Prince Zilah Part 41

Zilah made no response. Varhely's question was the most terrible of answers.

Ensconced in an armchair, the Prince then laid bare his heart to old Varhely, sitting near him. She was about to die, then! Solitude! Was that to be the end of his life? After so many trials, it was all to end in this: an open grave, in which his hopes were to be buried. What remained to him now? At the age when one has no recourse against fate, love, the one love of his life, was to be taken away from him. Varhely had administered justice, and Zilah had pardoned--for what? To watch together a silent tomb; yes, yes, what remained to him now?

"What remains to you if she dies?" said old Yanski, slowly. "There remains to you what you had at twenty years, that which never dies.

There remains to you what was the love and the pa.s.sion of all the Zilah princes who lie yonder, and who experienced the same suffering, the same torture, the same despair, as you. There remains to you our first love, my dear Andras, the fatherland!"

The next day some Tzigana musicians, whom the Prince had sent for, arrived at the castle. Marsa felt invigorated when she heard the czimbalom and the piercing notes of the czardas. She had been longing for those harmonies and songs which lay so near her heart. She listened, with her hand clasped in that of Andras, and through the open window came the "March of Rakoczy," the same strains which long ago had been played in Paris, upon the boat which bore them down the Seine that July morning.

An heroic air, a song of triumph, a battle-cry, the gallop of horses, a chant of victory. It was the air which had saluted their betrothal like a fanfare. It was the chant which the Tzigani had played that sad night when Andras's father had been laid in the earth of Attila.

"I would like," said Marsa, when the music had ceased, "to go to the little village where my mother rests. She was a Tzigana also! Like them, like me! Can I do so, doctor?"

The doctor shook his head.

"Oh, Princess, not yet! Later, when the warm sun comes."

"Is not that the sun?" said Marsa, pointing to the April rays entering the old feudal hall and making the bits of dust dance like sparks of gold.

"It is the April sun, and it is sometimes dangerous for--"

The doctor paused; and, as he did not finish, Marsa said gently, with a smile which had something more than resignation in it--happiness:

"For the dying?"

Andras shuddered; but Marsa's hand, which held his, did not even tremble.

Old Varhely's eyes were dim with tears.

She knew that she was about to die. She knew it, and smiled at kindly death. It would take away all shame. Her memory would be to Andras the sacred one of the woman he adored. She would die without being held to keep that oath she had made not to survive her dreamed-of happiness, the union she had desired and accepted. Yes, it was sweet and welcome, this death, which taking her from Andras's love, washed away all stain.

She whispered in his ear the oft-repeated avowal:

"I love you! I love you! I love you! And I die content, for I feel that you will love me always. Think a moment! Could I live? Would there not be a spectre between you and your Marsa?"

She threw her arms about him as he leaned over the couch upon which she lay, and he made a gesture of denial, unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob.

"Oh, do not deny it!" she said. "Now, no. But later, who knows? On the other hand, you see, there will be no other phantom near you but mine, no other image but mine. I feel that I shall be always near you, yes, always, eternally, my beloved! Dear death! blessed death! which renders our love infinite, yes, infinite. Ah, I love you! I love you!"

She wished to see once more, through the open window, the sunny woods and the new blossoms. Behind those woods, a few leagues away, was the place where Tisza was buried.

"I should like to rest by her side," said the Tzigana. "I am not of your family, you see. A princess, I? your wife? I have been only your sweetheart, my Andras."

Andras, whiter than the dying girl, seemed petrified by the approach of the inevitable grief.

Now, as they went slowly down the white road, the Tzigani played the plaintive melancholy air of Janos Nemeth, that air impregnated with tears, that air which she used so often to play herself--"The World holds but One Fair Maiden!"

And this time, bursting into tears, he said to her, with his heart breaking in his breast:

"Yes, there is but thee, Marsa! but thee, my beloved, thee, thee alone!

Do not leave me! Stay with me! Stay with me, Marsa, my only love!"

Then, as she listened, over the lovely face of the Tzigana pa.s.sed an expression of absolute, perfect happiness, as if, in Zilah's tears, she read all his forgiveness, all his love, all his devotion. She raised herself, her little hands resting upon the window-sill, her head heavy with sleep--the deep, dreamless sleep-and held up her sweet lips to him: when she felt Andras's kiss, she whispered, so that he barely heard it:

"Do not forget me! Never forget me, my darling!" Then her head drooped slowly, and fell upon the Prince's shoulder, like that of a tired child, with a calm sweet smile upon her flower-like face.

Like the salute they had once given to Prince Sandor, the Tzigani began proudly the heroic march of free Hungary, their music sending a fast farewell to the dead as the sun gave her its last kiss.

Then, as the hymn died slowly away in the distance, soft as a sigh, with one last, low, heart-breaking note, Andras Zilah laid the light form of the Tzigana upon the couch; and, winding his arms about her, with his head pillowed upon her breast, he murmured, in a voice broken with sobs: "I will love only, now, what you loved so much, my poor Tzigana. I will love only the land where you lie asleep."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A man's life belongs to his duty, and not to his happiness All defeats have their geneses An hour of rest between two ordeals, a smile between two sobs Anonymous, that velvet mask of scandal-mongers At every step the reality splashes you with mud Bullets are not necessarily on the side of the right Does one ever forget?

Foreigners are more Parisian than the Parisians themselves History is written, not made.

"I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget"

If well-informed people are to be believe Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized It is so good to know nothing, nothing, nothing Let the dead past bury its dead!

Life is a tempest Man who expects nothing of life except its ending Nervous natures, as prompt to hope as to despair No answer to make to one who has no right to question me Not only his last love, but his only love Nothing ever astonishes me One of those beings who die, as they have lived, children Pessimism of to-day sneering at his confidence of yesterday Playing checkers, that mimic warfare of old men Poverty brings wrinkles Sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony Superst.i.tion which forbids one to proclaim his happiness Taken the times as they are The Hungarian was created on horseback There were too many discussions, and not enough action Unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob What matters it how much we suffer Why should I read the newspapers?

Willingly seek a new sorrow Would not be astonished at anything You suffer? Is fate so just as that