Michel Menko was alone in the little house he had hired in Paris, in the Rue d’Aumale. He had ordered his coachman to have his coupe in readiness for the evening. “Take Trilby,” he said. “He is a better horse than Jack, and we have a long distance to go; and take some coverings for yourself, Pierre. Until this evening, I am at home to no one.”
The summer day passed very slowly for him in the suspense of waiting. He opened and read the letters of which he had spoken to Marsa the evening before; they always affected him like a poison, to which he returned again and again with a morbid desire for fresh suffering—love-letters, the exchange of vows now borne away as by a whirlwind, but which revived in Michel’s mind happy hours, the only hours of his life in which he had really lived, perhaps. These letters, dated from Pau, burned him like a live coal as he read them. They still retained a subtle perfume, a fugitive aroma, which had survived their love, and which brought Marsa vividly before his eyes. Then, his heart bursting with jealousy and rage, he threw the package into the drawer from which he had taken it, and mechanically picked up a volume of De Musset, opening to some page which recalled his own suffering. Casting this aside, he took up another book, and his eyes fell upon the passionate verses of the soldier-poet, Petoefi, addressed to his Etelka:
“My soul is linked to thine, as clings the leaf unto the tree!” Michel repeated the lines with a sort of defiance in his look, and longed impatiently and nervously for the day to end.
A rapid flush of anger mounted to his face as his valet entered with a card upon a salver, and he exclaimed, harshly:
“Did not Pierre give you my orders that I would receive no one?”
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur; but Monsieur Labanoff insisted so strongly—”
“Labanoff?” repeated Michel.
“Monsieur Labanoff, who leaves Paris this evening, and desires to see Monsieur before his departure.”
The name of Labanoff recalled to Michel an old friend whom he had met in all parts of Europe, and whom he had not seen for a long time. He liked him exceedingly for a sort of odd pessimism of aggressive philosophy, a species of mysticism mingled with bitterness, which Labanoff took no pains to conceal. The young Hungarian had, perhaps, among the men of his own age, no other friend in the world than this Russian with odd ideas, whose enigmatical smile puzzled and interested him.
He looked at the clock. Labanoff’s visit might make the time pass until dinner.
“Admit Monsieur Labanoff!”
In a few moments Labanoff entered. He was a tall, thin young man, with a complexion the color of wax, flashing eyes, and a little pointed mustache. His hair, black and curly, was brushed straight up from his forehead. He had the air of a soldier in his long, closely buttoned frock-coat.
It was many months since these two men had met; but they had been long bound together by a powerful sympathy, born of quiet talks and confidences, in which each had told the other of similar sufferings. A long deferred secret hope troubled Labanoff as the memory of Marsa devoured Menko; and they had many times exchanged dismal theories upon the world, life, men, and laws. Their common bitterness united them. And Michel received Labanoff, despite his resolution to receive no one, because he was certain that he should find in him the same suffering as that expressed by De Musset and Petoefi.
Labanoff, to-day, appeared to him more enigmatical and gloomy than ever. From the lips of the Russian fell only words of almost tragical mystery.
Menko made him sit down by his side upon a divan, and he noticed that an extraordinary fever seemed to burn in the blue eyes of his friend.
“I learned that you had returned from London,” said Labanoff; “and, as I was leaving Paris, I wished to see you before my departure. It is possible that we may never see each other again.”
“Why?”
“I am going to St. Petersburg on pressing business.”
“Have you finished your studies in Paris?”
“Oh! I had already received my medical diploma when I came here. I have been living in Paris only to be more at my ease to pursue—a project which interests me.”
“A project?”
Menko asked the question mechanically, feeling very little curiosity to know Labanoff’s secret; but the Russian’s face wore a strange, ironical smile as he answered:
“I have nothing to say on that subject, even to the man for whom I have the most regard.”
His brilliant eyes seemed to see strange visions before them. He remained silent for a moment, and then rose with an abrupt movement.
“There,” he said, “that is all I had to tell you, my dear Menko. Now, ‘au revoir’, or rather, good-by; for, as I said before, I shall probably never see you again.”
“And why, pray?”
“Oh! I don’t know; it is an idea of mine. And then, my beloved Russia is such a strange country. Death comes quickly there.”
He had still upon his lips that inexplicable smile, jesting and sad at once.
Menko grasped the long, white hand extended to him.
“My dear Labanoff, it is not difficult to guess that you are going on some dangerous errand.” Smiling: “I will not do you the injustice to believe you a nihilist.”
Labanoff’s blue eyes flashed.
“No,” he said, “no, I am not a nihilist. Annihilation is absurd; but liberty is a fine thing!”
He stopped short, as if he feared that he had already said too much.
“Adieu, my dear Menko.”
The Hungarian detained him with a gesture, saying, with a tremble in his voice:
“Labanoff! You have found me when a crisis in my life is also impending. I am about, like yourself, to commit a great folly; a different one from yours, no doubt. However, I have no right to tell you that you are about to commit some folly.”
“No,” calmly replied the Russian, very pale, but still smiling, “it is not a folly.”
“But it is a danger?” queried Menko.
Labanoff made no reply.
“I do not know either,” said Michel, “how my affair will end. But, since chance has brought us together today, face to face—”
“It was not chance, but my own firm resolution to see you again before my departure.”
“I know what your friendship for me is, and it is for that reason that I ask you to tell me frankly where you will be in a month.”
“In a month?” repeated Labanoff.
“Give me the route you are going to take? Shall you be a fixture at St. Petersburg?”
“Not immediately,” responded the Russian, slowly, his gaze riveted upon Menko. “In a month I shall still be at Warsaw. At St. Petersburg the month after.”
“Thanks. I only ask you to let me know, in some way, where you are.”
“Why?”
“Because, I should like to join you.”
“You!”
“It is only a fancy,” said Menko, with an attempt at a laugh. “I am bored with life—you know it; I find it a nuisance. If we did not spur it like an old, musty horse, it would give us the same idiotic round of days. I do not know—I do not wish to know—why you are going to Russia, and what this final farewell of which you have just spoken signifies; I simply guess that you are off on some adventure, and it is possible that I may ask you to allow me to share it.”
“Why?” said Labanoff, coldly. “You are not a Russian.”
Menko smiled, and, placing his hands upon the thin shoulders of his friend, he said:
“Those words reveal many things. It is well that they were not said before an agent of police.”
“Yes,” responded Labanoff, firmly. “But I am not in the habit of recklessly uttering my thoughts; I know that I am speaking now to Count Menko.”
“And Count Menko will be delighted, my dear Labanoff, if you will let him know where, in Poland or Russia, he must go, soon, to obtain news of you. Fear nothing: neither there nor here will I question you. But I shall be curious to know what has become of you, and you know that I have enough friendship for you to be uneasy about you. Besides, I long to be on the move; Paris, London, the world, in short, bores me, bores me, bores me!”
“The fact is, it is stupid, egotistical and cowardly,” responded Labanoff.
He again held out to Menko his nervous hand, burning, like his blue eyes, with fever.
“Farewell!” he said.
“No, no, ‘au revoir’!”
“‘Au revoir’ be it then. I will let you know what has become of me.”
“And where you are?”
“And where I am.”
“And do not be astonished if I join you some fine morning.”
“Nothing ever astonishes me,” said the Russian. “Nothing!”
And in that word nothing were expressed profound disgust with life and fierce contempt of death.
Menko warmly grasped his friend’s thin and emaciated hand; and, the last farewell spoken to the fanatic departing for some tragical adventure, the Hungarian became more sombre and troubled than before, and Labanoff’s appearance seemed like a doubtful apparition. He returned to his longing to see the end of the most anxious day of his life.
At last, late in the evening, Michel entered his coupe, and was driven away-down the Rue d’Aumale, through the Rue Pigalle and the Rue de Douai, to the rondpoint of the Place Clichy, the two lanterns casting their clear light into the obscurity. The coupe then took the road to Maisons-Lafitte, crossing the plain and skirting wheat-fields and vineyards, with the towering silhouette of Mont Valerien on the left, and on the right, sharply defined against the sky, a long line of hills, dotted with woods and villas, and with little villages nestling at their base, all plunged in a mysterious shadow.
Michel, with absent eyes, gazed at all this, as Trilby rapidly trotted on. He was thinking of what lay before him, of the folly he was about to commit, as he had said to Labanoff. It was a folly; and yet, who could tell? Might not Marsa have reflected? Might she not; alarmed at his threats, be now awaiting him? Her exquisite face, like a lily, rose before him; an overwhelming desire to annihilate time and space took possession of him, and he longed to be standing, key in hand, before the little gate in the garden wall.
He was well acquainted with the great park of Maisons-Lafitte, with the white villas nestling among the trees. On one side Prince Tchereteff’s house looked out upon an almost desert tract of land, on which a racecourse had been mapped out; and on the other extended with the stables and servants’ quarters to the forest, the wall of the Avenue Lafitte bounding the garden. In front of the villa was a broad lawn, ending in a low wall with carved gates, allowing, through the branches of the oaks and chestnuts, a view of the hills of Cormeilles.
After crossing the bridge of Sartrouville, Michel ordered his coachman to drive to the corner of the Avenue Corneille, where he alighted in the shadow of a clump of trees.
“You will wait here, Pierre,” he said, “and don’t stir till I return.”
He walked past the sleeping houses, under the mysterious alleys of the trees, until he reached the broad avenue which, cutting the park in two, ran from the station to the forest. The alley that he was seeking descended between two rows of tall, thick trees, forming an arch overhead, making it deliciously cool and shady in the daytime, but now looking like a deep hole, black as a tunnel. Pushing his way through the trees and bushes, and brushing aside the branches of the acacias, the leaves of which fell in showers about him, Michel reached an old wall, the white stones of which were overgrown with ivy. Behind the wall the wind rustled amid the pines and oaks like the vague murmur of a coming storm. And there, at the end of the narrow path, half hidden by the ivy, was the little gate he was seeking. He cautiously brushed aside the leaves and felt for the keyhole; but, just as he was about to insert the key, which burned in his feverish fingers, he stopped short.
Was Marsa awaiting him? Would she not call for help, drive him forth, treat him like a thief?
Suppose the gate was barred from within? He looked at the wall, and saw that by clinging to the ivy he could reach the top. He had not come here to hesitate. No, a hundred times no!
Besides, Marsa was certainly there, trembling, fearful, cursing him perhaps, but still there.
“No,” he murmured aloud in the silence, “were even death behind that gate, I would not recoil.”
She stood at her window, like a spectre in her white dress, her hands clutching the sill, and her eyes striving to pierce the darkness which enveloped everything, and opened beneath her like a black gulf. With heart oppressed with fear, she started at the least sound.
All she could see below in the garden were the branches defined against the sky; a single star shining through the leaves of a poplar, like a diamond in a woman’s tresses; and under the window the black stretch of the lawn crossed by a band of a lighter shade, which was the sand of the path. The only sound to be heard was the faint tinkle of the water falling into the fountain.
Her glance, shifting as her thoughts, wandered vaguely over the trees, the open spaces which seemed like masses of heavy clouds, and the sky set with constellations. She listened with distended ears, and a shudder shook her whole body as she heard suddenly the distant barking of a dog.
The dog perceived some one. Was it Menko?
No: the sound, a howling rather than a barking, came from a long distance, from Sartrouville, beyond the Seine.
“It is not Duna or Bundas,” she murmured, “nor Ortog. What folly to remain here at the window! Menko will not come. Heaven grant that he does not come!”
And she sighed a happy sigh as if relieved of a terrible weight.
Suddenly, with a quick movement, she started violently back, as if some frightful apparition had risen up before her.
Hoarse bayings, quite different from the distant barking of a moment before, rent the air, and were repeated more and more violently below there in the darkness. This time it was indeed the great Danish hounds and the shaggy colossus of the Himalayas, which were precipitating themselves upon some prey.
“Great God! He is there, then! He is there!” whispered Marsa, paralyzed with horror.
There was something gruesome in the cries of the dogs, By the continued repetition of the savage noises, sharp, irritated, frightful snarls and yelps, Marsa divined some horrible struggle in the darkness, of a man against the beasts. Then all her terror seemed to mount to her lips in a cry of pity, which was instantly repressed. She steadied herself against the window, striving, with all her strength, to reason herself into calmness.
“It was his own wish,” she thought.
Did she not know, then, what she was doing when, wishing to place a living guard between herself and danger, she had descended to the kennel and unloosed the ferocious animals, which, recognizing her voice, had bounded about her and licked her hands with many manifestations of joy? She had ascended again to her chamber and extinguished the light, around which fluttered the moths, beating the opal shade with their downy wings; and, in the darkness, drinking in the night air at the open window, she had waited, saying to herself that Michel Menko would not come; but, if he did come, it was the will of fate that he should fall a victim to the devoted dogs which guarded her.
Why should she pity him?
She hated him, this Michel. He had threatened her, and she had defended herself, that was all. Ortog’s teeth were made for thieves and intruders. No pity! No, no—no pity for such a coward, since he had dared—
But yet, as the ferocious bayings of the dogs below became redoubled in their fury, she imagined, in terror, a crunching of bones and a tearing of flesh; and, as her imagination conjured up before her Michel fighting, in hideous agony, against the bites of the dogs, she shuddered; she was afraid, and again a stifled cry burst forth from her lips. A sort of insanity took possession of her. She tried to cry out for mercy as if the animals could hear her; she sought the door of her chamber, groping along the wall with her hands outspread before her, in order to descend the staircase and rush out into the garden; but her limbs gave way beneath her, and she sank an inert mass upon the carpet in an agony of fear and horror.
“My God! My God! It is a man they are devouring;” and her voice died away in a smothered call for help.
Then she suddenly raised her head, as if moved by an electric shock.
There was no more noise! Nothing! The black night had all at once returned to its great, mysterious silence. Marsa experienced a sensation of seeing a pall stretched over a dead body. And in the darkness there seemed to float large spots of blood.
“Ah! the unhappy man!” she faltered.
Then, again, the voices of the dogs broke forth, rapid, angry, still frightfully threatening. The animals appeared now to be running, and their bayings became more and more distant.
What had happened?
One would have said that they were dragging away their prey, tearing it with hideous crimson fangs.
Was Michel Menko indeed dead? We left him just as he was turning the key in the little gate in the wall. He walked in boldly, and followed a path leading to an open space where was the pavilion he had spoken of to Marsa. He looked to see whether the windows of the pavilion were lighted, or whether there were a line of light under the door. No: the delicate tracery of the pagoda-like structure showed dimly against the sky; but there was no sign of life. Perhaps, however, Marsa was there in the darkness.
He would glide under the window and call. Then, hearing him and frightened at so much audacity, she would descend.
He advanced a few steps toward the pavilion; but, all at once, in the part of the garden which seemed lightest, upon the broad gravel walk, he perceived odd, creeping shadows, which the moon, emerging from a cloud, showed to be dogs, enormous dogs, with their ears erect, which, with abound and a low, deep growl, made a dash toward him with outspread limbs—a dash terrible as the leap of a tiger.
A quick thought illumined Michel’s brain like a flash of electricity: “Ah! this is Marsa’s answer!” He had just time to mutter, with raging irony:
“I was right, she was waiting for me!”
Then, before the onslaught of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks. With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then, with formidable baying, returned more furiously still to the charge.
Michel Menko had no weapon.
With a knife he could have defended himself, and slit the bellies of the maddened animals; but he had nothing! Was he to be forced, then, to fly, pursued like a fox or a deer?
Suppose the servants, roused by the noise of the dogs, should come in their turn, and seize him as a thief? At all events, that would be comparative safety; at least, they would rescue him from these monsters. But no: nothing stirred in the silent, impassive house.
The hounds, erect upon their hind legs, rushed again at Michel, who, overturning them with blows from his feet, and striking them violently in the jaws, now staggered back, Ortog having leaped at his throat. By a rapid movement of recoil, the young man managed to avoid being strangled; but the terrible teeth of the dog, tearing his coat and shirt into shreds, buried themselves deep in the flesh of his shoulder.
The steel-like muscles and sinewy strength of the Hungarian now stood him in good stead. He must either free himself, or perish there in the hideous carnage of a quarry. He seized with both hands, in a viselike grip, Ortog’s enormous neck, and, at the same time, with a desperate jerk, shook free his shoulder, leaving strips of his flesh between the jaws of the animal, whose hot, reeking breath struck him full in the face. With wild, staring eyes, and summoning up, in an instinct of despair, all his strength and courage, he buried his fingers in Ortog’s neck, and drove his nails through the skin of the colossus, which struck and beat with his paws against the young man’s breast. The dog’s tongue hung out of his mouth, under the suffocating pressure of the hands of the human being struggling for his life. As he fought thus against Ortog, the Hungarian gradually retreated, the two hounds leaping about him, now driven off by kicks (Duna’s jaw was broken), and now, with roars of rage and fiery eyes, again attacking their human prey.
One of them, Bundas, his teeth buried in Michel’s left thigh, shook him, trying to throw him to the ground. A slip, and all would be over; if he should fall upon the gravel, the man would be torn to pieces and crunched like a deer caught by the hounds.
A terrible pain nearly made Michel faint—Bundas had let go his hold, stripping off a long tongue of flesh; but, in a moment, it had the same effect upon him as that of the knife of a surgeon opening a vein, and the weakness passed away. The unfortunate man still clutched, as in a death-grip, Ortog’s shaggy neck, and he perceived that the struggles of the dog were no longer of the same terrible violence; the eyes of the ferocious brute were rolled back in his head until they looked like two large balls of gleaming ivory. Michel threw the heavy mass furiously from him, and the dog, suffocated, almost dead, fell upon the ground with a dull, heavy sound.
Menko had now to deal only with the Danish hounds, which were rendered more furious than ever by the smell of blood. One of them, displaying his broken teeth in a hideous, snarling grin, hesitated a little to renew the onslaught, ready, as he was, to spring at his enemy’s throat at the first false step; but the other, Bundas, with open mouth, still sprang at Michel, who repelled, with his left arm, the attacks of the bloody jaws. Suddenly a hollow cry burst from his lips like a death-rattle, forced from him as the dog buried his fangs in his forearm, until they nearly met. It seemed to him that the end had now come.
Each second took away more and more of his strength. The tremendous tension of muscles and nerves, which had been necessary in the battle with Ortog, and the blood he had lost, his whole left side being gashed as with cuts from a knife, weakened him. He calculated, that, unless he could reach the little gate before the other dog should make up his mind to leap upon him, he was lost, irredeemably lost.
Bundas did not let go his hold, but twisting himself around Michel’s body, he clung with his teeth to the young man’s lacerated arm; the other, Duna, bayed horribly, ready to spring at any moment.
Michel gathered together all the strength that remained to him, and ran rapidly backward, carrying with him the furious beast, which was crushing the very bones of his arm.
He reached the end of the walk, and the gate was there before him. Groping in the darkness with his free hand, he found the key, turned it, and the gate flew open. Fate evidently did not wish him to perish.
Then, in the same way as he had shaken off Ortog, whom he could now hear growling and stumbling over the gravel a little way off, Michel freed his arm from Bundas, forcing his fingers and nails into the animal’s ears; and the moment he had thrown the brute to the ground, he dashed through the gate, and slammed it to behind him, just as the two dogs together were preparing to leap again upon him.
Then, leaning against the gate, and steadying himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from their human prey.
Michel never knew how long he remained there, listening to the hideous growling of his bloodthirsty enemies. At last the thought came to him that he must go; but how was he to drag himself to the place where Pierre was waiting for him? It was so far! so far! He would faint twenty times before reaching there. Was he about to fail now after all he had gone through?
His left leg was frightfully painful; but he thought he could manage to walk with it. His left shoulder and arm, however, at the least movement, caused him atrocious agony, as if the bones had been crushed by the wheel of some machine. He sought for his handkerchief, and enveloped his bleeding arm in it, tying the ends of it with his teeth. Then he tottered to a woodpile near by, and, taking one of the long sticks, he managed with its aid to drag himself along the alley, while through the branches the moon looked calmly down upon him.
He was worn out, and his head seemed swimming in a vast void, when he reached the end of the alley, and saw, a short way off down the avenue, the arch of the old bridge near which the coupe had stopped. One effort more, a few steps, and he was there! He was afraid now of falling unconscious, and remaining there in a dying condition, without his coachman even suspecting that he was so near him.
“Courage!” he murmured. “On! On!”
Two clear red lights appeared-the lanterns of the coup. “Pierre!” cried Michel in the darkness, “Pierre!” But he felt that his feeble voice would not reach the coachman, who was doubtless asleep on his box. Once more he gathered together his strength, called again, and advanced a little, saying to himself that a step or two more perhaps meant safety. Then, all at once, he fell prostrate upon his side, unable to proceed farther; and his voice, weaker and weaker, gradually failed him.
Fortunately, the coachman had heard him cry, and realized that something had happened. He jumped from his box, ran to his master, lifted him up, and carried him to the carriage. As the light of the lamps fell on the torn and bloody garments of the Count, whose pallid and haggard face was that of a dead man, Pierre uttered a cry of fright.
“Great heavens! Where have you been?” he exclaimed. “You have been attacked?”
“The coup—place me in the coup.”
“But there are doctors here. I will go—”
“No—do nothing. Make no noise. Take me to Paris—I do not wish any one to know—To Paris—at once,” and he lost consciousness.
Pierre, with some brandy he luckily had with him, bathed his master’s temples, and forced a few drops between his lips; and, when the Count had recovered, he whipped up his horse and galloped to Paris, growling, with a shrug of the shoulders:
“There must have been a woman in this. Curse the women! They make all the trouble in the world.”
It was daybreak when the coup reached Paris.
Pierre heard, as they passed the barrier, a laborer say to his mate
“That’s a fine turnout. I wish I was in the place of the one who is riding inside!”
“So do I!” returned the other.
And Pierre thought, philosophically: “Poor fools! If they only knew!”
At the first streak of daylight, Marsa descended, trembling, to the garden, and approached the little gate, wondering what horror would meet her eyes.
Rose-colored clouds, like delicate, silky flakes of wool, floated across the blue sky; the paling crescent of the moon, resembling a bent thread of silver wire, seemed about to fade mistily away; and, toward the east, in the splendor of the rising sun, the branches of the trees stood out against a background of burnished gold as in a Byzantine painting. The dewy calm and freshness of the early morning enveloped everything as in a bath of purity and youth.
But Marsa shuddered as she thought that perhaps this beautiful day was dawning upon a dead body. She stopped abruptly as she saw the gardener, with very pale face, come running toward her.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, something terrible has happened! Last night the dogs barked and barked; but they bark so often at the moon and the shadows, that no one got up to see what was the matter.”
“Well—well?” gasped Marsa, her hand involuntarily seeking her heart.
“Well, there was a thief here last night, or several of them, for poor Ortog is half strangled; but the rascals did not get away scot free. The one who came through the little path to the pavilion was badly bitten; his tracks can be followed in blood for a long distance a very long distance.”
“Then,” asked Marsa, quickly, “he escaped? He is not dead?”
“No, certainly not. He got away.”
“Ah! Thank heaven for that!” cried the Tzigana, her mind relieved of a heavy weight.
“Mademoiselle is too good,” said the gardener. “When a man enters, like that, another person’s place, he exposes himself to be chased like a rabbit, or to be made mincemeat of for the dogs. He must have had big muscles to choke Ortog, the poor beast!—not to mention that Duna’s teeth are broken. But the scoundrel got his share, too; for he left big splashes of blood upon the gravel.”
“Blood!”
“The most curious thing is that the little gate, to which there is no key, is unlocked. They came in and went out there. If that idiot of a Saboureau, whom General Vogotzine discharged—and rightly too, Mademoiselle—were not dead, I should say that he was at the bottom of all this.”
“There is no need of accusing anyone,” said Marsa, turning away.
The gardener returned to the neighborhood of the pavilion, and, examining the red stains upon the ground, he said: “All the same, this did not happen by itself. I am going to inform the police!”
It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone for the last time—to-morrow she would be another’s.
The fiery Tzigana, who felt in her heart, implacable as it was to evil and falsehood, all capabilities of devotion and truth, was condemned to lie, or to lose the love of Prince Andras, which was her very life. There was no other alternative. No, no: since she had met this man, superior to all others, since he loved her and she loved him, she would take an hour of his life and pay for that hour with her own. She had no doubt but that an avowal would forever ruin her in Andras’s eyes. No, again and forever no: it was much better to take the love which fate offered her in exchange for her life.
And, as she threw herself back in her chair with an expression of unchangeable determination in her dark, gazelle-like eyes, there suddenly came into her mind the memory of a day long ago, when, driving along the road from Maisons-Lafitte to Saint-Germain, she had met some wandering gipsies, two men and a woman, with copper-colored skins and black eyes, in which burned, like a live coal, the passionate melancholy of the race. The woman, a sort of long spear in her hand, was driving some little shaggy ponies, like those which range about the plains of Hungary. Bound like parcels upon the backs of these ponies were four or five little children, clothed in rags, and covered with the dust of the road. The woman, tall, dark and faded, a sort of turban upon her head, held out her hand toward Marsa’s carriage with a graceful gesture and a broad smile—the supplicating smile of those who beg. A muscular young fellow, his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother—the woman was old, or perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings wrinkles—walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies. Farther along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the end of a rope, the gipsy held a small gray bear. As she passed by them, Marsa involuntarily exclaimed, in the language of her mother “Be szomoru!” (How sad it is!) The man, at her words, raised his head, and a flash of joy passed over his face, which showed, or Marsa thought so (who knows? perhaps she was mistaken), a love for his forsaken country. Well, now, she did not know why, the remembrance of these poor beings returned to her, and she said to herself that her ancestors, humble and insignificant as these unfortunates in the dust and dirt of the highway, would have been astonished and incredulous if any one had told them that some day a girl born of their blood would wed a Zilah, one of the chiefs of that Hungary whose obscure and unknown minstrels they were! Ah! what an impossible dream it seemed, and yet it was realized now.
At all events, a man’s death did not lie between her and Zilah. Michel Menko, after lying at death’s door, was cured of his wounds. She knew this from Baroness Dinati, who attributed Michel’s illness to a sword wound secretly received for some woman. This was the rumor in Paris. The young Count had, in fact, closed his doors to every one; and no one but his physician had been admitted. What woman could it be? The little Baroness could not imagine.
Marsa thought again, with a shudder, of the night when the dogs howled; but, to tell the truth, she had no remorse. She had simply defended herself! The inquiry begun by the police had ended in no definite result. At Maisons-Lafitte, people thought that the Russian house had been attacked by some thieves who had been in the habit of entering unoccupied houses and rifling them of their contents. They had even arrested an old vagabond, and accused him of the attempted robbery at General Vogotzine’s; but the old man had answered: “I do not even know the house.” But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a thief? It was more and worse than money or silver that he had dared to come for: it was to impose his love upon a woman whose heart he had well-nigh broken. Against such an attack all weapons were allowable, even Ortog’s teeth. The dogs of the Tzigana had known how to defend her; and it was what she had expected from her comrades.
Had Michel Menko died, Marsa would have said, with the fatalism of the Orient: “It was his own will!” She was grateful, however, to fate, for having punished the wretch by letting him live. Then she thought no more of him except to execrate him for having poisoned her happiness, and condemned her either to a silence as culpable as a lie, or to an avowal as cruel as a suicide.
The night passed and the day came at last, when it was necessary for Marsa to become the wife of Prince Andras, or to confess to him her guilt. She wished that she had told him all, now that she had not the courage to do so. She had accustomed herself to the idea that a woman is not necessarily condemned to love no more because she has encountered a coward who has abused her love. She was in an atmosphere of illusion and chimera; what was passing about her did not even seem to exist. Her maids dressed her, and placed upon her dark hair the bridal veil: she half closed her eyes and murmured:
“It is a beautiful dream.”
A dream, and yet a reality, consoling as a ray of light after a hideous nightmare. Those things which were false, impossible, a lie, a phantasmagoria born of a fever, were Michel Menko, the past years, the kisses of long ago, the threats of yesterday, the bayings of the infuriated dogs at that shadow which did not exist.
General Vogotzine, in a handsome uniform, half suffocated in his high vest, and with a row of crosses upon his breast—the military cross of St. George, with its red and black ribbon; the cross of St. Anne, with its red ribbon; all possible crosses—was the first to knock at his niece’s door, his sabre trailing upon the floor.
“Who is it?” said Marsa.
“I, Vogotzine.”
And, permission being given him, he entered the room.
The old soldier walked about his niece, pulling his moustache, as if he were conducting an inspection. He found Marsa charming. Pale as her white robe, with Tizsa’s opal agraffe at her side, ready to clasp the bouquet of flowers held by one of her maids, she had never been so exquisitely beautiful; and Vogotzine, who was rather a poor hand at turning a compliment, compared her to a marble statue.
“How gallant you are this morning, General,” she said, her heart bursting with emotion.
She waved away, with a brusque gesture, the orange-flowers which her maid was about to attach to her corsage.
“No,” she said. “Not that! Roses.”
“But, Mademoiselle—”
“Roses,” repeated Marsa. “And for my hair white rosebuds also.”
At this, the old General risked another speech.
“Do you think orange-blossoms are too vulgar, Marsa? By Jove! They don’t grow in the ditches, though!”
And he laughed loudly at what he considered wit. But a frowning glance from the Tzigana cut short his hilarity; and, with a mechanical movement, he drew himself up in a military manner, as if the Czar were passing by.
“I will leave you to finish dressing, my dear,” he said, after a moment.
He already felt stifled in the uniform, which he was no longer accustomed to wear, and he went out in the garden to breathe freer. While waiting there for Zilah, he ordered some cherry cordial, muttering, as he drank it:
“It is beautiful August weather. They will have a fine day; but I shall suffocate!”
The avenue was already filled with people. The marriage had been much discussed, both in the fashionable colony which inhabited the park and in the village forming the democratic part of the place; even from Sartrouville and Mesnil, people had come to see the Tzigana pass in her bridal robes.
“What is all that noise?” demanded Vogotzine of the liveried footman.
“That noise, General? The inhabitants of Maisons who have come to see the wedding procession.”
“Really? Ah! really? Well, they haven’t bad taste. They will see a pretty woman and a handsome uniform.” And the General swelled out his breast as he used to do in the great parades of the time of Nicholas, and the reviews in the camp of Tsarskoe-Selo.
Outside the garden, behind the chestnut-trees which hid the avenue, there was a sudden sound of the rolling of wheels, and the gay cracking of whips.
“Ah!” cried the General, “It is Zilah!”
And, rapidly swallowing a last glass of the cordial, he wiped his moustache, and advanced to meet Prince Andras, who was descending from his carriage.
Accompanying the Prince were Yanski Varhely, and an Italian friend of Zilah’s, Angelo Valla, a former minister of the Republic of Venice, in the time of Manin. Andras Zilah, proud and happy, appeared to have hardly passed his thirtieth year; a ray of youth animated his clear eyes. He leaped lightly out upon the gravel, which cracked joyously beneath his feet; and, as he advanced through the aromatic garden, to the villa where Marsa awaited him, he said to himself that no man in the world was happier than he.
Vogotzine met him, and, after shaking his hand, asked him why on earth he had not put on his national Magyar costume, which the Hungarians wore with such graceful carelessness.
“Look at me, my dear Prince! I am in full battle array!”
Andras was in haste to see Marsa. He smiled politely at the General’s remark, and asked him where his niece was.
“She is putting on her uniform,” replied Vogotzine, with a loud laugh which made his sabre rattle.
Most of the invited guests were to go directly to the church of Maisons. Only the intimate friends came first to the house, Baroness Dinati, first of all, accompanied by Paul Jacquemin, who took his eternal notes, complimenting both Andras and the General, the latter especially eager to detain as many as possible to the lunch after the ceremony. Vogotzine, doubtless, wished to show himself in all the eclat of his majestic appetite.
Very pretty, in her Louis Seize gown of pink brocade, and a Rembrandt hat with a long white feather (Jacquemin, who remained below, had already written down the description in his note-book), the little Baroness entered Marsa’s room like a whirlwind, embracing the young girl, and going into ecstasy over her beauty.
“Ah! how charming you are, my dear child! You are the ideal of a bride! You ought to be painted as you are! And what good taste to wear roses, and not orange-flowers, which are so common, and only good for shopgirls. Turn around! You are simply exquisite.”
Marsa, paler than her garments, looked at herself in the glass, happy in the knowledge of her beauty, since she was about to be his, and yet contemplating the tall, white figure as if it were not her own image.
She had often felt this impression of a twofold being, in those dreams where one seems to be viewing the life of another, or to be the disinterested spectator of one’s own existence.
It seemed to her that it was not she who was to be married, or that suddenly the awakening would come.
“The Prince is below,” said the Baroness Dinati.
“Ah!” said Marsa.
She started with a sort of involuntary terror, as this very name of Prince was at once that of a husband and that of a judge. But when, superb in the white draperies, which surrounded her like a cloud of purity, her long train trailing behind her, she descended the stairs, her little feet peeping in and out like two white doves, and appeared at the door of the little salon where Andras was waiting, she felt herself enveloped in an atmosphere of love. The Prince advanced to meet her, his face luminous with happiness; and, taking the young girl’s hands, he kissed the long lashes which rested upon her cheek, saying, as he contemplated the white vision of beauty before him:
“How lovely you are, my Marsa! And how I love you!”
The Prince spoke these words in a tone, and with a look, which touched the deepest depths of Marsa’s heart.
Then they exchanged those words, full of emotion, which, in their eternal triteness, are like music in the ears of those who love. Every one had withdrawn to the garden, to leave them alone in this last, furtive, happy minute, which is never found again, and which, on the threshold of the unknown, possesses a joy, sad as a last farewell, yet full of hope as the rising of the sun.
He told her how ardently he loved her, and how grateful he was to her for having consented, in her youth and beauty, to become the wife of a quasi-exile, who still kept, despite his efforts, something of the melancholy of the past.
And she, with an outburst of gratitude, devotion, and love, in which all the passion of her nature and her race vibrated, said, in a voice which trembled with unshed tears:
“Do not say that I give you my life. It is you who make of a girl of the steppes a proud and honored wife, who asks herself why all this happiness has come to her.” Then, nestling close to Andras, and resting her dark head upon his shoulder, she continued: “We have a proverb, you remember, which says, Life is a tempest. I have repeated it very often with bitter sadness. But now, that wicked proverb is effaced by the refrain of our old song, Life is a chalet of pearls.”
And the Tzigana, lost in the dream which was now a tangible reality, saying nothing, but gazing with her beautiful eyes, now moist, into the face of Andras, remained encircled in his arms, while he smiled and whispered, again and again, “I love you!”
All the rest of the world had ceased to exist for these two beings, absorbed in each other.