He reached his own room unseen, feeling his way with his hands against
the tapestry of the wall, and had presence of mind enough to fling his
clothes off him and stagger to his bed, where he sank down insensible.
She was still asleep.
When dawn broke they found him ill, exhausted, with a return of fever.
He had once a fit of weeping like a child. He could not bear his wife a
moment from his sight. She reproached herself for having acceded to his
desire and left him unattended whilst she slept.
But of that midnight interview she guessed nothing.
Her cousin Egon sent her a few lines, saying that he had been summoned
to represent his monarch at the autumn manœuvres of Prussia, and had
left at daybreak without being able to make his farewell in person,
as he had previously to go to his castle of Taróc. She attached no
importance to it. When Sabran was told of his departure he said
nothing. He had recovered his power of self-control: the oriental
impassibility under emotion which was in his blood from his Persian
mother. If he betrayed himself he knew that it would be of little use
to have been spared by his enemy. The depression upon him his wife
attributed to his incapacity to move and lead his usual life; a trial
always so heavy to a strong man. As little by little his strength
returned, he became more like himself. In addressing her he had a
gentleness almost timid; and now and then she caught his gaze fastened
upon her with a strange appeal.
One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was
certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following
words to his foe and his judge:
'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I
send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical
weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time
or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof
absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that
the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue
it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but
shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of
action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present
permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have
governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or
chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern
both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse
at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia
Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to
nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the
great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was
taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never
saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years
old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I
remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you,
and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then
returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him.
One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the
Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that
I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make
you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always
been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family,
could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts,
the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then,
thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father.
I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my
fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother
Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year
after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You
see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things
or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had
a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices,
like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the
love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit
which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of
me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive
tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in
my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those
three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me
with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be
rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did
me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a
word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis
with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold
some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque
going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down
with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone
reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe,
and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread,
fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I
neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me
popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name
of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went
there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the
moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I
liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely
more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his
fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior.
Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left
for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his
hut, and saved my life by his skill and care. This stranger was the
Marquis Xavier de Sabran, who had dwelt for nearly seventy years in the
solitude of those virgin forests, which nothing ever disturbed excepts
the hiss of an Indian's arrow or the roar of woods on fire. How he
lived there, and why, is all told in the monograph I have published of
him. He was a great and a good man. His life, lost under the shadows
of those virgin forests was the life of a saint and of a philosopher
in one. His influence upon me was the noblest that I had ever been
subject to; he did me nothing but good. His son had died early, having
wedded a Spanish Mexican ere he was twenty. His grandson had died
of snake-bite: he had been of my age. At times: he almost seemed to
think that this lad lived again in me. I spent eight years of my life
with him. His profound studies attracted me; his vast learning awed
me. The free life of the woods and sierras, the perilous sports, the
dangers from the Indian tribes, the researches into the lost history
of the perished nation, all these interested and occupied me. I was
glad to forget that I had ever lived another existence. Wholly unlike
as it was in climate, in scenery, in custom, the liberty of life on
the pampas and in the forests recalled to me my childhood on the
steppes of the Volga. I saw no European all those years. The only men
I came in contact with were Indians and half breeds; the only woman I
loved was an Indian girl; there was not even a Mexican _ranch_ near,
within hundreds of miles. The dense close-woven forest was between us
and the rest of the world; our only highway was a river, made almost
inaccessible by dense fields of reeds and banks of jungle and swamps
covered with huge lilies. It was a very simple existence, but in it
all the wants of nature were satisfied, all healthy desires could be
gratified, and it was elevated from brutishness by the lofty studies
which I prosecuted under the direction of the Marquis Xavier. Eight
whole years passed so. I was twenty-five years old when my protector
and friend died of sheer old age in one burning summer, against whose
heat he had no strength. He talked long and tenderly with me ere he
died; told me where to find all his papers, and gave me everything
he owned. It was not much. He made me one last request, that I would
collect his manuscripts, complete them, and publish them in France.
For some weeks after his death I could think of nothing but his loss.
I buried him myself, with the aid of an Indian who had loved him; and
his grave is there beside the ruins that he revered, beneath a grove of
cypress. I carved a cross in cedar wood, and raised it above the grave.
I found all his papers where he had indicated, underneath one of the
temple porticoes; his manuscripts I had already in my possession: all
those which had been brought with him from France by his Jesuit tutors,
and the certificates of his own and his father's births and marriages,
with those of his son, and of his grandson. There was also a paper
containing directions how to find other documents, with the orders and
patents of nobility of the Sabrans of Romaris, which had been hidden
in the oak wood upon their sea-shore in Finisterre. All these he had
desired me to seek and take. Now came upon me the temptation to a great
sin. The age of his grandson, the young Réné de Sabran, had been mine:
he also had perished from snake-bite, as I said, without any human
being knowing of it save his grandfather and a few natives. It seemed
to me that if I assumed his name I should do no one any wrong. It boots
not to dwell on the sophisms with which I persuaded myself that I had
the right to repair an injustice done to me by human law ere I was
born. Men less intelligent than I can always find a million plausible
reasons for doing that which they desire to do; and although the years
I had spent beside the Marquis Xavier had purified my character and
purged it of much of the vice and the cynicism I had learned in Paris,
yet I had little moral conscientiousness. I lived outside the law in
many ways, and was indifferent to those measures of right and wrong
which too often appeared to me mere puerilities. Do not suppose that
I ceased to be grateful to my benefactor; I adored his memory, but it
seemed to me I should do him no wrong whatever. Again and again he had
deplored to me that I was not his heir; he had loved me very truly, and
had given me all he held most dear----the fruits of his researches.
To be brief, I was sorely tempted, and I gave way to the temptation.
I had no difficulty in claiming recognition in the city of Mexico as
the Marquis de Sabran. The documents were there, and no creature knew
that they were not mine except a few wild Puebla Indians, who spoke
no tongue but their own, and never left their forest solitudes. I was
recognised by all the necessary authorities of that country. I returned
to France as the Marquis de Sabran. On my voyage I made acquaintance
with two Frenchmen of very high station, who proved true friends to
me, and had power enough to protect me from the consequences of not
having served a military term in France. On my arrival in Europe, I
went first to the Bay of Romaris: there I found at once all that had
been indicated to me as hidden in the oak wood above the sea. The
priest of Romaris, and the peasantry, at the first utterance of the
name, welcomed me with rapture; they had forgotten nothing----Bretons
never do forget. Vassia Kazán had been numbered with the drowned dead
men who had gone down when the _Estelle_ had foundered off the Pinos.
I had therefore no fear of recognition. I had grown and changed, so
much during my seven years' absence from Paris that I did not suppose
anyone would recognise the Russian collegian in the Marquis de Sabran.
And I was not in error. Even you, most probably, would never have known
me again had not your perceptions been abnormally quickened by hatred
of me as your cousin's husband; and had you even had suspicions you
could never have presumed to formulate them but for that accident in
the forest. It is always some such unforeseen trifle which breaks down
the wariest schemes. I will not linger on all the causes that made me
take the name I did. I can honestly say that had there been any fortune
involved, or any even distant heir to be wronged, I should not have
done it. As there was nothing save some insignia of knightly orders and
some acres of utterly unproductive sea-coast, I wronged no one. What
was left of the old manor I purchased with the little money I took over
with me. I repeat that I have wronged no one except your cousin, who is
my wife. The rest of my life you know. Society in Paris became gracious
and cordial to me. You will say that I must have had every moral sense
perverted before I could take such a course. But I did not regard it
as an immorality. Here was an empty title, like an empty shell, lying
ready for any occupant. Its usurpation harmed no one. I intended to
justify my assumption of it by a distinguished career, and I was aware
that my education had been beyond that of most gentlemen. It is true
that when I was fairly launched on a Parisian life pleasure governed
me more than ambition; and I found, which had not before occurred to
me, that the aristocratic creeds and the political loyalties which I
had perforce adopted with the name of the Sabrans de Romaris completely
closed all the portals of political ambition to me. Hence I became
almost by necessity a _fainéant_, and fate smiled upon me more than I
merited. I discharged my duty to the dead by the publication of all
his manuscripts. In this at least I was faithful. Paris applauded me.
I became in a manner celebrated. I need not say more, except that I
can declare to you the position I had entered upon soon became so
natural to me that I absolutely forgot it was assumed. Nature had made
me arrogant, contemptuous, courageous; it was quite natural to me to
act the part of a great noble. My want of fortune often hampered and
irritated me, but I had that instinct in public events which we call
_flair._ I made with slender means some audacious and happy ventures on
the Bourse. I was also, famous for _la main heureuse_ in all forms of
gambling. I led a selfish and perhaps even a vicious life, but I kept
always within those lines which the usages of the world has prescribed
to gentlemen even in their licence. I never did anything that degraded
the name I had taken, as men of the world read degradation. I should
not have satisfied severe moralists, but, my one crime apart, I was
a man of honour until----I loved your cousin. I do not attempt to
defend my marriage with her. It was a fraud, a crime; I am well aware
of that. If you had struck me the other night, I would not have denied
your perfect right to do so. I will say no more. You have loved her.
You know what my temptation was: my crime is one you cannot pardon. It
is a treason to your rank, to your relatives, to all the traditions
of your order. When you were a little lad you said a bitter truth to
me. I was born a serf in Russia. There are serfs no more in Russia,
but Alexander, who affranchised them, cannot affranchise me. I am
base-born. I am like those cross-bred hounds cursed by conflicting
elements in their blood: I am an aristocrat in temper and in taste and
mind. I am a bastard in class, the chance child of a peasant begotten
by a great lord's momentary _ennui_ and caprice! But if you will stoop
so far----if you will consider me ennobled by _her_ enough to meet
you as an equal would do----we can find with facility some pretext
of quarrel, and under cover and semblance of a duel you can kill me.
You will be only taking the just vengeance of a race of which you are
the only male champion--what her brothers would surely have taken had
they been living. She will mourn for me without shame, since you have
passed me your promise never to tell her of my past. I await your
commands. That my little sons will transmit the infamy of my blood to
their descendants will be disgrace to them for ever in your sight. Yet
you will not utterly hate them, for children are more their mother's
than their father's, and she will rear them in all noble ways.'
Then he signed the letter with the name of Vassia Kazán, and addressed
it to Egon Vàsàrhely at his castle of Taróc, there to await the return
of Vàsàrhely from the Prussian camp. That done, he felt more at peace
with himself, more nearly a gentleman, less heavily weighted with his
own cowardice and shame.
It was not until three weeks later that he received the reply of
Vàsàrhely written from the castle of Taróc. It was very brief:----
'I have read your letter and I have burned it. I cannot kill you, for
she would never pardon me. Live on in such peace as you may find.
(Signed) 'PRINCE VÀSÀRHELY.'
To his cousin Vàsàrhely wrote at the same time, and to her said:
'Forgive me that I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, and I did
not rebel against necessity, for so I avoided some pain. The world has
seen me at Hohenszalras; let that suffice. Do not ask me to return.
It hurts me to refuse you anything, but residence there is only a
prolonged suffering to me and must cause irritation to your lord. I go
to my soldiers in Central Hungary, amongst whom I make my family. If
ever you need me you will know that I am at your service; but I hope
this will never be, since it will mean that some evil has befallen
you.' Rear your sons in the traditions of your race, and teach them to
be worthy of yourself: being so they will be also worthy of your name.
Adieu, my ever beloved Wanda! Show what I have said herein to your
husband, and give me a remembrance in your prayers.
(Signed) 'EGON.'