conscious of a certain difficulty in providing for it a proper
termination. In the excitement of the occasion, he had felt emboldened
to take one of her hands, which he still retained; the other was
holding the reins of the two cream-colored ponies. He could hardly
simply drop it--the hand and the conversation--without more; and yet
what suitable catastrophe could there be for the situation? Might he
kiss it, and cut the conversation? It were a mere act of courtesy, no
breach of respect to the absent Serge. As a boy of twenty-two he had
never dared; but as a man of twenty-five----
She did not seem in the least surprised. Possibly she had thought
him older than twenty-five. But May, after that little ceremony, had
dropped the hand most unmistakably; and she turned the ponies’ heads
away. May gave a last look to the forest-glade, as they drove out from
it, and reflected that the place would be impressed upon his memory
forever. It was really astonishing the number of places that were to be
impressed upon his memory forever!
A restless week followed. He saw the Countess de Valska every day; but
there was something uncomfortable in their relations--a certain savor
of an unaccepted sacrifice, of an offering burned in vain.
The countess would not let him seek the Austrian foe on her own behalf,
nor yet bedew the soil of Poland with his blood; and it was very
difficult to say what he was to do for her in Baden-Baden, or, for
matter of that, what the noble Polacco de Valski could do in Siberia.
Poor Serge!
Yes, poor Serge! On the eighth day, Austin May, calling on the
countess, found her in a lovely _négligé_, dissolved in tears. (He had
been refused her door, at first, but finally, after a little pressing,
had been admitted.) The countess did not look up when he entered; and
Austin stood there, twisting his hat in sympathy, and looking at her.
Suddenly she lifted her head, and transfixed his blue eyes with her
dewy black ones.
“Dead!” said she.
“What?” responded May, anxiously. “Poland? Ital----”
“No, no!” she cried. “Serge--Serge!”
“Your husband?” cried he--“the Count Polacco----”
The countess dropped her lovely head in a shower of tears, as when a
thick-leaved tree is shaken by the wind, just after rain.
“He has been dead a year and a half,” she moaned.
“A year and a half?”
“Nineteen months. He died on the 23d of February, 1877--three weeks
after the last letter that I ever got from him.”
“But how--but how did you never know?” said May, wildly.
“Was it not cruel? The despotism of the White Czar! Sometimes they
would keep his letters for a year, sometimes they would let them
come directly. They would not let me know for fear that I--ah, God!”
She sprang to her feet with a sweep of her long robe, and shook her
jewelled finger at the chandelier.
“Can you blame us that we kill and die for such a despotism, such
a tyranny, as that?” Then suddenly, as she crossed by a sofa, she
straightened up to her full height, like a wave cresting, poised a
brief second, then fell in a heap--a graceful heap--her head resting on
the sofa in her hands.
Then the young man had to seek, not to console her, but to calm
her, to lift her from the floor, to bring her ice-water, a fan,
a feather, pour oil and salt upon the wound, toilet-vinegar, or
other salads. May never knew exactly what he did; but it was like
consoling an equinoctial gale. Hardly had she got fairly calm, and
sobbing comfortably, and sitting in a chair, and he beside her--and
he remembered patting her clasped hands, as one does a spoiled
child’s--when she would dash upright, upsetting the chair, and
swear her vengeance on the cruel Czar.... And at this point in his
reminiscences May winced a little; for he had by no means a distinct
recollection that he had not sworn his vengeance on the Czar with hers.
And, when you come to think of it, the Czar’s injuries to Mr. May cried
not as yet for deeds of blood.
III.
DIDO AND ÆNEAS.
May repeated his visit of condolence every day for several weeks. At
the end of that time the season at Baden-Baden was drawing to a close,
and it became necessary that the countess should betake herself and her
sorrowing heart to some other refuge. May knew this, and it troubled
him.
For he now felt that he not only admired Mme. de Valska as a patriot,
but that he loved her as an exceedingly beautiful and fascinating
woman. Surely, here was the heroine of his youthful dreams--a life that
were a poet’s ideal.
To link himself with her and her noble aims, to be a Byron without the
loneliness, to combine fame in future history with present domestic
bliss--what a career!
He loved the countess, he adored her; and he fancied that she deigned
to be not indifferent to his devotion, to his sympathy. But--there was
the shadow of the late count.
And the countess seemed much broken by his death. True, she no longer
gave way to wild bursts of passion; she never wept; in fact, in
Austin’s presence, she rarely mentioned him. But there was a sadness,
a weak and lonely way about her, as if she could not live without
her Serge’s protecting arm. It must have been a moral support, as he
could have done but little from his Siberian mine; but, whereas she
used to be brave, enterprising, facing the world alone, now she seemed
helpless, confiding, less heroic, perhaps, but still more womanly.
Austin only loved her the more for that And it emboldened him a little.
After all, her husband had been dead a year and a half, though she had
only known of it a few weeks. He determined to speak. Why should his
life’s happiness--possibly hers--be wrecked upon a mere scruple of
etiquette?
He took his opportunity, one day, when she spoke of Italy. (Now, that
the count was dead, she seemed to think less of unhappy Poland, and
more of unredeemed Italy; as was natural, she being a Cascadegli.) He
took her hands at the same time, and begged that she would redeem him
with Italy. His life, his fortune, were at her service, should she
but give him the right to protect her, and fight her battles for her
always. “I know,” he added earnestly, “how your heart still bleeds for
your noble husband. But your duty is to your country, to yourself. And
remember, though you heard of it but yesterday, the Count Polacco has
been dead a year and a half.”
“Nineteen months,” sighed the countess, with a sob, going him four
weeks better. And before he left the room they were engaged. He did not
go to bed that night; but wandered in the moonlight, treading as on
clouds. Favored young man!
In the morning, he noticed with delight that she had laid aside her
long crape veil. Already, said she, her country called for her; she
must recommence her labors, and the deep mourning would attract too
much notice. May had vaguely fancied she would start at once for Milan
or Warsaw, and after a few months’ delay he would meet her, and they
would have a quiet marriage ceremony. But she explained to him that
the true arena of her labors was in Paris. Here was the focus of
conspiracies; here she must live and have a _salon_, and call together
her devoted countrymen. Here she would need his protection, and, with
his American passport, he could safely visit her oppressed fatherland,
when events required action on the spot.
Obviously, as he recognized with joy, this plan made it necessary
for them to be married immediately. But then he must speak to her of
his uncle’s will. Not that it mattered much; he was quite ready to
renounce fortune, even life, for her; but she must know that they
would not be rich. It was a mere formality; but it must be done. So he
told her of the curious will; and how, if he married before August the
fourteenth, 1886, he was to lose all his uncle’s property, even to what
remained of the celebrated Eclipse claret. But then, what was money?
Particularly to them, who had no other aims than love and patriotism;
both commodities not to be bought, or measured in sterling exchange
or napoleons. But the countess seemed to attach much weight to May’s
communication.
Money, alas! was in these sordid times necessary, even for patriotic
revolutions. The wheels must be greased, even when Bucephalus drew the
chariot. Still, this was not the essential. She was quite willing to
share her small fortune with the man whom she loved; but how could she
bear to ruin him--to make her alliance his sacrifice? Suppose he should
ever repent his action? And here May began to make his oaths eternal;
but she stopped him. Was there no other way? Could there be no escape,
no legal device? Lawyers would do almost anything, if paid enough. But
May shook his head, and pressed again her hand to his lips; and her
dark eyes brimmed with tears.
She, for herself, would be willing to suffer him as her adorer, to
trust him as her knight, her follower, as he once had proposed before.
And, by that arrangement, he would not lose the fortune. But what would
the world say--the cold and heartless world? And she looked at May
imploringly, as if for advice.
And May had to admit, in answer, that the world would be
likely to make itself as disagreeable as usual under similar
circumstances--particularly, now that the unhappy count was dead, and
could no longer defend his heroic consort from the spite of petty
spirits. The moral support was something, after all. May had true
Boston reverence for what the world said; and it never occurred to
him that even a heroine, who had braved two emperors, might brave its
verdict.
For some moments neither spoke. What was there to say? But the silence
grew oppressive; and at last she broke it with a cry.
“Farewell, then,” said she.
But at this May broke out with a round oath. Farewell it should never
be. What cared he for his uncle’s fortune, or for the estate in
Brookline, when his future lay in Poland? He would have a little left;
he could win more by his own exertions. For a moment his impetuosity
almost overbore her resistance. But then the Paris _salon_ was a
necessity; and half of her own estate and all of poor Polacco’s had
been seized by foreign despots. She would think it over. She would
give him an answer that night. And then there came a lover’s parting;
and May went back to his hotel, not wholly desperate, and got the
engagement-ring he had ordered, and sent it to her. It was of small
diamonds; but then there was a necklace, sent from Paris, of perfect
Oriental pearls. A woman could afford to get engaged once a month, for
such a necklace.
And he had gone back that evening, and he had found a letter. The
countess had gone, leaving the note behind her. It was edged with deep
black; and May took it now from his pocket-book, yellow and worn, with
a smile that would have been cynical had it not been slightly nervous.
“_Très-cher!_” it began, “I cannot bear” (it was all in French, but
we will make clumsy English of the countess’s delicate phrase, as did
May, when he read it now) “that your love for me should be your ruin.
It is too late for me to deny that you also have my heart; I can only
fly. Otherwise my woman’s weakness would destroy either you or myself.
I shall go by the morning train to Frankfurt, where I shall stop two
days. If you do not wish to betray me, seek not my refuge out. I shall
keep the ring as a pledge” (she says nothing about the necklace, it
occurred to May, at this late date)--“a pledge that I shall be faithful
to you, as, I hope, you to me. For what are six or seven years?”
(At her age! thought May, with a shudder.) “I will devote them to
my unhappy countrymen.” (_Compatriotes_ was the original, which may
be feminine.) “But wait for me until you are free; and perhaps, who
knows? my Italy redeemed! I will join you, and be one with you forever.
Meantime you will travel, possibly forget me! But on the fourteenth of
August, 1886, you will be at home. _On that day you will hear from me!_”
May laid the letter down and shuddered. This was most unquestionably
the fourteenth day of August in the year eighteen hundred and
eighty-six. He seized nervously the glass of claret; but, as he raised
it to his lips, looked through the blinds, in the direction of the
house. His second glass of claret fell unheeded to the floor.
A carriage was standing before the front door, and beside it stood a
footman in livery.
Scene Third
THE ADMINISTRATION
I.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.
The three years following May’s unhappy affair with the Countess
Polacca de Valska had been uneventful. He had not plunged again into
foreign parts, but became a student of the barbarities of civilization.
He saw what is termed the world, particularly that manifestation of
it which attains its most perfect growth in London and Paris. Perhaps
it would be too much to say that he forgot the Countess de Valska,
but certainly his feelings toward that unhappy fair one underwent
certain modifications. And as he was in the meantime in the receipt of
some twenty thousand a year from the estate of the late John Austin,
he by degrees became more reconciled to the extremely practical view
the cruel countess had taken of their duties in relation to that
gentleman’s will.
He very often wondered as to who might be the residuary legatee. It
would be a wild freak, that he was sure of. It was quite on the cards
for Uncle Austin to have provided that, since his nephew did not want
the money, it might go to the devil for all he cared--or to the Total
Abstinence Society.
It is more sad to say that, as time went by, certain metaphysical
doubts as to the objective reality of the Cascadegli and the Siberian
mine began to obtrude themselves. Faith of the most stubborn
description remained to him, so far as the countess’s Paris salon and
her beautiful self was concerned, but he failed to see the necessary
connection between Trouville, Baden-Baden, Italia Irredenta, and the
Parisian police. And Serge had removed himself, for an encumbrance, in
a singularly accommodating way.
But May was a man of his word; and he looked forward, at first eagerly,
and afterward with mingled emotions, to their promised next meeting in
Brookline, Mass.
The woman Byron might have married was not the wife for Talleyrand. And
May’s volcanic or Byronic age had passed, and he was in the tertiary
period. Taking her for all she said she was, she wouldn’t do in
society, and he doubted that she was all she said she was.
However, it gave him no serious trouble until after his acquaintance
with the beautiful Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon. Youth has a long future
ahead of it, and a young man of twenty-seven easily discounts
obligations maturing only in six years. But when May was thirty, and
well launched in London society--whether it was the charms of Mrs.
Dehon aforesaid, or the vanishing of youthful heroism and that increase
of comfort which attends middle life--a political heroine like the
Countess Polacca de Valska no longer seemed to him the ideal consort
for a man of his temperament.
Young men have their time for falling in love with comédiennes upon the
stage; and then they turn to the comédiennes of real life. Only in the
latter case it is to be noted that they ever prefer the heroines of a
tragedy.
It was on the very evening before all advice became superfluous, that
he confided his troubles to Tom Leigh, and asked his advice. Tom
Leigh advised him that “he was in a devil of a hole.”
“But what am I to do?” said May. “I am bound to meet her--in five
years.”
“Perhaps she won’t come,” said Tom. But Austin shook his head. If she
didn’t come, there was May Austin--but he checked himself. He had never
spoken of his cousin to Tom Leigh. She was doubtless married ere this;
and if she wasn’t, he preferred her to the countess.
“Perhaps her husband ain’t dead,” suggested the resourceful Tom. But
May smiled, bitterly. “I guess he’s dead enough--much as ever he was.”
“Then I don’t see but what you’ll have to stand the breach of promise
suit,” Tom concluded, with a grin. In these misfortunes, truly, there
is something pleasant to our best friends. We know that Messrs. Winkle
and Tupman must have chuckled in secret over even Bardell vs. Pickwick.
But the idea was unspeakably awful to our fastidious hero. Moreover, he
darkly imagined that the countess had other resources than a breach of
promise suit.
This was on the evening before the hunt; on that epochal brink of their
first meeting. And on the next day all this talk became superfluous; as
superfluous as for Falstaff to demand the time of day.
II.
A LEAD OF HEARTS.
Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon--ah, Mrs. Dehon! Great heavens! why had they
not met earlier--before she had sacrificed herself upon Terwilliger’s
commonplace altars--before her radiant youth had been shrouded in
tragedy?
The Russo-French police may be successfully evaded, but not so the laws
of society. Naught but misery could he see in store for them both--one
long life-agony of divided souls.
Of course, it took some time before this dismal prospect lay fairly out
before them. At their first meeting there was nothing sadder in sight
than the purple hills of Exmoor and the clear cascade of Bagworthy
Water; and their talk was broken only by the cheerful yelp of hounds.
And there had been fortune, too, in this; fortune we call fate, when
fortune turns out ill. He had hardly seen her at the Cloudsham meet,
and but just knew who she was. Thither he had gone with his friends,
the Leighs, to see the red deer hunted in his ancient lair; and as he
stood there, snuffing with his horse the sea-breeze that came up from
Porlock Bay, immaculate in coat and patent-leathers, she had ridden up
with a fat and pursy citizen beside her. This stall-fed citizen was
horse-back on another square-built brute, and it was very Psychecide
to call the wretch her husband. A Diana, by heaven! thought he; and,
indeed, she sat her horse as any goddess might, and clothed her own
riding-habit as the moon her covering of cloud.
“Who’s that?” said he to Tom Leigh.
“That’s the girl that married old Dehon,” said Tom. “She did it----”
But when or how she did it Austin never knew, for just then there was
a joyous baying from the hounds, and whish! they scampered downward,
skirting hanging Cloudsham Wood. Unluckily, they were at the wrong end
of the field, and before they reached the steep bit of gorsy moor that
overlooks the valley everyone else who meant to ride had disappeared in
the cover of the forest. She reined in her beautiful horse on the very
brink, and looked up the valley over Oare Hill; May stood a few yards
below and looked down the valley in the direction of Porlock. Then she
looked down the valley to Porlock, and May looked up the valley to Oare
Hill. And their eyes met.
Her beautiful eyes glanced quickly off, like a sunbeam from a single
eyeglass. She turned, as if in sudden decision, and sped like an arrow
over the high moor. May’s eyes followed her; and his soul was in his
eyes, and his body went after the soul. One dig of the spurs nigh
unseated him, as if his spirited horse scorned such an incitement to
chivalric duty; and so, for some twenty minutes on end they rode, May
neither gaining nor losing, and both out of sight of the rest of the
hunt. Now and then the cry of hounds came up from the forest-valley on
the right, and May fancied he heard below a crashing as of bushes; but
he had faith in his guiding goddess and he took her lead.
The high winds whistled by his head, and there were blue glimpses of
the sea and wide gray gleams of misty moorland; but the soft heather
made no sound of their mad gallop, and May was conscious of nothing
else save the noble horse before him and the flutter of the lady’s
riding-habit in the wind. Now the earth that rushed beneath was yellow
with the gorse, now purple with the heather; here, he would sail over
a turf-bank, there, his horse would swerve furiously from the feeling
of an Exmoor bog; where she would ride, he would ride. This he swore
to himself; but she rode straight, and he could make no gain. At the
top of the moor, almost on the ridge of Dunkery Beacon, was a narrow
cart-path, fenced six feet high in ferny turf, after the usual manner
of Devonshire lanes. May saw it and exulted; this was sure to turn her,
till she found a gate at least.
But his beautiful chase rode up the gentle inner incline and sailing
over the lane like a bird, was lost to sight upon the other side.
“By heavens!” swore May to himself. “She means to kill herself.”
He rode at it and cleared the six-foot width of lane successfully; but
his horse could not bunch his legs upon the narrow bank beyond. He
rolled down it, and May over his head into a bank of heather.
The eager American prematurely began to swear before his head struck
the ground; and before his one moderate oath was finished, he was upon
his horse and off again. Mrs. Dehon had not even turned round upon his
disaster; but May was none the less attracted to her by that. What was
mortal mishap to a spirit wrecked like hers? Why should she?
They were riding down hill now; and she was riding a little more
carefully, favoring her horse. But May cared neither for his horse nor
his neck by this time. Straight down the hill he rode; and by the time
they reached the Lynn he had gained the quarter-mile he lost. Here she
had pulled up her horse, and he pulled up his at a courteous distance;
and both sat still there, in the quiet valley; and the noise of their
horses’ breathing was louder than the rustle of the wind in the old
ash-trees around them.
May wondered if his pilot was at fault; but hardly had the thought
crossed his mind before they heard again the music of the hounds, at
full cry; and far up, two or more miles away, toward the Countisbury
road, they saw the stag. Though so far off, he was distinctly visible,
as he paused for one moment on the brow of the black moor, outlined
against the blue sky; then he plunged downward, and the hounds after
him, and May’s horse trembled beneath him; and May wondered why his
goddess was not off.
But instead of riding down to meet the hunt, along the valley of the
East Lynn, by Oare Church and Brendon, she turned and rode up in the
direction of Chalk-water. May followed; and hardly had they left the
Lynn and gone a furlong up the Chalk-water Combe, when she struck sharp
to the right, breasting the very steepest part of Oare Oak Hill. If she
knew that he was behind her, she did not look around; and May again had
all that he could do to keep his guide in sight.
And now the event proved her skilful venery. For as they crested Oare
Oak Hill, and the long bare swell of the moor rolled away before them,
the sharp cry of the hounds came up like sounds of victory in the
valley just below. Well had Diana known that either way of the Lynn
would be too full of his enemies for the now exhausted deer to take. It
must make for Bagworthy Water. Long ere they had ridden down the Lynn
to the meeting of the streams, the hunt would have passed; but now, as
they looked across and along the lonely Doone Valley, they saw the full
pack far down at their feet, close by the foaming stream.
Then May could see his leader whip her horse, as if she would open the
gap between them; and he set his teeth and swore that he would overtake
her, this side the death. And he gained on her slowly, and the purple
and yellow patches mingled to a carpet as they whirled by him, and he
felt the springing of his horse’s haunches like the waves of a sea; and
below them, hardly apace with them, was the hunt and the cry of hounds.
Down one last plunging valley--no, there was another yet to cross, a
deep side-combe running transversely, its bottom hid in ferns. But the
hounds were now abreast of them, below, and there was no time to ride
up and around. May saw her take it; and as she did, a great shelf of
rock and turf broke off and fell into the brook below. He saw her turn
and wave him back; it was the first notice she had taken of him; and
he rode straight at the widened breach and took it squarely, landing
by her side. Then, without a word, they dashed down, alongside of the
slope, and there, in upper Bagworthy Waters, found the deer at bay, and
the hounds; but of the hunt no sign, save Nicholas Snow, the huntsman,
with reeking knife. He had already blooded his hounds; and now he sat
meditatively upon a little rock by the stream, his black jockey-cap in
his hands, looking at the body of the noble stag, now lifeless, that
had so lately been a thing of speed and air. A warrantable deer it was,
and its end was not untimely.
May pushed his panting horse up nearer hers. She was sitting
motionless, her cheeks already pale again, her eyes fixed far off upon
the distant moor. “Mrs. Dehon!” said he, hat in hand.