Gloria Victis! Part 9

The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their depths.

Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history.

In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of distinction, but mentally coa.r.s.e--alternating between brutish excesses and superst.i.tious penances--at once cynical as a roue and sentimental as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him n.o.bly in her imagination.

Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.

It was not so with Wjera; when doubt had once sown discord between her head and her heart, she fought out the battle unflinchingly, inexorably, in strict honesty, and when the conflict was over her dream had vanished. In this wondrously lovely illusion she had exhausted all the ideality of her nature. Her reason gained the upperhand at last, and ever after she a.n.a.lyzed her fellow-mortals with sharp precision; judging them with harsh justice, and speaking of the affections with an unaffected, contemptuous coolness very rare in a girl so young.

Time pa.s.sed by. She came to be twenty-six years old. She was the eldest and the handsomest of five daughters, and her distaste for marriage increased the difficulty of providing for the other sisters, and excited unpleasant remark among her family circle. Chance introduced Count Lodrin to her acquaintance, and perhaps because he seemed to her a respectable nullity, she selected him for her husband.

No one could remember ever having seen so ill-matched a pair. She, aglow with life, delighting in physical exercises, a reckless and indefatigable horsewoman--to whom a steeple-chase was no more than is a waltz to other women,--and he, paying with an attack of illness for every unusual physical effort, not even daring to take a long drive without an extra cushion at his back.

Whilst his thoughts moved slowly in a traditional roundabout way, 'her woman's wit flew straight and did exactly hit,' before the Count had cleared his throat for his first 'consequently.'

Her quick wit bewildered him; her outspoken acuteness of discernment offended him. There was a world-wide dissimilarity between her views and his. The Count was a strict Catholic; the Countess was inclined to scepticism; although cast in a loftier mould, in her daring mockery and her graceful eccentricity she recalled the fine ladies of the eighteenth century--of that time when social and mental freedom, made fashionable by philosophers, had not yet been degraded to vulgarity by demagogues. His wife's wicked wit shocked poor Count Lodrin. Much ridicule was cast upon the couple, but every one was none the less glad to belong to the brilliant circle which the Countess drew around her, and daily the wonder grew that calumny could not touch the beautiful wife of this dead-and-alive dotard.

Three years pa.s.sed; now and then women hinted innuendoes about Wjera Lodrin, but the other s.e.x continued to speak of her with that mixture of admiration and irritation which bears the truest testimony to the blamelessness of a very beautiful woman. At last society was content to shrug its shoulders and to repeat, 'She is a riddle.'

The Countess was unutterably bored. The only occupation that she pursued with inexhaustible interest, though at the same time with reckless intrepidity, was riding.

"She has no sphere of activity; hers is the grand, fiery nature of a gifted man beating against the petty barriers of feminine existence.

What is to come of it?" a sagacious student of human nature once said, in speaking of her.

All at once there was a decided change for the worse in Count Lodrin's health, and the physicians prescribed a sojourn in the South.

Reluctantly enough the Countess consented to accompany her husband.

They set out, and the world maliciously compared Wjera to Juana of Castile, because she travelled with a corpse, and a father-confessor.

The Count found Nice quite too gay, and therefore took refuge in a secluded villa in the Riviera.

The Countess nearly died of ennui in the gray, sultry, sirocco-like monotony of an autumn heavy with the fragrance of roses, and in the tedium of an Italian winter. In spring the pair returned to Bohemia, the Count in somewhat better health, the Countess as cold and hard as ever, but irritable to a degree until now quite foreign to her.

In the August after their return Oswald was born. The old Count could not contain himself for joy; the Countess cared but very little for the child.

This was the woman whom Georges had known fifteen years before, and now,--he could hardly believe his senses!

Before he went to bed on the first night of his return to Tornow, he stood for a long while at the window of his room looking thoughtfully out into the night. The moon was high in the heavens; everything was still, save for a low rustle now and then in the huge lindens growing on the border of the pond in front of the castle. The ancient trees seemed to stir and stretch themselves in their sleep. His gaze wandered over the compact angular architecture of the high, black-gabled roofs, the rows of houses with tiny windows, in the little town,--all bathed in bluish moonlight. It was hardly changed since he had last seen it,--in the castle everything was changed. What had become of the social distractions in which the Countess Lodrin had been wont to delight?--Vanished, as by magic. The entire castle impressed him as having recovered from a restless fever.

Had the Countess's former cold, harsh demeanour been but the mask for the intense hunger of a strangely dowered nature that could find no fit nourishment? And had love for her child filled up at last the fearful rift made in her inmost life by an early disappointment?

Georges asked himself these questions. Once more his glance wandered to the pond in whose waters the moon was mirrored. "Strange!" he murmured,--"today it was but a dark pool, and now in the moonlight it gleams a silver disk! Hm! Extraordinary, how true maternal love will hallow every woman's heart! Strange exceedingly! what must she not have suffered in her life ...!"

CHAPTER XIII.

The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She was sitting in an arm-chair knitting with very thick wooden needles and coa.r.s.e brown worsted, something evidently destined for a charitable purpose.

The boudoir, an irregular square room and with a picturesque bow-window, was furnished with no regard to uniformity of style, and therefore had the charm which characterizes rooms which have been as it were gradually evolved from the habits and tastes of a cultured occupant, until they are the frame or setting of an individuality. A delightful confusion of comfort and feminine taste reigned here, and the two or three trifling articles that offended all artistic sense, struck the eye only as piquant beauty spots. The cabinets, filled with rare old porcelain, threw into strong relief the ugly inkstand and candlesticks of modern dark-blue Sevres upon a writing-table. They were a memento,--a marriage gift from a Russian cousin and youthful playmate who fell in the Crimean war. Among some old pictures, an Andrea del Sarto, a Franz Hals, and two Wateaus, hung in triumphant self-complacency a portrait by Lawrence--a man's head and bust,--a crimson-lined cloak was thrown around the shoulders, the shirt collar was open, black hair fell low on the brow, the eyes were large and wild, the frankly smiling mouth was exquisitely chiselled. It hung just over the writing-table, lord of all, and was the portrait of Oswald Zinsenburg, an uncle of the Countess, a gifted fellow, who, when Secretary of Legation in England, had been intimate with Lord Byron, and in all the romantic ardour of a young aristocrat fighting for freedom, had died of brain fever at Missolonghi at the age of twenty-seven, shortly after Lord Byron's death.

This portrait the Countess Wjera loves, princ.i.p.ally because it is so like her son, and upon it her gaze rested as she dropped the long wooden-needles in her lap, and fell into a revery.

The air of the room was penetrated with the delicious fragrance of the roses, and lilies of the valley that filled the various vases.

Everything was quiet,--the birds were taking their siesta, the faint pattering of the horse-chestnut blossoms could be heard as they fell upon the gravel path, before the castle.

The drowsy midday stillness was suddenly broken by a softly whistled Russian gipsy melody and an elastic young footstep. The Countess turned her head. She knew the air well--how often she had sung it! The whistling came nearer, then ceased, and the door of the boudoir opened.

"May we come in?" a cheery voice asked.

"Always welcome!" replied the Countess, and Oswald, followed by a large s.h.a.ggy Newfoundland, entered, his curls wet and clinging to his forehead, a bunch of waterlilies in his hand, and looking more than ever like the portrait by Lawrence.

"Good morning, mamma; how are you? Make your bow, Darling--so, old fellow--so!" And as the Newfoundland gravely lowered his fine head, a performance for which he was duly caressed by his master, Oswald sank into a low seat beside his mother.

"You have been bathing," she observed, stroking back his wet hair.

"Yes, I have been swimming in the lake at Wolnitz, and I have brought you these waterlilies," he replied, laying the flowers in her lap, "they are the first I have seen this year, and they are your favourite flowers, are they not? How fair and melancholy they are! Strange that these pure white things should spring from such slimy mud! May I?"

taking out his cigar-case.

"Of course, my child. What have you been about to-day? I have not seen you before."

"I went out very early. I had sent for the forester to come to me at seven, and I went with him to the new plantations. The young firs are as straight as soldiers. And then I dawdled about in the woods--it was so lovely there!--'tis the earth's honeymoon, and when I see everything blossoming out in the sunshine, I think of all that lies in the near future for me, and I feel like shouting for joy! Apropos, mamma, I have found a site for the Widow's Asylum that you want to found. I have been puzzling over the best situation for it, and I have decided to put the old Elizabeth monastery at the disposal of your benevolence. Is this what you would like?"

She held out her hand to him with a smile. "Have you found time to think of that too? I thought you had forgotten my scheme long ago."

"Ah yes, I am in the habit of forgetting your wishes!" he said gaily.

"No, Heaven knows you are not," the Countess murmured, "you have always been loving and considerate to me."

"And what else could I be, mamma?" he said affectionately. "Ah, on a glorious spring day like this, when the world is so beautiful, and my blood goes coursing in my veins with delight, I am tempted to kneel down before you and thank you for the dear life you have bestowed upon me--what is the matter, mamma, you have suddenly grown so pale?"

"It is nothing--only a slight pain in my heart--it has gone already,"

the Countess whispered, turning aside her head.

"Quite gone?--is it my cigar smoke?"

"Not at all, dear child!"--

In spite of this a.s.sertion he tossed his cigar out of the window. "You used to smoke yourself," he observed.

"Yes," she said, looking down at her knitting, "but since I have learned to employ my hands, I have given up smoking."

"You knit instead--It seems odd to me to see _you_ knitting. Georges thinks you very much altered."

"I have grown old, _voila!_"

"And he thinks too that you spoil me tremendously, that no mother in all Austria spoils her son as you do me."