Under a Charm. Vol. I

Waldemar gave a start almost of dismay.

"So soon? September promises to be fine, why not spend it here?"

"I cannot, on Wanda's account. I can hardly expect my brother to do without his darling any longer. It was very unwillingly, and only by my especial wish, that he consented to leave her behind. I promised him in return that I would myself take her to Rakowicz."

"Rakowicz is not far from Wilicza, is it?" asked Waldemar, quickly.

"Only two or three miles; about half as far as Altenhof from this."

The young man was silent. He looked anxiously through the window again: the shore seemed to have an unusual interest for him to-day.

"Speaking of Wilicza," said the Princess, negligently, "you will be taking possession of your property soon, I suppose, now that you are of age. When do you think of going there?"

"It was fixed for next spring," said Waldemar, absently, still absorbed by his outdoor observations. "I wanted to stay on with my uncle through the winter; but all that will be changed now, for I mean to go to the University."

His mother bent her head approvingly.

"I can but applaud such a resolution. I have never disguised from you that the essentially practical education you have received at your guardian's has been, in my opinion, too one-sided. For such a position as yours, some higher culture is indispensable."

"I should rather like to see Wilicza first, though." Waldemar made a dash at his object. "I have not been there since my childhood, and … You will make a long stay at Rakowicz, will you not?"

"I do not know," replied the Princess. "For the present I shall certainly accept the refuge offered by my brother to me and to my son. Time will show whether we must make a permanent claim on his generosity."

Young Nordeck looked up. "Refuge? Generosity? What do you mean, mother?"

The Princess's lips twitched nervously, the only sign she gave that the step she was about to take was one painful to her. With this exception her face remained unmoved as she answered–

"Hitherto I have concealed the state of our circumstances 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 pricked 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 assert 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 shore 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 shore; 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 entitled 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 flashing eyes. "Do you not see, or will you not see, that Waldemar is in love with your niece–that he worships 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!"