Sunrise Part 2

The great divine wave had spent itself. But were we to sit supinely by--this was what he asked, though not precisely in these consecutive words, for sometimes he walked to and fro in his eagerness, and sometimes he ate a bit of bread, or sat down opposite his friend for the purpose of better confronting him--to wait for that distant and mysterious East to send us another revelation? Not so. Let the proud-spirited and courageous West, that had learned the teachings of Christianity but never yet applied them--let the powerful West establish a faith of her own: a faith in the future of humanity itself--a faith in future of recompense and atonement to the vast mult.i.tudes of mankind who had toiled so long and so grievously--a faith demanding instant action and endeavor and self-sacrifice from those who would be its first apostles.

"The complaining millions of men Darken in labor and pain."

And why should not this Christianity, that had so long been used to gild the thrones of kings and glorify the ceremonies of priests--that had so long been monopolized by the rich and the great and the strong, whom its Founder despised and denounced--why should it not at length come to the help of those myriads of the poor and the weak and the suffering whose cry for help had been for so many centuries disregarded? Here was work for the idle, hope for the hopeless, a faith for them who were perishing for want of a faith.

"You say all this is vague--a vision--a sentiment?" he said, talking in the same eager way. "Then that is my fault. I cannot explain it all to you in a few words. But do not run away with the notion that it is mere words--a St. Simonian dream of perfectibility, or anything like that. It is practical; it exists; it is within reach of you. It is a definite and immense organization; it may be young as yet, but it has courage and splendid aims; and now, with a great work before it, it is eager for aid. You yourself, when you see a child run over, or a woman starving of hunger, or a blind man wanting to cross a street, are you not ready with your help--the help of your hands or of your purse? Multiply these by millions, and think of the cry for help that comes from all parts of the world. If you but knew, you could not resist. I as yet know little--I only hear the echo of the cry; but my veins are burning; I shall have the gladness of answering 'Yes,' however little I can do. And after all, is not that something? For a man to live only for himself is death."

"But you know, Evelyn," said his friend, though he did not quite know what to answer to all this outburst, "you must be more cautious. Those benevolent schemes are very n.o.ble and very captivating; but sometimes they are in the hands of rather queer people. And besides, do you quite know the limits of this big society? I thought you said something about vindicating the oppressed. Does it include politics?"

"I do not question; I am content to obey," said Lord Evelyn.

"That is not English; unreasoning and blind obedience is mere folly."

"Perhaps so," said the other, somewhat absently; "but I suppose a man accepts whatever satisfies the craving of his own heart. And--and I should not like to go alone on this new thing, Brand. Will you not come some little way with me? If you think I am mistaken, you may turn back; as for me--well, if it were only a dream, I think I would rather go with the pilgrims on their hopeless quest than stay with the people who come out to wonder at them as they go by. You remember--

"'Who is your lady of love, oh ye that pa.s.s Singing? And is it for sorrow of that which was That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be?

For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing.

--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden; For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we That love, we know her more fair than anything.'"

Yes; he had certainly a pathetic thrill in his voice; but now there was something else--something strange--in the slow and monotonous cadence that caught the acute ear of his friend. And again he went on, but absently, almost as if he were himself listening--

"--Is she a queen, having great gifts to give?

--Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterest tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die.

And he shall leave all things under the sky, And go forth naked under sun and rain, And work and wait and watch out all his years."

"Evelyn," said George Brand, suddenly, fixing his keen eyes on his friend's face, "where have you heard that? Who has taught you? You are not speaking with your own voice."

"With whose, then?" and a smile came over the pale, calm, beautiful face, as if he had awakened out of a dream.

"That," said Brand, still regarding him, "was the voice of Natalie Lind."

CHAPTER III.

IN A HOUSE IN CURZON STREET.

Armed with a defiant scepticism, and yet conscious of an unusual interest and expectation, George Brand drove up to Curzon Street on the following evening. As he jumped out of his hansom, he inadvertently glanced at the house.

"Conspiracy has not quite built us a palace as yet," he said to himself.

The door was opened by a little German maid-servant, as neat and round and rosy as a Dresden china shepherdess, who conducted him up-stairs and announced him at the drawing-room. It was not a large room; but there was more of color and gilding in it than accords with the severity of modern English taste; and it was lit irregularly with a number of candles, each with a little green or rose-red shade. Mr. Lind met him at the door. As they shook hands, Brand caught a glimpse of another figure in the room--apparently that of a tall woman dressed all in cream-white, with a bunch of scarlet geraniums in her bosom, and another in her raven-black hair.

"Not the gay little adventuress, then?" was his instant and internal comment. "Better contrived still. The inspired prophetess. Obviously not the daughter of this man at all. Hired."

But when Natalie Lind came forward to receive him, he was more than surprised; he was almost abashed. During a second or two of wonder and involuntary admiration, he was startled out of his critical att.i.tude altogether. For this tall and striking figure was in reality that of a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, who had the beautifully formed bust, the slender waist, and the n.o.ble carriage that even young Hungarian girls frequently have. Perhaps the face, with its intellectual forehead and the proud and firmly cut mouth, was a trifle too calm and self-reliant for a young girl: but all the softness of expression that was wanted, all the gentle and gracious timidity that we a.s.sociate with maidenhood, lay in the large, and dark, and l.u.s.trous eyes. When, by accident, she turned aside, and he saw the outline of that clear, olive-complexioned face, only broken by the outward curve of the long black lashes, he had to confess to himself that, adventuress or no adventuress, prophetess or no prophetess, Natalie Lind was possessed of about the most beautiful profile he had ever beheld, while she had the air and the bearing of a queen.

Her father and he talked of the various trifling things of the moment; but what he was chiefly thinking of was the singular calm and self-possession of this young girl. When she spoke, her dark, soft eyes regarded him without fear. Her manner was simple and natural to the last degree; perhaps with the least touch added of maidenly reserve. He was forced even to admire the simplicity of her dress--cream or canary white it was, with a bit of white fur round the neck and round the tight wrists. The only strong color was that of the scarlet geraniums which she wore in her bosom, and in the splendid ma.s.ses of her hair; and the vertical sharp line of scarlet of her closed fan.

Once only, during this interval of waiting, did he find that calm serenity of hers disturbed. He happened to observe the photograph of a very handsome woman near him on the table. She told him she had had a parcel of photographs of friends of hers just sent over from Vienna: some of them very pretty. She went to another table, and brought over a handful. He glanced at them only a second or two.

"I see they are mostly from Vienna: are they Austrian ladies?" he asked.

"They live in Austria, but they are not Austrians," she answered. And then she added, with a touch of scorn about the beautiful mouth, "Our friends and we don't belong to the women-floggers!"

"Natalie!" her father said; but he smiled all the same.

"I will tell you one of my earliest recollections," she said: "I remember it very well. Kossuth was carrying me round the room on his shoulder. I suppose I had been listening to the talk of the gentlemen; for I said to him, 'When they burned my papa in effigy at Pesth, why was I not allowed to go and see?' And he said--I remember the sound of his voice even now--'Little child, you were not born then. But if you had been able to go, do you know what they would have done to you? They would have flogged you. Do you not know that the Austrians flog women?

When you grow up, little child, your papa will tell you the story of Madame von Maders.p.a.ch.'" Then she added, "That is one of my valued recollections, that when I was a child I was carried on Kossuth's shoulders."

"You have no similar reminiscence of Gorgey, I suppose?" Brand said, with a smile.

He had spoken quite inadvertently, without the slightest thought in the world of wounding her feelings. But he was surprised and shocked by the extraordinary effect which this chance remark produced on the tall and beautiful girl standing there; for an instant she paused, as if not knowing what to say. Then she said proudly, and she turned away as she did so,

"Perhaps you are not aware that there are some names you should not mention in the presence of a Hungarian woman."

What was there in the tone of the voice that made him rapidly glance at her eyes, as she turned away, pretending to carry back the photographs?

He was not deceived. Those large dark eyes were full of sudden, indignant tears; she had not turned quite quickly enough to conceal them.

Of course, he instantly and amply apologized for his ignorance and stupidity; but what he said to himself was, "That child is not acting.

She may be Lind's daughter, after all. Poor thing! she is too beautiful, and generous, and n.o.ble to be made the decoy of a revolutionary adventurer."

At this moment Lord Evelyn arrived, throwing a quick glance of inquiry toward his friend, to see what impression, so far, had been produced.

But the tall, red-bearded Englishman maintained, as the diplomatists say, an att.i.tude of the strictest reserve. The keen gray eyes were respectful attentive, courteous--especially when they were turned to Miss Lind; beyond that, nothing.

Now they had not been seated at the dinner-table more than a few minutes before George Brand began to ask himself whether it was really Curzon Street he was dining in. The oddly furnished room was adorned with curiosities to which every capital in Europe would seem to have contributed. The servants, exclusively women, were foreign; the table gla.s.s and decorations were all foreign; the unostentatious little banquet was distinctly foreign. Why, the very bell that had summoned them down--what was there in the soft sound of it that had reminded him of something far away? It was a haunting sound, and he kept puzzling over the vague a.s.sociation it seemed to call up. At last he frankly mentioned the matter to Miss Lind, who seemed greatly pleased.

"Ah, did you like the sound?" she said, in that low and harmonious voice of hers. "The bell was an invention of my own; shall I show it to you?"

The Dresden shepherdess, by name Anneli, being despatched into the hall, presently returned with an object somewhat resembling in shape a Cheshire cheese, but round at the top, formed of roughly filed metal of a l.u.s.trous yellow-gray. Round the rude square handle surmounting it was carelessly twisted a bit of old orange silk; other decoration there was none.

"Do you see what it is now?" she said. "Only one of the great bells the people use for the cattle on the Campagna. Where did I get it? Oh, you know the Piazza Montenara, in Rome, of course? There is a place there where they sell such things to the country people. You could get one without difficulty, if you are not afraid of being laughed at as a mad Englishman. That bit of embroidered ribbon, though, I got in an old shop in Florence."

Indeed, what struck him further was, not only the foreign look of the little room and its belongings, but also the extraordinary familiarity with foreign cities shown by both Lind and his daughter. As the rambling conversation went on (the sonorous cattle-bell had been removed by the rosy-cheeked Anneli), they appeared to be just as much at home in Madrid, in Munich, in Turin, or Genoa as in London. And it was no vague and general tourist's knowledge that these two cosmopolitans showed; it was rather the knowledge of a resident--an intimate acquaintance with persons, streets, shops, and houses. George Brand was a bit of a globe-trotter himself, and was entirely interested in this talk about places and things that he knew. He got to be quite at home with those people, whose own home seemed to be Europe. Reminiscences, anecdotes flowed freely on; the dinner pa.s.sed with unconscious rapidity. Lord Evelyn was delighted and pleased beyond measure to observe the more than courteous attention that his friend paid to Natalie Lind.

But all this while what mention was there of the great and wonderful organization--a mere far-off glimpse of which had so captured Lord Evelyn's fervent imagination? Not a word. The sceptic who had come among them could find nothing either to justify or allay his suspicions. But it might safely be said that, for the moment at least, his suspicions as regarded one of those two were dormant. It was difficult to a.s.sociate trickery, and conspiracy, and cowardly stabbing, with this beautiful young Hungarian girl, whose calm, dark eyes were so fearless. It is true that she appeared very proud-spirited, and generous, and enthusiastic; and you could cause her cheek to pale whenever you spoke of injury done to the weak, or the suffering, or the poor. But that was different from the secret sharpening of poniards.

Once only was reference made to the various secret a.s.sociations that are slowly but eagerly working under the apparent social and political surface of Europe. Some one mentioned the Nihilists. Thereupon Ferdinand Lind, in a quiet and matter-of-fact way, without appearing to know anything of the _personnel_ of the society, and certainly without expressing any approval of its aims, took occasion to speak of the extraordinary devotion of those people.

"There has been nothing like it," said he, "in all the history of what men have done for a political cause. You may say they are fanatics, madmen, murderers; that they only provoke further tyranny and oppression; that their efforts are wholly and solely mischievous. It may be so; but I speak of the individual and what he is ready to do. The sacrifice of their own life is taken almost as a matter of course. Each man knows that for him the end will almost certainly be Siberia or a public execution; and he accepts it. You will find young men, well-born, well-educated, who go away from their friends and their native place, who go into a remote village, and offer to work at the commonest trade, at apprentices' wages. They settle there; they marry; they preach nothing but the value of honest work, and extreme sobriety, and respect for superiors. Then, after some years, when they are regarded as beyond all suspicion, they begin, cautiously and slowly, to spread abroad their propaganda--to teach respect rather for human liberty, for justice, for self-sacrifice, for those pa.s.sions that prompt a nation to adventure everything for its freedom. Well, you know the end. The man may be found out--banished or executed; but the a.s.sociation remains. The Russians at this moment have no notion how wide-spread and powerful it is."

"The head-quarters, are they in Russia itself?" asked Brand, on the watch for any admission.

"Who knows?" said the other, absently. "Perhaps there are none."

"None? Surely there must be some power to say what is to be done, to enforce obedience?"