by Ouida
Bela listened with a grave face; when women, even his fearless mother, spoke to him in such a way, he was apt to think with disdain that they over-rated danger because they were women; and when his tutor so addressed him, he was also apt to think that it was because the good professor was a bookworm and cared for weeds, stones, and butterflies. But when his father said so, he was awed; he had heard Ulrich and Otto tell a hundred stories of their lord’s prowess and courage and magnificent strength, for the deeds of Sabran in the floods and on the mountains had become almost legendary in their heroism to all the mountaineers of the Hohe Tauern, and all the dwellers on the Danube forest.
‘But ought one not to be brave?’ he said with hesitation. ‘You are.’
‘We ought to be brave, certainly, or we are not fit to live; but we must not be vain of being brave, nor rely upon it too much. Courage is a mere gift of ‘ — he was about to say ‘chance,’ but seeing the blue eyes of the child fastened upon him, changed the word and said ‘a gift of God.’
‘What a handsome boy he is,’ he thought, as he looked thus at his little son. ‘And how wise it is to leave children wholly to their mothers when their mothers are wise!’
‘I will remember,’ said Bela thoughtfully; ‘when I am a man I want to be just what you are.’
Sabran turned away at the innocent words. ‘Be what your mother’s people were, and I shall be content,’ he said gravely.
‘But your people too,’ said Bela; ‘they were very great and very good. The Herr Professor reads us things out of that big book on Mexico, and the Marquis Xavier was a saint,’ he says. Gela likes the book better than I because it is all about birds, and beasts, and flowers; but the part about the Indians, and the Incas, that pleases me; and then there are the Breton stories too that are in real history, they are quite beautiful, and I would die like that.’
Bela’s tongue once loosened seldom paused of its own accord; his eyes were dark and animated, his face was eager and proud.
‘The Marquis Xavier was a saint, indeed,’ said his father abruptly. ‘Revere his name. All my children should revere his name and memory. But lean most to your mother’s people; you are Austrian born, and the chief of your duties and possessions will be in Austria. I think you would die heroically, my boy, but you will find that it is harder to live so. The horses are rested, let us ride home; it grows late for you.’
Bela, whose mind was quick in intuition, felt that his father did not care to talk about Mexico or Bretagne.
‘I will ask the Herr Professor if I did wrong to speak to him of the big book,’ he said to himself as he mounted his pony; he was very anxious to please his father, but he was afraid he had missed the way. ‘I suppose it is because they were only saints, and the Szalras were all soldiers,’ he thought on reflection, soldiers being by far the foremost in his esteem.
‘He says it is harder to live well than to die well,’ said Bela over his bread and milk that night to his brother.
‘I suppose that is because dying is over so soon,’ said the meditative Gela; ‘and you know it must take an enormous time to live to be old — quite old — like Aunt Ottilie.’
‘I should like to die very grandly,’ said Bela with shining eyes, ‘and have all the world remember me for ever and for ever, as they do great Rudolph.’
‘I should like to die saving somebody,’ said Gela, ‘just as Uncle Bela saved the pilgrims; that would please our mother best.’
‘I should like to die in battle,’ said the living Bela; ‘and that would please our mother, because so many of us have always died so fighting the French, or the Prussians, or the Turks. When I am a man I shall die like Wallenstein.’
‘But Wallenstein was killed in a room,’ said Gela, who was very accurate.
‘You are always so particular!’ said Bela impatiently, who had himself only a vague idea of Wallenstein, as of someone who had gone on fighting without stopping for thirty years.
‘The Herr Professor says it is just being particular which makes the difference between the scholar and the sciolist,’ said Gela solemnly, his pretty rosy lips closing carefully over the long word halbgelehrte.
This night after the ride he and she dined quite alone. As he sat in the Rittersaal and looked at the long line of knights, the many blazoned shields, the weapons borne in gallant warfare, a sudden sensation came to him of the vile thing that he did in being in this place. It seemed to him that those armoured figures should grow animate and descend and drive him out. Bela, then sleeping happily, dreaming of the glories of his ride, had raised with his innocent words a torturing spirit in his father’s breast. What had he brought to this haughty and chivalrous race? — the servile Slav, the barbaric Persian, blood, and all the dishonour that their creed would hold the basest upon earth. Besides, to lie to her children! Even the blue eyes of the boy had made him embarrassed and humiliated, as if she were judging him through her first-born’s gaze. What would it be when that child, grown to man’s estate, should speak to him of his people, of his forefathers?
For the first time it occurred to him that these boys would inevitably, as they grew older, ask him many questions, wish to know many things. He could turn aside a child’s inquisitive interest, but it would be more painful, less easy, to refuse to supply a grown youth’s legitimate interrogations. All these children would some time or another make many inquiries of him that his wife, out of delicate sympathy, never had intruded upon him. The fallen fortunes of the Sabran race had always seemed to her one of those blameless misfortunes for which the best respect is shown by silence. But her sons would naturally, one day or another, be more interested in learning more of those from whom they were descended.
The lie in reply would be easy and secure. There were all the traditions and recollections of the Sabrans of Romaris to be gathered from the tongues of the people in Finisterre, and the private papers of their race which he possessed. He could answer well enough, but it would be a lie, and a lie seemed to him now a disgrace? Before his marriage he had looked on falsehood as a necessary part of the world’s furniture, but he had not lived all these years beside a noble nature, to which even a prevarication was impossible, without growing ashamed of his former laxities.
‘There is not a dead man amongst all those knights who bore these arms that should not rise to punish and disown me!’ he thought with poignant hatred of his past.
When he went to his room the impulse once more came over him to tell his wife all; to throw himself on her mercy, and let her do the worst she would; but he had a certain fear of her which acted like a spell on that moral cowardice, which his Slav temperament and his hidden secret combined to bind in a dead weight on the physical courage and natural pride of his character.
He resolved to do his uttermost as they grew older to rear his sons to worthiness of that great race whose name they bore; to uproot in them by all means in his power any falser or darker faults they might have inherited from him. He promised himself so to watch over his own words and deeds that as they grew to manhood they should find no palliative or example of wrong-doing in his life. The closeness of his peril, the folly of his dalliance with Olga Brancka, had left him distrustful and diffident of his own powers to resist evil. He said to himself that he would seek the world no more; his wife was happiest in her own dominion, amidst her own people; he would court neither pleasure nor ambition again. Here he had peace; here he loved and was beloved; here he would abide, and let courts and cities hold those less blessed than he.
In the morning he awoke refreshed and tranquil; a beautiful sunrise was tinging with rose the snows of the opposite Venediger peaks; the flush of early autumn was upon the lower woods, but no snow had fallen even on the mountains. The lake was deeply green as a laurel leaf, and its waters rolled briskly under a strong breeze. It was a brilliant day for the hills, and the jägermeister and his men were in waiting, for he had arranged over night to go chamois-hunting on those steep alps and glaciers which towered above the hindmost forests of
Hohenszalras. He did not very often give rein to his natural love of field sports, for he knew that his wife liked to feel that the innocent creatures of the mountains were safe wherever she ruled. But there was real sport to be had here, with every variety of danger accompanying to excuse it, and Otto and his men were proud of their lord’s prowess and perseverance on the high hills, and only sorrowed that he so often let his rifles lie unused in the gun-room. He went out whilst the day was still red and young, like a rose yet in bud, and climbed easily and willingly the steep paths and precipitous slopes which led to the glaciers.
‘Count Bela wants sadly to come with us one of these days,’ said Otto, with a broad smile. ‘He can use his crampons right manfully; will not the Countess soon let me teach him to shoot?’
‘I think not willingly, Otto,’ said Sabran. ‘She thinks children’s hands are best free of bloodshed; and so do I. It can do a child no good to see the dying agony of an innocent creature. Teach Herr Bela to climb as much as you like, but leave powder and shot alone.’
‘I am sure the Herr Marquis himself must have been a line shot very early?’
‘I was at a semi-military college,’ said Sabran, thinking of those days at the Lycée Clovis when he had sought the salle d’armes with such eagerness, as being the scene of those lessons which would most surely enable him to meet men as their equal or their master.
‘If only Count Bela might be taught to shoot at a mark?’ said the old huntsman, wistfully.
‘You know very well, Otto, that your lady decides everything for her children, and that all her decisions I uphold,’ said his master. ‘Be sure they are wiser than either yours or mine would be. She can teach him herself, too; she can hit a running mark as well as you or I. Do you remember the day when you arrested me in these woods?’
‘Ah, my lord!’ said Otto, with a rolling oath; ‘never can I pardon myself, though you have so mercifully pardoned me!’
‘And my good rifle is still lying in the bed of the lake,’ said Sabran, glancing backward at the Szalrassee, now many hundred feet below them, a mere green ribbon shining through the deeper green of fir and pine woods.
‘Yes, my lord!’ answered the man, cheerily. ‘The good English rifle indeed was lost; but it seems to me that the Herr Marquis did not make wholly a bad exchange!’
‘No, indeed,’ said his master, as he paused and looked down to where the towers and spires of Hohenszalras glimmered like mere points of glittering metal in the sunshine far below.
They were now at the highest altitude at which gemsbocks are found, and the business of the day commenced as they sighted what looked like a mere brown speck against the greyness of the opposite glacier. Before the day was done Sabran had shot to his own gun eight chamois on the heights, and some score of ptarmigan and black-cock on the lower level. He saw more than one kuttengeier and lammergeier, but, in deference to the traditions of the Szalras, did not fire on them. The healthful fatigue, the rarefied air, the buoyant exhilaration which comes with the atmosphere of the great heights, made him feel happy, and gave him back all his confidence in the present and the future. When he rested on a ledge of rock, listening to Otto’s hunter’s tales, and making a frugal meal of some hard biscuit and a draught of Voslauer, he wondered at himself for having so recently been beguiled by the febrile excitations of Paris, or having desired the fret and wear of a public career. What could be better than this life was? To have sought to leave it was folly and ingratitude. The peace and the calm of the great mountains which she loved so well seemed to descend into his soul.
It was twilight when they reached the lower slopes of the hills, the jägers loaded with game, he and Otto walking in front of them. From the still far-off islet oh the lake, and from the belfry of the Schloss, the Ave Maria was chiming; the deep-toned bells of the latter ringing the Emperor’s Hymn.
Talking gaily with Otto, with that frank kindliness which endeared him to all these mountaineers, he approached the house slowly, fatigued with the pleasant tire of a healthy and vigorous man after a long day’s pastime on the hills, and entered by a back entrance, which led through the stables into the wing of the building where his own private rooms were situated. He took his bath and dressed himself for the evening, then went on his way across the vast house to the white salon, where his wife and her aunt were usually to be found at the time of the children’s hour before dinner. With some words on his lips to claim her praise for having spared the vultures, he pushed aside the portière and entered, but the words died on his tongue, half spoken.
His wife was there, but before the hearth, seated with her profile turned towards him, also was Olga Brancka. His wife, who was standing, came towards him.
‘My cousin Olga took us by surprise an hour ago. The telegram must have missed us which she says she sent yesterday from Salzburg.’
Her eyes had a cold gaze as she spoke; her sense of the duties of hospitality and of high breeding had alone compelled her to give any form of welcome to her guest. Madame Brancka, playing with a feather screen, looked up with a little quiet self-satisfied smile.
‘Unexpected guests are the most welcome. When there is an old proverb, pretty if musty, all ready made for you, Réné, why do you not repeat it? I am truly sorry, though, that my telegram miscarried. I suspect it comes from Wanda’s old-fashioned prejudice against having a wire of her own here from Lienz. I dare say they never send you half your messages.’
Sabran had mechanically bowed over the hand she held out to him, but he scarcely touched it with his own. He was deadly pale. The amazement that her effrontery produced on him was stupefaction. Versed in the ways of women and of the world though he was, he was speechless and helpless before this incredible audacity. She looked at him, she smiled, she spoke, like the most innocent and unconscious creature. For a moment an impulse seized him to unmask her then and there, and hound her out of his wife’s presence; the next he knew that it was impossible to do so. Men cannot betray women in that way, nor was he even wholly free enough from blame himself to have the right to do so. But an intense rage, the more intense because perforce mute, seized him against this intruder by his hearth. Only to see her beside his wife was an intolerable suffering and shame. When he recovered himself a little, feeling his wife’s gaze upon him, he said with some plain incredulity in his contemptuous words:
‘The failure of messages is often caused by the senders of them; the people are extremely careful at Lienz. I do not think the fault lies there. We can, however, only regret the want of due warning, for the reason that we can give no fit or flattering reception of an honoured guest. You come from Paris?’
For the first time a slight sudden flush rose upon Olga Brancka’s cheek, callous though she was. She felt the irony and the disdain. She perceived that she had in him an inexorable foe, beyond all allurement and all entreaty.
‘I passed by Paris,’ she answered, easily enough. ‘Of course I had to see my tailors, like everyone else in September. I have been first to Noissetiers, then to London, then to Homburg, then to Russia. I do not know where I have not been since we met. And you good people have been vegetating beneath your forests all that time? I was curious to come and see you in your felicity. Hohenszalrasburg used to be called the vulture’s nest; it appears to have become a dove’s!’
‘I spared a whole family of lammergeier to-day in deference to your forest law,’ he said, turning to his wife, whilst to himself he thought what a far worse beast of prey was sitting here, smoothing her glossy feathers in the warmth of his own hearth. She noticed the extreme pallor of his face, the sound of anger and emotion forcibly restrained; she imagined something of what he felt, though she could guess neither its intensity nor its extent. She had done herself violence in meeting with courtesy and tranquillity the woman who now sat between them, but she could not measure or imagine the guilt and the audacity of her.
When, that evening, as twilight came on, she had heard the sound of wheels beneath the terraces, and in a little while ha
d been informed by Hubert that the Countess Brancka had arrived, her first movement had been to refuse to receive her, her next to remember that to one who had been Gela’s wife, and now was Stefan Brancka’s, the doors of Hohenszalras could not be shut without an open quarrel and scandal, which would regale the world and make feud inevitable between her husband and the whole race of Vàsàrhely. The Vàsàrhely knew the worthlessness of Stefan’s wife, but for the honour of their name they would never admit that they did so; they would never fail to defend her. Moreover, hospitality of a high and antique type had always been the first of obligations upon all those whom she descended from and represented. They would not have refused to harbour their worst foe if he had demanded asylum. They would not have turned away sovereign or beggar from their gates. Those days were gone, indeed, but their high and generous temper lived in her. In the brief space in which Hubert, having made the announcement, waited for her commands, she had struggled with her own repugnance and conquered it. She had told herself that to turn Stefan’s wife from her doors would be the mere vulgar melodrama of a common and undignified anger. After all she knew nothing; therefore she traversed the house to receive her unasked guest, and gave her welcome without any pretence of cordiality or friendship, but with a perfect and unhesitating politeness void of all offence.
She was thankful that the Princess Ottilie was again in the south of France with her sister-in-law of Lilienhöhe, so that her indignation, her interrogation, and her quick regard were spared to them. Now that her niece was no longer alone, the Princess did not think it her bounden duty to endure these northern winds, blowing from Poland and the Baltic over the old duchy of Austria, which she had at all times so peculiarly detested, though she had been born a thousand miles nearer the Baltic herself.
Olga Brancka had been profuse in her apologies and expressions of regret, but she had at once let her carriage, hired at S. Johann, with its four post-horses changed at Matrey, be taken to the stables, and had gone herself to her old apartments, where in little time her two maids had altered her heavy furs and travelling clothes to the costume of consummate simplicity and elegance in which she now sat, putting forth her small feet in rose satin shoes to the warmth from the great Hirschvogel stove, which, with its burnished and enamelled colour, illumined one side of the white salon.