Under a Charm Volume I Part 7

"Hitherto I have concealed the state of our circ.u.mstances from the world, and I intend still to do so. To you, I neither can nor will make a secret of our position. Yes, I am compelled to seek a refuge with my brother. You know something of the events which happened during the term of my second marriage. I stood at my husband's side when the storm of revolution swept him down. I followed him into banishment, and for ten long years I shared his exile. Our fortune was sacrificed to the cause; for some time there has been a hopeless discrepancy between the claims of our position and the means at our command. A cursory inspection of our affairs, made since the Prince's death, has convinced me that I must give up the struggle. We are at the end of our resources."

Waldemar would have spoken. His mother raised her hand to silence him.

"You can understand what it costs me to make these disclosures to you, and that I never should have entered on the subject if I myself had been alone in question; but as a mother, I must look to my son's interests. Every other consideration must give way to that. Leo stands on the threshold of life, of his career. I do not fear for him the privations of poverty, but its humiliations, for I know that he will not be able to bear them. Fate has willed it that you should be rich; henceforth, your wealth will be at your unlimited disposal. I confide your brother's future to your generosity, and to your sense of honour."

Any other woman would have felt, and shown she felt, it keenly mortifying thus to sue for help from the son of the man she had fled from in scorn and hatred; but this woman so carried herself that the painful step she had to take was in no degree lowering to her, and wrought no prejudice to her dignity. Her bearing, as she stood before her son, was not that of a supplicant. She made appeal neither to his filial feeling, nor to an affection which, as she well knew, did not exist. The mother with her rights stepped, for the time being, into the background. She did not take her stand on them; but she demanded from the elder brother's sense of justice that he should befriend the younger--and it soon appeared that she had not erred in her judgment of Waldemar. He sprang up quickly.

"And you only tell me this now, today? Why did I not hear of it sooner?"

The Princess's eyes met his gravely and steadily.

"What answer would you have made me if, on our first meeting after our long separation, I had made this communication to you?"

Waldemar looked down; he very well remembered the insulting manner in which he had asked his mother what it was she wanted with him.

"You are mistaken in me," he replied, hastily. "I should never have consented to your seeking help from any one but me. What! I am to be master of Wilicza and allow my mother and brother to live in a state of dependence! You are mistaken in me, mother; I have not deserved such distrust!"

"I was not distrustful of you, my son, but only of that influence which has guided you so far, and may perhaps be your guide even now. I do not even know whether your friends will permit you to offer us an asylum."

Again she p.r.i.c.ked him with a goad which never failed in its effect, and which the mother was always ready to apply at the right moment. As usual, it stung the young man's pride into arms.

"I think I have shown you that I can a.s.sert my own independence," he replied, shortly. "Now tell me, what am I to do? I am ready for anything."

The Princess felt she was about to hazard a bold stroke, but she went on steadily, straight to her aim.

"We can only accept your help in one form, so that it shall not be made a humiliation to us," said she. "You are master of Wilicza--would it not seem natural that your mother and brother should be your guests in your own house?"

Waldemar started. At the mention of Wilicza, the old suspicion and distrust reared their heads anew. All the warnings he had heard from his guardian against his mother's plans recurred to his memory. The Princess saw this, and parried the danger with masterly skill.

"I only care for the place on account of its being near Rakowicz," she said, indifferently. "From thence I could keep up a constant intercourse with Wanda."

Near Rakowicz! constant intercourse with its inhabitants! That decided the question. The young man's cheeks flushed crimson as he replied--

"Arrange it just as you like. I shall agree to everything. I am not going to stay permanently at Wilicza just at present; but I will take you there, at any rate--and there are long holidays at the University every year."

The Princess held out her hand to him.

"I thank you, Waldemar, in my own name, and in Leo's."

Her thanks were sincerely meant, but there was no warmth or heartiness in them, and Waldemar's reply was equally cool.

"Pray don't, mother; you make me feel ashamed. The thing is settled--and now I can go to the sh.o.r.e at last, I suppose."

He seemed most desirous of escaping, and his mother detained him no longer. She knew too well to whom she owed her victory. Standing at the window, she watched the young man as he strode hastily along the garden walk towards the sh.o.r.e; then, turning to her desk again, she sat down to finish a letter she had been writing to her brother.

The letter was just completed, and the Princess was in the act of sealing it, when Leo made his appearance. He looked almost as heated as his brother had been previously; but, in his case, it was evidently some inner disturbance which sent the blood to his temples. With a frowning brow and lips tightly set, he drew near his mother, who looked up in surprise.

"What is the matter, Leo? Why do you come alone? Did Waldemar not find you and Wanda?"

"Oh, to be sure. He came to us a quarter of an hour ago," said Leo, in an agitated tone.

"And where is he now?"

"He has gone out for a sail with Wanda."

"Alone?"

"Yes, all alone."

"You know very well I do not approve of such doings," said the Princess, much annoyed. "If, now and then, I trust Wanda to you, that is quite a different thing. You have been brought up together, and are therefore ent.i.tled to treat each other as brother and sister. Waldemar stands in quite a different relation to her, and moreover--I do not choose that they should thus be left alone together. The boating excursion was planned by you all in common. Why did you not remain with the others?"

"Because I will not always stay where I am not wanted!" exclaimed Leo.

"Because it is no pleasure to me to see Waldemar following Wanda about with his eyes, and behaving as if she were the only creature in existence."

The Princess pressed the seal on her letter.

"I have told you before what I think of these foolish fits of jealousy, Leo. Are you beginning with them again already?"

"Mamma!" The young Prince came up to the writing table with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "Do you not see, or _will_ you not see, that Waldemar is in love with your niece--that he wors.h.i.+ps her?"

"Well, and what do you do?" asked his mother, leaning back in her chair composedly. "Precisely the same, or at least you fancy so. You cannot expect me to take this boyish enthusiasm into serious account? You and Waldemar are just at the age to need an ideal, and Wanda is the only young girl with whom you have been thrown in contact so far.

Fortunately, she is still child enough to look on it all as a sort of game, and it is for that reason alone I allow it to go on. If she were to begin to take a more serious view of the matter, I should be obliged to interfere and restrict your intercourse to narrower limits. But, if I know anything of Wanda, the case will not arise. She plays with you both, and laughs at you both. So indulge yet awhile in your romance, young people! It will do your brother no harm to practise a little gallantry. He needs it much, I am sorry to say!"

The smile which accompanied these words was truly insulting to a youthful pa.s.sion--it said so plainly, 'mere child's play.' Leo restrained his indignation with much difficulty.

"I wish you would talk to Waldemar in that tone of his 'boyish enthusiasm,'" he replied, with suppressed vehemence. "He would not take it so quietly."

"I should not disguise from him, any more than from you, that I look upon the matter as a piece of youthful folly. If, five or six years hence, you speak to me of your love to Wanda, or if Waldemar tells me of his, I shall attach some importance to your feelings. For the present, you can safely play the part of your cousin's faithful knights--always on condition that no disputes arise between you on the subject."

"They have arisen already," declared Leo. "I have just had some very sharp words with Waldemar. That was why I gave up the sail. I won't bear it. He claims Wanda's company and conversation altogether for himself, and I won't stand his imperious, dictatorial ways any longer either. I shall take every opportunity now of letting him see it."

"You will not do that," interrupted his mother. "I am more desirous now than ever that there should be a good understanding between you, for we are going with Waldemar to Wilicza."

"To Wilicza!" cried Leo, in a fury; "and I am to be his guest there--to be under him, perhaps! No, that I will never consent to; I will owe Waldemar nothing. If it costs me my whole future, I'll accept nothing from him!"

The Princess preserved her superior calm, but her brow grew dark as she answered--

"If you are willing to set your whole future at stake for a mere whim, I am still here to watch over your interests. Besides, it is not merely a question of you or of me. There are other and higher considerations which make a sojourn at Wilicza desirable for me, and I have no intention of allowing my plans to be disturbed by your childish jealousy. You know I should never ask of you anything that could compromise your dignity; and you know, too, that I am accustomed to see my will obeyed. I tell you, we are going to Wilicza, and you will treat your brother with the regard and courtesy I show him myself. I require obedience from you, Leo."

The young Prince knew that tone full well. He knew that when his mother a.s.sumed it she meant to have her way at any cost; but on this occasion a mighty spur urged him to resistance. If he ventured no reply in words, his face betrayed that he was inclined to rebel in deeds, and that he would hardly condescend so far as to show his brother the required courtesy.

"I will take care that no provocation to these disputes shall arise in future," went on the Princess. "We shall leave this in a week, and when Wanda goes back to her father you will necessarily see less of her. As to this sail, _tete-a-tete_ with Waldemar, of which I altogether disapprove, it shall most decidedly be the last."

So saying, she rang, and, on Pawlick's appearing, gave him the letter to take to the post. It conveyed news to Count Morynski of their intended departure from C----, and informed him that his sister would not at present make a claim on his hospitality, but that the former mistress of Wilicza was about to return to, and take up her residence in, her old home.

CHAPTER VII.