The Countess Brancka meanwhile had been staying at Taróc for the autumn
shooting when her brother-in-law had returned there unexpectedly, and
to her chagrin, since she had filled the old castle with friends of
her own, such as Egon Vàsàrhely little favoured, and it amused her to
play the châtelaine there and organise all manner of extravagant and
eccentric pastimes. When he arrived she could no longer enjoy this
unchecked independence of folly, and he did not hesitate to make it
plain to her that the sooner Taróc should be cleared of its Parisian
world the better would he be pleased. Indeed she knew well that it
was only his sense of hospitality, as the first duty of a gentleman,
which restrained him from enforcing a rough and sudden exodus upon
her guests. He returned, moreover, unusually silent, reserved, and
what she termed ill-tempered. It was clear to her that his sojourn at
Hohenszalras had been painful to him; and whenever she spoke to him of
it he replied to her in a tone which forbade her further interrogation.
If she feared anyone in the world it was Egon, who had again and again
paid her debts to spare his brother annoyance, and who received her and
her caprices with a contemptuous unalterable disdain.
'Wanda has ruined him!' she always thought angrily. 'He always expects
every other woman to have a soul above _chiffons_ and to bury herself
in the country with children and horses.'
Her quick instincts perceived that the hold upon his thoughts which
his cousin always possessed had been only strengthened by his visit to
her, and she attributed the gloom which had settled down on him to the
pain which the happiness that reigned at Hohenszalras had given him.
Little souls always try to cram great ones into their own narrowed
measurements. As he did not absolutely dismiss her she continued to
entertain her own people at Taróc, ignoring his tacit disapproval, and
was still there when the letter of Sabran reached her brother-in-law.
She had very quick eyes; she was present when the letters, which only
came to Taróc once a week, being fetched over many leagues of wild
forest, and hill, and torrent, and ravine, were brought to Vàsàrhely,
and she noticed that his face changed as he took out a thick envelope,
which she, standing by his shoulder, with her hand outstretched for
her own correspondence from Paris and Petersburg, could see bore the
post-mark of Matrey. He threw it amongst a mass of other letters, and
soon after took all his papers away with him into the room which was
called a library, being full of Hungarian black-letter and monkish
literature, gathered in centuries gone by by great priests of the race
of Vàsàrhely.
What was in that letter?
She attended to none of her own, so absorbed was she in the impression
which gained upon her that the packet which had brought so much
surprise and even emotion upon his face came from the hand of Wanda.
'If even she should be no saint at all?' she thought, with a malicious
amusement. She did not see Egon Vàsàrhely for many hours, but she
did not lose her curiosity nor cease to cast about for a method of
gratifying it. At the close of the day when she came back from hunting
she went into the library, which was then empty. She did not seriously
expect to see anything that would reward her enterprise, but she knew
he read his letters there and wrote the few he was obliged to write:
like most soldiers he disliked using pen and ink. It was dusk, and
there were a few lights burning in the old silver sconces fixed upon
the horns of forest animals against the walls. With a quick, calm
touch, she moved all the litter of papers lying on the huge table
where he was wont to do such business as he was compelled to transact.
She found nothing that gratified her inquisitiveness. She was about
to leave the room in baffled impatience----impatience of she knew not
what----when her eyes fell upon a pile of charred paper lying on the
stove.
It was one of those monumental polychrome stoves of fifteenth-century
work in which the country-houses of Central Europe are so rich; a
grand pile of fretted pottery, towering half way to the ceiling, with
the crown and arms of the Vàsàrhely princes on its summit. There was
no fire in it, for the weather was not cold, and Vàsàrhely, who alone
used the room, was an ascetic in such matters; but upon its jutting
step, which was guarded by lions of gilded bronze, there had been some
paper burned: the ashes lay there in a little heap. Almost all of
it was ash, but a few torn pieces were only blackened and coloured.
With the eager curiosity of a woman who is longing to find another
woman at fault, she kneeled down by the stove and patiently examined
these pieces. Only one was so little burned that it had a word or two
legible upon it; two of those words were Vassia Kazán. Nothing else was
traceable; she recognised the handwriting of Sabran. She attached no
importance to it, yet she slipped the little scrap, burnt and black as
it was, within one of her gauntlets; then, as quickly as she had come
there, she retreated and in another half hour, smiling and radiant,
covered with jewels, and with no trace of fatigue or of weather, she
descended the great banqueting-hall, clad as though the heart of the
Greater Karpathians was the centre of the Boulevard S. Germain.
Who was Vassia Kazán?
The question floated above all her thoughts all that evening. Who was
he, she, or it, and what could Sabran have to say of him, or her, or
it to Egon Vàsàrhely? A less wise woman might have asked straightway
what the unknown name might mean, but straight ways are not those
which commend themselves to temperaments like hers. The pleasure and
the purpose of her life was intrigue. In great things she deemed
it necessity; in trifles it was an amusement; without it life was
flavourless.
The next day her brother-in-law abandoned Taróc, to join his hussars
and prepare for the autumn manœuvres in the plains, and left her and
Stefan in possession of the great place, half palace, half fortress,
which had withstood more than one siege of Ottoman armies, where it
stood across a deep gorge with the water foaming black below. But she
kept the charred, torn, triangular scrap of paper; and she treasured
in her memory the two words Vassia Kazán; and she said again and again
and again to herself: 'Why should he write to Egon? Why should Egon
burn what he writes?' Deep down in her mind there was always at work
a bitter jealousy of Wanda von Szalras; jealousy of her regular and
perfect beauty, of her vast possessions, of her influence at the Court,
of her serene and unspotted repute, and now of her ascendency over the
lives of Sabran and of Vàsàrhely.
'Why should they both love that woman so much?' she thought very often.
'She is always alike. She has no temptations. She goes over life as if
it were frozen snow. She did one senseless thing, but then she was rich
enough to do it with impunity. She is so habitually fortunate that she
is utterly uninteresting; and yet they are both her slaves!'
She went home and wrote to a cousin of her own who had been a member
of the famous Third Section at Petersburg. She said in her letter: 'Is
there anyone known in Russia as Vassia Kazán? I want you to learn for
me to what or to whom this name belongs. It is certainly Russian, and
appears to me to have been taken by some one who has been named _more
hebrœo_ from the city of Kazán. You, who know everything past,
present, and to come, will be able to know this.'
In a few days she received an answer from Petersburg. Her cousin wrote:
'I cannot give you the information you desire. It must be a thing of
the past. But I will keep it in mind, and sooner or later you shall
have the knowledge you wish. You will do us the justice to admit that
we are not easily baffled.'
She was not satisfied, but knew how to be patient.