The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 39
"Would that be a very great misfortune, father darling?" said Antoinette with a roguish smile. "If ever I marry, you know, I shall have to leave you. And what would you do then? You would be driven to marry your cook!"
This sally put the old scientist in a good humour. His daughter was the charm and solace of his life, and though he would have liked to see her happily married, he did not know what he should do when she left him. On the way back to the hotel, Antoinette tried to find some edelweiss, but she was not able to clamber up to the high rocks on which this rare flower grows. Great therefore were her joy and surprise, on returning to the hotel, to find on the table of her room a wicker basket, full of edelweiss, and rarer Alpine flowers. Was it for her? Yes! For in the basket was a note addressed, "Mlle. Moriaz." Fluttering with excitement she opened it, and read:
"I arrived in this valley, disgusted with life, sad, and weary to death. But I saw you pa.s.s by my window, and some strange, new power entered my soul. Now I know that I shall live, and accomplish my work in the world. 'What does this matter to me?' you will say when you read these lines--and you will be right. My only excuse for writing to you in this way is that I shall depart in a few days, and that you will never see me, and never know who I am."
After getting over her first impression of profound astonishment, Antoinette laughed, and then gave way to curiosity. Who had brought the flowers? "A little peasant boy," said the hotel porter, "but I did not know him. He must have come from another village."
For some days, Mlle. Moriaz glanced at everybody she met, but she never found a single romantic figure in the crowd of invalids that sauntered about St. Moritz. If, however, she had always accompanied her father, who, growing stronger every day, began to go out on long geological excursions, she might have met a very picturesque and striking young man. For Count Abel Larinski now always followed M. Moriaz, and watched over him like a guardian angel. "Oh, if he would only fall down one of the rocks he is always hammering at, and break a leg, or even sprain an ankle!" said the gallant Polish n.o.bleman. "Wouldn't that be a lucky accident for me!"
All things, it is said, come to those who know how to wait. One afternoon M. Moriaz climbed up a very steep slope of crumbling rock, and came to a narrow gorge over which he was afraid to leap. He could not descend by the way he had come up, for the slope was really dangerous.
It looked as though he should have to wait hours, and perhaps, days, until some herdsman pa.s.sed by; and he began to shout wildly in the hopes of attracting attention. To his great joy, his shout was answered, and Count Larinski climbed up the other side of the gorge, carrying a plank, torn from a fence he pa.s.sed on his way. By means of this, he bridged the gorge, and rescued the father of Antoinette, and naturally, he had to accompany him to the hotel, and stay to dinner. As we have said, Count Larinski was a very handsome man; tall, broad-shouldered, with strange green eyes touched with soft golden tints. When he began to talk, simply and modestly of the part he had played in the last Polish Revolution against the despotic power of Russia, Antoinette felt at last that she was in the presence of a hero. And what a cultivated man he was! He played the piano divinely, and they pa.s.sed many pleasant evenings together. One night, the Count left behind him a piece of music, inscribed "Abel Larinski." "Surely," Mlle. Moriaz thought, "I have seen that writing somewhere!" Her breath came quickly, as with a trembling hand she took out of her bosom the letter which had been sent with the flowers, and compared the handwritings. They were identical.
_II.--A Conversation with a Dead Man_
Just a week afterwards, Count Larinski had a very serious conversation with his partner, Samuel Brohl. The strange thing about the conversation was that there was only one man in the room, and he talked all the time to himself. Sometimes he spoke in German with lapses into Yiddish, and any one would then have said that he was Samuel Brohl, a notorious Jewish adventurer. Then, recovering himself, he talked in Polish, and he might have been mistaken for a Polish gentleman. He seemed to be a man who was trying to study a difficult matter from two different points of view, and he undoubtedly had an actor's talent for throwing himself into the character of the n.o.bleman he was impersonating.
"Do you see," said Samuel Brohl, "fortune at last smiles upon us. The charming girl is ours. I have won her for you, dear Larinski, by the means Oth.e.l.lo used to charm the imagination and capture the heart of Desdemona. Do you not remember, my dear Count, the tales you used to tell us, when we were living together in a garret in Bucharest? How you fought in the streets of Warsaw against the Cossacks? How they tracked you through the snow-covered forest by the trail of blood you left behind you? Oh, I recollected it all, and I flatter myself that I related it with just that proud, sombre, subdued melancholy with which you used to speak of your sufferings."
"Do you think that she has really fallen in love with me?" asked Count Larinski. "I am afraid of her father. In spite of all that I have done for that famous man of science, he does not seem to fancy me as a son-in-law. Do you imagine it is merely because of my poverty? Or does he find anything wrong with me?"
This last question profoundly disturbed the soul of Samuel Brohl. What!
were all the skilful intrigues which he had spent four years in weaving, to come to nothing? For it was now four years since Samuel Brohl had entered into his strange partnership with the Polish n.o.bleman. Brohl himself was the son of a Jewish tavern-keeper in Gallicia. A great Russian lady, Princess Gulof, attracted by his handsome presence, and strange green eyes, had engaged him as her secretary and educated him.
He had repaid her by robbing her of her jewels and running off with them to Bucharest. There he had met Count Larinski, who, for more honourable motives, was also hiding from the Russian secret police. By representing himself as a persecuted anarchist, Brohl completely won the confidence of large-hearted, chivalrous Polish patriot.
"Ah, it was a lucky chance that brought us together!" said Samuel Brohl.
"If you had not met me, you would have been dead, four years ago, and clean forgotten. Do you remember your last instructions? After giving me every bit of money you had--a little over two thousand florins, wasn't it?--you showed me a box containing your family jewels, your letters, your diary, your papers, and you said to me: 'Destroy everything it contains. Poland is dead. Let my name die too!'
"But, my dear Count," continued Samuel Brohl, "how could I let a man of your heroic worth and romantic character be forgotten by the world? No, it was Samuel Brohl who died and was buried in an unknown grave. I have the certificate of his death. Count Abel Larinski still lives. It is true that he is so changed by all his sufferings that his oldest friends would never recognise him. His hair used to be black, it is now brown; his blue eyes have become golden green; moreover he has grown considerably taller. But what does it matter? He is still a handsome man, with a n.o.ble air and charming manner."
"Very well," said Count Larinski. "I must take the risk of meeting in Paris anyone who used to know me before my transformation. I will pack up and depart."
It was indeed a terrible ordeal which he had to face. By a strange irony of fate, all his skilfully conceived plans were imperilled at the very moment when his success seemed absolutely certain. As he had foreseen, M. Moriaz was not at first inclined to consent to the marriage; but Antoinette soon won her father over, and when Count Larinski called at their charming villa at Cormeilles, on the outskirts of Paris, he had as warm a welcome as the most ardent of suitors could desire.
"We must introduce you, my dear Count, to all our friends," said M.
Moriaz. "We are giving a party to-morrow evening for the purpose. Of course you will be able to attend?"
"Naturally," said Larinski, "I am looking forward with the greatest eagerness to making the acquaintance of all Antoinette's friends. The only thing I regret is that none of my old comrades in the great struggle against Russia can be at my side at the happiest moment of my life. Alas! many are working in fetters in the mines of Siberia, and the rest are scattered over the face of the globe."
_III.--Samuel Brohl Comes to Life_
But, though none of Count Larinski's friends was able to appear at Cormeilles, one of Samuel Brohl's old acquaintances came to the party.
On entering the drawing-room, he saw an old, ugly, sharp-faced woman, talking in a corner with Camille Langis. It was Princess Gulof. It seemed to him as if the four walls of the room were rocking to and fro, and that the floor was slipping from under his feet like the deck of a ship in a wild storm. By a great effort of will, he recovered himself.
"Never mind, Samuel Brohl," he said to himself. "Let us see the game through. After all she is very shortsighted, and you may have changed in the last four years."
Antoinette presented him to the Princess, who examined him with her little, blinking eyes, and smiled on him kindly and calmly.
"What luck! What amazing luck!" he thought. "She is now as blind as an owl. If only I can escape from talking to her, I'm safe."
Unfortunately, Antoinette asked him to take the Princess in to dinner.
He offered her his arm, and led her to the table, in absolute silence.
She, too, did not speak; but when they sat down, she began to talk gaily to the priest of the parish, who was sitting on her right. Her sight was so bad that she had to bend over her winegla.s.ses to find the one she wanted. Seeing this, Samuel Brohl recovered his self-confidence.
"She can't have recognised me," he thought; "my voice, my accent, my bearing, everything has changed. Poland has entered into my blood. I am no longer Samuel, I am Larinski."
Boldly entering into the general conversation, he related with a melancholy grace a story of the Polish insurrection, shaking his lion-like mane of hair, and speaking with tears in his voice. It was impossible to be more of a Larinski than he was at that moment. When he finished, a murmur of admiration ran round the table.
"Although we are mortal enemies, Count," said the Princess Gulof, "allow me to congratulate you. I hear you have won the hand of Mlle. Moriaz."
"Mortal enemies?" he said, in a low, troubled voice. "Why are we mortal enemies; my dear Princess?"
"Because I am a Russian and you are a Pole," she replied. "But we shall not have time to quarrel. I am leaving for London at seven o'clock to-morrow morning. What is the date of your wedding?"
"If I dared hope that you would do me the honour to attend it," he said, skilfully evading answering her question, "I might put it off until your return from England."
"You are too kind," said the Princess. "I would not think of delaying the happy event to which Mile. Moriaz so eagerly looks forward. What a beautiful girl she is! I dare not ask you what is her fortune. You are, I can see, an idealist. You do not trouble yourself with matters of money. But oh, you poor idealists," she whispered, leaning over him with a friendly air, "you always come to grief in the end!"
"How is that?" he said with a smile.
"You dream with your eyes open, my dear Count Larinski, and your awakening is sometimes sudden and unpleasant."
Then, advancing her head towards her companion, her little eyes flaming like a viper's, she whispered: "Samuel Brohl, I knew you all along. Your dream has come to an end."
A cold sweat broke out on the forehead of the adventurer. Leaning over the Princess, his face convulsed with hatred, he murmured:
"Samuel Brohl is not the sort of man to put up with an injury. Some years ago, he received two letters from you. If ever he is attacked, he will publish them."
Rising up, he made her a low bow, and took leave of Mlle. Moriaz and her father, and left the house. At first, he was utterly downcast, and inclined to give up the game; but as he tramped back to Paris in the moonlight, his courage returned. He had two letters which the Princess had written to him when she was engaged in Paris on a political mission of great importance, and they contained some amazing indiscretions in regard to the private lives of several august personages.
"No," he said to himself, "she will think twice before she interferes in my affairs. I can ruin her as easily as she can ruin me."
As a matter of fact, Princess Gulof was unable to sleep all that night.
She was torn between the desire for vengeance and the fear of reprisals.
_IV.--The Partnership is Dissolved_
The next morning, after breakfast, Mlle. Moriaz was surprised to receive a visit from Princess Gulof.
"I have come to see you about your marriage," said the Princess.
"You are very kind," replied Mlle. Moriaz, "but I do not understand...."