Bela heard the galloping hoofs of the horses, and ran with his fleet
feet, quick as a fawn's, down the grand staircase and out on to the
terrace, where the winds of the north were driving with icy cold and
furious force over a world of snow. With his golden hair streaming in
the blast, he strained his eyes into the gloom of the avenues below,
but the animals had vanished from sight. He turned sadly and went into
the Rittersaal.
'Is that my father who has gone?' he said in a low voice to Hubert, who
was there. The old servant, with the tears in his eyes, told him that
it was. A groom had come to him to say that their lord had made ready
a sledge and driven away without a word to any one of them, while the
night was falling apace.
Bela heard and said nothing; he had his mother's power of silence in
sorrow. He climbed the staircase silently, and went and listened in the
corridor where his father had waited and watched so long. His heart was
heavy, and ached with an indefinable dread. He did not seek Gela. It
seemed to him that this sorrow was his alone. He alone had heard his
father's farewell words; he alone had seen his father weep.
All the selfishness and vanity of his little soul were broken up and
vanished, and the first grief he had ever known filled up their empty
place. He had adored his father with an unreasoning blind devotion,
like a dog's; and this intense affection had been increased rather than
repressed by the indifference with which he had been treated.
His father was gone; he felt sure that it was for ever: if he could not
see his mother he thought he could not live. To the mind of a child
such gigantic and unutterable terrors rise up under the visitation of a
vague alarm. Abroad in the woods, or under any bodily pain or fear, he
was as brave as a lion whelp, but he had enough of the German mystic in
his blood to be imaginative and visionary when trouble touched him. The
sight of his father's grief had shaken his nerves, and filled him with
the first passionate pity he had ever known. A man so great, so strong,
so wonderful in prowess, so far aloof from himself as Sabran had always
seemed to his little son, to be so overwhelmed in such helpless sorrow,
appeared to Bela so terrible a thing that an intense fear took for the
first time possession of his little valiant soul. His father could slay
all the great beasts of the forests; could break in the horse fresh
from the freedom of the plains; could breast the stormy waters like
a petrel; could scale the highest heights of the mountains. And yet
someone--something--had had power to break down all his strength, and
make him flee in wretchedness.
It could not be his mother who had done this thing? No, no! never,
never! It had been done because she was lying ill, helpless, perhaps
was dead.
As that last dread came over him he lost all control over himself.
He knew what death was. A little girl he had been fond of in Paris
had died whilst he was her playmate, and he had seen her lying, so
waxen, so cold, so unresponsive, when he had laid his lilies on her
little breast. A great despair came over him, and made him reckless
what he did. In the desperation of terror blent with love, he started
up and ran to the door of his mother's apartments. It yielded to his
pressure; he ran across the ante chamber and the dressing-rooms, and
pulled aside the tapestry.
Then he saw her; seated at the further side of the great bedchamber.
There was a feeble grey light from the western sky, to which the
casements of the chamber turned. It was very pale and dim, but by it he
saw her lying back, rigid and colourless, the white satin, the dusky
fur, the deep shadows gathered around her. There was that in her look
and in her attitude which made the child's heart grow cold, as his
father's had done.
She was alone; for she had bade her women not come unless she summoned
them. Bela stood and gazed, his pulses beating loud and hard; then with
a cry he ran forward and sprang to her, and threw his arms about her.
'Oh, mother, mother, you are not dead!' he cried. 'Oh, speak to me; do
speak to me! He is gone away for ever and ever, and if we cannot see
you we shall all die. Oh, do not look at me so! Pray, pray, do not.
Shall I fetch Lili?---'
In his vague terror he thought to disarm her by his little sister's
name. She had thrust him away from her, and was looking with cold and
cruel eyes on his face, that was so like the face of his father. She
was thinking:
'You are the son of a serf, of a traitor, of a liar, of a bastard,
and yet you are _mine_! I bore you, and yet you are his. You are
shame incarnate. You are the living sign of my dishonour. You bear my
name--my untainted name--and yet you were begotten by him.'
Bela dropped down at her feet as his father had done.
'Oh, do not look at me so,' he sobbed. 'Oh, mother, what have I done?
I have tried to be good all this while. He is gone away, and he is so
unhappy, and he bade me never vex or disobey you, and I never will.'
His voice was broken in his sobs, and he leaned his head upon her
knees, and clasped them with both his arms. She looked down on him, and
drew a deep shuddering breath. The holiest joy of a woman's life was,
for her, poisoned at the springs.
Then, at the child's clinging embrace, at his piteous and innocent
grief, the motherhood in her welled up under the frost of her heart,
and all its long-suffering and infinite tenderness revived, and
overcame the horror that wrestled with it. She raised him up and
strained him to her breast.
'You are mine, you are mine!' she murmured over him. 'I must forget all
else.'