Under a Charm Volume I Part 5

"I only did that to torment you," replied the young lady with great candour. "You grew so angry when I told you of my interesting adventure with a stranger. You naturally believed some fascinating cavalier had escorted me, and I left you in that belief. Now, Leo"--here her gaiety got the better of her again--"now you see it was not a very dangerous affair."

"Well, yes, I see that," a.s.sented the young Prince, laughing; "but Waldemar must have had some knightly instinct, or he would not have condescended to act as your guide."

"Possibly; but I shall remember his escort as long as I live. Just fancy, Leo; all in a minute I lost the path I had so often taken, and which I thought I knew so well. At every attempt to find it I got deeper and deeper into the forest, until at last I strayed into regions quite unknown to me. I could not even tell in which direction the Beech Holm or the sea lay, for there was not a breath of wind, and not a murmur of the waves reached me. I stood still, not knowing what to do, and was just on the point of turning back, when something broke through the bushes as violently as though the woods were being beaten for a battue. Suddenly the figure of a man stood before me, whom I really could take for none other than the wood-demon in person. He was up to his knees in mud. A freshly killed doe was thrown over his shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that blood was dripping from the animal down on to his clothes and staining them. The enormous yellow mane, which serves him for hair, had been roughly used by the bushes, and was hanging down over his face. He stood there with a gun in his hand, and a growling, snarling dog at his side, who showed his teeth as he looked at me. I ask you if it was possible to take this monster of the woods for a human being bent on sport."

"You were in a tremendous fright, I suppose," said Leo, banteringly.

Wanda tossed her head. "In a fright? I? You ought to know by this time that I am not timid. Another girl would have probably fled precipitately, but I kept my ground, and asked the way to the Beech Holm. Though I repeated the question twice, I got no answer. Instead of replying, the spectre stood as though rooted to the ground, and stared at me with its great wild eyes without uttering a sound. Then I did begin to feel uncomfortable, and turned to go, when in a moment, with two strides, he was at my side, pointing to the right, and showing an unmistakable intention of acting as my guide."

"But not by pantomime alone?" interposed Leo. "Waldemar spoke to you, surely."

"Oh yes, he spoke; he honoured me in all with six or seven words, certainly not more. On joining company with him, I heard something like 'We must take to the right;' and on parting, 'Yonder lies the Beech Holm.' During the half-hour's interval, there reigned an impressive silence which I did not venture to break. And what a way it was we took! First we went straight into the very midst of the thicket, my amiable guide walking on ahead of me, trampling and crushing down the bushes like a bear. I believe he destroyed half the forest to make some sort of a pa.s.sage for me. Then we came to a clearing, then to a bog. I expected we should plunge right into it; but, marvellous to say, we stopped on the brink. All this time not a word pa.s.sed between us; but my singular companion stuck close to my side, and whenever I looked up I met his eyes, which seemed to grow more and more uncanny every minute. I now inclined decidedly to the opinion that he had risen from one of the ancient tumuli, and was prowling about in search of some human being whom he would straightway drag off to one of the old heathen altars, and there immolate. Just as I was preparing for my approaching end, I saw the blue sea glistening through the branches, and at once recognised the neighbourhood of the Beech Holm. My wonderful cavalier came to a halt, fixed his great eyes on me once more, as though he would eat me up on the spot, and seemed hardly to hear that I was thanking him. Next minute I was on the sh.o.r.e, where I caught sight of your boat. Think of my astonishment when I came in to-day and found my wood-demon--my giant of primeval times, whom I thought long since buried in some deep cavern of the earth--in my aunt's reception room, and when the said ghostly vision was introduced to me as 'Cousin Waldemar.' It is true, he conducted himself in the most approved style; he even took me in to dinner. But, goodness me!

how funnily he set about it! I believe it was the first time in his life he ever offered a lady his arm. Did you see how he bowed, how he behaved at table? Don't be offended, Leo; but this new brother of yours belongs rightly to the wilderness, and to the furthest depths of it, too! There he has at least something awe-inspiring about him; but when he comes out among civilised men, he simply convulses one with laughter. And to think that he should be the future lord of Wilicza!"

At heart, Leo shared this opinion; but he thought it inc.u.mbent on him to take his brother's part. He felt how infinitely superior to young Nordeck he himself was, both in appearance and bearing, and this made it easy to be generous.

"But it is not Waldemar's fault that his education has been so entirely neglected," said he; "mamma thinks that his guardian has let him run wild systematically."

"Well, all I can say is, he is a monster," decided the young lady. "I herewith solemnly declare that if I have to go in to dinner with him again, I will impose a voluntary fast on myself, and not appear at table."

During their talk, Wanda's handkerchief, with which she had been fanning herself, had slipped down, and now lay at some distance below them in the ivy which crept round the balcony. Leo noticed this, and gallantly bent to reach it. He was obliged almost to go down on his knees. In this position, he picked up the handkerchief, and restored it to his cousin. Instead of thanking him, she burst out into a peal of laughter. The young Prince sprang to his feet.

"You are laughing?"

"Oh, not at you, Leo. It only struck me how unutterably comic your brother would have looked in such a situation."

"Waldemar? Yes, indeed; but you will hardly have that satisfaction. He will never bend the knee before a lady, certainly not before you."

"Certainly not before me!" repeated Wanda, in a tone of pique. "Oh, you think I am still such a child, it is not worth while kneeling to me. I have a great mind to prove to you the contrary."

"How?" asked Leo, laughing. "By bringing Waldemar to your feet, perhaps?"

The girl pouted. "And suppose I undertook to do it?"

"Well, try your power on my brother, if you like," said he, touchily.

"Perhaps that will give you a better notion of what you can do, and what you can't."

Wanda sprang up with the eagerness of a child who sees a new toy before it.

"I agree. What shall we wager?"

"But it must be done in earnest, Wanda. It must not be a mere act of politeness, like mine just now."

"Of course not," a.s.sented the young Countess. "You laugh; you think such a thing is quite beyond the range of possibility. Well, we shall see who wins. You shall behold Waldemar on his knees before we leave. I only make one condition; you must give him no hint of it. I think it would rouse all the bear in him if he were to hear we had presumed to make his lordship the object of a wager."

"I won't say a word," declared Leo, carried away by her mischievous eagerness, and joining in the frolic. "We shan't escape an outburst of his Berserker wrath, though, when you laugh out at him at last, and tell him the truth. But perhaps you mean to say yes?"

Both the children--for children they still were with their respective sixteen and seventeen years--joked and made merry over their conceit, as such thoughtless young creatures will. Accustomed constantly to tease and torment each other, they had no misgivings about including a third person in their sport. They never reflected how little Waldemar's stern, unbending character was suited to such trifling, or to what bitter earnest he might turn the play imagined by them in the foolish gaiety of their hearts.

CHAPTER VI.

Some weeks had pa.s.sed. The summer was drawing to an end, and all hands at Altenhof were busy with the harvest. The Squire, who had spent his whole morning in the fields, looking after the men and directing the work, had come home weary and exhausted, and was settling himself down for his well-earned after-dinner nap. Whilst making his preparations for it, he looked round every now and then, half angrily, half admiringly, at his adopted son, who was standing by the window dressed in his usual riding gear, waiting for his horse to be brought round.

"So you are really going over to C---- in the heat of the day?" asked Herr Witold. "I wish you joy of your two hours' ride. There is not a bit of shade all the way. You will be getting a sunstroke--but you don't seem able to live now without paying your respects to your mother at least three or four times a week."

The young man frowned. "I can't refuse to go if my mother wishes to see me. Now that we are so near each other she has a right to require that I should pay her some visits."

"Well, she makes a famous use of the right," said Witold; "but I should like to know how she has contrived to turn you into an obedient son. I have tried in vain for nearly twenty years. She managed it in a single day; she certainly always had the knack of governing people."

"You ought to know that I do not allow myself to be governed, uncle,"

replied Waldemar, in a tone of irritation. "My mother met me in a conciliatory spirit, and I neither can nor will repulse her advances roughly, as you did whilst I was under your guardianship."

"They tell you often enough that you are under it no longer, I'll be bound," interrupted his uncle. "You have laid great stress on that for the last few weeks; but it is quite unnecessary, my boy. You have, I am sorry to say, never done anything but just what pleased you, and often acted in opposition to my will. Your coming of age is a mere form, for me, at least, though not for the Baratowskis. They best know what use they mean to make of it, and why they are continually reminding you of your freedom."

"What is the good of these perpetual suspicions?" cried Waldemar, in a pa.s.sion. "Am I to give up all intercourse with my relations for no other reason but because you dislike them?"

"I wish you could put your dear relations' tenderness to the test,"

said Witold, ironically. "They would not trouble themselves so much about you, if you did not happen to be master of Wilicza. Now, now, don't fly out again. We have had quarrels enough about it of late, I am not going to spoil my nap to-day. This confounded bathing season will be over soon, and then we shall be quit of them all."

A short pause followed, Waldemar pacing impatiently up and down the room.

"I can't think what they are about in the stables. I ordered Norman to be saddled--the men seem to have gone to sleep over it."

"You are in a terrible hurry to get away, are not you?" asked the Squire, drily. "I really believe they have given you some philtre over in C----, which will not allow you to rest anywhere else. You can hardly bear to wait until it is time for you to be in the saddle."

Waldemar made no reply. He began to whistle and to crack his whip in the air.

"The Princess is going back to Paris, I presume?" asked Witold all at once.

"I don't know. It is not decided yet where Leo is to finish his studies. His mother will no doubt be guided by that in the choice of her future home."

"I wish he would go and study in Constantinople, and that his lady mother would be guided by that, and take herself off with him to the land of the Turks; then, at all events, they could not be back for some time," said Herr Witold, spitefully. "That young Baratowski must be a perfect prodigy of learning. You are always talking of his studies."

"Leo has learned a great deal more than I, yet he is four years younger," said Waldemar, in a grumbling voice.

"His mother has kept him to his books, no doubt. That boy has kept the same tutor all the while, you may be sure; while six have decamped from here, and the seventh only stays on with you because he can't very well help himself."

"And why was not I kept to my books?" asked young Nordeck, suddenly, crossing his arms defiantly and going up close to his guardian. The latter stared at him in astonishment.

"I do believe the boy is going to reproach me with giving him his own way in everything," he cried, in wrathful indignation.

"No," replied Waldemar, briefly. "You meant well, uncle; but you don't know how I feel when I see that Leo is before me in everything, and hear constantly of the necessity of further advantages for him, while I stand by and ... But there shall be an end of it. I'll go to the University, too."

Herr Witold, in his fright, nearly let fall the sofa cushion he was comfortably adjusting.