by Ouida
She had been told by her lawyers that her husband had refused to touch a coin of the revenues of Idrac, and had once visited them to sign a power of procuration, whereby they could receive those revenues and set them aside in accumulation for his son Gela. That was all she heard. Whither he had gone she was ignorant. She did not make any effort to learn. On the night following his departure a peasant had been sent with the sleigh and horses home to Hohenszalras. The solicitors of Salzburg had seen him a week or two later at their ancient offices under the Calvarienburg: that was all. She had bade him let it be forgotten that he had ever lived beside her. He had obeyed her.
The days, and weeks, and months went on, and his place knew him no more. The jägers, seated round their fires in their forest-huts, spoke longingly and wonderingly of his absence. The hunters, when they brought down a steinbock with unusual effort or skill, said that it had been a shot that would have been worthy of his praise. His old friend wept for him with the slow sad tears of age, and the child Bela prayed for his return every night that he knelt down before his crucifix. But his name never passed his wife’s lips, and was never written by her hand. She had given her all with the superb generosity of a sovereign; she had in her wrongs the intense abiding unutterable disgust of a sovereign betrayed and outraged. When she let grief have its way, it was when no eyes beheld her, when the night was down and solitude sheltered her.
She had never spoken of what had befallen her to any human ear; not even to her priest’s. The horror of it was buried in her own breast; its sepulchre all the waste and ashes of her perished joys.
When the Princess Ottilie, weeping, entreated to be told the worst, she answered briefly:
‘He betrayed me. How, matters nothing.’
More than that she never said. The Princess supposed that she spoke of the disloyalty of the passions, and dared not urge her to more confidence. ‘I warned him that she would never forgive if he were faithless,’ she thought, and wept for hours at her orisons, her gentle soul resenting the inflexibility of this mute immutable bitterness of offended love.
Too proud and too delicate to intrude undesired into any confidence, and too tenderhearted to utter censure aloud to one she loved, the Princess showed in a thousand ways without speech that she considered there were cruelty and egotism in her unexplained separation from her husband. Believing as she did that his offence was that conjugal infidelity which, however blameable, is one of those injuries which all women who love forgive, and which those who do not love endure in silence from patience and dignity, herself offended at her exclusion from all knowledge of the facts, she said but little; but her whole attitude was one of restrained reproach.
‘With time she will change,’ she said to herself. But time passed on, and she could see no change, nor any hope of it.
The grave severe beauty of their mother had a vague terror for her children. She never now smiled at their mirth, laughed at their sports, or joined in their pastimes. She was almost always silent. Bela longed to throw his arms about her knees, and cry out to her: ‘Mother, mother, where is he?’ But he did not venture to do so. Without his reasoning upon it, the child instinctively felt that her frozen calm covered depths of suffering which he did not dare disturb. He had been so completely terrified once, that the remembrance of that hour lay like ice upon his bright courage. Even the younger ones felt something of the same fear. Their mother remembered them, cared for them, was heedful that their needs of body and of brain were perfectly supplied. But they felt, as young children feel what they cannot explain, that they were outside her life, insufficient for her, even fraught with intense pain to her. Often when she stooped to kiss them a shudder passed over her; often when they came into her presence she looked away from them, as though the sight of them stung and blinded her. They never heard an angry word from her lips, but even repeated anger would have kept them at less distance from her than did that mute majesty of a grief they could not comprehend.
She was more severe to all her dependants; she never became unjust, but she was often stern; the children at the schools saw her smile no more. Santa Claus still filled their stockings on Christmas Eve; but of the stately figure which moved amidst them, robed in black, they grew afraid. She seldom went to them or to her peasantry. Bela and Gela were sent with her winter gifts. In the summer the sennerins never now saw her enter their high huts and drink a cup of milk, talking with them of their herds and flocks.
She was tranquil as of old. She fulfilled the duties of her properties, and attended to all the demands made upon her by her people; her liberalities were unchanged, her justice was unwarped, her mind was clear and keen. But she never smiled, even on her young daughter; and the little Lili said once to her brothers:
‘Do you know, I think our mother is changing to marble. She will soon be of stone, like the statues in the chapel. When I touch her I feel cold.’
Bela was angered.
‘You are ungrateful, you little child,’ he said to his sister. ‘Who loves us, who cares for us, who thinks of us, as our mother does? If her lips are cold, perhaps her heart is broken. We are only children; we can do so little.’
He had treasured the words of his father in his soul. He had never told them, except to Gela, but they were always present to him. He alone had seen and heard enough to understand that some dire disaster had shattered in pieces the beautiful life which his parents had led together. He had received an indelible impression from the two scenes of that evening. Without comprehending, he had felt that something had befallen them, which struck at their honour no less than at their peace. He had a clear conception of what honour was; it was the first tuition that Wanda von Szalras gave her children. Vague as his understanding of their grief had been, it had been sufficient to strike at that pride winch was inborn in him. He was like the Dauphin of whom he had thought in Paris. He had seen his father driven from his throne; he had seen his mother in the sackcloth and ashes of affliction. He was humiliated, bewildered, softened; he, who had believed himself omnipotent because all the people of the Iselthal ran to do his bidding, felt how helpless he was in truth. He was shut out from his mother’s confidence; he had been powerless to console her or to retain his father; there was something even in himself from which his mother shrank. What had his father said? ‘She will in time pardon you for being mine.’ What had been the meaning of those strange words? And where had his father gone?
When the summer came and Bela rode through the glad green woods, his heart was heavy. Would his father never ride there any more? Bela had often watched, himself unseen, the fiery horse that bore the man he loved come plunging and leaping through bough and brake till it passed him as though the wind bore it. He had always thought as he had watched, ‘When I grow up I will be just what he is’; and now that splendid and gracious figure which had been always present on the horizon of his child’s mind, magnified and glorified like the illuminated figures in the painted chronicles, was no more there — had faded utterly away in the dusk and the snow of that wintry twilight.
A thousand times was the question to his mother on his lips: ‘Will he never come back? Shall we never see him again?’ But he dared not speak it when he saw that look of a revulsion they could not comprehend always upon her face.
‘He bade me never vex her,’ Bela thought, and obeyed.
‘I wonder if ever he think of us,’ he said once to Gela, as their ponies walked down one of the grassy rides of the home woods.
‘Perhaps he is dead,’ said Gela, in a hushed, wistful voice.
‘How dare you say that, Gela?’ said his brother, angry from an intolerable pain. ‘If he were — were — that, we should be told it. There would be masses in the chapel. We should have black clothes. Oh no! he is not dead. I should know it, I am sure I should know it. He would send down some angel to tell me.’
‘Why do you care so much for him?’ said Gela, very low. ‘It must be he who has made our mother so changed, so unhappy; and it is she whom we should love
most. You say even he told you so.’
Bela’s lips unclosed to loose an angry answer. He was thinking; ‘It is she who sent him away, she who made him weep.’ But his loyalty checked it; he would not utter what he thought, even to his brother.
‘I think he would not wish us to talk of it,’ he said gravely and sadly. ‘We will pray for him; that is all we can do.’
‘And for her,’ said Gela, under his breath.
They were both mute, and let the bridles lie on their ponies’ necks as they rode home quietly and sorrowfully in the still summer afternoon to the great house, which, with all its thousand casements gleaming in the sun, seemed to them so silent, so empty, so deserted now. Bela looked up at the banner, with its deep red and its blazoned gold streaming on a westerly wind. ‘The flag would be half-mast high if it were that,’ he thought, his heart wrung by the dread which Gela had suggested to him. He had seen the banner lowered when Prince Lilienhöhe had died.
On the lawn under the terrace the other children were playing with little painted balloons; the boys did not go to them, but riding round to the stables entered the house by the side entrance. Gela went to his violin, which he loved better than any toy, and studied seriously. Bela wandered wearily over the building, tormented by the doubt which his brother had put in his thoughts. They were always enjoined to keep to their own wing of the house; but he often broke the rule, as he did most others. He walked listlessly along the innumerable galleries, and up and down the grand staircases, his St. Hubert hound following his steps. His face was very pale, his little hands were folded behind his back, his head was bent. He knew that the Latin and Greek for the morrow were all unprepared, but he could not think of them. He was thinking only: ‘If it should be, if it should be?’
He came at last to the door of the library. It was there that his mother now spent most of her time. She took long rides alone, always alone; and often chose for them the wildest weather. When she was indoors, she passed her time in unremitting application to all the business of her estates. He opened the great oak door very softly, and saw her seated at the table; Donau and Neva, who now were old, were lying near her feet. She was studying some papers. The sunset glow came through the painted casements and warmed all the light about her, but by its contrast, her attitude, her expression, her features, looked only the graver, the colder, the more colourless. Her gown was black, her pearls were about her throat, her profile was severe, her cheek, turned to the light, was pale and thin. She did not see the little gallant figure of her son in his white summer riding-clothes, and with his golden hair cut across his brows, looking like a boy’s portrait by Reynolds.
He stood a moment irresolute; then he went across the long room and stood before her, and bowed as he knew he ought to do. She started and turned her head and saw the pallor of the child’s face. She put out her hand to him; it was very thin, and the rings were large upon it. He saw a contraction on her features as of pain; it was but of a moment, because he looked so like his father. —
‘What is it, Bela?’ she said to him. ‘You ought not to come here.’
His lower lip quivered. He hesitated; then, gathering all his courage, said timidly:
‘May I ask you just one thing?’
‘Surely, my child — are you afraid of me?’
It struck her, with a sudden sense of contrition, that she had made the children afraid of her. She had never thought of it before.
Bela hesitated once more, then said boldly: Gela said to day he might be dead. Oh, if he ever die, will you please tell me? I shall think of it day and night.’
Her face changed terribly; the darker passions of her nature were spoken on it.
‘I have forbidden you to speak of your father, if it be him you mean,’ she said sternly and very coldly.
But Bela, though frightened, clung to his one thought.
‘But he may die!’ he said piteously. ‘Will you tell me? Please, will you tell me? He might be dead now — we never hear.’
She leaned her arm upon the table, and covered her eyes with her hand. She was silent. She strove with herself so as not to treat the child with harshness. Though he hurt her so cruelly, he was right. She honoured him for his courage.
‘If you will only tell me that,’ said the boy, with tears in his throat, ‘I will never ask anything else — never — never!’
‘Why do you cling so to his memory?’ she said, with a sudden impatience of jealousy. ‘He never took heed of you.’
‘I was so little,’ said Bela, with a sigh. ‘But I loved him — oh! I have always loved him — and I was the last to see him that night.’
‘I know!’ she said harshly, ashamed meanwhile of her own harshness, for how could the child suspect the torture his words were to her? What had his father given her beautiful boy? — disgraced descent, sullied blood, the heritage of falsehood and of dishonour. Yet the boy loved his memory better than he loved her presence. And the time had been, not so long passed, when she would have recognised the preference with fond and generous delight.
Bela stood beside her, his eyes watching her with timid interrogation, with longing appeal. The look upon his face went to her heart. She knew not what to say to him. She had hoped he would be always silent, and forget, as children usually forget.
‘You are right to feel so,’ she said to him at last, with a violent effort. ‘Cherish his memory, and pray for him always; but do not speak of him to me. When you are grown to manhood, if I be living then, you shall hear what has parted your father and me; you shall judge us yourself. But there are many years to that; many weary years for me. I shall endeavour that they shall be happy ones for you; but you must never ask me, never speak, of him. I gave you that command that night; but you are very young, you have forgotten.’
Bela listened with a sinking heart. He gathered from her words that his father’s absence was, as he had feared, for ever.
‘I had not forgotten,’ he said in a whisper, for the moment was terrible to him. ‘But if — if what Gela said should ever be, will you tell me that? I will not disobey again, but pray — pray — tell me that.’
His mother’s face seemed to him to grow colder and colder, paler and paler, till she scarcely looked a living woman.
‘I will tell you — if I know,’ she said, with a pause between each slow spoken word. Then the only smile that had come upon her lips for many months came there; a smile sadder than tears, more bitter than all scorn.
‘He will outlive me, fear not,’ she said, as she put out her hand to the child. ‘Now leave me, my dear; I am occupied.’
Bela touched her hand with his lips, which, despite his will, quivered as he did so. He felt that he had failed, that he had disobeyed and hurt her, that he had been unable to show one tenth of all the feelings which choked him with their force and longing. He hung his head as he went sorrowfully away. ‘She may not know! She may not know!’ he thought, with terror.
He looked back at her timidly as he closed the door. She had resumed her writing; the red sunset light fell on her black gown, on her stately head, on her profile, cut clear as on a cameo.
He dared not return.
The mother whom he had known in other years, on whose knee he had rested his head as she told him tales in the twilight hour, whose hand had caressed his curls, whose smile had rewarded his stammering Latin or his hardly achieved line of handwriting, who had stooped over him in his drowsy dreams, and made him think of angels, the mother who had said to Egon Vàsàrhely: ‘This is my Bela: love him a little for my sake,’ seemed as far from him as though she were lying in her tomb.
She, when the tapestry had fallen behind the slender figure of her little son, continued to write on. It was hard, dry matter that she wrote of; the condition of her miners amongst the silver ore of the north-east. She forced her mind to it, she compelled her will and her hand; that was all. These things depended on her; she would not neglect them, she strove to find in them that distraction which lighter natures seek in pleas
ure. But in vain she now endeavoured to compel her attention to the details she was following and correcting; soon they became to her so confused that they were unintelligible; for once her intelligence refused to obey her will. The child’s words haunted her. She laid down her pen, pushed aside the reports and the letter in which she was replying to them, and rising paced to and fro the long polished floor of the library.
It was here that he had first bowed before her on that night when Hohenszalras had sheltered him from the storm.
‘We had a mass of thanksgiving!’ she thought.
The child’s words haunted her. Not to know even that when they had passed nine years together in the closest of all human ties! For the first time the misgiving came to her, had she been too harsh? No; it would have been impossible to have done less; many would have done far more in chastisement of the fraud upon their honour and good faith. Yet as she recalled their many hours of joy it seemed as if she had remembered these too little. Then again she scouted her own weakness. What had been all his life beside her save one elaborate lie?
The broad shafts of the blazing sunset slanted across the inlaid woods of the floor which she paced; the windows were open, the birds sang in the rose boughs and ivy without. The summers would come thus, one after another, with their intolerable light, and the intolerable laughter of the unconscious children; and she would carry her burden through them, though the day was for ever dark for her.
Time had been when she had thought that she should die if he were lost to her; but she lived on and marvelled at herself. Her very soul seemed to have gone from her with the destruction of her love. Her body seemed to her but a mere shell, an inanimate pulseless thing. The only thing that seemed alive in her was shame.
She paced now up and down the long room while the sunset died and the grey evening dulled the painted panes of the casements. The boy’s question had pierced through her frozen serenity. It was true that she had no knowledge where his father was; he might be dead, he might be killed by his own hand — she knew nothing. She had bidden him let her forget that he had ever lived beside her, and he had obeyed her. He might be in the world of men, careless and content, consoled by others, or he might be in his grave.