Count Odin had been three days at Melbourne Hall when the Earl returned. For thirty hours he did not recover consciousness; the second day found him restless and but dimly aware of the circumstances of his accident; the third day, however, recorded such an improvement that, as the evening drew on, he sent the maid, Partigan, to my Lady Evelyn begging that she would come to him.
There had been wild excitement in the house, to be sure. Tragedy is ever the delight of the servants' hall; nor was it less delightful because memorable days were few at the Manor. History has recorded that Partigan, the maid, shed tears when she heard that the young man upstairs was a foreigner and exceedingly handsome. Mr. Griggs, the butler, felt it necessary to sample divers vintages of wine and to ask repeatedly what the Earl would think of it. The maids whispered together in corners; the grooms discussed the erring horse with straws protruding from the corners of their mouths. To these worthies and to others the daily bulletin, which the shrewd, side-whiskered Dr. Philips delivered each morning as he climbed into his motor-car, became as the tidings of a horse-race or of a royal wedding. Rumor had said that the young Count was dead when they carried him to the house. Dr. Philips declared that he would have him dancing before the month was done.
"Fracture, pshaw!" exclaimed that knowing practitioner; "they might tell you that in Harley Street, but in Derbyshire we know better. He has a skull as thick as a water-butt. Con-cuss-ion, sir, that is the matter. You may tell her ladyship so with my compliments. Con-cuss-ion is what Dr. Philips says, and if there is anyone who disputes his word, he'd like to see the man."
They carried the news to Evelyn, who had scarcely left her room since this amazing adventure befell her. A brief account of the accident obtained from the lips of young Felix Horowitz, Count Odin's friend, narrated the simple circumstance that they had been driving from Moretown to Melbourne Hall and had collided upon the way with a hay-cart, whose driver, as the drivers of hay-carts so frequently will, had been taking his siesta during the heat of the day. Thrown from the box into the gutter, the coachman dislocated his shoulder and had many bruises to show; while his horse, terrified at the absence of control, instantly bolted in one of those blind panics which may overtake even the most docile of animals.
Such a story Felix Horowitz had told, but more he could not tell. Evelyn's anxious question as to the purport of Count Odin's visit remained unanswered. It was possible, the youth said, that the Count drove out to see Lord Melbourne. "But I should not be surprised," he added naïvely, "if there were a better reason which you must not expect me to confess."
She was afraid to press the point, nor dare she, at present, invite the confidence of one who was so great a stranger to her. Sooner or later it would be necessary to abase herself before this man who had thrust himself unluckily into her life and made such quick use of his advantages. Evelyn perceived immediately that she must go to Count Odin and say, "My father does not know that I am Etta Romney. Please do not tell him." And this was far from being the whole penalty of the accident. A glimmer of the truth could come to her already as a spectre which henceforth must haunt her life. She knew that her father had spent some years in Roumania, and that nothing would induce him to revisit that country wherein he had married Dora d'Istran. In the same breath, she told herself that this man was a Roumanian and acquainted with her father's story.
Had she been entirely honest with herself she would have gone on to admit a certain fascination in the mystery which she could neither account for nor take arms against. Count Odin was like no other man she had known. She had tried to deceive herself in London with the imagined belief that she never wished to see him again. Many times, however, since she had returned to Derbyshire this very desire would assert itself. She found herself, against her will and reason, covertly hoping that she might hear his story from his own lips. A psychologist would have held that there was a certain affinity between the two, and that she had become the victim of it unconsciously. Her fear was of a splendid fascination she had become aware of and could not resist. She imagined that she would obey this man if he commanded her, despite her resolute will and almost eccentric originality. And this she feared even more than her own secret.
It is to be imagined how the suspense of Count Odin's illness tried nerves as high strung as those of Evelyn, and with what expectation she awaited the hour when he would recover consciousness. Her desire had become that of knowing the worst as speedily as might be; and the worst she certainly would not know until consciousness returned and some good excuse might admit her to the sick man's room. Hourly, almost, she asked the news of Dr. Philips and received the strictly professional answer:
"An ordinary case—no cause for worry at all—don't think about it."
To the Doctor's inquiry what she knew of Count Odin she merely said that she had heard of him in London and believed that his father had been the Earl's friend many years ago. This did not in any way disguise her unrest, and the Doctor would have been more than human had he not put his own construction upon it.
"Head over ears in love with him," he told the Vicar that night; "why, sir, she would not deceive a blind man. She's met this fellow in London and bagged him like a wounded pheasant. I shouldn't wonder if it hadn't been all arranged between them—bolting horse and all. There he is, in the chaplain's room, rambling away in a tongue a Hottentot would be ashamed of, and she's waiting for me always on the stairs just ready to hug me for a good word. What do you make of it? You've married a few and ought to be an expert."
The Vicar shook his head at the compliment and declared that it would never suit the Earl.
"He hopes that she will never marry," he said; "he has told me so himself more than once. If she does marry, he has great ambitions. After all, she may only be naturally anxious. I dare say she's asking herself whether her own car did not do some of the mischief."
The Vicar's wife, on her part, declared the situation to be exceedingly distressing.
"There's no other lady in the house," she said aghast. "I think the Earl should be advised to return. It is so very unusual."
As a matter of fact, the Earl came home on the evening of the third day, exactly one hour after Evelyn had been sent for to see Count Odin for the first time since the tragedy. The meeting took place at the Count's request, as it has been said. Returning consciousness brought with it a full remembrance of the circumstances of the accident and a desire to thank his hostess for that which had been done. So Evelyn went to him, determined to throw herself upon his pity. No other possible course lay before her.
Dr. Philips was in the room when she entered it; but his belief that this was anaffaire de coeurremained obdurate, and he withdrew into an alcove, when the first introductions were over, and made a great business there of discussing the patient's condition with the nurse who had come over from Derby. Thus Evelyn found her opportunity to speak freely to the young Count. Each felt, however, that the need of words between them was small.
"My dear lady," he began, "how shall I apologize for what has happened to me? Three days in your house and not a word of regret that I intrude upon you. Ah, that clownish fellow of a coachman and the other who was asleep upon the imperial. Well, I shall long remember your English horses, and, dear lady, I am not ungrateful to them."
He held out his hand and Evelyn could not withhold her own, which he clasped with warm fingers as though to draw her nearer still toward him.
"It is impossible to speak of gratitude under such circumstances," she said in a low voice. "My father will approve of all that has been done, Count. He is returning to-night from London."
She paused and looked round the room, anxious that Dr. Philips should not hear her. The Count, in his turn, smiled a little maliciously as though fully aware of her thoughts.
"Forgive me," he said again. "I came to see your father, but I did not know that he was the Earl of Melbourne. Will you not sit down, dear lady? You make me unhappy while you stand."
He touched her hand again and indicated a low chair facing his bed. Evelyn, whose heart beat quickly, sat without protest. The minutes were brief; she had so much to tell him.
"You knew my father in Roumania, did you not?" she asked in a tone that could not hide her curiosity. The Count answered her with a kindly smile.
"He was my father's friend," he exclaimed, raising himself a little upon the pillow; "that would be more than twenty years ago. So much has happened since then, Lady Evelyn. Twenty years in a man's life and a woman's—ah, if we could recall even a few of them——"
"Even the weeks," she said meaningly, "when we were not ourselves, but another whom we wish to forget. Our friends can help us to recall those weeks, Count."
Evelyn had not understood the difficulty of confession until this moment. Her visit to London had been so entirely of her own planning, she had locked the dreams of her life so surely in the secret chambers of her heart, that this man was the first human being with whom she had shared so much as a single word of them. Secret actions and secret thoughts alike shame us when we speak of them aloud. Nothing but a dire dread of discovery would have induced her to face the humiliations of this avowal had it not been that silence must have meant discovery and discovery might mean disaster beyond any she could imagine. Count Odin, a trained man of the world, had perception sufficient to read her story instantly and to understand its full significance. Here was a woman who put herself into his power without a single thought of the consequences. He rejoiced beyond words at the circumstance, but had the wit to conceal his pleasure when he replied with an apparent generosity which earned her gratitude:
"Those are the weeks when our friends should be blind, Lady Evelyn. I am glad that you tell me this. Frankly, I, too, am an artist, and can understand your father's objection to the theatre. Let us forget that the most charming Etta Romney has existed. She came from nowhere and has gone away as she came. We shall be so ungallant that we go to forget her name and the theatre and all her cleverness. Please to speak no more of it. I am your servant, and my memory is at your command. If we have met in London, so shall it be. If we are strangers when your father is come back, that also I will be ready to remember. Command my silence or my words as you think for the best."
He accompanied the words with a gesture which would have made light of the whole affair—as though to say, "This is a little thing, let us speak of something more important. The act, however, did not deceive Evelyn. Her former distrust of this man returned with new force. She felt instinctively that she must pay a price for his silence; though she knew not, nor could she imagine, what that price must be. And, more than this, she rebelled already against the penalties of deception. The net in whose meshes her daring had caught her was a net of equivocation which must degrade while it endured.
"It is for my father's sake," she said quietly, believing it at the moment really to be so. "He knows little of the theatre and dislikes it in consequence. Of course, Count, I had no intention of remaining in London. If you have any love for the stage yourself, you will understand why I went."
"No one so sympathetically, dear lady. You were born an artiste; you will die one, though you never again shall go upon the stage. Here is our friend, Dr. Philips, coming with the medicine to make us happy. Is it that we have met in London or are we to be strangers? Speak and I obey you, now and always."
"There is no necessity to say anything about it," she exclaimed, flushing as she stood up. "I do not suppose my father will ask the question. Your visit to Derbyshire was in his interests, I understand, Count."
He turned a swift keen glance upon her—far from a pleasant glance.
"I came to ask a question of him, lady. I came that he shall tell me whether my own father is a free man or a prisoner. He will not answer that question willingly. But until it is answered, I remain the guest of your house. Silence, if you please. This also is my secret and to-day is not the time to speak of it."
He raised a hand warningly and Evelyn turned about to find Dr. Philips at her side. The little man seemed more amused than ever. His idea that this was a lover's meeting, brought about by the laborious device of a bolting horse and a smashed carriage, could not be put aside.
"Doing capitally, I perceive," he remarked in that professional tone of voice which no human ill, whatever it may be, appears able to modulate or alter. "Out in a bath-chair to-morrow and steeplechasing the next day. Well, well, if we could only put youth into our bottles, what magicians we should be! Now, sir, if I had been in the carriage, the Lady Evelyn, here, would have been asking herself what she would wear at the funeral to-morrow. But I am an old man and you are a young one, and there is nothing like youth in all the world."
"A most excellent sentiment," said the Count, "and one I take to mean that I may return to London before the end of the week if the Lady Evelyn will graciously permit me to go."
Dr. Philips looked at both of them and smiled.
"You must speak to the Earl about that," he exclaimed. "Why, there is his carriage. I must go and break the news to him."
Premonition is an odd thing enough and no distant relative of that sister art of prophecy which the ancients so justly esteemed. Evelyn knew no reason whatever why her father should be offended by the presence of Count Odin at the Manor, but none the less premonition warned her that the meeting would not be unattended by consequences of some import. In this fear she had quitted the Count's room directly Dr. Philips warned her that the Earl's carriage was in the courtyard; and going out to the head of that short flight of stairs by which you reach the banqueting hall, she waited there in no little expectation, afraid she knew not of what, and yet quite sure that she had good reason to be afraid. Down below, in the great hall itself, she heard a sound of voices—for the Doctor had already begun his tale—and she tried to catch the sense of it, listening particularly for any mention of Count Odin's name, which must, she believed, be the key to this strange riddle of her adventure. When her father approached her, smiling and not ill-pleased, she was quite sure that the Count's name had not been mentioned; nor was her surmise in any way incorrect.
The Earl came up the stairs with the air of a man who is glad to get home again and has heard a good jest upon the very threshold of his house. He wore a dark tweed suit and his bronzed face, if slightly drawn by the fatigues of travel, wore, none the less, that benevolent air of content which invariably attended the assurance that all was well at Melbourne Hall. Stooping to kiss Evelyn, he told her in a word that he was aware of the adventure and found it amusing enough.
"Yes, the Doctor has told me," he began; "a man and a horse and a flying machine! My dear girl, you must be careful. What will the county say if we go on like this—the second spill in a couple of months. Why, I'll have to endow an hospital for your victims! Evelyn, my dear——"
She interrupted him almost hotly.
"Doctor Philips should write books," she said quickly. "We had nothing whatever to do with it. The horse bolted from Moretown and raced up behind us. I turned into a field and saved the car. What nonsense to say that it was our fault! Ask the Count's friend how it happened. He has been to London, but he will return to-morrow. He can tell you all about it, father. I was too frightened at the time to know exactly what did happen."
The Earl, still believing that the Doctor's incoherent jargon must have some truth in it, paused, nevertheless, at the word "Count."
"Is the man a foreigner?" he asked quickly.
"He will tell you for himself," she replied evasively. "We have given him the Chaplain's Room. Please go there and ask him how it was. Dr. Philips has been romancing as usual."
The Doctor came up to them while they spoke and looked foolish enough at overhearing her words. He certainly was a poor hand at a narrative, and his incoherent account of the tragedy had left the Earl with no other idea than that of Evelyn's recklessness and the consequences which had attended it.
"It's just like me," he exclaimed meekly, "always putting my foot in it somewhere. And a great big flat foot too, my dear. What did I tell him now? I said you were returning from Derby and the horse bolted and your car ran into a field. That's it, wasn't it now? Dear me, how very foolish!"
Evelyn did not hear him. They had strolled together down the corridor and witnessed the Earl enter the sick man's room, and now a sharp sound of voices almost in anger came up to them. On his part, Dr. Philips remained convinced that the Count had come into Derbyshire to see Evelyn and that the Earl had some knowledge of the circumstances. Evelyn's abstracted manner seemed to bear him out in this ridiculous idea. Pale and silent and agitated, she waited for the result of that momentous interview. What had the two men to say to each other? How much she would have given to be able to answer that question!
"Your father knows something of the Count, I think?" the Doctor ventured at a hazard while they waited.
She answered that she was unaware of the circumstance.
"I have only seen this man twice in my life," she exclaimed with growing impatience. "If you are writing his biography, Doctor, I really am worse than useless."
He looked at her amazed. "This man." Surely there was nothing romantic about that.
"Writing his biography. My dear Lady Evelyn, what an idea! I quite thought he was an old friend of yours. But everyone we know is an old friend of ours nowadays," he said somewhat solemnly, as though grieved that his anticipations should thus be disappointed. "I know absolutely nothing of the Count," he went on, "except that he is a Roumanian, a country, I believe, in the south-east of Europe, with Bukharest for its capital. I remember that from my schooldays. The Roumanians shoot the Bulgarians on half-holidays, and the Bulgarians burn the Roumanians alive after they have been to church on Sundays. Evidently a country to which one should send their relatives—the elderly ones who have made their wills satisfactorily."
Evelyn was too kind to embarrass him by the declaration that her mother had been a daughter of the country he esteemed so lightly. His readiness to apologize upon every occasion was typical of a kindly man who believed that all the world was ready to find fault with him. His livelihood depended upon his recognition of the fact that illness itself is sometimes little better than a vanity—and that when an obstinate man tells you that he is an invalid, his pride is hurt if you tell him that he is not.
"My father spent many years in Roumania when he was a young man," Evelyn said, in answer to the Doctor's tirade. "Those are years he does not often speak of. I can't tell you why, Doctor, but he dislikes anyone even to remind him that he was once anattachéat Bukharest. Perhaps he will not welcome Count Odin here. I imagine it may be so."
"I'm quite certain of it," said the Doctor with a dry smile. "People who are glad to see each other do not talk like that—of course we must not listen," he added, drawing her away toward the Long Gallery; "we are not supposed to be present at all."
A sound of voices raised almost as though in anger warned him that this was no common affair. Every doctor is curious, and Dr. Philips had no merits above the common in this respect. He knew that he would narrate the whole circumstance to the Vicar later on in the evening, and that two wise heads would be shaken together over this amazing discovery. For the moment he watched Evelyn narrowly and, perceiving her agitation, found himself asking how much of her story was true. Had she, indeed, met this intruder but once in London; and was she in ignorance of the Earl's past, so far as Roumania had written it? He doubted the possibility—it seemed to him prudent, however, not to remain longer at the Hall.
"I shall run over in the morning," he said blandly; "you can tell me anything I ought to know then. There is nothing much the matter with the man, and a bump may have knocked some good sense into his head. Don't allow him to worry the Earl—I don't want another patient in the house, and your father has not looked very well lately. Send for me again if you have any trouble, and I'll be back as soon as the messenger."
He would much have liked to stop, but that, he realized, was out of the question. Here was some private page from the life-story of a man whose actions had ever mystified both his friends and neighbors. An old woman in his love of a scandal, Dr. Philips had the Earl's displeasure to set in the other pan of the social balance; and that was something not to be lightly weighed. Taking leave of Evelyn at the western door of the Long Gallery, he left her with many protestations of his interest, and the repeated assurance that his morning visit should be an early one.
"I'll look in first thing," he exclaimed; "don't let that man worry the Earl, my dear. There's a hang-dog look about him I never liked. Keep your eyes on him—and take my advice, the advice of an old friend—get rid of him."
Anxious as she was, she could not but smile at thisvolteface. An hour ago, believing that Count Odin had come to Melbourne because he was her lover, the Doctor was ready to declare him a very Adonis, a prodigy of charm and valor and all the graces. Now he had become "that man," a term human nature is ready enough to apply to strangers. Evelyn, left alone in the gallery, fell to wondering which was the truer estimate. Why, she asked, had she any interest in this stranger at all? Did the appeal he made to her speak to Etta Romney or to Evelyn, my lord of Melbourne's daughter? Was there not a subtle idea that this man could speak for the glamour and the stir of that world she craved for and was denied. Even at this early stage, she did not believe that the influence was for good, though she forbore to name it as utterly evil. Agitation, indeed, and a curiosity more potent than any she had ever submitted to, now dominated her to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Why did her father delay? Of what sometime forgotten day of the dead years were the two men now speaking in a tone which declared their anger? She could not even hazard an answer. The gong for dressing sounded and still the Earl did not leave the Count's room. Dinner was served—he did not appear at the table. Greatly distressed and afraid, Evelyn waited until nine o'clock, when a message came down to tell her that he had gone to his room and would dine alone.
"I must go up, Griggs," she said firmly; "my father cannot be well."
"My lady," he said, "the Earl was firm on that. He will see no one, not even you to-night."
The intimation astounded her, and yet had been expected. Destiny spoke to her plainly since the day the Count had come to Melbourne Hall. For what else had it been but Destiny which brought her face to face with this man in London, sent her almost into his arms and revealed her name to him! But for that chance encounter, her secret might have remained her own to the end. She did not fear her secret now, but a great mystery, the story of her father's life (she knew not what it might be), told abroad to the world, to his shame and her own. Not in vain had she lived these years of a close intimacy with one who could not so much as bear the word "youth" mentioned in his presence. There had been a past in the Earl's life, of that she was convinced—and this man, she said, had come to the Manor to accuse him. It remained for her to take up arms against him—she, my Lady Evelyn, the recluse, the captive of a selfish idea.
And that was in her mind already—the personal issue between herself and the Count. She would not shrink from it, although she realized its perils.
"Not Evelyn, but Etta," she said, "yes, yes, and that is Destiny also. And now the world is all before me and I am alone."
Alone! Truly so, for my Lady Evelyn knew not one in all the world to whom she might speak in that hour of awakening.
Alone in his own room, high up in the northern tower of Melbourne Hall, the Earl locked the door and turned up the lights with the air of a man who has a considerable task before him and must make the most of the hours of grace remaining.
He was very pale and greatly changed since he had returned from London three hours ago. Some would have perceived in his manner, not the evidences of fear but of displeasure, and such displeasure as events bordering upon tragedy alone could provoke. Uttering but one harsh instruction to the servant who answered his bell, he sat at his writing table and for a full hour turned over the pages of a diary which had not seen the light for twenty years or more.
Georges Odin! How the very name could seize upon his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Sitting there with the time-stained papers before him, the Earl was no longer in Derbyshire but out upon the Carpathians, a youth of the West craving for the excitements of the East; a hunter upon a brave horse, the friend of brigands and of outlaws—drinking deep of the intoxicating draughts of freedom and debauch. Well and truly had this young Count, whom Fate had sent to his door, reminded him of these scenes he had made it his life's purpose to forget.
"Zallony, my lord," he had said, "Zallony still lives and you were one of Zallony's band. They tell of your crimes to this day. The mad Englishman who carried the village girls to the hills—the mad Englishman who drank when no other could lift the cup—the mad Englishman who rode out of Bukharest in a bandit's cloak and lived the Bohemian days of which the very gypsies were ashamed. Shall I tell you his name? It would be that of my father's murderer."
And the answer had been a cringing evasion.
"I met Georges Odin in fair fight. He was the better man. I could show the scars his sword left to this day. Of what do you accuse me? They sent him to prison—well, I did not make their laws. He died there, a convict laborer in the salt mines. Was it my doing? Ask those at the Ministry. We moved heaven and earth to save him. The Government's reason was a political one. They sent your father to the mines because the Russian Government—then all powerful at Bukharest—believed him to be its most dangerous enemy. His affair with me was the excuse. What had I to do with it?"
But the Count persisted.
"Your influence would have saved him. You preferred to keep silent, my lord. And I will tell you more. It was at your instigation that the Roumanian Government arrested my father in the first place. You wished for revenge—I think it was more than that. You were afraid that the woman you married would find you out if Georges Odin regained his liberty. You were not sure that Dora d'Istran did not love him. And so—you left Roumania and took her with you—luckily for you both—to die before she had read her own heart truly. That's what I have come this long way to tell you. To Robert Forrester—I said. How should I know that in England they would make a lord of such a man! I did not know it; but that to me is the same. You shall answer my question or pay the price. My lord, I have brains of my own and I can use them. You shall pay me what you owe—you will be wise to do so."
The Earl did not wince at the threat, nor did his habitual self-control desert him. His insight would have been shallow indeed if he had not perceived that he was face to face with a dangerous enemy, and one with whom he might not trifle.
"Put your question to me and I will answer it," he said doggedly. "Remember that we are not in Roumania, Count. A word from me and my men would set you where questions would help you little. Speak freely while I have the patience to hear you."
"As freely as you could desire, my lord. A wise man would not utter a threat at such a time. Do you think that I, Georges Odin's son, do you think that I come to England alone? Ah, my lord, how little you know me! Open one of your windows and listen for the message my friends will deliver to you. I come to you with white gloves upon my hands. It is to ask you, my lord, in what prison my poor father is lying at this moment. Tell me that, help me to open the gates for him, and we are friends. It will be time to utter threats when you refuse."
The Earl's face blanched at the words, but he did not immediately reply to them. The story which the young man told was too astonishing that he should easily understand it.
"You father died in the fortress of Krajova," he said at length. "I remember that it was in the month of November in the year 1874. Why do you speak of the gates of his prison! It is incredible that you should bring such a story to me."
"As little incredible as your own ignorance, my lord. I thought as you did until the day, five years ago, which released Zallony's brother from Krajova. He brought the news to us. My father lives. But he is at Krajova no longer. The Russian Government never forgets, my lord. It remembers the day when Georges Odin was its enemy. My own people fear that my father's liberty would awaken old affairs that had better sleep. He is the victim of them. Yours is the one hand in all Europe that could set him free. My lord, the world must know his story and you shall write it. And if not you—then my Lady Evelyn, your daughter. Do you think I am so blind that I do not read the truth? The blood that ran in the mother's veins runs in the daughter's. Open the doors of this house to her and she will go to the hills as her mother went. The desire of life throbs in her veins. When I speak to her, I witness the struggle between the old and the new; faith and joy; the convent and the theatre; love and the prison. Your pride, your fear, have made a captive of her—but I, my lord, may yet cut her pretty bonds. As God is in heaven, I will not spare her one hour of shame if you do not give my father back to me. Think of that before you answer me. The girl or the man. Your shame or her freedom. My lord, you have not many hours in which to choose."
Such an alternative the Earl carried with him to his own room; such an alternative spoke to him from every page of the diaries his hand turned so painfully. It was as though the dead had risen to accuse him. Yonder, in a great clamped drawer of the bureau, were the letters he had received from his dead wife in the days when he contended with Georges Odin for the love of that mad, wild girl of the Carpathians. How ardently he had loved her! What mad hours they had lived amid the gypsy children of Roumania! And yet in heart and will she was another's. He had long known she loved the prisoner at Krajova. And the one supremely cowardly thing he had done in the course of his life had been done at the dictation of an uncontrollable passion which would sacrifice even honor for her sake. Georges Odin, the Count's father, had met him in fair fight—the better swordsman had won. Never would he forget the day—the snow-capped hills, the white glen in which they fought; the keen sword lightly engaging his own; then the swift attack, the masterlyreposteand that sensation as of red-hot iron passing to his very heart. No shame here, it is true; but there were days of shame afterward when the story came out and King Charles himself asked the question, was it so? A word from Robert Forrester would have saved his enemy from the mines. He never spoke it. The man disappeared from his ken, and he believed that he was dead. He could scarcely deny the justice of the retribution which now overtook him.
Georges Odin alive and a prisoner still in some unknown fortress citadel. How the very name could awaken forgotten sensations! It seemed to the Earl as though the madness of his youth struggled once more for mastery with the finer impulses and desires which a later day had inspired. Yesterday he had been a country gentleman, seeking to cast behind finally that cloak of unconventionally he had worn with such pleasure in his youth. He had meant to whitewash the sepulchre; to take his seat in the Lords; to equip himself for the great honors thrust upon him; to marry Evelyn sedately to a son of a noble house and then, as it were, to convince himself that the abnormal had been purged out of him and would afflict him no more. These ambitions, however, were powerless now to combat the more natural instincts which the story of his youth could recreate for him. Once more in imagination he rode the hills of Roumania as a free adventurer, submitting to the laws neither of God nor of man. Once more the sensuous voluptuousness of the Earl dominated him, and the spirit within him rebelled at its captivity. He must escape convention, he thought, become a wanderer once more. And Evelyn! Had he not feared to read in her acts this very inheritance his own nature cried out for. He shuddered when he thought of Evelyn. Who would save her in the hour of cataclysm?
Such were the thoughts of that night long drawn and terrible. In moments of revulsion against those who had thus brought him to bay, there were mad whisperings which reminded him that Georges Odin's son was the prisoner of his house and that, as he would, he might readily be detained there until some understanding had been come to. This was a thought the Earl could recall again and again. The man was alone and helpless in his hands. It would be folly to open the doors and to say, "Go out and tell the story to the world." Melbourne Hall had harbored greater secrets before that day, and might witness them again. Why should he stand irresolute; what forbade him to save Evelyn from all that revelation must mean to her? He knew not—it remained for the house to answer him, silently and finally, with the answer of one who has set out upon no idle mission but is well aware of the danger he must face.
This was at the hour of dawn. Unable to sleep, the Earl sat by his open window watching the chill gray light creeping over the dew-laden grass and disclosing the trees one by one as though an unseen hand drew back the curtain of the night from the stately branches. A thrush with a sweet note heralded the day—the deer began to browse beneath the great avenue of yews. Anon, a sweet fresh air, invigorating as a very draught of life itself, came down from the hills and sent the ripples leaping and splashing beneath the arches of the old bridge, as though the river also had awakened from a lover's dreams. And now all stood revealed as in a picture of a forest land; the vast spaces of ripe green grass, delicious vistas of wood and thicket; home scenes, and scenes of Nature untrammelled. Upon other days, often at such an hour as this, the Earl had looked down upon them and said, "Mine—mine ... all these are mine." To-day he viewed them with heavy eyes. Something unfamiliar in the landscape attracted his attention and roused him from his musings.
A loom of heavy white smoke floating upward from the glen! Nothing but that. A drift of smoke and anon the figure of a man seen between the trees! Another would hardly have remarked the circumstances, but Robert Forrester became awake in an instant and as vigilant as one who dreads that which his eyes discover.
"They are gypsies, by——" he said, "and they have come at this man's bidding."
He knew the meaning of their presence without words to tell him. They had come to demand the freedom of their old master, Georges Odin, whose son had carried them across the seas with him.
"I must answer them," the Earl said, "and if I answer them, what then! Will the other be silent?"
He turned away and shut the window violently, as though to shut the spectre out.
"He would kill me," he said; "the world is not big enough to hide me from Georges Odin."
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 embarrassment," 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 grass, 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 passionate 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 passing 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 scrapes 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 ashore 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 passion 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 noble, 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."
"Cara mia," he said, taking both her hands and trying to draw her close to him, "I care not how it is if you shall say you love me. Do not hide the truth from yourself. Your father is in great danger. You can save him from the penalties of wrong. Will you refuse to do so because I love you—love you as I have never believed a man could love; love you as my father loved your mother so many years ago—with the love of a race that has fought for women and died for them; a race which is deaf when a women says no, which follows her,cara mia, to the end of the earth and has eyes for nothing else but the house which shelters her? Will you do this when your heart can command me as you will—saying, speak or be silent, forget or remember? I know you better; you love me, Evelyn; you are afraid to tell me, but you love me. That is why I remain a prisoner of this house—because you love me, and I shall make you my wife. Ah,cara mia, say it but once—I love you, Georges, the son of my father's friend—I love you and will not forbid your words."
A strange thrill ran through Evelyn's veins as she listened to this passionate declaration. The frenzied words of love did not deceive her. This man, she thought, would so speak to many a woman in the years to come. A better wit would have concealed his purpose and rendered him less frank. "He would sell his father's liberty at my bidding," she said, and the thought set her struggling in his arms, flushed with anger and with shame.
"I will not hear you, Count," she cried again and again. "I cannot love you—you are not of my people. If my father has done wrong, he shall repay. He is not so helpless that he cannot save me from this. Oh, please let me go; your hands hurt me. I can never be your wife, never, never!"