The Shadow of the Czar Part 8

Her intellectual training appeared more adapted to the acquirements of a ruler, a statesman, or an amba.s.sador than to those of an ordinary young lady; and Paul puzzled himself to account for the aims of those who had directed her education, for Barbara herself volunteered no information on the matter, and still maintained an att.i.tude of reticence as to her past life.

CHAPTER IV

THE SEALED CHAMBER

When, amid the most enchanting scenery to be found in Europe, and at a time when all the charms of summer are poured upon the earth, a handsome young captain is brought into companionship with a youthful woman, whose intellect charms even more than her beauty; and when the pair dwell isolated from the rest of the world with nothing to divert attention from each other, it requires no prophet to predict the result.

Barbara was now out of her convalescent stage; and, therefore, neither she nor Paul had any valid excuse for remaining longer at Castel Nuovo; nevertheless they continued to postpone indefinitely the day of departure.

Paul completely ignored the regiment at Corfu, and the good uncle, who was doubtless fuming at his nephew's protracted absence; and Barbara on her part seemed to have forgotten her pursuers from the convent, and her desire for the protection of the British flag.

Enwrapped in each other, yielding to the delicious spirit of _dolce far niente_, the pair were leading an idyllian life.

To Lambro and Jacintha the scenery around was as it had always been, but to Paul and Barbara, mountains, sea, air, sky, had become steeped in hues of divine beauty; each succeeding day seemed happier than the preceding.

They entertained a dreamy notion that their life at Castel Nuovo would not last forever, but its end they put far from their thoughts. The golden present was all in all. Why antic.i.p.ate pain? _Vogue la galere._

Lambro offered no opposition to their stay, though the thought of the Master's return gave him some uneasiness at times, and he said as much to Jacintha.

"I wish he would come," was her reply. "I should like to see his face when he sets eyes upon the signorina."

"He'll think as we did, that she has risen from the dead," returned Lambro.

"Well, she has a protector in Captain Cressingham, who will know how to deal with the Master, should he appear."

"Humph! there'll be the devil to pay ere long," growled Lambro. That Jacintha was not married to the old Greek troubled Barbara very little, if at all. Jacintha had brought her back to life; Jacintha was as good as gold; Barbara, figuratively speaking, would have turned and rent any one who should have ventured to a.s.sail the reputation of Jacintha.

For, thanks to new influences, Barbara's character was undergoing development. The stateliness and gravity that had marked her bearing on the first night of her coming to Castel Nuovo were yielding to a more buoyant and girlish spirit.

Close to the castle a semicircle of dark rocks, with a sandy base, over which the tide flowed, formed an ideal bathing place. Every morning Barbara would seek this spot attended by Jacintha.

"Wouldn't Abbess Teresa and the nuns be scandalized if they saw me now?" she would remark as she returned to breakfast, laughing and wringing out her dark wet locks like some lovely Nereid.

She was a maiden formed for gayety. In previous days her natural disposition had evidently been kept under restraint. She was now revelling in the sunshine of a new and sweet liberty, and Jacintha could scarcely believe her own eyes, when one day, attracted by the sounds of sweet laughter and of ringing steel proceeding from an adjoining apartment, she peeped in and discovered the cause of it all to be Barbara, who was receiving her first lesson in fencing from Paul, while Lambro looked on with sombre approval.

"What next, I wonder?" thought Jacintha.

Barbara illumined the dark and melancholy castle like a sunbeam. Even Lambro relaxed something of his moroseness in her presence, and had begun to doubt whether five hundred beshliks could procure in the mart of Janina a maiden in all respects like Barbara. She had taken to Lambro much more than Paul had, who could not overcome his secret distrust of the old Palicar.

But then Lambro was a hero in Barbara's eyes, because he had fought for the freedom of a conquered race, and she herself, as it subsequently transpired, was the daughter of a conquered race.

When the day's strolling with Paul was over, and the evening meal finished, she would invite the old Greek to fight his battles over again. Sitting on a low stool at his feet, and resting her elbows on her lap and her chin on her hands, her hair sometimes falling in dusky waves around her fair throat, she would betray such interest in Lambro's reminiscences that the foolish Paul was often moved to jealousy.

"And by deeds such as these," she murmured on one occasion, "was the freedom of h.e.l.las won. Why should not Poland achieve what Greece has achieved?"

"So, signorina, you are of Polish blood?" smiled Paul.

"And am proud of my nationality."

"I would for your sake that your people were free."

"They _will_ be free again," she answered, a beautiful heroic look transfiguring her face with a new light. "Oh! Kosciusko," she cried, with an outburst of patriotism that quite surprised Paul, "why did you say '_Finis Poloniae_'? Because _you_ said it, men have come to believe it. No, no, it is not true. The greenstone sceptre of Poland may lie in the treasury of the Kremlin broken in halves, but the spirit of the Polish people is not broken. Would that I had been born a man that I might shoulder musket and fight for fatherland! The Princess Radzivil fought on horseback against the Russians, and why may not I?" And then raising her wine-gla.s.s aloft, she added, "Confusion to the Czar!"

"Amen," said Lambro, responsive to the toast. "We had to a.s.sa.s.sinate old Capo d'Istria because he was too much under Russian influence. Ah!

how we danced the Romaka the night he died!"

This remark of Lambro created a diversion, for Barbara, who had never seen the Greek national dance, asked him to describe it.

The old Palicar did more than describe,--he acted it. Kicking his embroidered slippers into the air he went through all the flings and evolutions of the Romaka with an agility surprising for one so aged, at the same time chanting an appropriate ballad.

"Ah! who could leap higher than Lambro in his youth?" he cried, when he had finished his performance.

Barbara thanked him, and observed, with a pretty air of command, that as Lambro had done something to entertain them it was now Paul's turn to do the like.

And Paul began by singing the first song that entered his head and that happened to be "The Mistletoe Bough," at that time not so hackneyed a ballad as now, and probably never before heard in the hall of a Dalmatian castle. At any rate it was new to his hearers, and Barbara in particular seemed much interested by it.

"Is there any truth in it?" she asked at its conclusion.

"Supposed to be founded on fact," returned Paul, proceeding to relate the story of the fair lady of Modena.

"Ginevra, if she had lived at Castel Nuovo," observed Barbara, "might have found a better place of concealment than an oaken chest. Now,"

she added, prompted by a playful impulse, "give me a clear start of one minute, and without going outside the castle I will undertake to hide where no one shall find me."

She sprang up, and with laughing eyes and graceful step danced from the apartment.

"She is still a girl, you see," smiled Paul.

Entering into the fun of the thing they allowed a full minute to elapse, and then set off to find her.

They went through the castle from roof to bas.e.m.e.nt, exploring every place capable of affording concealment. But Barbara was invisible; she had vanished as if completely melted to air.

Half-an-hour had pa.s.sed in this search. Then they went again through the building loudly calling her by name, and, proclaiming themselves beaten, they invited her to come forth from her hiding place.

Their appeal met with no response. They stared dubiously at one another. The affair had begun to lose its humorous side. The death-like silence, Barbara's invisibility, the gray twilight now stealing through the castle, caused it to a.s.sume a somewhat ghostly aspect.

"She must have gone outside," said Lambro.

"She promised to keep within the building," observed Paul.

For the third time they explored the castle, ending their search on the highest landing of the staircase. Here they paused before the locked door of the mysterious study.

"She is perhaps concealed here," suggested Paul.

"Impossible," returned Lambro, pointing to the wax. "The Master's seal is unbroken."