A week or two later Sabran arrived alone at their palace in Vienna,
and was cordially received by the great minister whom Wanda called
her cousin Kunst. He had also an audience of his Imperial master, who
showed him great kindness and esteem; he had been always popular and
welcome at the Hofburg. His new career awaited him under auspices the
most engaging; his intelligence, which was great, took pleasure at the
prospect of the field awaiting it; and his personal pride was gratified
and flattered at the personal success which he enjoyed. He was aware
that the brain he was gifted with would amply sustain all the demands
for _finesse_ and penetration that a high diplomatic mission would make
upon it, and he knew that the immense fortune he commanded through his
wife would enable him to fill his place with the social brilliancy and
splendour it required.
He felt happier than he had done ever since the day in the forest when
the name of Vassia Kazán had been said in his ear; he had recovered his
nerve, his self-command, his _insouciance_; he was once more capable of
honestly forgetting that he was anything besides the great gentleman
he appeared. There was an additional pungency for him in the fact of
his mission being to Russia. He hated the country as a renegade hates
a religion he has abandoned. The undying hereditary enmity which must
always exist, _sub rosa_, betwixt Austria and Russia was in accordance
with the antagonism he himself felt for every rood of the soil, for
every syllable of the tongue, of the Muscovite. He knew that Paul
Zabaroff, his father's legitimate son, was a mighty prince, a keen
politician, a favourite courtier at the Court of St. Petersburg. The
prospect of himself appearing at that Court as the representative of
a great nation, with the occasion and the power to meet Paul Zabaroff
as an equal, and defeat his most cherished intrigues, his most subtle
projects, gave an intensity to his triumph such as no mere social
honours or gratified ambition could alone have given him. If the
minister had searched the whole of the Austrian empire through, in
all the ranks of men he could have found no one so eager to serve the
purpose and the interests of his Imperial master against the rivalry of
Russia, as he found in one who had been born a naked _moujik_ in the
_isba_ of a Persian peasant.
Even though this distinction which was offered him would rest like
all else on a false basis, yet it intoxicated him, and would gratify
his desires to be something above and beyond the mere prince-consort
that he was. He knew that his talents were real, that his tact and
perception were unerring, that his power to analyse and influence men
was great. All these qualities he felt would enable him in a public
career to conquer admiration and eminence. He was not yet old enough to
be content to regard the future as a thing belonging to his sons, nor
had he enough philo-progenitiveness ever to do so at any age.
'To return so to Russia!' he thought, with rapture. All the ambition
that had been in him in his college days at the Lycée Clovis, which
had never taken definite shape, partly from indolence and partly from
circumstance, and had not been satisfied even by the brilliancy of
his marriage, was often awakened and spurred by the greatness of the
social position of all those with whom he associated. In his better
moments be sometimes thought, 'I am only the husband of the Countess
von Szalras; I am only the father of the future lords of Hohenszalras;'
and the reflection that the world might regard him so made him restless
and ill at ease.
He knew that, being what he was, he would add to his crime tenfold
by acceptance of the honour offered to him. He knew that the more
prominent he was in the sight of men, the deeper would be his fall if
ever the truth were told. What gauge had he that some old school-mate,
dowered with as long a memory as Vàsàrhely's, might not confront him
with the same charge and challenge? True, this danger had always seemed
to him so remote that never since he had landed at Romaris bay had he
been troubled by any apprehension of it. His own assured position, his
own hauteur of bearing, his own perfect presence of mind, would have
always enabled him to brave safely such an ordeal under the suspicion
of any other than Vàsàrhely; with any other he could have relied on his
own coolness and courage to have borne him with immunity through any
such recognition. Besides, he had always reckoned, and reckoned justly,
that no one would ever dare to insult the Marquis de Sabran with a
suspicion that could have no proof to sustain it. So he had always
reasoned, and events had justified his expectations and deductions.
This month that he now passed in Vienna was the proudest of his life;
not perhaps the happiest, for beneath his contentment there was a
jarring remembrance that he was deceiving a great sovereign and his
ministers. But he thrust this sting of conscience aside whenever it
touched him, and abandoned himself with almost youthful gladness to the
felicitations he received, the arrangements he had to make, and the
contemplation of the future before him. The pleasures of the gay and
witty city surrounded him, and he was too handsome, too seductive, and
too popular not to be sought by women of all ranks, who rallied him on
his long devotion to his wife, and did their best to make him ashamed
of constancy.
'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of
dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly
degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is
always hers and my love.'
Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of
her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty
life led there under the show summits of her hills.
He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's
caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not
infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most
use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the
daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.
As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the
Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and
a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour
and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he
had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world
beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had
beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He
went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now
and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some
portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some
quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.
On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:
'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.
(Signed) 'WANDA.'
No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches
could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful
affection.
'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.
The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the
season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the
sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and
the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and
magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present
at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation,
as the ambassador-designate to Russia.
Court dress became him, and his great height and elegance of manner
made him noticeable even in that brilliant crowd of notables. All the
greatest ladies distinguished him with their smiles, but he gave them
no more than courtesy. He saw only before the 'eye of memory' his wife
as he had seen her at the last court ball, with the famous pearls about
her throat, and her train of silver tissue sown with pearls and looped
up with white lilac.
'It is the flower I like best,' she had said to him. 'It brought me
your first love-message in Paris, do you remember? It said little; it
was very discreet, but it said enough!'
'You are always thinking of Wanda!' said the Countess Brancka to him
now, with a tinge of impatience in her tone.
He coloured a little, and said with that hauteur with which he always
repressed any passing jest at his love for his wife:
'When both one's duty and joy point the same way it is easy to follow
them in thought.'
'I hope you follow them in action too,' said Mdme. Brancka.
'If I do not, I am at least only responsible to Wanda.'
'Who would be a lenient judge you mean? said the Countess, with a
certain smile that displeased him. 'Do not be too sure; she is a von
Szalras. They are not agreeable persons when they are angered.'
'I have not been so unhappy as to see her so,' said Sabran coldly,
with a vague sense of uneasiness. As much as it is possible for a man
to dislike a woman who is very lovely, and young enough to be still
charming in the eyes of the world, he disliked Olga Brancka. He had
known her for many years in Paris, not intimately, but by force of
being in the same society, and, like many men who do not lead very
decent lives themselves, he frankly detested _cocodettes._
'If we want these manners we have our _lionnes_,' he was wont to say,
at a time when Cochonette was seen every day behind his horses by the
Cascade, and it had been the height of the Countess Olga's ambition at
that time to be called like Cochonette. A certain resemblance there
was between the great lady and the wicked one; they had the same small
delicate sarcastic features, the same red gold curls, the same perfect
colourless complexion; but where Cochonette had eyes of the slightest
blue, the wife of Count Stefan had the luminous piercing black eyes of
the Muscovite physiognomy. Still the likeness was there, and it made
the sight of Mdme. Brancka distasteful to him, since his memories of
the other were far from welcome. It was for Cochonette that he had
broken the bank at Monte Carlo, and into her lap that he had thrown
all the gold rouleaux at a time when in his soul he had already adored
Wanda von Szalras, and had despised himself for returning to the slough
of his old pleasures. It was Cochonette who had sold his secrets to
the Prussians, and brought them down upon him in the farmhouse amongst
the orchards of the Orléannais, whilst she passed safely through, the
German lines and across the frontier, laden with her jewels and her
_valeurs_ of all kinds, saying in her teeth as she went: 'He will
never see that Austrian woman again!' That had been the end of all he
had known of Cochonette, and a presentiment of perfidy, of danger, of
animosity always came over him whenever he saw the _joli petit minois_
which in profile was so like Cochonette's, looking up from under the
loose auburn curls that Mdme. Olga had copied from her.
Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more
admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds;
and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette
would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels
flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams.
There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her
breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.
Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an _étourdissement_
that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.
'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda,
_mon beau_ cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are
really going to Russia?'
'I believe so.'
'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in
paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'
'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'
'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy
enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money
that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'
'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played
since my marriage.'
'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A
saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature,
though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by
marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean
nothing.'
'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he
was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.
'Call me at least _cousinette_,' said Mdme. Olga; 'we are cousins, you
know, thanks to Wanda. Oh! she will be very unhappy in St. Petersburg;
she will not amuse herself, she never does. She is incapable of a
flirtation; she never touches a card. When she dances it is only
because she must, and then it is only a quadrille or a contre-dance.
She always reminds me of Marie Thérèse's "In our position nothing is a
trifle." You remember the Empress's letters to Versailles?'
Sabran was very much angered, but he was afraid to express his anger
lest it should seem to make him absurd.
'Madame,' he said, with ill-repressed irritation, 'I know you speak
only in jest, but I must take the liberty to tell you----however
bourgeois it appear----that I do not allow a jest even from you upon my
wife. Anything she does is perfect in my sight, and if she be imbued
with the old traditions of gentle blood, too many ladies desert them in
these days for me not to be grateful to her for her loyalty.'
She listened, with her bright black eyes fixed on him; then she leaned
a little more closely on his arm.
'Do you know that you said that very well? Most men are ridiculous
when they are in love with their wives, but it becomes you, Wanda is
perfect, we all know that; you are not alone in thinking so. Ask Egon!'
The face of Sabran changed as he heard that name. As she saw the
change she thought: 'Can it be possible that he is jealous?'
Aloud she said with a little laugh: 'I almost wonder Egon did not
run you through the heart before you married. Now, of course, he
is reconciled to the inevitable; or, if not reconciled, he has to
submit to it as we all have to do. He grows very _farouche_; he lives
between his troopers and his castle of Taróc, like a barbaric lord
of the Middle Ages. Were you ever at Taróc? It is worth seeing----a
huge fortress, old as the days of Ottokar, in the very heart of the
Karpathians. He leads a wild, fierce life enough there. If he keep the
memory of Wanda with him it is as some men keep an idolatry for what is
dead.'
Sabran listened with a sombre irritation. 'Suppose we leave my wife's
name in peace,' he said coldly. 'The _grosser cotillon_ is about to
begin; may I aspire to the honour?'
As he led her out, and the light fell on her red gold curls, on her
dazzling butterflies, her armour of diamonds, her snow-white skin, a
thousand memories of Cochonette came over him, though the scene around
him was the ball-room of the Hofburg, and the woman whose great bouquet
of _rêve d'or_ roses touched his hand was a great lady who had been the
wife of Gela von Szalras, and the daughter of the Prince Serriatine.
He distrusted her, he despised her, he disliked her so strongly that
he was almost ashamed of his own antagonism; and yet her contact, her
grace of movement, the mere scent of the bouquet of roses had a sort of
painful and unwilling intoxication for the moment for him.
He was glad when the long and gorgeous figures of the cotillon had
tired out even her steel-like nerves, and he was free to leave the
palace and go home to sleep. He looked at a miniature of his wife as
he undressed; the face of it, with its tenderness and its nobility,
seemed to him, after the face of this other woman, like the pure high
air of the Iselthal after the heated and unhealthy atmosphere of a
gambling-room.
The next day there was a review of troops in the Prater. His presence
was especially desired; he rode his favourite horse Siegfried, which
had been brought up from the Tauern for the occasion. The weather was
brilliant, the spectacle was grand; his spirits rose, his natural
gaiety of temper returned. He was addressed repeatedly by the
sovereigns present. Other men spoke of him, some with admiration, some
with envy, as one who would become a power at the court and in the
empire.
As he rode homeward, when the manœuvres were over, making his way
slowly through the merry crowds of the good-humoured populace, through
the streets thronged with glittering troops and hung with banners, and
odorous with flowers, he thought to himself with a light heart: 'After
all, I may do her some honour before I die.'
When he reached home and his horse was led away, a servant approached
him with a sealed letter lying on a gold salver. A courier, who said
that he had travelled with it without stopping from Taróc, had brought
it from the Most High the Prince Vàsàrhely.
Sabran's heart stood still as he took the letter and passed up the
staircase to his own apartments. Once there he ordered his servants
away, locked the doors, and, then only, broke the seal.
There were two lines written on the sheet inside. They said:
'I forbid you to serve my Sovereign. If you persist, I must relate to
him, under secrecy, what I know.'
They were fully signed----'Egon Vàsàrhely.' They had been sent by a
courier, to insure delivery and avoid the publicity of the telegraph.
They had been written as soon as the tidings of his appointment to the
Russian mission had become known at the mountain fortress of Taróc.