Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/351

 and they became orphans when the boy was ten and the girl five years old. Nasha had, since the death of her parents, remained for nine months out of every year alone at the castle, her brother's life being led elsewhere.

Winter at Eagle's Gorge was a time of siege, against which provisions were laid in and logs stored up. The kennel was brought indoors, and Nasha, Getha, and Lyoff would sit around the fire, listening to the storms howling through the pass, conscious that the pure, refulgent snow was piling itself up around their fastness, drifting high against doors and windows, filling every cranny with its gentle flakes, and clothing the ravines in delicate splendour. With the spring came Volmer, who was not always as welcome to Nasha as the soft days that brought him. But she remembered he was her only brother, the head of her house, and she gave him the best greeting in her power, recollecting his favourite dishes, his tastes, and even his whims. He made but a poor return for her generous hospitality, lounging about the rooms, grumbling at their shabby appointments, and sneering at the primitive customs of the household at Eagle's Gorge.

It was not astonishing he should hate it; the contrast it presented to Paris, his usual dwelling-place, was so great. The brother and sister had no interests or sympathies in common; nothing, in fact, but their name united them. A beautiful woman might have been of use to the worldling Volmer; she might have given a reflected brilliancy to his career; she might even have lured gold into his pockets; but Nasha was worse than useless, and Volmer consequently, considering himself aggrieved, never looked at her without cursing his bad luck. Nasha, whose tranquillity concealed her painful thoughts, realized with pangs of a half-passionate despair the effect of her ugliness upon her fate. She, whose existence lay in such a sombre groove, dreamed often of the life that might have been. She had not bored over the library treasures in vain; from them she knew something of the world beyond her mountains, and she learned to believe that in the whole wide range of human life there is no magic like a woman's beauty.

Beauty could procure all the heart's desires—love, gold, pomp, power, the homage of genius, the devotion of kings—but the woman without beauty was passed by or frowned upon; men did not want her; women held her in contempt. Nasha thought of these things with poor attempts at self-consolation, but she seldom succeeded in even soothing her restless spirit; the aching would not be cured; the old longing would reassert its protest against Fate, but the futile wishes which sprang from it were never put into words.

Few guests came to the castle, as it lay far out of the beaten track, and Volmer always seemed to leave the memory of his Paris life behind him when he crossed its threshold. Nasha had never even heard the name of any of his friends. She was not curious; Paris and her brother's life were mere shadows to her. She knew enough of Volmer's character to be sure that, excepting while he was at Eagle's Gorge, she had no place in his thoughts. She kept on her way uncomplainingly, incuriously, giving him a gracious, if not very hearty, welcome when he appeared, and speeding his departure without regrets; but at last Volmer made his coming eventful.

One evening, as they sat at supper, he flung a portrait across the table to her, as though to challenge an opinion. Nasha looked long at it and returned it without a word.

"What do you think of him?" asked Volmer.

"He is very handsome."

"He is. All the women in Paris are mad over him."

Nasha made no response.

"You are not curious?" exclaimed Volmer, interrogatively. "Why don't you ask questions?"

"As you say, I am not curious. There is nothing I want to know. It is late—I am tired—" She moved towards the door.

"Nasha!" said her brother.

"Well?"

"Come here."

"What is it?"

"Will you marry this man?"

"You have never made sport of me before, Volmer," she replied, glancing at his animated face, and swiftly dropping her eyes.

"I say, will you have this man for a lover?"

"You are mad! Let me go. He is a king among men. He must marry a beautiful woman."

"He shall marry you."

"Volmer, be silent!"

"He is coming here," said Volmer, sardonically.

"I will not see him."

"But he shall marry you!"

"Not with his eyes open."