"Then you, too, have never been in the garden?"
"Yes," she answered, blushing deeply. "I have often been there with Wanda and the burgomaster"s daughters, and occasionally alone. The custodians know me, but they said nothing, and I was weak enough to be glad of it. I fancied I was superior to the others. But I have atoned!
How I felt when I recognized--"
"By that scene in this house," he said, interrupting her. "I have only known since yesterday what an impression it must have made upon you, and a wrong one. Fraulein Judith! Believe me, this gulf--"
She listened intently, but he came to a stand. No, he could not, he ought not, lie.
"Well, the gulf?"
"Is not so deep, after all. But why talk about it? Your brother, then, is in Heidelberg!"
A sad smile played around her lips. "You are an honest man, Count Baranowski. Once before this evening you alone had the courage to speak the truth. Now I understand why I never heard of the beautiful Esther from either my father or Raphael or Bergheimer."
"And why not?"
Her face glowed. "She was an outcast."
"A hard judgment! Just think how Casimir loved her."
"I do not believe it. Perhaps I ought not to talk about it. It does not seem quite proper. But yet why should I be silent? If he had really loved her, he would have made her his wife; or if this was not possible, since he was a king and she a Jewess, then he should have kept away from her, and not brought her to shame--the worst of fates.
For if her name is ever spoken among us Jews, it would be as disgraced."
"I do not know about that," he answered. "Any one with human feelings ought not to condemn her so mercilessly, even had Casimir not been a king. Suppose she loved him with all her heart?"
Judith shook her head.
"You do not believe it?
"I don"t know;" she was confused, but conquered herself, and continued bravely: "At least I have never heard of such love among ourselves. My parents, for instance; no one could have found a happier pair, yet they were introduced to each other at their betrothal. And this is generally the case. I think we must be different in this regard from other races."
"Do you really believe so?" he exclaimed. "For then nature herself has formed the gulf. But I think you are mistaking cause for effect.
Isolation and the clinging to ancient usages have brought your people to it. When I see you standing before me, I think--"
"Please do not talk of me," she implored, in such a piteous tone that he became silent instantly.
"How quiet!" said a laughing voice during the unpleasant pause. It was Lady Anna.
The following day, as Judith entered the dining-room at the dinner-hour, her father came to meet her. "A letter from our dear ones!" he exclaimed, "from Breslau. They have journeyed that far without pausing, but they propose to remain there a week before crossing Saxony and Bavaria to the Neckar. Only think, Bergheimer has found our old pupil from Mayence in Breslau. He is a banker, named Berthold Wertheimer, and Bergheimer cannot laud him enough. I have written to Raphael, and told him of the generous conduct of our count.
How much he and the others of our co-religionists have misjudged the man!"
"What conduct?" inquired Judith.
"Have you not heard of it yet? The whole town is talking of it. The sign-board at the entrance of the castle gardens has been removed, and he has notified the heads of the congregation in a very pleasant letter. I suppose you will wish to add something to this letter to Raphael. He sends you his love, and says: "Judith"s promise at our parting to remember our last conversation makes me very happy." What does he mean by that?"
"Nothing," she murmured. "Only childishness!"
"I thought so; but you are surely not well, my child? You are so pale!"
CHAPTER IV.
It was three weeks later; a mild, bright October day. The landscape is scantily blessed with that beauty which in more favored countries delights the heart of man. Limitless plains surround us on all sides, from which gently swelling billows of earth occasionally elevate themselves above the dead level, only to sink back into it again.
Brooks and rivers roll their muddy, sluggish waters between miry banks, from their birthplace in the distant mountains to the lower and drearier steppe country, while here and there a streamlet is sucked up by the thick turf, or dammed into a pond, whose broad, turbid mirror reflects the reed of the small boggy islands and the pale, misty blue of the firmament.
The small towns, where the Jews, the outcast chosen people (chosen, it would seem, for unspeakable miseries), live huddled together in crowded groups of wretched huts, are poor and dirty. More pitiful still are the villages, where the Ruthene, sullen and fierce, ploughs the land under the lash of the Pole.
Here and there are tiny plantations of birch-trees; but one may wander over heath for miles and miles, where little grows but the juniper and nothing blooms but the heather.
The winter is fearful, when the storms from the north drive the snow across the vast plains. Short and scanty is the spring, and parching the heat of summer; but the autumn, gentle and bright, revives the hearts of the poor and refreshes the barren land. The heath takes on a vivid crimson blush, the woods a darker tinge; the deep blue of the sky is intensified by the greater purity of the atmosphere; and even the stubble-field becomes a thing of beauty, with the transparent spider-webs floating over it like a bridal veil.
The soothing calm of the autumnal day had its influence upon Count Agenor, as he rode slowly homeward over the steppe, the air vibrating with the music of the noonday bells. He started off early in the morning, after a sleepless night, during which he had been tossed and shaken as by spirits of evil.
That had come to pa.s.s which was inevitable after he had yielded to the tempter and gone to the Wiliszenski recital. Since then, thanks to the ingenuity of the magistrate, he had often met the beautiful Jewess alone, and knew now he had no need to ask her whether she comprehended that sensation which Christians call love.
Since yesterday, too, he felt he no longer required the medium so obnoxious to him; for Judith had been in the park alone, had fallen on his breast; his arm had clasped her youthful form, his lips had dared to touch hers. And she had promised to go again, and he knew she would keep her word.
True, he did not expect to attain his desire to-day; weeks might elapse before he wakened the pa.s.sion in her which raged in his veins. But the hour must come when she would be his. Yet this certainly did not make him happy. Quite the contrary. Never before had he felt so sad.
For, as she had said, he was an honest man. The handsome Uhlan officer had enjoyed almost everything that the beauty of woman could offer him.
But on one point his conscience was clear. He had enticed no wife from her husband"s side; he had brought no girl to misery. This was to be partly attributed to his exquisite sense of the requirements of his n.o.ble birth, partly to the subjection he was still under to his late father"s wishes.
This clever and good man had early recognized that, in spite of many n.o.ble qualities, his son was lacking in that which was most important for the head of an impoverished branch of a n.o.ble house; that is, energy of character and the power to say "no." So, with the best of motives, he had striven to maintain and increase his influence over him. It was princ.i.p.ally owing to this that Agenor had always so scrupulously held himself above reproach, until the death of his father made him the head of the family. Never had a lie pa.s.sed his lips. But now he had lied and cheated, and if he wished to attain his desires he must continue to do so.
The young count had won Judith because she thought him n.o.ble and knightly, and free from prejudices against her nation. She trusted entirely in his love and honor. One word about the gulf that divided them, one intimation of the impossibility of making her his wife, and she was lost to him forever. As yet she had said nothing to him about the future--but if she did? And even if she did not, and he kept silence, or was only ambiguous in his speech, would it rest any less lightly on his conscience?
But, aside from all this, Agenor did not merely l.u.s.t after the Jewess, but loved her with his whole heart. He often questioned himself as to how it happened, but never found an answer. Certainly her beauty had at first inflamed his senses; but that was not all. She was so pure, so n.o.ble in her pride, so touching in her submission, so pitiable in the way she felt her position.
But this could not explain the mystery which had taken possession of his heart. "Perhaps," he sometimes thought, "it is only pity, or horror of the fate towards which I am leading her, if I continue so weak."
This fate seemed gloomy enough to him. "She is not a girl who would accommodate herself to the position of a kept mistress, or would be shrewd enough to save her reputation by marriage with another man."
Through the anxious nights he thought, with horror, "She cannot survive it! You will be her murderer!" With feverish pulses he paced up and down his bedroom till, quite worn out, he sank again into his chair.
But the voice of his conscience kept repeating, through the stillness of the night, "Her murderer! if your weakness is not overcome."
Could he give her up? It seemed impossible; more impossible than ever, now when every nerve of his body tingled with feverish, almost painful desire. Could he make her his wife? "Rather die!" he said to himself; and, as he sat there brooding over it, there seemed but one thing equal to the disgrace of placing Judith Trachtenberg"s name in the line of his pedigree, and that was the committing a base action.
The dawn found him absorbed in these confused, antagonistic ideas. He had his horse saddled, and galloped away across the heath, without rest, without aim; then dropped the reins, and, as he rode slowly back over the plain, from which the morning mists were rising, he became more composed in body and mind. He had viewed things too gloomily in the silence of this painful night, and he tried to strengthen himself in this opinion by a thousand subterfuges. But there was one idea that he could not coax himself to tolerate--that of a n.o.bleman taking to his arms a girl of inferior birth, and she, after years of separation, meeting with a new love and a husband.
Still, though Agenor could not make her his wife, he could make this proud, beautiful creature the companion of his life; and was this such a disgraceful position that she would reject it with scorn? She would not, if she loved him as the old chroniclers said Esther did the king.
He would be perfectly frank, and tell her she could count on his love and fidelity, but not on his hand. He resolved upon this as he rode home across the glowing heather. He would neither commit a crime against her nor violate his conscience; and should she tear herself away from him, he must find strength to endure it. If any one doubts the possibility of renunciation, let him go to the moorlands in autumn to learn it.
With a pacified conscience and filled with good resolves, he reached home. As he entered the courtyard he frowned angrily. The magistrate"s britzska stood before the door. His interviews with this man were growing more and more painful; each time Wroblewski became more insolent and more familiar, and, in his present frame of mind, nothing could be more unpleasant than a meeting with his "faithful aid."
He met his unwelcome guest in the breakfast-room. "You see," shouted the latter, "I make myself quite at home; I have even ordered Jan to put a plate for me."
Agenor nodded, sat down, and invited him by a wave of the hand to help himself. "And to what am I indebted for this pleasure?" he asked, abruptly.