H. Hesketh-Prichard

“ Rallywood rode slowly down the shoulder of the mountain spur. Under the gray light of the afternoon the limitless swamps stretching to the skyline looked cold and naked under their drifted snow. From the sky big with storm overhead, to the scanty grass that showed by the wayside blackened by the rigours of the winter, the whole aspect of the frontier was ominous and forbidding. Before he plunged into the lower ravines Rallywood turned to look back at the angry towers of Sagan. He was thinking of Colendorp. Under their shadow that lonely and reckless life had come to its close. ”

“ Vanity has knowledge of no tongue whereby to interpret pride.
'No, but it showed me what he was.'
'I wonder how Baron von Elmur would like to hear that his future wife was not ashamed to declare her love for another man!' retorted Isolde.
'I mean to tell him.'
'No, no, Valerie, don't!' exclaimed Madame de Sagan, whose weakness exuded very often in a sort of kind-heartedness, 'I should not tell him. Such a confidence is apt to turn sour in a husband's memory. You may trust me—I will keep your secret.' Valerie smiled scornfully. ”

“ But,' with a man's ready thought for the woman he loves, 'you must not be found here. Say good-bye to me, Valerie.'
'John,' she clung to him, 'how can I let you go? You are dying for Maäsau—for my father—for me—yes, yes, I can guess all!'
'Valerie, do you know what your love is to me? I need nothing more. I have not thought of what there is beyond, but when you want me you will find me waiting.'
In the long silence life itself might have been suspended. ”

“ And I, Count Simon of Sagan, colonel-in-chief of the Guard of Maäsau, now pronounce upon you the sentence of death. Trusted by the Guard, you chose to betray them! Where is the oath of fealty by which you swore to obey? We are polluted by your treason, we are tainted by your shame! Are you afraid to speak? Is your voice frozen in your throat? The greater part of your punishment should be in its shame. ”

“ They are waiting. They have each his dream. Sagan's of empire and revenge, for he is after all a splendid ruffian, untamable, gallant, a man who could never be compelled to cry 'Enough' to evil fortune.
Sometimes deep in the night, while the two enemies play their long games together, Sagan flings down the cards and laughs and speaks of another game which will find its conclusion in the dim paths of the future. But Unziar only smiles. If that day should ever come it will find him ready. But to-day is not to-morrow, and 'God bless the present!' as Rallywood said. ”

“ With Sagan, throughout life, to desire was to have, and in his pursuit of the wished-for object, he was hampered by no new-fangled sentiments of honour, truth, or loyalty. Like other savages he quickly tired of his fancies when once gratified. Not four years ago he had been possessed by a frantic passion for the beautiful young wife whom he had now come to regard with something dangerously near hate.
In dealing with such a temperament as this both Elmur and Selpdorf were well aware that they were handling an explosive that might at any moment wreck their most carefully laid plans. ”

“ Isolde shrugged her shoulders and made a little grimace at Rallywood.
'Do not heed her, Jack. People are always very pleased with themselves for doing what other people call magnificent. Valerie is cross. Take this chair by me; I have a very serious quarrel with you.'
All the terror and peril of that dreadful drive had passed from Madame de Sagan's facile mind. The little rivalries and coquetries of everyday life occupied her as fully as if her lot contained no troublous outlook. In this conjunction vanity will often do for a woman what work does for a man. ”

“ At last Wallenloup could bear it no longer. He rose to his feet and saluting the Count led the way from the room, the line closing with Rallywood between Adolf and Unziar as guard.
Left alone in the great dim vaulted chamber, Sagan stood upright and watched the door through which they had filed out, and there came upon him in the dying daylight a terrible moment, such as all uncontrolled natures must at times know. A sense of the futility of all things, a knowledge that life has lost its taste, the hideousness of finally baffled desire. ”

“ That ill-luck should overtake him when hope was at its keenest, and when his relations both with the Guard and the Duke had reached a promising point, struck him hard. If he left the Guard he must also leave Maäsau. He had told himself a hundred times that the daughter of the Chancellor was far beyond his winning, yet the certainty of losing her, which this last development of events involved, was the worst blow of all. To stare an empty future in the face is like looking into expressionless eyes where no soul can ever come. ”

“ He was one whose love is hopeless, whose loved one is lost as though in death, and who lives through the present dream according to an ideal, the ideal of being worthy of the vanished past.
Unziar alone looked stonily blank, but the other grim faces round the table regarded Rallywood with a sort of satisfaction. He had sinned against them, but they were about to make him pay the highest human penalty for his sin. Yet to Ulm his demeanour was suggestive. There was something eloquent of singleness of heart and nobleness that seemed to buoy up this man with his broken honour. ”

“ He has his work to do and he does it well, and always between Count Sagan and his dreams stands the irrevocable figure of the young Maäsaun.
Sometimes Sagan taunts him with his hopeless love, but he only answers by a look. And each knows that wherever he may turn, he will find the other standing up against him—the fierce imbruted prisoner with his royal fearlessness, and his intense and frigid guard. ”

“ The broadly flowing Kofn forms part of the north-eastern boundary of the State of Maäsau. Its dark waters rush tumultuously from the gorge below the Castle of Sagan, and fling a vast enclosing arm about the bleak plains and marshes of which the wastes of the frontier consist.
It is a land where even summer dwells coldly.
To the north a chain of hills rises black against the sky, and there, set upon a boldly jutting spur, the Castle of Sagan dominates the inhospitable landscape like a frown upon a sinister face. ”

“ Rallywood looked down at him, and Counsellor fancied there was a shadow of reproach in the glance.
'For you that is the question, but for me there is another,' Rallywood said deliberately. 'Until I can resign my oath to Maäsau, honour holds me her sworn soldier.'
'Of all things in the world what is so arbitrary as honour?' cried Counsellor. 'Honour is a wild flower; God plants it, but man prunes it, and the devil only can be responsible for the sports one sometimes meets with. ”

“ But if I were here as your colonel, Lieutenant Adolf, by Heaven, sir, not all the officers of the Guard, past or present'—he rose to his feet as he spoke, and grasping the hilt of his sword glared round upon them—'should dare to hint at insult to a comrade!' and he drove the blade home with a clatter into its scabbard and strode out of the room as he had come, like a thunderstorm. ”

“ I—we, Isolde and I—heard the shots. You do not know it, but there is a plot. Your life is not safe! Captain Rallywood is right; no life that stands in Count Sagan's way is safe! And you on whom the State depends—you who alone can uphold her liberty—you are the first they will try to destroy! He hates you, else why should he try to kill me?'
She was clinging to his arm.
'To kill you? If I thought that was true—if I could believe he meant to injure you——'
It added very much to Selpdorf's difficulties that he had a conscience and a heart. Perhaps Valerie had kept both awake. ”

“ They passed like a vision, noiseless, swift, and dim, and although Rallywood followed quickly, he could not find them. The gloom and the snow had obliterated all trace of the sleigh, and at last Rallywood himself, well as he knew the country, became bewildered; but luckily the horse he rode was a charger he had had with him on the Frontier. He left it to choose its own direction, yet it was long before a blur of light which he knew to be the open doorway of the block-house grew out on the shifting darkness.
Within, the men of the patrol were standing in a group talking eagerly. ”

“ But first he must clear his tarnished honour—tarnished with the foul proposal made to him by Count Simon of Sagan. He had passed through life a cold and, in his own sense of the word, an honourable man, disliked, feared and avoided outside his own most intimate circle. He had been driven by the irresistible destiny of character to live a lonely man, and now the strength of a lonely man was his—the strength that can make an unknown death a glory for the sake of honour, not honours. ”

“ If he were to return to-morrow to the narrow quarters he had occupied for so many months, the very memory of her would glorify the wooden walls, and even the old barren monotony of life with the frontier patrol be chequered and cheered by the knowledge that somewhere under the same skies Valerie Selpdorf lived and smiled.
The beggars of love—such as Rallywood—are apt to believe that in the mere fact of owning remembrance, they own wealth which can never be expended. ”

“ Count Sagan, his big chest covered with gold-lace and orders, loomed at the head of the table, Wallenloup and Ulm to his right and left, Adiron, Unziar, Adolf and Varanheim seated according to their rank. At the foot of the table in the uniform of the Guard but without a sword stood the prisoner.
One man present was a complete stranger to Rallywood—Major Ulm, who had just returned from leave, and whose keen eyes set in a thin shaven face scrutinised him coldly. Behind Ulm's bald forehead dwelt most of the sagacity and discretion of the Guard. ”

“ Streams of dirty water poured from the roofs, and in the streets the miry snow sluiced slowly downhill or stuck on passing boot-heels in treacherous pads.
A thaw is demoralising; its penetrative power strikes deeper than physical malaise. With the average man or woman it damps the spirits, unstrings the will, and slackens the mental and moral fibre until resistance of any kind becomes an effort. M. Selpdorf was in the habit of saying that the rope by which the world swings is made up of the strands of the days rather than of the fathoms of the years. ”

“ We may laugh at conventional methods, but even in Révonde there are some which must be yielded to.'
'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Révonde.'
Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.
'I am a soldier—only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me. And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'
Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile. ”

“ For my part I don't believe that a life or so would weigh too heavy in the balance as against a province, even in your master's judgment. I take my world as I find it, my good Baron!'
'Pardon me, my lord, you take the world as your ancestors found it! You may be all your fathers were, but however time goes at Sagan, the rest of the world has not stood still since the middle ages. And the world is on my side to-day. Besides,' he added more suavely, 'we should gain nothing. We should alienate Selpdorf, who is useful, and who knows too much. ”

“ A woman laughed, a light, provoking laugh, Rallywood, who was still held by the crush against the door, knew it well, but he breathed freely, for it was not the laugh he had feared to hear.
'Nevertheless, Baron, I like scruples; they are always respectable, and therefore of use—sometimes,' the lady answered in a high, sweet tone.
'Your husband, my Lord Sagan, has not found them indispensable in his career.'
'But he is not a woman!' with a sigh.
'A beautiful woman can dispense with everything except—her beauty! That makes fools of us all! ”

“ Though only a girl in years, Valerie was a woman in experience. Experience, not gained altogether at first hand, be it understood, but such as a clever woman easily gathers from the lives of those about her. As the motherless daughter of M. Selpdorf, she had had exceptional opportunities. Thrown into the midst of a brilliant but vicious society, her eyes had seen more of the bare under-texture of life than was perhaps desirable ”