When the Princess Baratowska issued a command in such a tone and such a manner, she never failed to obtain a hearing. Even at this crisis her sons, almost involuntarily, obeyed her behest. Leo let fall the hand he had already raised to his sword-hilt, and Nordeck paused. The struggle in the strong man against his old furious violence was terrible to behold; but his mother's words had caused him to reflect a moment, and more was not wanting now to recall him to himself.
"Leo, there have been insults enough," he said, hoarsely. "One word, one single word more, and there will indeed be nothing left us but an appeal to arms. If yesterday you still had the right to accuse me, you have forfeited that right to-day. I love Wanda more than you can dream of; for you have not, as I have, fought for years against this passion–have not borne aversion, separation, mortal peril, only, after all, to attain to a conviction that love is stronger than you. But, even for Wanda's sake, I would not have given up duty and honour, would not have deserted my appointed post, would not secretly have abandoned the troops entrusted to me, and broken the oath of obedience I had sworn to my leader. All this you have done. Our mother shall decide which of us deserves the ignominious word you have flung at me."
"What is this, Leo?" cried the Princess, startled, a great fear taking possession of her. "You are here with your uncle's knowledge and consent? You had express leave from him to come to Wilicza? Answer me!"
A crimson flush dyed the young Prince's face, which up to this time had been so pale. He did not venture to meet his mother's eye, but turned upon Waldemar with sudden and furious defiance.
"What do you know of my duty? What matter is it to you? You are on the side of our enemies. I have stood my ground so far without flinching, and I shall be forthcoming when I am wanted; for that very reason, this matter between us must be quickly settled. I have not much time in which to reckon with you. I must go back to my men to-day, in the course of an hour or two."
"You will arrive too late," said Waldemar, coldly. "You will not find them."
Leo evidently did not grasp the meaning of the words he heard. He stared at his brother, as though the latter had been speaking in some foreign tongue.
"How long have you been absent from your command?" asked Waldemar again, this time with such terrible earnest that Leo half involuntarily made answer–
"Since yesterday evening."
"A surprise took place during the night. Your troops are routed, dispersed."
A cry broke from the young Prince's lips. He rushed up to the speaker. "It is impossible–it cannot be! You lie–you wish to scare me, to drive me away."
"No, it cannot be," said the Princess, with quivering lips. "You cannot have news of what happened out yonder during the night, Waldemar. I should have heard it before you. You are deceiving us; do not resort to such means."
Waldemar looked at his mother in silence for a few seconds–at the mother who preferred to accuse him of a lie than to believe in an error of his brother's. Perhaps it was this which made him so icy and pitiless, as he went on.
"An important post was confided to Prince Baratowski, with strict orders not to stir from it. He and his troops covered his uncle's rear. Prince Baratowski was absent from his post when the night attack was made–successfully. The leader was absent, and those who remained behind showed themselves unequal to their task. Taken by surprise, they offered but a weak resistance, totally without plan or method. A terrible slaughter followed. About twenty men took refuge on this territory, and fell into the hands of our patrols. Three of the fugitives lie, grievously wounded, over at the manor-farm. From their mouths I learned what had happened. All the rest are dispersed or destroyed."
"And my brother?" asked the Princess, calm, to all appearance, but with an awful, unnatural calm. "And the Morynski corps? What has become of them?"
"I do not know," replied Waldemar. "It is said that the victors advanced on W–. No news has reached us of what has taken place there."
He was silent. There was a pause of terrible stillness. Leo had hidden his face in his hands; a deep groan escaped his breast. The Princess stood erect, her eyes steadily fixed on him. She panted for breath.
"Leave us, Waldemar," said she at last.
He hesitated. His mother had always shown herself cold, often enough hostile to him. Here, on this very spot, she had confronted him as a bitter enemy at the time when the contest for supremacy at Wilicza had brought about an open rupture; but he had never yet seen her as she appeared at this moment, and he, this hard, relentless Nordeck, was seized with a feeling akin to anxiety and compassion, as he read his brother's doom in her face.
"Mother!" he said, in a low tone.
"Go," she repeated. "I have to talk with Prince Baratowski. No third person can come between us. Leave us alone."
Waldemar obeyed and left the room, but his heart swelled within him as he went. He was banished in order that the mother might talk to her son. If she were now about to let that son feel her anger, as she had so often testified to him her affection, he, the elder, was still a stranger, as he had ever been. He was told to go; he could not 'come between' his mother and brother, whether they met in love or hate. A great bitterness took possession of Nordeck's soul, and yet he felt that in this hour he was avenged–that his mother, who had ever denied to him her love, was punished now in her tenderest point, punished through her darling, the child she had idolised.
Waldemar closed the curtains behind him. He remained in the next room, so as to guard the entrance, come what might, for he was fully sensible of the danger to which Leo was exposed. Prince Baratowski had taken too open and decided a part in the insurrection not to be placed under a ban, even on this side the frontier; even here condemnation and imprisonment awaited him. He had imprudently come up to the Castle in broad daylight. The troop, which had escorted the wounded men, was still in the village, and at any moment a detachment, convoying the other fugitives to L–, might pass through Wilicza. It was necessary to take some precautionary measures.
Waldemar stood at the window, as far from the door as possible. He would hear nothing of the interview from which he had been shut out–and, indeed, it was impossible for any sound to penetrate the heavy velvet folds of the thick portières. But time pressed. More than half an hour had elapsed, and the two were still closeted together. Neither the Princess nor Leo seemed mindful of the fact that the latter's danger grew with every minute. Waldemar, at length, resolved to interrupt them. He went back into the drawing-room; but paused with astonishment on entering, for instead of the agitating scene he had expected to witness, he found the most absolute silence. The Princess had disappeared, and the door of her study, which had previously stood open, was now closed. Leo was alone in the room. He lay back in an armchair, his head buried in the cushions, and neither stirred nor in any way noticed his brother's appearance. He seemed utterly crushed and broken. Waldemar went up to him, and spoke his name.
"Rouse yourself," he said, in a low, urgent tone. "Take some thought for your safety. We are now connected with L– in a hundred ways. I cannot secure the Castle from visits which would be dangerous for you. Retire to your own rooms in the first instance. They will be thought empty and closed as heretofore, and Pawlick is trustworthy. Come."
Slowly Leo raised his head. Every drop of blood had receded from his face; it was grey with an ashy pallor. He fixed his large, vacant eyes on his brother, seeming not to understand him, but his ear caught the last word mechanically.
"Come where?" he asked.
"Away, in the first place, from these reception-rooms, which are accessible to so many. Come, I beg of you."
Leo rose in the same mechanical way. He looked round the salon with a strange expression, as if the familiar place were unknown to him, and he were trying to recall where he was; but as his eye fell upon the closed door of his mother's study, he shuddered.
"Where is Wanda?" he asked at length.
"In her room. Do you wish to see her?"
The young Prince shook his head. "No. She, too, would repulse me with horror and contempt. I don't care to go through it again."
He leaned heavily on the chair; his voice, usually so clear in its youthful freshness, sounded faint and exhausted. It was plain that the scene he had gone through with his mother had completely shattered him.
"Leo," said Waldemar, earnestly, "if you had not exasperated me so terribly, I should not have told you the news in that abrupt way. You drove me beyond bounds with that fatal word."
"Be satisfied; my mother has given it me back. It is I who am the traitor–the coward. I had to listen and be silent."
There was something most unnatural in this rigid, dull calm, contrasting so strongly with the young man's usual fiery impetuosity. That one half-hour seemed to have altered his whole nature.
"Follow me," urged Waldemar. "For the present you must remain at the Castle."
"No, I shall go over to W– at once. I must know what has become of my uncle and the rest."
"For God's sake, do nothing so rash," exclaimed the elder brother, in great alarm. "What, you would be mad enough to cross the frontier now, in broad daylight? It would be neither more nor less than suicide."
"I must," persisted Leo. "I know the place where I can cross. I found the way this morning, and I can find it a second time."
"And I tell you, you cannot get across. The sentinels on our side have been doubled since the morning, and over the border there is a treble line to pass. Orders are out to shoot down any one who does not give the watchword–and, in any case, you would arrive too late. At W– the fate of the day has been decided long ere this."
"No matter," broke out Leo, suddenly passing from his torpor to a state of wildest desperation. "There will still be some fighting–one other encounter, and I want no more. If you knew how my mother has maddened me with her fearful words! She must feel that if my men have been lost through fault of mine, I shall have to bear all the curse, the hell of knowing it. She should have been merciful, instead of … Oh, God! Yet she is my mother, and for so long I have been all in all to her!"
Waldemar stood by, deeply moved at this outbreak of grief. "I will call Wanda," he said at last. "She will …"
"She will do the same. You do not know the women of our people. But, for that very reason"–a sort of gloomy triumph gleamed through the young Prince's despair–"for that very reason, you need hope nothing from them. Wanda will never be yours, never, even though she could step over my dead body to you, though she may love you, and die of her love. You are the enemy of her people. You help in the work of oppression–that will decide your sentence with her. No Polish woman will be your wife–and it is well that it is so," he went on, with a deep-drawn sigh. "I could not have died in peace with the thought of leaving her in your arms; now I am at ease on that point. She is lost to you as to me."
He would have hurried away, but suddenly stopped, as though a spell had fallen on him. For a second he seemed to waver, then he went slowly, hesitatingly, to the door which led to the Princess's study.
"Mother!"
All was still within.
"I wanted to say good-bye to you."
No answer.
"Mother!" The young Prince's voice shook in its eager, heart-rending entreaty. "Do not let me go from you thus. If I may not see you, say at least one word–one single word of farewell. It will be the last. Mother, do you not hear me?"
He was kneeling before the barred door, pressing his brow against it, as though it must open to him. In vain; the door remained close, and no sound was heard within. The mother had no parting word for her son; the Princess Baratowska no pardon for his error.
Leo rose from his knees. His face was rigid again now, only about his lips there quivered an expression of wild and bitter anguish, such as never in his young life could he have experienced before. He spoke no word, but silently took up the cloak which he had cast aside on his entrance, threw it round his shoulders, and went to the door. His brother attempted to hold him back. Leo thrust him aside.
"Let me go. Tell Wanda–no, tell her nothing. She does not love me; she has given me up for you. Good-bye."
He rushed away. Waldemar stood a few minutes in utmost perplexity, doubtful as to what course he should adopt. At last he seemed to have taken a resolution. He passed quickly through the adjoining room, to the Princess's ante-chamber. There he found the house-steward, Pawlick, with a troubled, anxious face. Directly the old man had heard of the arrival of his sick countrymen, he had hurried to them, and had been the first to hear the terrible news. On returning to the Castle, debating in his own mind as to how he should communicate it to his mistress, he suddenly beheld Prince Baratowski, standing before him at the entrance. Leo gave the alarmed old servitor no time to unburthen himself, but merely passed him with a hasty inquiry for his brother, for Countess Morynska, and disappeared in his mother's apartments. Pawlick could not tell whether his young master were informed of the late events or not; but when, some time later, the unhappy boy rushed past him unheedingly, one look at his face was sufficient to show him he knew all.
"Pawlick," said Waldemar, coming in, "you must follow Prince Baratowski immediately. He is about to commit an act of the maddest rashness, which will cost him his life, if he really carries out his project. He means to cross the frontier, now, in daylight."
"God forbid!" exclaimed the old man, horrified.
"I cannot keep him back," continued Nordeck, "and I dare not show myself at his side. That would only increase his danger; yet, in his present frame of mind, he must have some one with him. I know you have still a good seat in the saddle, in spite of your years. The Prince is on foot. You will be able to come up with him before he reaches the frontier, for you know the direction he will take–the place whence the secret communication with the insurgents is kept up. I fear it is in the neighbourhood of the border-station."
Pawlick did not reply. He dared not answer in the affirmative, but at this moment courage to deny the truth failed him. Waldemar understood his silence.
"It is just about there that the most vigilant watch is kept," he cried, hastily. "I heard it from our officers. How my brother contrived to get through this morning, I know not. He will not succeed a second time. Hasten after him, Pawlick. He must not attempt to cross there; anywhere else rather than there! He must wait–conceal himself until dusk, in the forester's station itself, if there is no other way. Inspector Fellner is there; he is on my side, but he will never betray Leo. Hasten!"
He had no need to speak so urgently. Mortal anxiety on his young master's account was depicted on the old man's face.
"In ten minutes I shall be ready," said he. "I'll ride as though for my own life."
He kept his word. Barely ten minutes later he rode out of the Castle yard. Waldemar, who was standing watching at the window above, drew a breath of relief.
"That was the only thing to be done. He may perhaps reach him even yet; and so, at all events, the worst will be averted."
Four, five hours elapsed, and yet no tidings. Generally, when there was work astir on the frontier, messages came fast and frequent. All the couriers on their way to L–, passing through Wilicza, would halt in the village with their news, for a few minutes, at least. To-day these communications seemed suddenly cut off. Waldemar paced uneasily up and down his room, trying to think of Pawlick's prolonged absence as a favourable sign. The old man had certainly come up with Leo, and would stay by him so long as the young Prince remained on German soil. Perhaps they were both lying in hiding in the forester's house. At length, late on in the afternoon, the steward appeared. He came in hastily, without waiting to be announced.
"Herr Nordeck, I must beg of you to come over to the manor-farm," he said. "Your presence there is urgently needed."
Waldemar looked up. "What is it? Has anything happened to one of the wounded?"
"No, not that," said Frank, evasively; "but I must entreat you to come yourself. We have had news from the border. There has been a decisive engagement out at W–. A regular battle was fought this morning against the Morynski corps."
"Well, with what issue?" asked Nordeck, in extreme suspense and anxiety.
"The insurgents have suffered a terrible defeat. It is said there had been treason at work, that they were taken by surprise. They defended themselves desperately, but were forced to succumb to superior numbers at last. The survivors are scattered to all points of the compass."
"And their leader, Count Morynski?"
The steward looked down.
"Is he dead?"
"No; but seriously wounded, and in the enemy's hands."
"So that, too, is added!" Waldemar murmured. He himself had never been on intimate terms with his uncle; but Wanda!–he knew with what passionate love she clung to her father. Had he fallen in the fight, she would have borne it better than to know him exposed to such a fate, and exposed to it through _whom_! Who was to blame for the defeat of that corps, surprised by an attack from which it believed itself protected by the cover of Prince Baratowski's advance-guard?
Waldemar summoned up all his self-command. "Who brought the news? Is it trustworthy, or mere report?"
"It was the major domo, Pawlick, who brought it. He is over yonder …"
"At your house? He brings you the news, though he knows that I have been waiting hours here for his return. Why did he not come up to the Castle?"
Frank's eyes sought the ground once more. "He dared not. Her Highness or the young Countess might have been at the window. They must first be prepared. Pawlick is not alone, Herr Nordeck."
"What has happened?" cried Waldemar, a cold presentiment stealing over him.
"Prince Baratowski has fallen," said the steward, in a low voice. "Pawlick brings the corpse."
Waldemar was silent. He laid his hand over his eyes, and stood for a few seconds motionless; then, collecting himself with an effort, he hurried away over to the manor-farm, Frank following him. At the steward's house, Pawlick met him. He looked up timidly at the lord of Wilicza, whom he, the Princess's faithful servant, had been wont to consider as an enemy; but Nordeck's face showed him what he had already felt that morning, that it was no foe, but his young master's own brother who stood before him, and all the old man's composure broke down at the sight.
"Our Princess!" he wailed; "she will never survive it, nor the young Countess either!"
"You did not reach the Prince in time?" asked Waldemar.
"Oh yes, I came up with him in time, and delivered your warning message. He would not listen, he was bent on crossing in spite of everything; he thought the forest thickets would protect him. I implored, I kneeled to him, and asked him if he would let himself be shot down by the sentries like some hunted animal. That told at last. He consented to wait until evening. We were just considering whether we should venture into the forester's station, when we were met by …"
"By whom? By a patrol?"
"No, by the farmer of Janowo. We had no treachery to fear from him, he has always been faithful to the cause. He had been called on to provide relays for the troops, and was just coming back from the frontier. He had heard say that a battle was being fought near W–, which was not yet decided; that the Morynski corps had been surprised, but was defending itself desperately. It was all over then with reason and reflection. Our young Prince had only one thought–how to get to W– and throw himself into the thick of the fight. We could not hold him back. He would listen to nothing then. He had left us about half an hour, when we heard shots fired; two at first, one after the other, then half a dozen all at once; and then …" The old man could say no more, his voice failed him, and a torrent of hot tears burst from his eyes.
"I have brought the body," he said, after a pause. "The cavalry captain, who was here yesterday, obtained it for me from the set out yonder. They could do nothing with a dead man. But I did not dare to take it straight up to the Castle. We have laid him in there for the present."
He pointed to a room on the other side of the passage. Waldemar signed to him and the steward to remain behind, and went in alone. Grey and dim the waning twilight fell on the lifeless form of the young Prince. Silently his brother stood by, gazing down upon him. The beautiful face, which he had seen so radiant with life and happiness, was rigid now and cold; the flashing dark eyes were closed; and the breast, which had swelled so high with hope and dreams of liberty, now bore the death-wound. If the hot wild blood of youth had erred, it had also made atonement, as it gushed forth from that shattered breast, staining the clothing with dark, ominous patches. But a few hours before all the passions of youth had raged in that inanimate frame. Hatred and love, jealousy and ardent thirst for revenge, despair at the terrible consequences of an act committed in reckless haste–all were past, frozen into the icy stagnation of death. One trace alone remained on the still, pale face. Stamped thereon so deeply, that it seemed indelibly graven for ever and ever, was that look of anguish which had quivered round the son's lips when his mother refused him a last farewell, when she let him go from her without a word of forgiveness. All else had faded out of sight with life itself; but this one grief Prince Baratowski had taken with him into his death-struggle; it had been with him in the last glimmer of consciousness. The shadow of the grave itself could not shroud it from view.
Waldemar left the room, sombre and mute as he had entered it; but those who waited for him without, glancing at his troubled face, could see that he had loved his brother.
"Bring the body up to the Castle," he said. "I will go on first–to my mother."