Gavin's belief that Evelyn would now make a confidant of him rested largely upon a knowledge of human nature, which the great and successful school of endeavor had revealed to him. Nor was he in any way mistaken. The intimacy of a peril, mutually dared and overcome, brought the man and the woman together as years of social intercourse could not have done. That very night they walked in the Italian Gardens of Melbourne Hall and spoke as freely as brother and sister might have done.
"I like your guest," Gavin began—and he referred to a young solicitor by name Gilbert Ray, who had come down from London by the afternoon train—"I like your guest. The fact that he is losing his hair is a point in his favor. When you think how much the head of a prosperous lawyer must carry, it is a wonder that there is room for any of the commoner emotions at all. Not a month ago, Sir Francis Button told me that he could lock up half the great people in town, politicians included, by one turn of a little key in his safe. My fingers would be itching all day to open that safe if I were he. Just think of the blessings I should confer upon the halfpenny papers. A Cabinet Minister in the police court. They would leave the war out altogether next day. After all, the world takes nothing very seriously nowadays."
"Not even itself," said Evelyn, almost as one speaking with regret. "We are growing too cynical even to deceive ourselves, and that used to be the most pleasant of all amusements. But I agree with you about Mr. Ray. His face is an honest one. I wonder if it is any drawback to him in his business."
Gavin laughed, wondering perhaps at the flippancy of their talk and their mutual desire to avoid any reference to that which had befallen them earlier in the day. By common consent they would not speak of the accident; each believed that some self-applause must attend the recital of it, and, save for a few brief words when Evelyn had recovered that morning, their resolution of silence remained unshaken. Out here upon the open lawns with the deep crimson shades of the dining-room making a fairy scene behind them; out here where the night breeze was like a breath of a tired sleeper and the river below droned a lullaby, it was difficult enough to realize that death had been so recently their neighbor. Nor had they the desire to do so. This new intimacy of association was a gracious gift to them both; and Evelyn, not less than he, understood that it might yet influence the years to come.
"Honesty is always a drawback in certain professions," Gavin said, as they wandered away from the open windows to the darker shades beneath the yews; "an honest doctor would be in danger of starving, while an honest photographer would certainly go to the workhouse. Mr. Ray, at least, was honest in his desire to get rid of us. His remarks upon the beauty of the evening I found quite superfluous."
"My father is very anxious to talk to him," Evelyn said quickly. "I am sure you have remarked his abstracted manner since you came here. A stranger would notice such things at once. He is not well, and I fear is in great trouble, Mr. Ord. Perhaps he will tell Mr. Ray. I hope sincerely that he will do so."
"Then he has said nothing to you, Lady Evelyn?"
"He has said that which I find great difficulty in understanding. I wish it were otherwise. A woman is never able to estimate a man's danger correctly. There are so many things of which she takes no account."
"When she will not permit a man to help her. I am asking you to tell me the story, you see. It has been in my mind to do so for some hours past. Of course, I have known that there is a story. I should never regret coming to Melbourne Hall if I could be of the slightest use to you, Lady Evelyn. Will you not make me your friend?"
He drew her still farther apart, down to that very bridge he had crossed the night he came to the Hall; that night of weird hallucination and childish phantoms. Standing by the low balustrade (she half-sitting upon it and watching the eddies in the pool below), she spoke of Etta Romney and of a young girl whose dreams had sent her to London.
"I have always delighted to live in a world of my own making," she said frankly. "There are days together when I believe myself to be some one else and act and do that which I believe they would have acted and done. The theatre stood to me for a very heaven of self-deceptions. I read of it in books, dreamed of it in my sleep, tried to picture it as it must be. Oh, yes, I have spoken my own plays aloud beneath the trees of this Park so many days. I was Di Vernon, my Lady Beatrice, Viola, Desdemona, all the young girls you can name in the books. Sometimes I had the idea to run away and hide myself from everyone in that great picture land my visions showed to me. No one here could share my thoughts. My father adored me, but has never understood me. To him, I am the child of the woman he loved beyond anything on earth. He guards me as though some change would come upon me if he ceased his vigilance. Then irony appears and says it is my father who is changing. I have been aware of it ever since Count Odin visited us. These wild men have brought misfortune to our house and God knows where we are drifting. I thought at one time that if I married the Count that would be the end of everything. I can believe it no longer. My father is tempted to sacrifice me; but he would regret it all his life if he did so. Can you blame me if I think of London again—seriously and forever!"
Gavin answered her with difficulty. He knew so few of the facts of her story as yet that his common sense warned him to speak guardedly.
"I should be the last to blame you," he said slowly; "but surely there is an alternative? We take a desperate step when other and wiser roads are closed to us. Let me try to understand it better. Count Odin, you say, has some hold upon your father——"
"I did not say so, surely——"
"Then I imagine as much. He has some hold upon your father, obtained by that which happened in Bukharest many years ago. Do you know precisely what his claim is?"
"His father's liberty. The old Chevalier Georges Odin is a prisoner in one of the mines on the borders of the Black Sea. The Count declares that this is my father's work. I cannot tell you if it be true or false. If it is true, I will see that we leave no stone unturned to set Georges Odin free. I wish I could be so sure that his liberty will bring no peril upon my father."
"The men were enemies, then?"
"I have understood as much. They were rivals for my dead mother's hand."
"And your father profited by his enemy's political misfortune?"
"I must believe it, since he is afraid to give this man his liberty."
"A natural fear—in Roumania; not, I think, in England. Will you let me ask how your marriage with the young Count would help your father in his difficulty?"
"I do not know, unless it is assumed that as Georges Odin's daughter-in-law, I should pay the debt my father owes."
"And save him from a purely imaginary danger?"
"Would you think it purely imaginary when you remember the guests we entertain in our Park?"
"The gypsies—could the police say nothing to them? Remember we are living in England, where all the fine sentiments preached in Southern Europe are so many heroics to be laughed at. If a Roumanian were to challenge me to avenge the honor of my ancestors by cutting his throat in the Carpathians, I should put his letter among my curiosities. Vendettas and secret societies and such absurdities have no place among us outside the theatre. That's why I say that this matter should be dealt with in an English way. If your father has done any man a wrong, he, as an English gentleman, will do his best to put it right. All the rest is merely tall talk. It should not even be taken into account, and would not be, I think, unless there are circumstances of which I know nothing. That is why I speak with reservation. I know so little of your father, and he is one of the most difficult men to know that I have met."
Evelyn shook her head.
"Every man is difficult to know and every woman," he said philosophically; "those who seem most superficial are often the people we understand least. Here am I talking to you as I have never talked to anyone in all my life, and yet you know nothing about me whatever."
"I differ from that entirely."
"Indeed, it is true. If it were not, you would not have asked me why I let them say that I am going to marry Count Odin."
"You let them say it because it is too foolish to contradict."
"Nothing of the kind. I let them say it because my mother would have married his father had her wishes been consulted. Oh, I know that so well. Every day my inheritance speaks to me. I am afraid of him, and yet am drawn toward him. I detest him and yet go to him. Do you wonder that London seems my only way of escape—the theatre where Etta Romney can come to life again and Evelyn be forgotten?"
She spoke with some excitement as she always did when the silent voice within told her again of those triumphs awaiting her upon the stage in London whenever she had the mind to seek them. Gavin thought that he understood her; but her confession troubled him none the less. Almost formal as their conversation had been, there was that in the timbre of their voices, in their steps, their gestures, their looks, which declared the pleasure of their intimacy and would have betrayed the mutual secret to any who might have overheard them. Love, indeed, laughed aside at the prim phrases and the mock sophistries—and none realized this more surely than Gavin.
"I hope it would be as a last resource," said Gavin presently, still thinking of her threat to return to the theatre. "You must not forget that your friends may have something to say in the matter."
"My friends! Who are my friends?" she exclaimed hotly. "The chattering doctor, who is always looking for an excuse to feel my pulse. The vicar, who is so dreadfully afraid of his wife hearing the nonsense he talks to me. Young John Hall, who can speak of nothing else but Yorkshire cricket scores. I have no friends—unless it be the dogs."
Gavin drew a little nearer to her, and confronting her suddenly, he said:
"Then here is a new breed of hound and one that will be faithful."
She turned away her head, forgetting that the darkness hid her crimson cheeks from him.
"I must not listen to you—I, who am to be Count Odin's wife," she said.
"You will never be Count Odin's wife," he rejoined. "I forbid it, you have given me the right. Listen to me, Evelyn. The night I came to Melbourne Hall, I heard a voice calling to me as I crossed this very bridge. It was your voice. I looked over and I saw a face down there in the river and it was your face. That night I did not know why Destiny had sent me to this house. But I know it now, and it makes me say to you, 'I love you—I love you, Evelyn, and my love will save you.' When you tell me that you must not hear me, it is not yourself speaking but another. I love you, and, before God, I will not rest day or night until I have saved your father and you from this shadow which has come upon your lives. It is yours to give me the right to do so—here and now, the right your heart bids you give me and you will not deny."
He took her hands in both of his and drew her toward him. She resisted him a brief moment; then suddenly, as though disguise were idle, she lifted her lips to his and kissed him.
"From myself," she said; "save me from myself."
Gavin permitted her to escape his arms when he heard the Earl calling to them from the Italian garden above the river. A sense of exultation, of ecstasy no words could measure, possessed him as he watched the slim white-clad figure, here disappearing, there showing itself again between the ramparts of the splendid trees. She was his, henceforth and forever. All her beauty, her charm, her intellect, every grace of speech and manner had passed to his possession.
This stately girl of whom the countryside spoke as of some wondrous divinity, she had promised to become his wife; for him the warm kisses of her lips, the declared secrets of her eloquent eyes, the passionate ardor of her embraces. Yesterday he would have called himself a madman to have dared the meanest of the hopes which now might be regarded with equanimity. To-night he could recall them with that kind incredulity which even attends the first hours of such an avowal as this. What act or purpose of his life had brought him such a reward; why had she deemed him worthy? he asked himself. He was neither a vain man nor a fool. If he contemplated his good fortune with a just trepidation, none the less he believed himself to merit it. She loved him, and henceforth might claim his life. This was the whole lesson of the first brief moments of delight.
Gavin was far too excited to think of returning to the Castle; nor had he any wish to speak to the Earl until his own story presented itself to him in some reasonably plausible shape. Under other circumstances, he could have understood the anger and the impatience which such a declaration might bring upon him; but these he did not expect at Melbourne Hall. Robert Forrester seemed to him rather an aristocrat by accident than by birth. He, himself, would not in any case consider the dignity of his own life and calling as beneath that of one whose ancestors had been the jest of London in the days of the Stuarts. He had the right of an honored name, of considerable achievement, and of his youth; and by these he claimed her. Moreover, the secrets of the Hall were now his own; and he understood that the forgotten years stalked as ghosts through the splendid chambers, speaking of passions outlived and of the aftermath to be garnered from their fields. Father and daughter alike were reaping that which had been sown in Bukharest more than twenty years ago. From his just judgment, from her birthright, it lay upon the stranger to save them. Gavin determined to begin his work that very night.
He had lighted a pipe when Evelyn left him, and with this glowing in the darkness, he set out, with no definite purpose in his mind, toward the gypsy encampment down in the hollow by the river. Behind him, Melbourne Hall stood up as a glittering palace of a wonder-world, its windows casting out their brilliant jets to make blacker darkness in the gardens, and many a picture revealed to speak of ancient centuries and the momentous history of the house. Ahead of him lay the moonlit park, the giant yews and elms, the matchless oaks, glades and dells, where from the elves should come unsurpassable avenues and all the beauty of the forest scene. Gavin walked on, however, oblivious of the night or its wonders. He had a vague idea that he might learn something from the rogues and vagabonds who had followed Count Odin to Melbourne Hall; and, with this idea indicating his path, he came presently to the thicket beyond which the encampment lay. There a sound of voices arrested his attention. Plainly, he said, a woman was speaking; and while the surprise of this discovery was still upon him, the music of a violin, weird and echoing, began to accompany the speaker in a song so plaintive that the very spirit of sorrow appeared to breathe in every note of it.
Gavin listened to the music spell-bound, and yet a little ashamed of his position. No possible advantage to himself or others would have induced him to play an eavesdropper's part at Melbourne or elsewhere. If he lingered in the shadow of the thicket, it was because the music compelled him and he could not escape its fascinations. When the sound of the voice died away, he turned about to come at the encampment by another road; and then he became aware for the first time that he did not stand there alone. A pair of black eyes, shining like a cat's in the darkness, looked up at him as it were from his very shoulder. Returning their gaze, but not without a quickening pulse and some apprehension of danger, he could, at length, outline the figure of a man, slim and agile, and yet not without a certain grace to be perceived even in such a light. That this fellow was one of the gypsies he had no doubt at all. The clear moonlit night revealed the oval face, the restless eyes, the long, tapering hands of a Romany. Gavin remarked the hands particularly, for one of them was thrust into the bosom of a spotlessly white and clinging shirt—and that hand, he said, covered the hilt of a gypsy's knife. So it was to be a hazardous encounter after all. He understood too well that if he moved so much as a foot, this gypsy would stab him.
"Why do you watch us, sir?"
The English was execrable but the meaning quite plain. Gavin answered as abruptly:
"I am listening to your music."
The gypsy, utterly lost in his attempts to continue in a tongue of which he knew so little, stammered for an instant and then asked curtly:
"Do you speak German, sir?"
"Possibly as well as you do; I have been three years in that excellent country."
"Please to tell me who you are, then, and why you come to his Excellency's house?"
Gavin laughed at the impertinence of it. Speaking in fluent German, he said:
"I might very well put that question to you. Shall I say, then, that I am not here to answer your questions. Come, we had better be frank with each other. I may be able to help you."
This was a new idea to the gypsy and one that caused him some perplexity. A little reflection convinced him that the stranger was right.
"Very well," he said, "we will talk about it. Come to my tent and Djala shall make us coffee. Why not be friends? Yes, we might help each other, as you say. Let us talk first and then we can quarrel."
He led the way through a path of the dell, powdering the ground with the golden dust of wild flowers as he went. The encampment had been enlarged considerably since Evelyn discovered it on the gypsies first coming to Moretown. There were no less than seven tents; and the biggest of these, the one to which Gavin's guide now conducted him, had been furnished with lavish generosity. Old silver lamps from the Hall cast a warm, soft light upon the couches and rugs about; there were old tapestries hung against the canvas; tables glittering with silver ornaments; a buffet laden with bottles and silver boxes. But the chief ornament was Djala, a little Hungarian girl, and such a perfect picture of wild beauty that Gavin stared at her amazed.
"Here is Djala," the guide said, with a gesture of his hand toward her. "I am known as Zallony's son. His Excellency may have spoken of me."
"I know nothing," said Gavin simply. "Permit me to tell the young lady that she has a charming voice. I have never heard music that fascinated me so much."
"It is the music of a nation of musicians, sir. Please to sit down. Djala will serve us cigarettes and coffee."
The girl laughed pleasantly, showing a row of shining white teeth and evidently understanding that a compliment had been paid her by the stranger. When she had served the coffee and cigarettes, she ran away with a coquette's step and they heard her singing outside to the soft accompaniment of a zither. Zallony's son smoked meanwhile with the contemplative silence of the Oriental; and Gavin, waiting for him, would not be the first to break the truce.
"So you have been in Germany, sir?"
"I was there three years," said Gavin.
"You know Bukharest, it may be?"
"Not at all, though a lady's book was on the point of sending me to the Carpathians."
"You should go and see my country; it is the finest in the world."
"I will take care to do so on the earliest opportunity."
"Make friends with my people and they will be your friends. We never forget, sir. That is why I am here in this English country, because we never forget."
"The best of qualities.... They tell me that your father was his Excellency's friend in Roumania many years ago."
The gypsy looked at him questioningly.
"It is as you say, sir. They were brothers of the hills. When the houses burned and the women ran from the soldiers, then men said it is Zallony and the English lord. There was another with them. He is in prison now—he who was my father's friend. Sir, I come to England to give him liberty."
Gavin was greatly interested. He drained the little cup of coffee, and, filling a pipe slowly, he said:
"What forbids your success?"
Zallony's son looked him straight in the face.
"A lady known to us—she may forbid it, sir."
"You cannot mean the Lady Evelyn?"
"We will not speak of names. You have her confidence. Say to her that when she is false to my friend, Count Odin, I will kill her."
"But that is nonsense. What has she to do with it? Your affair is with the Earl, her father. Why do you speak of her?"
"Because there is only one door by which my father's friend can win his liberty. Let Georges Odin's son marry an Englishwoman and my Government will release him."
"That is your view. Do you forget his Excellency's influence? Why should he not petition the Government at Bukharest for this man's liberty?"
"Because, in that case, his own life would be in danger. We are a people that never forgets. I have told you so. If Georges Odin were at liberty, he would cross the world to find his enemy. That is our nature. We love and hate as an Eastern people should. The man who does us a wrong must repay, whoever he is. It would be different if the young Count had an English wife. That is why I wish it."
Gavin smiled almost imperceptibly.
"It is quite clear that you know little of England," he said. "This language suits your own country very well. Permit me to say that it is ridiculous in ours. If Lord Melbourne had any hand in your friend's imprisonment, which I doubt, he is hardly likely to be influenced by threats. I should say that you are going the wrong way to work. As to the Lady Evelyn, I will tell you that she will never be the wife of one of your countrymen. If you ask a reason, it is a personal one, and before you now. She is going to marry me. It is just as well that we should understand as much at once."
The gypsy heard the news as one who had expected to hear it. He smoked for a little while in silence. Then he said:
"I appreciate the courtesy of your admission. That which I thought it necessary to tell you at first, I must now repeat ... this lady is the betrothed of my friend, Count Odin. I remain in England as the guardian of his honor. If you are wise, you will leave the house without further warning. My friend is absent, and until he is here I must speak for him. We do not know you and wish you no harm. Let this affair end as it began. You would be foolish to do otherwise."
Gavin heard the threat without any sign of resentment whatever.
"You are talking the language of the Carpathians, not of London," he said, with a new note of determination in his tone. "I will answer you in my English way. I have asked Lady Evelyn to marry me, and she will do so before the year is out. That is final. For the rest, I remind you again that you are not in Bukharest."
He rose, laughing, and offered his hand.
"Good-night," he said. "They will be anxious about me at the Castle."
It was the gypsy's turn to smile.
"I have dealt fairly with you," he said; "for that which is now to come, do not blame me when it comes."
"Too late is often never," replied Gavin lightly; and with that he left him.
The gypsy girl, Djala, had ceased to sing as he quitted the tent and the rest of the encampment was in darkness. But as he crossed the home park, a burly figure upon a black horse loomed up suddenly from the shadows and there was still moonlight enough for him to recognize the Earl.
"He is going to his gypsy friends," Gavin said to himself. "Then he knows that this brigand's son has spoken to me—ah, I wonder!"
It is an English characteristic to deride the Europe code of social ethics and especially those fine heroics which attended the vindication of what is so often miscalled "honor." Whatever else Gavin Ord lacked, sound common sense he had abundantly; and that came to his aid when he returned from the gypsy's tent to the Manor and debated the odd interview which he had so abruptly terminated. These men, he said, were mere bravadoes; but they might be dangerous none the less. Of Count Odin he knew nothing; but his antipathy to all counts was ineradicable, and he had come to number them together as so many impostors, valiants, and bankrupts. This habit of thinking first led him to the supposition that Lord Melbourne, his host, had been the victim of a little band of swindlers and was about to be blackmailed by them as few even of the most unfortunate degenerates are blackmailed, even in this age of accomplished roguery.
"It is a hundred to one old Georges Odin is dead," he argued; "this son of his got the story somehow and came over here to make what he could by it. The Earl has lost his nerve, and his love for Evelyn is betraying him into cowardice. I shall see him and tell him the truth. If they fire off pistols at me, I must take my luck in my hand. There may be a deeper story—if so, I shall find it out when the time comes. I am now to act for Evelyn's sake and think of no consequences which do not concern her. Very well, I will begin to-morrow and the Earl is my first step. He shall hear everything. When he has done so, I shall know what to do."
He slept upon this, but it was a broken sleep whose interludes found him sitting up in bed listening for any sounds in the house, and repeating in spite of himself the gypsy threats. He could not forget that some one had watched him in his sleep when first he came to Melbourne Hall; and this unforgotten figure his imagination showed to him again, telling him that it crossed the room with cat-like steps or breathed upon his face whenever his eyes were closed. His natural courage made nothing of the darkness; but the suggestion of unknown and undisclosed danger became intolerable as the night advanced; and at the very first call of dawn, he drew the curtains back and waited with a child's longing for the day. When this at length broke above the night's mists floating up from the river, Gavin rose and put on his dressing-gown, being quite sure that sleep had, for the time being, deserted him. True, his odd hallucination that some one was in the room with him no longer troubled him; but certain facts disquieted him none the less; and of these, the belief that his wallet and his papers had been ransacked during the night was not the least alarming. He felt sure that he could not be mistaken. A man of method, he remembered clearly how he had placed his papers and in what order he had left them. Whoever had played the spy's part had done so clumsily, forgetting to reclasp the wallet and leaving the dressing-table in some disorder. This troubled Gavin less than the knowledge that some one had, after all, watched him while he slept and that his dream had not deceived him. "They take me for a spy from Bukharest," he said ... and he could laugh at the delusion.
It would have been about five o'clock of the morning by this time; a glorious hour, full of the sweet breath of day and of that sense of life and being which is the daydawn's gift. Gavin knew little of the habits of grooms, save that they were the people who were supposed to rise with the sun; but when an hour had passed he went out impatiently to the stables, and there the excellent William found him a "rare ould divil of a hoss" and one that "came just short of winnin' the National, to be sure he did." This raw-boned cantankerous brute carried him at a sound gallop twice round the home park; and, greatly refreshed, he returned to the Hall and asked the apologetic Griggs if the Earl were yet down. The answer that "his lordship was awaiting him in the Long Gallery," hardly surprised him. He felt sure that the recognition last night had been mutual.
"Zallony's son has told him," he said; "very well, I will go and ask him to give me Evelyn."
*****
The Earl sat at a little table placed in one of the embrasures of the Gallery. He had aged greatly these last few weeks, and there were lines upon his face that had not been there when Gavin first came to Moretown. A close observer would have said that the habit of sleep had long deserted him. This his eyes betrayed, being glassy in their abstracted gaze and rarely resting upon any object as though to observe it for more than an instant. When Gavin entered, a tremulous hand indicated a chair drawn up near by the table. The Earl was the first to speak and he did so with averted gaze and in a loud voice which failed to conceal the hesitation of his words.
"I hear of your unfortunate accident for the first time, Mr. Ord," he said slowly. "Let me implore you to run no more risks of the kind. The Belfry Tower is too old to write new histories."
Gavin replied with an immediate admission of that which he owed to Evelyn's bravery.
"But for your daughter, my lord," he said, "I should not be here this morning to speak to you of very grave things. Please do not think me insensible of your kindness if I mention that at once. I have asked Lady Evelyn to be my wife and she has given her consent. Naturally I tell you of this upon the first possible occasion. You know something of my story, or you would not have paid me the compliment of asking me here. I have an assured income of some two thousand a year, and, with your friendship, I should double it in as many years. That is a vulgar statement, but necessary. My father was Lord Justice Ord, as you possibly knew; my dear mother is the daughter of Sir Francis Winnington, of Audley Court, Suffolk. These things, I know, must be talked about at such times, so please bear with me. I am sure that Evelyn would wish me to continue in the profession I have chosen; and, with your consent, I shall do so. There is nothing else I can tell you if it is not to say how very deeply I love your daughter and that I believe her love for me is not less."
The Earl heard him without remark. When he had finished he made no immediate response, seeming to lack words rather than decision.
"Mr. Ord," he said at length, "you had every right to speak to Evelyn. I make no complaint of it. But she cannot be your wife, for if she is not already the betrothed of another, there is at least an honorable understanding that she will make no marriage until he has been heard again. This affair must begin and end to-day. If I am no longer able to ask you to remain my guest here, you will understand my difficulty. I cannot answer you in any other way. For your sake I wish indeed that I could."
Gavin had fully expected this; but it did not disconcert him in any way. The battle which he must wage for Evelyn's sake had but begun. Settling himself in his chair and looking the Earl full in his face, he said:
"Does Lady Evelyn know of this, my lord? Is this the answer she wishes you to give me?"
"In no sense. But I speak as one who consults her interests before all things."
Gavin smiled perceptibly.
"Forgive me, Lord Melbourne," he said; "but all this is so very characteristic of your house and its history. A hundred years ago it would have sounded well enough and I should have called a coach obediently as any gentleman of those days would have felt obliged to do. But we live in the twentieth century, my lord, when men and women have learned the meaning of the word liberty ... when the desires and schemes of other people——"
"Schemes, Mr. Ord——"
"No other word is possible. You do not desire the marriage for purely selfish reasons. I am not impertinent enough to inquire into them, but Evelyn has told me something, and the rest I deduce from the answer you have just given me. To save yourself, my lord, you would marry your daughter to a scoundrel, who is known for such in his own country and ours; and, when you did it, some false logic would try to tell you that it was for the sake of your home and name; while all the time it is done to save you some inconvenience, some penalty you should in justice pay to the past. I am not so blind that I cannot see the things which are happening all around me. Evelyn's consent to my proposal gives me this right to speak plainly to you, in her interests and my own. Would you not be wiser, my lord, to deal with me as I am dealing with you—to tell me in a word why this stranger can coerce you when an Englishman is answered in a word? I think that you would. I think it would be well if you said, 'Here is a man who wishes to be my friend and will be so regardless of the consequences.'"
The boldness of his utterance found the Earl altogether unarmed. Under other circumstances he would have wrung the bell and ordered a carriage for Mr. Gavin Ord; but the whole problem was too full of perplexities for that. It may be that Lord Melbourne was fully alive both to the truths and falsehoods of his position. He had done a man a great wrong and that man's son had crossed Europe to bid him right the wrong and act justly. How easy would it all have been if Evelyn had loved this son and married him! No story then to delight a scandal-loving multitude; no fear, growing upon weak nerves, that the man who had suffered might avenge his wrong. Yes, Evelyn could save him ... and here was a stranger who forbade her to do so.
"You speak very freely," he said to Gavin presently. "I will do you the justice to believe that you also speak honestly. If Evelyn has told you anything, it will be that Count Odin is the son of one of my oldest friends."
"I have learned that from two sources," said Gavin. "Will you let me add, my lord, that you are probably speaking of a man who is dead?"
The Earl started and looked up quickly.
"Have you any knowledge of that?"
"None whatever, but I have heard of Count Odin's story."
"He is as other young men, I suppose; neither better nor worse——"
"While, for the daughter you love, you would have chosen just such a man. Is that so, my lord?"
Here was a shrewd hit, going straight to the heart of one who, for fifteen long years, had striven to shield his daughter from that which her dead mother's genius had bequeathed to her—the life and passion of the East; the nomad's craving for change and excitement; the gilt and tinsel of the theatre. Yes, truly, they had been years of self-sacrifice and of ceaseless vigil—to end in this spectre of youth reborn and of vengeance awake.
"Mr. Ord," he said, "I perceive that my story is known to you. Your judgment of me is what the world's judgment would be if half the truth were known—and, remember, it is rarely more than half a truth that the world comes to possess. I am acting, you say, not from a desire to do the best for my daughter, but to shield myself. It may be so, for men are blind enough when their own salvation is at stake. At the same time, there are reasons other than these, and such that you will hardly discover. I believe it is very necessary to Evelyn's happiness that this story shall be hushed up, for the time being at any rate. But I have made no promise to Count Odin other than those you know. If his father is still a prisoner in the mines at Yoliska, then I will do my best to obtain his liberty when I have assurances that such liberty will not be used to my disadvantage or to Evelyn's. I tell you upon my word as an Englishman that I am guiltless of such knowledge. When he fought with me in Bukharest, more than twenty years ago, I met him as a man of honor and nearly paid with my life for the folly. They now assert that my friends laid the complaint which induced the Roumanian Government to arrest him. I do not believe it to be true. Georges Odin, the records say, died in the fortress prison of Krajova nearly ten years ago. Prince Charles' Government arrested him, I admit, on the score of the duel he fought with me; but they had been trying to arrest him for many years, and that was their excuse. Of the rest I knew nothing. If he is dead——"
"My lord, have you taken no steps to ascertain the truth of his death?"
"My solicitors are now making all inquiries at Bukharest and Krajova."
"I should have thought that solicitors were scarcely the people to employ."
"Who else is to be trusted with such a story as this?"
"I am, Lord Melbourne."
"You—but you are a stranger to me and my house."
"A stranger who is willing to become a friend. Say that you will put no opposition in my way and I will begin my task at once."
"I appreciate your offer, but must decline it. Acceptance would imply an obligation I am unwilling to recognize."
"I ask for no recognition. To-night, my lord, I leave London for Bukharest. In a month or less I will return to tell you whether Georges Odin is alive or dead."
The Earl stared at him amazed.
"Bring me news of Georges Odin's death," he said, "and you shall marry my daughter."
Gavin rose and offered him his hand.
"I will start directly I have seen the Lady Evelyn," he said.
"In America, my dear Gavin, they would certainly name you for a very prince of hustlers."
The speaker, a lad of twenty-two years of age, leaned back indolently in his chair and sipped a tiny cup of Turkish coffee with lazy satisfaction. Gifted with brown curly hair, ridiculously blue eyes, and a beardless chin, Cambridge had named him ironically "the Lamb." His name was Arthur Kenyon, and there had been no prettier athlete in all London when he was there, precisely ten days ago.
"Yes," he went on, "you lure me to this place, which might be half a mile at the most from the infernal regions, and promise me a ripping holiday. I come like a sheep to the shearing and what is my reward? Hours of self-contemplation—long musings upon an innocent past, and the thermometer at 112° Fahrenheit in the shade. Ye gods, what a thing to be a travelling Englishman!"
They sat in the restaurant of the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest, justly famous, as the English boy had said, for its historic prices and ancient meats, long matured. Gavin Ord, grown a little older since he left Derbyshire some fifteen days ago, had a map of Roumania before him and all his intentions appeared to be concentrated upon this. The restaurant, despite the season of the year, could show a fair array of pretty women in Vienna gowns and of little gold-laced officers who chaperoned them. The heat of the night had become intense and a great block of ice upon a marble pedestal melted visibly as though despairing of the effort to exist. Energy might have been deemed a forgotten art but for the frantic exertions of a typical gypsy band which fiddled as though its very salvation depended upon the marvels of its presto.
"My dear Arthur," said Gavin at length, folding up his map and lighting a cigarette with the air of one who is thinking of anything but a smoker's pleasure, "I am a beast, certainly. Exit, then, I am a successful beast."
"Do you mean to say that you have found him?"
"Good Master Indiscretion—I have found the house which Cook built and I am going to visit it to-morrow."
"Yes, yes, of course, that ancient and interesting Roman building ... well, I always wanted to see Roumania, and, of course, we shall do Buda-Pesth going back. By the way, do you notice that acrobat playing the 'cello over there? Don't turn round yet. He's been watching you ever since we sat down just as though he loved you dearly."
Gavin smoked for a little while without shifting his position in any way. Presently he said:
"I don't know why he should. Unless they watched me from London, which is not improbable, they are hardly likely to know of my arrival yet. When you have drunk your coffee, we'll go and take a turn on the Corso. The 'cellist certainly likes me. I see what you mean."
Half Bukharest seemed to have flocked to the Corso, or public park, by the time they arrived there. Even the innumerable gaming tables, which are the chief fame of the pretentious city, were deserted upon such a night as this; while the open-air cafes were so many illuminated ice-houses, thronged by perspiring civilians and equally perspiring soldiers, whose talk began and ended with an anathema upon the heat. Gavin Ord had travelled but little; his one real friend, Arthur Kenyon, had already been half across the world and back; but for both the interests of this strange scene, with its babble of excited tongues, its Hungarians, Servians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and by no means least numerous, its sallow-faced Turks, were beyond any within their experience.
"No wonder the people at the Ministry tell you to be careful," said Kenyon amiably, as he pointed to a great Bashi-Bazouk whose very mustache might have been inflammable. "I would sooner meet a Chinese mandarin than that fellow anywhere. And there are plenty more of the kind, you see. All sorts, shapes and sizes, ready to cut your throat for a golden coin any day you may be wanting the job done."
"All sham, my dear Arthur. Knives made in Birmingham and pistols in Germany! Don't worry your head about them. We start for Okna at seven o'clock to-morrow."
"Oh, you've found out where it is, then?"
"I wanted to tell you before dinner, but these fellows were listening. Cecil Chesny was at the Ministry to-day and he could not have done more for me. Okna means a stiff ride into the mountains and some hunting when we get there. If the old man, Georges Odin, is alive, he is at Okna. Our task is to persuade him that London is a healthier place——"
"And the son, this man they call the Count, what of him?"
"I can learn little. He has evidently been living on his wits for a long time. He was here a fortnight ago throwing promises to his creditors right and left. The local papers announce his engagement to Lord Melbourne's daughter—they spell it, "Sir Lord Milbawn," and declares that he is going up to buy the old Castle at Gravitza. I don't believe he is in Bukharest to-day—if he is, well, I must look out for myself, and you must help to look out for me. The rest depends upon his father. I could go back to England to-night and tell the Earl that Georges Odin was released four years ago from the mines at Prahova, but that would not help me. The Count would go back and blackmail them again on the score of what his friends, the gypsies, meant to do. No, I shall bring the father if he is to be brought, and carry my purchase back to England. That's my plan, Arthur. Time will prove whether it's clever or foolish."
Arthur Kenyon listened as one listens to the tale of an Eastern romance. Gavin had told him the whole story before they left London; but here in Bukharest it seemed so much easier to comprehend, amid a people careless of life and little unacquainted with death. All the gauds of passion, of love, and hatred were known to this mean city. Here, at least, it did not appear difficult to understand how Count Odin, the adventurer, having heard the history of Robert Forrester's youth and of his present wealth, had set out for England determined to profit by his knowledge.
"We have no color in our roguery in London," Arthur said presently. "It's all just one drab tint—the same color as the yellow press that delights in it. Here one begins to understand why the fittest survive. You are a pretty plucky chap, Gavin, or you would not take it so easily——"
"Not for a woman's sake, Arthur!"
"Oh, well, I suppose if one is sufficiently in love, one would hack at Cerberus for a woman's sake. I am less fettered. Here in Bukharest I begin to wonder whether I shall die for the charming Lucy or the equally beautiful Lucinda. You have no doubts. My dear old fellow, I'm afraid you're in deadly earnest."
"So much in earnest, Arthur, that if I cannot go back to make Evelyn my wife, I will never go back at all."
"Eros living in a dirty Roumanian hotel on ancient meats! No, by all the gods. But, tell me, does your friend Chesny think you are unwise to go to Okna?"
"He says I am mad. I told him as much as I had the right to tell. Odin, the son, is a swindler; but his gypsy friends are honest. They believe that an Englishman shut up one of their heroes for twenty years; and if they can find the man who did it, they will kill him. There's the Count's chance. I am going one better by offering to take his father to England to meet the man who wronged him and say that the vendetta is at an end. A mad scheme! Yes. Well, possibly, mad schemes are better than the others sometimes, and this may be the particular instance. I will tell you when we get to Okna, if ever we get there."
"Then you are plainly not an optimist."
"Hush—there's your old friend the 'cellist, going home it appears. A gypsy to the finger tips, Arthur. Let us talk of the weather!"