Danira Part 8

The young officer started; it was but a moment ere the pa.s.sing emotion was repressed, but Edith had seen it. The colonel exclaimed:

"Gone! Where?"

"I don't know. She came to my room last night to bid me farewell, in a wild, pa.s.sionate manner, that frightened me even more than her words.

She forbade me to awake you or betray her flight, and was gone ere I could fairly collect my senses. I understood nothing about the whole affair, nothing except--the message she gave me for Gerald."

"For Gerald?" repeated Arlow, whose amazement at first exceeded his indignation.

"Yes, for him."

The young girl, while repeating Danira's words, fixed her eyes upon her lover's face with a half timid, half questioning expression. She saw the flush that crimsoned his brow for an instant, and the light which leaped into his eyes at the vindication the message contained.

"I suspected that she would not be here this morning," he said, at last. "After what had happened she could not stay, and would undoubtedly have gone sooner or later, but I had antic.i.p.ated something worse than an attempt at rescue."

"I should think that was bad enough!" cried the colonel, furiously.

"The thankless, treacherous creature, who has lived with us for years and been treated like a child of the house! To repay the benefits she has received in this way--it is disgraceful."

This indignation was certainly pardonable in a man who, with the best intentions and the most benevolent designs, had endeavored to curb an alien, refractory element, but anger made him unjust. All the secret aversion cherished against his adopted daughter now burst forth unrestrained; he heaped the most violent invectives upon the fugitive, and could not find words enough to condemn her.

Gerald listened for a time in silence, but the flush on his face deepened and his brow grew darker and darker. When the colonel again repeated the expression, "base treachery," the young man's eyes suddenly flashed with a light as fierce as at the time the insult had been hurled into his face.

"Danira is no traitress--that is now proved," he said, in a sharp, positive tone, "and her aiding in the rescue of one of her own race is no disgrace to her in my eyes."

"Do you want to take her part?" cried Arlow, angrily. "Do you want to make excuses for a vagabond who leaves the house in the darkness of night to wander about the mountains with an escaped prisoner, and--"

"Under the protection of her brother, who has summoned her, and is now taking her back to her home. It was a mistake to tear this girl from her birthplace, a mistake by which she has been the greatest sufferer.

She has done wrong, it is true, but the voice of blood has proved stronger than that of grat.i.tude; perhaps, in her place, I might have done the same."

The colonel gazed in speechless astonishment at his future son-in-law, whom he saw in this state of excitement for the first time.

"Well, you are the last person from whom I expected such opinions!" he burst forth. "You are actually const.i.tuting yourself the knight and defender of the runaway. Edith, what do you say to this affair? You don't utter a word."

Edith's eyes still rested on the young officer's face, and even now she did not avert her gaze.

"I think Gerald is right," she said, gently. "I felt the same when Danira bade me farewell last night."

"Yes, that's the way with young people; they always see the romantic side!" cried the colonel, angrily. "No unbiased opinion can be expected from you; we won't argue about it any farther. At any rate, I am glad the affair is ended in this way. I have always considered it a misfortune that my own undue haste compelled me to tolerate such an element in my household. This Danira's presence weighed like a nightmare upon us all."

"Yes, it was fortunate that she went--for us all!" said Gerald, with a long breath, as if a weight had been removed from his breast also.

Arlow paced up and down the room several times, as was his custom when struggling with any emotion; then he paused before his daughter.

"Amidst all these discussions we are forgetting the main thing. You don't yet know, my child, that Gerald must leave. The order came last evening, and he is to march with his men to-morrow to join the regiment."

"So soon?" asked Edith, but the tone was hollow, almost mechanical. Her father looked at her in surprise; he had expected that she would receive the news very differently. But Gerald advanced to the young girl's side and bent over her.

"Yes, I must go, and my little Edith must forgive my longing to share the perils and privations of my comrades. I am to show myself worthy of my _fiancee_ in this campaign. If I return we will turn our backs upon this country and I will take my young wife home to beautiful, sunny Tyrol and my mother's arms. Believe me, Edith, we can be very happy there."

There was an unusual warmth and tenderness in the words, perhaps also a strange haste and uneasiness, while he grasped in a convulsive rather than fervent clasp the hand of his promised bride, who did not utter a syllable in reply. The colonel, however, now completely appeased, said:

"Well, that is talking sensibly! Edith will submit to the separation until your return; she is a soldier's daughter. But go now, my son. You must make the arrangements at the citadel which we have been discussing. We shall expect you here this afternoon, and I will see that you have leisure to devote yourself this last evening to your _fiancee_."

Gerald raised the little hand which lay in his to his lips, and this time really pressed a long, ardent kiss upon it. The caress seemed almost like a plea for pardon, and he looked up reproachfully when the hand was hastily withdrawn.

"You see the ice is breaking!" said the colonel, in a jesting tone, when the door had closed behind the young officer. "The parting appears to make Gerald realize what he possesses in his little _fiancee_. Do you still think he is incapable of loving?"

Edith slowly turned her face toward her father; it was startlingly pale, and the blue eyes were filled with scalding tears.

"Oh! yes, Gerald can love!" she said, with quivering lips. "I have learned that to-day--but he has never loved me!"

IV.

On a desolate, rocky mountain plateau, a most lonely and secluded location, was a fort, which, built many years before, had recently been greatly strengthened, and was now the centre of the military operations for the suppression of the rebellion.

Months had pa.s.sed since the first outbreak, and the insurrection was not yet wholly subdued, though every indication betokened a speedy conquest. During this time the troops had endured all sorts of dangers and hardships, a series of fierce battles had been waged, and here they were compelled to fight, not only men, but the country, the climate, the immobility and barrenness of this mountainous region, which proved themselves foes to the strangers, while they became so many allies to the natives of the land. Yet the greater part of the toilsome task was already accomplished and the fate of the insurrection decided.

The tribe of which Joan Obrevic had been chief was the only one that still opposed to the soldiery a tenacious and energetic resistance. Its members had joined the rebellion immediately after the death of their leader and the return of his son, and now this son occupied his father's place and carried on a fierce, desperate warfare, in which all the cruelty of his race was displayed. With proud defiance he rejected every overture relating to surrender or treaty, and woe betide all the wounded and prisoners who fell into his hands!

A number of wounded soldiers, whose condition did not permit them to be transported farther, had been brought to the fort, and Father Leonhard had come there to render them spiritual consolation and a.s.sistance. The sun shone hotly down upon the stone walls of the little fortress, but within their shelter it was comparatively cool. The priest was sitting in the tiny room a.s.signed to him, and before him stood George Moosbach, covered with dust, flushed with heat, and bearing every token of a fatiguing march.

"Here we are, your reverence," he said. "At least, here I am for the present, half dead with thirst, three quarters worn out by fatigue, and entirely roasted by the heat of the sun. Well, when a fellow has the same sport every day he gets used to it in time."

"Yet you don't seem much the worse for your exertions," replied the priest, glancing at the young soldier's face--it was a little more sunburnt, it is true, but the black eyes sparkled as boldly and blithely as ever.

"They must be borne," he answered stolidly. "Besides, I knew beforehand that it was a G.o.d-forsaken country. There are no human beings here at all except His Majesty's faithful troops, who have to fight these savages. We march for hours without seeing tree or bush, nothing but sky, rocks and sunshine, and by way of variety sometimes encounter a _bora_, during which one can see and hear nothing. If you were not here, your reverence, there would be no Christianity; we've fallen among Turks and pagans. Oh, my beautiful, blessed Tyrol! The Lord created you specially for His own pleasure, but I should like to know what He could have been thinking of when He made Krivoscia."

George had not yet attained familiarity with the name, which fell in a perfectly barbarous accent from his lips, but the priest said reprovingly:

"Our Lord knows best why He has distributed His gifts in one way and not another-- So you have reported that Baron von Steinach and his men are coming to the fort?"

"Yes; they'll be here in half an hour, and I hope still alive."

"Why? Are there wounded soldiers with the troops?"

"No, when I left they were all well, but a man isn't sure of his life an hour here. How often, when we were marching merrily along, singing the songs of our beautiful Tyrol, those accursed savages have unexpectedly attacked us! One moment the wilderness is perfectly empty, and all at once there are the fellows, as if they had grown out of the rocks, and their bullets are whizzing around our heads. They never make a stand anywhere; if we try to catch them in a ravine they are on the heights, and when we climb up they are down below again. If it comes to a real attack, the whole troop vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, as if the cliffs had swallowed them up, and we halt, utterly bewildered, look at each other, and count our ears and noses to see whether we still have them all."

This vivid and exhaustive description of Krivoscian campaigning brought a pa.s.sing smile to Father Leonhard's face.

"If any one should hear you, he would suppose you a bad soldier who only did your duty under compulsion," he replied. "Yet I was able to write to your parents a few days ago that their George distinguished himself on every occasion, and his superior officers gave him the highest praise for his fearlessness."

George looked very proud of the eulogy bestowed upon him, but modestly disclaimed it.

"I learned that by watching my lieutenant. Whenever he meets the insurgents he always sends them home with broken heads. Perhaps you have written to Baroness von Steinach, too, your reverence?"