"You are speaking of some one: the Englishman?"
Beratinsky burst out laughing.
"Listen, Reitzei! Even my good friend Calabressa perceives. He, too, has encountered the Englishman. Oh yes, we must all give way to him, else he will stamp on our toes with his thick English boots. You, Reitzei: how long is he to allow you to retain your office?"
"Better for him if he does not interfere with me," said the younger man.
"I was always against the English being allowed to become officers. They are too arrogant; they want everything under their direction. Take their money, but keep them outside: that would have been my rule."
"And this Englishman," said Beratinsky, with a smile, though there was the light of malice in his eye, "this Englishman is not content with wanting to have the mastery of poor devils like you and me; he also wishes to marry the beautiful Natalie--the beautiful Natalie, who has. .h.i.therto been as proud as the Princess Brunhilda. Now, now, friend Calabressa, do not protest. Every one has ears, has eyes. And when papa Lind comes home--when he finds that this Englishman has been making a fool of him, and professing great zeal when he was only trying to steal away the daughter--what then, friend Calabressa?"
"A girl must marry," said Calabressa.
"I thought she was too proud to think of such things," said the other, scornfully. "However, I entreat you to say no more. What concern have I with Natalie Lind? I tell you, let her make more new friends."
Calabressa sat silent, his heart as heavy as lead. He had come with some notion that he would secure one other--powerful, and in all of Lind"s secrets--on whom Natalie could rely, should any emergency occur in which she needed help. But these jealous and envious taunts, these malignant prophecies, only too clearly showed him in what relation Vincent Beratinsky stood with regard to the daughter of Natalie Berezolyi and the Englishman, her lover.
Calabressa sat silent. When some one began to play the zither, he was thinking not of the Culturverein in London, but of the dark pine woods above the Erlau, and of the house there, and of Natalie Berezolyi as she played in the evening. He would ask Natalushka if she, too, played the zither.
CHAPTER XX.
FIDELIO.
George Brand walked away from the house in Curzon Street in a sort of bewilderment of hope and happiness and grat.i.tude. He would even try to accept Calabressa"s well-meant counsel: why should he not be friends with everybody? The world had grown very beautiful; there was to be no more quarrelling in it, or envy, or malice.
In the dark he almost ran against a ragged little child who was selling flowers.
"Will you buy a rose-bud, sir?" said she.
"What?" he said, severely, "selling flowers at this time of night? Get away home with you and get your supper, and go to bed;" but he spoiled the effect of his sharp admonition by giving the girl all the silver he had in his pocket.
He found the little dinner-party in a most loquacious mood. O"Halloran in especial was in full swing. The internal economy of England was to be readjusted. The capital must be transferred to the centre of the real wealth and brain-power of the country--that is to say, somewhere about Leeds or Manchester. This proposition greatly pleased Humphreys, the man from the North, who was quite willing to let the Royal Academy, the South Kensington and National Galleries, and the British Museum remain in London, so long as the seat of government was transferred to Huddersfield or thereabouts. But O"Halloran drew such a harrowing picture of the effect produced on the South of England intellect by its notorious and intense devotion to the arts, that Humphreys was almost convicted of cruelty.
However, if these graceless people thought to humbug the hard-headed man from the North, he succeeded on one occasion in completely silencing his chief enemy, O"Halloran. That lover of paradox and idle speculation was tracing the decline of superst.i.tion to the introduction of the use of steam, and was showing how, wherever railways went in India, ghosts disappeared; whereupon the Darlington man calmly retorted that, as far as he could see, the railways in this country were engaged in making as many ghosts as they could possibly disperse in India. This flank attack completely surprised and silenced the light skirmisher, who sought safety in lighting another cigar.
More serious matters, however, were also talked about, and Humphreys was eager that Brand should go down to Wolverhampton with him next morning. Brand pleaded but for one day"s delay. Humphreys reminded him that certain members of the Political Committee of the Trades-union Congress would be at Wolverhampton, and that he had promised to see them. After that, silence.
At last, as Humphreys and O"Halloran were leaving, Brand said, with an effort,
"No, it is no use, Humphreys. I _must_ remain in London one more day.
You go down to-morrow; I shall come by the first train next morning.
Molyneux and the others won"t be leaving for some days."
"Very well, sir; good-night, sir."
Brand returned into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair; his only companion now was his old friend Evelyn.
The younger man regarded him.
"I can tell the whole story, Brand; I have been reading it in your face.
You were troubled and perplexed before you got that letter. It gave some hope. Off you went to see Natalie; you came back with something in your manner that told me you had seen her and had been received favorably.
Now it is only one more day of happiness you hunger for, before going up to the hard work of the North. Well, I don"t wonder. But, at the same time, you look a little too restless and anxious for a man who has just won such a beautiful sweetheart."
"I am not so lucky as that, Evelyn," said he, absently.
"What, you did not see her?"
"Oh yes, I saw her; and I hope. But of course one craves for some full a.s.surance when such a prize is within reach; and--and I suppose one"s nerves are a little excited, so that you imagine possibilities and dangers--"
He rose, and took a turn up and down the room.
"It is the old story, Evelyn. I distrust Lind."
"What has that to do with it?"
"As you say, what has that to do with it? If I had Natalie"s full promise, I should care for nothing. She is a woman; she is not a school girl, to be frightened. If I had only that, I should start off for the North with a light heart."
"Why not secure it, then?"
"Perhaps it is scarcely fair to force myself on her at present until her father returns. Then she will be more her own mistress. But the doubt--I don"t know when I may be back from the North--" At last he stopped short. "Yes, I will see her to-morrow at all hazards."
By-and-by he began to tell his friend of the gay-hearted old albino he had encountered at Lind"s house; though in the mean time he reserved to himself the secret of Natalie"s mother being alive.
"Lind must have an extraordinary faculty," he said at length, "of inspiring fear, and of getting people to obey him."
"He does not look a ferocious person," Lord Evelyn said, with a smile.
"I have always found him very courteous and pleasant--frank, amiable, and all the rest of it."
"And yet here is this man Calabressa, an old friend of his; and he talks of Lind with a sort of mysterious awe. He is not a man whom you must think of thwarting. He is the Invulnerable, the Implacable. The fact is, I was inclined to laugh at my good friend Calabressa; but all the same, it was quite apparent that the effect Lind had produced on his mind was real enough."
"Well, you know," said Lord Evelyn, "Lind has a great organization to control, and he must be a strict disciplinarian. It is the object of his life; everything else is of minor importance. Even you confess that you admire his tremendous power of work."
"Yes, I do. I admire his administrative capacity; it is wonderful. But I don"t believe for a moment that it was his mind that projected this big scheme. That must have been the work of an idealist, perhaps of a dozen of them, all adding and helping. I think he almost said as much to me one night. His business is to keep the machinery in working order, and he does it to perfection."
"There is one thing about him: he never forgets, and he never forgives.
You remember the story of Count Verdt?"
"I have cause to remember it. I thought for a moment the wretch had committed suicide because I caught him cheating."
"I have been told that Lind played with that fellow like a cat with a mouse. Verdt got hints from time to time that his punishment as a traitor was overtaking him; and yet he was allowed to live on in constant fear. And it was the Camorra, and not Lind, or any of Lind"s friends, who finished him after all."
"Well, that was implacable enough, to be sure; to have death d.o.g.g.i.ng the poor wretch"s heels, and yet refusing to strike."
"For myself, I don"t pity him much," said Lord Evelyn, as he rose and b.u.t.toned his coat. "He was a fool to think he could play such a trick and escape the consequences. Now, Brand, how am I to hear from you to-morrow? You know I am in a measure responsible."
"However it ends, I am grateful to you, Evelyn; you may be sure of that.