CHAPTER III.

“IF THOU WERT KIND AS THOU ART FAIR----”

Leaving his brother to contemplate the beauties of nature under the shade of the pines, Caerleon walked on, finding his progress much more rapid than it had been when Cyril was his companion, and arrived before very long at a point from which he was able to descry the huntsman’s cottage, built under the shelter of a towering crag. Pausing for a moment to determine which of two paths now before him would be more likely to lead him directly towards it, he heard footsteps above him, and presently a lady came in sight round a turning in the right-hand path. Tall and slight, she wore a plain tweed dress and felt hat, and the trim neatness of her appearance struck Caerleon as most refreshing after the alternate dowdiness and magnificence of many of the Austrian belles he had come across. It did not occur to him at first that this stately lady could be the hoydenish little Scythian schoolgirl of whom he was in search, but presently it struck him as unlikely that two young ladies would be wandering alone in the mountains on the same day, and he advanced to meet the girl.

“Excuse me,” he said, taking off his cap, “but have I the honour of speaking to Mdlle. O’Malachy?”

“I am Nadia O’Malachy,” she replied, looking at him with an expression in which he read surprise not wholly unmixed with resentment. He noticed that her eyes were large and grey, and that her wavy dark hair grew low on her brow. She spoke English readily, but with a slight foreign accent.

“I must ask you to forgive me for stopping you in this way,” said Caerleon, wishing to disarm her evident suspicion, “but the fact is that Madame O’Malachy was very anxious about you, and I promised to see you safely back to the hotel.”

“My mother sent you after me?” she said quickly. “It was quite unnecessary. Pray continue your walk.”

“The object of my walk is achieved,” said Caerleon. “I have only to return.”

“I have told you,” said the girl, with angry dignity, “that I do not desire your company.”

Caerleon laughed inwardly. The walk seemed to promise some amusement. “And I regret, mademoiselle,” he said, “that having promised to see you home, I must do it. I will walk behind you, if you prefer it.”

“Oh no,” said Mdlle. O’Malachy, pointing to the path beside her with an imperious gesture, “I do not wish to insult you. You consider yourself a gentleman. I took you for one.”

She walked on by his side, apparently expecting a retort, but he maintained a resolute silence, although secretly convulsed by the contrast between the intention she expressed and the words which followed it. Suddenly, to his surprise, she turned to him.

“I beg your pardon. I ought not to have said that. I was wrong.”

“Pray don’t apologise,” said Caerleon. “I am here only as your mother’s messenger, and I quite understand that you find my presence disagreeable, and that I can’t expect you to consider my feelings.”

“I do not consider them,” she retorted. “I apologised because it was right to do it when I had been rude.”

“As a punishment to yourself?” asked Caerleon, much amused.

“Certainly not,” she answered. “As a means of self-discipline.”

“I see--and a punishment to me?”

“By no means. Why should I punish you? What you do has no interest for me. Oh, I beg your pardon. That was rude again.”

“Not at all. But I am interested in your self-disciplinary system. Do you mind explaining it a little more fully? I think I ought to hear something about it, you know, since I have to suffer from it.”

“Now she’s going to flare up again,” he thought, as his companion turned and glared at him, but the anger faded out of her eyes as he looked at her in calm expectancy.

“It is a just rebuke,” she said, in a low voice. “I will tell you, although I do not care to speak of myself, but it will be a good punishment for me, as you say. My godmother, with whom I have always lived until lately, used to encourage me to self-denial when I was a child, saying that one could never rise to the height of a great renunciation unless one trained oneself for it by means of constant smaller ones. As I grew older, the principle seemed to me so excellent that I have followed it in other things.--When you were little, did you never hold your hand in the flame of the candle to try and find out whether you could be a martyr?”

“No,” said Caerleon; “I have often done it, but I am afraid it was because I was told not to.”

“Well, I have done it--often. And so with other things. I discovered in myself a strong tendency to insincerity, and fearing to yield to it, I made it a duty never to let politeness or the desire to please keep me from saying what I thought. How dreadful it would be to fail in truthfulness at some great crisis on account of a long course of petty hypocrisies! But I found that this made me appear rude, and I am very proud, and did not like to confess myself in the wrong. So here was another opportunity for self-discipline, and I resolved to let nothing prevent me from instantly asking pardon of any one I had offended in this way.”

“I see--without regard to that person’s feelings. And may I ask whether Madame--your godmother--pursues the same system?”

“My godmother is Princess Soudaroff. No; she does not need it, she is too good. Her life is given up to working among the poor. Her house is an asylum for the wretched. She loves every one, is kind to every one.”

“And she has impressed her views upon you, has she? Did I understand you to say that she brought you up?”

“Yes; she pitied the life I led with my parents, and she adopted me as her own. She gave me everything I could need, and provided excellent teachers for me; but, best of all, she allowed me to help her in her work. Sometimes we lived at her country house, and worked among the peasants, and sometimes in Pavelsburg, and then our work lay among the poorest of the poor. Oh, what a life it was! She cares for body and soul alike. The hospitals and prisons are visited, Bible-classes, sewing-classes held; drunkards reached, young girls away from home befriended and taken care of. To be in trouble or in loneliness--that gives you claim enough upon my Princess.”

“I didn’t know that you went in for all this kind of thing in Scythia,” said Caerleon. “It’s not quite one’s idea of the Greek Church, somehow.”

“But we are Evangelicals; we are separated,” said the girl, eagerly. “They say we are heretics,--Non-conformists, I think you call it in England,--and they persecute us. My godmother has often been in danger of exile, but something has always happened to save her. She has no fear at all.”

“Only for you, perhaps. I suppose the reason you are here is that she sent you away when danger threatened. You didn’t leave her, I am sure.”

“Not of my own free will, never! My mother sent for me; but not on account of any danger. She gave me up willingly enough when I was of no use to her, but now she thinks that I am old enough to be of assistance. Assistance to her!”

“I daresay it is better for you, after all, than your life with Princess Soudaroff,” said Caerleon, judicially. “We can’t always have what we like, you know, and it doesn’t look well for a girl to be unable to get on with her mother.”

“How dare you say that?” she cried, turning upon him again. “What do you know of my circumstances? Do you think I have not tried, longed, _agonised_ to honour my father and mother? but I will not help them in their work. Don’t talk to me of the look of things until you know something about them. Oh, I beg----”

“Excuse me,” said Caerleon, quickly, “but if you have to apologise to me again, do you mind turning your head away, and doing it in a whisper? The effect on yourself would be the same, and it would spare my feelings.”

“You are a scoffer!” said Mdlle. O’Malachy, sharply.

“I hope not; but I am afraid that your apologies will get on my nerves.”

“Your nerves?” she looked him up and down, and then laughed. “You don’t suffer from nerves?”

“You don’t know how wearing it is to be always looking out for apologies--and getting them.”

“But why should it affect your nerves? You are English, you do not drink absinthe?” She was still looking him over in the light of a curious medical problem, and her tone was full of interest.

“I hope you don’t intend to catechise me upon my private vices,” said Caerleon, hastily. “What I said was only in joke. I don’t know what nerves are.”

“A joke?” Evidently it had not occurred to her that any one could take such a liberty on such short acquaintance. “But I do not even know your name, sir.”

“And is it necessary to know a man’s name before he may make a joke in conversation with you?” asked Caerleon, laughing, but she did not hear him.

“I know you must be one of the English noblemen who are staying in the hotel, and you cannot be the brother--he is small and delicate, my father said so. You are, then, the pretender?”

“The pretender?” asked Caerleon in astonishment.

“I beg your pardon--I should have remembered that the word has a worse meaning in English than in French. The aspirant, I should say--the aspirant to the throne of Thracia?”

“Well, I was, a year ago; or rather the throne of Thracia aspired to me. I refused it, you know.”

“I remember; I was sorry. But you are going to accept it now?”

“Now? I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t a thought of it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Here? in Hungary? To visit my friend, Count Temeszy.”

“But you are on your way to Thracia?”

“I assure you I am not. What can have put it into your head?”

“Every one thinks so. My parents quite believe it--and so do others.”

“Then they are mistaken, that’s all.”

“But why do you stay here, since Count Temeszy is away? You leave soon?”

“Not that I know of. Why should we?”

“Sir,” her voice was very earnest, “will you be angry if I give you a warning? If there is no special reason to keep you here, do not remain. My father is not--is not a good friend for young men.”

“A card-sharper, of course!” was the thought that darted through Caerleon’s mind. “It’s good of her to tell me, poor girl!” Aloud he added, “Thank you for your warning, mademoiselle. Perhaps you would be so kind as to mention to your father that I don’t carry the revenues of Thracia about with me.”

“You won’t understand,” cried the girl, passionately; “it is nothing about money. Consider what political disturbances your acceptance of the crown might bring about, and that there are those who will suspect you of desiring to provoke them so long as you remain in this part of Europe, however innocent your motives may be. I remember that when the crown was offered to you last year, the affair was much discussed in our circle. I myself heard Count Wratisloff say in my godmother’s drawing-room, ‘Here is the peace of Europe hanging upon the caprice of a boy!’”

“I am much obliged to him,” said Caerleon, grimly.

“Now I have offended you again. I am sorry. Count Wratisloff is a man who speaks a little emphatically sometimes, but he had no intention of being unkind. He prayed for you himself at our prayer-meeting the next day.”

“Very kind of him, I’m sure. I suppose he prayed that I might refuse the crown?”

“Oh no. How could he pretend to regulate the course of public affairs? If the time is come for a great European war, who can prevent it? He prayed that all might happen for the best.”

“Then you and your circle are fatalists, mademoiselle?”

“Surely not. ‘What will be, will be’--that is what the fatalists say, is it not?” she looked at him inquiringly. “But what we say is, ‘What will be, must be for the best.’”

“But why pray about it, then?” asked Caerleon, interested by this frank confession of faith.

“That we may be brought to believe that it is so when we cannot see it,” she answered, in a low voice; and although Caerleon would willingly have pursued the subject, a turn in the path here brought them in sight of Cyril, and there was no further opportunity for private conversation. During the rest of the way home they spoke chiefly of temperance work, Mdlle. O’Malachy recounting incidents from her experience among Princess Soudaroff’s _protégés_, and Caerleon replying with reminiscences of the various abortive attempts at restrictive legislation which he had supported in his House of Commons days, while Cyril listened and smiled with lofty contempt.

“Here we are,” he said at last, with undisguised relief, “and here is your father coming to meet us, mademoiselle.”

“Naughty girl!” cried the O’Malachy, shaking his fist playfully at his daughter. “I hope you’ve given trouble enough to us and to these gentlemen? There’s your mother waiting for you on the balcony. Go and settle ut with her yourself. Me lord, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you and to Lord Cyrul for your goodnuss to-day. Me wife is very nervous, but you have been most kind in relieving her anxiety. May I hope that you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner this evening? Madame O’Malachy will like to thank you herself.”

“You are very kind,” said Caerleon. “We were hoping to call this afternoon----”

“Call!” cried the O’Malachy in high contempt. “Would you talk about calling in this wildernuss? Come to-night, and we’ll be delightud to see you.”

The invitation was accepted with suitable gratitude, and the O’Malachy returned to his wife and daughter, while Caerleon and Cyril sought their own quarters. Lunch was rather a silent ceremony, for Caerleon felt an unaccountable aversion to detailing to his brother his conversation with Nadia O’Malachy.

“Not going out again, surely?” said Cyril, when the meal was over, and Caerleon took up his cap from the window-seat.

“I want a smoke.”

“Well, there are no ladies here, thank goodness! Sit down and smoke like a reasonable human being.”

“No, I want a walk.”

“I should have thought you had had walking enough for one day,” grumbled Cyril, but Caerleon was already outside, and he was obliged to address the remainder of his complaint to his cigar. “He walks with her all morning, does he? and then goes out again to think about her? I ought to have foreseen this. That’s the drawback of the kind of life we’ve been leading for a man of Caerleon’s stamp. He’s scarcely spoken to a lady since the Governor died, and now the first decent-looking girl he meets bowls him over at once. What a blessing it is that I’m not susceptible!”

Caerleon’s walk lasted for over two hours, and Cyril, with a telegram in his hand, was awaiting him impatiently when he returned.

“Back at last!” he said. “Do see what this is. It may be to summon us home about something, or it may be from Temeszy.”

“It is from Temeszy,” said Caerleon, opening it. “The steward must have telegraphed to him yesterday as soon as we were gone. He has business in Paris which will keep him there for more than a month, but he wants us to take up our quarters at the castle, ride his horses, hunt his wolves, or whatever else in the way of game there may be about, and so on--in fact, use the house as if it was our own.”

“Well, what do you think?” asked Cyril.

“If you ask me,” said Caerleon, slowly, “I think that we might as well have stayed at Llandiarmid as bury ourselves out there without Temeszy or any one to speak to.”

“I see,” said Cyril. “You mean to stay on here for the present, then?”

“Yes, I think we might.”

“But you forget that Mr or M. O’Malachy is coming back. What is one to call a fellow who has an Irish father and a Sarmatian mother, and has been brought up abroad? But anyhow, he is coming, and we have got his room.”

“I forgot that,” said Caerleon, rather crestfallen. “We must find out to-night when he is expected. There’s no need to leave until he comes.”

Once more Cyril drew dark inferences from his brother’s words, but he made no remark, and at the appointed time they presented themselves in Madame O’Malachy’s _salon_, where a most cordial welcome awaited them. They were the only guests, and it fell naturally to Caerleon to escort his hostess to the table and to sit beside her, a privilege for which he was not as grateful as he ought to have been, for he could hear Cyril and Nadia wrangling busily throughout the meal. Guessing that his brother was treating Mdlle. O’Malachy to a little _fin de siècle_ philosophy, he had no difficulty in imagining the light in which it would strike her, and his anxiety to hear what she was saying in reply distracted his attention a little from her mother, who conversed vivaciously in French, addressing him as “_mon cher marquis_” in a way that reminded him vaguely of the Molière he had read when at school.

“I am longing that you should know my son,” she observed at last. “He is of the same age as your brother, and I have a presentiment that they will be friends. Louis is a true enthusiast, and it is this trait in his character that has caused us no small anxiety. My husband has perhaps told you that until a short time ago the unfortunate boy was an officer in the Scythian army. Would you believe that he has resigned his post in order to join the Thracian revolutionists?”

“Indeed?” said Caerleon, much interested; “and has he joined them yet?”

“No, but he intends to do so as soon as possible. Imagine his throwing away all his prospects like this! It is madness.”

“Come now, Barbara,” put in the O’Malachy from his end of the table. “Louie is a very decent feller, and he may make his way yet. You wouldn’t believe that I meself began life as a leader in the Sarmatian insurrection, would you?” he asked, turning to the young men with an air of extreme innocence.

“No, indeed,” said Caerleon, dimly conscious that Cyril started, and pursed up his lips as though to whistle.

“It’s true, then. When I left Ireland as a young man, after a little difficulty with the Government connectud with the troubles of ’48, I took, though it is not I should say ut, a prominent part in the Sarmatian affair, and yet here I am now, a colonel in the Scythian army. I learned wisdom, you see. The Scythians were not so bad as I had thought them, and the Sarmatians were a good deal worse, and so ut happened that I changed sides, perhaps with a little persuasion of another kind addud on,” and he glanced waggishly at his wife, who laughed rather nervously, and remarked that the candles were burning low.

“But have you never visited England since 1848?” asked Caerleon. “Surely there can be no danger of your being arrested now? I hope I may have the pleasure of welcoming you at Llandiarmid yet.”

“Yes,” said Cyril, “if you began as a Sarmatian revolutionist and end as a Scythian officer, we may hope to see you in a comfortable berth in the Constabulary yet, O’Malachy.”

“Ah, but there’s another businuss since ’48,” said the O’Malachy. “You know Balster, the feller that was made Irush Secretary two or three years ago? When I heard he had got the Irush Offus, I sent um a present of a box of cigars, the brand I always smoke meself--he had admired them greatly when I met um at Ludwigsbad some time before. Well, would you believe ut? Sure ’twas a mighty queer piece of work--the police opened the box when ut got to Doblun, and they found dynamite in ut. So then they accused me of trying to blow the man up, and I daren’t set foot in me native land. I was sorry, of course; but how was ut me fault?”

“Do you mean to imply,” asked Caerleon, “that the police took the cigars out and put dynamite instead of them?”

“All I can say,” replied the O’Malachy, spreading out his hands with a deprecatory gesture, “is that I sent cigars, and that the police fellers found an infernal machine. You must make what you can of ut.”

“Oh, don’t harp on the subject, Caerleon,” put in Cyril, seeing that his brother was not satisfied. “Can’t you see that it’s very naturally disagreeable to the O’Malachy? When do you expect your son, O’Malachy?”

“In two or three days, Lord Cyrul. I am greatly pleased that he will be so fortunate as to meet you here.”

“Oh, but we shan’t be here,” said Caerleon, seizing his opportunity. “We must not forget that we are trespassing on your kindness all the time we occupy these rooms. We will clear out to-morrow, if you like.”

“That you won’t,” returned the O’Malachy. “Why, when I was hearing in the town yesterday that your friend was in Parrus, and knew that you would be wanting to come back here, I went straight to the landlord, and got um to clear out another room for Louie, without any fuss at all. So now the place is plenty big for both of us, and I will think that you are offended with us if you turn out before you have seen all you want of the neighbourhood.”

“Since you are so kind,” said Caerleon, “we will certainly stay on for the present.” Here a frown from Cyril reached him, and an almost imperceptible “Don’t!” and he added rather lamely, “That is, if you are quite sure we are not inconveniencing you--or Miss O’Malachy.”

“My dear marquis,” said Madame O’Malachy, “let me assure you that your society is already doing my husband far more good than the waters here. As for my daughter, how should you inconvenience her?”

“Oh no; why should I need two rooms?” asked Nadia, gloomily, and Caerleon could get nothing but monosyllables from her during the remainder of the evening. When the guests were gone, however, she turned to her parents as she was leaving the room.

“You may be interested to know,” she said in her clear hard voice, “that Lord Caerleon has no intention of going to Thracia, nor of accepting the Thracian crown. I am not in the habit of helping you in your work, but I thought that this piece of news might possibly lead you to alter your plans a little.”

“Many thanks, my daughter,” said Madame O’Malachy, while her husband laughed softly. “In what way are our plans to be changed?”

“Surely you can leave Lord Caerleon and his brother alone, now that you know this, and not seek to involve them in any danger?”

“Mademoiselle,” said the O’Malachy, rising and standing with his back to the stove, “may I remind you of one small fact? We have not, as you remark, the honour of your assistance, and I regret to say that this necessarily deprives you of any pleasure you might derive from sharing our confidence. Whatever plans your mother and I may have in view, we do not feel inclined to risk their reaching Lord Caerleon by communicating them to you.”

Nadia’s face grew crimson, but she threw her head back proudly as she bade her parents good-night and left the room.

“There is a little fool for you!” said Madame O’Malachy with lazy contempt.

“What did you mean by making signs to me at dinner?” asked Caerleon of Cyril, when they were alone together in his room.

“Any one with ordinary common-sense would have seen that I meant you not to accept the O’Malachy’s offer, but to go on at once, away from here.”

“But why in the world? You said nothing of this before.”

“Because I did not know who he was, but at dinner it suddenly flashed upon me that he was the hero of a story which I heard when I was in Pavelsburg. Old Dostelsky, who helped in putting down the Sarmatian rebellion, told it to two or three of us in the smoking-room one night.”

“Something spicy, I suppose? Come, let us hear it.”

“Well, it seems that the O’Malachy was, as he said, one of the Sarmatian leaders, and he gave the Scythians so much trouble that they were ready to go any lengths to get rid of him. They tried fair means and they tried foul--open attacks, and bribes, and attempted assassination, but it was all no good. At last--I don’t know whether it was a lucky guess, or whether something showed them his weak point--they thought of working upon his susceptibilities. They had a decoy handy, Mdlle. Barbara Platovska, a young Sarmatian lady, brought up in Paris and trained in Scythia. She had done a good deal of work for them already, and she was as plucky and as wily as she was beautiful, so that she was a valuable instrument. Well, they sent her off with a free hand, and a pardon for O’Malachy, signed by the Emperor, in her pocket, together with a promise of employment for him in the Scythian army. Mdlle. Barbara lays her plans, and presently, travelling by night through a forest where the rebels had one of their camps, she falls into their hands. There was some talk of shooting her at once, for her face was unmistakable, and they all knew what harm she had done to their cause; but she singled out O’Malachy, and threw herself at his feet and demanded his protection. You wouldn’t find many Irishmen who would refuse to help a pretty woman in such a plight, and O’Malachy pulled her behind him, and told the rest to come on. They nearly got to blows, but at last they agreed to give the girl some form of trial, and they carried her off to their headquarters. Naturally O’Malachy kept close to her on the way, and she used her opportunity so well that before the journey was over he was head and ears in love with her. He soon discovered that the rest were determined to kill her, and the very first night that he had the chance he helped her to escape from the ruined tower in which she was imprisoned, and escorted her back to her friends. Up to that time he fully meant to go back and give himself up to his comrades, but now was Mdlle. Barbara’s chance. She never let him alone on that journey, until she had got him to promise to come in with her and surrender. He must have been pretty sick of the Sarmatians altogether--they were rather a shady lot, always quarrelling and fighting among themselves--and there was nothing to be made out of their job, and he was in love as well, and he thought she loved him, so he consented. He got his pardon and his post in the Scythian army, and he meant to get Mdlle. Barbara. But when he went to claim her she met him as she had done the other men she had betrayed, turned her back on him and told him that no traitor should ever be her husband. But she had tried that trick once too often. He had her against the wall with a revolver to her head in an instant, and then and there he made her promise to marry him. And that wasn’t all, either. He took her to the table, still with the revolver pointed at her, and made her write out and sign an account of the scene. Then he let her go, but she married him the next week. You see he could have ruined her with that paper. If it had once come to her employers’ ears that she had lost her nerve, and yielded to threats, they would never have made use of her again. Perhaps, too, the O’Malachy’s style of wooing pleased her, or she may have had a soft place for him in her heart all along. At any rate, they married, and went into partnership, and you see what a happy couple they are.”

“But how did the story get about?” asked Caerleon. “Surely it was to the interest of both of them to keep it quiet.”

“Oh, the O’Malachy let it out one evening when he had been dining--told it as rather a fine thing, I believe.”

“The old beast! to go and give his wife away like that,” remarked Caerleon, with righteous indignation.

“Well, after all, she doesn’t show up so very much worse than he does in the matter,” said Cyril. “They are rather a well-matched pair. You know what their present manner of life is?”

“Oh yes, I know. Card-sharping.”

Cyril stared. “Not unless you are speaking in parables, and alluding to political cards. They are spies of the Scythian Government, _agents provocateurs_, and so on. The O’Malachy is supposed to be travelling for his health, a pursuit which enables him to be pretty constantly on the move, and turn up just where his presence is required. Oh, he’s a fine old fellow! Wasn’t that rich about Balster and the infernal machine? It was an awful sell for him, though. Sorry! of course he was sorry--that Balster didn’t open it himself, and get blown up. That’s one of his little ways of employing his leisure hours, and the whole family are really otherwise engaged than in health-seeking, very much so.”

“Not all of them. Miss O’Malachy is not.”

“Well, you certainly know more about her than I do, so I can’t say. You have a queer taste in fathers-in-law, though.”

“Don’t talk rot,” said Caerleon, indignantly. “I won’t hear the girl slandered, but I can’t even make out whether I like her or not. She says the most appalling things in the coolest voice, and then apologises.”

“Well,” said Cyril, getting near the door, “when a man goes out to think about a girl, and wastes two hours of his valuable time in trying to decide whether he likes her or not, and then comes back without having found out, it looks as though he was pretty far gone already.” And Cyril quitted the room in a hurry, dexterously avoiding the boot which Caerleon hurled at him.