Alone in the solitary hut, by that hearth where but the night previous my heart had overflowed with such tenderness for her, I sat and nursed my grievances and brooded upon my wrongs till they grew to overpowering size and multiplied a thousandfold; and curious it is that what I thought of most was the bitter unfairness to me, the monstrous injustice of her contempt, at the very moment when I had meant to sacrifice my life and prospects to her. I told myself she did not love me, had never loved me, and worked myself to a pitch of frenzy over that thought. The memory of her announcement on this afternoon, the full knowledge of her deceit, the confession of her worse than burgher origin, weighed not now one feather-weight in my resentment. That I had cast from me as the least of my troubles; so can a man change and so can love swallow up all other passions! No doubt, I told myself, she was mocking me now in her own mind; no doubt she reckoned that her poor infatuated fool would come creeping back with all promptitude and beg for her smile. She should learn at last that she had married a man; not till I saw her down at my very feet would I take her back to my breast.
All next day I hunted in a bitter wind and in a bitter temper. There were clouds arising, my huntsmen told me, that looked very like snow clouds, and I must beware being snowed up upon the height. I was in the humour to welcome hardship and even danger, and so the whole day we rode after an old rogue boar and came back in darkness, at no small risk, empty handed, and the roughness of my temper by no means improved. Next day the weather still held up, and again I hunted. My men must have wondered what had come over their erstwhile genial master. Even my uncle could not have shown them a harder rule or ridden them with less consideration through the hardest of ways in the teeth of the most fiendish of winds.
That night, again, I sat and brooded by the leaping flame of the pine logs, but it was in a different mood. All my surly determination, my righteous indignation, had melted from me, leaving me as weak as water. Of a sudden in the closest heat of the chase there had come to me an awful vision of what I had done; a terrible swift realisation of the insult I had flung at the face of the woman who was indeed the wife of my heart and love. Oh, God, what had I done? I had sought to humble her—I had but debased myself! Through the whole day her words, “Is this your English honour?” had rung a dismal rhythm in my ear to the beat of my horse’s hoofs on the hard ground, to the call of the horn amid the winding rocks. The vision of her faded smile, of her dimple paled to a pitiable ghost, of her babyish drooping lip, and then of her white face struck with such scorn, haunted me to madness. I sickened from my food as I sat to my supper, and put down my cup untasted. And now as the wind whistled and the foreboded storm was gathering upon us, the longing to see her, to be with her, to kneel at her feet—yes, I would now be the one to kneel—came upon me with such violence that I could not withstand it.
I ordered my horses. I would listen to no remonstrance, no warning. I must return to Tollendhal, I said, were all the powers of darkness leagued against me. And return I did. It was a piece of foolhardiness in which I ran, unheeding, the risk of my life; but the Providence that protects madmen protected me that night, and Janos and I arrived in safety through a gale of wind and a fall of snow that might indeed have proved our death. All covered with rime I ran into the house and up to the door of her room. It was past midnight, and there I paused for a moment fearing to disturb her.
Two or three of the women came pattering down the passage to me and with expressive gestures addressed me volubly; one of the girls was weeping. I could not understand a word they said, but with a new terror I burst open the door of the bedroom. In this appalling dread I realised for the first time how I loved my wife!
The room was all empty and all dark; I called for lights. There was no trace of her presence; her bed had not been slept in. Like a maniac I tore about the house, seeking her, shrieking her name, demanding explanations from those to whom my speech meant nothing. I recked little of my dignity, little of the impression I must create upon my household! And at last János, his wrinkled face withered up and contorted with the trouble he dared not speak, gave me the tidings that the gracious lady had gone. She and her nurse had set forth on foot and left no message with any one.
What need is there for me to write down what I endured that black night? When I look back upon it it is as one may look back upon some terrible nightmare, some hideous memory of delirium. She had left me, and left me thus, without a word, and with but one sign. The cursed pedigree was still spread upon the table where we had quarrelled. I found upon it her wedding ring. A great cross had been drawn over the half-written entry of our marriage. That was all, but it was surely enough. The jewels I had given her were carefully packed in their cases and laid upon a table in her room. Her own things had been gathered together the day of her departure, which was the day I left her, and they had been fetched the next morning by some strange servant in an unknown travelling coach. More than this I have not been able to glean, for the storm has rendered the ways impassable; but it is rumoured that the Countess de Schreckendorf is dead, and that the Princess also has left the country.
I have no more to say. It is only two nights ago since I came home to such misery, and how I have passed the hours, what needs it to set forth? At times I tell myself that it is better so, that she is false and base, and that I were the poorest of wretches to forgive her. But at times again I see the whole naked truth before me, and I know that she was to me what no woman can be again. And my uncle looks down at me as I write, with a sour frowning face, and seems—strange it is, yet true—to revile me now with bitter scorn, not for having kept her, the roturière, but for having driven her from my castle!
“Thou hadst her; thou couldst not hold her,” he seems to snarl.