Sunrise by William Black (online e book reader TXT) 📖

heart leaped up with a bound.

"My dear young lady," said he, taking her hand, "forgive me for making such a peremptory appointment--"

"But you bring good news'?" she said, breathlessly. "Oh, sir, I can see that you have succeeded--yes, yes--the danger is removed--you have saved him!"

"My dear young lady," said he smiling, but still greatly embarrassed, "it is my good fortune to be able to congratulate you. Ah, I thought that would bring some brightness to your eyes--"

She raised his hand, and kissed it twice passionately.

"Mother," she said, in a wild, joyful way, "will you not thank him for me? I do not know what I am saying--and then--"

The general had turned to her mother. Natalie quickly took out the telegraph-form, unfolded it, knelt down and put it on the garden-seat, and with trembling fingers wrote her message: "You are saved! Come to us at once; my mother and I wait here for you;" that was the substance of it. Then she rose, and for a second or two stood irresolute, silent, and shamefaced. Happily no one had noticed her. These two had gone forward, and were talking together in a low voice. She did not join them; she could not have spoken then, her heart was throbbing so violently with its newly-found joy.

"Stefan," said the mother--and there was a pleasant light in her sad eyes too--"I shall never forget the gratitude we owe you. I have nothing else to regard now but my child's happiness. You have saved her life to her."

"Yes, yes," he said, in stammering haste, "I am glad the child is happy. It would be a pity, at her time of life, and such a beautiful, brave young lady--yes, it would be a pity if she were to suffer: I am very glad. But there is another side to the question, Natalie; it refers to you. I have not such good news for you--that is, it depends on how you take it; but it is not good news--it will trouble you--only, it was inevitable--"

"What do you mean?" she said, calmly.

"Your husband," he said, regarding her somewhat anxiously.

"Yes," she said, without betraying any emotion.

"Well, you understand, we had not the power to release your English friend unless there had been injustice--or worse--in his being appointed. There was. More than that, it was very nearly a repetition of the old story. Your husband was again implicated."

She merely looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"And the Council," he said, more embarrassed than ever, "had to try him for his complicity. He was tried and--condemned."

"To what?" she said, quite calmly.

"You must know, Natalie. He loses his life!"

She turned very pale.

"It was not so before," she managed to say, though her breath came and went quickly.

"It was; but then he was pardoned. This time there is no hope."

She stood silent for a second or two; then she said, regarding him with a sad look,

"You think me heartless, Stefan. You think I ought to be overwhelmed with grief. But--but I have been kept from my child for seventeen years. I have lived with the threat of the betrayal of my father hanging over me. The affection of a wife cannot endure everything. Still, I am--sorry--"

Her eyes were cast down, and they slowly filled with tears. Von Zoesch breathed more freely. He was eagerly explaining to her how this result had become inevitable--how he himself had had no participation in it, and so forth--when Natalie Lind stepped quickly up to them, looking from the one to the other. She saw something was wrong.

"Mother, what is it?" she said, in vague fear. She turned to Von Zoesch. "Oh, sir, if there is something you have not told me--if there is trouble--why was it not to me that you spoke?"

She took hold of her mother's hand.

"Mother, what is it?"

"My dear young lady," said Von Zoesch, interposing, "you know that life is made up of both bitter and sweet--"

"I wish to know, signore," she said, proudly, "what it is you have told my mother. If there is trouble, it is for her daughter to share it."

"Well, then, dear young lady, I will tell you," he said, "though it will grieve you also. I must explain to you. You cannot suppose that the happy news I deliver to you was the result of the will of any one man, or number of men. No. It was the result of the application of law and justice. Your--sweetheart, shall I call him?--was intrusted with a grave duty, which would most probably have cost him his life. In the ordinary way, no one could have released him from it, however much certain friends of yours here might have been interested in you, and grieved to see you unhappy. But there was this possibility--it was even a probability--that he had been selected for this service unfairly. Then, no doubt, if that could be proved, he ought to be released."

"Yes, yes," she said, impatiently.

"That was proved. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that among those convicted of this conspiracy was your father. Well, the laws of our association are strict--they are even terrible where a delinquent is in a position of high responsibility. My dear young lady, I must tell you the truth: your father has been adjudged guilty--and--and the punishment is--death!"

She uttered a quick, short cry of alarm, and turned with frightened eyes to her mother.

"Mother, is it true? is it true?"

The mother did not answer; she had clasped her trembling hands. Then the girl turned; there was a proud passion in her voice.

"Oh, sir, what tiger is there among you that is so athirst for blood? You save one man's life--after intercession and prayer you save one man's life--only to seize on that of another. And it is to me--it is to me, his daughter--that you come with congratulations! I am only a child; I am to be pleased: you speak of a sweetheart; but you do not tell me that you are about to murder my father! You give me my lover; in exchange you take my father's life. Is there a woman in all the world so despicable as to accept her happiness at such a cost?"

Involuntarily she crushed up the telegram she held in her hand and threw it away from her.

"It is not I, at all events," she exclaimed. "Oh, signore, you should not have mocked me with your congratulations. That is not the happiness you should offer to a daughter. But you have not killed him yet--there is time; let things be as they were; that is what my sweetheart, as you call him, will say; he and I are not afraid to suffer. Surely, rather that, than that he should marry a girl so heartless and cowardly as to purchase her happiness at the cost of her father's life?"

"My dear young lady," he said, with a great pity and concern in his face, "I can assure you what you think of is impossible. What is done cannot be undone."

Her proud indignation now gave way to terror.

"Oh no, signore, you cannot mean that! I cannot believe it! You have saved one man--oh, signore, for the love of Heaven, this other also! Have pity! How can I live, if I know that I have killed my father?"

He took both her hands in his, and strove to soothe down her wild terror and dismay. He declared to her she had nothing to do with it, no more than himself; that her father had been tried by his colleagues; that if he had not been, a fearful act of treachery would have been committed. She listened, or appeared to listen; but her lips were pale; her eyes had a strange look in them; she was breathless.

"Calabressa said they were all-powerful," she interrupted suddenly. "But are they all-powerful to slay only? Oh no, I cannot believe it! I will go to them; it cannot be too late; I will say to them that I would rather have died than appealed to them if I had known that this was to be the terrible result. And Calabressa--why did he not warn me? Or is he one of the blood-thirsty ones also--one of the tigers that crouch in the dark? Oh, signore, if they are all-powerful, they are all-powerful to pardon. May I not go to themselves?"

"It would be useless, my dear signorina," said Von Zoesch, with deep compassion in his voice. "I am sorry to grieve you, but justice has been done, and the decision is past recall. And do not blame poor old Calabressa--"

At this moment the bell of the outer gate rang, echoing through the empty house, and he started somewhat.

"Come, child," said her mother. "We have taken up too much of your time, Stefan. I wish there had been no drawback to your good news."

"At the present moment," he said, glancing somewhat anxiously toward the building, "I cannot ask you to stay, Natalie; but on some other occasion, and as soon as you please, I will give you any information you may wish. Remember, you have good friends here."

Natalie suffered herself to be led away. She seemed too horror-stricken to be able to speak. Von Zoesch accompanied them only to the terrace, and there bade them good-bye. Granaglia was waiting to show them to the gate. A few moments afterward they were in their carriage, returning to Naples.

They sat silent for some time, the mother regarding her daughter anxiously.

"Natalushka, what are you thinking of?"

The girl started: her eyes were filled with a haunting fear, as if she had just seen some terrible thing. And yet she spoke slowly and sadly and wistfully.

"I was thinking, mother, that perhaps it was not so hard to be condemned to die; for then there would come an end to one's suffering. And I was wondering whether there had been many women in the world who had to accuse themselves of taking a part in bringing about their own father's death. Oh, I hope not--I hope not!"

A second afterward she added, with more than the bitterness of tears in her trembling voice, "And--and I was thinking of General von Zoesch's congratulations, mother."


CHAPTER LVI.


A COMMISSION.

Lord Evelyn obeyed his friend's summons in considerable anxiety, if not even alarm; for he made no doubt that it had some connection with that mysterious undertaking to which Brand was pledged; but when he reached Lisle Street, and was shown into the larger room, no very serious business seemed going forward. Two or three of the best-known to him among the English members of the Society were present, grouped round a certain Irish M.P., who, with twinkling eyes but otherwise grave face, was describing the makeshifts of some provincial manager or other who could not pay his company their weekly salary. To the further surprise of the new-comer, also, Mr. Lind was absent; his chair was occupied by Gathorne Edwards.

He was asked to go into an inner room; and there he found Brand, looking much more like himself than he had done for some time back.

"It is awfully kind of you, Evelyn, to come at once. I heard you had returned to town yesterday. Well, what of the old people down in Wiltshire?"

Lord Evelyn was quite thrown off his guard by this frank cheerfulness. He forgot the uneasy forebodings with which