Under a Charm Volume Iii Part 9

"Bronislaus is beyond rescue," said the Princess, hopelessly. "Do not risk your life now in our lost cause. It has cost victims enough! Think of Pawlick's fate, of your brother's death!" She seized his hand, and held it tightly. "You shall not go. I was over rash just now when I said I had nothing more to lose; at this moment I feel there is one thing left to me. I will not give up you too, my last, my only child.

Do not go, my son. Your mother entreats you; do not go!"

At length her heart warmed towards him with maternal love; at length this love spoke to him in tender accents, such as Waldemar had never before heard from her lips. Even to this proud, inexorable woman an hour had come, when, seeing all around her tottering and falling, she was fain to cling desperately to the one support which Fate had left her. The spurned, neglected son resumed his rights at last. True, the grave had opened for his brother, before any such rights were accorded to him.

Any other mother and son might now have clasped each other in a long embrace, striving in this rush of new-born tenderness to drown all memory of their long, deep-rooted estrangement; these natures were too hard, and too alike in their hardness, for any such swift and absolute revulsion of feeling. Waldemar spoke no word, but for the first time in his life he lifted his mother's hand to his lips, and pressed them on it long and fervently.

"You will stay?" implored the Princess.

He drew himself up. The bright flush was still on his face, but the last few minutes seemed to have transfigured it. All rancour and bitterness had vanished from his features; his eyes still sparkled with defiance, but it was the glad defiance of one confident of victory, and ready to enter the lists and do battle with Fate.

"No," he replied, "I shall go; but I thank you for those words--they make the venture a light one to me. You have always looked upon me as your enemy, because I would not lend my hand to further your plans. I could not do that--I cannot now; but nothing forbids me to rescue the Count from the consequences of an inhuman verdict. At all events, I am determined to make the attempt, and, if any one can accomplish it, I shall. You know the spur which urges me on."

The Princess gave up all resistance. She could not remain quite hopeless in face of his steady a.s.surance.

"And Wanda?" she asked.

"She said to me to-day, 'If my father were free, I might find courage to defy all and everything for your sake.' Tell her I may one day remind her of those words. Now ask me nothing more, mother. You know that I must act alone, for I alone am unsuspected. You are distrusted and watched. Any step taken by you would betray the enterprise, any news sent you by me would jeopardise it. Leave all in my hands; and now, farewell. I must away, we have no more time to lose."

He touched his mother's hand with his lips once more, and hastened from her. The Princess felt something akin to a pang at this sudden, rapid leave-taking. She went up to the window to wave a last adieu to the traveller as he hurried away; but she waited in vain. His eyes sought, indeed, one of the Castle windows, as he rode slowly, lingeringly through the courtyard; but that window was not hers. He gazed steadfastly, persistently, up to Wanda's room, as though such a look must have power to draw his love to him, to force from her a parting 'G.o.d speed!' It was for her sake alone he was entering on the perilous task before him; his mother, the reconciliation so lately sealed, all faded away and sank to nought when his Wanda came in question.

And he really obtained his wish of seeing her once more. The young Countess must have appeared at the bay-window, for Waldemar's face suddenly lighted up, as though a ray of suns.h.i.+ne had fallen athwart it.

He waved his hand to her, then gave his Norman the rein, and dashed, quick as the wind, out of the Castle-yard.

The Princess still stood in her place, gazing after him. He had not looked back to her--she was forgotten! At this thought, for the first time that stab went through her heart which had so often traversed Waldemar's at sight of her tenderness to Leo--and yet in this moment a conviction she had hitherto refused fully to admit forced itself irresistibly upon her--a conviction that the inheritance, all share of which had been denied her darling, had fallen to her first-born son, that to him his mother's strength and energy had descended, that in mind and character he approved himself very blood of her blood.

CHAPTER XV.

In the forenoon of a cool but sunny May day, Herr Frank was returning from L---- whither he had been to fetch his daughter and son-in-law.

Professor Fabian and his wife were seated in the carriage with him. The former's new academical dignity seemed to agree right well with him; he looked in better health and spirits than ever. His young wife, in consideration of her husband's position, had a.s.sumed a certain stateliness of demeanour which she did her very best to maintain, and which was in comic contrast to her fresh, youthful appearance.

Fortunately, she often fell out of her role, and became true Gretchen Frank once more; but at this moment, it was the Professor's wife who sat by her father's side with much gravity of deportment, giving him an account of their life in J----.

"Yes, papa, it will be a great relief to us to come and stay with you for a time," said she, pa.s.sing her handkerchief over her blooming face, which certainly did not look as though it needed relief. "We University people have so many claims upon us. We are expected to interest ourselves in every possible subject, and our position requires so much from us. We Germanists stand well to the front in the scientific movement of the age."

"You certainly appear to stand very much to the front," said the steward, who was listening with some wonder. "Tell me, child, which of you really fills the professorial chair at J----, your husband or yourself?"

"The wife belongs to the husband, so it comes to the same," declared Gretchen. "Without me Emile never could have accepted the post, distinguished scholar as he is. Professor Weber said to him the day before yesterday in my presence, 'My worthy colleague, you are a perfect treasure to the University, as regards science, but for all the details of practical life you are worth absolutely nothing. In all such matters you are quite at sea. It is a mercy your young wife is so well able to supply your deficiencies.' He is quite right, is he not, Emile?

Without me you would be lost in a social point of view."

"Altogether," a.s.sented the Professor, full of faith, and with a look of grateful tenderness at his wife.

"Do you hear, papa, he owns it," said she, turning to her father.

"Emile is one of the few men who know how to appreciate their wives.

Hubert never would have done that. By-the-by, how is the a.s.sessor? Is not he made Counsellor even yet?"

"No, not yet, and he is so wrath at it that he has given in his resignation. At the beginning of next month he quits the service of the State."

"What a loss for all the future ministries of our country!" laughed Gretchen. "He had quite made up his mind he should come into office some day, and he used to practice the ministerial bearing when he was sitting in our parlour. Is he still tormented with the fixed idea of discovering traitors and conspirators everywhere?"

Frank laughed in his turn. "I really don't know, for I have hardly seen him since your engagement was announced, and never once spoken to him.

He has laid my house under a ban ever since that time. You might certainly have told him the news in a more considerate manner. When he comes over to Wilicza, which does not happen often, he stops down in the village, and never comes near the manor-farm. I have no transactions with him now that Herr Nordeck has taken the direction of the police into his own hands--but the a.s.sessor may pa.s.s for a rising man nowadays: he inherited the greater part of Schwarz's fortune. The Professor died a few months ago."

"Of bilious fever, probably," put in Mrs. Fabian.

"Gretchen!" remonstrated her husband, in a tone between entreaty and reproof.

"Well, he was of a very bilious temperament. He went just as much into that extreme as you do into the other with your mildness and forbearance. Just fancy, papa, directly after his nomination to J----, Emile wrote to the Professor, and a.s.sured him that he was quite innocent of all the disputes which had taken place at the University.

As a matter of course, the letter was never acknowledged, notwithstanding which, my lord and husband feels himself called upon, now that this disagreeable but distinguished person has betaken himself to a better world, to write a grandiloquent article on him, deploring the loss to science, just as if the deceased had been his dearest friend."

"I did it from conviction, my dear," said Fabian, in his gentle, earnest way. "The Professor's ungenial temper too often acted as a hindrance to that full recognition of his talents which was due to them. I felt it inc.u.mbent on me to recall to the mind of the public what a loss science has sustained in him. Whatever may have been his defects of manner, he was a man of rare merit."

Gretchen's lip curled contemptuously.

"Well, he may have been; I'm sure I don't mind. But now to a more important matter. So Herr Nordeck is not in Wilicza?"

"No," replied the steward, laconically. "He has gone on a journey."

"Yes, we know that. He wrote to my husband not long ago, and said he was thinking of going over to Altenhof, and that he should probably spend a few weeks there. Just now, when he has his hands so full of business at Wilicza!--it seems strange!"

"Waldemar has always looked on Altenhof as his real home," said the Professor. "For that reason, he never could make up his mind to sell the estate which Herr Witold bequeathed to him by his will. It is natural he should wish to revisit the place where all his youth was pa.s.sed."

Gretchen looked highly incredulous. "You ought to know your former pupil better. He is not likely to be troubled by any sentimental reminiscences of his youth at a time when he is engaged in the tremendous task of Germanising his Slavonian estates. No, there is something in the background, his attachment to Countess Morynska, probably. Perhaps he has resolved to put all thoughts of her out of his head--it would be the wisest thing he could do! These Polish women sometimes get quite absurd and irrational with their national fanaticism, and Countess Wanda is to the full as great a fanatic as any of them. Not to give her hand to the man she loves, just because he is a German! I would have taken my Emile, if he had been a Hottentot! and now he is always fretting over the supposed unhappiness of his dear Waldemar. He seriously believes that that personage has a heart like other human beings, which I, for one, emphatically deny."

"Gretchen!" said the Professor again, this time with an attempt to look severe, in which laudable effort he signally failed.

"Emphatically!" repeated his young wife. "When a man has a grief at his heart, he shows it one way or another. Herr Nordeck is as busy as possible, making such a stir here in Wilicza that all L---- is clapping its hands to its ears, and when he acted as best man at my wedding, there was not a trace of trouble to be seen in him."

"I have already told you that extreme reserve is one of Waldemar's chief characteristics," declared Fabian. "This pa.s.sion might sap and utterly ruin him without his betraying anything of it to the eyes of others."

"A man who does not show it when he is crossed in love, can't have any very deep feelings," persisted Gretchen. "It was plain enough in you ten paces off. The last few weeks before our engagement, when you thought I was going to marry the a.s.sessor, you went about with the most woe-begone countenance. I was dreadfully sorry for you; but you were so shy, there was no making you speak out."

The steward had abstained from all part in this conversation, being, apparently, fully taken up by an examination of the trees by the wayside. The road, which ran for a short distance along the bank of the river, became rather bad just at this place. The damage caused by the late high tides had not yet been repaired, and in the present dilapidated state of the quay, shaken by the constant wash of the water, some hesitation might reasonably be felt at driving over it.

Frank, it is true, maintained that there was not the slightest danger, adding that he had pa.s.sed over that very spot on his outward journey; but Gretchen did not place absolute reliance on these a.s.surances. She preferred getting out, and walking the short distance to the neighbouring bridge. The gentlemen followed her example, and all three set out, taking a higher footpath, while the carriage proceeded at a slow pace over the quay below.

They were not the only travellers who considered caution the better part of valour.

From the bridge a carriage was seen approaching, the occupant of which appeared to share Gretchen's views. He called to the coachman to stop, and alighted in his turn, just as Frank and his companions reached the spot, and thus suddenly found themselves face to face with Herr a.s.sessor Hubert.

This unexpected meeting caused some painful embarra.s.sment on either side. The parties had not spoken since the day when the a.s.sessor, furious at the engagement so recently contracted, had rushed out of the house, and the steward, under the impression that he had lost his reason, had sent the Inspector to look after him; but their acquaintance was of too old standing for them now to pa.s.s as strangers--they all felt that. Frank was the first to recover himself.

He took the best possible way out of the difficulty by going up to the a.s.sessor as though nothing had happened, offering him his hand in the most friendly manner, and expressing his pleasure at seeing him again at last.

The a.s.sessor stood erect and stiff, clothed in black from head to foot.

He had a c.r.a.pe band on his hat, and another on his arm. The family celebrity was duly mourned, but the money inherited appeared to have dropped some balm into the heart of the sorrowing nephew, for he looked the very reverse of disconsolate. There was a peculiar expression on his face to-day, an exalted self-satisfaction, a tranquil grandeur. He seemed in the humour to forgive all offences, to make peace with his kind--so, after a moment's hesitation, he took the offered hand, and replied by a few polite words.

The Professor and Gretchen now came forward. Hubert cast one glance of dark reproach at the young lady--who, in her little travelling-hat and flowing veil, certainly looked charming enough to awaken regretful feelings in the heart of her former adorer--bowed to her, and then turned to her husband.