Dawning. A cheap hotel in Paris. Who is this young girl of angelic beauty, lying on a bed in a small room? What has brought her to Paris, to this miserable dwelling?
Gloria. What can we say about her? She was the daughter to the Count de Sindi and she spent her first sixteen years in the East of France. Her mother, the Countess Grubb-Konungsen, was Danish, an heiress to an ancient family. Hilda Grubb-Konungsen came to Paris, when she was only eighteen. The beautiful and proud maiden impressed a modest young man, the Count Jean de Sindi. They fell in love with each other and got married. Hilda gave birth to a son, who was called Antoine. Two years later, Gloria was born.
Hilda was reserved by nature, and life also taught her to be practical. Handsome Jean was her exact opposite. Pensive and far from reality, he couldn’t run his castle. He always got into debts, and Hilda had to pay them. The castle of Sindi was very modest, because the Countess’s parents refused to give their daughter a big dowry.
True, Jean was a well-educated man, so they taught Antoine and Gloria to read, write and count since early childhood. Antoine was an attractive and clever boy, but he couldn’t match his sister. Since her early years, Gloria exposed talents for mathematics, literature, music and, of course, she was the first beauty in all the counties around. Although not frisky and troublesome, she was good at horse riding, shooting, and even fencing. Gloria was on friendly terms with peasant children, and when she was five, a German girl Matilda, who was a year younger than her, became her friend. Matilda had lived in a poor family, her parents had died, and they brought the girl to France, to the castle of Sindi. The girls started living together, and little by little Matilda became Gloria’s closest friend.
When Gloria was six, Maman showed the children her motherland, Denmark. Although the girl was small, she kept this journey in her memory. They had seen almost all Europe: German principalities, Flanders and other countries. The way was long, but everyone enjoyed it.
The castle of Grubb-Konungsen was on a high hill. A ditch with water surrounded it. That was a wonderful place, an unforgettable one. The girl remembered rich interior of the castle, and among all this wealth, an ancient man, who turned out her grandfather. Her grandmother had already died.
Gloria quickly made friends with local children, and soon after that, spoke Danish. She had a gift for languages. Antoine disapproved of her activities. He was pensive, like his father. The mild outlines of the surroundings, covered with mist, made a great impression on him. He would wander for hours along the deep ditch, sometimes climbing on the rampart. Gloria joined him from time to time.
Sindis stayed in Denmark for about two months. Nobody wanted to go away, but this sad day came at last. They took a coach and went back home. The reminiscences of the journey to Hilda’s motherland were like a dream. After coming to France, the weight of cares fell on everybody.
Taxes, unbearable for small feudal lords, poor harvest, and epidemics—all that seemed a nightmare after the wonderful journey to Denmark. Hilda and Jean couldn’t stand housekeeping. As for the children, they led their own life. The castle of Sindi was in a beautiful place near the river, and they thought it looked like the Danish one. They walked for hours around it, went to the villages, and played with peasants.
When Gloria was nine, Jean’s brother Robert and his son George visited them. The girl remembered that birthday very well. They placed a large table in the most beautiful hall, with the best plates and dishes on it, French and Danish. The birthday presents were nice: a diamond necklace, a golden ring with an emerald, a charming dress with a long skirt, and various trinkets.
After dinner, the children went to the forest. Gloria and George were alone. The boy was already twelve, and his lovely cousin had charmed him. And, in fact, the girl was beautiful in her simple light-coloured dress, with her loose, flowing golden hair. George was impudent enough. He fancied he deserved love from his cousin. Plucking up his courage, he moved nearer and said,
“I like you, Gloria. Do you really dislike my father and me?”
“No, why do you think so? What is this strange question for?”
“But if you like me, it means you love me.”
“Love you? But I love only Mum and Dad, and Matilda, of course. If you mean such love, as between my mother and father, I can’t love in such a way now, so I don’t love you.”
The girl was speaking in a calm and reasonable way. Her beautiful face was serious. George flew into a rage.
“You’re malicious!” cried he, plucking her by the sleeve.
“Stop it!”
“Bad and malicious! I’ll never come to your castle again!”
Gloria ran away from him, but the boy tried to catch her.
At that moment, Hilda appeared on the way to the castle. A slender woman clad in a simple dress was not French. She was the daughter of Denmark, Countess Grubb-Konungsen. Her dark, fluffy hair was knotted. This hairstyle opened her clean, smooth forehead and made her face with ideal regular features strict. Hilda was thirty, and though she looked younger, all her appearance was majestic and wisdom shone in her eyes.
The children saw her. Gloria stopped and noticed that so did George. The boy always quailed in front of his aunt under her cold, keen sight.
“What are you doing here, children? Gloria, George, just look at yourselves! Go to the castle and change your clothes!”
“Mum, it was George. He ran after me.”
“George was it or not, you are both nice, be sure. Go to the castle.”
Her peremptory tone and cold, impassionate expression impressed the children. Gloria, in her torn dress, made a curtsy to her mother, glanced at her cousin with contempt, and went to the castle. He dragged after her in despondency. Hilda looked at her daughter with a smile. She liked girl’s attitude to George, whom Countess couldn’t stand, because she considered him hot-tempered and ill-bred. The boy was telling his father about his evil cousin and his unwillingness to come to Sindi again. Robert didn’t like the castle either. Rude and greedy thanks to his richness, he neither liked nor understood his sensitive and liberal brother, interested only in arts and sciences. Robert also disliked Hilda. He thought woman should only bear and bring up children, and shouldn’t concern herself with her husband’s business. He also hated Jean because the latter always criticized the alchemists whom Robert knew. Jean treated this science in the same way as Count de Peyrac did, the man whom all the noblemen of the East of France disliked. It was during the departure, when Count Robert first thought up to connect Count de Sindi with Peyrac, and if the latter one fell into disgrace, then the same would happen to Jean. But in Sindi, everything remained as usual. No one suspected such plans, though all the family thought of their relatives with aversion.
A year passed. One day (it was in May) a messenger from the king came to the castle with an order to Count de Sindi to report for Paris because of Count de Peyrac’s arrest. It was a shock.
“Prison threatens you!” cried Hilda. She was in great agitation. Gloria had never seen her parents in such a state.
“I’ll go to Paris tomorrow. Come what may,” answered Jean. But Hilda flew to him and forbade going.
“I’ll go myself,” she said, and her expression didn’t allow any objections. Two days later, she set out.
An entire month passed, but there was no news from Paris. Nobody knew what had happened to Hilda. Two weeks later, the messenger came. They did not learn what steps Hilda took to hush up her husband’s process, but everyone could say it was not adultery. They received King’s gracious invitation to Paris to the Royal ball from the messenger. There were also praises to Hilda as a real gentlewoman.
Two weeks after that, Jean, Gloria and Antoine arrived in Paris and stayed at the hotel “Saint-Peine”, where Hilda met them. They dressed up, but their clothes faded under the magnificence of the court of Louis XIV. Hilda was majestic, and Gloria was charming, but both of them seemed too modest compared to the courtiers. Hilda’s nobleness conquered everyone. Men didn’t take their eyes off her. One of them, of the royal family, addressed her:
“Duchess de…”
“Countess de Sindi,” said Hilda with a smile.
“Excuse me, I’ve muddled you up with someone else,” murmured he, and didn’t talk to her anymore.
Everybody admired Gloria. The court accepted her loveliness and refined manners, so unusual for her young age, with approval. Everything fascinated the girl in the splendid hall: chandeliers and furniture, decoration of the ceiling and walls, mirrors and sculpture. She wanted to find a person who would be the best in keeping with the appointment, and she was surprised realizing it was her mother, the most beautiful, the cleverest, the strongest, the best woman in the world. “If I were like her,” Gloria thought. Since that she aimed at her best to attain her mother’s perfection.
The ball was over at last. It was late evening when ladies and gentlemen went home. Sindis also came back to the hotel. Gloria couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. She was lying on the bed with open eyes and thought, what man on the ball she liked best? But she found nobody. The girl tried to imagine a man who could be her husband. “He is strong, handsome, noble, he has a cold, severe face, he is very tall, he is brilliant and well educated,” she was thinking. It’s not her father; he’s not such a man. It’s a man whom she is about to find. Where? When? She didn’t know. With these thoughts, Gloria fell asleep. Next day Sindis went back to the castle.
Life went as usual again. During the journey to Paris, Gloria missed her castle, the old park and the great wood, the river and the wide meadow and her beloved friend Matilda. They saw little of each other lately, so Gloria was the happiest girl in the world, when they were walking along the river shore or riding a horse together again. Matilda was nine; she was a well-built girl with a pleasant face framed with straight dark hair. She was rather clever. The family de Sindi loved the girl very much; she became the second daughter to Hilda, who approved of girls’ friendship. Antoine had to go to college; so, he was engrossed in studying and seldom spoke with his sister. Their life was calm and peaceful. Antoine started his studies; the college was close to the castle, so the boy came to spend the night at home. He was good at studying, but his father hardly had enough money for his education, and his debts to the college increased. The boy had spent three years there, and it had been “paid” only for one and a half. But Hilda had found the way to raise money for Antoine’s education, and they settled everything. “I can’t imagine how we would do without Hilda!” said Jean.
One more year passed in this manner. Plague was creeping up to France. The Eastern part of the country was the first sacrifice to this awful illness. The county de Sindi was also under the threat. Antoine’s college had been removed to an abbey, which was situated a bit more western than the castle, so Antoine couldn’t spend nights at home anymore. He said goodbye to his parents and sister, wished the county would escape the plague and set out.
But It came. Hilda and Jean had done all they could to protect the castle from the epidemic. They did their best to avoid the disease. Gloria and Matilda almost didn’t leave the house. In the villages, peasants perished in large numbers. People died on the sides of the roads, in their houses—everywhere. That was an awful result of the illness. Hilda couldn’t look indifferently at her villages, so she often appeared there, helped peasants, because they didn’t know how to guard themselves against the plague. Upon coming home, she always took precautionary measures not to infect anybody.
It was the end of February; the weather was cold and severe. One day, after coming home, Hilda sat down on a sofa and complained of a headache. Gloria helped her to go to bed and gave her medicine. The girl almost shivered. Hilda might have caught not cold, but the plague. But Countess assured her she was wrong. Hilda wanted to recover soon and to take the housekeeping into her own hands again.
She had been ill for an entire month, but there were no visible symptoms of the plague for a while. She was getting worse and worse. The spring came at last; the sun peeped out, which made the sick woman happy. “I hope I’ll get well soon,” said Hilda. Gloria and Matilda spent all their time with Countess. She had been very weak by the beginning of April.
Once she called everybody who was in the house, put on her best dress and wrote her will in their presence. That struck Gloria. She wanted to rush to her mother and snatch the terrible paper out of her hands. But she could not do it. Hilda put her will down on a small writing-table calmly and bid farewell to all inhabitants of the castle. Queer thing: she hoped to recover again. Suddenly she went to her room, leaning on her husband’s hand. Lying in bed, Hilda called Gloria and Jean and said she would soon die.
“No, Mum, you can’t die. You are immortal. What will we do without you?” cried Gloria. Mother stopped her with a sign.
“I have something to tell you, my beloved daughter, Gloria. Gloria, I want you to be happy. I want you to have a family and children. But don’t live here, Gloria, don’t live in France, it doesn’t bring happiness! Leave it when you grow up. I always loved you, Gloria, more than others, even more than Antoine. But take care of him, my dear. Farewell! Jean, my love, take care of my children. Farewell. Oh, my God, I shan’t be here tomorrow, I’ll never see the dawn. But the light, here it is, I see it. Farewell!” Hilda fell on the pillows.
“What will we do without you?” screamed Jean in terror. Gloria fell on her mother’s bed, sobbing. Hilda slightly touched her hair, but her hand hung. Gloria rose her head and asked with tears,
“Mummy… - has she died?”
“Yes…” her father answered. Something broke in his soul at that moment. Gloria was torn with pain. Hilda died, the utmost perfection for her. She didn’t want to and couldn’t believe in it.
The awful news about mother’s death reached Antoine in the abbey. “It’s impossible. She is immortal!” he cried. “We go home right now.”
Riding up to the castle, he noticed all windows were black and there were three black figures on the road. They were Jean, Gloria and Matilda. Gloria moved forward to meet her brother. He jumped off, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms. The girl was in black clothes and a black shawl. Matilda also wore black.
“I don’t believe mother is dead, no!” cried Antoine. Gloria led him to the burial vault, with the name of Countess de Sindi inscribed in golden letters. “Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Antoine. He fell on his knees in front of the vault and sobbed, leaning against the wall. Gloria felt pain seeing him in such a condition. She restrained her tears with difficulty, but suddenly she felt a new strength inside. “You will bear everything if you have passed this,” her inner voice said. Antoine rose to his feet and came to his sister together with their father. “Mummy died,” he said, “Now everything is in your hands, Gloria. You can do everything—you will be the mistress of this castle. We trust you with everything, we rely only upon you”.
A new period in Gloria’s life began, time without mother. She became closer to the person who understood her and whom she loved—Matilda. Father entrusted her with all the housekeeping, but Gloria preferred reading. She could spend hours and hours on a balcony engrossed in Dante, Petrarch, Rabelais and some modern writers. She found consolation only in books, although she also kept the house, helped with cooking, tidied up the castle, and watered flowers in the garden. But always and everywhere did she miss her mother: her strong quick hands, her calm face, her ability to do everything swiftly and beautifully. Gloria did want to call mummy, but then she recollected she died. Grief and pain were leaving her slowly, and sometimes apathy replaced them.
Only Matilda was usually at home. Antoine studied at college, and their father was elsewhere: he either went to the college to solve problems with payment or visited a neighbour to borrow a new sum of money. Jean’s debts rose and rose. Gloria couldn’t cut them down. She was blooming like a spring flower: her face took the shape of a regular oval; her eyes, dark-grey as a mist above the sea in Denmark, shaded by long eye-lashes; her golden hair, tied with satin fillet, gave her skin golden tint; the colour appeared sometimes on her pale cheeks. She was only fourteen, but there was pain in her grey eyes.
