Under a Charm Volume Iii Part 8

"When do you set out?" he asked, after a pause.

"Next month. I am not to see my father again until we meet at O----.

There my aunt will also be allowed one interview with him. She will go with me so far. You see we need not say good-bye to-day; we have some weeks before us. But promise me not to come to Rakowicz in the mean time, not again to a.s.sail me with reproaches and arguments, as you have this morning. I need all my courage for the hour of parting, and you rob me of it with your despair. We shall see each other yet once again--until then, farewell!"

"Farewell," he said, shortly, almost roughly, without looking at her, or taking the hand she held out to him.

"Waldemar!" There was heart-stirring sorrow and reproach in her tone, but it was powerless to lay his fierce irritation. Anger and misery at losing his love overcame for the moment all the young man's sense of justice.

"You may be right," he said, in his harshest tone, "but I cannot bring myself all at once to appreciate this exalted spirit of self-sacrifice--still less to share it. My whole nature rises up in protest against it. As, however, you insist on carrying your plan into execution, as you have irrevocably decreed our parting, I must see how I can get through existence alone. I shall make no further moan, that you know. My bitterness only offends you, it will be best that I should be silent. Farewell, Wanda."

A conflict was going on in Wanda's mind. She knew that it only needed one word from her to change all his harshness and austerity into soft tenderness; but to speak that word now would be to renew the contest, to endanger the victory so hardly won. She was silent, paused for a second, then bowed her head slightly, and left the room.

Waldemar let her go. He stood with his face turned to the window. Many bitter emotions were written on that face, but no trace was there of the resignation which the woman he loved had required of him. Leaning his brow against the panes, he remained long motionless, lost in thought, and only looked up at last on hearing his name spoken.

It was the Princess who had come in unnoticed. How the last year with all its cruel blows had told upon this woman! When, in the old days, her son had met her in C---- after a separation of years, she had just suffered a heavy loss; then as now she had been draped in deepest mourning. But her husband's death had not bent her proud energetic spirit; she had clearly recognised the duties devolving on her as a widow and a mother, had designed, and steadily carried out, the new plan of life which for a time had made her ruler and mistress of Wilicza. She had overcome her grief, because self-control was necessary, because there were other tasks before Baratowski's widow than that merely of deploring his loss, and Princess Hedwiga had ever possessed the enviable faculty of subordinating her dearest feelings to the outward calls of necessity.

Now, however, it was otherwise. The mourner still bore herself erect, and, at a first cursory glance, no very striking alteration might have been remarked in her; but he who looked closer would have seen the change which Leo Baratowski's death had wrought in his mother. There was a rigid look on her features; not the quiescence of still resignation, but the dead calm of one who has nothing more to hope or to lose, for whom life and its interests have no further concern. Those eyes, once so imperious, were dull now and shaded; the proud brow, which but a year before had been smooth as marble, was furrowed with deep lines, telling of anguish, and there were patches of grey in the dark hair. The blow, which had fallen on this mother, wounding her mortally in her pride as in her affections, had evidently attacked the very well-springs of her being, and the defeat of her people, the fate of the brother, whom, after Leo, she loved more than all on earth, had done the rest--the once inflexible, indomitable spirit was broken.

"Have you really been plying Wanda with argument and remonstrances again?" said she, and her voice too was changed; it had a dull, weary sound. "You must know that it is all in vain."

Waldemar turned round. His face had not cleared; it was dark and wrathful still, as he answered--

"Yes, it was all in vain."

"I told you so beforehand. Wanda is not one of those women who say No to-day and to-morrow throw themselves into your arms. Her resolution, once taken, was irrevocable. You ought to recognise this, instead of distressing her by re-opening a useless strife. It is you, and you alone, who show her no mercy."

"I?" exclaimed Waldemar fiercely. "Who was it, then, that suggested this resolution to her?"

The Princess's eyes met his without flinching. "No one," she replied.

"I, as you know, have long since ceased to interfere between you. I have learned by too bitter experience how powerless I am to oppose your pa.s.sion ever again to attempt to check it, but I neither can nor will prevent Wanda from going. She is all my brother has in the world. She will only do her duty in following him."

"To her death," added Waldemar.

The Princess was sitting now, wearily resting her head on her hand.

"Death has come near us too often of late for any one of us to fear it.

When the strokes of Fate fall thick and fast, as they have fallen upon us, one grows familiar with the worst; and this is the case with Wanda.

We have nothing more to lose, therefore nothing to fear. This unhappy year has blighted other hopes than yours; so many have gone to their graves mid blood and tears! You will have to bear it, if, to all the other ruins, the wreck of your happiness is added."

"You would hardly forgive me were I to rescue my happiness from the ruin of your hopes," said Waldemar, bitterly. "Well, you need not be uneasy. I have seen plainly to-day that Wanda is not to be moved."

"And you?"

"Well, I submit."

The Princess scanned his face for some seconds.

"What are you thinking of doing?" she asked suddenly.

"Nothing; you hear--I give up hope and submit to the inevitable."

His mother's eye still rested scrutinisingly upon him.

"You do _not_ submit, or I am much mistaken in my son. Is that resignation which is written on your brow? You have some plan, some mad, perilous project. Beware! Wanda's own will stands opposed to you.

She will yield to no compulsion, not even from you."

"We shall see that," replied the young man, coldly--he gave up denial, finding the mask was seen through. "In any case, you may set your mind perfectly at ease. My plan may be a mad one, but if it presents any danger, that danger will be mine only--at most, my life will be at stake."

"At most, your life?" repeated the Princess. "And you can say that to rea.s.sure your mother!"

"Pardon me, but I think there has been small question with you of a mother's feelings since the day you lost your Leo."

The Princess gazed fixedly on the ground.

"From that hour you have let me feel that I am childless," she said in a low tone.

"I?" exclaimed Waldemar. "Was it for me to put obstacles in the way of your leaving Wilicza. I knew right well that you were hurrying away to escape from me, that the sight of me was intolerable to you.

Mother"--he drew nearer her involuntarily, and, harsh and unsparing as were his words, they yet told of a secret rankling pain--"when all your self-control gave way, and you sank down weeping on my brother's corpse, I dared not say one comforting word--I dare not even now. I have always been a stranger, an alien from your heart; I never held a place in it. If, from time to time, I have come over here to Rakowicz, it was because I could not live without seeing Wanda. I have never thought of seeking you, any more than you have sought me in this time of mourning; but truly the blame of our estrangement does not lie at my door. Do not impute it to me as a crime that I left you alone in the bitterest hour of your life."

The Princess had listened in silence, not attempting to interrupt him; but as she answered, her lips moved convulsively, contracted, as it were, by some inward spasm.

"If I have loved your brother more than you, I have lost him--how have I lost him! I could have borne that he should fall, I myself sent him out to fight for his country--but that he should fall in such a way!"

Her voice failed her, she struggled for breath, and there was a pause of some seconds before she could continue. "I let my Leo go without a word of pardon, without the last farewell for which he prayed on his knees, and that very day they laid him at my feet shot through the breast. All that is left to me of him--his memory--is indissolubly connected with that fatal act of his which brought destruction on our troops. My people's cause is lost; my brother is going to meet a doom worse by far than death. Wanda will follow him. I stand altogether alone. I think you may be satisfied, Waldemar, with the manner in which Fate has avenged you."

In the utter weariness of her voice, the dull rigidity of her features, there was something far more pathetic than in the wildest outbreak of sorrow. Waldemar himself could but be impressed by it; he bent down over her.

"Mother," said he, meaningly; "the Count is still in his own country, Wanda is still here. She has to-day unconsciously pointed out to me a way in which I may yet hope to win her. I shall take that way."

The Princess started up in alarm. Her look sought his anxiously, enquiringly; she read her answer in his eyes.

"You mean to attempt ..."

"What you two have attempted before me. You have failed, I know.

Perhaps I shall succeed better."

A ray of hope illumined the Princess's countenance, but it died out again immediately. She shook her head.

"No, no; do not undertake it. It is useless; and if I say so, you may rest a.s.sured that no means have been left untried. We have made every effort, and all in vain. Pawlick has paid for his fidelity with his life."

"Pawlick was an old man," replied Waldemar, "and an anxious, timorous nature to boot. He had devotion enough for any task, but he had not the requisite prudence, not the requisite audacity at a critical moment.

Such an enterprise demands youth and a bold spirit; above all, it is essential that the princ.i.p.al should act in person, trusting to no one but himself."

"And himself incur all the terrible danger. We have learned, to our cost, how they guard their frontiers and their prisoners out yonder.

Waldemar, am I to lose you too?"

Waldemar looked at her in amazement, as the last words burst from her lips like a cry of pain. A bright flush overspread his face.

"Your brother's freedom depends on it," he reminded her.