Under a Charm Volume Iii Part 7

"It was the major domo, Pawlick, who brought it. He is over yonder ..."

"At your house? He brings you the news, though he knows that I have been waiting hours here for his return. Why did he not come up to the Castle?"

Frank's eyes sought the ground once more. "He dared not. Her Highness or the young Countess might have been at the window. They must first be prepared. Pawlick is not alone, Herr Nordeck."

"What has happened?" cried Waldemar, a cold presentiment stealing over him.

"Prince Baratowski has fallen," said the steward, in a low voice.

"Pawlick brings the corpse."

Waldemar was silent. He laid his hand over his eyes, and stood for a few seconds motionless; then, collecting himself with an effort, he hurried away over to the manor-farm, Frank following him. At the steward's house, Pawlick met him. He looked up timidly at the lord of Wilicza, whom he, the Princess's faithful servant, had been wont to consider as an enemy; but Nordeck's face showed him what he had already felt that morning, that it was no foe, but his young master's own brother who stood before him, and all the old man's composure broke down at the sight.

"Our Princess!" he wailed; "she will never survive it, nor the young Countess either!"

"You did not reach the Prince in time?" asked Waldemar.

"Oh yes, I came up with him in time, and delivered your warning message. He would not listen, he was bent on crossing in spite of everything; he thought the forest thickets would protect him. I implored, I kneeled to him, and asked him if he would let himself be shot down by the sentries like some hunted animal. That told at last.

He consented to wait until evening. We were just considering whether we should venture into the forester's station, when we were met by ..."

"By whom? By a patrol?"

"No, by the farmer of Janowo. We had no treachery to fear from him, he has always been faithful to the cause. He had been called on to provide relays for the troops, and was just coming back from the frontier. He had heard say that a battle was being fought near W----, which was not yet decided; that the Morynski corps had been surprised, but was defending itself desperately. It was all over then with reason and reflection. Our young Prince had only one thought--how to get to W---- and throw himself into the thick of the fight. We could not hold him back. He would listen to nothing then. He had left us about half an hour, when we heard shots fired; two at first, one after the other, then half a dozen all at once; and then ..." The old man could say no more, his voice failed him, and a torrent of hot tears burst from his eyes.

"I have brought the body," he said, after a pause. "The cavalry captain, who was here yesterday, obtained it for me from the set out yonder. They could do nothing with a dead man. But I did not dare to take it straight up to the Castle. We have laid him in there for the present."

He pointed to a room on the other side of the pa.s.sage. Waldemar signed to him and the steward to remain behind, and went in alone. Grey and dim the waning twilight fell on the lifeless form of the young Prince.

Silently his brother stood by, gazing down upon him. The beautiful face, which he had seen so radiant with life and happiness, was rigid now and cold; the flashing dark eyes were closed; and the breast, which had swelled so high with hope and dreams of liberty, now bore the death-wound. If the hot wild blood of youth had erred, it had also made atonement, as it gushed forth from that shattered breast, staining the clothing with dark, ominous patches. But a few hours before all the pa.s.sions of youth had raged in that inanimate frame. Hatred and love, jealousy and ardent thirst for revenge, despair at the terrible consequences of an act committed in reckless haste--all were past, frozen into the icy stagnation of death. One trace alone remained on the still, pale face. Stamped thereon so deeply, that it seemed indelibly graven for ever and ever, was that look of anguish which had quivered round the son's lips when his mother refused him a last farewell, when she let him go from her without a word of forgiveness.

All else had faded out of sight with life itself; but this one grief Prince Baratowski had taken with him into his death-struggle; it had been with him in the last glimmer of consciousness. The shadow of the grave itself could not shroud it from view.

Waldemar left the room, sombre and mute as he had entered it; but those who waited for him without, glancing at his troubled face, could see that he had loved his brother.

"Bring the body up to the Castle," he said. "I will go on first--to my mother."

CHAPTER XIV.

Spring had come round again for the second time since the beginning of the rebellion, which had blazed up so hotly at first, but which now lay quelled and crushed. Those wintry March days of the preceding year had not only brought woe on the Wilicza household, but had been pregnant with disaster to the whole insurrection. By the defeat of the Morynski corps, one of its chief supports had been lost to it. When overtaken by that sudden attack, which found him and his so totally unprepared--relying, as they did, upon the shelter afforded them by Prince Baratowski and his troops--Count Morynski had defended himself with all the energy of desperation; and even when, surrounded and outnumbered, he saw that all was lost, he yet fought on to the last, determined to sell his life and liberty as dearly as possible. So long as he remained at their head, his example inspired his wavering forces, and kept them together; but when the leader lay bleeding and unconscious on the ground, all resistance was at an end. Those who could not fly were hewn down, or taken prisoners by the victorious party. It was more than a defeat, it was an annihilation; and if that day's work did not decide the fate of the revolution, it yet marked a turning-point in its career. From that time forth, the fortunes of the insurgents declined, steadily and surely. The loss of Morynski, who had been by far the most redoubtable and energetic of the rebel leaders; the death of Leo Baratowski, on whom, in spite of his youth, the eyes of his countrymen were turned; in whom, by virtue of his name and family traditions their hopes and expectations centred--these were heavy blows for a party which had long been split into factions, and divided against itself, and which now fell still further asunder.

Occasionally, it is true, the waning star would gleam out brightly for a moment. There were other conflicts, other battles glorious with heroic acts and deeds of desperate valour; but the fact stood out ever more and more plainly, that the cause for which they fought was a lost cause. The insurrection, which at first had spread over the whole land, was forced back into narrower and narrower limits. Post after post fell into the hands of the enemy; one troop after another was dispersed, or melted away, and the year, which at its opening had seen the horizon lurid with revolutionary flames, before its close saw the fire quenched, the last spark extinguished. Nothing but ashes and ruins remained to testify of the death-struggle of a people over whom the fiat of history has long since gone forth.

A weary interval elapsed before Count Morynski's fate was decided. He first awoke to consciousness in a dungeon, and for a time his serious, nay, as it was at first believed, mortal wounds rendered all proceedings against him objectless. For months he lingered in the most precarious state, and when at length he recovered, it was to find himself on the threshold of life, confronted with his death-warrant.

For a leader of the revolution, taken armed and in actual fight, no other fate could be reserved. Sentence of death had been pa.s.sed on him, and would most a.s.suredly have been carried out in this, as in numberless other cases, but for his long and dangerous illness. His conquerors had not thought fit to inflict capital punishment on a man supposed to be dying, and when, later on, it became practicable to apply the law in all its rigour, the rising had been altogether suppressed, all danger to the land averted. The victors' obdurate severity relaxed in its turn. Count Morynski was reprieved, his sentence commuted to exile for life; exile in its bitterest form, indeed, for he was condemned to deportation to one of the most distant parts of Siberia--a terrible favour to be granted a man whose whole life had been one long dream of freedom, and who, even during the years of his former banishment in France, had never known any restriction on his personal liberty.

He had not seen those dear to him since the evening on which he had taken leave of them at Wilicza. Neither his sister, nor even his daughter, could obtain permission to see him. All their attempts to reach him were foiled by the strict watch kept on the prisoner, by the careful measures taken to shut him off from all possible intercourse with the outer world. For this strict watch they had, indeed, themselves to blame. More than once had they sought to rescue him from his captivity. So soon as the Count was on the road to recovery, every resource the Princess and Wanda had at their command was employed to facilitate his flight; but all their plans for his deliverance failed, the last experiment costing Pawlick, the faithful old servant of the Baratowski house, his life. He had volunteered for the perilous service, and had even so far succeeded as to put himself in communication with Morynski. The prisoner had been apprised of what was doing, the plan for his escape had been agreed upon, but Pawlick was surprised while engaged in the preparations for it, and, flying from the spot in the first impulse of his alarm, was shot down by the sentinels. The discovery of this scheme resulted in a still closer guard of the unhappy captive, and a keen and vigilant observation of his friends at large. They could take no further step without arousing suspicion, and increasing the hardships to which their brother and father was subjected. They were fain to yield at last to the hopeless impossibility of the case.

Immediately after the death of her younger son, the Princess had quitted Wilicza, and taken up her residence at Rakowicz. People thought it very natural she should not leave her orphaned niece alone. Waldemar knew better what drove his mother away. He had silently concurred when she told him of her resolve, making not the slightest attempt to combat it. He knew that she could no longer bear to live on at the Castle, that the constant sight of himself was intolerable to her; for had he not been the cause of the catastrophe by which Leo had lost his life and destruction had overtaken the troops committed to Leo's charge?

Perhaps it was a relief to Nordeck that the Princess should go, now that he was obliged daily and hourly to wound her by the manner of his rule at Wilicza. Having with iron determination once taken the reins in hand, he held them in a like grasp of iron, stern and steady guidance being indeed urgently called for. He had been right in saying that chaos reigned on his estates: no other word would so aptly have described the disorder which the twenty years of mismanagement during his late guardian's lifetime and the four years of Baratowski regime had bequeathed to him; but now, with incredible energy, he set himself to the work of bringing order out of chaos. At first Waldemar had enough to do with all his might to stem the tide of rebellion which, raging beyond the frontier, threatened to overflow his land; but when once he felt he had free play and liberty of action, when the insurrection with the thousand secret links binding it to Wilicza showed signs of dying out, a process of transformation began, quite unparalleled in its completeness. Such of the officials as failed to render implicit obedience were dismissed, and those who remained were subjected to severest control. The whole service of the woods and forests was placed in other hands; new foresters and rangers were appointed; the leased-out farms were--in some cases at a great money sacrifice--redeemed from the tenants in possession, and incorporated into the main estate, of which the young proprietor himself was sole administrator. It was a gigantic undertaking for one man single-handed to regulate and govern so vast a concern, especially now, when old things were overturned and the new not yet established, when there was no cohesion, nothing worked in joint; but Waldemar showed himself equal to the task. He had finally won the day in his contest with his subordinates. The population about Wilicza still remained hostile; its hatred of the German in him was abiding and consistent; but even the outsiders had learned to feel the master's hand, and to bend to its guiding impulse. By the Princess's departure the malcontents lost their firmest support, and the collapse of the movement in the neighbouring province quenched the spirit of resistance on this side the border.

There could, indeed, be no question as yet of that peaceful, well-ordered calm to be found on similar estates in other provinces.

Neither the times nor circ.u.mstances could admit of such a state of things; but a beginning was made, the path cleared, and the rest must be left for the future to work out.

Herr Frank, the steward, was still at Wilicza. He had put off his removal for a year, yielding to the express wish of his employer, who was most desirous of keeping this clever, experienced ally at his side for a while. Now only, when the most urgent measures for the re-establishment of order had been successfully taken, did Frank definitely resign his office, with a view to carrying out that long-cherished project of his, of settling down on his own land. The pretty and not unimportant estate which he had bought, lay in another province, in a pleasant situation and in full enjoyment of peace and order, strongly contrasting in this last respect with the old Polish neighbourhood where mischief was ever brewing, where the very air was full of plots, against which the steward had battled for twenty years, but which his soul abhorred. Two months would elapse before the purchaser could take possession of his new home; in the mean time he stayed on at Wilicza in his old position.

As to Gretchen, the fact that she was her father's darling had been amply demonstrated on the occasion of her marriage; her dowry exceeded all the calculations which a.s.sessor Hubert had so minutely entered into for the benefit of another. The wedding had taken place in the preceding autumn, and the newly married pair had gone to live in J----, where Professor Fabian now actually filled the post which had been offered to him, and where 'we meet with the most extraordinary success,' said his wife, writing to her father. Fabian overcame his timid dread of a public life more easily and quickly than he could have believed possible, and justified all the expectations entertained with regard to the author of the 'History of Teutonism,' who had so suddenly sprung into fame. His amiable, modest manners, which stood out in strong contrast to his predecessor's uncourteous and overbearing ways, won for him the general good-will; and his young and blooming wife contributed not a little to the advancement of his social position, so gracefully did she preside over the charming home which her father's generous kindness had fitted up with every elegance and comfort. The young couple were now about to pay their first visit to the paternal roof, and were expected to arrive at Wilicza in the course of a few days.

Things had not gone so well with a.s.sessor Hubert, though a quite unexpected and rather considerable accession of fortune had lately come to him. Unfortunately, the event which procured him the legacy, deprived the family of its man of mark. Professor Schwarz had died some months before; and, that celebrated scholar being unmarried, his fortune went to his nearest of kin. Hubert's pecuniary position was greatly improved thereby, but what did it profit him? The bride on whom he had so surely counted had given herself to another, and as yet he did not hold his Counsellorship. There seemed, indeed, for the present, small prospect of his promotion, although he outdid himself in official zeal, although he kept the police department of L---- in a twitter of perpetual alarm with his so-called discoveries, and would have counted no exertions too great, could he, in that year of revolution, but have laid hands on a traitor or two, conspiring against his own State. In this hope he was, however, still destined to be disappointed. And this same State behaved in a manner altogether disgraceful towards its most faithful servant; it seemed to have no fitting sense of his self-sacrifice and general devotedness, but rather to incline to the view taken by Frank, who declared, in his outspoken way, that the a.s.sessor was doing one stupid thing after another, and would get himself turned out of the service before long. Indeed, at every fresh promotion, Hubert was pa.s.sed over in so pointed a fashion that his colleagues began to laugh at and to taunt him with his nonsuccess. Then a dark resolve shaped itself in the mind of this deeply injured man.

Schwarz's legacy had made him quite independent; why should he longer endure to be so overlooked and neglected? why continue to serve this ungrateful State, which persistently refused to recognise his brilliant abilities, while insignificant men like Dr. Fabian were called to fill important posts and had distinctions heaped on them?

Hubert spoke of tendering his resignation. He even mentioned the subject in the presence of the President; but great was his mortification when that magnate, with crushing affability, encouraged him in the idea. His Excellency was of opinion that the a.s.sessor, with his private means, was in no need of an official position, and would do well to withdraw from its fatigues. Besides, he was of rather an 'excitable' temperament, and such duties as his required, above everything, calmness and reflection. Hubert felt something of his celebrated relative's misanthropy arise within him, as he went home after this conversation, and, on the spur of the moment, drew up his letter of resignation. This letter was sent off and actually accepted!

As yet, neither the State nor the police department of L---- had been thrown out of their accustomed grooves by the circ.u.mstance, but some disturbance might be looked for in the ensuing month, when his threatened retirement would a.s.sume the proportions of an accomplished fact. The nephew had in him too much of that uncle, whose unfortunate strategy he had lately imitated, not to live in expectation of some impending catastrophe.

In the courtyard at Rakowicz stood the horse of the young lord of Wilicza. It happened but rarely that Nordeck rode over to this house, and when he came, his visits were of short duration. The breach between him and his nearest relations was still unhealed; late events seemed, indeed, rather to have widened it, to have sundered them still more completely.

Countess Morynska and Waldemar were alone together in the lady's private sitting-room. Wanda was much changed. She had always been pale, but with a paleness which had nothing in common with the deathly hue now overspreading her face. Visible tokens were there of all that she had suffered of late--suffered, in knowing the father she so pa.s.sionately loved in prison, sick nigh unto death without the power of going to him and allaying his pain even for a moment, in witnessing the final wreck and failure of those bright dreams of liberty, for which he had so enthusiastically staked his life, and which were not without a powerful hold on his daughter's soul. Mortal anxiety as to the decision of this twofold destiny, constant vacillation between hope and fear, the agitating suspense of each fresh attempt at rescue--these all had left most evident traces. Wanda's was one of those natures which will face the heaviest misfortunes with desperate energy so long as a glimmer of hope is left, but which, when once this glimmer is extinguished, break down utterly. She seemed nearly to have reached this despairing point. At the present moment a sort of feverish excitement upheld her. She had evidently rallied what was but too surely her last remaining strength.

Waldemar stood before her, unchanged, haughty and unbending as ever. In his manner there was but little of that forbearance to which the young Countess's appearance made so urgent an appeal. His att.i.tude was almost menacing, and mingled anger and pain were in his voice as he spoke to her.

"For the last time I entreat you to give up the thought. You would only incur death yourself, without being of any help to your father. It would be one torment more for him to see you dying before his eyes. You are bent on following him into that fearful desert, that murderous climate, to which the strongest succ.u.mb; you, who from your earliest youth have been delicately nursed, and surrounded by all life's comforts, purpose now to expose yourself to the most cruel privations.

The tried and tempered steel of the Count's endurance may possibly hold out under them, but you would fall a victim before many months were over. Ask the doctor, ask your own face; they will tell you that you would not live a year in that terrible land."

"Do you think my father will live longer?" replied Wanda, with a trembling voice. "We have nothing more to hope or expect from life, but we will at least die together."

"And I?" asked Waldemar, with bitter reproach.

She turned away without answering him.

"And I?" he repeated, more vehemently. "What shall I do? What is to become of me?"

"You at least are free. You have life before you. Bear it--I have worse to bear!"

An angry remonstrance was on Waldemar's lips; but he glanced at that pale, troubled face, and that glance made him pause. He forced himself to be calm.

"Wanda, when, a year ago, we came at last to understand each other, the promise you had given my brother stood between us. I would have fought my battle, have won you from him at any cost; but it never came to that. His death has torn down the barrier, and no matter what may threaten us from without, it is down, and we are free. By Leo's newly opened grave, while the sword was still impending over your father's head, I did not dare speak to you of love, of our union. I forced myself to wait, to see you but seldom, and only for a few minutes at a time. When I came over to Rakowicz, you and my mother let me feel that you still looked on me as an enemy; but I hoped for better days, for a happier future, and now you meet me with such a determination as this!

Can you not understand that I will combat it as long as breath is left in me? 'We will die together!'--easily said and easily done when bullets are flying thick and fast, when, like Leo, one may be shot to the heart in a moment. But have you reflected what death in exile really may be? A slow wasting away; a long protracted struggle against privations which break the spirit before they destroy the body; far from one's country, cut off from the world and its interests, from all that intellectual life which to you is as necessary as the air you breathe; to be weighed down and gradually stifled by the load of misery! And you require of me that I shall endure to see it, that I shall stand by, and suffer you voluntarily to dedicate yourself to such a fate?"

A slight shudder pa.s.sed through the young Countess's frame. The truth of his description may have gone home to her; but she persisted in her silence.

"And your father accepts this incredible sacrifice," went on Waldemar, more and more excitedly, "and my mother gives her approval to the plan.

Their object is simply this, to drag you from my arms, to achieve which they will even subject you to a living death. Had I fallen instead of Leo, and the present cruel fate overtaken the Count, he would have commanded you to stay, my mother would energetically have defended her son's rights, and would have compelled you to give up so ill-judged a scheme; but now, they themselves have suggested these ideas of martyrdom, although they know that it will be your death. It does away with all prospect of our union, even in the far distant future, and that is enough for them!"

"Do not speak so bitterly," Wanda interrupted him. "You do my family injustice. I give you my word that, in taking this resolution, I have been guided by none. My father is advancing towards old age. His wounds, his long imprisonment, more than all else, the defeat of our cause, have broken him down morally and physically. I am all that is left to him, the one tie which still binds him to life. I am his altogether. The lot, which you so forcibly described just now, will be his lot. Do you think I could have one hour's peace at your side, knowing him to be journeying towards such a fate alone, abandoned to his doom, feeling that I myself was bringing on him the crudest grief of his life, by marrying you, whom he still looks on as one of our enemies? The one mitigation of his terrible sentence I could obtain--and that with the utmost difficulty--was a permission for me to accompany my father. I knew that I should have a hard fight with you--how hard it would be I am only learning now. Spare me, Waldemar, I have not much strength left."

"No, not for me," said Waldemar, bitterly. "All the strength and love in you are given to your father. What shall become of me, how I am to endure the misery of separation, you do not stay to enquire. I was a fool when I believed in that impulse which threw you into my arms in a moment of danger. You were 'Wanda' to me but for an instant. When I saw you next day, you spoke to me as Countess Morynska, and are so speaking to me to-day. My mother is right. Your national prejudices are your very heart's blood, the food on which you have been nourished since your infancy; you cannot renounce them without renouncing life itself--to them we are both to be offered up--to them your father is ready to sacrifice his only child. He would never, never have consented that you should accompany him, if the man, who loved you, had been a Pole. I being that man, he will agree to any plan which may part you from me. What matter, if only he can preserve you from the German, if he stand faithfully by the national creed? Can you Poles feel nothing but hate--hate which stretches even beyond the grave?"

"If my father were free, I might perhaps find courage to set him and all that you call prejudice at defiance," said Wanda, in a low voice.

"As it is, I cannot, and"--here all her old energy gleamed forth anew--"I will not, for it would be betraying my duty as his child. I will go with him, even though it costs me my life. I will not leave him alone in his distress."

She spoke these words with a steady decision which showed her resolution to be unalterable. Waldemar seemed to feel it. He gave up his resistance.