An Eastern sun, monstrous and molten and blinking tears of fire, dwelt an instant in the West ere it sank beneath the rim of the mountains, beyond which lies the river Danube. Instantly, as though by a wizard's enchantment, the heat spell passed from the face of the withered land and the sweetness of the night came down. All the woods were alive now, as though the voice of Even had bidden them rejoice. Birds appeared, flitting from the swaying boughs of oak and elm and sycamore. Springs bubbled over as though rejoicing that their enemy slept. Life that had been dormant but ten minutes ago answered to the reveille of twilight and added a note musical to the song. Men breathed a full breath of the soft breezes and said that it was good to live. The very landscape, revealing new beauties in the mellow light, might have been sensible of the hour and its meaning.
It was the evening of the second day after Gavin Ord and his friend Arthur Kenyon had dined together in the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest. A railway and twelve hours' abuse of its tardiness had carried them a stage upon this journey. Willing Hungarian ponies, mules, in whose eyes the negative virtues might be read, brought them to the foot of the mountains and left them there to camp with what luxury they might. Attended by a sleek Turk they had discovered in the Capital, their escort boasted no less than four heroes of the line—for this had been Cecil Chesny's unalterable determination, that they should not go to the mountains alone.
"It's a fool's errand and may be dangerous," said he; "these soldiers are thieves, but they will see that no one else robs you. I will ask the Ministry to pick out as good specimens as he can. Don't complain when you see them. They are much less harmless than they look."
Gavin did not like the business at all, but as Chesny's good-will was necessary to the expedition, he put up with it, and the four shabby soldiers accompanied him from Bukharest. They were ill-mannered fellows enough, raw-boned, high-cheeked, sallow-faced ruffians, whose "paradise enow" could be found wherever good comely, plump girls and bad tobacco might be found. Their energy at meal-times became truly prodigious. They were as ravenous wolves, seeking what they might devour; and, as Arthur Kenyon remarked, they would have eaten his boots if he had taken them off.
Now, this pretty company, Englishmen, Roumanians, a Greek and a Turk, encamped in the woods together upon the evening of the second day, and found what comfort they could beneath the sheltering leaves of a spacious beech. It had been Gavin's intention to put up at a guest-house named by the guide-book he had purchased in Vienna; but when they came to the place where the inn should have stood, they discovered nothing but charred ruins and cinerous relics; and, "by all the gods," said Arthur Kenyon, "the red cock has crowed here before us." A romantic ear would have listened greedily at such a time to the guide's tales of border pleasantries—girls carried shrieking to the mountains, roofs blazing, priests burned in their holy oils, babes hoist on bayonets—for such they would have made a simple affair in which a drunken herdsman and a paraffin lamp had figured notably; but Gavin was in no mood for narratives, and he sent them to the right about, one for wood, another for water, a third to hunt a cot or homestead, if such were to be discovered.
"The Hotel of the Belle Étoile after all," he said gloomily; "well, it might have been worse, Arthur."
"Just so. If I had not stocked your larder at Slavitesti, you would now be doing what the amiable Foulon advised the French people to do a hundred years ago—eating hay with relish, my dear boy. Well, there's red wine strong enough to poison White Bull, and maize bread tough enough for a guinea set of ready-made grinders, to say nothing of cheese, sausage, and biscuits. Fall on, Macduff, and damned be he who eats enough!"
"I don't care twopence about the food," said Gavin savagely; "it's the delay I fret over. We may be within riding distance of the place for all I know. They could have told us at this inn."
"The boy on the burning deck grown eloquent. We might have put out the fire for them or comforted some of the ladies. Are you really in such a hurry, Gavin?"
"Judge for yourself. From the Castle at Okna I can write to Evelyn and tell her the truth. Until it is told, she will be the daily victim of a rogue's plausible suggestions. Why, the man may have returned to Derbyshire by this time—all that is possible and more."
"And there was a great square moon in the sky and thereon the people read the story of the Jaberwock. Tell me frankly, would Evelyn listen to the man now?"
"Evelyn would not, but Etta Romney might. Enigmas—I shall not explain them. Let us go to supper. The day will come after the centuries."
"Gavin, my dear fellow—this is the ancient fever. I bow to it. Pass the wine and I'll drink to your enigma. We are people of importance and our escort is a royal one. It is also musical. That song suggests Seigfried or is it the 'Belle of New York'? My musical education was completed at Magdalen College within Cambridge and is incomplete."
He frivolled on as young men will, not without purpose, for Gavin's anxiety was potent to all about him. It had seemed an easy thing in England to visit the near East and learn for himself the simple truth of Georges Odin's fate. Here on the slopes of the mountains he began to understand his difficulties, perhaps the danger, of his pursuit. For this, he remembered, had been the scene of Robert Forrester's youth, this the home of Zallony, the revolutionary brigand upon whose head three countries had set a price. Time had not changed the disposition of the mountain people, nor had civilization influenced its social creeds. Beware of Zallony's gypsies, they had said to him at Bukharest. This night had brought him within a post of his goal. It would be hard enough if any mischance should send him back to England empty-handed; to say to Evelyn, "I have failed; I can tell you nothing."
Arthur Kenyon, for his part, had begun to enjoy the whole adventure amazingly. Especially he liked the four merry soldiers who ate and drank as though they had been fasting and athirst for a week, and lay down afterwards to fall instantly to sleep. In this the Greek muleteer and the Turkish robber of all trades imitated them without loss of time; so that by nine o'clock nothing but the red glow of two English pipes and the sonorous nasal thank-offerings of the sleepers would have betrayed the camp or its occupants. Such conversation as passed between Gavin and Arthur was in fitful whispers, the talk of men thoroughly fatigued and wistful for the day. They, too, dropped to sleep over it at last, and when they awoke it was to such a scene as neither would ever forget, however long he might live.
Gavin slept without dreaming, the first night he had done so since he left England. He could remember afterwards that his friend's voice awoke him from his heavy slumber; and that, when he sat up and stared about him, Arthur Kenyon was the first person his eyes rested upon. Instantaneously, as one sees a picture in a vision, the scene of the camp presented itself to his view—the great trunks of the oaks and beeches, the hollow, wherein the horses were tethered, the tangle of grass and undergrowth. Just as he had seen it when he fell asleep, so the reddening embers of the camp-fire showed it to him now—unchanged, and yet how different! He was, for this brief instant, as a sleeper who wakes in a familiar room and wonders why he has been awakened. Then, just as rapidly, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew.
Arthur Kenyon stood with his back against the trunk of a beech, his revolver drawn and about him such a motley crowd that only a comic opera could have reproduced it. Gypsies chiefly, the fire-light flashed upon sallow faces which a man might see in an evil dream; upon arms that a mediæval age should have forged; upon limbs that forest labor had trained to hardiness. Crying together in not unmusical exclamations, the raiders appeared in no way desirous of injuring their man, but only of disarming him. One of their number lay prone already, hugging a wounded thigh and muttering imprecations which should have brought the heavens upon his head—a second had the Englishman by the legs and would not be beaten off; while of the rest, the foremost aimed heavy blows at the extended pistol and demanded its delivery in sonorous German. Such was the scene which the picture presented to Gavin as he awoke. He was on his feet before the full meaning of it could be comprehended.
"Halt!" he cried, for lack of any other word to serve. His tone, his manner, drew all eyes toward him. "What do you want?" he continued, with the same air of authority. Twenty voices answered him, but he could make nothing of their reply. He was about to speak for the third time when rough hands pinioned his arms and feet from behind and instantly deprived him of the power to move a step from the place where he stood.
"To conduct your excellency to the Castle of Okna—we have come for that, excellency."
"You are aware that I am an Englishman?"
The gypsy pointed smilingly to his wounded friend.
"We are perfectly aware of it, excellency."
"Then you know the consequences of that which you are doing?"
"Pardon, excellency—there are no consequences in the mountains. Let your friend be wise and put up his pistol. We shall shoot him if he does not."
Gavin, doubting the nature of the situation no longer, shrugged his shoulders and invited Kenyon by a gesture to put up his pistol.
"We can do nothing, Arthur, let them have their way."
"I beg your pardon, Gavin; I could make holes in two or three of them."
"It would not help us. They are evidently only agents. Let's hear what the principal has to say."
"Very well, if you think so. It's poor fun, though—almost like shooting sheep in the Highlands. But, of course, I bow to wisdom."
He held out his hands to the gypsy who bound them immediately with a leather thong taken from the saddle-bow of the excellent pony he had ridden. Silently and methodically now, the men secured their prisoners and produced their gyves of heavy rope. To resist would have been just that madness which Gavin named it—and but for Evelyn the scene had been one to jest at.
"Do you treat all your guests at the Castle of Okna in this way?" he asked the leader of the men suddenly.
The reply was delivered with a suavity delightful to hear.
"When they come to us with soldiers and Turks, then we speak plainly to them, excellency."
"True, I had forgotten the soldiers. Where are those noble men now?"
"Half-way back to Slavitesti, excellency."
"And the muleteer?"
"Oh, my friends are warming his feet for him. We are not fond of Greeks, here in the mountains, excellency."
Gavin started as the man spoke, for a wild shriek broke upon his ears and becoming louder until it sounded like some supreme cry of human agony, ended at last in a fearful sobbing, as it were the weeping of a child in pain. When he dared to look, he saw the gypsies had dragged the wretched Greek to the camp-fire and pouring oil from a can upon his bare feet, they thrust them into the flames and held them there with that utter indifference to human suffering which, above all others, is the characteristic of the people of the Balkans. Worming in their embrace, his eyes starting from his head, his voice paralyzed by the fearful cries he raised, the wretched man suddenly fainted and lay inanimate in the flame. Then, and not until then, they drew him back and left him quivering upon the green grass.
"He was warned," the gypsy leader muttered sullenly; "he should have known better."
But Arthur, showing Gavin his bleeding wrists, said with a shrug.
"I think very little of wisdom, Gavin."
The rope had cut the flesh almost to the bone in his efforts to go to the help of the wretched Greek.
Some one upon the outskirts of the wood whistled softly and the gypsies stood with ears intent listening, alarmed, to the signal. When it had been twice repeated, they appeared to become more confident, and, untethering their ponies, or calling, with low, whining voices, those that grazed, they turned to their prisoners and bade them prepare to march.
"To the Castle of Okna, excellency——"
A shout of laughter greeted the saying, and Gavin, had he been credulous until this time, would have remained credulous no more. A philosopher always, he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the ropes which bound him.
"I am no acrobat," he said; "I cannot ride with a rope about my legs."
"We are about to remove it, excellency. Be careful what you do—my men are hasty. If you are wise, you will be followed by so many laughing angels. If, however, we should find you obstinate, then, excellency——"
He touched the handle of a great knife at his girdle significantly, and some of the others, as though understanding him, closed about the pony significantly while Gavin mounted. A similar attention being paid to Arthur Kenyon was not received so kindly; for no sooner did they attempt to lift him roughly to the saddle than he turned about and dealt the first of them a rousing blow which stretched the fellow full length upon the grass and left him insensible there. The act was within an ace of costing him his life. Knives sprung from sheathes, antique pistols were flourished—there were cries and counter-cries; and then, as though miraculously, a louder voice from some one hidden in the wood commanding them to silence. In that moment, the gypsy chief flung himself before Kenyon and protected him with hands uplifted and curses on his lips.
"Dogs and carrion—do you forget whom you obey?" he almost shrieked, and then to the Englishman, "You are mad,mein herr—be wise or I will kill you."
Kenyon, strangely nonchalant through it all, shrugged his shoulders and clambered upon the back of the pony. Gavin turned deadly pale in spite of himself, breathed a full breath again, and desired nothing more of fate than that they should quit the cursed wood without further loss of time. As though enough evil had not come to him there, he espied, as they rode from the place, the dead body of his servant, the Turk, face downwards with the knife that killed him still protruding from his shoulders. And he doubted if the wretched Greek, so brutally maimed in the fire, still lived or must be numbered a second victim of the night.
Had he been a fool to leave England upon such an errand at all, or did the circumstances of his visit justify him? Of this he did not believe that he was the best judge. That which he had done had been done for the sake of one whose sweet voice seemed to speak of courage even at such an hour—Evelyn, the woman who first had taught him what man's love could be; whose fair image went with him as he rode, the stately figure of his dreams, the gentle Evelyn for whom the supreme adoration and pity of his life were reserved. If ignominy were his ultimate reward, he cared nothing—no danger, no peril of the way, must be set against the happiness, nay, the very soul's salvation, of her who had said to him, "I love you!"
This had been the whole spirit of his journey, and it did not desert him now when the gypsies set out upon the mountain road and he understood that he was a helpless hostage in their hands. As for Arthur Kenyon, he, with English stolidity, still chose to regard the whole scene as a jest and to comment upon it from such a standpoint. To him the picturesque environment of height and valley, forests of pine and sleeping pastures, were less than nothing at all. He did not care a blade of grass for the first roseate glow of dawn in the Eastern sky; for the shimmer of gold upon the majestic landscape, or the jewels sprayed by the stream below them. He had met an adventure and he gloried in it. Begging a cigarette from the nearest gypsy, he thanked the fellow for a light, and so fell to the thirty words of German bequeathed to him by that splendid foundation of one William at Winchester. There were "havenzie's" and "Ich Wimsche's" enough to have served a threepenny manual of traveller's talk here. Neither understood the other and each was happy.
"The man's a born idiot," Arthur said to Gavin at last. "I ask him where the road leads to and he says 'half-an-hour.'"
"Meaning we are half-an-hour from our destination."
"Then why the deuce can't he say so in plain English?"
"He might ask you why the deuce you can't ask him in plain Hungarian."
"That's so—but how these fellows don't break their jaws over this gabble, I can't make out. Well, I suppose we shall get breakfast somewhere, Gavin."
"Are you hungry, Arthur?"
"Not much; I'm thinking of that poor devil of a Greek."
"Yes, they are brutes enough. What could we do?"
"Oh, I knew that! What I am hoping is that they will get it hot after we have told the tale at Bukharest. The authorities——"
"Authorities, in the Balkans, Arthur! Do you forget our escort?"
"Oh, those blackguards. They ought to enter for the mile championship at the L.A.C. In the matter of running, they are a glory to their country."
"They will tell some cock-and-bull story and make it out that we dismissed them. Chesny told me not to put too much reliance upon them. Well, they're no loss. We can see it through without them."
"Good old pronoun. Would you define that 'it' for my benefit?"
"Oh, there I'm beaten. We are going up a mountain and may go down again. That's evident. Two Jacks and no Jills to speak of. There's a house also, I perceive—across the torrent yonder. That must have been built when the witches were young. The flat tiles speak of Julius Caesar, don't they? I wonder if they know we're coming?"
"We might have cabled 'coffee and the nearest approach to cold grouse.' Do you like cold grouse for breakfast, Gavin? There's nothing to beat it on the list, to my way of thinking. Cold grouse and nice, crisp, hot toast. Some Cambridge squash afterwards, and then a great big round pipe. That's what you think of when you've been ten hours in the saddle and can't find an inn. I wish I could discern it now, as the curate says."
Gavin smiled, but his gaze was set upon the ancient ruin his quick eye had observed upon a height of the green mountain above them. He wondered if the path would carry them by it, or pierce the hills and leave the castle, for such it plainly had been, upon their left hands. But for the circumstances in which he approached it, the scene had been wild and strange enough to have awakened all an artist's dormant capacities for admiration. They were well above the pine woods by this time and could look back upon a fertile valley, exquisitely green, and bordered by shining rivers. Villages, churches, farms were so many dolls' houses planted upon mighty fields while midget beasts awakened to the day. The bridle-track itself wound about a considerable mountain whose slopes were glorious with heather and mountain ash; there were other peaks beyond, rising in a crescendo of grandeur to the distant vista of the eternal snows, where the gods of solitude had been enthroned and melancholy uplifted an icy sceptre.
Gavin could not but be sensible of the majesty of this scene; nor did he find the old castle out of harmony with its beauties. The building, which he now perceived that they were approaching, had been built in a cleft of the hills, at a point where the torrent fell in a thunder of silver spray to a deep blue pool far down in the valley below. Clinging, as it were, to the very face of a precipitous cliff, a drawbridge spanned the torrent and gave access to the mountain road upon the further side of the pass; but so narrow was the river and so perpendicular the rocks that it seemed as though men might clasp hands across the abyss or a good horse take it in the stride of a gallop. For the rest, the black frowning walls, the iron-sheathed doors, the pint-houses, the barbicon, the quaint turrets thrust out here and there above the chasm, spoke of many centuries and many arts—here of Saracen, there of Turk, of the reign of the rounded arch, and even of glorious Gothic. A building to study, Gavin said, to scan with well-schooled eyes from some opposing height, whence every phase of its changing wonders might be justly estimated by him who would learn and imitate. Even his own predicament was forgotten when his guides stopped upon its threshold and demanded in loud tones that the drawbridge should be let down.
"This is the place, by Mahomet," said Arthur dryly ... and he added, "What a devil of a house for a week-end!"
Gavin bade him listen. A voice across the chasm replied to the gypsy hail.
"Don't you recognize that?" he asked; "it's the voice we heard in the wood."
"When this crowd desired to agitate my heirs, executors and assigns? You're right for a ransom. I wonder if they'll introduce us."
"We shall soon know. Here's the bridge coming down. What have you done with your armor, Arthur?"
"Left it in the cab, perhaps—don't speak, that ancient person yonder engrosses me. I wonder what Tree would pay for the loan of his make-up."
"I'll put the question when I return. This evidently is where we get down. Well, I'm glad of that anyhow."
It was as he said. The cavalcade had come to its journey's end; and there, picturesquely grouped upon the narrow road, were men and mules and mountain ponies, giving more than a welcome splash of color to the neighboring monotony of rock and shrub, and right glad all to be once more at their ease. It now became plain that none but the gypsy leader was to enter the Castle with the prisoners; and he, when he had addressed some loud words to the others (for the roar of the torrent compelled him to shout), passed first across the bridge, leading Kenyon's pony and calling to the other to follow him. Just a glance the men could turn upon raging waters, here of the deepest blue, there a sour green, or again but a boiling, tumbling mass of writhing foam—just this and the vista of the sheer, cruel rocks and the infernal abyss; then they passed over and the bridge was drawn up and they stood within the courtyard, as securely caged as though the oubliettes prisoned them and gyves of steel were about their wrists.
"Excellents, my master, the Chevalier, would speak with you."
Thus said the guide—and, as he said it, Gavin understood that he had come to the house of Count Odin's father, the man who had loved Dora d'Istran, and for love of her had paid nearly twenty years of his precious liberty.
"And this is the Castle of Okna?" he exclaimed.
The guide smiled.
"No, excellency," he said, "the Castle of Okna lies many miles from here. You must speak to our master of that. That is his step, excellency!"
They listened and heard the tapping of a stick upon a stone pavement. It approached them laboriously; and after that which seemed an interminable interval, an old white-haired man appeared at one of the doors of the quadrangle and raising his voice bade them welcome. The voice was the one they recognized as that of the wood; but the face of the speaker sent a shudder through Gavin's veins which left him unashamed.
"Blind," he muttered, amazed—"the man is blind."
The blind man felt his way down a short flight of stairs, and, standing before the prisoners, he said in a voice indescribably harsh and grating:
"Gentlemen, welcome to Setchevo," and so he told them the name of the place to which their journey had carried them.
A man of middle stature, slightly bent, his face pitted and scarred revoltingly, his fine white hair combed down with scrupulous vanity upon his shoulders, the eyes, nevertheless, remained supreme in their power to repel and to dominate. Sightless, they seemed to search the very heart of him who braved them. Look where they might, the Englishmen's gaze came back at last to those unforgettable eyes. The horror of them was indescribable.
"Welcome to Setchevo, gentlemen. I am the Chevalier Georges Odin. Yes, I have heard of you and am glad to see you. Please to say which of you is Mr. Gavin Ord."
Gavin stepped forward and answered in a loud, courageous voice, "I am he." The blind man, passing trembling claws over the hands and faces of the two, smiled when he heard the voice and drew still nearer to them.
"You came from England to see me," he said; "you bring me news from my son and his English wife."
This was a thing to startle them. Did he, then, believe that Count Odin, his son, had already married the Lady Evelyn, or was it but acoup de theatreto invite them to an indiscretion. Gavin, shrewd and watchful, decided in an instant upon the course he would take.
"I bring no message from your son; nor has he, to my knowledge, an English wife. Permit me an interview where we can be alone and I will state my business freely. Your method of bringing us here, Chevalier, may be characteristic of the Balkans; but I do not think it will be understood by my English friends in Bukharest. You will be wise to remember that at the outset."
Here was a threat and a wise threat; but the old man heard it with disdain, his tongue licking his lips and a smile, vicious and cruel, upon his scarred face.
"My friend," he said, "at the donjon of Setchevo we think nothing of English opinion at Bukharest, as you will learn in good time. I thank you, however, for reminding me that you are my guests and fasting. Be good enough to follow me. The English, I remember, are eaters of flesh at dawn, being thus but one step removed from the cannibals. This house shall gratify you—please to follow me, I say."
Laboriously as he had descended the stairs, he climbed them again, the baffling smile still upon his face and the stick tapping weirdly upon the broken stone. The house within did not belie the house as it appeared from without. Arched corridors, cracked groins, moulded frescoes, great bare apartments with dismal furniture of brown oak, the whole building breathed a breath both chilling and pestilential. If there were a redeeming feature, Gavin found it in the so-called Banqueting Hall, a fine room gracefully panelled with a barrel vault and some antique mouldings original enough to awaken an artist's curiosity. The great buffet of this boasted plate was of considerable value and no little merit of design; and such a breakfast as the Chevalier's servants had prepared was served upon a mighty oak table which had been a table when the second Mohammed ravaged Bosnia.
The men were hungry enough and they ate and drank with good appetite. Perhaps it was with some relief that they discovered a greater leniency within the house than they had found without. Discomfort is often the ally of fear; and whatever were the demerits of the House at Setchevo, the discomforts were relatively trifling. As for the old blind Chevalier, he sat at the head of the table just as though he had eyes to watch their every movement and to judge them thereby. Not until they had made a good meal of delicious coffee and fine white bread, with eggs and a dish of Kolesha in a stiff square lump from the pan—not until then did he intrude with a word, or appear in any way anxious to question them.
"You pay a tribute to our mountain air," he exclaimed at last, speaking a little to their astonishment in their own tongue; "that is your English virtue, you can eat at any time."
"And some of us are equally useful in the matter of drinking," rejoined Arthur Kenyon, who had begun to enjoy himself again, and was delighted to hear the English language.
The Chevalier, however, believed this to be some reflection upon his hospitality, and he said at once:
"I compliment you upon your frankness,mein herr—my servants shall bring wine."
"Oh, indeed, no, I referred to a very bad habit," exclaimed Kenyon quickly and then rising, he added, "With your permission, sir, I will leave you with my friend. I am sure you have both much to say to each other."
He did not wait for a reply but strolled off to the other end of the hall and thence out to the courtyard, no man saying him nay. Alone together, the Chevalier and Gavin sat a few moments in awkward silence, each debating the phrase with which he should open the argument. Meanwhile, a Turkish servant brought cigarettes, and the old man lighted one but immediately cast it from him.
"The blind cannot smoke," he said irritably; "that is one of the compensations of life which imagination cannot give us. Well, I am too old to complain—my world lies within these walls. It is wide enough for me."
"I am indeed sorry," said Gavin, for suffering could always arouse his sympathies wherever he found it. "Is there no hope at all of any relief?"
"None whatever. The nerves have perished. So much I owe to my English friendship—the last gift it bestowed upon me. Shall I tell you by what means I became blind,mein herr? Go down to the salt mines at Okna and when they blast the rock there, you will say, 'Georges Odin, the Englishman's friend, lost his eyesight in that mine.' It is true before God. And the man who put this calamity upon me—what of him? A rich man,mein herr, honored by the world, a great noble in his own country, a leader of the people, the possessor of much land and many houses. He sent me to Okna. We were boys together on the hills. If he shamed me in the race for all that young men seek of life, I suffered it because of my friendship. Then the night fell upon me—you know the story. He took from me the woman I loved. We met as men of honor should. I avenged the wrong—my God, what a vengeance with the Russian hounds upon my track and the fortress prison already garnished for me!Mein herr, you knew of this story or you would not have come to my house. Tell me what I shall add to it, for I listen patiently."
He was a fine old actor and the melodramatic gesture with which he accompanied the recital would have made a deep impression upon one less given to cool analysis and reticent common sense than Gavin Ord. Gavin, indeed, had thought upon this strange history almost night and day since Lord Melbourne had first related it. If he had come to have a settled opinion upon it all, nothing that had yet transpired upon his journey from England altered that opinion or even modified it. This blind man he believed to have been the victim of the Russian Government. Lord Melbourne had acted treacherously in making no attempt to release his old rival from the mines; but had he so attempted, his efforts must have been futile—for the Russians believed that Georges Odin was their most relentless enemy and had pursued him with bitter and lasting animosity. So the affair stood in Gavin's mind—nor was he influenced in any way by the forensic appeal now addressed to him.
"Yes," he said slowly, "I know your story, Chevalier, and I am here because of it. Let me say in a word that I come because Lord Melbourne is anxious and ready, in so far as it is possible to do so, to atone for any wrong he may have done you. He desires nothing so much as that you two, who were friends in boyhood, should be reconciled now when years must be remembered and the accidents of life be provided for. So he sends me to Bukharest to invite you to England, there to hear him for himself and to tell him how best he may serve you. I can add nothing to that invitation save my own belief in his honesty, and in the reality of those motives which now actuate him. If you decide to accompany me to England——"
An exclamation which was half an oath arrested him suddenly and he became aware that he was no longer heard patiently. In truth, the native temper of his race mastered Georges Odin in that moment and left him with no remembrance but that of the wretchedness of his own life and the depth of the passions which had contributed to it.
"Money!" he cried angrily, "this man offers me money!"
"Indeed, no—he offers you friendship."
"Tell me the truth! He is afraid of me. Yes, there was always a coward's cloak ready for him. He knew it and played his part in spite of it. He is afraid of me and sends you here to say so. My friend, that man shall yet fall on his knees before me. He shall beg mercy, not for himself but for another. When his daughter—God be thanked he has a daughter—when his daughter is my daughter—ha! we can reach many hearts through the hearts of the women they love. As he did to me, so will I do to this English girl he dotes upon. When she is my son's wife!"
His laugh had a horrid ring in it—broken, stunted teeth protruded from his hanging lips, his hands trembled upon the stick he carried. "When she is my son's wife!" He seemed to moisten the very words with a tongue lustful for vengeance. And Gavin heard him with a repulsion beyond all experience, a horror that made him dread the very touch of such a man's fingers.
"Chevalier," he said at length, "the Lady Evelyn will never be your son's wife."
"Ha, a prophet? Tell me that you are her chosen husband, and I will ask you no second question."
"I am her chosen husband and I return to England to marry her."
"You return!Mein herr, am I a madman that I should open my gates to one who does not even know how to hold his tongue? Shall I send you back to rob my son of the rewards of his fidelity? Return you shall—when she is his wife. Until that time,mein herr, consider yourself my guest."
He rose defiantly, brandishing his stick.
"Fool," he cried; "fool to dare the mountains which Zallony rules. As you came in folly, so shall you go—when the Englishwoman is in my son's arms."
"As you came in folly, so shall you go----""As you came in folly, so shall you go——"
"As you came in folly, so shall you go----""As you came in folly, so shall you go——"
He turned, a laugh which was almost a cry upon his lips, and tapped his way from the apartment. Gavin could hear the sound of his footsteps long afterwards, passing from corridor to corridor of the great bare house; but the words he had spoken lingered and were echoed, as though by a spirit of vengeance moving in the room.
It would have been about half-past one upon the afternoon of a gloomy November day, some three months after Gavin Ord set out for Roumania, that a hansom cab was driven up to the stage-door of the Carlton Theatre, the Lady Evelyn, wearing heavy black furs and a motor veil, which entirely hid her face from the passers-by, alighted timidly and offered the cabman a generous fare. Deaf to the man's effusive assurance that he had no other ambition in life but to drive the same fare back to the place whence she came, Evelyn entered the narrow alley wherein the stage-door is situated and at once asked the stage-door keeper if Mr. Charles Izard was or was not within the house? The simple question provoked an answer that might have satisfied a diplomatist but helped Evelyn not at all.
"Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. It depends on who wants him. Now, you take a word from me, miss. Say to yourself, Shall I go and have dinner with the Prince of Wales this afternoon or shall I not? That'll answer you and leave old Jacob Briggs to finish his pipe in peace, he being the father of widows, likewise of orphans."
Jacob, it was plain, had but just lunched and was more affable than upon any less benign occasion. He sat with his back to a bill which announced the concluding nights of that dismal play "Oliver Cromwell—a comedy, by Rowland Wales," and he smoked a pipe with that which the ancient Weller would have called an "uncommon power of suction." Here, said he, is another of 'em, meaning thereby another candidate for histrionic honors which twenty-five shillings a week should reward. Jacob knew how to deal with them; "but," said he, "when I've got my dinner in me then I'm a blessed lamb." So he addressed Evelyn "humorous-like" and did not lose his patience even when she would not go away.
"I must see Mr. Izard to-day. I am sure he will wish to see me. If you would take my name into the theatre——"
Jacob Briggs, pulling the pipe to the right side of his mouth, ate a smile as though it were good butter.
"Perhaps he was agoing to send a carriage and pair for yer, miss, or a motor kar. That's wot he does ordinary to such young ladies as you. Now, I shouldn't wonder if you don't think as you can play Miss Fay's part better'n she herself. I've seed a many and most of 'em do. But, lord, I'm too good-natured to take much notice on it. Tryin's tryin', says I, and if you ask for a sufferin (sovereign), who knows as you mayn't get a shilling. Wot you've got to do, miss, is to go round to the horfiss. They'll soon turn you out of that, and better for you in the long run——"
"And yet you used not to think so when I was playing Di Vernon, Mr. Briggs."
The smile left Jacob's face as though some one had hit him. He slipped down the board until he came near to sitting on the pavement. Speech did not immediately assist him, and he could mutter nothing else but the mystic and entirely irrelevant phrase, "D—n my uncle!" which he continued to repeat until he had scrambled to his feet and doffed his carpenter's cap.
"Good Lord, Miss Romney, if you'd have said so, why, I'd have pulled the theatre down for ye, and willing. Mr. Izard now—he won't be glad neither. 'Briggs,' says he to me, 'she'll come back some day just as sure as Mrs. Briggs'—but that's neither here nor there, miss. He's over at the tavern now and Mr. Lacombe with him. Let me say the word and he'll come back in a fire-engine——"
Evelyn protested that she did not desire the word to be said; but would wait in the auditorium and announce herself to the great man. Understanding that the "tavern" really meant the Carlton Hotel and that there was a rehearsal of a new and modern play at two o'clock, she entered the theatre and sat, her veil undrawn, in the wings, whereby from time to time the acquaintances of old time must pass her. So dark was it that she feared no recognition. Those who came in and out, pinched girls who had lunched off a sponge-cake and a cup of cocoa; heavy-jowled men whose mid-day refreshment had been distilled from juniper; sleek youths with a new rendering of Hamlet in their pockets—the success, the fortunes, the hopes, the disappointments of each chained his tongue and directed his eyes to that man or woman alone who had the patience and the good-nature to hear a recital of them. None paid attention to Evelyn, or as much as remarked her presence in the sombre light. Even little Dulcie Holmes passed her by unnoticed; and as for the melancholy Lucy Grey, she was too full of her own troubles so much as to think of anyone else's. "I wish I were dead," she had just said to Dulcie—and this was as much as to say, "I have no part in the new play, and God knows how I shall pay for my lodging."
Evelyn had a little difficulty in restraining herself from declaring her identity to the girls; but an incurable love of dramatic effect came to her aid and, perhaps, the vain desire to be discovered more worthily by that great man, Mr. Charles Izard. Aware that she was waiting there as the humblest suppliant for the theatre's favors, she perceived presently that the iron door between stage and auditorium stood open; and, slipping through, she entered a stage-box and there waited in better security. One by one now the "stars" entered the theatre and took up their positions upon the dimly-lighted stage. A chatter of conversation arose, amidst which the stage-manager's voice could be heard in heated argument with a lady whose part had been cut. All waited for the great man; and when he appeared a hush fell as though upon a transformation scene in a country pantomime. Lo, he had come—fresh from a long cigar and a bottle of what he called "noots"—meaning the excellent wine of Burgundy known as Nints. What bustle, what activity upon the part of the underlings now! How busy the principals appear to be! How white in the gloom are the faces of the girls, who lately spoke of fortune and furs and a furore of applause!
The new play was also a new entertainment. It appeared to Evelyn to be a hash-up of drama and ballet, with a comedy scene in each act, introduced for the sole purpose of exploiting a lady who could imitate wild animals. That it might succeed in an age which has almost forgotten the bombastics of the ancient drama, and cares not a straw what an entertainment may be called so long as it is amusing and provokes a rhythmical nodding of heads, was very probable. Mr. Izard, at least, had few doubts about the success of it; and yet he could have wished it otherwise. "They ask me to elevate the people," he would remark in confidential moments—"why, sir, the people that want elevating had better go up in elevators. I'm here to run a theatre, not a Tower of Babel, and that's so. Just walk round to some of these fine-mouthed folk and ask them what they will pay down in dollars for the good of humanity and the British stage. If you can buy a ten-cent collar with the proceeds of that hat-box, I'll set a stone up to your memory. No, sir, the world's too tired to think. Give 'em a great actress and they don't have to think. That's what I'm looking for, like a man who's dropped a thousand-dollar scarf-pin on the beach at Atlantic City. Since Etta Romney walked out—but what's the good of talking about that? When she comes back I'll begin to think about the people's good health again. Sir, she made the rest of them look like thirty cents, and that's gospel truth."
The confession would end with a sigh and a new application to the business of tragic-burlesque-comedy. Smarting from the pink lash of a half-penny evening paper, which had, in a leading article that afternoon, cast italicized reflections upon "the porcine Paladius of the people's palaces," the great man was in no very pleasant mood; and this he made manifest directly rehearsal began. Scarcely a dozen lines had been repeated before the leading lady was in tears and the old stock actor sulking at a public-house round the corner. Ladies at twenty-three shillings a week heard themselves addressed in terms which implied their fitness for the position of dummies in a side-show. The stage-manager would infallibly have been visited with blindness if the great man's appeals to unknown powers had been heard. When calm fell, Izard settled himself frettingly in a stall and there simmered a long while in silence. Not for half an hour did an exclamation escape him, and then it came almost involuntarily. He seemed to be waging a battle between his contempt for the leading lady and his fear that she would walk out of the house; and the latter being worsted, he cried aloud, almost like one in despair:
"Etta Romney—Etta Romney—what, in God's name, keeps you out of my theatre!"
A dead silence fell. Everyone was awed by the real pathos of this regret, drawn from a man who had never been the servant of a sentiment. And when a musical voice answered him from the stage-box, opposite prompt, then, indeed, did Charles Izard come as near to collapsing as ever he had done in his unemotional life.
"Nothing keeps me, Mr. Izard. I am here."
"Etta Romney, by God!" he exclaimed, and in the same breath he told them that the rehearsal was over.