as different as 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!’
CHAPTER VI.
“A few 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!