The Lady Evelyn Part 12

Evelyn was too kind to embarra.s.s him by the declaration that her mother had been a daughter of the country he esteemed so lightly. His readiness to apologize upon every occasion was typical of a kindly man who believed that all the world was ready to find fault with him. His livelihood depended upon his recognition of the fact that illness itself is sometimes little better than a vanity--and that when an obstinate man tells you that he is an invalid, his pride is hurt if you tell him that he is not.

"My father spent many years in Roumania when he was a young man,"

Evelyn said, in answer to the Doctor's tirade. "Those are years he does not often speak of. I can't tell you why, Doctor, but he dislikes anyone even to remind him that he was once an _attache_ at Bukharest.

Perhaps he will not welcome Count Odin here. I imagine it may be so."

"I'm quite certain of it," said the Doctor with a dry smile. "People who are glad to see each other do not talk like that--of course we must not listen," he added, drawing her away toward the Long Gallery; "we are not supposed to be present at all."

A sound of voices raised almost as though in anger warned him that this was no common affair. Every doctor is curious, and Dr. Philips had no merits above the common in this respect. He knew that he would narrate the whole circ.u.mstance to the Vicar later on in the evening, and that two wise heads would be shaken together over this amazing discovery.

For the moment he watched Evelyn narrowly and, perceiving her agitation, found himself asking how much of her story was true. Had she, indeed, met this intruder but once in London; and was she in ignorance of the Earl's past, so far as Roumania had written it? He doubted the possibility--it seemed to him prudent, however, not to remain longer at the Hall.

"I shall run over in the morning," he said blandly; "you can tell me anything I ought to know then. There is nothing much the matter with the man, and a b.u.mp may have knocked some good sense into his head.

Don't allow him to worry the Earl--I don't want another patient in the house, and your father has not looked very well lately. Send for me again if you have any trouble, and I'll be back as soon as the messenger."

He would much have liked to stop, but that, he realized, was out of the question. Here was some private page from the life-story of a man whose actions had ever mystified both his friends and neighbors. An old woman in his love of a scandal, Dr. Philips had the Earl's displeasure to set in the other pan of the social balance; and that was something not to be lightly weighed. Taking leave of Evelyn at the western door of the Long Gallery, he left her with many protestations of his interest, and the repeated a.s.surance that his morning visit should be an early one.

"I'll look in first thing," he exclaimed; "don't let that man worry the Earl, my dear. There's a hang-dog look about him I never liked. Keep your eyes on him--and take my advice, the advice of an old friend--get rid of him."

Anxious as she was, she could not but smile at this _volteface_. An hour ago, believing that Count Odin had come to Melbourne because he was her lover, the Doctor was ready to declare him a very Adonis, a prodigy of charm and valor and all the graces. Now he had become "that man," a term human nature is ready enough to apply to strangers.

Evelyn, left alone in the gallery, fell to wondering which was the truer estimate. Why, she asked, had she any interest in this stranger at all? Did the appeal he made to her speak to Etta Romney or to Evelyn, my lord of Melbourne's daughter? Was there not a subtle idea that this man could speak for the glamour and the stir of that world she craved for and was denied. Even at this early stage, she did not believe that the influence was for good, though she forbore to name it as utterly evil. Agitation, indeed, and a curiosity more potent than any she had ever submitted to, now dominated her to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Why did her father delay? Of what sometime forgotten day of the dead years were the two men now speaking in a tone which declared their anger? She could not even hazard an answer. The gong for dressing sounded and still the Earl did not leave the Count's room. Dinner was served--he did not appear at the table. Greatly distressed and afraid, Evelyn waited until nine o'clock, when a message came down to tell her that he had gone to his room and would dine alone.

"I must go up, Griggs," she said firmly; "my father cannot be well."

"My lady," he said, "the Earl was firm on that. He will see no one, not even you to-night."

The intimation astounded her, and yet had been expected. Destiny spoke to her plainly since the day the Count had come to Melbourne Hall. For what else had it been but Destiny which brought her face to face with this man in London, sent her almost into his arms and revealed her name to him! But for that chance encounter, her secret might have remained her own to the end. She did not fear her secret now, but a great mystery, the story of her father's life (she knew not what it might be), told abroad to the world, to his shame and her own. Not in vain had she lived these years of a close intimacy with one who could not so much as bear the word "youth" mentioned in his presence. There had been a past in the Earl's life, of that she was convinced--and this man, she said, had come to the Manor to accuse him. It remained for her to take up arms against him--she, my Lady Evelyn, the recluse, the captive of a selfish idea.

And that was in her mind already--the personal issue between herself and the Count. She would not shrink from it, although she realized its perils.

"Not Evelyn, but Etta," she said, "yes, yes, and that is Destiny also.

And now the world is all before me and I am alone."

Alone! Truly so, for my Lady Evelyn knew not one in all the world to whom she might speak in that hour of awakening.

CHAPTER XIV

INHERITANCE

Alone in his own room, high up in the northern tower of Melbourne Hall, the Earl locked the door and turned up the lights with the air of a man who has a considerable task before him and must make the most of the hours of grace remaining.

He was very pale and greatly changed since he had returned from London three hours ago. Some would have perceived in his manner, not the evidences of fear but of displeasure, and such displeasure as events bordering upon tragedy alone could provoke. Uttering but one harsh instruction to the servant who answered his bell, he sat at his writing table and for a full hour turned over the pages of a diary which had not seen the light for twenty years or more.

Georges Odin! How the very name could seize upon his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Sitting there with the time-stained papers before him, the Earl was no longer in Derbyshire but out upon the Carpathians, a youth of the West craving for the excitements of the East; a hunter upon a brave horse, the friend of brigands and of outlaws--drinking deep of the intoxicating draughts of freedom and debauch. Well and truly had this young Count, whom Fate had sent to his door, reminded him of these scenes he had made it his life's purpose to forget.

"Zallony, my lord," he had said, "Zallony still lives and you were one of Zallony's band. They tell of your crimes to this day. The mad Englishman who carried the village girls to the hills--the mad Englishman who drank when no other could lift the cup--the mad Englishman who rode out of Bukharest in a bandit's cloak and lived the Bohemian days of which the very gypsies were ashamed. Shall I tell you his name? It would be that of my father's murderer."

And the answer had been a cringing evasion.

"I met Georges Odin in fair fight. He was the better man. I could show the scars his sword left to this day. Of what do you accuse me?

They sent him to prison--well, I did not make their laws. He died there, a convict laborer in the salt mines. Was it my doing? Ask those at the Ministry. We moved heaven and earth to save him. The Government's reason was a political one. They sent your father to the mines because the Russian Government--then all powerful at Bukharest--believed him to be its most dangerous enemy. His affair with me was the excuse. What had I to do with it?"

But the Count persisted.

"Your influence would have saved him. You preferred to keep silent, my lord. And I will tell you more. It was at your instigation that the Roumanian Government arrested my father in the first place. You wished for revenge--I think it was more than that. You were afraid that the woman you married would find you out if Georges Odin regained his liberty. You were not sure that Dora d'Istran did not love him. And so--you left Roumania and took her with you--luckily for you both--to die before she had read her own heart truly. That's what I have come this long way to tell you. To Robert Forrester--I said. How should I know that in England they would make a lord of such a man! I did not know it; but that to me is the same. You shall answer my question or pay the price. My lord, I have brains of my own and I can use them.

You shall pay me what you owe--you will be wise to do so."

The Earl did not wince at the threat, nor did his habitual self-control desert him. His insight would have been shallow indeed if he had not perceived that he was face to face with a dangerous enemy, and one with whom he might not trifle.

"Put your question to me and I will answer it," he said doggedly.

"Remember that we are not in Roumania, Count. A word from me and my men would set you where questions would help you little. Speak freely while I have the patience to hear you."

"As freely as you could desire, my lord. A wise man would not utter a threat at such a time. Do you think that I, Georges Odin's son, do you think that I come to England alone? Ah, my lord, how little you know me! Open one of your windows and listen for the message my friends will deliver to you. I come to you with white gloves upon my hands.

It is to ask you, my lord, in what prison my poor father is lying at this moment. Tell me that, help me to open the gates for him, and we are friends. It will be time to utter threats when you refuse."

The Earl's face blanched at the words, but he did not immediately reply to them. The story which the young man told was too astonishing that he should easily understand it.

"You father died in the fortress of Krajova," he said at length. "I remember that it was in the month of November in the year 1874. Why do you speak of the gates of his prison! It is incredible that you should bring such a story to me."

"As little incredible as your own ignorance, my lord. I thought as you did until the day, five years ago, which released Zallony's brother from Krajova. He brought the news to us. My father lives. But he is at Krajova no longer. The Russian Government never forgets, my lord.

It remembers the day when Georges Odin was its enemy. My own people fear that my father's liberty would awaken old affairs that had better sleep. He is the victim of them. Yours is the one hand in all Europe that could set him free. My lord, the world must know his story and you shall write it. And if not you--then my Lady Evelyn, your daughter. Do you think I am so blind that I do not read the truth?

The blood that ran in the mother's veins runs in the daughter's. Open the doors of this house to her and she will go to the hills as her mother went. The desire of life throbs in her veins. When I speak to her, I witness the struggle between the old and the new; faith and joy; the convent and the theatre; love and the prison. Your pride, your fear, have made a captive of her--but I, my lord, may yet cut her pretty bonds. As G.o.d is in heaven, I will not spare her one hour of shame if you do not give my father back to me. Think of that before you answer me. The girl or the man. Your shame or her freedom. My lord, you have not many hours in which to choose."

Such an alternative the Earl carried with him to his own room; such an alternative spoke to him from every page of the diaries his hand turned so painfully. It was as though the dead had risen to accuse him.

Yonder, in a great clamped drawer of the bureau, were the letters he had received from his dead wife in the days when he contended with Georges Odin for the love of that mad, wild girl of the Carpathians.

How ardently he had loved her! What mad hours they had lived amid the gypsy children of Roumania! And yet in heart and will she was another's. He had long known she loved the prisoner at Krajova. And the one supremely cowardly thing he had done in the course of his life had been done at the dictation of an uncontrollable pa.s.sion which would sacrifice even honor for her sake. Georges Odin, the Count's father, had met him in fair fight--the better swordsman had won. Never would he forget the day--the snow-capped hills, the white glen in which they fought; the keen sword lightly engaging his own; then the swift attack, the masterly _reposte_ and that sensation as of red-hot iron pa.s.sing to his very heart. No shame here, it is true; but there were days of shame afterward when the story came out and King Charles himself asked the question, was it so? A word from Robert Forrester would have saved his enemy from the mines. He never spoke it. The man disappeared from his ken, and he believed that he was dead. He could scarcely deny the justice of the retribution which now overtook him.

Georges Odin alive and a prisoner still in some unknown fortress citadel. How the very name could awaken forgotten sensations! It seemed to the Earl as though the madness of his youth struggled once more for mastery with the finer impulses and desires which a later day had inspired. Yesterday he had been a country gentleman, seeking to cast behind finally that cloak of unconventionally he had worn with such pleasure in his youth. He had meant to whitewash the sepulchre; to take his seat in the Lords; to equip himself for the great honors thrust upon him; to marry Evelyn sedately to a son of a n.o.ble house and then, as it were, to convince himself that the abnormal had been purged out of him and would afflict him no more. These ambitions, however, were powerless now to combat the more natural instincts which the story of his youth could recreate for him. Once more in imagination he rode the hills of Roumania as a free adventurer, submitting to the laws neither of G.o.d nor of man. Once more the sensuous voluptuousness of the Earl dominated him, and the spirit within him rebelled at its captivity. He must escape convention, he thought, become a wanderer once more. And Evelyn! Had he not feared to read in her acts this very inheritance his own nature cried out for. He shuddered when he thought of Evelyn. Who would save her in the hour of cataclysm?

Such were the thoughts of that night long drawn and terrible. In moments of revulsion against those who had thus brought him to bay, there were mad whisperings which reminded him that Georges Odin's son was the prisoner of his house and that, as he would, he might readily be detained there until some understanding had been come to. This was a thought the Earl could recall again and again. The man was alone and helpless in his hands. It would be folly to open the doors and to say, "Go out and tell the story to the world." Melbourne Hall had harbored greater secrets before that day, and might witness them again. Why should he stand irresolute; what forbade him to save Evelyn from all that revelation must mean to her? He knew not--it remained for the house to answer him, silently and finally, with the answer of one who has set out upon no idle mission but is well aware of the danger he must face.

This was at the hour of dawn. Unable to sleep, the Earl sat by his open window watching the chill gray light creeping over the dew-laden gra.s.s and disclosing the trees one by one as though an unseen hand drew back the curtain of the night from the stately branches. A thrush with a sweet note heralded the day--the deer began to browse beneath the great avenue of yews. Anon, a sweet fresh air, invigorating as a very draught of life itself, came down from the hills and sent the ripples leaping and splashing beneath the arches of the old bridge, as though the river also had awakened from a lover's dreams. And now all stood revealed as in a picture of a forest land; the vast s.p.a.ces of ripe green gra.s.s, delicious vistas of wood and thicket; home scenes, and scenes of Nature untrammelled. Upon other days, often at such an hour as this, the Earl had looked down upon them and said, "Mine--mine ...

all these are mine." To-day he viewed them with heavy eyes. Something unfamiliar in the landscape attracted his attention and roused him from his musings.

A loom of heavy white smoke floating upward from the glen! Nothing but that. A drift of smoke and anon the figure of a man seen between the trees! Another would hardly have remarked the circ.u.mstances, but Robert Forrester became awake in an instant and as vigilant as one who dreads that which his eyes discover.

"They are gypsies, by----" he said, "and they have come at this man's bidding."

He knew the meaning of their presence without words to tell him. They had come to demand the freedom of their old master, Georges Odin, whose son had carried them across the seas with him.

"I must answer them," the Earl said, "and if I answer them, what then!

Will the other be silent?"

He turned away and shut the window violently, as though to shut the spectre out.

"He would kill me," he said; "the world is not big enough to hide me from Georges Odin."