SUNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.
The poplar trees on KAśrAśs Island are clothing themselves with green,
while yellow and blue flowers dot the turf. The whole island is a
veritable little paradise. It forms the summer residence of a family
of wealth and taste. On the broad veranda, which is shaded from the
morning sun by a damask awning, stands a cradle hung with dainty white
curtains; and in the cradle sleeps a little baby. In a willow chair at
the foot of the cradle sits the mother, in a white, lace-trimmed
wrapper, her hair falling in natural curls over her shoulders and
bosom. A young man sits before an easel opposite the lady, and paints
her miniature, while at the other end of the veranda a three-year-old
boy is engaged in coaxing a big Newfoundland dog to serve as pony to
his little master.
This young mother and these children are A-dAśn Baradlay's wife and
children, and the young man is his brother JenA'. Without JenA' to bear
her company, the young wife might lose her reason, thinking of her
absent husband, imagining his perils, and waiting weeks for any news
from him. JenA' knows how to dispel her fears: for every anxiety he has
an antidote, and when all else fails he rides to the next town and
brings back cheering tidings--in which, alas, there may be but few
words of truth.
The young artist is not satisfied with his picture. He has a decided
artistic bent and talks of going to Rome to study; but this likeness
that he is now trying to paint baffles him. It seems to lack
something; although the features are correctly drawn, the whole has a
strange and unnatural look.
"BA(C)la, come here, little nephew."
The boy left the Newfoundland dog and ran to his uncle.
"Look here, look at this picture and tell me who it is."
The little fellow stared a moment at the painting with his great blue
eyes. "A pretty lady," he answered.
"Don't you know your mamma, BA(C)la?" asked the artist.
"My mamma doesn't look like that," declared the boy, and ran back to
his four-footed playmate.
"The likeness is good," said Aranka encouragingly; "I am sure it is."
"But I am sure it is not," protested JenA', "and the fault is yours.
When you sit to me you are all the time worrying about A-dAśn, and that
produces exactly the expression I wish to avoid. We want to surprise
him with the picture, and he mustn't see you looking so anxious and
sad."
"But how can I help it?"
Alas, what tireless efforts the young man had put forth to cheer up
his sister-in-law! How carefully he had hidden his own anxious
forebodings and predicted an early triumph for the cause of freedom,
when his own heavy heart told him it could not be.
A faint cry from the wee mite of humanity in the cradle diverted the
mother's attention, and as she bent over her baby and its cry turned
to a laugh, the young artist caught at last on her face the expression
he had been waiting for,--the tender, happy look of a fond mother.
* * * * *
In the castle at Nemesdomb the moon was shining brightly through the
windows. It fell on the family portraits, one after another, and they
seemed to step from their frames like pale ghosts. Brightest and
clearest among them all was the likeness of the man with the heart of
stone.
Back and forth glided a woman's form clad in white. One might have
thought a marble statue from the family vault had left its pedestal to
join the weird assembly in the portrait gallery. The stillness of the
night was broken from time to time by a sigh or a groan or a stifled
cry of pain. What ghostly voices were those that disturbed the quiet
of that moonlit scene?
The whole Baradlay castle had been turned into a hospital by its
mistress and opened to the warriors wounded in the struggle for
freedom; and it was these poor soldiers whose cries of pain now broke
the stillness of the night. Two physicians were in attendance; the
library was turned into a pharmacy and the great hall into a surgeon's
operating-room, while the baroness and her women spent their days
picking lint and preparing compresses.
Standing in the moonlight before her dead husband's portrait, the
widow spoke with him. "No," said she firmly, "you shall not frighten
me away. I will meet you face to face. You say to me: 'All this is
your work!' I do not deny it. These groans and sighs allow neither you
nor me to sleep. But you know well enough that bloodshed and suffering
were inevitable; that this cup of bitterness was, sooner or later, to
be drained to the bottom; that whoever would enjoy eternal life must
first suffer death. You ask me what I have done with your sons. The
exact contrary to what you bade me do. Two of them are fighting for
their country; one of the two is wounded, and I may hear of his death
any day. But I repent not of what I have done. I await what destiny
has in store for us, and if I am to lose all my sons, so be it! It is
better to suffer defeat in a righteous cause than to triumph in an
unrighteous one."
She left the portrait and sought her own apartment, and the moonlight
crept on and left the haughty face on the wall in darkness.