Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

has been your Highness’s choice,” she said, “to exclude me from public affairs. Perhaps I was not fitted by education or intelligence to share in the cares of government. Your Highness will at least bear witness that I have scrupulously respected your decision, and have never attempted to intrude upon your counsels.”

      Odo bowed. It would have been useless to remind her that he had sought her help and failed to obtain it.

      “I have accepted my position,” she continued. “I have led the life to which it has pleased your Highness to restrict me. But I have not been able to detach my heart as well as my thoughts from your Highness’s interests. I have not learned to be indifferent to your danger.”

      Odo looked up quickly. She ceased to interest him when she spoke by the book, and he was impatient to make an end.

      “You spoke of danger before,” he said. “What danger?”

      “That of forcing on your subjects liberties which they do not desire!”

      “Ah,” said he thoughtfully. That was all, then. What a poor tool she made! He marvelled that, in all these years, Trescorre’s skilful hands should not have fashioned her to better purpose.

      “Your Highness,” he said, “has reminded me that since our marriage you had lived withdrawn from public affairs. I will not pause to dispute by whose choice this has been; I will in turn merely remind your Highness that such a life does not afford much opportunity of gauging public opinion.”

      In spite of himself a note of sarcasm had again crept into his voice; but to his surprise she did not seem to resent it.

      “Ah,” she exclaimed, with more feeling than she had hitherto shown, “you fancy that because I am kept in ignorance of what you think I am ignorant also of what others think of you! Believe me,” she said, with a flash of insight that startled him, “I know more of you than if we stood closer. But you mistake my purpose. I have not sent for you to force my counsels on you. I have no desire to appear ridiculous. I do not ask you to hear what I think of your course, but what others think of it.”

      “What others?”

      The question did not disconcert her. “Your subjects,” she said quickly.

      “My subjects are of many classes.”

      “All are of one class in resenting this charter. I am told you intend to proclaim it within a few days. I entreat you at least to delay, to reconsider your course. Oh, believe me when I say you are in danger! Of what use to offer a crown to our Lady, when you have it in your heart to slight her servants? But I will not speak of the clergy, since you despise them—nor of the nobles, since you ignore their claims. I will speak only of the people—the people, in whose interest you profess to act. Believe me, in striking at the Church you wound the poor. It is not their bodily welfare I mean—though Heaven knows how many sources of bounty must now run dry! It is their faith you insult. First you turn them against their masters, then against their God. They may acclaim you for it now—but I tell you they will hate you for it in the end!”

      She paused, flushed with the vehemence of her argument, and eager to press it farther. But her last words had touched an unexpected fibre in Odo. He looked at her with his unseeing visionary gaze.

      “The end?” he murmured. “Who knows what the end will be?”

      “Do you still need to be told?” she exclaimed. “Must you always come to me to learn that you are in danger?”

      “If the state is in danger the danger must be faced. The state exists for the people; if they do not need it, it has ceased to serve its purpose.”

      She clasped her hands in an ecstasy of wonder. “Oh, fool, madman—but it is not of the state I speak! It is you who are in danger—you—you—you—”

      He raised his head with an impatient gesture.

      “I?” he said. “I had thought you meant a graver peril.”

      She looked at him in silence. Her pride met his and thrilled with it; and for a moment the two were one.

      “Odo!” she cried. She sank into a chair, and he went to her and took her hand.

      “Such fears are worthy neither of us,” he said gravely.

      “I am not ashamed of them,” she said. Her hand clung to him and she lifted her eyes to his face. “You will listen to me?” she whispered in a glow.

      He drew back chilled. If only she had kept the feminine in abeyance! But sex was her only weapon.

      “I have listened,” he said quietly. “And I thank you.”

      “But you will not be counselled?”

      “In the last issue one must be one’s own counsellor.”

      Her face flamed. “If you were but that!” she tossed back at him.

      The taunt struck him full. He knew that he should have let it lie; but he caught it up in spite of himself.

      “Madam!” he said.

      “I should have appealed to our sovereign, not to her servant!” she cried, dashing into the breach she had made.

      He stood motionless, stunned almost. For what she had said was true. He was no longer the sovereign: the rule had passed out of his hands.

      His silence frightened her. With an instinctive jealousy she saw that her words had started a train of thought in which she had no part. She felt herself ignored, abandoned; and all her passions rushed to the defence of her wounded vanity.

      “Oh, believe me,” she cried, “I speak as your Duchess, not as your wife. That is a name in which I should never dream of appealing to you. I have ever stood apart from your private pleasures, as became a woman of my house.” She faced him with a flash of the Austrian insolence. “But when I see the state drifting to ruin as the result of your caprice, when I see your own life endangered, your people turned against you, religion openly insulted, law and authority made the plaything of this—this—false atheistical creature, that has robbed me—robbed me of all—” She broke off helplessly and hid her face with a sob.

      Odo stood speechless, spell-bound. He could not mistake what had happened. The woman had surged to the surface at last—the real woman, passionate, self-centred, undisciplined, but so piteous, after all, in this sudden subjection to the one tenderness that survived in her. She loved him and was jealous of her rival. That was the instinct which had swept all others aside. At that moment she cared nothing for her own safety or his. The state might perish if they but fell together. It was the distance between them that maddened her.

      The tragic simplicity of the revelation left Odo silent. For a fantastic moment he yielded to the vision of what that waste power might have accomplished. Life seemed to him a confusion of roving forces that met only to crash in ruins.

      His silence drew her to her feet. She repossessed herself, throbbing but valiant.

      “My fears for your Highness’s safety have led my speech astray. I have given your Highness the warning it was my duty to give. Beyond that I had no thought of trespassing.”

      And still Odo was silent. A dozen answers struggled to his lips; but they were checked by the stealing sense of duality that so often paralyzed his action. He had recovered his lucidity of vision, and his impulses faded before it like mist. He saw life again as it was, an incomplete and shabby business, a patchwork of torn and ravelled effort. Everywhere the shears of Atropos were busy, and never could the cut threads be joined again.

      He took his wife’s hand and bent over it ceremoniously. It lay in his like a stone.

      —————

VIII.

      The jubilee of the Mountain Madonna fell on the feast of the Purification. It was