CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PRIMROSE PATH

Ye are not bound! The soul of things is sweet, The Heart of being is celestial rest, Stronger than woe is will: that which was good Doth pass to better--best. --EDWIN ARNOLD.

The shadows of that same exquisite evening fell very softly across the walled-in pleasance at Nicolashof. Dinner was over, and the Governor sat upon the terrace with his cigarette, and Vronsky as his companion. From within the drawing-room, which was but faintly lighted, came the sound of Nadia's singing. Miss Forester played, and the two men--Denzil Vanston within, and Vronsky without--listened spellbound to the magic of that mysteriously appealing voice.

The evening was untroubled even by a breath of wind. The tops of the forest trees, visible beyond the garden bowers, were motionless in the warm air. The hues of the sky were such as must have been seen to be imagined.

Denzil sat with a kind of helplessness in his whole attitude, his eyes devouring the girl who sang to him.

He had been in a pitiable condition when the kindness of Stepan Stepanovitch had carried him off to the luxurious simplicity of Nicolashof, and the unforeseen seductions of the life there. Fresh from his lonely journey, his heart full of sensations to which he had till then been a stranger, torn with anxiety respecting the fate of his brother, and uncertain as to the extent of the danger with which the reappearance of her uncle menaced Rona--he had been in dire need of sympathy.

He found himself received with a cordiality for whose charm he had been utterly unprepared. The change from foreign ways, discomfort, loneliness, and sickness, to the delightful atmosphere of sympathy, and the perfect comfort of a well-regulated household, modeled upon the English standard, was astounding, and its effects much greater than could have been foreseen.

In truth, his own frame of mind at this crisis of his history was a sealed mystery to himself.

Rona had touched in him springs of feeling of a kind different from anything in his previous experience. She had--all unconsciously--called these sensations into being; _but she had not satisfied them_. This last fact, so all-important, his intelligence did not recognize, though his physical instinct knew it well enough.

To his passion there had been, in Veronica Leigh, no response. No pulse in her had thrilled in concert with his own. This he felt, without knowing it. He had quitted England with a fierce desire unsatisfied.

And, all unknown to both of them, Nadia was bestowing what Rona had withheld.

This girl was very woman to her finger-tips. No intellectual education had trained her in the ways that Rona had gone. She lived in a world of emotions, with no actual knowledge of life.

The dream of her youth had always been to be English. She loved Miss Forester better than anyone else in the world. She absorbed the literature, the customs, of her beloved land. She read English novels, and longed to come in contact with an English gentleman.

It was not surprising that, when she met Denzil, she should idealize him.

In his quiet manner, his pleasant appearance, his outwardly calm bearing, she thought she perceived all the greatness, the depth, of the English character. She saw him through a haze of rosy dreams, just as he saw her in a circle of mystic light. Each was to the other a perfectly new type, with all the fascination of the unknown.

She had fancied herself in love with Felix, and had been thrown back upon herself in much the same manner as Denzil.

The feeling with which she inspired the bewildered young man was entirely mutual. Each to the other was the central figure of a romance in real life.

Everything in the circumstances of their association conspired to make the dream perfect. They were isolated from all the world. Each formed for the other the paramount interest of the moment.

Nadia differed essentially from the girls he knew in England. Her physical beauty appealed to his own thin blood with a force that shook him. The witchery of her voice, the splendor of her eyes, the atmosphere of mystery which seemed to radiate from her, acted like a narcotic upon his enfeebled system. For days past he had lived, steeped in a dream whose awakening he simply refused to picture. Just as Felix and Rona, in the forest, were longing that the journey might never end, so the blameless Denzil, who had lived so many years in the prosaic groove of a country gentleman of quiet habits and few tastes, was positively yearning that he might remain forever, slowly convalescing within the magic walls of that romantic inclosure where the outside world could be so completely forgotten that it might never have existed.

The notion that Miss Rawson and Rona, the two links with his own steady-going everyday life, were traveling to him, and must arrive in two or three days, was a notion which he put from him. He could not--would not think. He was steeped to the lips in a fairy tale, which he would read on to the end. He did not say this, even in his own heart. He was conscious of nothing of the kind. He drifted, like one floating out upon a warm current, carrying him away, whither he neither knew nor cared.

Outside upon the terrace the Governor took his cigar from his mouth, and said to Vronsky, "Your Felix assures me that in England those whom he calls the county gentlefolk are equal in their own eyes with us of the aristocracy in Russia."

"I believe that is true," said Vronsky, with a huge sigh.

After some minutes' musing:

"Life in Russia is uncertain for us of the upper classes," pursued Stepan Stepanovitch, who seemed to be thinking aloud. "I have an idea that my child would be happier in a country so secure as your England. If she were to decide to love an Englishman--I am not sure that I should say no to her. He has means, this Vanston--hein?"

"He is not what they in England call very rich," said Vronsky. "But he has enough to be very comfortable, and will have more when his aunt dies, I believe." He was glad that Nadia's father could not see his face as he answered these torturing questions. "But I am not sure that this young man's affections are free," he said, making his voice sound calm with great difficulty. "I understand from Felix that his brother has cut him out in the love of the young girl to whom he, Felix, was betrothed."

"So?" said the Governor, in astonishment. "He does not seem to me like a man who would do such things."

"There was some misunderstanding. What do I know?" said Vronsky, wearily.

The Governor moved slightly upon his chair, so as to look into the drawing-room. Nadia had left the piano, and was sitting upon a sofa, very much in the shadow. Denzil had left his big chair, and was seated beside her.

Her father lowered his voice almost to a whisper. "I have never seen her so with anyone else," he confided. "He is unlike any man she has met--a different type, as you say. She does not care for the men of her own country. By St. Isaac! it would not be a bad thing. It would not do to frighten her; but of course I realize that if I am proscribed, I shall be taken off sooner or later. And I tell you the truth, her brothers are extravagant. I shall not have much power to leave her well dowered, when my pay from this province ceases. You think her attractive, Vronsky, my friend--hein?"

The tears were running down Vronsky's face in the darkness as he answered, "Yes, I do."

"Well," said the Governor, "then I do not interfere. As to the other girl, this can, perhaps, be arranged. In England that is so, is it not? They do break betrothals, and think no shame of those that do so. Felix should be back in a few days now. He cannot be far behind the ladies upon the road."

Vronsky drew a deep breath. His heart was full of rage. His Felix had been jilted for this little straw puppet--this man who did not know his own mind for a month together! He thought of the long months during which Felix had been exposed to the charms of Nadia. During all that time his allegiance to the girl in England had never wavered. And now this little sneak came, having gained the one woman, and succumbed without a struggle to the charm of the other.

The two upon the sofa rose and passed together out of the room, and away into the starlit garden.

"I hope," said the Governor, "that you will not be hurt if I express my strong desire that the two English ladies should be my guests here. I do not mean to disparage your own well-known hospitality."

Vronsky growled. "He had no right to send for them--what are English ladies to do here at the world's end?" he muttered. "He is as selfish as false"--but the final words were in his beard, and the Governor did not catch them.

"He was, however, very ill for a few days," he remarked.

"If he had died it would have simplified matters," said Vronsky, brutally.

The Governor looked slightly hurt. "You do not then think highly of him?"

"I? Oh, I know very little of him. It was plucky of him to come out here after his brother. He was quite sure, when he arrived, that his brother was dead. But he wanted to see the corpse, actually."

This speech, in the ears of the man who heard it, sounded like absolute nonsense, but Vronsky had been nervy and uncertain in his temper ever since Felix disappeared, and he was pardoned.

"Ah, well," said Stepan Stepanovitch. "A few days more will decide all. But it would please me well that Nadia Stepanovna should be the wife of an Englishman, if he is a man of position."