Black Diamonds Part 23

In the second week of his stay the countess gave her ball. Ivan was invited, and went.

"Shall you dance?" asked the captain.

"I haven't done so for fifteen years."

"It suits men of our years to look on," remarked the marquis, languidly. "No man dances now after two-and-thirty."

Looking on was pleasant enough. The nameless grace and wonderful agility displayed by the aristocratic, fas.h.i.+onable woman was a sight for the G.o.ds to admire. Countess Angela was to-night surpa.s.sing fair.

She wore a rose-colored dress, with a body, in the Hungarian fas.h.i.+on, all studded with pearls; the sleeves were of lace. She had taken a fancy to dress her hair like the peasant girls, in two long tresses plaited with ribbons; it suited her to perfection. But men get tired of everything, even of a sight fit for the G.o.ds. After supper one said to the other:

"Let us make use of our time; the young fellows can dance; let us play tarok."

Ivan played cards every day. He played most games well; he never disputed with his partners. He could lose with a good grace; when he won was not elated. When he held bad cards he showed no ill-temper, and seldom made a mistake. He was looked upon as an acquisition, and for a _savant_ he was really a useful man. On this evening he was in exceptionally good-luck.

Suddenly Count Edmund came into the card-room in a violent hurry. He said to Ivan:

"Throw down your cards. Angela wishes to dance a turn of the Hungarian cotillon with you."

Hungarian cotillon! Strange times, that we should have a Hungarian court, a Hungarian ministry, Hungarian silver and gold coins. That is nothing wonderful; it is only natural, it is fate, and due to us. But a Hungarian cotillon belongs to the day of agitators. We dance the cotillon to the air of "Csardas."

Ivan obeyed Angela's mandate. When he came to her he bowed low before her.

"You wouldn't have troubled yourself to come near me only I sent for you," she said, in a tone of gentle reproach.

"Into the presence of a queen one doesn't intrude; we wait to be summoned."

"Don't try and flatter me; if you do like the others I shall treat you as I do them, and not speak one word to you. I much prefer your way, although you are always offending me."

"I do not remember to have ever offended you."

"Because you do nothing else. You know that very well."

It was now their turn; they joined the waltzers, and no one would have guessed that it was fifteen years since Ivan had danced.

Meantime, in the card-room there was some gossip over this new whim of the young countess. Count Edmund, as he shuffled the cards, declared his cousin Angela was bewitched about this Ritter Magnet.

"Ah, is that so?" cried the Marquis Salista.

"Don't you believe him," interrupted Count Stefan. "I know our pretty Angela; she is as full of mischief as a kitten. As soon as she remarks that a man has a hobby-horse, she makes him ride it, puts it through all its paces, caracoling, leaping, _haute ecole_. This is her trick: once she knows the subject which interests a man, she talks of it with such an earnest face, such sympathetic eyes; and when he has left her, charmed at her intelligence, her sweetness, she ridicules the unfortunate devil. This is the way she treated poor Sondersheim, a very brave young fellow, who has only one fault, that he wors.h.i.+ps Angela, and she abhors him. She laughs at everybody."

"That is true; but she praises Ivan, not to his face, but behind his back to me, and not because he is a man of science, a geologist, but because he is such a brave man."

"That is another of her tricks; the artful puss knows right well that the praise which comes at third-hand is the sweetest of all flattery."

"I take good care not to repeat one word to Ivan."

"There you show him real friends.h.i.+p," remarked Salista, laughing.

In the ball-room the dancers had returned to their places.

"You were ready to leave Pesth," Angela was saying, with a charming pout. "You needn't deny it; the abbe told me."

"Since then circ.u.mstances have detained me longer than I expected,"

returned Ivan, coolly.

"Have you got a family at home?"

"I have no one belonging to me in the world."

"And why have you not?"

This was a searching question.

"Perhaps you already know what my business is. I have a colliery; I work with the miners, and spend my day underground."

"Ah, that explains everything," said Angela, regarding him with tender sympathy. "Now I understand that you are indeed right. It would be terrible to condemn a woman to the sufferings a miner's wife must endure. What can be more terrible than to take leave of her husband each morning, not knowing whether they will ever meet again; to know he is in the depths of the earth while she breathes the fresh air of heaven; to fancy her beloved is perhaps buried alive, and she cannot hear his cries for help; that even if it is not so, that he is surrounded by a deadly atmosphere, that it only needs a spark to become a h.e.l.l, in which her darling would be lost to her forever? I can understand how a woman's heart would break under such a daily agony; even to her child she would say, 'Do not run so fast, else a stone may fall on your father's head and kill him.'" Then, with a sudden change of expression, Angela turned angrily to Ivan. "But why do you stay down in the mine like a common miner?"

"Because it is my element, as the battle-field is that of the soldier, the sea of the sailor, the desert of the traveller. It is with me as it is with them--a pa.s.sion. I love the mysterious darkness of the world underground."

The warmth with which Ivan spoke these words kindled an answering enthusiasm in his listener.

"Every pa.s.sion is absorbing," she said, "especially the pa.s.sion for creation and for destruction. I understand how a woman would follow a man she loved, not only to the field, but into the battle itself, although the art of war has now become a very prosaic and second-cla.s.s affair, and has lost every trace of idealism. I confess, however, the heroism of the miner is to me incomprehensible. A man who occupies himself with dead, cold stones is to me like that Prince Badrul-Buder in the 'Arabian Nights,' who was turned into a stone, and whose wife preferred a living slave to her marble husband. I prefer those who penetrate to unknown regions of the globe, and I could envy the wife of Sir Samuel Baker, who travelled by his side all through the deserts of South Africa, holding in one hand a pistol, while the other hand was clasped in that of her husband. Together they bore the burning heat, together repulsed the savage wild beasts. Hand in hand they appeared before the King of Morocco, and what the arm of the husband failed to procure was given to the charms of the wife. I can place myself in the position of this woman, who, alone and deserted in the Mangave wood, sat through the livelong night with the head of the wounded traveller on her lap and a loaded pistol beside her. To heal his wounds she ventured into the woods and found herbs; for his food she contrived to cook in the desert. She did this for the only man she loved, whose only love she is and has ever been. Her name is known and revered in every place where Europeans have penetrated."

Again they had to join the circle of dancers, and when they returned to their place Angela resumed the conversation:

"What I said just now was sheer nonsense; the whole thing was the outcome of despicable vanity. A miserable idea to travel through countries where a woman is hardly to be distinguished from a beast, and that because she walks upright; where the ideal of beauty is to have the upper lip bored into a big hole, so that when laughing the nose is visible--ridiculous! And then to be proud because she was the most beautiful woman, and her husband perforce was faithful to her. A great thing, indeed, to be the queen of beauty amid monsters of ugliness! No, no; I know of something better, far bolder. A woman, Fraulein Christian, has accomplished a journey alone on horseback all across the steppes of Asia. What if a man and a woman had the courage to penetrate through the Polenia Ca.n.a.l to the warm seas discovered by Kane? or if a man and a woman had the courage to cast anchor in the regions of the north pole, and to the inhabitants of that magnetic kingdom boldly say, 'Compare yourselves with us; we are handsomer, stronger, more faithful, happier than you are'? That would be a triumph; and such a journey I would willingly undertake."

As she said these words, Angela's eyes gleamed upon Ivan with the splendor of the aurora borealis. Ivan decided within himself upon a sudden experiment.

"Countess, if you have the pa.s.sion or desire to visit strange worlds, and to excite the benighted inhabitants to a proper emulation for something better, truer, more intellectual than that they have hitherto known, if this is really your laudable wish, I can recommend to your notice a country equally in need of such enlightenment, and infinitely nearer to you."

"What is it?"

"It is Hungary."

"But are we not in Hungary already?"

"Countess, you are in it, but not of it. You are merely visiting us.

You do not know what and who we are. You need not go so far as the poles or Abyssinia; here is a new world open to you, a large field where your pa.s.sion for creating and improving can be easily gratified."

Angela opened her fan, and with an air of indifference fanned her white bosom.

"What can _I_ do? I am not my own mistress."

"You are not your own mistress, and, nevertheless, you rule."

"Over whom?"