II.THESEUS AND ARIADNE.
Thenext morning May rose after a sleepless night, and wandered pensively along the beach. His head was full of the Comtesse Polacca de Valska; perhaps a drop or two of that charming personage had brimmed over from his head into his heart. Their romantic drive had ended in no more romantic a locality than the railroad station; there he had parted from her, perhaps forever. For she had assured him that after her meeting with the rosetted Frenchman the air of Trouville would not be good for her, and she had taken the night mail for Paris. Her maid was to follow on the next day with luggage. As soon as she was safely established, and had, at least temporarily, thrown the enemies of her unhappy country off her track, she was to let May (her deliverer, as she entitled him) know,and he could see her again. But, alas! as she tearfully remarked, that might never be. The French republic was now seeking to curry favor with the despotism of the Czar, and even Prince Obstropski had had to leave Paris for Geneva. Austin wanted to kiss her hand as she departed, but feared lest this trivial homage should jar upon a heroine like her. The bell rang, the guard cried out; one last glance of her dark eyes, and all was over. She was gone, and May felt that perhaps the most romantic episode of his life was ended.
He went back to the hotel, but, unfortunately, none of the famous Eclipse claret was at hand. So he contented himself with brandy and soda. Visions of nihilistic fair ones, of Polish patriots andItalia irredentakept him wakeful through the night. For the Comtesse had told him of her Italian descent, of her alliance with the great patriot Milanese house, the Castiglioni dei Cascadegli.... And the Count Polacco de Valski was immured for life in the Siberian mines.... Poor devil! May cut another cigar, and reflected upon the Count’s unhappy condition.
In a few days he received a letter from the countess. It was a mere line, incidentally telling him that she had not established herself at Paris, but at Baden-Baden; but it was principally filled with pretty thanks for his “heroic chivalry.” The expression had seemed a trifle too strong at the time, even to Austin May.
But when he arrived at Baden-Baden, and saw how charming the countess was in her now elaborateentourage, he made allowances. Man is generous by nature, especially to beautiful heroines with husbands in Siberian mines. May thought of the hapless Polacco de Valski as turning out polyform lead-pencils by the ribboned bunch, and marking them BBBB, and then, alternately, HHHH. May had been much exercised in mind how to explain his sudden trip to Baden-Baden, and had devised many plausible reasons for going, all of which proved superfluous. The countess did not seem in the least surprised. He found her weeping over a letter. “See,” said she, “it is from Serge.”
“The d—— Really?” said May.
The countess folded the letter, kissed it,and replaced it in her bosom. This was an extremely embarrassing proceeding to May, and he kept some time silent. With his Anglo-Saxon awkwardness at social comedy, he thought that Polacco might as well be kept out of the case.
“Shall we go for a drive?” said she, at last.
“Delighted,” said Austin May.
The drives about Baden-Baden are charming. You wind for miles upon the brows of castle-crowned hills, overhanging the gay little valley; and then you plunge into the ancient gloom of the Black Forest, and the eerie pines, and a delicious shiver of wildness and solitude, all the time with the feeling that the Kursaal and its band are close at hand, should the silence grow oppressive. There, if your heart do trouble you, you can look at pretty women; and, if the eternal verities beset your spirit, gamble for napoleons.
The countess drove two little cream-colored ponies, and encouraged May to smoke his cigarette most charmingly.... Bah! why go on with it? Even now, over the Eclipse claret, May could not but admitthat he had spent in Baden-Baden three of the most charming weeks of his life. He would not mind passing three such weeks again, could he be sure they would bejustthree such weeks, and that they would end at the same time. But,que diable!because the play is amusing, we do not wish to stay in the theatre forever. And May nervously glanced at the window, as he thought he heard the sound of carriage-wheels again. He had smoked too much strong tobacco, probably; but, after all, it was even now only the middle of the afternoon—not sunset, or near it. He might have to come to stronger drugs than tobacco, to stronger deeds than tobacco-smoke, ere the evening was over. Hence that arsenal with which he had provided himself.
Well, to cut it short, he fell in love with her. Of course he did. He adored her. Possible! He wanted to marry her. This seemed impossible; but he had most certainly said so. He was barely twenty-five, and she—well, she was older than he was. And she had a husband in the Siberian mines. As May looked back upon it, this seemed her only advantage. But, after all,it was her patriotism that first attracted him—her heroism, her devotion to her unhappy cause, or causes. Italia irredenta! Poland! Nihilism! For May was not quite clear which one or more of these was chief in her mind; and nihilism was a new word then, but it sounded dangerous and attractive. Could he not be her chevalier, her lieutenant, her esquire? It was no more than Byron had done for Greece, after all. He was free, independent (for the next eight years)—broken-hearted, he was going to add, but stopped. After all, May Austin had not refused to marry him; and three of the eleven years were gone. At all events, there was nothing to prevent his attaching himself to a forlorn hope, if he chose. Eight years of chances were in his favor; and at the worst—if neither May Austin got married, nor Polacco died—he could make a rescue of the husband from Siberia and do the BB pencils himself. He lay awake many nights thinking of these things, and at last he was emboldened to speak of them to her.
How well he remembered the day he did so! The day—but no, it was evening.They had driven out after dinner, (did any man ever propose before breakfast?) and the scene was a moonlit glade in the Black Forest. The two ponies stood motionless; but their fair owner was much moved as he poured into her delicate ear his desires and devotions. It was so noble of him, she said, and was moved to tears. And then his devotion to her unhappy country! and she wiped away another tear for Poland or Italia irredenta. How she wished Serge could have met him, and could know of this! And she wiped away another tear for Serge. But no, my noble American—noble citizen of a free country! It could never be. Poland and she must bear their woes alone. They could never consent to drag down a brave young Bostonian in their wreck. And then, how could she ever reward him? With her friendship, said Austin. But the Comtesse seemed to think her friendship would be inadequate.
The scene was becoming somewhat oppressive; and May, at least, was conscious of a certain difficulty in providing for it a proper termination. In the excitement of the occasion, he had felt emboldened totake one of her hands, which he still retained; the other was holding the reins of the two cream-colored ponies. He could hardly simply drop it—the hand and the conversation—without more; and yet what suitable catastrophe could there be for the situation? Might he kiss it, and cut the conversation? It were a mere act of courtesy, no breach of respect to the absent Serge. As a boy of twenty-two he had never dared; but as a man of twenty-five——
She did not seem in the least surprised. Possibly she had thought him older than twenty-five. But May, after that little ceremony, had dropped the hand most unmistakably; and she turned the ponies’ heads away. May gave a last look to the forest-glade, as they drove out from it, and reflected that the place would be impressed upon his memory forever. It was really astonishing the number of places that were to be impressed upon his memory forever!
A restless week followed. He saw the Countess de Valska every day; but there was something uncomfortable in their relations—a certain savor of an unaccepted sacrifice, of an offering burned in vain.
The countess would not let him seek the Austrian foe on her own behalf, nor yet bedew the soil of Poland with his blood; and it was very difficult to say what he was to do for her in Baden-Baden, or, for matter of that, what the noble Polacco de Valski could do in Siberia. Poor Serge!
Yes, poor Serge! On the eighth day, Austin May, calling on the countess, found her in a lovelynégligé, dissolved in tears. (He had been refused her door, at first, but finally, after a little pressing, had been admitted.) The countess did not look up when he entered; and Austin stood there, twisting his hat in sympathy, and looking at her. Suddenly she lifted her head, and transfixed his blue eyes with her dewy black ones.
“Dead!” said she.
“What?” responded May, anxiously. “Poland? Ital——”
“No, no!” she cried. “Serge—Serge!”
“Your husband?” cried he—“the Count Polacco——”
The countess dropped her lovely head in a shower of tears, as when a thick-leaved tree is shaken by the wind, just after rain.
“He has been dead a year and a half,” she moaned.
“A year and a half?”
“Nineteen months. He died on the 23d of February, 1877—three weeks after the last letter that I ever got from him.”
“But how—but how did you never know?” said May, wildly.
“Was it not cruel? The despotism of the White Czar! Sometimes they would keep his letters for a year, sometimes they would let them come directly. They would not let me know for fear that I—ah, God!” She sprang to her feet with a sweep of her long robe, and shook her jewelled finger at the chandelier.
“Can you blame us that we kill and die for such a despotism, such a tyranny, as that?” Then suddenly, as she crossed by a sofa, she straightened up to her full height, like a wave cresting, poised a brief second, then fell in a heap—a graceful heap—her head resting on the sofa in her hands.
Then the young man had to seek, not to console her, but to calm her, to lift her from the floor, to bring her ice-water, a fan, a feather, pour oil and salt upon the wound,toilet-vinegar, or other salads. May never knew exactly what he did; but it was like consoling an equinoctial gale. Hardly had she got fairly calm, and sobbing comfortably, and sitting in a chair, and he beside her—and he remembered patting her clasped hands, as one does a spoiled child’s—when she would dash upright, upsetting the chair, and swear her vengeance on the cruel Czar.... And at this point in his reminiscences May winced a little; for he had by no means a distinct recollection that he had not sworn his vengeance on the Czar with hers. And, when you come to think of it, the Czar’s injuries to Mr. May cried not as yet for deeds of blood.