Black Diamonds Part 42

"You wish to become an actress?"

"I do wish that." Eveline laid a stress on the last word.

"From ambition?"

"I cannot say so. If I were ambitious I should be more diligent. I want my freedom. I don't want my wings clipped. I like to feel I can use them as I choose."

"That is rather a dangerous experiment for any one so young and pretty as you are."

"One never falls so low that one cannot rise again."

"Where did you learn that?"

"From what I see every day."

"You are resolved to leave me?"

"I am--I am--I am!" Eveline repeated these words impatiently.

"Then I had better free you from my disagreeable society as soon as possible," said the prince, taking up his hat. Then, with an ironical bow, he added, "Forgive me, madam, for the weary hours I must have imposed upon you."

Eveline, with an impatient stamp of her foot, turned her back upon him. The prince, when he had got as far as the anteroom, found that he had forgotten his walking-stick in the drawing-room. It had been a Christmas present from Eveline, and he would not leave it with her. He went back to fetch it.

He opened the door gently, and he saw a sight that surprised him.

Eveline still stood with her back to him. She had in her hands the stick he had come for, which she kissed two or three times, sobbing bitterly. The prince withdrew gently. Everything was made clear to him. Eveline quarrelled with him to make the separation less hard for him. She pretended to be mean and ungrateful in order that he might forget her more easily. Why did she do this?

The next day the prince found the solution of this riddle. His servant brought him the key of Eveline's apartments. The lady had left by the very earliest train. The prince hastened to the palace, and he then understood why it was that Eveline had left. She had taken nothing; everything was there. She was a pearl among women. A lock of her hair was wound round the handle of the walking-stick--her beautiful hair, which fell from the crown of her head to her feet.

Eveline arrived in Paris before Kaulmann. It had been settled between them that she should stop at a hotel until he arranged where she should live.

Some weeks later Felix came and said: "Your house is ready for you.

Will you come and see it?"

Eveline drove with Felix to her new home, which was in the Rue Sebastopol, one of the best situations in Paris, the first floor. As she came into the apartment her heart beat. Everything was familiar to her eyes--the cherry-colored curtains, the carpets, the dove-colored panels, the black marble fireplace, the oval frames in china, the window looking into the garden--all as in Vienna. The same pictures, the same service of silver, the wardrobes, the jewel-cases, even to the glove which she had left upon the table.

The tears fell from her eyes as she murmured to herself, "The good, kind prince!"

Felix, however, with perfect _aplomb_, took all the credit to himself, and asked her, "Have I not arranged your apartment to your taste?"

Eveline made him no answer. Her thoughts were with the good, kind prince, her best friend. To him she owed her engagement at the Opera-house in Paris, the wreaths that were thrown to her on her first appearance, the carriage she drove in every day. All was due to the paternal interest of Prince Theobald, who, from the day he called her his daughter, had never ceased to care for her as his child.

CHAPTER XXVI

DIES IRae

One gloomy day in late autumn Ivan went from the forge to his mine, and upon the way his thoughts ran in a sad groove. "What a curious world we live in; everything goes wrong--at least, for most people.

Bread is not for the wise man, nor success for the strong; it was so in the days of Solomon. One bad year follows the other, for even nature acts like a step-mother to men. The poor are hungry and beg for bread, and when they have eaten they forget from whom they received nourishment. All the great proprietors go to their graves without doing, either for their country or their neighbor, anything worth mentioning; all the burden of the present and the future seems to fall upon the less numerous and more exhausted cla.s.s. The patriots are all hollow; they weep when they are in their cups; they show their fists, but no one dares to strike a blow. All manly strength is gone; there is not a man worth the name in the whole country. And the women--they are all the same, from the high-born dame to the peasant girl--false and heartless. Even in the bowels of the earth it is no better. For the last two days there has been choke-damp in the mine; the escape of gas has been so great that the men cannot work; it is as likely as not that there will be an explosion while I am in the pit."

You see, Ivan's thoughts were as black as the landscape, and suited to its gloom. His road from the forge to the mine led him past the workmen's houses, and as he pa.s.sed one of these a miner came stumbling out of the door. The house was a wine-shop. The miner had his back towards Ivan, who did not recognize him, but he noticed that the man had great difficulty in walking straight.

"I wonder who it is that has got drunk so early in the day?" thought Ivan, and hastened after the man to find out who he was. When he got up with him he saw, to his surprise, that it was Peter Saffran. This struck Ivan unpleasantly; he recalled how, on the day when Evila had eloped, Saffran had sworn never again to touch brandy; he knew also that Peter had kept this oath. He recollected also, but imperfectly, that when he said that he wouldn't drink any more he had let fall some threat. Well, it didn't much matter; if he got drunk, that was his affair. But why did he come to Ivan's village to get drunk? Why didn't he go to the tavern in his own colony?

Ivan hailed the man. "Good-morning, Peter."

Peter did not return the greeting; he stared like a stupid dog who doesn't know his own master. He looked at Ivan with a wild eye, he pressed his lips together, and his nostrils extended. He drew his cap down over his eyes.

Ivan asked him, "Has the choke-damp got into your pit?"

No answer from Peter. He shoved his cap from off his forehead, and, opening his mouth to its full extent, bent his face to that of Ivan, and let his hot, spirit-laden breath blow over him. Then, without saying a syllable, he turned away, and set off running in the direction of the company's mine.

The heated breath of the man, with the sickening smell of bad brandy, sent a shudder through Ivan's frame. He stood still, staring after the runaway, who, when he had got a certain distance, stopped and looked back. Ivan could see his face distinctly. He looked like a madman; his lips hung apart, like those of a mad dog; his white teeth gleamed in contrast to his red gums. His whole appearance was so strange and desperate that Ivan laid hold of the revolver in his pocket. For one moment the thought pa.s.sed through his mind that he would be doing a good work in freeing the world of such a creature, but on second thoughts he let him go unharmed, and continued his way to the mine to look after the ventilators.

In the vault the proportion between the hydrogen and the air was three to seven. Ivan forbade any work to be done in the mine, or any pumping out of the dangerous gas. He employed his men in the open air, removing the coal that was required, and only allowed those to remain below who had to look after the air-pumps.

He remained the whole day on the spot, controlling everything and keeping a close watch. Towards evening he left the mine and returned to his house. Everything was apparently safe. It was a nasty, foggy, gloomy evening; the state of the atmosphere reacted upon the mind and body alike. When nature is out of sorts, man suffers; when the sky is overcast, he, too, is gloomy. And when the earth is sick, when worms and mould destroy the fruit, when the harvest is ruined by blight, and the cattle are decimated by pestilence--above all, when the noxious vapors from the coal-mines rise to the surface and poison the very air--then men sicken and die.

All through the day Ivan had felt cold shudders running over his whole body. His limbs were contracted by that unpleasant feeling called goose-skin, and when he got home he shivered, although his room was warm. He was restless, uneasy. He could occupy himself with nothing; everything palled upon him. The worst symptom of all, he could not even work.

When a man refuses food or drink, when he does not care for the company of a pretty woman, when his club wearies him, these are unhealthy signs; but when he turns away from work, and finds no longer any interest in his usual occupation, then it is time to send for the physician.

Ivan's head throbbed, yet he could not sleep, and to stay awake was torture. He lay down, and with a resolute effort closed his eyes. A panorama of past, present, and future kept dancing before him. Peter Saffran's hot, stinking breath seemed to breathe again in his nostrils, and the very horror brought back to his memory the man's long-forgotten words:

"No more during my life shall I drink brandy--_only once_; and when I do, and when you smell from my breath that I have been drinking, or see me coming out of the public-house, then take my advice and stop safe at home, for on that day no man shall know in what manner he shall die."

Who cares for the threat of a drunken man? Let me sleep. No, the drunken man would not allow Ivan to sleep; his breath was there.

Faugh! it made him sick. His blear-eyed, pallid face was there bending over the bed, looking into Ivan's eyes with his blood-shot eyes; his open mouth and shut teeth came quite close to the sleeper, who, vainly beating his arms in the air, tried to drive away this horrid nightmare.

Ah, what is that sound? A crack like the crack of doom awoke Ivan; not alone awoke him, but threw him violently out of bed and on to the floor, where he lay stunned.

His first consecutive thoughts were, "The choke-damp has exploded! My mine is in ruins!" This was enough to get him on his legs and to send him out in the darkness--darkness, raven-black darkness, the stillness only broken by a whistling sound in the air. Ivan stood for a moment wondering. He felt the earth swaying under his feet; he heard a subterranean grumbling. There! the pitch-dark night was suddenly illumined; a bright pillar of fire rose out of the Bondavara Company's mine. At the same moment another fearful explosion was heard, worse than the last. The windows of the house were shattered in a thousand pieces, the chimneys, the roofs fell in. The pressure of the air forced Ivan back and threw him against the door of his own house. By the strong light of the demoniacal pillar he could see his own workmen all on their knees with a horrified expression upon their ghastly faces. Women and children were gathered at the doors of the houses, but the terror was so great that every one was speechless.

The entire valley glowed like the crater of a volcano. It vomited forth a rain of fire-sparks, as in Gomorrah. The flames reached almost to the clouds, and heaven sent forth clap upon clap of thunder, the like of which in the most terrible thunder-storm had never been heard.

Two minutes later the flames were extinguished. The whole valley was again enveloped in pitch-darkness, only over the company's mine floated a filmy white cloud.

"The neighboring mine has exploded!" shrieked Ivan. "Help! help!" He never remembered that it was his enemy's mine; he only thought that there, in the bowels of the earth, a fearful, indescribably fearful, calamity had happened. "Help! help!" he cried, and ran to the alarm-bell, at which he pulled with all the strength of his body.

His own men came rushing in hot haste, all repeating to one another, as if it were something new, "The neighboring mine has exploded!"

Then followed a significant pause. The men carrying lanterns surrounded Ivan, and looked at him questioningly, waiting for him to speak.

How had he guessed their thoughts?