"What if each man finds that in himself?" said Lind, with something of the air of a dreamer coming over the firm and thoughtful and rugged face. "It may be a brotherhood. All a.s.sociations do not need to be controlled by kings and priests and standing armies."
"And the end of all this devotion, you say is Siberia or death?"
"For the man, perhaps; for his work, not. It is not personal gain or personal safety that a man must have in view if he goes to do battle against the oppression that has crushed the world for centuries and centuries. Do you not remember the answer given to the Czar by Michael Bestoujif when he was condemned? It was only the saying of a peasant; but it is one of the n.o.blest ever heard in the world. "I have the power to pardon you," said the Czar to him, "and I would do so if I thought you would become a faithful subject." What was the answer? "Sire," said Michael Bestoujif, "that is our great misfortune, that the Emperor can do everything, and that there is no law.""
"Ah, the brave man!" said Natalie Lind, quickly and pa.s.sionately, with a flash of pride in her eyes. "The brave man! If I had a brother, I would ask him, "When will you show the courage of Michael Bestoujif?""
Lord Evelyn glanced at her with a strange, admiring, proud look. "If she had a brother!" What else, even with all his admiration and affection for her, could he hope to be?
Presently they wandered back into other and lighter subjects; and Brand, at least, did not notice how the time was flying. When Natalie Lind rose, and asked her father whether he would have coffee sent into the smoking-room, or have tea in the drawing-room, Brand was quite astonished and disappointed to find it so late. He proposed they should at once go up to the drawing-room; and this was done.
They had been speaking of musical instruments at dinner; and their host now brought them some venerable lutes to examine--curiosities only, for most of the metal strings were broken. Beautiful objects, however, they were, in inlaid ivory or tortoise-sh.e.l.l and ebony; made, as the various inscriptions revealed, at Bologna, or Padua, or Venice; and dating, some of them, as far back as 1474. But in the midst of all this, Brand espied another instrument on one of the small tables.
"Miss Lind," said he, with some surprise, "do you play the zither?"
"Oh yes, Natalie will play you something," her father said, carelessly; and forthwith the girl sat down to the small table.
George Brand retired into a corner of the room. He was pa.s.sionately fond of zither music. He thought no more about that examination of the lutes.
"_Do you know one who can play the zither well?_" says the proverb. "_If so, rejoice, for there are not two in the world._" However that might be, Natalie Lind could play the zither, as one eager listener soon discovered. He, in that far corner, could only see the profile of the girl (just touched with a faint red from the shade of the nearest candle, as she leaned over the instrument), and the shapely wrists and fingers as they moved on the metallic strings. But was that what he really did see when the first low tremulous notes struck the prelude to one of the old pathetic _Volkslieder_ that many a time he had heard in the morning, when the fresh wind blew in from the pines; that many a time he had heard in the evening, when the little blue-eyed Kathchen and her mother sung together as they sat and knitted on the bench in front of the inn? Suddenly the air changes. What is this louder tramp? Is it not the joyous chorus of the home-returning huntsmen; the lads with the slain roedeer slung round their necks; that stalwart Bavarian keeper hauling at his mighty black hound; old father Keinitz, with his three beagles and his ancient breech-loader, hurrying forward to get the first cool, vast, splendid bath of the clear, white wine? How the young fellows come swinging along through the dust, their faces ablaze against the sunset! Listen to the far, hoa.r.s.e chorus!--
"Dann kehr ich von der Haide, Zur hauslich stillen Freude, Ein frommer Jagersmann!
Ein frommer Jagersmann!
Halli, hallo! halli, hallo!
Ein frommer Jagersmann!"
White wine now, and likewise the richer red!--for there is a great hand-shaking because of the Mr. Englishman"s good fortune in having shot three bucks: and the little Kathchen"s eyes grow full, because they have brought home a gentle-faced hind, likewise cruelly slain. And Kathchen"s mother has whisked inside, and here are the tall schoppen on the table; and speedily the long, low room is filled with the tobacco-smoke. What!
another song, you thirsty old Keinitz, with the quavering voice? But there is a l.u.s.ty chorus to that too; and a great clinking of gla.s.ses; and the Englishman laughs and does his part too, and he has called for six more schoppen of red.... But hush, now! Have we come out from the din and the smoke to the cool evening air? What is that one hears afar in the garden? Surely it is the little Kathchen and her mother singing together, in beautiful harmony, the old, familiar, tender _Lorelei_! The zither is a strange instrument--it speaks. And when Natalie Lind, coming to this air, sung in a low contralto voice an only half-suggested second, it seemed to those in the room that two women were singing--the one with a voice low and rich and penetrating, the other voice clear and sweet like the singing of a young girl. "_Die Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt, und ruhig fliesset der Rhein._" Was it, indeed, Kathchen and her mother? Were they far away in the beautiful pine-land, with the quiet evening shining red over the green woods, and darkness coming over the pale streams in the hollows? When Natalie Lind ceased, the elder of the two guests murmured to himself, "Wonderful! wonderful!" The other did not speak at all.
She rested her hands for a moment on the table.
"Natalushka," said her father, "is that all?"
"I will not be called Natalushka, papa," said she; but again she bent her hands over the silver strings.
And these brighter and gayer airs now--surely they are from the laughing and light-hearted South? Have we not heard them under the cool shade of the olive-trees, with the hot sun blazing on the garden-paths of the Villa Reale; and the children playing; and the band busy with its dancing _canzoni_, the gay notes drowning the murmur and plash of the fountains near? Look now!--far beneath the gray shadow of the olive-trees--the deep blue band of the sea; and there the double-sailed barca, like a yellow b.u.t.terfly hovering on the water; and there the large martingallo, bound for the cloud-like island on the horizon. Are they singing, then, as they speed over the glancing waves?... "_O dolce Napoli! O suol beato!_" ... for what can they sing at all, as they leave us, if they do not sing the pretty, tender, tinkling "Santa Lucia?"
"Venite all" agile Barchetta mia!
Santa Lucia!
Santa Lucia!"
... The notes grow fainter and fainter. Are the tall maidens of Capri already looking out for the swarthy sailors, that these turn no longer to the sh.o.r.es they are leaving?... "_O dolce Napoli! O suol beato!_" ...
Fainter and fainter grow the notes on the trembling string, so that you can scarcely tell them from the cool plashing of the fountains ...
"_Santa Lucia!... Santa Lucia!_"....
"Natalushka," said her father, laughing, "you must take us to Venice now."
The young Hungarian girl rose, and put the zither aside.
"It is an amus.e.m.e.nt for the children," she said.
She went to the piano, which was open, and took down a piece of music--it was Kucken"s "Maid of Judah." Now, hitherto, George Brand had only heard her murmur a low, harmonious second to one or other of the airs she had been playing; and he was quite unprepared for the pa.s.sion and fervor which her rich, deep, resonant, contralto voice threw into this wail of indignation and despair. This was the voice of a woman, not of a girl; and it was with the proud pa.s.sion of a woman that she seemed to send this cry to Heaven for reparation, and justice, and revenge. And surely it was not only of the sorrows of the land of Judah she was thinking!--it was a wider cry--the cry of the oppressed, and the suffering, and the heart-broken in every clime--
"O blest native land! O fatherland mine!
How long for thy refuge in vain shall I pine?"
He could have believed there were tears in her eyes just then; but there were none, he knew, when she came to the fierce piteous appeal that followed--
"Where, where are thy proud sons, so lordly in might?
All mown down and fallen in blood-welling fight!
Thy cities are ruin, thy valleys lie waste, Their summer enchantment the foe hath erased.
O blest native land! how long shalt decline?
When, when will the Lord cry, "Revenge, it is Mine!""
The zither speaks; but there is a speech beyond that of the zither. The penetrating vibration of this rich and pathetic voice was a thing not easily to be forgotten. When the two friends left the house, they found themselves in the chill darkness of an English night in February. Surely it must have seemed to them that they had been dwelling for a period in warmer climes, with gay colors, and warmth, and sweet sounds around them. They walked for some time in silence.
"Well," said Lord Evelyn, at last, "what do you think of them?"
"I don"t know," said the other, after a pause. "I am puzzled. How did you come to know them?"
"I came to know Lind through a newspaper reporter called O"Halloran. I should like to introduce you to him too."
George Brand soon afterward parted from his friend, and walked away down to his silent rooms over the river. The streets were dark and deserted, and the air was still; yet there seemed somehow to be a tremulous, pa.s.sionate, distant sound in the night. It was no tinkling "Santa Lucia"
dying away over the blue seas in the south. It was no dull, sonorous bell, suggesting memories of the far Campagna. Was it not rather the quick, responsive echo that had involuntarily arisen in his own heart, when he heard Natalie Lind"s thrilling voice pour forth that proud and indignant appeal,
"When, when will the Lord cry, "Revenge, it is Mine!""
CHAPTER IV.
A STRANGER.
Ferdinand Lind was in his study, busy with his morning letters. It was a nondescript little den, which he also used as library and smoking-room; its chief feature being a collection of portraits--a most heterogeneous a.s.sortment of engravings, photographs, woodcuts, and terra-cotta busts.
Wherever the book-shelves ceased, these began; and as there were a great number of them, and as the room was small, Mr. Lind"s friends or historical heroes sometimes came into odd juxtaposition. In any case, they formed a strange a.s.semblage--Arndt and Korner; Stein; Silvio Pellico and Karl Sand cheek by jowl; Pestal, Comte, Cromwell, Garibaldi, Marx, Mazzini, Bem, Kossuth, La.s.salle, and many another writer and fighter. A fine engraving of Napoleon as First Consul was hung over the mantel-piece, a pipe-rack intervening between it and a fac-simile of the warrant for the execution of Charles I.
Something in his correspondence had obviously annoyed the occupant of this little study. His brows were bent down, and he kept his foot nervously and impatiently tapping on the floor. When some one knocked, he said, "Come in!" almost angrily, though he must have known who was his visitor.
"Good-morning, papa!" said the tall Hungarian girl, coming into the room with a light step and a smile of welcome on her face.
"Good-morning, Natalie!" said he, without looking up. "I am busy this morning."
"Oh, but, papa," said she, going over, and stooping down and kissing him, "you must let me come and thank you for the flowers. They are more beautiful than ever this time."
"What flowers?" said he, impatiently.
"Why," she said, with a look of astonishment, "have you forgotten already? The flowers you always send for my birthday morning."