WANDA
BY
OUIDA
_'Doch!--alles was dazu mich trieb;_
_Gott!--war so gut, ach, war so lieb!'_
Goethe
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1883
WANDA.
CHAPTER XI.
On her return she spoke of her royal friends, of her cousins, of
society, of her fears for the peace of Europe, and her doubts as to
the strength of the empire; but she did not speak of the one person of
whom, beyond all others, Mdme. Ottilie was desirous to hear. When some
hours had passed, and still she had never alluded to the existence of,
the Princess could bear silence no longer, and casting prudence to the
winds, said boldly and with impatience:
'And your late guest? Have you nothing to tell me? Surely you have seen
him?'
'He called once,' she answered, 'and I heard him speak at the Chamber.'
'And was that all?' cried the Princess, disappointed.
'He speaks very well in public,' added Wanda, 'and he said many tender
and grateful things of you, and sent you many messages--such grateful
ones that my memory is too clumsy a tray to hold such eggshell china.'
She was angered with herself as she spoke, but the fragrance of the
white lilac and the remembrance of its donor pursued her--angered
with herself, too, because Hohenszalras seemed for the moment sombre,
solitary, still, almost melancholy, wrapped in that winter whiteness
and stillness which she had always loved so well.
The next morning she saw all her people, visited her schools and her
stables, and tried to persuade herself that she was as contented as
ever.
The aurist came from Paris shortly after her, and consoled the Princess
by assuring her that the slight deafness she suffered from occasionally
was due to cold.
'Of course!' she said, with some triumph. 'These mountains, all this
water, rain whenever there is not snow, snow whenever there is not
rain; it is a miracle, and the mercy of Heaven, if one saves any of
one's five senses uninjured in a residence here.'
She had her satin hood trebly wadded, and pronounced the aurist a
charming person. Herr Greswold in an incautious moment had said to her
that deafness was one of the penalties of age and did not depend upon
climate. A Paris doctor would not have earned his fee of two hundred
napoleons if he had only produced so ungallant a truism. She heard a
little worse after his visit, perhaps, but if so, she said that was
caused by the additional wadding in her hood. He had told her to use a
rose-water syringe, and Herr Greswold was forbidden her presence for a
week because he averred that you might as well try to melt the glacier
with a lighted pastille.
The aurist gone, life at Hohenszalras resumed its even tenor; and
except for, the post, the tea-cups, and the kind of dishes served at
dinner, hardly differed from what life had been there in the sixteenth
century, save that there were no saucy pages playing in the court, and
no destriers stamping in the stalls, and no culverins loaded on the
bastions.
'It is like living between the illuminated leaves of one of the Hours,'
thought the Princess, and though her conscience told her that to dwell
so in a holy book like a pressed flower was the most desirable life
that could be granted by Heaven to erring mortality, still she felt it
was dull. A little gossip, a little movement, a little rolling of other
carriage-wheels than her own, had always seemed desirable to her.
Life here was laid down on broad lines. It was stately, austere,
tranquil; one day was a mirror of all the rest. The Princess fretted
for some little _frou-frou_ of the world to break its solemn silence.
When Wanda returned from her ride one forenoon she said a little
abruptly to her aunt:
'I suppose you will be glad to hear you have convinced me. I have
telegraphed to Ludwig to open and air the house in Vienna; we will go
there for three months. It is, perhaps, time I should be seen at Court.'
'It is a very sudden decision!' said Madame Ottilie, doubting that she
could hear aright.
'It is the fruit of your persuasions, dear mother mine! The only
advantage in having houses in half a dozen different places is to be
able to go to them without consideration. You think me obstinate,
whimsical, barbaric; the Kaiserin thinks so too. I will endeavour to
conquer my stubbornness. We will go to Vienna next week. You will see
all your old friends, and I all my old jewels.'
The determination once made, she adhered to it. She had felt a vague
annoyance at the constancy and the persistency with which regret for
the lost society of Sabran recurred to her. She had attributed it to
the solitude in which she lived: that solitude which is the begetter
and the nurse of thought may also be the hotbed of unwise fancies.
It was indeed a solitude filled with grave duties, careful labours,
high desires and endeavours; but perhaps, she thought, the world for a
while, even in its folly, might be healthier, might preserve her from
the undue share which the memory of a stranger had in her musings.
Her people, her lands, her animals, would none of them suffer by
a brief absence; and perhaps there were duties due as well to her
position as to her order. She was the only representative of the great
Counts of Szalras. With the whimsical ingratitude to fate common
to human nature, she thought she would sooner have been obscure,
unnoticed, free. Her rank began to drag on her with something like the
sense of a chain. She felt that she was growing irritable, fanciful,
thankless; so she ordered the huge old palace in the Herrengasse to be
got ready, and sought the world as others sought the cloister.
In a week's time she was installed in Vienna, with a score of horses,
two score of servants, and all the stir and pomp that attend a great
establishment in the most aristocratic city of Europe, and she made her
first appearance at a ball at the Residenz covered with jewels from
head to foot; the wonderful old jewels that for many seasons had lain
unseen in their iron coffers--opals given by Rurik, sapphires taken
from Kara Mustafa, pearls worn by her people at the wedding of Mary of
Burgundy, diamonds that had been old when Maria Theresa had been young.
She had three months of continual homage, of continual flattery, of
what others called pleasure, and what none could have denied was
splendour. Great nobles laid their heart and homage before her feet,
and all the city looked after her for her beauty as she drove her
horses round the Ringstrasse. It left her all very cold and unamused
and indifferent.
She was impatient to be back at Hohenszalras, amidst the stillness of
the woods, the sound of the waters.
'You cannot say now that I do not care for the world, because I have
forgotten what it was like,' she observed to her aunt.
'I wish you cared more,' said the Princess. 'Position has its duties.'
'I never dispute that; only I do not see that being wearied by society
constitutes one of them. I cannot understand why people are so afraid
of solitude; the routine of the world is quite as monotonous.'
'If you only appreciated the homage that you receive----'
'Surely one's mind is something like one's conscience: if one can be
not too utterly discontented with what it says one does not need the
verdict of others.'
'That is only a more sublime form of vanity. Really, my love, with
your extraordinary and unnecessary humility in some things, and your
overweening arrogance in others, you would perplex wiser heads than the
one I possess.'
'No; I am sure it is not vanity or arrogance at all; it may be
pride--the sort of pride of the "Rohan je suis." But it is surely
better than making one's barometer of the smiles of simpletons.'
'They are not all simpletons.'
'Oh, I know they are not; but the world in its aggregate is very
stupid. All crowds are mindless, the crowd of the Haupt-Allee as well
as of the Wurstel-Prater.'
The Haupt-Allee indeed interested her still less than the
Wurstel-Prater, and she rejoiced when she set her face homeward and saw
the chill white peaks of the Glöckner arise out of the mists. Yet she
was angry with herself for the sense of something missing, something
wanting, which still remained with her. The world could not fill it up,
nor could all her philosophy or her pride do so either.
The spring was opening in the Tauern, slow coming, veiled in rain,
and parting reluctantly with winter, but yet the spring, flinging
primroses broadcast through all the woods, and filling the shores of
the lakes with hepatica and gentian; the loosened snows were plunging
with a hollow thunder into the ravines and the rivers, and the grass
was growing green and long on the alps between the glaciers. A pale
sweet sunshine was gleaming on the grand old walls of Hohenszalras,
and turning to silver and gold all its innumerable casements as she
returned, and Donau and Neva leaped in rapture on her.
'It is well to be at home,' she said, with a smile, to Herr Greswold,
as she passed through the smiling and delighted household down the
Rittersaal, which was filled with plants from the hothouses, gardenias
and gloxianas, palms and ericas, azaleas and camellias glowing between
the stern armoured figures of the knights and the time-darkened oak of
their stalls.
'This came from Paris this morning for Her Excellency,' said Hubert,
as he showed his mistress a gilded boat-shaped basket, filled with
tea-roses and orchids; a small card was tied to its handle with
'_Willkommen_' written on it.
She coloured a little as she recognised the handwriting of the single
word.
How could he have known, she wondered, that she would return home that
day? And for the flowers to be so fresh, a messenger must have been
sent all the way with them by express speed, and Sabran was poor.
'That is the Stanhopea tigrina,' said Herr Greswold, touching one with
reverent fingers; 'they are all very rare. It is a welcome worthy of
you, my lady.'
'A very extravagant one,' said Wanda von Szalras, with a certain
displeasure that mingled with a softened emotion. 'Who brought it?'
'The Marquis de Sabran, by _extra-poste_, himself this morning,'
answered Hubert--an answer she did not expect. 'But he would not wait;
he would not even take a glass of tokayer, or let his horses stay for a
feed of corn.'
'What knight-errantry!' said the Princess well pleased.
'What folly!' said Wanda, but she had the basket of orchids taken to
her own octagon room.
It seemed as if he had divined how much of late she had thought of him.
She was touched, and yet she was angered a little.
'Surely she will write to him,' thought the Princess wistfully very
often: but she did not write. To a very proud woman the dawning
consciousness of love is always an irritation, an offence, a failure, a
weakness: the mistress of Hohenszalras could not quickly pardon herself
for taking with pleasure the message of the orchids.
A little while later she received a letter from Olga Brancka. In it she
wrote from Paris:
'Parsifal is doing wonders in the Chamber, that is, he is making Paris
talk; his party will forbid him doing anything else. You certainly
worked a miracle. I hear he never plays, never looks at an actress,
never does anything wrong, and when a grand heiress was offered to
him by her people refused her hand blandly but firmly. What is one to
think? That he washed his soul white in the Szalrassee?'
It was the subtlest flattery of all, the only flattery to which she
would have been accessible, this entire alteration in the current
of a man's whole life; this change in habit, inclination, temper,
and circumstance. If he had approached her its charm would have been
weakened, its motive suspected; but aloof and silent as he remained,
his abandonment of all old ways, his adoption of a sterner and worthier
career, moved her with its marked, mute homage of herself.
When she read his discourses in the French papers she felt a glow
of triumph, as if she had achieved some personal success; she felt
a warmth at her heart as of something near and dear to her, which
was doing well and wisely in the sight of men. His cause did not,
indeed, as Olga Brancka had said, render tangible, practical, victory
impossible for him, but he had the victories of eloquence, of
patriotism, of high culture, of pure and noble language, and these
blameless laurels seemed to her half of her own gathering.
'Will you never reward him?' the Princess ventured to say at last,
overcome by her own impatience to rashness. 'Never? Not even by a word?'
'Hear mother,' said Wanda, with a smile which perplexed and baffled the
Princess, 'if your hero wanted reward he would not be the leader of a
lost cause. Pray do not suggest to me a doubt of his disinterestedness.
You will do him very ill service.'
The Princess was mute, vaguely conscious that she had said something
ill-timed or ill-advised.
Time passed on and brought beautiful weather in the month of June,
which here in the High Tauern means what April does in the south.
Millions of song-birds were shouting in the woods, and thousands of
nests were suspended on the high branches of the forest trees, or
hidden in the greenery of the undergrowth; water-birds perched and
swung in the tall reeds where the brimming streams tumbled; the purple,
the white, and the grey herons were all there, and the storks lately
flown home from Asia or Africa were settling in bands by the more
marshy grounds beside the northern shores of the Szalrassee.
One afternoon she had been riding far and fast, and on her return a
telegram from Vienna had been brought to her, sent on from Lienz.
Having opened it, she approached her aunt and said with an unsteady
voice:
'War is declared between France and Prussia!'
'We expected it; we are ready for it,' said the Princess, with all
her Teutonic pride in her eyes. 'We shall show her that we cannot be
insulted with impunity.'
'It is a terrible calamity for the world,' said Wanda, and her face was
very pale.
The thought which was present to her was that Sabran would be foremost
amidst volunteers. She did not hear a word of all the political
exultation with which Princess Ottilie continued to make her militant
prophecies. She shivered as with cold in the warmth of the midsummer
sunset.
'War is so hideous always,' she said, remembering what it had cost her
house.
The Princess demurred.
'It is not for me to say otherwise,' she objected; 'but without war all
the greater virtues would die out. Your race has been always martial.
You should be the last to breathe a syllable against what has been the
especial glory and distinction of your forefathers. We shall avenge
Jena. You should desire it, remembering Aspern and Wagram.'
'And Sadowa?' said Wanda, bitterly.
She did not reply further; she tore up the message, which had come from
her cousin Kaulnitz. She slept little that night.
In two days the Princess had a brief letter from Sabran. He said: 'War
is declared. It is a blunder which will perhaps cause France the loss
of her existence as a nation, if the campaign be long. All the same I
shall offer myself. I am not wholly a tyro in military service. I saw
bloodshed in Mexico; and I fear the country will sorely need every
sword she has.'
Wanda, herself, wrote back to him:
'You will do right. When a country is invaded every living man on her
soil is bound to arm.'
More than that she could not say, for many of her kindred on her
grandmother's side were soldiers of Germany.
But the months which succeeded those months of the 'Terrible Year,'
written in letters of fire and iron on so many human hearts, were
filled with a harassing anxiety to her for the sake of one life that
was in perpetual peril. War had been often cruel to her house. As a
child she had suffered from the fall of those she loved in the Italian
campaign of Austria. Quite recently Sadowa and Königsgrätz had made
her heart bleed, beholding her relatives and friends opposed in mortal
conflict, and the empire she adored humbled and prostrated. Now she
became conscious of a suffering as personal and almost keener. She had
at the first, now and then, a hurried line from Sabran, written from
the saddle, from the ambulance, beside the bivouac fire, or in the
shelter of a barn. He had offered his services, and had been given the
command of a volunteer cavalry regiment, all civilians mounted on their
own horses, and fighting principally in the Orléannois. His command was
congenial to him; he wrote cheerfully of himself, though hopelessly of
his cause. The Prussians were gaining ground every day. Occasionally,
in printed correspondence from the scene of war, she saw his name
mentioned by some courageous action or some brilliant skirmish. That
was all.
The autumn began to deepen into winter, and complete silence covered
all his life. She thought with a great remorse--if he were dead?
Perhaps he was dead? Why had she been always so cold to him? She
suffered intensely; all the more intensely because it was not a sorrow
which she could not confess even to herself. When she ceased altogether
to hear anything of or from him, she realised the hold which he had
taken on her life.
These months of suspense did more to attach her to him than years
of assiduous and ardent homage could have done. She, a daughter of
soldiers, had always felt any man almost unmanly who had not received
the baptism of fire.
Mdme. Ottilie talked of him constantly, wondered frequently if he were
wounded, slain, or in prison; she never spoke his name, and dreaded to
hear it.
Greswold, who perceived an anxiety in her that, he did not dare to
allude to, ransacked every journal that was published in German to find
some trace of Sabran's name. At the first he saw often some mention of
the Cuirassiers d'Orléans, and of their intrepid Colonel Commandant:
some raid, skirmish, or charge in which they had been conspicuous for
reckless gallantry. But after the month of November he could find
nothing. The whole regiment seemed to have been obliterated from
existence.
Winter settled down on Central Austria with cold silence, with roads
blocked and mountains impassable. The dumbness, the solitude around
her, which she had always loved so well, now grew to her intolerable.
It seemed like death.
Paris capitulated. The news reached her at the hour of a violent
snowstorm; the postillion of her post-sledge bringing it had his feet
frozen.
Though her cousins of Lilienhöhe were amongst those who entered the
city as conquerors, the fate of Paris smote her with a heavy blow. She
felt as if the cold of the outer world had chilled her very bones, her
very soul. The Princess, looking at her, was afraid to rejoice.
On the following day she wrote to her cousin Hugo of Lilienhöhe, who
was in Paris with the Imperial Guard. She asked him to inquire for and
tell her the fate of a friend, the Marquis de Sabran.
In due time Prince Hugo answered:
'The gentleman you asked for was one of the most dangerous of our
enemies. He commanded a volunteer cavalry regiment, which was almost
cut to pieces by the Bavarian horse in an engagement before Orleans.
Two or three alone escaped; their Colonel was severely wounded in
the thigh, and had his charger shot dead under him. He was taken
prisoner by the Bavarians after a desperate resistance. Whilst he
lay on the ground he shot three of our men with his revolver. He was
sent to a fortress, I think Ehrenbreitstein, but I will inquire more
particularly. I am sorry to think that you have any French friends.
By-and-by she heard that he had been confined not at Ehrenbreitstein
but at a more obscure and distant fortress on the Elbe; that his wounds
had been cured, and that he would shortly be set free like other
prisoners of war. In the month of March in effect she received a brief
letter from his own hand, gloomy and profoundly dejected.
'Our plans were betrayed,' he wrote. 'We were surprised and surrounded
just as we had hobbled our horses and lain down to rest, after being
the whole day in the saddle. Bavarian cavalry, outnumbering us four to
one, attacked us almost ere we could mount our worn-out beasts. My
poor troopers were cut to pieces. They hunted me down when my charger
dropped, and I was made a prisoner. When they could they despatched
me to one of their places on the Elbe. I have been here December and
January. I am well. I suppose I must be very strong; nothing kills
me. They are now about to send me back to the frontier. My beautiful
Paris! What a fate! But I forget, I cannot hope for your sympathy; your
kinsmen are our conquerors. I know not whether the house I lived in
there exists, but if you will write me a word at Romaris, you will be
merciful, and show me that you do not utterly despise a lost cause and
a vanquished soldier.'
She wrote to him at Romaris, and the paper she wrote on felt her tears.
In conclusion she said:
'Whenever you will, come and make sure for yourself that both the
Princess Ottilie and I honour courage and heroism none the less because
it is companioned by misfortune.'
But he did not come.
She understood why he did not. An infinite pity for him overflowed her
heart. His public career interrupted, his country ruined, his future
empty, what remained to him? Sometimes she thought, with a blush on her
face, though she was all alone: 'I do.' But then, if he never came to
hear that?