Spring had come round again for the second time since the beginning
of the rebellion, which had blazed up so hotly at first, but which now
lay quelled and crushed. Those wintry March days of the preceding year
had not only brought woe on the Wilicza household, but had been
pregnant with disaster to the whole insurrection. By the defeat of the
Morynski corps, one of its chief supports had been lost to it. When
overtaken by that sudden attack, which found him and his so totally
unprepared--relying, as they did, upon the shelter afforded them by
Prince Baratowski and his troops--Count Morynski had defended himself
with all the energy of desperation; and even when, surrounded and
outnumbered, he saw that all was lost, he yet fought on to the last,
determined to sell his life and liberty as dearly as possible. So long
as he remained at their head, his example inspired his wavering forces,
and kept them together; but when the leader lay bleeding and
unconscious on the ground, all resistance was at an end. Those who
could not fly were hewn down, or taken prisoners by the victorious
party. It was more than a defeat, it was an annihilation; and if that
day's work did not decide the fate of the revolution, it yet marked a
turning-point in its career. From that time forth, the fortunes of the
insurgents declined, steadily and surely. The loss of Morynski, who had
been by far the most redoubtable and energetic of the rebel leaders;
the death of Leo Baratowski, on whom, in spite of his youth, the eyes
of his countrymen were turned; in whom, by virtue of his name and
family traditions their hopes and expectations centred--these were
heavy blows for a party which had long been split into factions, and
divided against itself, and which now fell still further asunder.
Occasionally, it is true, the waning star would gleam out brightly for
a moment. There were other conflicts, other battles glorious with
heroic acts and deeds of desperate valour; but the fact stood out ever
more and more plainly, that the cause for which they fought was a lost
cause. The insurrection, which at first had spread over the whole land,
was forced back into narrower and narrower limits. Post after post fell
into the hands of the enemy; one troop after another was dispersed, or
melted away, and the year, which at its opening had seen the horizon
lurid with revolutionary flames, before its close saw the fire
quenched, the last spark extinguished. Nothing but ashes and ruins
remained to testify of the death-struggle of a people over whom the
fiat of history has long since gone forth.
A weary interval elapsed before Count Morynski's fate was decided. He
first awoke to consciousness in a dungeon, and for a time his serious,
nay, as it was at first believed, mortal wounds rendered all
proceedings against him objectless. For months he lingered in the most
precarious state, and when at length he recovered, it was to find
himself on the threshold of life, confronted with his death-warrant.
For a leader of the revolution, taken armed and in actual fight, no
other fate could be reserved. Sentence of death had been passed on him,
and would most assuredly have been carried out in this, as in
numberless other cases, but for his long and dangerous illness. His
conquerors had not thought fit to inflict capital punishment on a man
supposed to be dying, and when, later on, it became practicable to
apply the law in all its rigour, the rising had been altogether
suppressed, all danger to the land averted. The victors' obdurate
severity relaxed in its turn. Count Morynski was reprieved, his
sentence commuted to exile for life; exile in its bitterest form,
indeed, for he was condemned to deportation to one of the most distant
parts of Siberia--a terrible favour to be granted a man whose whole
life had been one long dream of freedom, and who, even during the years
of his former banishment in France, had never known any restriction on
his personal liberty.
He had not seen those dear to him since the evening on which he had
taken leave of them at Wilicza. Neither his sister, nor even his
daughter, could obtain permission to see him. All their attempts to
reach him were foiled by the strict watch kept on the prisoner, by the
careful measures taken to shut him off from all possible intercourse
with the outer world. For this strict watch they had, indeed,
themselves to blame. More than once had they sought to rescue him from
his captivity. So soon as the Count was on the road to recovery, every
resource the Princess and Wanda had at their command was employed to
facilitate his flight; but all their plans for his deliverance failed,
the last experiment costing Pawlick, the faithful old servant of the
Baratowski house, his life. He had volunteered for the perilous
service, and had even so far succeeded as to put himself in
communication with Morynski. The prisoner had been apprised of what was
doing, the plan for his escape had been agreed upon, but Pawlick was
surprised while engaged in the preparations for it, and, flying from
the spot in the first impulse of his alarm, was shot down by the
sentinels. The discovery of this scheme resulted in a still closer
guard of the unhappy captive, and a keen and vigilant observation of
his friends at large. They could take no further step without arousing
suspicion, and increasing the hardships to which their brother and
father was subjected. They were fain to yield at last to the hopeless
impossibility of the case.
Immediately after the death of her younger son, the Princess had
quitted Wilicza, and taken up her residence at Rakowicz. People thought
it very natural she should not leave her orphaned niece alone. Waldemar
knew better what drove his mother away. He had silently concurred when
she told him of her resolve, making not the slightest attempt to combat
it. He knew that she could no longer bear to live on at the Castle,
that the constant sight of himself was intolerable to her; for had he
not been the cause of the catastrophe by which Leo had lost his life
and destruction had overtaken the troops committed to Leo's charge?
Perhaps it was a relief to Nordeck that the Princess should go, now
that he was obliged daily and hourly to wound her by the manner of his
rule at Wilicza. Having with iron determination once taken the reins in
hand, he held them in a like grasp of iron, stern and steady guidance
being indeed urgently called for. He had been right in saying that
chaos reigned on his estates: no other word would so aptly have
described the disorder which the twenty years of mismanagement during
his late guardian's lifetime and the four years of Baratowski regime
had bequeathed to him; but now, with incredible energy, he set himself
to the work of bringing order out of chaos. At first Waldemar had
enough to do with all his might to stem the tide of rebellion which,
raging beyond the frontier, threatened to overflow his land; but when
once he felt he had free play and liberty of action, when the
insurrection with the thousand secret links binding it to Wilicza
showed signs of dying out, a process of transformation began, quite
unparalleled in its completeness. Such of the officials as failed to
render implicit obedience were dismissed, and those who remained were
subjected to severest control. The whole service of the woods and
forests was placed in other hands; new foresters and rangers were
appointed; the leased-out farms were--in some cases at a great money
sacrifice--redeemed from the tenants in possession, and incorporated
into the main estate, of which the young proprietor himself was sole
administrator. It was a gigantic undertaking for one man single-handed
to regulate and govern so vast a concern, especially now, when old
things were overturned and the new not yet established, when there was
no cohesion, nothing worked in joint; but Waldemar showed himself equal
to the task. He had finally won the day in his contest with his
subordinates. The population about Wilicza still remained hostile; its
hatred of the German in him was abiding and consistent; but even the
outsiders had learned to feel the master's hand, and to bend to its
guiding impulse. By the Princess's departure the malcontents lost their
firmest support, and the collapse of the movement in the neighbouring
province quenched the spirit of resistance on this side the border.
There could, indeed, be no question as yet of that peaceful,
well-ordered calm to be found on similar estates in other provinces.
Neither the times nor circumstances could admit of such a state of
things; but a beginning was made, the path cleared, and the rest must
be left for the future to work out.
Herr Frank, the steward, was still at Wilicza. He had put off his
removal for a year, yielding to the express wish of his employer, who
was most desirous of keeping this clever, experienced ally at his
side for a while. Now only, when the most urgent measures for the
re-establishment of order had been successfully taken, did Frank
definitely resign his office, with a view to carrying out that
long-cherished project of his, of settling down on his own land. The
pretty and not unimportant estate which he had bought, lay in another
province, in a pleasant situation and in full enjoyment of peace and
order, strongly contrasting in this last respect with the old Polish
neighbourhood where mischief was ever brewing, where the very air was
full of plots, against which the steward had battled for twenty years,
but which his soul abhorred. Two months would elapse before the
purchaser could take possession of his new home; in the mean time he
stayed on at Wilicza in his old position.
As to Gretchen, the fact that she was her father's darling had been
amply demonstrated on the occasion of her marriage; her dowry exceeded
all the calculations which Assessor Hubert had so minutely entered into
for the benefit of another. The wedding had taken place in the
preceding autumn, and the newly married pair had gone to live in J----,
where Professor Fabian now actually filled the post which had been
offered to him, and where 'we meet with the most extraordinary
success,' said his wife, writing to her father. Fabian overcame his
timid dread of a public life more easily and quickly than he could have
believed possible, and justified all the expectations entertained with
regard to the author of the 'History of Teutonism,' who had so suddenly
sprung into fame. His amiable, modest manners, which stood out in
strong contrast to his predecessor's uncourteous and overbearing ways,
won for him the general good-will; and his young and blooming wife
contributed not a little to the advancement of his social position, so
gracefully did she preside over the charming home which her father's
generous kindness had fitted up with every elegance and comfort. The
young couple were now about to pay their first visit to the paternal
roof, and were expected to arrive at Wilicza in the course of a few
days.
Things had not gone so well with Assessor Hubert, though a quite
unexpected and rather considerable accession of fortune had lately come
to him. Unfortunately, the event which procured him the legacy,
deprived the family of its man of mark. Professor Schwarz had died some
months before; and, that celebrated scholar being unmarried, his
fortune went to his nearest of kin. Hubert's pecuniary position was
greatly improved thereby, but what did it profit him? The bride on whom
he had so surely counted had given herself to another, and as yet he
did not hold his Counsellorship. There seemed, indeed, for the present,
small prospect of his promotion, although he outdid himself in official
zeal, although he kept the police department of L---- in a twitter of
perpetual alarm with his so-called discoveries, and would have counted
no exertions too great, could he, in that year of revolution, but have
laid hands on a traitor or two, conspiring against his own State. In
this hope he was, however, still destined to be disappointed. And this
same State behaved in a manner altogether disgraceful towards its
most faithful servant; it seemed to have no fitting sense of his
self-sacrifice and general devotedness, but rather to incline to the
view taken by Frank, who declared, in his outspoken way, that the
Assessor was doing one stupid thing after another, and would get
himself turned out of the service before long. Indeed, at every fresh
promotion, Hubert was passed over in so pointed a fashion that his
colleagues began to laugh at and to taunt him with his nonsuccess. Then
a dark resolve shaped itself in the mind of this deeply injured man.
Schwarz's legacy had made him quite independent; why should he longer
endure to be so overlooked and neglected? why continue to serve this
ungrateful State, which persistently refused to recognise his brilliant
abilities, while insignificant men like Dr. Fabian were called to fill
important posts and had distinctions heaped on them?
Hubert spoke of tendering his resignation. He even mentioned the
subject in the presence of the President; but great was his
mortification when that magnate, with crushing affability, encouraged
him in the idea. His Excellency was of opinion that the Assessor, with
his private means, was in no need of an official position, and would do
well to withdraw from its fatigues. Besides, he was of rather an
'excitable' temperament, and such duties as his required, above
everything, calmness and reflection. Hubert felt something of his
celebrated relative's misanthropy arise within him, as he went home
after this conversation, and, on the spur of the moment, drew up his
letter of resignation. This letter was sent off and actually accepted!
As yet, neither the State nor the police department of L---- had been
thrown out of their accustomed grooves by the circumstance, but some
disturbance might be looked for in the ensuing month, when his
threatened retirement would assume the proportions of an accomplished
fact. The nephew had in him too much of that uncle, whose unfortunate
strategy he had lately imitated, not to live in expectation of some
impending catastrophe.
In the courtyard at Rakowicz stood the horse of the young lord of
Wilicza. It happened but rarely that Nordeck rode over to this house,
and when he came, his visits were of short duration. The breach between
him and his nearest relations was still unhealed; late events seemed,
indeed, rather to have widened it, to have sundered them still more
completely.
Countess Morynska and Waldemar were alone together in the lady's
private sitting-room. Wanda was much changed. She had always been pale,
but with a paleness which had nothing in common with the deathly hue
now overspreading her face. Visible tokens were there of all that she
had suffered of late--suffered, in knowing the father she so
passionately loved in prison, sick nigh unto death without the power of
going to him and allaying his pain even for a moment, in witnessing the
final wreck and failure of those bright dreams of liberty, for which he
had so enthusiastically staked his life, and which were not without a
powerful hold on his daughter's soul. Mortal anxiety as to the decision
of this twofold destiny, constant vacillation between hope and fear,
the agitating suspense of each fresh attempt at rescue--these all had
left most evident traces. Wanda's was one of those natures which will
face the heaviest misfortunes with desperate energy so long as a
glimmer of hope is left, but which, when once this glimmer is
extinguished, break down utterly. She seemed nearly to have reached
this despairing point. At the present moment a sort of feverish
excitement upheld her. She had evidently rallied what was but too
surely her last remaining strength.
Waldemar stood before her, unchanged, haughty and unbending as ever. In
his manner there was but little of that forbearance to which the young
Countess's appearance made so urgent an appeal. His attitude was almost
menacing, and mingled anger and pain were in his voice as he spoke to
her.
"For the last time I entreat you to give up the thought. You would only
incur death yourself, without being of any help to your father. It
would be one torment more for him to see you dying before his eyes. You
are bent on following him into that fearful desert, that murderous
climate, to which the strongest succumb; you, who from your earliest
youth have been delicately nursed, and surrounded by all life's
comforts, purpose now to expose yourself to the most cruel privations.
The tried and tempered steel of the Count's endurance may possibly hold
out under them, but you would fall a victim before many months were
over. Ask the doctor, ask your own face; they will tell you that you
would not live a year in that terrible land."
"Do you think my father will live longer?" replied Wanda, with a
trembling voice. "We have nothing more to hope or expect from life, but
we will at least die together."
"And I?" asked Waldemar, with bitter reproach.
She turned away without answering him.
"And I?" he repeated, more vehemently. "What shall I do? What is to
become of me?"
"You at least are free. You have life before you. Bear it--I have worse
to bear!"
An angry remonstrance was on Waldemar's lips; but he glanced at that
pale, troubled face, and that glance made him pause. He forced himself
to be calm.
"Wanda, when, a year ago, we came at last to understand each other, the
promise you had given my brother stood between us. I would have fought
my battle, have won you from him at any cost; but it never came to
that. His death has torn down the barrier, and no matter what may
threaten us from without, it is down, and we are free. By Leo's newly
opened grave, while the sword was still impending over your father's
head, I did not dare speak to you of love, of our union. I forced
myself to wait, to see you but seldom, and only for a few minutes at a
time. When I came over to Rakowicz, you and my mother let me feel that
you still looked on me as an enemy; but I hoped for better days, for a
happier future, and now you meet me with such a determination as this!
Can you not understand that I will combat it as long as breath is left
in me? 'We will die together!'--easily said and easily done when
bullets are flying thick and fast, when, like Leo, one may be shot to
the heart in a moment. But have you reflected what death in exile
really may be? A slow wasting away; a long protracted struggle against
privations which break the spirit before they destroy the body; far
from one's country, cut off from the world and its interests, from all
that intellectual life which to you is as necessary as the air you
breathe; to be weighed down and gradually stifled by the load of
misery! And you require of me that I shall endure to see it, that I
shall stand by, and suffer you voluntarily to dedicate yourself to such
a fate?"
A slight shudder passed through the young Countess's frame. The truth
of his description may have gone home to her; but she persisted in her
silence.
"And your father accepts this incredible sacrifice," went on Waldemar,
more and more excitedly, "and my mother gives her approval to the plan.
Their object is simply this, to drag you from my arms, to achieve which
they will even subject you to a living death. Had I fallen instead of
Leo, and the present cruel fate overtaken the Count, he would have
commanded you to stay, my mother would energetically have defended her
son's rights, and would have compelled you to give up so ill-judged a
scheme; but now, they themselves have suggested these ideas of
martyrdom, although they know that it will be your death. It does away
with all prospect of our union, even in the far distant future, and
that is enough for them!"
"Do not speak so bitterly," Wanda interrupted him. "You do my family
injustice. I give you my word that, in taking this resolution, I have
been guided by none. My father is advancing towards old age. His
wounds, his long imprisonment, more than all else, the defeat of our
cause, have broken him down morally and physically. I am all that is
left to him, the one tie which still binds him to life. I am his
altogether. The lot, which you so forcibly described just now, will be
his lot. Do you think I could have one hour's peace at your side,
knowing him to be journeying towards such a fate alone, abandoned to
his doom, feeling that I myself was bringing on him the crudest grief
of his life, by marrying you, whom he still looks on as one of
our enemies? The one mitigation of his terrible sentence I could
obtain--and that with the utmost difficulty--was a permission for
me to accompany my father. I knew that I should have a hard fight with
you--how hard it would be I am only learning now. Spare me, Waldemar, I
have not much strength left."
"No, not for me," said Waldemar, bitterly. "All the strength and love
in you are given to your father. What shall become of me, how I am to
endure the misery of separation, you do not stay to enquire. I was a
fool when I believed in that impulse which threw you into my arms in a
moment of danger. You were 'Wanda' to me but for an instant. When I saw
you next day, you spoke to me as Countess Morynska, and are so speaking
to me to-day. My mother is right. Your national prejudices are your
very heart's blood, the food on which you have been nourished since
your infancy; you cannot renounce them without renouncing life
itself--to them we are both to be offered up--to them your father is
ready to sacrifice his only child. He would never, never have consented
that you should accompany him, if the man, who loved you, had been a
Pole. I being that man, he will agree to any plan which may part you
from me. What matter, if only he can preserve you from the German, if
he stand faithfully by the national creed? Can you Poles feel nothing
but hate--hate which stretches even beyond the grave?"
"If my father were free, I might perhaps find courage to set him and
all that you call prejudice at defiance," said Wanda, in a low voice.
"As it is, I cannot, and"--here all her old energy gleamed forth
anew--"I will not, for it would be betraying my duty as his child. I
will go with him, even though it costs me my life. I will not leave him
alone in his distress."
She spoke these words with a steady decision which showed her
resolution to be unalterable. Waldemar seemed to feel it. He gave up
his resistance.
"When do you set out?" he asked, after a pause.
"Next month. I am not to see my father again until we meet at O----.
There my aunt will also be allowed one interview with him. She will go
with me so far. You see we need not say good-bye to-day; we have some
weeks before us. But promise me not to come to Rakowicz in the mean
time, not again to assail me with reproaches and arguments, as you have
this morning. I need all my courage for the hour of parting, and you
rob me of it with your despair. We shall see each other yet once
again--until then, farewell!"
"Farewell," he said, shortly, almost roughly, without looking at her,
or taking the hand she held out to him.
"Waldemar!" There was heart-stirring sorrow and reproach in her tone,
but it was powerless to lay his fierce irritation. Anger and misery at
losing his love overcame for the moment all the young man's sense of
justice.
"You may be right," he said, in his harshest tone, "but I cannot
bring myself all at once to appreciate this exalted spirit of
self-sacrifice--still less to share it. My whole nature rises up in
protest against it. As, however, you insist on carrying your plan into
execution, as you have irrevocably decreed our parting, I must see how
I can get through existence alone. I shall make no further moan, that
you know. My bitterness only offends you, it will be best that I should
be silent. Farewell, Wanda."
A conflict was going on in Wanda's mind. She knew that it only needed
one word from her to change all his harshness and austerity into soft
tenderness; but to speak that word now would be to renew the contest,
to endanger the victory so hardly won. She was silent, paused for a
second, then bowed her head slightly, and left the room.
Waldemar let her go. He stood with his face turned to the window. Many
bitter emotions were written on that face, but no trace was there of
the resignation which the woman he loved had required of him. Leaning
his brow against the panes, he remained long motionless, lost in
thought, and only looked up at last on hearing his name spoken.
It was the Princess who had come in unnoticed. How the last year with
all its cruel blows had told upon this woman! When, in the old days,
her son had met her in C---- after a separation of years, she had just
suffered a heavy loss; then as now she had been draped in deepest
mourning. But her husband's death had not bent her proud energetic
spirit; she had clearly recognised the duties devolving on her as a
widow and a mother, had designed, and steadily carried out, the new
plan of life which for a time had made her ruler and mistress of
Wilicza. She had overcome her grief, because self-control was
necessary, because there were other tasks before Baratowski's widow
than that merely of deploring his loss, and Princess Hedwiga had ever
possessed the enviable faculty of subordinating her dearest feelings to
the outward calls of necessity.
Now, however, it was otherwise. The mourner still bore herself erect,
and, at a first cursory glance, no very striking alteration might have
been remarked in her; but he who looked closer would have seen the
change which Leo Baratowski's death had wrought in his mother. There
was a rigid look on her features; not the quiescence of still
resignation, but the dead calm of one who has nothing more to hope or
to lose, for whom life and its interests have no further concern. Those
eyes, once so imperious, were dull now and shaded; the proud brow,
which but a year before had been smooth as marble, was furrowed with
deep lines, telling of anguish, and there were patches of grey in the
dark hair. The blow, which had fallen on this mother, wounding her
mortally in her pride as in her affections, had evidently attacked the
very well-springs of her being, and the defeat of her people, the fate
of the brother, whom, after Leo, she loved more than all on earth, had
done the rest--the once inflexible, indomitable spirit was broken.
"Have you really been plying Wanda with argument and remonstrances
again?" said she, and her voice too was changed; it had a dull, weary
sound. "You must know that it is all in vain."
Waldemar turned round. His face had not cleared; it was dark and
wrathful still, as he answered--
"Yes, it was all in vain."
"I told you so beforehand. Wanda is not one of those women who say No
to-day and to-morrow throw themselves into your arms. Her resolution,
once taken, was irrevocable. You ought to recognise this, instead of
distressing her by re-opening a useless strife. It is you, and you
alone, who show her no mercy."
"I?" exclaimed Waldemar fiercely. "Who was it, then, that suggested
this resolution to her?"
The Princess's eyes met his without flinching. "No one," she replied.
"I, as you know, have long since ceased to interfere between you. I
have learned by too bitter experience how powerless I am to oppose your
passion ever again to attempt to check it, but I neither can nor will
prevent Wanda from going. She is all my brother has in the world. She
will only do her duty in following him."
"To her death," added Waldemar.
The Princess was sitting now, wearily resting her head on her hand.
"Death has come near us too often of late for any one of us to fear it.
When the strokes of Fate fall thick and fast, as they have fallen upon
us, one grows familiar with the worst; and this is the case with Wanda.
We have nothing more to lose, therefore nothing to fear. This unhappy
year has blighted other hopes than yours; so many have gone to their
graves mid blood and tears! You will have to bear it, if, to all the
other ruins, the wreck of your happiness is added."
"You would hardly forgive me were I to rescue my happiness from the
ruin of your hopes," said Waldemar, bitterly. "Well, you need not be
uneasy. I have seen plainly to-day that Wanda is not to be moved."
"And you?"
"Well, I submit."
The Princess scanned his face for some seconds.
"What are you thinking of doing?" she asked suddenly.
"Nothing; you hear--I give up hope and submit to the inevitable."
His mother's eye still rested scrutinisingly upon him.
"You do _not_ submit, or I am much mistaken in my son. Is that
resignation which is written on your brow? You have some plan, some
mad, perilous project. Beware! Wanda's own will stands opposed to you.
She will yield to no compulsion, not even from you."
"We shall see that," replied the young man, coldly--he gave up denial,
finding the mask was seen through. "In any case, you may set your mind
perfectly at ease. My plan may be a mad one, but if it presents any
danger, that danger will be mine only--at most, my life will be at
stake."
"At most, your life?" repeated the Princess. "And you can say that to
reassure your mother!"
"Pardon me, but I think there has been small question with you of a
mother's feelings since the day you lost your Leo."
The Princess gazed fixedly on the ground.
"From that hour you have let me feel that I am childless," she said in
a low tone.
"I?" exclaimed Waldemar. "Was it for me to put obstacles in the
way of your leaving Wilicza. I knew right well that you were hurrying
away to escape from me, that the sight of me was intolerable to you.
Mother"--he drew nearer her involuntarily, and, harsh and unsparing as
were his words, they yet told of a secret rankling pain--"when all your
self-control gave way, and you sank down weeping on my brother's
corpse, I dared not say one comforting word--I dare not even now. I
have always been a stranger, an alien from your heart; I never held a
place in it. If, from time to time, I have come over here to Rakowicz,
it was because I could not live without seeing Wanda. I have never
thought of seeking you, any more than you have sought me in this time
of mourning; but truly the blame of our estrangement does not lie at my
door. Do not impute it to me as a crime that I left you alone in the
bitterest hour of your life."
The Princess had listened in silence, not attempting to interrupt him;
but as she answered, her lips moved convulsively, contracted, as it
were, by some inward spasm.
"If I have loved your brother more than you, I have lost him--how have
I lost him! I could have borne that he should fall, I myself sent him
out to fight for his country--but that he should fall in such a way!"
Her voice failed her, she struggled for breath, and there was a pause
of some seconds before she could continue. "I let my Leo go without a
word of pardon, without the last farewell for which he prayed on his
knees, and that very day they laid him at my feet shot through the
breast. All that is left to me of him--his memory--is indissolubly
connected with that fatal act of his which brought destruction on our
troops. My people's cause is lost; my brother is going to meet a doom
worse by far than death. Wanda will follow him. I stand altogether
alone. I think you may be satisfied, Waldemar, with the manner in which
Fate has avenged you."
In the utter weariness of her voice, the dull rigidity of her features,
there was something far more pathetic than in the wildest outbreak of
sorrow. Waldemar himself could but be impressed by it; he bent down
over her.
"Mother," said he, meaningly; "the Count is still in his own country,
Wanda is still here. She has to-day unconsciously pointed out to me a
way in which I may yet hope to win her. I shall take that way."
The Princess started up in alarm. Her look sought his anxiously,
enquiringly; she read her answer in his eyes.
"You mean to attempt ..."
"What you two have attempted before me. You have failed, I know.
Perhaps I shall succeed better."
A ray of hope illumined the Princess's countenance, but it died out
again immediately. She shook her head.
"No, no; do not undertake it. It is useless; and if I say so, you may
rest assured that no means have been left untried. We have made every
effort, and all in vain. Pawlick has paid for his fidelity with his
life."
"Pawlick was an old man," replied Waldemar, "and an anxious, timorous
nature to boot. He had devotion enough for any task, but he had not the
requisite prudence, not the requisite audacity at a critical moment.
Such an enterprise demands youth and a bold spirit; above all, it is
essential that the principal should act in person, trusting to no one
but himself."
"And himself incur all the terrible danger. We have learned, to our
cost, how they guard their frontiers and their prisoners out yonder.
Waldemar, am I to lose you too?"
Waldemar looked at her in amazement, as the last words burst from her
lips like a cry of pain. A bright flush overspread his face.
"Your brother's freedom depends on it," he reminded her.
"Bronislaus is beyond rescue," said the Princess, hopelessly. "Do not
risk your life now in our lost cause. It has cost victims enough! Think
of Pawlick's fate, of your brother's death!" She seized his hand, and
held it tightly. "You shall not go. I was over rash just now when I
said I had nothing more to lose; at this moment I feel there is one
thing left to me. I will not give up you too, my last, my only child.
Do not go, my son. Your mother entreats you; do not go!"
At length her heart warmed towards him with maternal love; at length
this love spoke to him in tender accents, such as Waldemar had never
before heard from her lips. Even to this proud, inexorable woman an
hour had come, when, seeing all around her tottering and falling, she
was fain to cling desperately to the one support which Fate had left
her. The spurned, neglected son resumed his rights at last. True, the
grave had opened for his brother, before any such rights were accorded
to him.
Any other mother and son might now have clasped each other in a long
embrace, striving in this rush of new-born tenderness to drown all
memory of their long, deep-rooted estrangement; these natures were too
hard, and too alike in their hardness, for any such swift and absolute
revulsion of feeling. Waldemar spoke no word, but for the first time in
his life he lifted his mother's hand to his lips, and pressed them on
it long and fervently.
"You will stay?" implored the Princess.
He drew himself up. The bright flush was still on his face, but the
last few minutes seemed to have transfigured it. All rancour and
bitterness had vanished from his features; his eyes still sparkled with
defiance, but it was the glad defiance of one confident of victory, and
ready to enter the lists and do battle with Fate.
"No," he replied, "I shall go; but I thank you for those words--they
make the venture a light one to me. You have always looked upon me as
your enemy, because I would not lend my hand to further your plans. I
could not do that--I cannot now; but nothing forbids me to rescue the
Count from the consequences of an inhuman verdict. At all events, I am
determined to make the attempt, and, if any one can accomplish it, I
shall. You know the spur which urges me on."
The Princess gave up all resistance. She could not remain quite
hopeless in face of his steady assurance.
"And Wanda?" she asked.
"She said to me to-day, 'If my father were free, I might find courage
to defy all and everything for your sake.' Tell her I may one day
remind her of those words. Now ask me nothing more, mother. You know
that I must act alone, for I alone am unsuspected. You are distrusted
and watched. Any step taken by you would betray the enterprise, any
news sent you by me would jeopardise it. Leave all in my hands; and
now, farewell. I must away, we have no more time to lose."
He touched his mother's hand with his lips once more, and hastened from
her. The Princess felt something akin to a pang at this sudden, rapid
leave-taking. She went up to the window to wave a last adieu to the
traveller as he hurried away; but she waited in vain. His eyes sought,
indeed, one of the Castle windows, as he rode slowly, lingeringly
through the courtyard; but that window was not hers. He gazed
steadfastly, persistently, up to Wanda's room, as though such a look
must have power to draw his love to him, to force from her a parting
'God speed!' It was for her sake alone he was entering on the perilous
task before him; his mother, the reconciliation so lately sealed, all
faded away and sank to nought when his Wanda came in question.
And he really obtained his wish of seeing her once more. The young
Countess must have appeared at the bay-window, for Waldemar's face
suddenly lighted up, as though a ray of sunshine had fallen athwart it.
He waved his hand to her, then gave his Norman the rein, and dashed,
quick as the wind, out of the Castle-yard.
The Princess still stood in her place, gazing after him. He had not
looked back to her--she was forgotten! At this thought, for the first
time that stab went through her heart which had so often traversed
Waldemar's at sight of her tenderness to Leo--and yet in this moment a
conviction she had hitherto refused fully to admit forced itself
irresistibly upon her--a conviction that the inheritance, all share of
which had been denied her darling, had fallen to her first-born son,
that to him his mother's strength and energy had descended, that in
mind and character he approved himself very blood of her blood.