"Yes, that is a wholesome conservative English sentiment, but it does not rule the actions of everybody."
"But common sense--"
"Oh, bother common sense! Common-sense is only a grocer that hasn"t got an idea beyond ham-and-eggs."
"Well, if I am only a grocer," Brand said, quite submissively, "don"t you think the grocer, if he were asked to pay off the National Debt, ought to say, "Gentlemen, that is a praiseworthy object; but in the meantime wouldn"t it be advisable for me to make sure that my wife mayn"t have to go on the parish?"
Thereafter there was silence for a time, and when Brand next spoke it was in a certain, precise, hard fashion, as if he wished to make his meaning very clear.
"Suppose, Evelyn," he said, "I were to tell you what has occurred to me as the probable explanation of Lind"s indifference about the future of his daughter, would you be surprised?"
"I expect it will be wrong, for you cannot do justice to that man; but I should like to hear it."
"I must tell you he wrote me a letter, a shilly-shallying sort of letter, filled with arguments to prove that a marriage between Natalie and myself would not be expedient, and all the rest of it: not absolutely refusing his consent, you understand, but postponing the matter, and hoping that on further reflection, et caetera, et caetera.
Well, do you know what my conclusion is?--that he is definitely resolved I shall not marry his daughter; and that he is playing with me, humbugging me with the possibility of marrying her, until he induces me to hand him over my fortune for the use of the Society. Stare away as you like; that is what I believe to be true."
He rose and walked to the window, and looked out.
"Well, Evelyn, whatever happens, I have to thank you for many things. It has been all like my boyhood come back again, but much more wonderful and beautiful. If I have to go to America, I shall take with me at least the memory of one night at Covent Garden. She was there--and Madame Potecki--and old Calabressa. It was _Fidelio_ they were playing. She gave me some forget-me-nots."
"What do you mean by going to America?" Lord Evelyn said.
Brand remained at the window for a minute or two, silent, and then he returned to his chair.
"You will say I am unjust again. But unless I am incapable of understanding English--such English as he speaks--this is his ultimatum: that unless I give my property, every cent of it, over to the Society, I am to go to America. It is a distinct and positive threat."
"How can you say so!" the other remonstrated. "He has just been to America himself, without any compulsion whatever."
"He has been to America for a certain number of weeks. I am to go for life--and, as he imagines, alone."
His face had been growing darker and darker, the brows lowering ominously over the eyes.
"Now, Brand," his friend said, "you are letting your distrust of this man Lind become a madness. What if he were to say to-morrow that you might marry Natalie the day after?"
The other looked up almost bewildered.
"I would say he was serving some purpose of his own. But he will not say that. He means to keep his daughter to himself, and he means to have my money."
"Why, you admitted, a minute ago, that even you could not suspect him of that!"
"Not for himself--no. Probably he does not care for money. But he cares for ambition--for power; and there is a vacancy in the Council. Don"t you see? This would be a tremendous large sum in the eyes of a lot of foreigners: they would be grateful, would they not? And Natalie once transferred to Italy, I could console myself with the honor and dignity of Lind"s chair in Lisle Street. Don"t you perceive?"
"I perceive this--that you misjudge Lind altogether. I am sure of it. I have seen it from the beginning--from the moment you set your foot in his house. And you tried to blind yourself to the fact because of Natalie. Now that you imagine that he means to take Natalie from you, all your pent-up antagonism breaks loose. Meanwhile, what does Natalie herself say?"
"What does she say?" he repeated, mechanically. He also was lying back in his chair, his eyes gazing aimlessly at the window. But whenever anyone spoke of Natalie, or whenever he himself had to speak of her, a quite new expression came into his face; the brows lifted, the eyes were gentle. "What does she say? Why, nothing. Lind requested me neither to see her nor write to her; and I thought that reasonable until I should have heard what he had to say to me. There is a message I got half an hour ago--not from her."
He handed to Lord Evelyn the anonymous scroll that he had received from the old German.
"Poor old Calabressa!" he said. "Those Italians are always very fond of little mysteries. But how he must have loved that woman?"
"Natalie"s mother?"
"Yes," said the other, absently. "I wonder he has never gone to see his sweetheart of former years."
"What do you mean?"
Brand started. It was not necessary that Lord Evelyn should in the mean time be intrusted with that secret.
"He told me that when he saw Natalie it was to him like a vision from the dead; she was so like her mother. But I must be off, Evelyn; I have to meet Molyneux at two. So that is your advice," he said, as he went to the door--"that I should comply with Lind"s demand; or--to put it another way--succ.u.mb to his threat?"
"It is not my advice at all--quite the contrary. I say, if you have any doubt or distrust--if you cannot make the sacrifice without perfect faith and satisfaction to yourself--do not think of it."
"And go to America?"
"I cannot believe that any such compulsory alternative exists. But about Natalie, surely you will send her a message; Lind cannot object to that?"
"I will send her no message; I will go to her," the other said, firmly.
"I believe Lind wishes me not to see her. Within the duties demanded of me by the Society, his wishes are to me commands; elsewhere and otherwise neither his wishes nor his commands do I value more than a lucifer-match. Is that plain enough, Evelyn?"
And so he went away, forgetting all the sage counsel Calabressa had given him; thinking rather of the kindly, thoughtful, mysterious little message the old man had left behind him, and of the beautiful caged bird that sighed and wept because she thought she was forgotten. She should not think that long!
CHAPTER XXVI.
A PROMISE.
This was a dark time indeed for Natalie Lind--left entirely by herself, ignorant of what was happening around her, and haunted by vague alarms.
But the girl was too proud to show to any one how much she suffered. On the contrary, she reasoned and remonstrated with herself; and forced herself to a.s.sume an att.i.tude of something more than resignation, of resolution. If it was necessary that her father should be obeyed, that her lover should maintain this cruel silence, even that he and she should have the wide Atlantic separate them forever, she would not repine. It was not for her who had so often appealed to others to shrink from sacrifice herself. And if this strange new hope that had filled her heart for a time had to be finally abandoned, what of that? What mattered a single life? She had the larger hope; there was another and greater future for her to think about; and she could cherish the thought that she at least had done nothing to imperil or diminish the work to which so many of her friends had given their lives.
But silence is hard to bear. Ever since the scene with her father, a certain undeclared estrangement had prevailed between these two; and no reference whatsoever had been made to George Brand. Her lover had sent her no message--no word of encouragement, of a.s.surance, or sympathy.
Even Calabressa had gone. There remained to her only the portrait that Calabressa had given her; and in the solitude of her own room many a time she sat and gazed at the beautiful face with some dim, wondering belief that she was looking at her other self, and that she could read in the features some portion of her own experiences, her own joys and sorrows. For surely those soft, dark, liquid eyes must have loved and been beloved? And had they too filled with gladness when a certain step had been heard coming near? and they looked up with trust and pride and tenderness, and filled with tears again in absence, when only the memory of loving words remained? She recalled many a time what Calabressa had said to her--"My child, may Heaven keep you as true and brave as your mother was, and send you more happiness." Her mother, then, had not been happy? But she was brave, Calabressa had said: when she loved a man, would she not show herself worthy of her love?
This was all very well; but in spite of her reasoning and her forced courage, and her self-possession in the presence of others, Natalie had got into the habit of crying in the quietude of her own room, to the great distress of the little Anneli, who had surprised her once or twice. And the rosy-cheeked German maid guessed pretty accurately what had happened; and wondered very much at the conduct of English lovers, who allowed their sweethearts to pine and fret in solitude without sending them letters or coming to see them. But on this particular afternoon Anneli opened the door, in answer to a summons, and found outside a club commissionaire whom she had seen once or twice before; and when he gave her a letter, addressed in a handwriting which she recognized, and ask for an answer, she was as much agitated as if it had come from her own sweetheart in Gorlitz. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the man, as if she feared he would take it back. She flew with it up-stairs, breathless. She forgot to knock at the door.
"Oh, Fraulein, it is a letter!" said she, in great excitement, "and there is to be an answer--"
Then she hesitated. But the good-sense of the child told her she ought to go.
"I will wait outside, Fraulein. Will you ring when you have written the answer?"
When Natalie opened the letter she was outwardly quite calm--a little pale, perhaps; but as she read it her heart beat fast. And it was her heart that instantly dictated the answer to this brief and simple appeal:
"My Natalie,--It is your father"s wish that I should not see you. Is it your wish also? There is something I would like to say to you."
It was her heart that answered. She rose directly. She never thought twice, or even once, about any wish, or menace, or possible consequence.
She went straight to her desk, and with a shaking hand wrote these lines: