Two days later Olga zu Lynar was seated by her fireside in the home
of her choice in the Swabian Alb, where the March day had none of the
sunlight and fragrance of Monte Carlo. Snow was still deep in the
passes of the hills, and blocks of ice were breaking up on all the
rivers. The great oak and pine-woods were black against heavy storm
clouds, and enclosed the landscape on all sides save one, where they
were cleft abruptly by a narrow gorge, which alone gave access to the
world beyond.
The news of her father’s end at Monte Carlo had intensified the
melancholy of her thoughts. She had always hoped whilst he lived that
some revelation, some atonement, might come from him.
He was dead; and death carries with it its own depression, its own
hopelessness. Death in her father’s case seemed to her intensified in
horror, because it was the end of a base, valueless, miserable life. It
filled her with the same sort of despair which Hurstmanceaux had felt
on hearing that Cocky was dying at Staghurst.
Nothing could be undone; nothing could be atoned for; nothing could be
explained: he was dead in a gambling place; and had left no message for
her. The German consul had telegraphed to her that there had been no
papers found anywhere except the official declarations of his birth and
rank.
She had never expected anything, and yet now that he was dead, in
unforgiving and unconfessing silence, she felt as if some added
hopelessness settled down on her. She was still young in years, she
had the kind of beauty which never wholly passes away, she had wealth,
and she could have found many who would have willingly aided her to
forget and make her life anew. But she had no wish to do so. She was
proud, and she would not have returned to the world on sufferance, to
be pointed out and whispered about. She preferred the sombre, mediæval
loneliness of her Swabian solitude, where the household honored and the
peasantry loved her. To them she was the Countess Olga zu Lynar, whom
they had served and cherished and admired ever since she had been a
young child riding through the forests and climbing up the braes. For
them she was the daughter of their dear and revered lady; of Prince
Khris they had known little. Their affection and respect were feudal;
and if any stranger had said an injurious word of her in the woods
round Schloss Lynar, he would have found a deep and a sure grave in the
rushing waters of their mountain streams.
Here, if she did not find peace, she found what most resemble it:
security, repose, and uninterrupted thought.
The death of her father rudely disturbed that calmness, because it
awakened the passion and sorrows of the past as a single rifleshot
would wake all the sleeping echoes of the hills and woods.
She sat beside the hearth, a boarhound stretched out in the warmth at
her feet; the dull grey day seeming evening as its light came through
the panes of the deep mullioned windows. Where she sat was the old
Rittersaäl of the castle, with the armor, the shields, and the banners
of a hundred forgotten battles ranged down the oaken walls. She had
touched nothing. She had left it all as her grandfather had found and
left it. It was gloomy, but she liked the gloom. It hurt her less than
light and movement and modern luxuries, which were in such cruelly
ironical mockery of her own sorrow.
As she sat thus, her long cloth fur-bordered skirts falling about her
feet, and the fire light shining on her face, the dog sprang up with
a loud rolling bark and rushed from the hall. She heard wheels on the
rarely used and lonely drive, which passed round under the trees to the
chief entrance on the other side of the house.
Who could it be? No one ever came there except some man of business.
No doubt it was some consul, or some lawyer, come to speak of Prince
Khristof’s funeral, and be paid for it.
But she heard a voice say in the outer hall beyond in speaking to the
dog:
“What Oscar, good Oscar, have you not forgotten?”
The sound of the voice made her heart stand still.
It was eight long years since she had heard it. Was she sane? Was she
in her senses? Did she only dream, awake, as she had so often dreamed
in sleep all vainly?
She stood in the centre of the great dark hall and saw, as through a
mist, a person enter. She saw him put back the servants with a gesture,
she saw him turn and close the door and remain motionless, the dog
leaping upon him; but she saw it all as in a cloud, as though many,
many miles away, and she felt that it was only a vision which would
fade and pass, like so many other visions of her lonely nights.
He who had entered hesitated still some moments; then he drew nearer.
“Olga,” he said timidly: “Olga, can you forgive?”
She fell forward insensible into his outstretched arms.
She had dreamed vainly of reunion for so long; and at last the dream
had come true.