Bela heard the galloping hoofs of the horses, and ran with his fleet feet, quick as a fawn's, down the grand staircase and out on to the terrace, where the winds of the north were driving with icy cold and furious force over a world of snow. With his golden hair streaming in the blast, he strained his eyes into the gloom of the avenues below, but the animals had vanished from sight. He turned sadly and went into the Rittersaal.
'Is that my father who has gone?' he said in a low voice to Hubert, who was there. The old servant, with the tears in his eyes, told him that it was. A groom had come to him to say that their lord had made ready a sledge and driven away without a word to any one of them, while the night was falling apace.
Bela heard and said nothing; he had his mother's power of silence in sorrow. He climbed the staircase silently, and went and listened in the corridor where his father had waited and watched so long. His heart was heavy, and ached with an indefinable dread. He did not seek Gela. It seemed to him that this sorrow was his alone. He alone had heard his father's farewell words; he alone had seen his father weep.
All the selfishness and vanity of his little soul were broken up and vanished, and the first grief he had ever known filled up their empty place. He had adored his father with an unreasoning blind devotion, like a dog's; and this intense affection had been increased rather than repressed by the indifference with which he had been treated.
His father was gone; he felt sure that it was for ever: if he could not see his mother he thought he could not live. To the mind of a child such gigantic and unutterable terrors rise up under the visitation of a vague alarm. Abroad in the woods, or under any bodily pain or fear, he was as brave as a lion whelp, but he had enough of the German mystic in his blood to be imaginative and visionary when trouble touched him. The sight of his father's grief had shaken his nerves, and filled him with the first passionate pity he had ever known. A man so great, so strong, so wonderful in prowess, so far aloof from himself as Sabran had always seemed to his little son, to be so overwhelmed in such helpless sorrow, appeared to Bela so terrible a thing that an intense fear took for the first time possession of his little valiant soul. His father could slay all the great beasts of the forests; could break in the horse fresh from the freedom of the plains; could breast the stormy waters like a petrel; could scale the highest heights of the mountains. And yet someone—something—had had power to break down all his strength, and make him flee in wretchedness.
It could not be his mother who had done this thing? No, no! never, never! It had been done because she was lying ill, helpless, perhaps was dead.
As that last dread came over him he lost all control over himself. He knew what death was. A little girl he had been fond of in Paris had died whilst he was her playmate, and he had seen her lying, so waxen, so cold, so unresponsive, when he had laid his lilies on her little breast. A great despair came over him, and made him reckless what he did. In the desperation of terror blent with love, he started up and ran to the door of his mother's apartments. It yielded to his pressure; he ran across the ante chamber and the dressing-rooms, and pulled aside the tapestry.
Then he saw her; seated at the further side of the great bedchamber. There was a feeble grey light from the western sky, to which the casements of the chamber turned. It was very pale and dim, but by it he saw her lying back, rigid and colourless, the white satin, the dusky fur, the deep shadows gathered around her. There was that in her look and in her attitude which made the child's heart grow cold, as his father's had done.
She was alone; for she had bade her women not come unless she summoned them. Bela stood and gazed, his pulses beating loud and hard; then with a cry he ran forward and sprang to her, and threw his arms about her.
'Oh, mother, mother, you are not dead!' he cried. 'Oh, speak to me; do speak to me! He is gone away for ever and ever, and if we cannot see you we shall all die. Oh, do not look at me so! Pray, pray, do not. Shall I fetch Lili?—-'