by Ouida
She was still asleep.
When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever. He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.
Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person, as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened upon her with a strange appeal.
One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following words to his foe and his judge:
‘Sir, —— You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you, and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him. One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the Prince Zabaroff was dead — my protector, as they termed him — and that I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family, could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts, the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then, thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father. I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices, like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe, and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread, fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior. Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts the hiss of an Indian’s arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican ranch near, within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France. For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss. I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave. I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all those which had been brought with hi
m from France by his Jesuit tutors, and the certificates of his own and his father’s births and marriages, with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine: he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris, yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and had given me all he held most dear —— the fruits of his researches. To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation. I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing —— Bretons never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead men who had gone down when the Estelle had foundered off the Pinos. I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so much during my seven years’ absence from Paris that I did not suppose anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran. And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred of me as your cousin’s husband; and had you even had suspicions you could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became almost by necessity a fainéant, and fate smiled upon me more than I merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me. I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call flair. I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on the Bourse. I was also, famous for la main heureuse in all forms of gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was a man of honour until —— I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her. You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia, but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten by a great lord’s momentary ennui and caprice! But if you will stoop so far —— if you will consider me ennobled by her enough to meet you as an equal would do —— we can find with facility some pretext of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me. You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are the only male champion — what her brothers would surely have taken had they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother’s than their father’s, and she will rear them in all noble ways.’
Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his own cowardice and shame.
It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief: ——
‘I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.
(Signed) ‘PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.’
To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:
‘Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return. It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen you.’ Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name. Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your husband,
and give me a remembrance in your prayers.
(Signed) ‘EGON.’
CHAPTER XXI.
The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman, which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation. If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.
‘Wanda has ruined him!’ she always thought angrily. ‘He always expects every other woman to have a soul above chiffons and to bury herself in the country with children and horses.’
Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him. Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law. She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely, and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope, which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race of Vàsàrhely.