The Pobratim Part 87

"I have bided my time, Baron; every knot comes to the comb, they say."

"Did they all come?"

"Sooner or later, all, to the very last; some of my enemies even rotted in the mines of Siberia----"

The Baron shivered, thinking of his father.

"Others----" The Countess, for a moment, seemed to be thinking of the past.

"Well?"

"But it is my own story I am telling you, not theirs. Count Yarnova and I reached Paris almost at the same time. On my arrival, I presented myself at the Russian Emba.s.sy. As the Amba.s.sadress happened to be looking for a companion or reader, the place was offered to me; I accepted it most willingly. A few days afterwards, I was informed by the gipsy, that the Count was to call on the Amba.s.sadress the next day. I remembered the prediction; I did my best to bring it about.

The room was exactly like the one described by my friend the gipsy; the furniture was gilt, the walls were covered over with old damask; as the Amba.s.sadress was fond of flowers, the room looked like a hot-house. I had put on the same white dress in which he had already seen me three times, and knowing the very moment the Count would come, I spoke of Russian peasant songs; I mentioned the one I was to sing, and being requested to sing it, I did so. Before I ended it, the door was opened and Count Yarnova was announced.

"I do not know whether his could be called love at first sight, but surely everybody in the room thought that his sudden pa.s.sion for me had almost deprived him of his reason.

"The Count called on the morrow, and asked if I could receive him; I did so, and he at once confessed his love for me. He told me that although he was old enough to be my father, still, he felt sure I should in time be fond of him, for marriages being made in heaven, I was ordained to be his wife.

"I tried to explain the plight in which I found myself, but he interrupted me at once, telling me that he knew everything.

"'I am aware that you have been forsaken by a cruel-hearted man,'

said he, 'but henceforth I shall be everything to you.'

"I summoned my courage, I spoke to him of my child.

"'The child that was born on Christmas night?'

"'Yes,' I answered below my breath.

"'It is my own spiritual child,' said he.

"I looked at him astonished.

"'I know all about it,' he continued. 'On that night I saw you in a vision, just as it had been predicted to me; I saw you just as I see you now. That very night I had, moreover, a vision. I was married to you, and---- but never mind about that dream. I have seen you after that--first in this magic ring; then I saw you materialised at Vienna, and again in Venice. Of course, it was not you, but your double, for you were at that time here in Paris, quite unconscious, quietly asleep, having, perhaps, a dream of what your other self was seeing.'

"Then he began to speak of materialisation, of the influence of planets, in fact, of many chaotic and uninteresting things to which I, apparently at least, listened with the greatest attention. I was well repaid for my trouble, for a few weeks afterwards we were married."

"And your former husband?"

"Was dead to me."

"Did not the Government give you any trouble?"

"The Russian Government knew that Countess Yarnova could be of great help."

"And was she?"

"Even more than had been expected."

The Countess paused a moment. "It happened that my enemies, Aleksij Orsinski, were also those of my country, so I crushed them."

The Baron trembled perceptibly.

"But that is their own tale, not mine. We came back to Russia, my husband worshipping me as a superhuman creature."

"And you loved him?"

"I loved but once."

"Then you still loved the man who----"

"Love either flows away like water, or it rankles in a festering heart and changes into gall. At St. Petersburg I saw again my parents. Their curse had fallen on their own heads; fortune's wheel had turned--their wealth was all gone--they were paupers. How despicable people are who, having once been rich, cannot get reconciled to the idea of being poor! How mean all their little makeshifts are! how cringing they get to be! You can even make them swallow any amount of dirt for a dinner you give them. They are all loathsome parasites. I might have ignored my parents--left them to their fate, or else helped them anonymously. I went to see them; it was so pleasant to heap burning coals on their heads. I doled out a pittance to them, received their thanks, allowed them to kiss my hands, knowing how they cursed me within their hearts. Grat.i.tude is the bitterest of all virtues; it sours the very milk of human kindness."

The Countess laughed a harsh, bitter, shrill laugh, and her guest wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"I shall tell you all about them some other time, in the long winter evenings when the wind howls outside and the country is all covered with its pall of snow. It will be pleasant to sit by the fire and tell you all these old family stories, Aleksij Orsinski."

And the dark figure buried in the big arm-chair laughed again in a mocking, discordant way.

"After some years the Count died, and then I was left sole mistress of all his wealth."

"And Anya?"

"Why, I hardly ever saw her. She was brought up here, in this dreary old castle, like a sleeping beauty; you, like Prince Charming, came to waken her up. You found her here by chance, did you not?"

"Yes, Countess; I happened----"

"Count Yarnova, likewise, found me by chance," said the woman in the dark, jeeringly, and interrupting him.

"What do you mean?" asked the Baron, breathing hard.

"I mean that the last knot has come to the comb." Aleksij Orsinski covered his face with his hands.

"Perhaps, after all," he thought, "this is nothing but a hideous dream."

"Do you not find, Baron, that Anya, _your_ Anya as you call her, reminds you of another girl, the girl you----"

"Countess, for mercy's sake, I can bear this no longer; who are you?"

The Baron, trembling, panting, sprang to his feet and went up to the Countess. She thereupon threw off her mantilla, and appeared in the bright light of the full moon, which was streaming through the mullioned windows.

The Baron stretched out his arms.

"Jadviga!" he said, in a low, m.u.f.fled tone; then he again covered his face with his hands.

"And now, Aleksij Orsinski, now that my story is at an end," said the Countess, in a jeering tone; "now that, at last, you have wakened from your day-dream, whom am I to call--Anya your fiancee, or Anya your own daughter?"

A low moan was the only answer.