Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 49

Yet Banfi remained dumb. Misfortune seemed to be written on his forehead. A far less practised eye, a far less penetrating genius than Azrael's, could have seen at a glance that he was no longer the haughty magnate he had been, but a fallen viceroy, whose fall was all the greater because he had stood so high; who had come to her, not because he had forsaken every one, but because every one had forsaken him; whom not pleasure but despair had brought to this place.

"I have been waiting for thee!" cried the girl, burying her head in Banfi's bosom, while he played involuntarily with her rich tresses. "To me thy absence is an eternity, thy presence but a fleeting moment."

Not for all the world would Azrael have let Banfi perceive that she had observed the change in him. She pushed a little round stool in front of the couch, took up her mandolin, and began to sing with a voice of thrilling sweetness one of those improvisations which the ardent imagination of the East brings spontaneously to the lips, striking the while with her fingers wild, fantastic chords.

"If thou hast joy, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt have so much the more. If thou hast grief, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt have so much the less."

Banfi looked at the odalisk with beetling brows.

But Azrael struck fresh chords and began another song--

"False is the world and all that is therein! Every day the sun forsakes the sky. Every day the sea forsakes her sh.o.r.es. Every year the swallow forsakes her nest. But the maiden who loves never forsakes her beloved."

Still Banfi remained silent. There he sat with staring, bloodshot eyes, his head resting on his elbows, like a poor, mortally-wounded lion.

And again the odalisk sang--

"If choice were thine, which wouldst thou choose--love with h.e.l.l, or heaven without love?"

Banfi stretched out his arms towards Azrael, and as the odalisk, casting away her mandolin, bent down to kiss his hand, he drew her to his breast, and the odalisk, softly stroking Banfi's forehead, said--

"What mean these wrinkles on thy n.o.ble brow, which I have never seen there before? Vainly do I charm them away with my kisses; they come back again and again. Wait!--I'll cover them with this diadem. So!--how well a kingly crown becomes thy brow!"

Banfi uttered an inarticulate cry, tore the diadem from his head, and hurled it far away, while with the other hand he roughly repulsed the girl. Every line of his face proclaimed his agony of mind. The odalisk looked into his face and could read there everything which had happened.

This pa.s.sionate outburst, however, aroused Banfi from out of his dull despondency. He sprang from the couch, resumed with an effort his usual proud, devil-may-care look, and raising the girl into the air cried, with bitter, scornful mirth--

"Bring me wine! To-day I'll make merry! Over our heads the storm is howling--let it howl! We'll laugh at it, eh! my pretty wench? To-day is ours! On this one day we'll heap together everything which can bring bliss and mad delight, so as to leave nothing for the morrow. Wine and kisses and music--and h.e.l.l-fire!"

The girl skipped away like a chamois, and came back like a Hebe with a large silver salver covered with gold goblets.

"No, not the golden pocals!" cried Banfi. "They won't break when we dash them against the wall. Serve the wine in Venetian crystals."

The odalisk obediently brought forth the gorgeously-coloured and gilded Venetian gla.s.ses, then so much in vogue, and pushed a broad, short-legged table close to the couch.

"Come, embrace me!" cried Banfi, drawing the girl to his bosom, and gazing into her abysmal black eyes.

"My love is an endless sea," whispered the girl, her hands resting on Banfi's shoulder.

"My desire is as h.e.l.l itself, which drinks to the very dregs!" cried Banfi, embracing the odalisk and pressing a burning kiss on her lips, as if he would have drunk in her very soul.

With that he seized the first gla.s.s that came to hand; the wine sparkled in the torch-light. Azrael's kisses had not yet softened his heart. With bitter scorn he raised the gla.s.s, and cried--

"I drink to my friends."

He drained it to the last drop, and hurled it contemptuously against the wall, so that it was shivered to pieces. Immediately afterwards he seized a second gla.s.s--

"I drink to my enemies."

With a wild peal of laughter he hurled the second gla.s.s into the air. In its flight it almost reached the ceiling, but it fell back again on the couch and did not break.

"See, it mocks me and will not break!" exclaimed Banfi, with sparkling eyes.

Azrael sprang up, seized the gla.s.s, and crushed it beneath her foot.

In Banfi's heart the flames of three pa.s.sions began to mingle--wrath, intoxication, and frantic love.

He raised the third gla.s.s to his lips, and while the girl held his body fast embraced, Banfi exclaimed, with flushed face and strident voice--

"I drink to Transylvania."

He drained the gla.s.s, but when he took it from his lips, the smile had frozen on his face, and instead of dashing the gla.s.s against the wall, he placed it gently on the table. A cold shudder ran through him at his own words--"I drink to Transylvania."

He did not remove his hand from the gla.s.s, and would shyly have put it aside in a safe place, when the crystal, without any visible cause, suddenly burst in pieces, filling the magnate's hand with a million fragments.

The diamond ring on his finger had scratched the gla.s.s, which, as all badly-cooled crystals are wont to do, shivered instantly at the contact, scattering its sparkling fragments in every direction like a Bologna flask.

Banfi shrank shuddering back at this phenomenon and hid his face in Azrael's bosom, as if he had seen a portentous enchantment.

The girl, however, impetuously seized her gla.s.s and cried exultantly--

"I drink to our love."

Her voice broke the spell of Banfi's sobering horror and plunged him into frenzied joy. He caught the slim, supple body of the odalisk in his arms, and pressed her to him with the strength of a boa-constrictor: she was almost stifled in his embrace.

"I know not what you have given me to drink," stammered Banfi, "but I have lost my head. I am beside myself for love."

"Then take heed that thou dost not faint. Long hast thou let me languish, and I swore that when next thou camest, to murder thee in thy sleep, so that thou mightest never forsake me more."

"Oh, do it, do it," whispered he, and drawing his dagger from his girdle and stretching himself at full length upon the couch, he laid bare his breast with one hand and gave the girl the dagger with the other.

Azrael, with demoniacal ferocity, grasped the dagger by its beryl handle, and threw herself like an armed Fury upon Banfi, who looked at her with a frenzied smile as the sharp edge of the dagger grazed his breast. Then the weapon fell from the hand of the odalisk, and the madly-distended eyes and lips resumed their languishing smile.

"Kill me rather than forsake me," stammered the girl, embracing Banfi.

"We'll die together, eh?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Jest not, Azrael. I am ready to do what I say."

"And I am ready to die," replied the girl. "Come, I'll show thee something,"--and with that, drawing aside the carpet, she lifted up a trap-door, beneath which was visible through the gloom a deeper, lower room, supported by short, stout, arched columns, close beside which a number of large barrels had been placed.

"Yes," said Banfi, "I know. In that cellar I have hidden the gunpowder which I saved after John Kemeny's fall."

"Look at this long nitrous linstock," said Azrael, drawing up the end of a thick cotton coil out of the cellar; "the barrels are connected with it, and many a time when thou hast been with me have I had the end of this lunt under the cushions of my couch, and held in my couch the torch which was to have kindled it whilst thou wert sleeping with thy head upon my breast, and I lay and listened calmly for the explosion which was to send us both to heaven or to h.e.l.l."

"And you were afraid to do it?"