So the Lady Evelyn had become Etta Romney once more, the child of the theatre, the daughter of a mystery which London was upon the eve of solving. The events which brought her to this resolution are briefly outlined in a letter which she wrote to her father upon the morning after her interview with the great Charles Izard at the Carlton Theatre. No longer ashamed of her resolution, she took up her residence boldly at the Savoy Hotel and entered her own name in the visitors' book, afraid of none.
SAVOY HOTEL,Thursday.
My dear Father:
I am here in London, according to my determination already announced to you. I shall live a little while at this hotel, and afterwards where my profession may make it necessary. Believe me, my dear father, that this life alone is best for me, and best for you at this moment. I could live no longer in a house where, rightly or wrongly, I have always felt a stranger—and my love for Gavin forbids me to hear those things which I must hear every day in my old home. Now that I am mistress of my own actions, you will be able to find an answer in my independence to those who are not to be answered in any other way. Should Count Odin follow me to London, he will learn that I am neither without friends nor resources; and I shall not hesitate to call upon both for my protection. It is my intention to establish myself here until such time as news of Gavin's welfare may come to me or that I may, myself, go to seek it. That he has been the victim of foul play I am sure; and I will not rest until the truth is known. Dear father, if you must suffer because of me, forgive and forget, and be sure always of my love for you and my desire for your happiness. We are outcasts of fortune both, and while the world is enjoying our position, we know that it is false, that we are but intruders by accident, and that our past is rising up every day to laugh our ambitions to scorn. Happier far when we were wanderers and poor, with days of love and hope to live and no debt to pay to a great and insupportable heritage. Dear father, you will next hear of me as Etta Romney, the actress—but never forget that Evelyn will return to you if you have need of her; and that her love for you is imperishable. Willingly would she take your burdens upon her own shoulders, and give you those years of rest and peace which are your heart's desire. But, for the time being, she must live alone for the sake of the man who has befriended her and to whom she has given her love.
Dearest Father,Your loving EVELYN always.
From which it is clear that the month of November found Gavin Ord still in Roumania and Count Odin again in Derbyshire. The latter had returned from Bukharest early in the month of September, and, dismissing his friends, the gypsies, had settled down at Melbourne Hall as one who, at no distant date, would be its master. That the Earl acquiesced in this assurance convinced Evelyn finally that she did not possess the whole of her father's story. Either he was a coward (and this she would never believe), or some mystery of her own past or his abetted the Count's pretensions. No other explanation of the matter was possible; nor could she foresee a day which would rid her of the presence of a man who ever spoke to her of the heritage her mother's country had bequeathed to her and its penalties.
She had always feared Count Odin, and she feared him now when the true meaning of a man's love had been made known to her and her daily prayer was for Gavin's safety. Not that she doubted herself or the truth of her love, but that she feared that something in her blood which might bring her to the Count's arms and mock for all time her faith in her own womanhood and her spoken word that she would be Gavin's wife upon his return. So greatly did this fear haunt her that the days of waiting became almost insupportable. She would rise with the sun each morning and say, "to-day his letter will come." The nights found her brooding and restless and fighting ever against the insidious advances of a man who made love to her with a Southern tongue—and when he was repulsed had no shame to threaten her.
"Your English friend was a fool to go to the mountains," he would say; "we cannot protect him there—my Government is helpless. The prison in which my father lies, sent there by the man who should have been his friend, will not open to an Englishman's knock. If I could have helped your friend, I would have done so because he was your friend. You say that he loves you. I will believe it when the sun shines in England. My dear lady, your heart is in the South with the vine and the pomegranates. All your life has not made an Englishwoman of you. You are like a flower that cries for the sun all day and withers because there is no sun. I will take you to a land of roses and set your feet upon golden sands. We will visit the East together—the color, the life, the music of it, shall enthrall us. There they will teach you how to love. In England your hearts are ice—but you have not an English heart."
Day by day these vehement protests would be made; day by day he whispered them in her ear, following her at home and abroad, in the galleries of Melbourne Hall, and to the glades and the thickets of the park. And her father abetted him, not openly by word but silently by impotent consent he acquiesced in her persecution, protesting that Georges Odin's son had a claim of hospitality upon him, and that he could not shut the gates of the house in his face. In plain truth, Robert Forrester sinned not of his will but of despair. He did not dare to tell Evelyn that, by the English law, Dora d'Istran might not be recognized as his wife at all and that she, his daughter, had therefore but a dubious claim to that dignity which the accidents of fortune had thrust upon him. He loved her, understood every whim of that strange, romantic mind, and believed, it may be, that the young Count would not be an unworthy husband for her. But the fear that she would charge him with the shame prevailed above other thoughts. He would not that she should pay the price for the follies and the amours of his youth.
And what of Evelyn herself, meanwhile? She was as one to whom the heaven of life has been suddenly revealed after long years of darkness and doubt. If she understood the meaning of womanhood, that of manhood was not hidden from her. In Gavin Ord she had, for the first time, met and known intimately an Englishman; understood the nobility of man, the resolution, the courage of those reticent personalities by which the nation has been made great and its children sent out to rule the new countries of the world. Such a knowledge uplifted her and revealed truths which had been hidden during her childhood. By Gavin's love would her soul be re-born; by faith in him would the victory over her heritage be won. This had become her credo, sustaining her in the conflict, and sending her to London with a brave heart and an unconquerable determination to win independence and freedom. More than this, she believed that the great city would give her friends; and that these friends would tell her how to find Gavin, and, if need be, to save him. No longer could she hide it from herself that something beyond the quest for Georges Odin kept her English friend in Roumania. She had received but two letters from him, and these had been written during the early days of his journey. The rest was silence and a dreadful doubt creeping upon her as a shadow; the doubt which said, "he may have given his life for you; he may never return."
We have said that Evelyn took up her residence at the Savoy Hotel, fearing no longer the disclosure of her identity. Thither upon the second morning came little Dulcie Holmes and the melancholy Lucy Grey, entering her splendid room with timid steps and altogether abashed by the changed circumstances under which they found their friend. Their introduction of themselves was characteristic. Dulcie, unable to restrain her impulse, threw herself into Evelyn's arms and waited to apologize until she had kissed her. Lucy Grey stood bolt upright and rebuked her friend with almost tearful melancholy.
"Oh, how can you, Dulcie ... and it's all in the papers too."
"I don't care a bit," rejoined the unabashed Dulcie. "I must kiss her if she'll kill me for it." And then to Evelyn she said: "Oh, you darling Lady Etta, oh, I am glad; I can't believe it's really true. But I've always said you'd come and I've told Mr. Izard so—and there's the gold watch you sent me, round my neck where it's always been since the day it came—and, oh, Etta, what times we will have again—what times!"
Lucy Gray appeared altogether dumbfounded by the familiarity.
"You forget yourself, Dulcie," she protested again and again, "after it being in the papers too—you certainly forget yourself. How can you say such things—to her ladyship as we all know after what's in the papers. I'm sure, miss, your ladyship won't think any the worse of Dulcie for this. It's her bringing up, that's what it is."
Evelyn was very much amused; but she hastened to reassure them, and, insisting upon their relating all their personal troubles (which they did with many exclamations and minute particulars), she ventured to asked them what the papers really had said and why it should make a difference to them. To this they answered in a breath that the Carlton would reopen in a fortnight with "Haddon Hall" and Miss Etta Romney in the title-rôle.
"And it says you're a Duchess, and Mr. Izard wouldn't say so before though he knew it all the time." Dulcie added with considerable enthusiasm, "Oh, Etta, how you kept it from us all, just as though you had been no different to anybody else. But I knew you were; I said you were no ordinary human being, and Lucy knew it. My life's never been the same since you went away, Etta. You won't leave us again, will you?"
They rambled on alternately in confusion and delight while Evelyn sent for the morning papers and read the news they spoke of. There, sure enough, was the story written for all to read.
"Many will hear with pleasure," said the "Daily Shuffler," "that one of the most capable and finished of our younger actresses is about to return to the stage. Some months ago, all dramatic London was not ashamed to be curious concerning the Romney Mystery. A new play presented to us an artiste of no common order. Scarcely had we settled down to admire her when she disappeared from our ken, and, while we do not doubt that certain of her friends were in the secret, this was well kept and remained undiscovered by the public. Now we know that Etta Romney is thenom de theatreof Lord Melbourne's daughter, the Lady Evelyn. Mr. Charles Izard informs us that he is about to present her in the rôle already familiar to us and sure of a wide welcome. Etta Romney, assuredly, will establish the success of the Carlton Theatre as no other actress of our time could do. We offer our cordial greetings upon her return to the stage, and congratulate all concerned upon the clever advertisement achieved."
Evelyn cringed when she read the last words; but her sense of humor proved greater than her annoyance.
"Did you believe, does anyone really believe, that I went away to advertise myself?" she asked the girls.
They answered in a breath that all the world believed it.
"Why, what else should it have been for? They say you and Mr. Izard did it, just as he lost Elsie Barton's jewels last year and had Billie Dan photographed in a motor-car accident. People love anything like that—they think it's so clever. There'll be such a scene when we open, Etta, as never was known. Shall I call you Etta, though, or should it be your ladyship?"
Etta was about to answer her as well as her amusement would let her when a man-servant opened the door and announced a visitor.
"Mr. Charles Izard," he said, and the girls stood up abashed.
"Mr. Izard here, however shall I look him in the face!" cried Lucy in an extremity of terror.
"I could drop through the ceiling for my nerves," said Dulcie, but she did nothing of the sort; merely standing and giggling nervously while the great man came panting in; and he, who had "presented" so many, now presented himself with the air of a Rajah just dismounted from an elephant, or a monarch about to address an assembly of barons.
"My dear," he said to Evelyn, "I've come to pay my respects to you, and that's what I do to few of 'em. You've got London by the throat and we'll both be rich before you let go. Didn't I say you'd come back to me? Why, when I think how we've fooled the populace, I could shout 'bully' until my tongue's tied. Now, let these girls go their way and we'll talk business. I've come to offer you a five years' engagement certain, and there's no one in London is going to better my terms. Three words and we settle it. Let 'em be spoken and we're friends for life."
"Mr. Izard," said Etta quickly, "I will play at your theatre for three months. Then I am going away. If I return, I will come to you again. But I may never return, and so I cannot engage myself to do so. Should my present determination be altered——"
Izard laughed hardly and almost impatiently.
"At coming or going, my dear, you have no equal in Europe," he admitted gloomily ... and then quickly, fearing to offend her, he added, "Well, have your own way. Take a fortune or leave one, Charles Izard will always be your friend."
It was a great admission, honestly meant, though uttered with the regret of one who saw a golden vision falling from his view. To himself, the great man said: "There is a man and he is not in England. The Lord send him a handsome funeral before the mischief is done."
Gavin heard the tap of the blind man's stick as the old Chevalier felt his way from the bare vaulted room in which a scanty supper had been served to them; and a fit of despondency coming upon him, more bitter than ordinary, he buried his face in his hands and uttered his heart-stricken complaint aloud.
"What are they all doing, then—why has Chesny broken his promise. Good God, Arthur, have we no friends at all? Is there no one who has interested himself in our story? I can't believe it. It isn't the English way. They must find out sooner or later. It can't be for all time."
Arthur, whose arm and shoulder were bound up in a garment that might have been a Moorish bernouse, smoked his pipe quietly and did not for a little while know what to say. Bitterly as he had paid for that which he called a "little trot to the Balkans," the English spirit forbade the utterance of any reproach, or even a word that his friend might take amiss.
"My people never trouble about me," he said. "They know me too well. You see, I've only a couple of uncles and a maiden aunt to go into hysterics; and my lawyers won't advertise while they can bank my dividends. It's different with you, Gavin. I'll bet your people were on the scent long ago; and that's to say nothing about Evelyn. Of course, she has not held her tongue. No woman does when she's in love with a man; and sometimes she can be eloquent when she is not. Oh, yes, I'll go nap on Evelyn all the time. She must know that we shouldn't stay in this cursed country for three months if we had the train fare to get out. Of course, she'll cry out about it—and if she cries loudly enough the Government will act. Not that I believe much in Governments—they generally weigh in when the corpse is buried."
Gavin smiled but did not raise his head. A fire of logs burned in the grate before them and filled the room with a haze of heavy smoke; the tapping of a man's stick had ceased, and the house was without sounds and void. In the hills above them a wild wind scoured the clefts and sent whirling clouds of snow to cover all living things below. The torrent beneath the drawbridge had become a monstrous scala of icy steps, a ladder with glistening rungs which none but the eagle dared.
"Three months—is it really three months?" Gavin exclaimed in a tone of unspeakable weariness; "three months in this awful den. Three months listening to that blind devil and his insults. God, I would never have believed that a man could go through so much and live. And you, Arthur—not a word from you since the beginning. That's what hits me. If you'd only speak out and tell me what I ought to hear, it would be easier."
Arthur laughed and stooped to light his pipe by the fire again.
"What's the good of talking. A pal asks you to come and you go. Is it his fault if a wheel comes off the coach? Let me have five minutes alone with that blind scoundrel and I'll be eloquent enough. Otherwise I intend to make myself as comfortable as I can under the circumstances. There's no fun in boxing scimitars—as we both of us have discovered."
They had discovered it, indeed. From the first day of their captivity in the mountains, insult, foul, oft-repeated, revolting insult had been their daily punishment. Coarse food, filthy rooms ... these they could have suffered; but the blind man's tongue, the lash of the whip his servants wielded, might have driven braver men to that last resource which faith in God alone can question or deny. The very wound which Arthur Kenyon made light of had been the first fruits of their English temper. A gypsy had lashed him across the shoulder with a riding whip and he had answered with an English left, straight and unerring. But the blow had scarcely been struck before a wild horde filled the room, its knives unsheathed, murder in its eyes—and from murder the terrible voice of the blind man alone withheld it. So the two comrades spoke of fighting scimitars, that was no jest at all.
"You are a friend in a hundred thousand," Gavin exclaimed as one who spoke from his very heart. "I'm not going to thank you, Arthur. What is the good of words between you and me? Here we are, worse than dead, by God ... and not a ray of light, not a speck anywhere. How will it end? How can it end? You heard him tell me this morning that Evelyn will marry his rascally son in ten days' time. Well, to-night I'm just in that humor which says, it may be true, he may have tired her out, lied to her, promised her God knows what, my liberty perhaps and her father's happiness afterwards. It might be that, Arthur. I try to put it fairly, and yet I must say that it might be so——"
"There are a hundred things that might be so, old man. This house might fall down the hill and the eagles carry you and me to the tree-tops. We might havepâté de foie grasfor supper and eighty-four champagne to wash it down with. There's no greater rot than the might-be-so. Tell me how to get out of this cursed den and I'll listen with both ears. As for Lady Evelyn—she's too much a woman to do any of the things you talk about. For all you know some sham tale has been told her—telegrams sent in our name, or something to lull her suspicions. When a man is travelling a thousand miles from home, people don't get alarmed about him for a month or two. But this I'll stake my existence upon, that once Evelyn guesses it's not all right with us, she'll move heaven and earth to know the reason why. That's what keeps me sane. I should kill this old man and myself afterwards if it were not that I believe in my friends. Doing so, I just sit down and wait like the Spaniards for to-morrow."
Gavin heard him in silence. This great room had become their prison-house; refectory by day and dormitory by night. For an hour each morning, they were permitted to go out into the court, where a vista of the sky spoke to them of liberty and the massive portcullis of the drawbridge mocked the idle word. "Until the Englishwoman is my son's wife," had been the sentence pronounced by the old Chevalier; and he repeated it day by day, tapping his way to their great bare cell, striking at them with his stick, cursing them—a very fiend incarnate, mad with the lust of money and the desire of revenge. And against such an enemy they were doubly powerless—not only by reason of his blindness, but by the knowledge that unseen eyes followed him to their room and that his allies, the gypsies, hidden in the house of Setchevo, were ready to do his bidding did he but raise his voice to call them.
Brave men, who do not know fear in a common way, may bend and break before such torture as this ... the torture of impotence and of unseen presences about them. Gavin had come to declare that he would sooner a man had burned his hand in a flame than compelled him to listen each day at dawn for the tapping of that stick upon the floor and the coming of that terrible sightless figure. Even in his sleep the old Chevalier would visit him, approaching with his claw-like hands extended and his eyes seeming to shine as live coals in the darkness. Never had he imagined that so much malignity, cunning, and vermin could be the fruits of imagined wrong or be united in one personality. And all his fine notions of retribution and reconciliation, of the old man's visit to England and the Earl's reception of him there—how vainglorious they had been and how childish, he said. Justly had such folly been overtaken and punished. He realized that his knowledge of human nature was pitifully small.
"Evelyn will help us if she can," he said at length, poking the fire restlessly and listening as of habit for the dreaded beat of the blind man's stick upon the stone floor without; "she will help us if she can, but what can a woman do? Let's regard that view of it as out of the question. What I would ask—what you have been asking—is just this—why does Chesny do nothing? He must know that if all had been well, we should have written and let him hear it. His Government could have these rats out in five minutes. Why does he do nothing? He's an old Winchester boy and could see us through if he knew. I can't think that such a man as Chesny would sit on his back and just ask what's happened. He's moving somewhere—pity it isn't on the road to Setchevo."
"Perhaps it is, and they've lost the road," rejoined Kenyon with a sarcasm he could not conceal. "Don't you see, Gavin, that these devils will have been clever enough to have taken care of themselves. Of course, they will. They give it out that we are making for the Castle of Okna which may be any number of miles you like from Setchevo. The escort—God save the mark!—knows better than to blab. Likely enough Chesny has heard that we crossed the frontier into Servia. Those poor devils who were killed are unlikely to be important enough to be searched for. Life is cheap hereabouts—and what is a Turk more or less? Chesny says we are all right and goes picnicking. Evelyn waits for our letters and doesn't a bit understand why they don't come. We must be patient, old chap—patient and brave. Nothing else will save us."
Gavin assented, though he could admit to himself that the common heroics of the nursery were the poorest food for a man in his situation. His days of waiting, patience, and bravery were so many hours of exquisite torture, like none he had imagined a man might suffer and live through. Evelyn, what of her, he asked himself waking and sleeping. Would the heritage in her blood deliver her to the bondage prepared for her; or had she, in his absence, the will to conquer it? He knew not what to think; his brain wearied of conjecture and wakened only when, as now, the blind man's stick tapped the bare stones and the sightless eyes looked into his own.
"Do you hear him, Arthur; he's coming to say Good-night to us."
"I hear, old chap—my God, if the man could only see——"
"Better blind—you would have killed him but for that, Arthur."
"It's true, Gavin, I would have killed him."
"And then—his friends. Better blind, Arthur."
Arthur said "Hush," for the sound of footsteps drew very near; and now they could hear the old Chevalier panting and shuffling and plainly approaching them. When he entered the room they perceived that something had occurred beyond the ordinary. The hand upon the stick quivered and trembled—the muscles of the forehead were twitching; there were drops of sweat upon the man's forehead, and his voice echoed the tumult of passion which shook him.
"One of you has written a letter to Bukharest," he cried hoarsely; "by whose hand was that?"
The two men looked at each other amazed. Neither had written such a letter nor knew aught of it.
"By whose hand?" the Chevalier continued, his anger growing as he spoke; "silence will not serve you, gentlemen. By whose hand was that letter written?"
Gavin now laughed aloud with a laugh that expressed both contempt and defiance.
"Had I written it, I would not have answered you," said he; "as I have not, your question merely arouses my curiosity."
Arthur did not answer at all; but he stood up as though fearing attack and his hand rested upon the back of the heavy oak chair—one of the few ornaments of that dismal room. His silence provoked Georges Odin as no words could have done.
"Let your friend speak," he cried, advancing with stick upraised. "I will know the truth; my servants shall flog it out of you—do you hear, I will have you whipped—answer me, who wrote that letter?"
Kenyon said not a word; and now the old man struck at him with his stick wildly and blindly, in a paroxysm of anger. One heavy blow fell upon Gavin's shoulder and he stepped back with an oath; but the young man's temper could not brook the new insult and he flung himself heavily upon the Chevalier and they fell to the ground together.
"Arthur—for God's sake——" cried Gavin.
"It's all right, Gavin; I won't hurt him, but I must have that stick."
He staggered to his feet, the bludgeon in his hand; but the blind man did not move. Fearing he knew not what, dreading the sudden apparition of the gypsies who spied upon their every movement, Gavin snatched a log from the fire, and, stooping, he held it up that he might look upon the old man's face.
"He is dead," he said.
Arthur did not speak. The log blazed and crackled and ebbed to darkness and still the two men did not move. Without, in the courtyard, not a sound could be heard. The House of Setchevo might have been a tomb of the living.
But the Englishmen knew that it concealed their hidden enemies and that the dawn would bring them to the room to avenge the man who had been their patron and their friend.
London, which loves a duchess or even personages of slightly less degree, when it discovers them in the arena where all the world may stretch out a finger to touch the noble pedestals, this London liked the story of the Lady Evelyn and flocked to the Carlton Theatre to see her and to criticise. The great Charles Izard, who measured all human greatness by the box-office, did not hesitate to declare that business to the extent of nineteen hundred pounds a week spoke more eloquently than any critic ... and he would add triumphantly, "Why, I discovered her, and she makes the rest of them look like thirty cents." By this time he implied a general inferiority of other actresses who were not filling their theatres to the extent of nineteen hundred pounds a week; and, regardless of the plain fact that mere curiosity had become his best friend, he continued to declare that he was the greatest and the wisest of men and that Etta Romney would have been a dismal failure under other management.
Evelyn certainly was a great success. No dinner party failed to discuss her charm or to admit it. You heard of her every day in theatrical clubs; a common question when people met was, "Have you seen Etta Romney?" Returning to their first judgments, the critics recanted nothing, though more than one really discerning writer perceived a change in her. The splendid Watley, with some nice asides upon Sophocles, Plautus, Judic, and Voltaire, admitted a difference:
"This is not the Di Vernon of the Spring," he wrote; "here is a newer conception, something of Rejane, a voice of sincerity matured; introspective comedy and the drama of pathos...."
The "Daily Shuffler," in plainer terms, said:
"Miss Romney does not let herself go—she appears to take poor Di's troubles too greatly to heart. We confess to certain watery tributes to her touching earnestness scintillating upon our manly cornea ... but we would remind this charming young actress that we go to the theatre to laugh as well as to cry ... and she has forgotten that. Perhaps the November fogs have something to do with it. She came to us in the Spring ... and with the Spring her lightness of heart may be given back to her. One of her audience, at least, hopes that it will be so...."
No one was more conscious of this change than Evelyn herself. That wild, almost uncontrollable passion of art, had left her. She liked to think that she had conquered it, and became a new Etta, for the sake of a man who loved her and had saved her from herself. Here she was, lauded to the skies by critical London; asked to every house, fawned upon, coveted, proclaimed a success beyond knowledge; and yet as far from knowing the secrets of such success as ever she had been in all her life. Anxiety for Gavin's safety attended every hour of her busy day. Confident at first that his dogged perseverance, his stubborn resolution, and his manifest prudence would be weapons enough for the work he had to do in Roumania, she had paid but little heed to his silence; for that she understood to be a wild country and one which would not expedite his letters. When he ceased to write, she said that he would have gone to the mountains. A longer spell of silence and the first whisper of her alarms began to make itself heard. How if he could not write to her because of accident or illness or even conspiracy? Terrified by the phantoms of imagination which now crowded upon her, she compelled her father to warn the Ministry at Bukharest, the Foreign Office, the Consulate. The letters were answered by promises as meaningless as they were futile. Gavin's few relatives in England bestirred themselves with little result—while Bukharest answered that the Englishmen had crossed the mountains into Servia and that nothing further of them was known.
So Evelyn had come to London to save the man she loved, if her new independence and her love might save him. She cared no longer that her father should know of this determination; for she doubted both his will to help her and the honesty of the declaration that he would do so. In truth, Robert Forrester had been unable to give battle to those forces which the years and his own youth had raged against him. To one who had loved the wild life of an adventurer, who had sown tares in many lands, the harvest time of age could support no pretentious dignity nor long maintain those greater ambitions which had momentarily attended his succession to the earldom.
He sank beneath the mental burdens; became an old man when he should still have been in his prime; could utter but a senile assent to every rogue who tricked him. Deep down in his heart lay hunger for the old life. An evil cynicism laughed at the restraints which place and power put upon him.
"Better a night on the hills with Zallony," he could tell himself, "than a life's dominion in the realms of social fatuity." It would have been so easy for him had Evelyn married Georges Odin's son. What it might have meant to her he had hardly considered.
And yet possibly his love for Evelyn was the truest emotion of his life. When her letter reached him and he could bring himself to understand it, the blow fell with a stunning force which seemed to shatter every remaining idol of his life. His beloved daughter! The mistress of his house! Capering about upon a stage for the guineas of a man he, Robert Forrester, could have bought up twenty times over. Here was a debacle beyond any he had imagined. The humiliation of it, the cruelty of it—more than that, the malice of her destiny! Was she not Dora d'Istran's daughter, and had not this blood of rebellion run in her veins since her childhood? What else could he have looked for, he asked himself ... and in the same breath he set the logic of it aside and sat down to write to her.
It was a pitiful letter, full of the tenderest expressions and the bitterest reproach.
"Do you owe nothing to my name?" he asked her, and in the same sentence could protest his love for her. "I am an old man and am alone and must look to the newspapers for news of the daughter who is all to me. Is this fame so much above a father's affection, then; so dear a thing that his home must be a home no longer because of it? The people say you are a great actress; some day you will ask yourself, Evelyn, if it was worth being that to wound one who has had no greater desire than the happiness of his only child...."
Just in such a strain had he delivered himself at home, and, now as then, the words earned but a cold response. "There is some secret of my father's life which is hidden from me," Evelyn said. What it could be, why it should affect her, she knew not. When he spoke of his failing health, the letter found her more sympathetic. She would have gone to him at any cost had she understood that he was really ill; but the general terms he used seemed to imply no immediate necessity ... and was there not Gavin to be considered?
Indeed, this priceless gift of love now influenced every act and deed of her life. She counted the hours which should bring her news of Gavin, worshipped her own image of him upon the stage at night; wrestled unceasingly with the voices which would speak of the Etta Romney that had been; the child of passionate dreamings and of an Eastern heritage no longer.
And her prayer was this, for Gavin's safety and her own salvation in his love.
Evelyn had played Di Vernon's part for thirty nights exactly when just as she was going on the stage, on the evening of the thirty-first day, a call-boy put a telegram into her hand and she had scarcely opened it when she discovered that it was from her father.
"I am passing through London upon my way to Paris," it said; "perhaps I shall be in the theatre. If not, come to me afterwards to De Kyser's Hotel. I will engage a room for you there."
She told the boy that there was no answer to the message and immediately passed to the garden scene she had played so often and always with such sweetness and light. The thought that her father might be in the house excited her strangely. Difficult as it is for a player upon the stage to identify those in the stalls, she peered intently, nevertheless, at the serried ranks before her and was conscious of a sense of disappointment when her search was vain. A second thought suggested that her father might be hidden by the curtains of a private box; and with this in her mind she found herself playing, not, as it were, to an audience of strangers, but to one who loved her and had never understood her. Surely her father would read something of her own story, of her loyalty to her old home, and the depth of feeling which had sent her from it when he listened to Di Vernon and her sweet sincerity. This was her hope, though she knew not whether the Earl were present or no. To her anxious questions during theentractes, old Jacobs, the stage-door keeper, declared that no one "hadn't come round from the front not since he'd drunk his supper beer"—a vague answer, insomuch as the beer in question made its appearance at six o'clock and continued to do so at short intervals until eleven.
She must suffer her curiosity, therefore; and take what profit of it she might. When the play was over and no news came from the front, she concluded with a natural regret that her father had not been present; and she was just wondering how she would get to De Kyser's Hotel and exactly where it might be when old Jacobs himself, unable to find a messenger, came round to tell her that a carriage stood at the door ready for her ... and that it was a "nobby one" to boot.
"She's footlights enough for a ballet," the old man said, with the patronizing air of one who did not keep motor cars and thought very little of those who did. "He says he comes from your father, but I shouldn't wonder if it were from Buckingham Palace. Will you go, Miss, or shall I say something civil to him?"
Evelyn hastened to say that she would go; and, putting on her furs, she went out to the carriage. This was waiting in the Haymarket, and the driver appeared to be quite a boy, an open-faced, honest-looking lad, who told her frankly that he was not to take her to De Kyser's Hotel, but to a house at Hampstead where the Earl expected her.
"There's a Mr. Fillimore there, Miss," he said. "I think he's a clergyman. They said you would know, and it would be all right for you to stop the night. The gentlemen are going away early in the morning. I believe—at least I heard the butler saying so——"
It was rather startling, but Evelyn suspected nothing. That old chatter-box, the Vicar of Moretown, had relatives at Hampstead, she knew, and nothing would be more natural than that he should have accompanied her father to town. None the less, it was annoying to have to go as she was; and nothing but the Earl's known intention to travel abroad almost immediately induced her to consent.
"Could you bring me back to-night if I wished?" she asked the lad.
He answered: "Oh, certainly, Miss. I'm up half the night carrying ladies about sometimes."
She entered the carriage without further parley and they drove swiftly through Regent Street and Portland Place. Her desire to meet her father betrayed her unconquered affection for him. She would tell him frankly that she would not return to him until she went as Gavin Ord's wife; and that her life from this time would be devoted to discovering the result of Gavin's journey and the reasons which kept him in Roumania. This would not be to say that he had ever dealt ungenerously with her; far from it, the whole of his immense fortune had ever been at her command; but the advantages which his money conferred upon her entailed corresponding duties; and she did not believe that her love for Gavin permitted her to live under the roof which also sheltered Georges Odin's son. For these reasons she had left her home; and to justify herself by them she now went to Hampstead at her father's bidding.
There was much gray mist in the lowlands by Regent's Park; and although the night became clearer as they climbed the height to Hampstead, it remained dark and moonless, and rarely permitted Evelyn to say where she was or how far they had driven. In no way concerned but very tired, she closed her eyes and listened dreamily to the rolling sound of wheels upon the wet road, telling herself that life was truly one swift journey with the echo of the worldly wheels ever rolling in human ears and saying "onward to an unknown goal; whether you will or no; desiring to rest or zealous; still shall this coach of destiny hurry you on by the houses of childhood, of love, and of death, to that kingdom of mystery which all must enter." How happy had she been if Gavin were beside her and they journeyed together to some haven of their desires, while all the past should be written out and that peace of understanding be truly found. Vain dream, sweet illusion—a voice called her from it, the rush of cold air upon her face awakened her. They had arrived at their destination and their journey was done.
Plainly an old house. Evelyn starting up from her dream perceived an old-fashioned stone porch with clematis thick upon it, an open door showing a brightly lighted hall within and a blazing welcome warmth from an open grate beyond. To the footman who helped her from the carriage she addressed a brief question.
"Is my father, is Mr. Fillimore here?" she asked.
The man bent his head; she understood him to be a foreigner; and, impatient to know, she entered the hall and the great doors were immediately closed behind her.
"This way if you would please, ladyship," the footman continued in such execrable English that she would have laughed at it upon any other occasion. "The gentlemen were here."
He opened a door upon the right-hand side of the hall and she found herself in a small panelled boudoir; so perfect in its scheme of decoration, so cozy, so warm, that she asked no longer why her father had come to Hampstead.
"Please tell the Earl that I am here," she said—and remembered as she said it that the Vicar's relatives had been spoken of at Moretown as very prodigies of riches. The footman, in answer to her, nodded his head as foreigners will; and venturing no more English phrases he left her alone.
How cold she was! And what a picture of a room! The Japanese panelling delighted her. The hangings in green silk delighted her. What inexpressibly luxurious chairs! And books everywhere, books in English, in French, in Italian—novels, biographies, picture-books. Did a fire ever roar up a chimney with such a pleasant sound. The warmth made the blood tingle in her veins; she bathed in it, stooped to it, caressed it with hands outspread to the blaze. And this was her occupation when she heard the door open behind her; and leaping up, said, "Dear father—I am so glad."
"My dear lady, your father has not yet arrived."
She stood transfixed, realizing her situation and the peril of it in one swift instant. Count Odin, the man she had fled from; Count Odin, whose very name she had tried to forget, he was her host then. Not for a moment would she deceive herself with the consideration of other possibilities or likely accidents. She had been lured to the house by a trick, and the intentions of those who brought her there could not but be evil. So much she understood, and in understanding found her courage.
"My father is not here," she repeated after him, guarding her self-control and standing before him defiantly.
He answered her almost with humility.
"No, he is not yet come, I am sorry to say. It is not my fault. His reasons are his own ... and, Lady Evelyn, there are many who will say that he is right."
She looked at him amazed.
"Did you ask me here to justify myself?" she exclaimed, the blood running to her cheeks and her flashing eyes. "Am I to answer, then, to you? I will believe such an impertinence when I hear it." And turning from him to the fire, she said, "How little you understand me—how little you could ever know of any Englishwoman. To dare to bring me here—to think that I should be afraid of you!"
He smiled at her contempt and came a little nearer to her.
"I never thought that," he said slowly. "I never accused you of want of courage, Lady Evelyn. Perhaps I am guilty of an impertinence. You shall tell me when you have heard my news—the news I bring you from Roumania."
Evelyn turned about in spite of herself and looked him full in the face.
"The news from Roumania!"
"Certainly, news of your friend, Mr. Gavin Ord."
The plot had been well contrived, and it did not fail. Curiosity, nay, fear almost, proved stronger than Evelyn's alarm or any thought of her own safety. Vainly she tried to suppress her emotion; while the man, for his part, followed every movement of her graceful figure with eyes that devoured its contour and a purpose which said, "she shall be my wife this night."
"Well?" she cried, her heart beating wildly, her hands clinched. What hours of anxiety, of dread, of passionate regret that one word recalled to her.
The Count drew a chair near the fire and motioned to her to sit. She obeyed him with a docility which did not surprise him. He held the master cards and would play them one by one.
"Well," he said lightly enough, "to begin with, your friend is still in Roumania."
"Am I unaware of that?" she exclaimed.
"Of course, you would not be. He is still in Roumania and a prisoner."
"A prisoner—why should he be a prisoner?"
"Because, dear lady, he is my father's enemy."
She realized what it meant and sat resting her bowed head upon her little hands.
"I will go to Roumania; I will see him," she said presently.
Odin smiled again at that.
"It would be a hazardous journey, and I fear an unprofitable one," said he.
"It can be no less profitable than the silent friendship of those who should speak. But we are talking in parables," she said quickly, "and for once I believe that you are telling me the truth."
"A flattering admission. I will do my best to be worthy of it. Let us continue the story as we began. Your friend is a prisoner in the house of my friends. They will release him upon the day I command them to do so—not an hour before. They are my servants, Lady Evelyn—and in the Carpathians to obey is the only commandment known to them. Should I say to them 'this man must not return to England,' then he would never return. I think you can understand that. It rests with me to save your friend's life or to ... but we are a long way from coming to that yet."
Evelyn trembled but she did not speak. The plain issue of that duel of sex could not be hidden from her. She was in the house of a man who had brought her there by a trick; a scoundrel and an adventurer, and she was alone. The price of Gavin Ord's liberty was the surrender of her honor. She understood and was silent, and the man knew that she understood.
"We are a long way from that," he continued, with a new note in his voice which spoke chiefly of his passion for her. "I hope that we shall never come to it. When I first saw you in London, Lady Evelyn, I said that there should never be another woman for me. I say so again to-night. If you do not marry me, I will never marry. Yes, I love you, and I am of a nation that learns from its childhood how women should be loved. Consent to be my wife and I will live for nothing else but your happiness. Your English friend shall win his liberty to-morrow; your father shall be my father's friend. I will live where you wish to live, serve you faithfully, have no thoughts but those you wish me to have. Evelyn—that is what I would first say to you to-night—that I love you—that you must love me—that I cannot live without you."
He bent over her and tried to touch her hand. She did not doubt that she had become, as he said, the great hope of his life. And just as she had said in Derbyshire, "Etta Romney would marry him," so now for an instant did the same voice speak to her to tell her the truths of such a passion as this and to put the spell of its great temptation upon her. Then, white and trembling, the true Evelyn spoke.
"Count Odin," she said, "I love another man. I must answer you once and forever—this cannot be; it is impossible."
He heard her patiently, did not yet threaten her, and, indeed, continued to be such a lover as he had declared the men of his nation to be.
"I believe nothing of the kind. This man has appeared before you as a hero. He goes like a new Don Quixote to tilt against the windmills of his folly. You do not love such a man—and he—he knows nothing of what love is."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I do love him," she said very calmly. "I love him, and I shall marry him."
"When he returns from Roumania?"
"When he returns, or when I go to him there."
He laughed now at her earnestness.
"We will go together—you and I," he said. "We will start for Paris to-morrow. It is a stage upon our journey. I sent for you so—to go to Paris with me to-morrow. Of course, your father goes. He will tell you so when he comes here. He goes with us, and is pleased to be out of England. Why should he not be? Here is all the town gaping at his daughter. That pains him. I, too, dislike it, for I do not wish the world to call my wife an actress. No, Lady Evelyn, we shall prevent it—your father and I. In France, you will forget all this. The day will come when you will know that we have been your friends."
He would have had it appear that he spoke with sincerity and earnestness; but Evelyn heard little of that which he said. The deep-laid plot never for a moment deceived her. She knew that her father was in no way concerned in it; she understood that she had been brought to the house by a subterfuge and that courage alone would save her.
"Count Odin," she said as she rose and faced him, "when my father wishes me to go to Paris he will tell me so. Your threats I treat with contempt. You are one of those men whose part in life is to be woman's enemy. I know you now, and am not even afraid of you. Let me leave this house quietly and I will forget that I ever came here. Compel me to stay and I will find a way to the nearest police station in spite of you. That is my answer. I have nothing further to say."
He listened to her as though he had expected just such an answer as this.
"Dear lady," he said with provoking insolence, "do you know that it is one o'clock and that we are nearly five miles from Charing Cross?"
"It would make no difference to me if we were fifty."
"But your father is coming here——"
"That is not true."
"Come, you compel me to be angry. Understand that I have no intention whatever of letting you go. If you persist, I must speak more frankly."
"A new experience. Stand aside, please. I am going to leave this house."
He laughed brutally.
"Go to your English friend. I will telegraph that you are coming. Go to him—if he is still alive, dear lady."
She shuddered but did not flinch.
"I will tell the story where all the world may read it to-morrow."
"To-morrow—to-morrow, how far off is to-morrow sometimes. Beware of to-morrow, Lady Evelyn."
He drew aside and opened the door for her; and she, wondering greatly at his apparent compliance, put her furs about her shoulders. Just for one instant she stopped and with a woman's instinct would have bargained with him for Gavin's life.
"Give me your word of honor that no harm shall happen to Mr. Ord and I will be silent," she said.
He crossed the room and looked closely into her face.
"We will speak of that to-morrow—when your father comes," he said.
The words perplexed her. She hesitated but had nothing more to say. Outside in the hall, the fire still burned brightly in the open grate, and the gas lamps were lighted. Not a sound could be heard; no human being appeared to inhabit that remote and lonely tenement. Trembling with excitement and afraid, she knew not of what, Evelyn had reached the front door and was stooping to unbolt it when a pair of strong arms were clasped suddenly about her and a heavy cloak thrown over her head. Taken utterly by surprise, overwhelmed by terror of the circumstance, she felt herself lifted from her feet and carried swiftly from the hall. All her strength could not fling those strong arms from her nor put aside the cloak which stifled her cries. Inanimate, afraid as she had never been in all her life, she lay almost senseless in the man's arms and let him do as he would with her.
For she knew that she was Odin's prisoner, and that no act or will of hers could save her from the plot so subtly contrived.