After this revelation, Nadia kept her eyes open, and arrived before long at the conclusion that very few people came to the village, with the exception, of course, of the emissaries of M. Drakovics, who were not charged with messages of one kind or another for her parents. It seldom happened that a letter arrived by post, or was openly delivered; but pedlars and travelling showmen, artisans wandering in search of work, and roaming gipsies, each and all seemed to have a secret understanding with the O’Malachy and his wife. Sometimes a sign, scarcely perceptible save to the initiated, would convey the needed information—sometimes, Nadia felt sure, letters were brought; but she never saw one change hands, nor came upon any trace of it afterwards. It was evident that any documents which might prove compromising were immediately and punctiliously burnt, and this precaution it was that baffled the men employed by M. Drakovics, who had no means of distinguishing the remains of burnt paper among the ashes raked out from the great stove.
Another curious fact which Nadia discovered about this time was the secret of the means by which her parents held their necessary consultations without attracting the attention of the spies by prolonged conferences, or wasting a portion of their working hours at night. Coming upon them one day in the sunny spot where they usually sat, she found her mother, as she thought, reading aloud in French; but the first words that reached her ear scarcely sounded as though they were drawn from the novel on Madame O’Malachy’s knee.
“You see what Louis says: ‘Our friend X. has come over at last. His Majesty’s promises were too attractive. He engages to bring all his employés with him when the word is given.’ This despatch must be sent on immediately. It will show that there are others upon whom we can depend beside the city guard. ‘“Adorable Erminie!” s’écria Léonide, en se précipitant——’ What do you want, my daughter?”
Nadia delivered the message with which she was charged from the landlord, and retired, and it was some time before she lighted on the meaning of this curiously disjointed sentence. It occurred to her at last, in one of those flashes of insight which sometimes present to the mind in a moment the solution of a mystery long pondered over in vain, that the adventures of Léonide and Erminie were merely a blind, and that when Madame O’Malachy was supposed by those who were set to watch her to be reading to her husband in French, she was in reality discussing with him the progress of their schemes. No thought of profiting by this discovery to penetrate into her parents’ plans occurred to Nadia, and in any case the idea of acting as a spy would have been abhorrent to her; but even had she been anxious to probe more deeply the mystery of M. X. and his employés, her father and mother kept their secrets as carefully concealed from her as from the Thracian police-agents themselves. If the subject of Thracia was mentioned when she was in their company, it was merely as the text of a bantering discourse, conducted with more or less of good-humour on the O’Malachy’s part, but punctuated with bitter reproaches on that of his wife. Neither of them could forgive Nadia for her folly in refusing Caerleon, when the acceptance of his proposal would have raised the whole family to affluence and distinction, although Madame O’Malachy resented much more strongly than her husband the loss of the material benefits promised by the match. His easy-going nature accepted serenely enough the change in the position of affairs, and the necessity of plotting against the man he had hoped to welcome as a son-in-law; but both he and his wife were careful to guard against giving Nadia any inkling of the consequences which might ensue to Thracia and its king from her refusal. Although they never engaged in their mysterious work until she was out of the way, they would not run the risk of stimulating her curiosity by showing any eagerness to get rid of her, and allowed her to join them or not just as she pleased. But the certainty of finding herself either reproached or laughed at for the foolish way in which she had mismanaged what Madame O’Malachy called “l’affaire Carlino” made her only anxious to shun their society; and during the first few days of their stay at Witska she roamed about the garden alone, finding nothing to do but to recall the past, and feeling that she had nothing in the whole world to which to look forward. This being the case, it is not surprising that she caught herself one day wishing that she had not forbidden Caerleon so absolutely ever to renew his suit, but the discovery shocked and horrified her extremely.
“All my life I have been preparing to make a stand at some great crisis,” she said to herself; “and now that it has come, I am giving way already. I must find something to do. Of what use is it to train myself to be a martyr, if I cannot bear a week’s loneliness?”
She summoned all her resolution to enable her to meet this unexpected demand, and reviewed the state of affairs. With mingled shame and disgust she realised that she had been cherishing the vague thought that it was scarcely worth while to take up any settled work at present, and that this was owing to a half-hope that something might still happen to set things right and render her sacrifice unnecessary. It was a bitter disappointment to her to find that she could be so false to her dearest principles, and her first impulse was to place her determination beyond the possibility of change. As a step in the desired direction, she tore up the letter she had been about to despatch to her godmother, Princess Soudaroff, and wrote another. She knew that of late her letters had been somewhat short and superficial, telling all the trivial pieces of news she could find, but never touching on the all-important subject which had engrossed the minds of her parents, from the moment of their first sight of Caerleon, to that of her parting from him at Bellaviste. It is true that both Caerleon and Cyril had found a casual mention in the earlier letters written from Janoszwar; but as time went on both names, and especially that of the elder brother, had dropped out of sight in a way that would have caused some idea of the truth to enter the mind of most women, but the Princess was not inclined to be suspicious by nature. Nadia’s heart smote her now for her reticence, and she told her story to the Princess, suppressing only two material facts,—the name of her lover—this was due to her anxiety to behave fairly towards Caerleon,—and, as a natural corollary, her reason for refusing him. It must be confessed that she was not altogether sorry to be unable to lay the whole of the facts before her godmother; for although the Princess was very sympathetic in cases of conscience, she had a habit of looking at things differently from any one else, and Nadia had a lurking suspicion that in this case she might tell her that she had acted hastily, and ought to have asked advice. And this was merely what her own conscience hinted to her many times a-day. Before giving Caerleon her final answer she had been upheld by the expectation that the consciousness of having done right would bring her peace, if not happiness; but she now knew little indeed of either feeling. This made her begin to doubt whether she might not have been led astray by her own conviction of the goodness of the deed; and the doubt returned again and again to make her wretched.
Her duty to her godmother performed, and her resolution placed beyond recall, Nadia told herself that her lack of occupation had undoubtedly made it easier for her to fail in steadfastness, and that she must find something to do. She would no longer remain all day in the inn garden, but would go out into the village and try to make friends with the people, and this not only by way of a moral medicine for herself, but as a duty which she had neglected hitherto. She could not at first speak the language of the villagers nor they hers; but the interest she showed in the children won her a way into the hearts of the women, and she discovered, much to her surprise, that when a child was sick or hurt she could do more for it than any one else in Witska. In times of health the little ones found her somewhat solemn and unapproachable, for although she longed to make friends with them, she was not one of those who can throw themselves heart and soul into the small interests which seem so momentous to children; but when they were ill the experience she had gained in Princess Soudaroff’s cottage-hospital stood her in good stead. The nurses there had been wont to laugh at her as slow and clumsy; but at Witska, where there was no one to watch her with critical eyes, she succeeded in putting into practice the lessons she had learned. One or two cases of recovery from severe illness, which seemed miraculous to the villagers, but which were really due to patient nursing and modern methods of treatment, gained her a wide reputation, and appeals began to reach her from outlying hamlets and solitary huts, entreating her to pay a visit to some sick child. When these requests were translated to her by the cosmopolitan waiter, she welcomed them eagerly, for they promised fresh work, and work was what she wanted. A wild desire would seize her now and again to see Caerleon’s face once more, to hear his pleasant voice, to meet the glance, half puzzled, half amused, which he would cast at her when she had said anything that startled him. The vehemence of this longing for his presence alarmed her. She felt that she could almost volunteer to go to Bellaviste as a spy, if such a course would enable her to catch a glimpse of him; that she would be willing to meet the doom which Thracia kept for Scythian spies, if only she had seen him first. In this state of mind she welcomed the calls which came to her to take long mountain-walks and seek out distant families where a child lay ill, for the exertion of the day brought her back at night so tired that she was glad to go to bed and sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion. At first her long excursions drew upon her some opposition from her father.
“Sure it’s not the thing,” he said, “for a young lady to be roaming about alone like this. I won’t allow ut.”
“What would you have, O’Malachy?” asked his wife, scornfully. “Can we afford to engage a retinue to attend upon a girl who might be Queen of Thracia if she liked, and will not? Nothing will happen to her. She is a failure.”
Left to her own devices in this unflattering way, Nadia gladly accepted the implied permission to pursue her lonely walks, attended only by one of the great dogs which were kept to protect the flocks from the wolves, and which had attached himself to her. She saw no trace of the smugglers and outlaws of whom vague tales were current in the village; but one very real alarm beset her at times, of which she said nothing at home. It became evident to her by degrees that her proceedings were being watched. She would find herself tracked by pursuers of whom she could only obtain a glimpse by stratagem; and when she had learned to speak the language a little, she would hear at the cottages to which she was bound that a stranger had been there since her last visit, making inquiries as to the gracious lady and her doings. At first she was at a loss to imagine who could think her of sufficient importance to dog her steps in this way; but presently it dawned upon her that M. Drakovics, who still declined to be persuaded that she was not engaged in a conspiracy against Caerleon, had instructed his emissaries to keep an eye on her. This solution of the mystery satisfied herself; and as no one else appeared to notice anything unusual, she was not obliged to parry the remarks of others. The shepherds warned her to be careful, and not to stray from the beaten track, lest she should run into danger; but she knew that the wolves were not likely to venture from their fastnesses as yet, and, moreover, her mother’s words echoed bitterly in her ears. Nothing would happen to her, or, if it did, it would not signify. She was a failure. And yet, while her heart sank lower, she refused to allow herself to contemplate the possibility of reversing her decision. If she could bring Caerleon back to her with a word, she would not utter it, to ruin him and his kingdom. What he had called her mania for martyrdom was still strong upon her, and the more fervently she longed to reverse her decision the more sternly she crushed down the pain.