The Shadow of the Czar Part 12

"My second year's residence in the convent was saddened by the tidings of the Countess Lorenska's death,--to me a calamity in more ways than one, for it made Father Ravenna my guardian, and him I had always viewed with secret dislike, if not with fear.

"Now that I was growing older and more thoughtful, the question as to my parentage began to trouble me. Who was I? why kept ignorant of my origin? why put to this course of study? The abbess Teresa averred that all would ultimately be made clear by my guardian Ravenna, who would remove me from the convent as soon as I was eighteen.

"On the eve of my eighteenth birthday Ravenna appeared, no longer a simple priest. His scarlet robes and the t.i.tle 'Your Eminence,'

addressed to him by the abbess, showed that he had risen to the dignity of a cardinal.

"He held an interview with me in the quietude of my own apartment. He had not seen me for six years, remember, and of course during that time I had grown from girlhood into womanhood.

"I noticed that as soon as he had set eyes on me he gave a start. I am certain that he murmured 'How like'! During the whole of the interview he walked to and fro, seemingly intent on studying my face and figure, now in one light, now in another, conduct which very much embarra.s.sed me.

"'Know, my daughter,' he began, 'that your father, supposed by you to be dead, is really living.'

"You can imagine my surprise at this statement.

"'Then why does he not acknowledge me?'

"'He has lived under the belief that you died as soon as born.'

"'He knows differently now?'

"'I have informed him of his error.'

"'And he has sent you to bring me to him?' I cried joyfully.

"'Alas! there's a difficulty at present in the way of your meeting each other. Accustomed for eighteen years to regard you as dead, he listens with scepticism to the story that you are living. Nay, more, he avers the statement to be a conspiracy on my part."

"'A conspiracy!' I repeated wonderingly.

"'He has another daughter by a second wife, your half-sister, of whom he has grown pa.s.sionately fond. You, as the elder, stand in the light of her interests; whatever she thought herself ent.i.tled to now devolves upon you. For this reason he seeks to deny your relations.h.i.+p to him.'

"'They wrong me by such thoughts,' I cried. 'I ask not for wealth, but for affection.'

"'Tut, tut,' returned the cardinal. 'We have clear proofs of your filiation and legitimacy. We shall compel him to acknowledge you. You shall not be deprived of your rights.'

"'How came my father to think me dead?'

"'I believe I am responsible for that error,' he said, with a smile that told me some interested motive lay at the root of his deception.

"I was unable to control my indignation.

"'You!' I cried. 'A holy cardinal the author of a falsehood that has separated a father from his daughter for eighteen years, and that will perhaps keep them apart forever! I honor my father for his present distrust of you. If you lied to him in my infancy, what wonder that he should deem you to be lying now?'

"The cardinal waved his hand deprecatingly. 'The end sanctifies the means, and my end is a n.o.ble one.'

"Curiosity overcame my anger. Despite my aversion to the cardinal, I could not refrain from plying him with questions; the names of my father and my sister; their station in life; their abode, and the like.

"But Cardinal Ravenna remained inflexibly uncommunicative. It was in vain that I knelt before him, and with tears entreated that he would let me see my father and sister face to face.

"'My presence may move them,' I said.

"'Your presence, my daughter, would create confusion,' he said coldly.

'Leave to me the task of winning for you a splendid heritage. Till then you must remain in this convent.'

"And with that Ravenna took his departure.

"The new knowledge imparted by the cardinal contributed rather to embitter than to cheer my life. It was not a pleasant reflection that somewhere in the world I had both father and sister who had never seen me, and who, apparently, had no desire to see me.

"For this state of affairs the cardinal, according to his own statement, was responsible, and I hated him for it. He cared nothing for the feelings of parent and child; his only object in bringing the two together was to advance his own interests; he would exact a price both from the father and from the new daughter.

"I resolved to cast off the self-const.i.tuted guardians.h.i.+p of Cardinal Ravenna. I would quit the convent, and, making my way to Warsaw, endeavor to discover the friends of my girlhood.

"But when I conferred with Abbess Teresa she told me kindly, yet firmly, that this could not be; the cardinal had left strict orders that I must be detained till his return.

"From that time my freedom ceased. The walks which I had been accustomed to take outside the convent in the company of two attendant nuns were stopped. The cloister gardens were open to me; once I had deemed them s.p.a.cious, now they seemed very narrow. Though treated kindly in other ways I knew myself to be a prisoner watched by innumerable eyes.

"The cardinal came not to release me. And thus eight months pa.s.sed,--the most melancholy time I had ever known.

"At last the porter, Bulgar, with whom I had always been a favorite, listened to my pleading, and one dark night, by preconcerted arrangement with me, he left the convent-gate unlocked, and I stole forth.

"But my flight might soon be intercepted. A few miles to the north of the convent, on the Bosnian frontier, is a fortress garrisoned by Austrian troops. I remembered that once when a poor nun longing for her freedom again, had run away, the Abbess had obtained aid from this fortress. The commandant sent out a troop, which, scouring the country around, returned with the fugitive after a three days' search. Devoted to the cardinal's interests, Abbess Teresa would certainly make a similar requisition in my case.

"Still I had the advantage of several hours' start, and, trusting to heaven for aid, I fled onward through the darkness. Zara, sixty miles to the northwest, was the haven of my desires. For two days I journeyed on foot, sleeping the first night in the woods.

"At the end of the second day--but you know the rest.

"O Paul," she murmured, with a soft pressure of her arms, "whom have I in the world but you? And to think that I at first repulsed you when you met me that night in the wood!"

And here Barbara, having finished her story, looked up at Paul.

"Why so grave?" she asked, with a smile that masked a certain misgiving on her part.

"In the very act of asking you to be my wife, Barbara, I feel compelled to pause. Your story is so suggestive. Supposing you should prove to be a rich heiress, or a peeress, or," he continued, his mind reverting to the portrait of the lady with the diadem, "shall we ascend higher, and say a princess?--you will make a mesalliance by marrying one who has nothing but a cloak and a sword."

"Dreams, Paul, dreams."

"Nay, the interest taken in you by the cardinal proves that you are a person either of rank or wealth, or possibly both."

"I place no faith in the cardinal's story. Doubtless, there does exist somewhere a rich Polish n.o.ble, whose infant daughter was lost or stolen away eighteen or nineteen years ago, but I do not believe that I am she, though Ravenna would have me play the role of the missing heiress. But even if I were an empress--"

Here Barbara paused in her utterance.

"Yes; if you were an empress--?"

"Cannot you guess the rest?"

"You would be my wife. Is that so, Barbara?"

"Yes, Paul," she replied, simply. "None but you."