It was midsummer once more in the Iselthal, five years and a half after
the celebration at the Imperial palace of those nuptials which had been
so splendid that their magnificence had been noticeable even at that
magnificent Court. The time had seemed to her like one long, happy,
cloudless day, and if to him there had come any fatigue, any satiety,
any unrest, such as almost always come to the man in the fruition of
his passion, he suffered her to see none of them.
It was one of those rare marriages in which no gall of a chain is felt,
but a quick and perfect sympathy insures that harmony which passion
alone is insufficient to sustain. He devoted himself with ardour to the
care of the immense properties that belonged to his wife; he brought
to their administration a judgment and a precision that none had looked
for in a man of pleasure; he entered cordially into all her schemes for
the well-being of her people dependent on her, and carried them out
with skill and firmness. The revenues of Idrac he never touched; he
left them to accumulate for his younger son, or expended them on the
township itself, where he was adored.
If he were still the same man who had been the lover of Cochonette,
the terror of Monte Carlo, the hero of night-long baccara and frontier
duels, he had at least so banished the old Adam that it appeared wholly
dead. Nor was the death of it feigned. He had flung away the slough
of his old life with a firm hand, and the peace, the dignity of his
present existence were very precious to him. He was glad to steep
himself in them, as a tired and fevered wayfarer was glad to bathe his
dusty and heated limbs in the cool, clear waters of the Szalrassee. And
he loved his wife with a great love, in which reverence, and gratitude,
and passion were all blent. Possession had not dulled, nor familiarity
blunted it. She was still to him a sovereign, a saint, a half divine
creature, who had stooped to become mortal for his sake, and his
children's.
The roses were all aglow on the long lawns and under the grey walls
and terraces; the sunbeams were dancing on the emerald surface of the
Szalrassee.
'What a long spell of fair weather,' said Sabran, as they sat beneath
the great yews beside the keep.
'It is like our life,' said his wife, who was doing nothing but
watching the clouds circle round the domes and peaks, which, white as
ivory, dazzling and clear, towered upward in the blue air like a mighty
amphitheatre.
She had borne him three children in these happy years, the eldest of
whom, Bela, played amidst the daisies at her feet, a beautiful fair boy
with his father's features and his father's luminous blue eyes. The
other two, Gela and the little Ottilie, who had seen but a few months
of life, were asleep within doors in their carved ivory cots. They were
all handsome, vigorous, and of perfect promise.
'Have I deserved to be so happy?' she would often think, she whom the
world called so proud.
'Bela grows so like you!' she said now to his father, who stood near
her wicker chair.
'Does he?' said Sabran, with a quick glance that had some pain in it,
at the little face of his son. 'Then if the other one be more like you
it will be he who will be dearest to me.'
As he spoke he bowed his head down and kissed her hand.
She smiled gravely and sweetly in his eyes.
'That will be our only difference, I think! It is time, perhaps, that
we began to have one. Do you think there are two other people in all
the world who have passed five years and more together without once
disagreeing?'
'In all the world there is not another Countess Wanda!'
'Ah! that is your only defect; you will always avoid argument by
escaping through the side-door of compliment. It is true, to be sure,
that your flattery is a very high and subtle art.'
'It is like all high art then, based on what is eternally true.'
'You will always have the last word, and it is always so graceful a
one that it is impossible to quarrel with it. But, Réné, I want you
to speak without compliment to me for once. Tell me, are you indeed
never--never--a little weary of being here?'
He hesitated a moment and a slight flush came on his face.
She observed both signs, slight as they were, and sighed; it was the
first sigh she had ever breathed since her marriage.
'Of course you are, of course you must be,' she said quickly. 'It has
been selfish and blameable of me never to think of it before. It is
paradise to me, but no doubt to you, used as you have been to the stir
of the world, there, must be some tedium, some dulness in this mountain
isolation. I ought to have remembered that before.'
'You need do nothing of the kind, now,' he said. 'Who has been talking
to you? Who has brought this little snake into our Eden?'
'No one; and it is not a snake at all, but a natural reflection.
Hohenszalras and you are the world to me, but I cannot expect that
Hohenszalras and I can be quite as much to yourself. It is always the
difference between the woman and the man. You have great talents; you
are ambitious.'
'Were I as ambitious as Alexander, surely I have gained wherewithal to
be content!'
'That is only compliment again, or if truth it is only a side of the
truth. Nay, love, I do not think for a moment you are tired of me;
I am too self-satisfied for that! But I think it is possible that
this solitude may have grown, or may grow, wearisome to you; that you
desire, perhaps without knowing it, to be more amidst the strife,
the movement, and the pleasures of men. Aunt Ottilie calls this
"confinement to a fortress;" now that is a mere pleasantry, but if ever
you should feel tempted to feel what she feels, have confidence enough
in my good sense and in my affection to say so to me, and then----.'
'And then? We will suppose I have this ingratitude and bad taste, what
then?'
'Why then, my own wishes should not stand for one instant in the way
of yours, or rather I would make yours mine. And do not use the word
ingratitude, my dearest; there can be no question of that betwixt you
and me.'
'Yes,' said Sabran, as he stooped towards her and touched her hair
with his lips. 'When you gave me yourself, you made me your debtor
for all time; would have made me so had you been as poor as you are
rich. When I speak of gratitude it is of _that_ gift, I think, not of
Hohenszalras.'
A warmth of pleasure flushed her cheek for a moment, and she smiled
happily.
'You shall not beg the question so,' she said, with gentle insistence
after a moment's pause. 'I have not forgotten your eloquence in the
French Chamber.' You are that rare thing a born orator. You are
not perhaps fitted to be a statesman, for I doubt if you would have
the application or bear the tedium necessary, but you have every
qualification for a diplomatist, a foreign minister.'
'I have not the first qualification, I have no country!'
She looked at him, in surprise--he spoke with bitterness and
self-contempt; but in a moment he had added quickly:--
'France is nothing to me now, and though I am Austrian by all ties and
affections, I am not an Austrian before the law.'
'That is hardly true,' she answered, satisfied with the explanation.
'Since France is little to you you could be naturalised here whenever
you chose, even if Idrac have not made you a Croat noble, as I believe
the lawyers would say it had; and the Emperor, who knows and admires
you, would, I think, at once give you gladly any mission you preferred;
you would make so graceful, so perfect, so envied an ambassador!
Diplomacy has indeed little force now, yet tact still tells wherever
it be found, and it is as rare as blue roses in the unweeded garden of
the world. I do not speak for myself, dear; that you know. Hohenszalras
is my beloved home, and it was enough for me before I knew you, and
nowhere else could life ever seem to me so true, so high, so simple,
and so near to God as here. But I do remember that men weary even of
happiness when it is unwitnessed, and require the press and stir of
emulation and excitation; and, if you feel that want, say so. Have
confidence enough in me to believe that your welfare will be ever my
highest law. Promise me this.'
He changed colour slightly at her generous and trustful words, but he
answered without a moment's pause:
'Whenever I am so thankless to fate I will confess it. No; the world
and I never valued one another much. I am far better here in the heart
of your mountains. Here only have I known peace and rest.'
He spoke with a certain effort and emotion, and he stooped over his
little son and raised him on her knees.
'These children shall grow up at Hohenszalras,' he continued, 'and you
shall teach them your love of the open air, the mountain solitudes, the
simple people, the forest creatures, the influences and the ways of
nature. You care for all those things, and they make up true wisdom,
true contentment. As for myself, if you always love me I shall ask no
more of fate.'
'If! Can you be afraid?'
'Sometimes. One always fears to lose what one has never merited.'
'Ah, my love, do not be so humble! If you saw yourself as I see you,
you would be very proud.'
She smiled as she spoke, and stretched her hand out to him over the
golden head of her child.
He took it and held it against his heart, clasped in both his own.
Bela, impatient, slipped off his mother's lap to pursue his capture of
the daisies; the butterflies were forbidden joys, and he was obedient,
though in his own little way he was proud and imperious. But there
was a blue butterfly just in front of him, a Lycœna Adonis, like a
little bit of the sky come down and dancing about; he could not resist,
he darted at it. As he was about to seize it she caught his fingers.
'I have told you, Bela, you are never to touch anything that flies or
moves. You are cruel.'
He tried to get away, and his face grew very warm and passionate.
'Bela will be cruel, if he like,' he said, knitting his pretty brows.
Though he was not more than four years old he knew very well that he
was the Count Bela, to whom all the people gave homage, crowding to
kiss his tiny hand after Mass on holy-days. He was a very beautiful
child, and all the prettier for his air of pride and resolution; he had
been early put on a little mountain pony, and could ride fearlessly
down the forest glades with Otto. All the imperiousness of the great
race which had dealt out life and death so many centuries at their
caprice through the Hohe Tauern seemed to have been inherited by him,
coupled with a waywardness and a vanity that were not traits of the
house of Szalras. It was impossible, even though those immediately
about him were wise and prudent, to wholly prevent the effects of the
adulation with which the whole household was eager to wait on every
whim of the little heir.
'Bela wishes it!' he would say, with an impatient frown, whenever his
desire was combated or crossed: he had already the full conviction that
to be Bela was to have full right to rule the world, including in it
his brother Gela, who was of a serious, mild, and yielding disposition,
and gave up to him in all things. As compensating qualities he was very
affectionate and sensitive, and easily moved to self-reproach.
With a step Sabran reached him. 'You dare to disobey your mother?' he
said, sternly. 'Ask her forgiveness at once. Do you hear?'
Bela, who had never heard his father speak in such a tone, was very
frightened, and lost all his colour; but he was resolute, and had been
four years old on Ascension Day. He remained silent and obstinate.
Sabran put his hand heavily on the child's shoulder.
'Do you hear me, sir? Ask her pardon this moment.'
Bela was now fairly stunned into obedience.
'Bela is sorry,' he murmured. 'Bela begs pardon.'
Then he burst into tears.
'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his
father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his
nurse, who came for him.
'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him
more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give
you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'
It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil
qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son,
and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was
unworthy to beget _her_ children,' he thought, with the self-reproach
that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his
satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what
trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years
to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his
blood?
'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to
see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It
hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own
little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill;
do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is
your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud
of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'
'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows
older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to
enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy
that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry
passions, of my degraded humanity?'
'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think
me.'
'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'
'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a _beau défaut_,
and I would not have you lose it.'
'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and
passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'
She looked at him surprised, and vaguely troubled at the self-reproach
and the self-scorn of his passionate utterance. Seeing that surprise
and trouble in her glance, he controlled the emotion that for the
moment mastered him.
'Ah, love!' he said quickly and truly, 'if you could but guess how
gross and base a man's life seems to him contrasted with the life of
a pure and noble woman! Being born of you, those children, I think,
should be as faultless and as soilless as those pearls that lie on your
breast. But then they are mine also; so already on that boy's face one
sees the sins of revolt, of self-will, of cruelty--being mine also,
your living pearls are dulled and stained!'
A greater remorse than she dreamed of made his heart ache as he said
these words; but she heard in them only the utterance of that extreme
and unwavering devotion to her which he had shown in all his acts and
thoughts from the first hours of their union.