CHAPTER XXI.

SUNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

The poplar trees on KAśrAśs Island are clothing themselves with green, while yellow and blue flowers dot the turf. The whole island is a veritable little paradise. It forms the summer residence of a family of wealth and taste. On the broad veranda, which is shaded from the morning sun by a damask awning, stands a cradle hung with dainty white curtains; and in the cradle sleeps a little baby. In a willow chair at the foot of the cradle sits the mother, in a white, lace-trimmed wrapper, her hair falling in natural curls over her shoulders and bosom. A young man sits before an easel opposite the lady, and paints her miniature, while at the other end of the veranda a three-year-old boy is engaged in coaxing a big Newfoundland dog to serve as pony to his little master.

This young mother and these children are A-dAśn Baradlay's wife and children, and the young man is his brother JenA'. Without JenA' to bear her company, the young wife might lose her reason, thinking of her absent husband, imagining his perils, and waiting weeks for any news from him. JenA' knows how to dispel her fears: for every anxiety he has an antidote, and when all else fails he rides to the next town and brings back cheering tidings--in which, alas, there may be but few words of truth.

The young artist is not satisfied with his picture. He has a decided artistic bent and talks of going to Rome to study; but this likeness that he is now trying to paint baffles him. It seems to lack something; although the features are correctly drawn, the whole has a strange and unnatural look.

"BA(C)la, come here, little nephew."

The boy left the Newfoundland dog and ran to his uncle.

"Look here, look at this picture and tell me who it is."

The little fellow stared a moment at the painting with his great blue eyes. "A pretty lady," he answered.

"Don't you know your mamma, BA(C)la?" asked the artist.

"My mamma doesn't look like that," declared the boy, and ran back to his four-footed playmate.

"The likeness is good," said Aranka encouragingly; "I am sure it is."

"But I am sure it is not," protested JenA', "and the fault is yours. When you sit to me you are all the time worrying about A-dAśn, and that produces exactly the expression I wish to avoid. We want to surprise him with the picture, and he mustn't see you looking so anxious and sad."

"But how can I help it?"

Alas, what tireless efforts the young man had put forth to cheer up his sister-in-law! How carefully he had hidden his own anxious forebodings and predicted an early triumph for the cause of freedom, when his own heavy heart told him it could not be.

A faint cry from the wee mite of humanity in the cradle diverted the mother's attention, and as she bent over her baby and its cry turned to a laugh, the young artist caught at last on her face the expression he had been waiting for,--the tender, happy look of a fond mother.

* * * * *

In the castle at Nemesdomb the moon was shining brightly through the windows. It fell on the family portraits, one after another, and they seemed to step from their frames like pale ghosts. Brightest and clearest among them all was the likeness of the man with the heart of stone.

Back and forth glided a woman's form clad in white. One might have thought a marble statue from the family vault had left its pedestal to join the weird assembly in the portrait gallery. The stillness of the night was broken from time to time by a sigh or a groan or a stifled cry of pain. What ghostly voices were those that disturbed the quiet of that moonlit scene?

The whole Baradlay castle had been turned into a hospital by its mistress and opened to the warriors wounded in the struggle for freedom; and it was these poor soldiers whose cries of pain now broke the stillness of the night. Two physicians were in attendance; the library was turned into a pharmacy and the great hall into a surgeon's operating-room, while the baroness and her women spent their days picking lint and preparing compresses.

Standing in the moonlight before her dead husband's portrait, the widow spoke with him. "No," said she firmly, "you shall not frighten me away. I will meet you face to face. You say to me: 'All this is your work!' I do not deny it. These groans and sighs allow neither you nor me to sleep. But you know well enough that bloodshed and suffering were inevitable; that this cup of bitterness was, sooner or later, to be drained to the bottom; that whoever would enjoy eternal life must first suffer death. You ask me what I have done with your sons. The exact contrary to what you bade me do. Two of them are fighting for their country; one of the two is wounded, and I may hear of his death any day. But I repent not of what I have done. I await what destiny has in store for us, and if I am to lose all my sons, so be it! It is better to suffer defeat in a righteous cause than to triumph in an unrighteous one."

She left the portrait and sought her own apartment, and the moonlight crept on and left the haughty face on the wall in darkness.