Under a Charm. Vol. II

Wanda must have stood so, motionless, for some length of time, when the sound of steps and a rustling close at hand attracted her attention. She raised herself impatiently, and was about to search for the cause of the disturbance, when the bushes were thrust aside, and Waldemar Nordeck stepped out from among them. He started at sight of the Countess. The unexpected meeting seemed as little agreeable to him as to her, but a retreat now was out of the question; they were too near each other for that. Waldemar bowed slightly, and said, "I was not aware that you had already left the hunt. Countess Morynska has the reputation of being so indefatigable a sportswoman–will she be missing at the close of the day?"

"I may retort with a like question," replied Wanda. "You, of all people, to be absent from the last run!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I have had quite enough of it. The noise and bustle of such a day destroy all the pleasure of the sport for me. To my mind all the excitement of the thing is in its chances, in the trouble one has to take. I miss all this, and, more especially, I miss the forest stillness and forest solitude."

Quiet and solitude were precisely what Wanda herself had felt in need of, what she had sought here; but nothing, of course, would have induced her to admit it. She merely asked–

"You come now from the forester's house?"

"No, I sent on Norman there before me. The hunt is away down by the river. The run will soon be over now, and they are sure to pass by here on their return. The rendezvous is close by."

"And what are we to do in the mean time?" asked Wanda, impatiently.

"Wait," returned Waldemar, laconically, as he unslung his gun and uncocked it.

The young Countess frowned. "Wait!" In a matter of course tone as though he took her staying for granted! She had a great mind to return at once to the forester's house; but no! It was for him to withdraw after disturbing her so unceremoniously in her retreat. She resolved to remain, even though she must spend some time longer in this Nordeck's company.

He certainly made no sign of going. He had leaned his gun against a tree, and now stood with folded arms surveying the landscape. Not once to-day had the sun succeeded in breaking through the veil of clouds; but now, at its setting, it gilded them with a bright gleam. A yellow flame spread over the western horizon, glimmering pale and uncertain through the trees, and the mists, those first precursors of evening, began to rise from the meadow ground. Very autumnal did the forest look with its half-stripped branches and carpet of dry leaves spread on the ground. Not a trace was there of that fresh sweet life which breathes through the woods in spring and summer, of that mighty vital force which pulses then through Nature's veins; everywhere existence seemed on the ebb, everywhere marks were visible of slow but unceasing decay.

The young Countess's eyes were fixed, darkly meditative, on her companion's face, as though she must and would decipher some enigma there. He seemed aware of her observation, though turning from her as he stood, for he suddenly faced round, and said carelessly, in the tone of a common remark–

"There is something desolate in the look of such an autumn landscape as evening comes on."

"And yet it has a peculiar poetic melancholy of its own," said she. "Do not you think so?"

"I?" he asked, sharply. "I have had very little to do with poetry–as you know, Countess Morynska."

"Yes, I know," she answered, in the same tone; "but there are moments when it forces itself upon one."

"It may be so with romantic natures. People of my sort have to learn to push through life without either romance or poetry. The years must be endured and lived through one way or another."

"How calmly you say that! Mere patient endurance was not exactly your forte formerly. I think you are wonderfully changed in that respect."

"Oh, one does not always remain a passionate, hot-headed boy! But perhaps you think I can never get the better of my old childish follies."

Wanda bit her lips. He had shown her very plainly that he could get the better of them. "I do not doubt it," she said, coldly. "I give you credit for much that you do not see fit to show openly."

Waldemar became attentive. For one moment he looked keenly, scrutinisingly at the young lady, and then replied quietly–

"In that case you set yourself in opposition to all Wilicza. People here are unanimous in declaring me a most inoffensive person."

"Because you wish to pass for such. I do not believe it."

"You are very good to ascribe a most unmerited importance to me," said Waldemar, ironically; "but it is cruel of you to deprive me of the single advantage I possess in the eyes of my mother and brother, that of being harmless and insignificant."

"If my aunt could hear the tone in which you say that, she would alter her opinion," declared Wanda, irritated by his sarcasm. "For the present, I am certainly alone in mine."

"And so you will continue," said Nordeck. "The world sees in me an indefatigable sportsman; perhaps, after the trial of day, it may vouch me a skilful rider–nothing more."

"Are you really bent on sport, Herr Nordeck, all these long days while you are roaming about with your gun and game bag?" asked the young lady, fixing a keen look on him.

"And on what else might I be bent, according to your notion?"

"I do not know, but I fancy you are inspecting your Wilicza, inspecting it closely. There is not a forester's station, not a village, not a farm, however distant from your property, which you have not visited. You have even called at the farms leased out to the different tenants, and you will no doubt soon be as much at home everywhere else as you already are in your mother's drawing-room. You appear there but seldom, it is true, and play the part of an indifferent bystander; yet nothing of what is going on, no word or look, escapes you. You seem to bestow but little notice on our visitors; yet there is not one of them who has not had to pass muster before you and on whom you have not pronounced your verdict."

She had gone on delivering thrust after thrust with a sureness of aim and decision of manner well calculated to disconcert him, and, for a moment, he actually was unable to answer her. He stood with a darkened face and lips tightly pressed together, visibly striving to overcome his annoyance. It was, however, no easy thing to vanquish 'this Nordeck.' When he looked up the cloud was still on his brow, but his voice expressed nothing save the keenest sarcasm.

"You really make me feel ashamed, Countess. You show me that from the very day of my arrival I have been the object of your close and exclusive observation. That is indeed more than I deserve!"

Wanda started, and flashed a look, scorching in its anger, at the man who ventured to return her shaft.

"I certainly do not deny the observation," said she; "but you will feel perfectly assured, Herr Nordeck, that no personal interest has any share in it."

He smiled with unfeigned bitterness. "You are quite right. I do not suppose that you take any interest in my person. You are safe from any such suspicion on my part."

Wanda would not understand the allusion, but she avoided meeting his glance. "You will, at least, bear me witness that I have been candid," she continued. "It is for you now to admit or to deny the truth of that which I have observed."

"And if I decline to answer you?"

"I shall infer that I have seen aright, and shall earnestly endeavour to convince my aunt of the fact that her son is a more dangerous person than she supposes."

The same sarcastic expression played about Waldemar's lips as he answered her. "Your judgment may be of the highest order, Countess Morynska, but you are no diplomatist, or you would choose your words more cautiously. Dangerous! The term is a significant one."

The young lady involuntarily shrank back in evident alarm. "I repeated your own expression, I think," said she, recovering herself quickly.

"Oh, that is different. I began to fancy that something was going on at Wilicza, and that my presence here was looked on as a danger."

Wanda made no reply. She saw now how extremely imprudent she had been to offer battle on this ground, where her adversary showed himself so completely her match. He parried every blow, returned her every thrust, and entangled her hopelessly in her own words, and he had withal the advantage of coolness and composure on his side, while she was on the verge of losing her self-command. She saw plainly that she could make no head in this direction, so she took a rapid resolution, and boldly tore away the net which her own unguarded words had woven about her.

"Lay aside your tone of scorn," said she, fixing her grave dark eyes full upon him. "I know that it is not meant for the matter we are discussing, but solely and altogether for me. You oblige me at last to touch upon a point which I should certainly have left buried in the past, were it not that you are continually recurring to it. Whether such conduct is chivalrous, I will not stay to inquire, but you must feel as well as I do that it has brought us into a position which is becoming intolerable. I offended you once, and you have never forgiven me to the present day. Well"–she paused a moment, and drew a long breath–"I behaved ill to you then. Will that suffice you?"

It was a strange apology, made even stranger by the haughty tone in which it was offered, the tone of a proud woman who knows right well that it involves no humiliation to herself if she stoops to ask pardon of a man for having made him the toy of her caprices. Countess Morynska was, doubtless, fully conscious of this, or she would hardly have deigned to speak the words. They produced, however, a very different effect from that which she had expected.

Waldemar had stepped a pace or two back; his eyes seemed to look her through and through. "Really?" he said, slowly, emphasising every word. "I did not know that Wilicza was worth that to your party!"

"You think …" cried Wanda, vehemently.

"I think that once already I have had to pay dearly for being the owner of this place," he interrupted her with a warmth which showed that he too was roused at length; his tone told of a long pent-up, rankling irritation. "In those days the object in view was to open Wilicza to my mother and her interests; now this Wilicza is to be preserved to those same interests, cost what it may. But they forget that I am no longer an inexperienced boy. You yourself have opened my eyes, Countess, and now I shall keep them open at the risk of having my conduct stigmatised by you as unchivalrous."

Wanda had grown deadly pale. Her right hand, hanging by her side, clenched itself convulsively in the velvet folds of her habit.

"Enough," she said, controlling herself with an effort. "I see that you wish for no reconciliation, and that you have recourse to insults in order to make any understanding between us possible. Well and good, I accept the enmity you offer me.

"You are mistaken," replied Waldemar, more calmly. "I offer you no enmity. That would indeed be a lack of chivalry towards …"

"Towards whom?" cried the young Countess, with flashing eyes, as he paused.

"Towards my brother's promised wife!"

A thrill passed through Wanda. Strange that the word should strike her as with a sudden pang. Involuntarily her eyes sought the ground.

"I have postponed offering you my congratulations hitherto," continued Waldemar. "Pray accept them to-day."

The Countess bowed her head in silent acknowledgment. She herself knew not what closed her lips, but at that moment she found it impossible to answer him. It was the first time this subject had been touched on between them, and the simple mention of it seemed to suffice, for Waldemar added no syllable to his congratulatory speech.

The yellow flame had long ago died out of the sky, and in its place had come a dreary, murky grey. The evening breeze swept through the half-stripped bushes and rustled among the crests of the tall trees, still partly decked with their gay many-tinted foliage; drooping and faded it hung now from the branches, leaf after leaf fluttered noiselessly to the ground, strewing the grass and the surface of the little lake. Through the scantily clothed boughs came a sort of low-whispered autumnal lament for the beauty and life which had been so blooming and verdant in the old sunshiny days, but was now fast sinking into its grave. Gloomy and weird the forest loomed across with all its fantastic, indistinct shadows; and here in the vaporous meadow the moist veil rose, ever thicker and thicker, hovered hither and thither, finally massing itself over the small piece of water. There it remained, a white spectral vision, floating uneasily backwards and forwards, stretching out its great humid arms to the two figures standing on the brink, as though it would have gathered them to it, shaping the while before their eyes a thousand forms and pictures, one pressing back, one flowing into the other in endless variation.

Nothing was to be heard but the monotonous sough of the wind, the rustle of the falling leaves–yet stay! what sound was that which, through it all, came like the distant, distant roar of the sea, while lo! out from the bosom of the seething mists a Fata Morgana rose to view. There appeared the green branches of mighty secular beeches, all flooded in the last golden glow of evening, the blue surging sea in its vast immeasurable greatness. Slowly the burning sun sank into the waters, and out from the stream of light, which at its contact spread far over the waves, arose once more the fairy city of the legend in all its halo of mystic fancy and enchanted splendour. The treasure kingdom again opened its untold stores, and once again, fuller now and more resonant than in that hour on the Beech Holm, rang out the bells of Vineta.

The old tale had not held good in the case of the two who had lived through that charmed hour together. Hostile and as strangers they had parted; hostile and as strangers they had since met, and so they now stood face to face. The youth had become a cold stern man, pursuing in proud reserve his solitary way through life; the child had ripened into a happy beautiful woman, but to neither of them had come again that which yon hour had brought them. Only now, on this dreary autumnal evening did it all quicken into life anew; and, as the remembrance was wafted over to them, the years which lay between faded away; hatred, strife, and bitterness, all grew dim; nothing remained but that deep inexpressible aspiration towards an unknown happiness which had first been called into being by the spirit bells of Vineta–nothing but the old sunset dream.

Waldemar was the first to rouse himself. He passed his hand rapidly across his brow, as though by an effort of will he would shake off all these fancies and drive away the vision.

"We should do much better to return to the forester's house, and wait there for the hunting party," said he, hastily. "The twilight is falling, and one can hardly breathe in this sea of mist."

Wanda assented at once. She, too, had seen enough of the phantasmagoria contained in that sea of mist, and was anxious by any means to put an end to the interview. She raised her habit and prepared to go. Waldemar threw his gun over his shoulder, and they were about to start when suddenly he paused.

"I offended you with my suspicions a little while ago, and perhaps I was unjust; but–be candid with me–was the half apology to which you condescended really intended for Waldemar Nordeck, or not rather for the master of Wilicza, with whom a reconciliation is sought in order that he may abet, or at least shut his eyes to, that which is passing on his estates."

"So you know …?" interrupted Wanda, and then stopped in confusion.

"Enough to take from you all apprehension of having been indiscreet just now. Did they really think me so unintelligent that I alone should be blind to what is already subject of conversation in L–, namely, that a party movement is going on, of which Wilicza is the seat, and my mother the soul and centre. There could be no danger in your owning to me what the whole neighbourhood knows. I knew it before I came here."

Wanda was silent. She tried to read in his face how much he knew, but Waldemar's features were undecipherable as ever.

"But that is not the question now," he began again. "I was asking for an answer to my question. Was that act of self-conquest a voluntary one, or–had the task been set you? Oh, do not start so indignantly. I only ask, and you can surely forgive me for looking distrustfully on any show of friendliness on your part, Wanda."

The young Countess would probably have taken these words as a fresh offence, and have answered them in an angry spirit, had they not conveyed a something which disarmed her in spite of herself. A change had come over Waldemar since he had looked into that mist yonder. He was hostile and frigid no longer; his voice, too, had quite another sound–it was softer, almost subdued. A little shock passed through Wanda as, for the first time for years, he pronounced her name.

"If my aunt at one time made me the unconscious instrument of her plans, you should accuse her, and not me," she replied, in a low tone; and, as she uttered them, some invisible power seemed to rob her words of their sting. "I suspected nothing of it. I was a child following the impulses of my caprices, but now"–she raised her head proudly–"now I am accountable to no one for what I do and leave undone, and the words I spoke just now were spoken on my own responsibility alone. You are right, they were not intended for Waldemar Nordeck; since he and I met, he has never given me cause to seek or even to wish for a reconciliation. My object was to force the master of Wilicza into raising for once his closed vizier. There is no need for that now. This interview of ours has taught me what I suspected before, that we have in you a bitter, a merciless adversary, who will use his power at the decisive moment, even though in so doing he must trample all family, all natural ties under foot."

"To whom should these ties bind me, pray?" asked Waldemar. "To my mother, perhaps, you think? My mother and I know very well how matters stand between us. She is less disposed than ever to forgive me for inheriting the Nordeck wealth, instead of her younger son. Or perhaps to Leo? Well, it may be that some brotherly love exists between us; but I do not think it would hold good if our ways should chance to cross, at all events not on his part."

"Leo would willingly have met you as a brother, if you had not made it too hard for him," interrupted Wanda. "You were always reserved and distant even with him; but there were times formerly when he could draw nearer you, when the fact that you were brothers could be discerned. But now it would be asking too much of his pride to endeavour to break through the icy barrier you oppose to him and to all those about you. It would be quite in vain for your mother and brother to come to you with demonstrations of affection; they would be met by a hard indifference which cares neither for them nor for any one in this world."

She stopped, for Waldemar was standing close to her side, and his eyes were riveted on her.

"You judge very correctly, very unsparingly," he said, slowly. "Have you never asked yourself what has made me hard and austere? There was a time when I was not so, at least not to you–when a word, a look could guide me, when I lent myself patiently to every whim. You might have done much with me then, Wanda–almost anything. That you were not willing, that my handsome, chivalrous brother even in those days carried off the palm was, after all, but natural. What could I have been to you? But you must understand that the events of those days formed a crisis in my life, and a man, who–like myself, for instance–has no turn for constant melancholy, naturally grows hard and suspicious after such an experience. Now, indeed, I look upon it as a piece of good fortune that my boyish romance was nipped in the bud–else my mother would infallibly have conceived the idea of repeating in our persons the drama which was performed here twenty years ago, when a Nordeck brought home a Morynska as his bride. You, a girl of sixteen, would possibly have submitted to the expressed will of your family, and I–should have shared my father's fate. From that we have both been preserved, and now the whole thing is over and buried in the past. I only wished to recall to your mind that you have no right to reproach me if I seem hard to you and yours.–Will you let me go with you now to the forester's house?"

Wanda followed him in silence. Angry and ready for the fray as she had been at first, the turn finally taken by the conversation had struck the weapons from her hand. To-day again they parted as foes, but they both felt that henceforth the nature of the struggle between them was changed–possibly the struggle itself would not on that account be a less arduous one.

Shrouded in its own misty breath, the meadow lay more and more closely hedged around by the dusky evening shadows. Over the lake the white cloud still hovered, but now it was only a formless, ever-shifting mass of vapour. The dream-picture which had risen from it, had vanished once more–whether it were forgotten could only be known to the two who walked on together silently side by side. Here in the dreary autumnal forests, in the eerie twilight hour, the old sea-legend from out of the far north had been wafted over to them, whispering anew the prophecy, "He who has once looked on Vineta will know no rest all his life for a longing to see the fair city again, even though he himself should be drawn down by it into the depths."

CHAPTER V

The two rooms in the Castle occupied by Dr. Fabian looked out on to the park, and were in some measure shut off from the rest of the house. There was a special reason for this. When the Princess caused the hitherto unused apartments of her first husband to be put in readiness for that husband's son, some thought was naturally given to the ex-tutor who was to accompany him, and a room was prepared in consequence. It was rather small and very noisy, for it lay next to the main staircase; but, according to the lady's notion, it was just suited to the Doctor. She knew that at Altenhof very little fuss had been made about him, especially by his former pupil. There must have been a considerable change in this respect, however, for on his arrival Waldemar had declared the accommodation to be quite inadequate, had caused the visitors' rooms on the other side of the house to be opened, and had sequestrated two of them to his friend's use. Now these rooms had been specially fitted up for Count Morynski and his daughter, who often spent whole weeks at Wilicza. Of this fact the young owner of the place could not possibly be aware; but when Pawlick, who now filled the office of major-domo at the Castle, opened his mouth to reply, Waldemar stopped him with a brief inquiry as to whether the apartments in question formed part of the Princess's suite, or of Prince Leo's. On receiving an answer in the negative, he declared very decidedly, "Then Dr. Fabian will occupy them at once." That same day the corridor which ran close by, where the servants were constantly passing up and down, was closed, and the order given that in future they were to go round by the other staircase, in order not to disturb the Doctor by running to and fro–and so the matter was settled.

The Princess said no word when informed of these occurrences. She had laid it down as a rule never to contradict her son in trifles. Other rooms were immediately prepared for her brother and niece. Still it was natural that she should look upon poor Fabian, the innocent cause of this mishap, with no very friendly eyes. She never made this apparent, it is true, for both she herself and the whole Castle soon came to know that Waldemar was exceedingly sensitive on the subject of his old tutor, and that, though he claimed little attention for himself, any failure of respect towards the Doctor would be most sharply reproved by him. This was almost the only point on which he asserted his right to command; but on this head he spoke so emphatically that every one, from the Princess down to the domestics, treated Dr. Fabian with the utmost consideration.