54-40 or Fight Part 40

There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hours of adversity.--_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving_.

"But Madam; but Madam--" I tried to begin. At last, after moments which seemed to me ages long, I broke out: "But once, at least, you promised to tell me who and what you are. Will you do that now?"

"Yes! yes!" she said. "Now I shall finish the clearing of my soul. You, after all, shall be my confessor."

We heard again a faltering footfall in the hallway. I raised an eyebrow in query.

"It is my father. Yes, but let him come. He also must hear. He is indeed the author of my story, such as it is.

"Father," she added, "come, sit you here. I have something to say to Mr.

Trist."

She seated herself now on one of the low couches, her hands clasped across its arm, her eyes looking far away out of the little window, beyond which could be seen the hills across the wide Potomac.

"We are foreigners," she went on, "as you can tell. I speak your language better than my father does, because I was younger when I learned. It is quite true he is my father. He is an Austrian n.o.bleman, of one of the old families. He was educated in Germany, and of late has lived there."

"I could have told most of that of you both," I said.

She bowed and resumed:

"My father was always a student. As a young man in the university, he was devoted to certain theories of his own. _N'est-ce pas vrai, mon drole?_" she asked, turning to put her arm on her father's shoulder as he dropped weakly on the couch beside her.

He nodded. "Yes, I wa.s.s student," he said. "I wa.s.s not content with the ways of my people."

"So, my father, you will see," said she, smiling at him, "being much determined on anything which he attempted, decided, with five others, to make a certain experiment. It was the strangest experiment, I presume, ever made in the interest of what is called science. It was wholly the most curious and the most cruel thing ever done."

She hesitated now. All I could do was to look from one to the other, wonderingly.

"This dear old dreamer, my father, then, and five others--"

"I name them!" he interrupted. "There were Karl von Goertz, Albrecht Hardman, Adolph zu Sternbern, Karl von Starnack, and Rudolph von Wardberg. We were all friends--"

"Yes," she said softly, "all friends, and all fools. Sometimes I think of my mother."

"My dear, your mother!"

"But I must tell this as it was! Then, sir, these six, all Heidelberg men, all well born, men of fortune, all men devoted to science, and interested in the study of the hopelessness of the average human being in Central Europe--these fools, or heroes, I say not which--they decided to do something in the interest of science. They were of the belief that human beings were becoming poor in type. So they determined to marry--"

"Naturally," said I, seeking to relieve a delicate situation--"they scorned the marriage of convenience--they came to our American way of thinking, that they would marry for love."

"You do them too much credit!" said she slowly. "That would have meant no sacrifice on either side. They married in the interest of _science!_ They married with the deliberate intention of improving individuals of the human species! Father, is it not so?"

Some speech stumbled on his tongue; but she raised her hand. "Listen to me. I will be fair to you, fairer than you were either to yourself or to my mother.

"Yes, these six concluded to improve the grade of human animals! They resolved to marry _among the peasantry_--because thus they could select finer specimens of womankind, younger, stronger, more fit to bring children into the world. Is not that the truth, my father?"

"It wa.s.s the way we thought," he whispered. "It wa.s.s the way we thought wa.s.s wise."

"And perhaps it was wise. It was selection. So now they selected. Two of them married German working girls, and those two are dead, but there is no child of them alive. Two married in Austria, and of these one died, and the other is in a mad house. One married a young Galician girl, and so fond of her did he become that she took him down from his station to hers, and he was lost. The other--"

"Yes; it was my father," she said, at length. "There he sits, my father.

Yes, I love him. I would forfeit my life for him now--I would lay it down gladly for him. Better had I done so. But in my time I have hated him.

"He, the last one, searched long for this fitting animal to lead to the altar. He was tall and young and handsome and rich, do you see? He could have chosen among his own people any woman he liked. Instead, he searched among the Galicians, the lower Austrians, the Prussians. He examined Bavaria and Saxony. Many he found, but still none to suit his scientific ideas. He bethought him then of searching among the Hungarians, where, it is said, the most beautiful women of the world are found. So at last he found her, that peasant, _my mother!_"

The silence in the room was broken at last by her low, even, hopeless voice as she went on.

"Now the Hungarians are slaves to Austria. They do as they are bid, those who live on the great estates. They have no hope. If they rebel, they are cut down. They are not a people. They belong to no one, not even to themselves."

"My G.o.d!" said I, a sigh breaking from me in spite of myself. I raised my hand as though to beseech her not to go on. But she persisted.

"Yes, we, too, called upon _our_ G.o.ds! So, now, my father came among that people and found there a young girl, one much younger than himself.

She was the most beautiful, so they say, of all those people, many of whom are very beautiful."

"Yes--proof of that!" said I. She knew I meant no idle flattery.

"Yes, she was beautiful. But at first she did not fancy to marry this Austrian student n.o.bleman. She said no to him, even when she found who he was and what was his station--even when she found that he meant her no dishonor. But our ruler heard of it, and, being displeased at this mockery of the traditions of the court, and wis.h.i.+ng in his sardonic mind to teach these fanatical young n.o.bles to rue well their bargain, he sent word to the girl that she _must_ marry this man--my father. It was made an imperial order!

"And so now, at last, since he was half crazed by her beauty, as men are sometimes by the beauty of women, and since at last this had its effect with her, as sometimes it does with women, and since it was perhaps death or some severe punishment if she did not obey, she married him--my father."

"And loved me all her life!" the old man broke out. "Nefer had man love like hers, I will haf it said. I will haf it said that she loved me, always and always; and I loved _her_ always, with all my heart!"

"Yes," said Helena von Ritz, "they two loved each other, even as they were. So here am I, born of that love."

Now we all sat silent for a time. "That birth was at my father's estates," resumed the same even, merciless voice. "After some short time of travels, they returned to the estates; and, yes, there I was born, half n.o.ble, half peasant; and then there began the most cruel thing the world has ever known.

"The n.o.bles of the court and of the country all around began to make existence hideous for my mother. The aristocracy, insulted by the republicanism of these young n.o.blemen, made life a h.e.l.l for the most gentle woman of Hungary. Ah, they found new ways to make her suffer.

They allowed her to share in my father's estate, allowed her to appear with him when he could prevail upon her to do so. Then they twitted and taunted her and mocked her in all the devilish ways of their cla.s.s. She was more beautiful than any court beauty of them all, and they hated her for that. She had a good mind, and they hated her for that. She had a faithful, loyal heart, and they hated her for that. And in ways more cruel than any man will ever know, women and men made her feel that hate, plainly and publicly, made her admit that she was chosen as breeding stock and nothing better. Ah, it was the jest of Europe, for a time. They insulted my mother, and that became the jest of the court, of all Vienna. She dared not go alone from the castle. She dared not travel alone."

"But your father resented this?"

She nodded. "Duel after duel he fought, man after man he killed, thanks to his love for her and his manhood. He would not release what he loved.

He would not allow his cla.s.s to separate him from his choice. But the _women!_ Ah, he could not fight them! So I have hated women, and made war on them all my life. My father could not placate his Emperor. So, in short, that scientific experiment ended in misery--and me!"

The room had grown dimmer. The sun was sinking as she talked. There was silence, I know, for a long time before she spoke again.

"In time, then, my father left his estates and went out to a small place in the country; but my mother--her heart was broken. Malice pursued her.

Those who were called her superiors would not let her alone. See, he weeps, my father, as he thinks of these things.

"There was cause, then, to weep. For two years, they tell me, my mother wept Then she died. She gave me, a baby, to her friend, a woman of her village--Threlka Mazoff. You have seen her. She has been my mother ever since. She has been the sole guardian I have known all my life. She has not been able to do with me as she would have liked."

"You did not live at your own home with your father?" I asked.

"For a time. I grew up. But my father, I think, was permanently shocked by the loss of the woman he had loved and whom he had brought into all this cruelty. She had been so lovable, so beautiful--she was so beautiful, my mother! So they sent me away to France, to the schools. I grew up, I presume, proof in part of the excellence of my father's theory. They told me that I was a beautiful animal!"

The contempt, the scorn, the pathos--the whole tragedy of her voice and bearing--were such as I can not set down on paper, and such as I scarce could endure to hear. Never in my life before have I felt such pity for a human being, never so much desire to do what I might in sheer compa.s.sion.