Books: Prince Zilah, v3
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Jules Claretie >> Prince Zilah, v3
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"Why?" interrupted Andras, turning quickly to Vogotzine.
"Ah! why? Because!" said the General, trying to give to his heavy face
an expression of shrewd, dignified gravity.
"What has happened?" asked the Prince. "Is she suffering again? Ill?"
"Oh, insane, I tell you! absolutely insane! mad as a March hare!
Two days ago, you see--"
"Well, what? two days ago?"
"Because, two days ago!--"
"Well, what? What is it? Speak, Vogotzine!"
"The despatch," stammered the General.
"What despatch?"
"The des--despatch from Florence."
"She has received a despatch from Florence?"
"A telegram--blue paper--she read it before me; upon my word, I thought
it was from you! She said--no; those miserable bits of paper, it is
astonishing how they alarm you. There are telegrams which have given me
a fit of indigestion, I assure you--and I haven't the heart of a
chicken!"
"Go on! Marsa? This despatch? Whom was it from? What did Marsa say?"
"She turned white as a sheet; she began to tremble--an attack of the
nerves--and she said: 'Well, in two days I shall know, at last, whether I
am to live!' Queer, wasn't it? I don't know what she meant! But it is
certain--yes, certain, my dear fellow--that she expects, this evening,
some one who is coming--or who is not coming, from Florence--that
depends."
"Who is it? Who?" cried Andras. "Michel Menko?"
"I don't know," faltered Vogotzine in alarm, wondering whether it were
Froloff's hand that had seized him by the collar of his coat.
"It is Menko, is it not?" demanded Andras; while the terrified General
gasped out something unintelligible, his intoxication increasing every
yard the carriage advanced in the Bois.
Andras was almost beside himself with pain and suspense. What did it
mean? Who had sent that despatch? Why had it caused Marsa such emotion?
"In two days I shall know, at last, whether I am to live!" Who could
make her utter such a cry? Who, if not Michel Menko, was so intimately
connected with her life as to trouble her so, to drive her insane, as
Vogotzine said?
"It is Menko, is it not? it is Menko?" repeated Andras again.
And Vogotzine gasped:
"Perhaps! anything is possible!"
But he stopped suddenly, as if he comprehended, despite his inebriety,
that he was in danger of going too far and doing some harm.
"Come, Vogotzine, come, you have told me too much not to tell me all!"
"That is true; yes, I have said too much! Ah! The devil! this is not
my affair!--Well, yes, Count Menko is in Florence or near Florence--
I don't know where. Marsa told me that--without meaning to. She was
excited--very excited--talked to herself. I did not ask her anything--
but--she is insane, you see, mad, mad! She first wrote a despatch to
Italy--then she tore it up like this, saying: 'No, what is to happen,
will happen!' There! I don't know anything but that. I don't know
anything!"
"Ah! she is expecting him!" cried Andras. "When?"
"I don't know!"
"You told me it was to be this evening. This evening, is it not?"
The old General felt as ill at ease as if he had been before a military
commission or in the hands of Froloff.
"Yes, this evening."
"At Maisons-Lafitte?"
"At Maisons," responded Vogotzine, mechanically. "And all this wearies
me--wearies me. Was it for this I decided to come to Paris? A fine
idea! At least, there are no Russian days at Maisons!"
Andras made no reply.
He stopped the carriage, got out, and, saluting the General with a brief
"Thank you!" walked rapidly away, leaving Vogotzine in blank amazement,
murmuring, as he made an effort to sit up straight:
"Well, well, are you going to leave me here, old man? All alone? This
isn't right!"
And, like a forsaken child, the old General, with comic twitchings of his
eyebrows and nostrils, felt a strong desire to weep.
"Where shall I drive you, Monsieur?" asked the coachman.
"Wherever you like, my friend," responded Vogotzine, modestly, with an
appealing look at the man. "You, at least, must not leave me!"
CHAPTER XXXII
THE VALE OF VIOLETS
In the Prince's mind the whole affair seemed clear as day, and he
explained the vague anxiety with which he had been afflicted for several
days as a mysterious premonition of a new sorrow. Menko was at Florence!
Menko, for it could be no other than he, had telegraphed to Marsa,
arranging a meeting with her. That very evening he was to be in the
house of Marsa Laszlo--Marsa who bore, in spite of all, the title and
name of the Zilahs. Was it possible? After the marriage, after this
woman's vows and tears, these two beings, separated for a time, were to
be united again. And he, Andras, had almost felt pity for her! He had
listened to Varhely, an honest man; drawing a parallel between a
vanquished soldier and this fallen girl--Varhely, the rough, implacable
Varhely, who had also been the dupe of the Tzigana, and one evening at
Sainte-Adresse had even counselled the deceived husband to pardon her.
In a state bordering on frenzy, Zilah returned to his hotel, thinking:
"He will be with her this evening!"
This was worse than all the rest. How could he punish her?
Punish her?
Why not? Was not Marsa Laszlo his wife? That villa of Maisons-Lafitte,
where she thought herself so safe, was his by law. He, the husband, had
a right to enter there at any hour and demand of his wife an account of
his honor.
"She wished this name of Zilah! Well! she shall know at least what it
costs and what it imposes upon her!" he hissed through his clenched
teeth. He walked nervously to and fro in the library of his hotel, his
excitement increasing at every step.
"She is Princess Zilah! She--a princess! Nothing can wrest from her
that title which she has stolen! Princess be it, then; but the Prince
has the right to deal out life or death to his wife--to his wife and to
the lover of his wife!" with a spasmodic burst of laughter. "Her lover
is to be there; Menko is to be there, and I complain! The man whom I
have sought in vain will be before me. I shall hold him at my mercy,
and I do not thank the kind fate which gives me that joy! This evening!
He will be at her house this evening! Good! Justice shall be done!"
Every moment added to his fever. He would have given ten years of his
life if it were already evening. He waited impatiently for the hour to
come when he could go and surprise them. He even thought of meeting
Menko at the railway station on his arrival from Italy: but what would be
the use? Menko would be at Maisons; and he would kill him before her
face, in a duel if Menko would fight, or like a thief caught in the act
if he attempted to fly. That would be better. Yes, he would kill him
like a dog, if the other--but no! The Hungarian, struck in the presence
of the Tzigana, would certainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should
be the sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko
should spatter her face--a crimson stain upon her pale cheek should be
her punishment.
Early in the evening Andras left the hotel, after slipping into the
pocket of his overcoat a pair of loaded pistols: one of them he would
cast at Menko's feet. It was not assassination he wished, but justice.
He took the train to Maisons, and, on his arrival there, crossed the
railway bridge, and found himself almost alone in the broad avenue which
runs through the park. As he walked on through the rapidly darkening
shadows, he began to feel a strange sensation, as if nothing had
happened, and as if he were shaking off, little by little, a hideous
nightmare. In a sort of voluntary hallucination, he imagined that he was
going, as in former days, to Marsa's house; and that she was awaiting him
in one of those white frocks which became her so well, with her silver
belt clasped with the agraffe of opals. As he advanced, a host of
memories overwhelmed him. He had walked with Marsa under these great
lindens forming an arch overhead like that of a cathedral. He remembered
conversations they had had in the evening, when a slight mist silvered
the majestic park, and the white villa loomed vaguely before them like
some phantom palace of fairyland. With the Tzigana clinging to his arm,
he had seen those fountains, with their singing waters, that broad lawn
between the two long lines of trees, those winding paths through the
shrubbery; and, in the emotion aroused by these well-remembered places,
there was a sensation of bitter pain at the thought of the happiness that
might have been his had fate fulfilled her promises, which increased,
rather than appeased, the Prince's anger.
As his steps led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where
she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he
turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they
had crossed together--she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, and
he overflowing with happiness.
The square in front of the sanctuary was now deserted and the leaves were
beginning to fall from the trees. A man was lying asleep upon the steps
before the bolted door. Zilah stood gazing at the Gothic portal, with a
statue of the Virgin Mother above it, and wondered whether it were he who
had once led there a lovely girl, about to become his wife; and the sad,
closed church produced upon him the effect of a tomb.
He dragged himself away from the contemplation of the stone threshold,
where slept the tired man--drunk perhaps, at all events happier than the
Prince--and proceeded on his way through the woods to the abode of Marsa
Laszlo.
There was, Zilah remembered well, quite near there, a sort of narrow
valley (where the Mayor of Maisons was said to have royally entertained
Louis XIV and his courtiers, as they were returning from Marly), a lovely
spot, surrounded by grassy slopes covered with violets, a little shady,
Virgilian wood, where he and Marsa had dreamed away many happy hours.
They had christened it The Vale o f Violets. How many memories were in
that sweet name, each one of which stabbed and exasperated Zilah, rising
before him like so many spectres.
He hastened his steps, repeating:
"He is there! She is waiting for him! Her lover is there!"
At the end of the road, before the villa, closed and silent like the old
church, he stopped. He had reached his destination; but what was he
about to do, he who--who up to this time had protected his name from the
poisonous breath of scandal?
He was about to kill Menko, or to be killed himself. A duel! But what
was the need of proposing a duel, when, exercising his rights as a
husband, he could punish both the man and the woman?
He did not hesitate long, however, but advanced to the gate, saying,
aloud:
"I have a right to enter my own house."
The ringing of the bell was answered by the barking of Duna, Bundas, and
Ortog, who tore furiously at their iron chains.
A man presently appeared on the other side of the gate. It was a
domestic whom Andras did not know and had never seen.
"Whom do you wish to see?" asked the man.
"The Princess Zilah!"
"Who are you?" demanded the man, his hand upon the inner bolt of the
gate.
"Prince Zilah!"
The other stood stock-still in amazement, trying to see, through the
darkness, the Prince's face.
"Do you hear me?" demanded Andras.
And, as the domestic opened the gate, as if to observe the appearance of
the visitor, the Prince gave it a nervous push, which threw the servant
backward; and, once within the garden, he came close to him, and said:
"Look well at me, in order that you may recognize me again. I am master
here."
Zilah's clear eye and imperious manner awed the man, and he bowed humbly,
not daring to speak.
Andras turned on his heel, mounted the steps, and entered the house; then
he stopped and listened.
She was with him. Yes, a man was there, and the man was speaking,
speaking to Marsa, speaking doubtless of love.
Menko, with his twisted moustache, his pretty smile and his delicate
profile, was there, behind that door. A red streak of light from the
salon where Marsa was showed beneath the door, which the Prince longed to
burst open with his foot. With anger and bitterness filling his heart,
he felt capable of entering there, and striking savagely, madly, at his
rival.
How these two beings had played with him; the woman who had lied to him,
and the coward who had sent him those letters.
Suddenly Marsa's voice fell upon his ear, that rich, contralto voice he
knew so well, speaking in accents of love or joy.
What was he waiting for? His hot, feverish hand sought the handle of his
pistol, and, striding forward, he threw open the door of the room.
The light from an opal-tinted lamp fell full upon his face. He stood
erect upon the threshold, while two other faces were turned toward him,
two pale faces, Marsa's and another's.
Andras paused in amazement.
He had sought Menko; he found--Varhely!
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DUEL
"Yanski!"
Marsa recoiled in fear at hearing this cry and the sudden appearance of
the Prince; and, trembling like a leaf, with her face still turned toward
that threshold where Andras stood, she murmured, in a voice choked with
emotion:
"Who is there? Who is it?"
Yanski Varhely, unable to believe his eyes, advanced, as if to make sure.
"Zilah!" he exclaimed, in his turn.
He could not understand; and Zilah himself wondered whether he were not
the victim of some illusion, and where Menko could be, that Menko whom
Marsa had expected, and whom he, the husband, had come to chastise.
But the most bewildered, in her mute amazement, was Marsa, her lips
trembling, her face ashen, her eyes fixed upon the Prince, as she leaned
against the marble of the mantelpiece to prevent herself from falling,
but longing to throw herself on her knees before this man who had
suddenly appeared, and who was master of her destiny.
"You here?" said Varhely at last. "You followed me, then?"
"No," said Andras. "The one whom I expected to find here was not you."
"Who was it, then?"
"Michel Menko!"
Yanski Varhely turned toward Marsa.
She did not stir; she was looking at the Prince.
"Michel Menko is dead," responded Varhely, shortly. "It was to announce
that to the Princess Zilah that I am here."
Andras gazed alternately upon the old Hungarian, and upon Marsa, who
stood there petrified, her whole soul burning in her eyes.
"Dead?" repeated Zilah, coldly.
"I fought and killed him," returned Varhely.
Andras struggled against the emotion which seized hold of him. Pale as
death, he turned from Varhely to the Tzigana, with an instinctive desire
to know what her feelings might be.
The news of this death, repeated thus before the man whom she regarded as
the master of her existence, had, apparently, made no impression upon
her, her thoughts being no longer there, but her whole heart being
concentrated upon the being who had despised her, hated her, fled from
her, and who appeared there before her as in one of her painful dreams in
which he returned again to that very house where he had cursed her.
"There was," continued Varhely, slowly, "a martyr who could not raise her
head, who could not live, so long as that man breathed. First of all,
I came to her to tell her that she was delivered from a detested past.
Tomorrow I should have informed a man whose honor is my own, that the one
who injured and insulted him has paid his debt."
With lips white as his moustache, Varhely spoke these words like a judge
delivering a solemn sentence.
A strange expression passed over Zilah's face. He felt as if some
horrible weight had been lifted from his heart.
Menko dead!
Yet there was a time when he had loved this Michel Menko: and, of the
three beings present in the little salon, the man who had been injured by
him was perhaps the one who gave a pitying thought to the dead, the old
soldier remaining as impassive as an executioner, and the Tzigana
remembering only the hatred she had felt for the one who had been her
ruin.
Menko dead!
Varhely took from the mantelpiece the despatch he had sent from Florence,
three days before, to the Princess Zilah, the one of which Vogotzine had
spoken to Andras.
He handed it to the Prince, and Andras read as follows:
"I am about to risk my life for you. Tuesday evening either I shall be
at Maisons-Lafitte, or I shall be dead. I fight tomorrow with Count M.
If you do not see me again, pray for the soul of Varhely."
Count Varhely had sent this despatch before going to keep his appointment
with Michel Menko.
...................
It had been arranged that they were to fight in a field near Pistoja.
Some peasant women, who were braiding straw hats, laughed as they saw the
men pass by.
One of them called out, gayly:
"Do you wish to find your sweethearts, signori? That isn't the way!"
A little farther, Varhely and his adversary encountered a monk with a
cowl drawn over his head so that only his eyes could be seen, who,
holding out a zinc money-box, demanded 'elemosina', alms for the sick in
hospitals.
Menko opened his pocketbook, and dropped in the box a dozen pieces of
gold.
"Mille grazie, signor!"
"It is of no consequence."
They arrived on the ground, and the seconds loaded the pistols.
Michel asked permission of Yanski to say two words to him.
"Speak!" said Varhely.
The old Hungarian stood at his post with folded arms and lowered eyes,
while Michel approached him, and said:
"Count Varhely, I repeat to you that I wished to prevent this marriage,
but not to insult the Prince. I give you my word of honor that this is
true. If you survive me, will you promise to repeat this to him?"
"I promise."
"I thank you."
They took their positions.
Angelo Valla was to give the signal to fire.
He stood holding a white handkerchief in his outstretched hand, and with
his eyes fixed upon the two adversaries, who were placed opposite each
other, with their coats buttoned up to the chin, and their pistols held
rigidly by their side.
Varhely was as motionless as if made of granite. Menko smiled.
"One! Two!" counted Valla.
He paused as if to take breath: then--
"Three!" he exclaimed, in the tone of a man pronouncing a death-
sentence; and the handkerchief fell.
There were two reports in quick succession.
Varhely stood erect in his position; Menko's ball had cut a branch above
his head, and the green leaves fell fluttering to the ground.
Michel staggered back, his hand pressed to his left side.
His seconds hastened toward him, seized him under the arms, and tried to
raise him.
"It is useless," he said. "It was well aimed!"
And, turning to Varhely, he cried, in a voice which he strove to render
firm:
"Remember your promise!"
They opened his coat. The ball had entered his breast just above the
heart.
They seated him upon the grass, with his back against a tree.
He remained there, with fixed eyes, gazing, perhaps, into the infinite,
which was now close at hand.
His lips murmured inarticulate names, confused words: "Pardon--
punishment--Marsa--"
As Yanski Varhely, with his two seconds, again passed the straw-workers,
the girls saluted them with:
"Well, where are your other friends? Have they found their sweethearts?"
And while their laughter rang out upon the air, the gay, foolish laughter
of youth and health, over yonder they were bearing away the dead body of
Michel Menko.
....................
Andras Zilah, with a supreme effort at self-control, listened to his old
friend relate this tale; and, while Varhely spoke, he was thinking:
It was not a lover, it was not Menko, whom Marsa expected. Between the
Tzigana and himself there was now nothing, nothing but a phantom. The
other had paid his debt with his life. The Prince's anger disappeared as
suddenly in proportion as his exasperation had been violent.
He contemplated Marsa, thin and pale, but beautiful still. The very
fixedness of her great eyes gave her a strange and powerful attraction;
and, in the manner in which Andras regarded her, Count Varhely, with his
rough insight, saw that there were pity, astonishment, and almost fear.
He pulled his moustache a moment in reflection, and then made a step
toward the door.
Marsa saw that he was about to leave the room; and, moving away from the
marble against which she had been leaning, with a smile radiant with the
joy of a recovered pride, she held out her hand to Yanski, and, in a
voice in which there was an accent of almost terrible gratitude for the
act of justice which had been accomplished, she said, firmly:
"I thank you, Varhely!"
Varhely made no reply, but passed out of the room, closing the door
behind him.
The husband and wife, after months of torture, anguish, and despair, were
alone, face to face with each other.
Andras's first movement was one of flight. He was afraid of himself.
Of his own anger? Perhaps. Perhaps of his own pity.
He did not look at Marsa, and in two steps he was at the door.
Then, with a start, as one drowning catches at a straw, as one condemned
to death makes a last appeal for mercy, with a feeble, despairing cry
like that of a child, a strange contrast to the almost savage thanks
given to Varhely, she exclaimed:
"Ah! I implore you, listen to me!"
Andras stopped.
"What have you to say to me?" he asked.
"Nothing--nothing but this: Forgive! ah, forgive! I have seen you once
more; forgive me, and let me disappear; but, at least, carrying away with
me a word from you which is not a condemnation."
"I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget."
"I do not ask you to forget, I do not ask you that! Does one ever
forget? And yet--yes, one does forget, one does forget, I know it. You
are the only thing in all my existence, I know only you, I think only of
you. I have loved only you!"
Andras shivered, no longer able to fly, moved to the depths of his being
by the tones of this adored voice, so long unheard.
"There was no need of bloodshed to destroy that odious past," continued
Marsa. "Ah! I have atoned for it! There is no one on earth who has
suffered as I have. I, who came across your path only to ruin your life!
Your life, my God, yours!"
She looked at him with worshipping eyes, as believers regard their god.
"You have not suffered so much as the one you stabbed, Marsa. He had
never had but one love in the world, and that love was you. If you had
told him of your sufferings, and confessed your secret, he would have
been capable of pardoning you. You deceived him. There was something
worse than the crime itself--the lie."
"Ah!" she cried, "if you knew how I hated that lie! Would to heaven
that some one would tear out my tongue for having deceived you!"
There was an accent of truth in this wild outburst of the Tzigana; and
upon the lips of this daughter of the puszta, Hungarian and Russian at
once, the cry seemed the very symbol of her exceptional nature.
"What is it you wish that I should do?" she said. "Die? yes, I would
willingly, gladly die for you, interposing my breast between you and a
bullet. Ah! I swear to you, I should be thankful to die like one of
those who bore your name. But, there is no fighting now, and I can not
shed my blood for you. I will sacrifice my life in another manner,
obscurely, in the shadows of a cloister. I shall have had neither lover
nor husband, I shall be nothing, a recluse, a prisoner. It will be well!
yes, for me, the prison, the cell, death in a life slowly dragged out!
Ah! I deserve that punishment, and I wish my sentence to come from you;
I wish you to tell me that I am free to disappear, and that you order me
to do so--but, at the same time, tell me, oh, tell me, that you have
forgiven me!"
"I!" said Andras.
In Marsa's eyes was a sort of wild excitement, a longing for sacrifice, a
thirst for martyrdom.
"Do I understand that you wish to enter a convent?" asked Andras,
slowly.
"Yes, the strictest and gloomiest. And into that tomb I shall carry,
with your condemnation and farewell, the bitter regret of my love, the
weight of my remorse!"
The convent! The thought of such a fate for the woman he loved filled
Andras Zilah with horror. He imagined the terrible scene of Marsa's
separation from the world; he could hear the voice of the officiating
bishop casting the cruel words upon the living, like earth upon the dead;
he could almost see the gleam of the scissors as they cut through her
beautiful dark hair.
Kneeling before him, her eyes wet with tears, Marsa was as lovely in her
sorrow as a Mater Dolorosa. All his love surged up in his heart, and a
wild temptation assailed him to keep her beauty, and dispute with the
convent this penitent absolved by remorse.
She knelt there repentant, weeping, wringing her hands, asking nothing
but pardon--a word, a single word of pity--and the permission to bury
herself forever from the world.
"So," he said, abruptly, "the convent cell, the prison, does not terrify
you?"
"Nothing terrifies me except your contempt."
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