CHAPTER XV
THE PRICE OF SALVATION
Evelyn met her father at the breakfast table on the following morning; but their brief conversation in no way enlightened her. The Earl, indeed, appeared to be entirely wrapped up in his own thoughts, and the few questions he put to her were far from being helpful.
"You have seen my friend, Count Odin," he remarked abruptly, "what is your opinion of him?"
"He interests me, but I do not like him," she replied as frankly.
"A first impression," the Earl continued with a note of annoyance but ill-concealed. "You will get to know him better. His father was my oldest friend."
"In which case the son is sometimes an embarra.s.sment," she said naturally, and with no idea of the meaning of her words.
The Earl looked up quickly.
"Has he told you anything," he asked with little cleverness, "spoken of Bukharest, perhaps? You must have been a good deal together while I was away. What did he say to you? A man like that is never one to hold his tongue."
She smiled at the suggestion.
"He was unconscious for thirty hours. My store of small talk did not come up to that. Why do you ask me, father? Don"t you wish me to talk to him?"
"My dear child, I wish you to like him if you can. His father was my friend. We must show him hospitality just for his father"s sake."
"Oh, I"ll take him in the park and flirt with him if you wish it. The nuns did not teach me how--I suppose flirtation was an extra."
Again he looked at her closely. This flippancy veiled some humor he could not fathom. Was it possible that the girl had been fascinated already by a man well schooled in the arts of pleasing women. And what solution of his trouble would that be? If he gave Evelyn to the son of Georges Odin--a coward"s temptation from which he shrank immediately, but not so far away that he put the thought entirely from him.
"I mean nothing so foolish," he exclaimed sharply; "the Count is our guest and must be treated as such. I understand that he is allowed to go out to-day. If you have any wish to accompany him in the car, he will consider it a courtesy."
"Thank you," she said in a hard voice, "I should really be frightened of the Vicar"s wife."
Her raillery closed the conversation. The Earl went upstairs to his guest. Evelyn, at a later hour, caught up a straw hat and ran off by herself to the little boat-house by the river. She was a skilful canoeist and there was just water enough for the dainty canoe her father had bought in Canada for her. Never was she so much alone as when lying, book in hand, beneath the shelter of some umbrageous willow; and to-day she welcomed solitude as she had never welcomed it since first they came to Melbourne Hall. One refuge there was above others--Di Vernon"s Arbor, they called it, where the willows spread their trailing branches upon the very waters; where the banks were so many couches of verdant gra.s.s, the iris generous in its abundant beauty, the river but a pool of the deepest, most entrancing blue water--this refuge she had named the Lake of Dreams, and to this to-day she steered her frail craft, and there found that solitude she prized so greatly.
What did her father mean by wishing her to be gracious to Count Odin?
Had he so changed in a night that he would sacrifice his only daughter to atone for some wrong committed in his own boyhood? Her pa.s.sionate nature could resent the mere idea as one too shameful to contemplate.
But what did it mean then, and how would she stand if the Count presumed upon her father"s acquiescence? The fascination which this stranger exercised did not deceive her; she knew it for the spell of evil, to be resisted with all her heart and soul. Was she strong enough, had she character enough to resist it? She would be alone against them both if the worst befell, she remembered, and would fight her battle unaided. Others might have been dismayed, but not Evelyn, the daughter of Dora d"Istran. She was grateful perhaps that her father had declared his preference so openly. A veiled hostility toward their guest might have provoked her to show him civilities which were asked of her no longer. As it was, she understood her position and could prepare for it.
To this point her reverie had carried her when she became aware that she was no longer alone. A rustling of leaves, a twig snapping upon the bank, brought her instantly to a recognition of the fact that some one watched her hiding-place behind the willows of the pool. Whoever the intruder might be, he withdrew when she looked up, and his face remained undiscovered. Evelyn resented this intrusion greatly, and was about to move away when some one, hidden by the trees, began to play a zither very sweetly, and to this the music of a guitar and a fiddle were added presently, and then the pleasing notes of a human voice.
Pushing her canoe out into the stream, Evelyn could just espy a red scarf flashing between the trees and, from time to time, the dark face of a true son of Egypt. Who these men were or why they thus defied her privacy, she could not so much as hazard; nor did she any longer resent their temerity. The weird, wild music made a strange appeal to her.
It awakened impulses and ideas she had striven to subdue; inspired her imagination to old ideals--excited and troubled her as no music she had heard before. The same mad courage which sent her to London to play upon the stage of a theatre returned to her and filled her with an inexplicable ecstasy. She had all the desire to trample down the conventions which stifled her liberty and to let the world think as it would. Etta Romney came back to life and being in that moment--Etta speaking to Evelyn and saying, "This is a message of the joy of life, listen, for it is the voice of Destiny."
The music ceased upon a weird chord in a minor key; and, when it had died away, Evelyn became aware that the men were talking in a strange tongue and secretly, and that they still had no intention of declaring their presence. With the pa.s.sing of the spell of sweet sounds, she found herself not without a little alarmed curiosity to learn who they were and by whom they had been permitted to wander abroad in the park, apparently unquestioned and unknown. Disquiet, indeed, would have sent her to the house again, but for the appearance of no other than Count Odin himself, who came without warning to the water"s edge and laughed at her evident perplexity.
"My fellows annoy you, dear lady," he said. "Pray let me make the excuses for them. You do not like their music--is it not so?"
"Not at all, I like it very much," she said, not weighing her words.
"It is the maddest music I ever heard in all my life."
"Then come and tell young Zallony so. I brought him to England, Lady Evelyn. I mean to make his fortune. Come and see him and tell him if London will not like him when he sc.r.a.pes the fiddle in a lady"s ear.
It would be gracious of you to do that--these poor fellows would die if you English ladies did not clap the hands for them. Come and be good to young Zallony and he will never forget."
He helped her ash.o.r.e with his left hand, for his right he carried in a silken scarf, the last remaining witness to his accident. His dress was a well-fitting suit of gray flannels, with a faint blue stripe upon them. He had the air and manner of a man who denied himself no luxury and was perfectly well aware of the fascination he exercised upon the majority of women he met, whatever their nationality. Had Evelyn been questioned she would have said that his eyes were the best gift with which Nature had dowered him. Of the darkest gray, soft and languishing in a common way, they could, when pa.s.sion dominated them, look into the very soul of the chosen victim and leave it almost helpless before their steadfast gaze. To this a soldier"s carriage was to be added; the grand air of a man born in the East and accustomed to be obeyed.
"This is Zallony," he said with a tinge of pride in his voice, "also the son of a man with whom your father was very well acquainted in his younger days. Command him and he will fiddle for you. There are a hundred ladies in Bukharest who are, at all times, ready to die for him. He comes to England and spares their lives. Admit his generosity, dear lady. He will be very kind to you for my sake."
Zallony was a Romany of Romanies: a tall, dark-eyed gypsy, slim and graceful, and a musician in every thought and act of his life. He wore a dark suit of serge, a broad-brimmed hat, and a bright blue scarf about his waist. With him were three others; one a very old man dressed in a bizarre fashion of the East, and at no pains to adapt it to the conventions of the West; the rest, dark-visaged, far from amiable-looking fellows, who might never have smiled in all their lives. Zallony remained a prince among them. He bowed low to Evelyn and instantly struck up a lively air, which the others took up with that verve and spirit so characteristic of Eastern musicians. When they had finished, Evelyn found herself thanking them warmly. They had no English, and could only answer her with repeated smiles.
"How did these people come here?" she asked the Count, as they began to walk slowly toward the woods.
His reply found him once more telling the truth and astounded, perhaps, at the ease of a strange employment.
"By the railway and the sea, Lady Evelyn. They are my watch-dogs--you would call them that in England. Oh, yes, I am a timid traveller. I like to hear these fellows barking in the woods. So much they love me that if I were in prison they would pull down the walls to get me out.
Your father, my lord, does not forbid them to pitch their tents in his park. Why should he? I am his guest and shall be a long time in this country, perhaps. These fellows are not accustomed to live in houses.
Dig them a cave and they will make themselves happy--they are sons of tents and the hills; men who know how to live and how to die. The story of Roumania has written the name of Zallony"s father in golden letters. He fought for our country against the Russians who would have stolen our liberty from us. To this day the Ministry at Petersburg would hang his son if he was so very foolish as to visit that unfortunate country. Truly, Zallony has many who love him not--he is fortunate, Lady Evelyn, that your father is not among the number."
He meant her to ask him a question and she did not flinch from it.
"Why should my father have any opinions upon the matter? Are these people known to him also?"
"My dear lady, in Roumania, twenty years ago, the bravest men, the biggest hearts, were at Zallony"s command. His regiment of hussars was the finest that the world has ever seen. Bukharest made it a fashion to send young men secretly to its ranks. The name of Zallony stood for a brotherhood of men, not soldiers only, but those sworn to fidelity upon the Cross; to serve each other faithfully, to hold all things in common--the poor devils, how little they had to hold!--such were Zallony"s hussars. Lady, your father and my father served together in the ranks; they took a common oath--they rode the hills, lived wild nights on desolate mountains, shared good fortune and ill, until an unlucky day when a woman came between them and brotherhood was no more.
I was such a little fellow then that I could not lift the sword they put into my hands; but they filled my body up with wine and I rode my pony after them, many a day that shall never be forgotten. This is to tell you that my mother, a little wild girl of the Carpathians, died the year I was born. Her I do not remember--a thing to be regretted, for who may say what a mother"s memory may not do for that man who will let it be his guiding star. I did not know her, Lady Evelyn. When they carried my father to prison, the priests took charge of me and filled my head with their stories of peace and good-will--the head of one who had ridden with Zallony on the hills and heard the call to arms as soon as he could hear anything at all. They told me that my father was dead--five years ago I learned that he lived. Lady Evelyn, he is a prisoner, and I have come to England to give him liberty."
He looked at her, waiting for a second question, nor did she disappoint him.
"Can my father help you to do that, Count?"
"My dear lady, consider his position. An English n.o.ble, bearing his honored name; the master of great riches--what cannot he do if he will?
Let him say but one word to my Government and the affair is done. I shall see my dear father again--the world will be a new world for me.
My lord has but to speak."
"Is it possible that he could hesitate?"
"All things are possible where human folly is concerned."
"Then there would be a reason, Count?"
"And a consequence, Lady Evelyn."
"Oh," she said quickly, "you are not frank with me even now."
"So frank that I speak to you as I never spoke to another in all my life. You are the only person in England who can help me and help your father to do well. I have asked him for the liberty of a man who never did him a wrong. He has refused to answer me, yes or no. Why should I tell you that delay is dangerous? If I am silent a little while, do you not guess that it is for your sake that I am silent? These things are rarely hidden from clever women. Say that Count Odin has learned to be a lover and you will question me no more."
They were in a lonely glade, dark with the shade of beeches, when he made this apparently honest declaration; and he stood before her forbidding her to advance further or to avoid his entreaty. Her confusion, natural to her womanhood, he interpreted in its true light.
"She does not love me, but there is that in her blood which will give me command over her," he said. And this was the precise truth. Evelyn had, from the first, been fully aware of the strange spell this man could put upon her. His presence seemed to her as that of the figure of evil beckoning her to wild pleasures and forbidden gardens of delight. Strong as her will was, this she could not combat. And she shrank from him, helpless, and yet aware of his power.
"You are speaking to me of grave things," she said quietly. "My own feelings must not enter into them. If my father owes this debt to you, he shall pay it. I will be no part of the price, Count Odin."