"I tell you I saw them led out under my very windows to be shot. Two and two they marched, with their heads erect, and their gait as haughty as if they were leading the assault. Thirteen of them in all, and the oldest not five-and-forty. Oh! woe to the Fatherland!--the best blood in Hungary was shed on that fearful day,--the gallant, the true-hearted, who had risen at the first call, and had been the last to fail. Taken with arms in their hands, forsooth! What should be in a gentleman's hands but arms at such a time? Oh, that I had but been a man!" The girl's dark eyes flashed, and her beautiful chiselled nostril dilated as she threw her head back, and stamped her little foot on the floor. None of your soft-eyed beauties was Valèrie de Rohan, but one who sparkled and blazed, and took your admiration fairly by storm. Those who are experienced in such matters affirm that these are the least dangerous of our natural enemies, and that your regular heart-breaker is the gentle, smiling, womanly woman, who wins her way into the citadel step by step, till she pervades it all, and if she leaves it, leaves desolation and ruin behind her. But of this I am incapable of giving an opinion; all I know is, Valèrie grew soft enough as she went on.
"I knew every man of them intimately; not one but had been my father's guest--my poor father, even then fined and imprisoned in Comorn for the manly part he had played. Not one of them but had been at our 'receptions' in the very room from the windows of which I now saw them marching forth to die; and not one but as he passed me lifted his unfettered hand to his head, and saluted me with a courtly smile. Last of all came Adolphe Zersky, my own second cousin, and the poor boy was but nineteen. I bore it all till I saw him; but when he passed under my very eyes, and smiled his usual light-hearted smile, and waved his handkerchief to me, and pressed it to his lips--a handkerchief I had embroidered for him with my own hands--and called out blithesomely, as though he were going to a wedding, 'Good-morning, Comtesse Valèrie; I meant to have called to-day, but have got a previous engagement,' I thought my heart would break. He looked prouder than any of them; I hardly think he would have been set free if he could. He was a true Hungarian. God bless him!--I heard the shots that struck them down. I often dream I hear them now. They massacred poor Adolphe last of all--he retained his sang-froid to the end. The Austrian officer on guard was an old schoolfellow, and Adolphe remarked to im with a laugh, just before they led him out, 'I say, Fritz, if they mean to keep us here much longer, they really ought to give us some breakfast!'
"Oh, Mr. Egerton, it was a cruel time. I had borne the bombardment well enough. I had seen our beautiful town reduced to ruins; and I never winced, for I am the daughter of a Hungarian; but I gave way when they butchered my friends, and wept--oh, how I wept! What else could I do? We poor weak women have but our tears to give. Had I but been born a man!"
Once more Valèrie's eye flashed, and the proud, wild look gleamed over her features; while a vague idea that for same days had pervaded my brain began to assume a certain form, to the effect that Valèrie de Rohan was a very beautiful woman, and that it was by no means disagreeable to have such a nurse when one was wounded in body, or such a friend when one was sick at heart. And she treated me as a real friend: she reposed perfect confidence in me; she told me of all her plans and pursuits, her romantic ideas, and visionary schemes for the regeneration of her country, for she was a true patriot; lastly, she confessed to a keen admiration for my profession as a soldier, and a tender pity for my wounds. Who would not have such a friend? Who would not follow with his eyes such a nurse as she glided about his couch?
It is useless to attempt the description of a woman. To say that Valèrie had dark, swimming eyes, and jet-black hair, twisted into a massive crown on her superb head, and round arms and white hands sparkling with jewels, and a graceful floating figure, shaped like a statue, and dressed a little too coquettishly, is merely to say that she was a commonplace handsome person, but conveys no idea of that subtle essence of beauty--that nameless charm which casts its spell equally over the wisest as the weakest, and which can no more be expressed by words than it can be accounted for by reason. Yet Valèrie was a woman who would have found her way straight to the hearts of most men. It seems like a dream to look back to one of those happy days of contented convalescence and languid repose. Every man who has suffered keenly in life must have felt that there is in the human organisation an instinctive reaction and resistance against sorrow, a natural tendency to take advantage of any lull in the storm, and a disposition to deceive ourselves into the belief that we are forgetting for the time that which the very effort proves we too bitterly remember. But even this artificial repose has a good effect. It gives us strength to bear future trials, and affords us also time for reflections which, in the excitement of grief, are powerless to arrest us for a moment.
So I lay on the sofa in the drawing-room at Edeldorf, and rested my wounded leg, and shut my eyes to the future, and drew a curtain (alas, what a transparent one it was!) over the past. There was everything to soothe and charm an invalid. The beautiful room, with its panelled walls and polished floor, inlaid like the costliest marquetry, a perfect mosaic of the forest; the light cane chairs and brocaded ottomans scattered over its surface; the gorgeous cabinets of ebony and gold that filled the spaces between the windows, reflected in long mirrors that ran from floor to ceiling; the gems of Landseer, reproduced by the engraver, sparkling on the walls--for the Hungarian is very English in his tastes, and loves to gaze through the mist at the antlered stag whom Sir Edwin has captured in the corrie, and reproduced in a thousand halls; or to rest with the tired pony and the boy in sabots at the halting-place; or to exchange humorous glances with the blacksmith who is shoeing that wondrously-drawn bay horse, foreshortened into nature, till one longs to pat him;--all this created a beautiful interior, and from all this I could let my eyes wander away, through the half-opened window at the end, over the undulating park, with its picturesque acacias, far, far athwart the rich Hungarian plain, till it crossed the dim line of trees marking the distant Danube, and reached the bold outline of hills beyond the river, melting into the dun vapours of an afternoon sky.
And there was but one object to intercept the view. In the window sat Comtesse Valèrie, her graceful head bent over her work, her pretty hands flitting to and fro, so white against the coloured embroidery, and her soft glance ever and anon stealing to my couch, while she asked, with a foreigner's empressement, which was very gratifying, though it might mean nothing, whether I had all I wanted, and if my leg pained me, and if I was not wearying for Victor's return from the chasse?
"And you were here years ago, when I was almost a baby, and I was away on a visit to my aunt at Pesth. Do you know, I always felt as if we were old friends, even the first day you arrived with Victor, and were lifted out of the carriage, so pale, so suffering! Oh, how I pitied you! but you are much better now."
"How can I be otherwise," was my unavoidable reply, "with so kind a nurse and such good friends as I find here?"
"And am I really useful to you? and do you think that my care really makes you better? Oh! you cannot think how glad I am to know this. I cannot be a soldier myself, and bear arms for my beloved country; but I can be useful to those who have done so, and it makes me so proud and so happy!"