Kitabı oku: «That Boy Of Norcott's», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SALON

The morning after my csardas success, a valet in discreet black brought me a message from the Countess that she expected to see me at her table at dinner, and from him I learned the names and rank of the persons I had met the night before. They were all of that high noblesse which in Hungary assumes a sort of family prestige, and by frequent intermarriage really possesses many of the close familiar interests of the family. Austrians, or indeed Germans from any part, are rarely received in these intimate gatherings, and I learned with some surprise that the only strangers were an English “lord” and his countess – so the man styled them – who were then amongst the guests. “The Lord” was with the Count on the shooting excursion; my Lady being confined to her room by a heavy cold she had caught out sledging.

Shall I be misunderstood if I own that I was very sorry to hear that an Englishman and a man of title was amongst the company? Whatever favor foreigners might extend to any small accomplishments I could lay claim to, I well knew would not compensate in my countryman’s eyes for my want of station. In my father’s house I had often had occasion to remark that while Englishmen freely admitted the advances of a foreigner, and accepted his acquaintance with a courteous readiness, with each other they maintained a cold and studied reserve; as though no difference of place or circumstance was to obliterate that insular code which defines class, and limits each man to the exact rank he belongs to.

When they shall see, therefore, thought I, how my titled countryman will treat me, – the distance at which he will hold me, and the measured firmness with which he will repel, not my familiarities, for I should not dare them, but simply the ease of my manner, – these foreigners will be driven to regard me as some ignoble upstart who has no pretension whatever to be amongst them. I was very unwilling to encounter this humiliation. It was true I was not sailing under false colors. I had assumed no pretensions from which I was now to retreat. I had nothing to disown or disavow; but still I was about to be the willing guest of a society, to a place in which in my own country I could not have the faintest pretension; and it was just possible that my countryman might bring this fact before me.

He might do worse, – he might question me as to who and what I was; nor was I very sure how my tact or my temper might carry me through such an ordeal.

Would it not be wiser and better for me to avoid this peril? Should I not spare myself much mortification and much needless pain? Thus thinking, I resolved to wait on the Countess at once, and explain frankly why I felt obliged to decline the gracious courtesy she had extended to me, and refuse an honor so full of pleasure and of pride.

She was not alone as I entered, – the Countess Palfi was with her, – and I scarcely knew how to approach my theme in presence of a third person. With a bold effort, however, I told what I had come for; not very collectedly, indeed, nor perhaps very intelligibly, but in such a way as to convey that I had not courage to face what might look at least like a false position, and was almost sure to entail all the unpleasant relations of such. “In fact, Madam,” said I, “I am nobody; and in my country men of rank never associate with nobodies, even by an accident. My Lord would not forgive you for throwing him into such acquaintanceship, and I should never forgive myself for having caused you the unpleasantness. I don’t imagine I have made my meaning very clear.”

“You have certainly made me very uncomfortable,” broke in Countess Hunyadi, thoughtfully. “I thought that we Hungarians had rather strict notions on these subjects, but these of your country leave them miles behind.”

“And are less reasonable, besides,” said the Palfi, “since your nobility is being continually recruited from so rich a bourgeoisie.”

“At all events,” cried the Countess, suddenly, “we are here at Schloss Hunyadi, and I am its mistress. I invite you to dine with me; it remains for you to decide how you treat my invitation.”

“Put in that way, Madam, I accept with deference;” and I bowed deeply and moved towards the door. The ladies acknowledged my salute in silence, and I fancied with coldness, and I retired.

I was evidently mistaken in attributing coldness to their manner; the ladies received me when I appeared at dinner with a marked cordiality, I sat next Madame Palfi, who talked to me like an old friend, told me who the various people at table were, and gave me great pleasure by saying that I was sure to become a favorite with Count Hunyadi, who delighted in gayety, and cherished all those that promoted it. Seeing what interest I took in the ways of Hungarian life, she explained many of the customs I saw around me, which, deriving from a great antiquity, were doubtless soon destined to give way before the advance of a higher civilization. I asked what she knew of the English guests. It was nothing, or next to nothing, – Count Hunyadi had made their acquaintance at Baden that summer, and invited them to pass their Christmas with him. Countess Palfi had herself arrived since they came, and had not seen them; for “my Lord,” as he was generally called, had left at once to join the shooting-party, and my Lady had not appeared since the day after her arrival. “I only know that she is a great beauty, and of most charming manners. The men all rave of her, so that we are half jealous already. We were expecting to see her at dinner to-day, but we hear that she is less well than yesterday.”

“Do you know their name?”

“No; I believe I heard it, – but I am not familiar with English names, and it has escaped me; but I will present you by and by to Count Greorge Szechenyi, who was at Baden when the Hunyadi met them, – he’ll tell you more of them.”

I assured her that my curiosity was most amply satisfied already. It was a class, in which I could not expect to find an acquaintance, far less a friend.

“There is something almost forced in this humility of yours,” cried she. “Are we to find out some fine morning that you are a prince in disguise?” She laughed so merrily at her own conceit that Madame Hunyadi asked the cause of her mirth.

“I will tell you later on,” said she. We soon afterwards rose to go into the drawing-room, and I saw as they laughed together that she had told her what she said.

“Do you know,” said the Countess Hunyadi, approaching me, “I am half of Madame Palfi’s mind, and I shall never rest till you reveal your secret to us?”

I said something laughingly about my incognito being the best coat in my wardrobe, and the matter dropped. That night I sang several times, alone, and in duet with the Palfi, and was overwhelmed with flatteries of my “fresh tenor voice” and my “admirable method.” It was something so new and strange to me to find myself the centre of polite attentions, and of those warm praises which consummate good breeding knows how to bestow without outraging taste, that I found it hard to repress the wild delight that possessed me.

If I had piqued their curiosity to find out who or what I was, I had also stimulated my own ambition to astonish them.

“He says he will ride out with me to-morrow, and does n’t care if I give him a lively mount,” said one, speaking of me.

“And you mean to gratify him, George?” asked another.

“He shall have the roan that hoisted you out of the saddle with his hind quarters.”

“Come, come, gentlemen, I’ll not have my protégé injured to gratify your jealousies,” said Madame Hunyadi; “he shall be my escort.”

“If he rides as he plays billiards, you need not be much alarmed about him. The fellow can do what he likes at the cannon game.”

“I ‘d give fifty Naps to know his history,” cried another.

I was playing chess as he said this, and, turning my head quietly around, I said, “The secret is not worth half the money, sir; and if it really interests you, you shall have it for the asking.”

He muttered out a mass of apologies and confused excuses, to all the embarrassment of which I left him most pitilessly, and the incident ended. I saw, however, enough to perceive that if I had won the suffrages of the ladies, the men of the party had conceived an undisguised dislike of me, and openly resented the favor shown me.

“What can you do with the foils, young gentleman?” whispered Szechenyi to me, as he came near.

“Pretty much as I did with you at billiards awhile ago,” said I, insolently; for my blood was up, and I burned to fix a quarrel somewhere.

“Shall we try?” asked he, dryly.

“If you say without the buttons, I agree.”

“Of course, I mean that.”

I nodded, and he went on, —

“Come down to the riding-school by the first light tomorrow then, and I ‘ll have all in readiness.”

I gave another nod of assent, and moved away. I had enough on my hands now; for, besides other engagements, I had promised the Countess Palfi to arrange a little piece for private theatricals, and have it ready by the time of Count Hunyadi’s return. So far from feeling oppressed or overwhelmed by the multiplicity of these cares, they stimulated me to a degree of excitement almost maddening. Failure somewhere seemed inevitable, and, for the life of me, I could not choose where it should be. As my spirits rose, I threw off all the reserve I had worn before, and talked away with an animation and boldness I felt uncontrollable. I made calembourgs, and dashed off impromptu verses at the piano; and when, culminating in some impertinence by a witty picture of the persons around me I had convulsed the whole room with laughter, I sprang up, and, saying good-night, disappeared.

The roars of their laughter followed me down the corridor, nor did they cease to ring in my ears till I had closed my door.

CHAPTER XXIX. AN UNLOOKED-FOR MEETING

I could more easily record my sensations in the paroxysm of a fever than recall how I passed that night. I am aware that I wrote a long letter to my mother, and a longer to Sara, both to be despatched in case ill befell me in my encounter. What I said to either, or how I said it, I know not.

No more can I explain why I put all my papers together in such fashion that they could be thrown into the fire at once, without leaving any, the slightest, clew to trace me by. That secret, which I had affected to hold so cheaply, did in reality possess some strange fascination for me, and I desired to be a puzzle and an enigma even after I was gone.

It wanted one short hour of dawn when I had finished; but I was still too much excited to sleep. I knew how unfavorably I should come to the encounter before me with jarred nerves and the weariness of a night’s watching; but it was too late now to help that; too late, besides, to speculate on what men would say of such a causeless duel, brought on, as I could not conceal from myself, by my hot temper. By the time I had taken my cold bath my nerves became more braced, and I scarcely felt a trace of fatigue or exhaustion. The gray morning was just breaking as I stole quietly downstairs and issued forth into the courtyard. A heavy fall of snow had occurred in the night, and an unbroken expanse of billowy whiteness spread ont before me, save where, from a corner of the court, some foot-tracks led towards the riding-school. I saw, therefore, that I was not the first at the tryst, and I hastened on in all speed.

Six or eight young men, closely muffled in furs, stood at the door as I came up, and gravely uncovered to me. They made way for me to pass in without speaking; and while, stamping the snow from my boots, I said something about the cold of the morning, they muttered what might mean assent or the reverse in a low half-sulky tone, that certainly little invited to further remark.

For a few seconds they talked together in whispers, and then a tall ill-favored fellow, with a deep scar from the cheek-bone to the upper lip, came abruptly up to me.

“Look here, young fellow,” said he. “I am to act as your second; and though, of course, I ‘d like to know that the man I handled was a gentleman, I do not ask you to tell anything about yourself that you prefer to keep back. I would only say that, if ugly consequences come of this stupid business, the blame must fall upon you. Your temper provoked it, is that not true?”

I nodded assent, and he went on.

“So far, all right. The next point is this. We are all on honor that, whatever happens, not a word or a syllable shall ever escape us. Do you agree to this?”

“I agree,” said I, calmly.

“Give me your hand on it.”

I gave him my hand; and as he held it in his own, he said, “On the faith of a gentleman, I will never reveal to my last day what shall pass here this morning.”

I repeated the words after him, and we moved on into the school.

I had drawn my sofa in front of the fire, and, stretching myself on it, fell into a deep dreamless sleep. A night’s wakefulness, and the excitement I had gone through, had so far worked upon me that I did not hear the opening of my door, nor the tread of a heavy man as he came forward and seated himself by the fire. It was only the cold touch of hi» fingers on the wrist as he felt my pulse that at last aroused me.

“Don’t start, don’t flurry yourself,” said he, calmly, to me. “I am the doctor. I have been to see the other, and I promised to look in on you.”

“How is he? Is it serious?”

“It will be a slow affair. It was an ugly thrust, – all the dorsal muscles pierced, but no internal mischief done.”

“He will certainly recover then?”

“There is no reason why he should not. But where is this scratch of yours? Let me see it.”

“It is a nothing, doctor, – a mere nothing. Pray take no trouble about it.”

“But I must I have pledged myself to examine your wound; and I must keep my word.”

“Surely these gentlemen are scarcely so very anxious about me,” said I, in some pique. “Not one of them vouchsafed to see me safe home, though I had lost some blood, and felt very faint!”

“I did not say it was these gentlemen sent me here,” said he, dryly.

“Then who else knew anything about this business?”

“If you must know, then,” said he, “it is the English Countess who is staying here, and whom I have been attending for the last week. How she came to hear of this affair I cannot tell you, for I know it is a secret to the rest of the house; but she made me promise to come and see you, and if there was nothing in your wound to forbid it, to bring you over to her dressing-room, and present you to her. And now let me look at the injury.”

I took off my coat, and, baring my arm, displayed a very ugly thrust, which, entering above the wrist, came out between the two bones of the arm.

“Now I call this the worst of the two,” said he, examining it “Does it give you much pain?”

“Some uneasiness; nothing more. When may I see the Countess?” asked I; for an intense curiosity to meet her had now possessed me.

“If you like, you may go at once; not that I can accompany you, for I am off for a distant visit; but her rooms are at the end of this corridor, and you enter by the conservatory. Meanwhile I must bandage this arm in somewhat better fashion than you have done.”

While he was engaged in dressing my wound, he rambled on about the reckless habits that made such rencontres possible. “We are in the middle of the seventeenth century here, with all its barbarisms,” said he. “These young fellows were vexed at seeing the notice you attracted; and that was to their thinking cause enough to send you off with a damaged lung or a maimed limb. It’s all well, however, as long as Graf Hunyadi does not hear of it. But if he should, he’ll turn them out, every man of them, for this treatment of an Englishman.”

“Then we must take care, sir, that he does not hear of it,” said I, half fiercely, and as though addressing my speech especially to himself.

“Not from me, certainly,” said he. “My doctor’s instincts always save me from such indiscretions.”

“Is our Countess young, doctor?” asked I, half jocularly.

“Young and pretty, though one might say, too, she has been younger and prettier. If you dine below stairs today, drink no wine, and get back to your sofa as soon as you can after dinner.” With this caution he left me.

A heavy packet of letters had arrived from Fiume, containing, I surmised, some instructions for which I had written; but seeing that the address was in the cashier’s handwriting, I felt no impatience to break the seal.

I dressed myself with unusual care, though the pain of my arm made the process a very slow one; and at last set out to pay my visit. I passed along the corridor, through the conservatory, and found myself at a door, at which I knocked twice. At last I turned the handle, and entered a small but handsomely furnished drawing-room, about which books and newspapers lay scattered; and a small embroidery-frame near the fire showed where she, who was engaged with that task, had lately been seated. As I bent down in some curiosity to examine a really clever copy of an altar-piece of Albert Durer, a door gently opened, and I heard the rustle of a silk dress. I had not got time to look round when, with a cry, she rushed towards me, and clasped me in her arms. It was Madame Cleremont!

“My own dear, dear Digby!” she cried, as she kissed me over face and forehead, smoothing back my hair to look at me, and then falling again on my neck. “I knew it could be no other when I heard of you, darling; and when they told me of your singing, I could have sworn it was yourself.”

I tried to disengage myself from her embrace, and summoned what I could of sternness to repel her caresses. She dropped at my feet, and, clasping my hands, implored me, in accents broken with passion, to forgive her. To see her who had once been all that a mother could have been to me in tenderness and care, who watched the long hours of the night beside my sick-bed, – to see her there before me, abject, self-accused, and yet entreating forgiveness, was more than I could bear. My nerves, besides, had been already too tensely strung; and I burst into a passion of tears that totally overcame me. She sat with her arm round me, and wept.

With a wild hysterical rapidity she poured forth a sort of excuse of her own conduct. She recalled all that I had seen her suffer of insult and shame; the daily outrages passed upon her; the slights which no woman can or ought to pardon. She spoke of her friendlessness, her misery; but, more than all, her consuming desire to be avenged on the man who had degraded her. “Your father, I knew, was the man to do me this justice,” she cried; “he did not love me, nor did I love him; but we both hated this wretch, and it seemed little to me what became of me, if I could but compass his ruin.”

I scarcely followed her. I bethought me of my poor mother, for whom none had a thought, neither of the wrongs done her, nor of the sufferings to which she was so remorselessly consigned.

“You do not listen to me. You do not hear me,” cried she, passionately; “and yet who has been your friend as I have? Who has implored your father to be just towards you as I have done? Who has hazarded her whole future in maintaining your rights, – who but I?” In a wild rhapsody of mingled passion and appeal she went on to show how Sir Roger insisted on presenting her everywhere as his wife.

Even at courts she had been so presented, though all the terrible consequences of exposure were sure to ring over the whole of Europe. The personal danger of the step was-a temptation too strong to resist; and the altercation and vindication that must follow were ecstasy to him. He was-pitting himself against the world, and he would back himself on the issue.

“And, here, where we are now,” cried I, “what is to happen if to-morrow some stranger should arrive from England who knows your story, and feels he owes it to his host to proclaim it?”

“Is it not too clear what is to happen?” shrieked she; “blood, more blood, – theirs or his, or both! Just as he struck a young prince at Baden with a glove across the face, because he stared at me too rudely, and shot him afterwards; his dearest tie to me is the peril that attaches to me. Do you not know him, Digby? Do you not know the insolent disdain with which he refuses to be bound by what other men submit to; and that when he has said, ‘I am ready to stake my life on it,’ he believes he has proved his conviction to be a just one?”

Of my father’s means, or what remained to him of fortune, she knew nothing. They had often been reduced to almost want, and at other times money would flow freely in, to be wasted and lavished with that careless munificence that no experiences of privation could ever teach prudence. We now turned to speculate on what would happen when he came back from this shooting-party; how he would recognize me.

“I see,” cried I: “you suspect he will disown me?”

“Not that, dear Digby,” said she, in some confusion, “but he may require – that is, he may wish you to conform to some plan, some procedure of his own.”

“If this should involve the smallest infraction of what is due to my mother, I ‘ll refuse,” said I, firmly, “and reject as openly as he dares to make it.”

“And are you ready to face what may follow?”

“If you mean as regards myself, I am quite ready. My father threw me off years ago, and I am better able to fight the battle of life now than I was then. I ask nothing of him, – not even his name. If you speak of other consequences, – of what may ensue when his hosts shall learn the fraud he has practised on them – ” It was only as the fatal word fell from me that I felt how cruelly I had spoken, and I stopped and took her hand in mine, saying, “Do not be angry with me, dear friend, that I have spoken a bitter word; bear with me for her sake, who has none to befriend her but myself.”

She made me no answer, but looked out cold and stern into vacancy, her pale features motionless, not a line or lineament betraying what was passing within her.

“Why remain here then to provoke a catastrophe?” cried she, suddenly. “If you have come for pleasure, you see enough to be aware there is little more awaiting you.”

“I have not come for pleasure. I am here to confer with Count Hunyadi on a matter of business.”

“And will some paltry success in a little peddling contract for the Count’s wine or his olives or his Indian corn compensate you for the ruin you may bring on your father? Will it recompense you if his blood be shed?”

There was a tone of defiant sarcasm in the way she spoke these words that showed me, if I would not yield to her persuasions, she would not hesitate to employ other means of coercion. Perhaps she mistook the astonishment my face expressed for terror; for she went on: “It would be well that you thought twice over it ere you make your breach with your father irreparable. Remember, it is not a question of a passing sentimentality or a sympathy, it is the whole story of your life is at issue, – if you be anything, or anybody, or a nameless creature, without belongings or kindred.”

I sat for some minutes in deep thought. I was not sure whether I understood her words, and that she meant to say it lay entirely with my father to own or disown me, as he pleased. She seemed delighted at my embarrassment, and her voice rung out with its own clear triumphant cadence, as she said, “You begin at last to see how near the precipice you have been straying.”

“One moment, Madam,” cried I. “If my mother be Lady Norcott, Sir Roger cannot disown me; not to say that already, in an open court, he has maintained his right over me and declared me his son.”

“You are opening a question I will not touch, Digby,” said she, gravely, – “your mother’s marriage. I will only say that the ablest lawyers your father has consulted pronounce it more than questionable.”

“And my father has then entertained the project of an attempt to break it.”

“This is not fair,” cried she, eagerly; “you lead me on from one admission to another, till I find myself revealing confidences to one who at any moment may avow himself my enemy.”

I raised my eyes to her face, and she met my glance with a look cold, stern, and impassive, as though she would say, “Choose your path now, and accept me as friend or foe.” All the winning softness of her manner, all those engaging coquetries of look and gesture, of which none was more mistress, were gone, and another and a very different nature had replaced them.

This, then, was one of those women all tenderness and softness and fascination, but who behind this mask have the fierce nature of the tigress. Could she be the same I had seen so submissive under all the insolence of her brutal husband, bearing his scoffs and his sarcasms without a word of reply? Was it that these cruelties had at last evoked this stern spirit, and that another temperament had been generated out of a nature broken down and demoralised by ill treatment?

“Shall I tell you what I think you ought to do?” asked she, calmly. I nodded assent. “Sit down there, then,” continued she, “and write these few lines to your father, and let him have them before he returns here.”

“First of all, I cannot write just now; I have had a slight accident to my right arm.”

“I know,” said she, smiling dubiously. “You hurt it in the riding-school; but it’s a mere nothing, is it not?”

I made a gesture of assent, not altogether pleased the while at the little sympathy she vouchsafed me, and the insignificance she ascribed to my wound.

“Shall I write for you, then? you can sign it afterwards.‘’

“Let me first know what you would have me say.”

“Dear father – You always addressed him that way?”

“Yes.”

“Dear father, – I have been here some days, awaiting Count Hunyadi’s return to transact some matters of business with him, and have by a mere accident learned that you are amongst his guests. As I do not know how, to what extent, or in what capacity it may be your pleasure to recognize me, or whether it might not chime better with your convenience to ignore me altogether, I write now to submit myself entirely to your will and guidance, being in this, as in all things, your dutiful and obedient son.”

The words came from her pen as rapidly as her fingers could move across the paper; and as she finished, she pushed it towards me, saying, —

“There – put ‘Digby Norcott’ there, and it is all done!”

“This is a matter to think over,” said I, gravely. “I may be compromising other interests than my own by signing this.”

“Those Jews of yours have imbued you well with their cautious spirit, I see,” said she, scoffingly.

“They have taught me no lessons I am ashamed of, Madam,” said I, reddening with anger.

“I declare I don’t know you as the Digby of long ago! I fancied I did, when I heard those ladies coming upstairs each night, so charmed with all your graceful gifts, and so eloquent over all your fascinations; and now, as you stand there, word-splitting and phrase-weighing, canvassing what it might cost you to do this or where it would lead you to say that, I ask myself, Is this the boy of whom his father said, ‘Above all things he shall be a gentleman’?”

“To one element of that character, Madam, I will try and preserve my claim, – no provocation shall drive me to utter a rudeness to a lady.”

“This is less breeding than calculation, young gentleman. I read such natures as yours as easily as a printed book.”

“I ask nothing better, Madam; my only fear would be that you should mistake me, and imagine that any deference to my father’s views would make me forget my mother’s rights.”

“So then,” cried she, with a mocking laugh, “you have got your courage up so far, – you dare me! Be advised, however, and do not court such an unequal contest. I have but to choose in which of a score of ways I could crush you, – do you mark me? crush you! You will not always be as lucky as you were this morning in the riding-school.”

“Great heaven!” cried I, “was this, then, of your devising?”

“You begin to have a glimpse of whom you have to deal with? Go back to your room and reflect on that knowledge, and if it end in persuading you to quit this place at once, and never return to it, it will be a wise resolve.”

I was too much occupied with the terrible fact that she had already conspired against my life to heed her words of counsel, and I stood there stunned and confused.

In the look of scorn and hate she threw on me, she seemed to exult over my forlorn and bewildered condition.

“I scarcely think there is any need to prolong this interview,” said she, at last, with an easy smile; “each of us is by this time aware of the kindly sentiments of the other; is it not so?”

“I am going, Madam,” I stammered out; “good-bye.”

She made a slight movement, as I thought, towards me; but it was in reality the prelude to a deep courtesy, while in her sweetest of accents she whispered, “Au revoir, Monsieur Digby, au revoir.” I bowed deeply and withdrew.