Sunrise, William Black [the best books of all time .txt] 📗

rather die than live!"

"Natalie--my life!"

"I must say that to you--once--that you may understand--if we should never see each other again. And now--"

She gently released herself from his embrace, and went and sat down by the table. He took a chair near her and held her hand. She would not look up, for her eyes were still wet with tears.

"And now," she said, making a great effort to regain her self-control, "you must tell me about yourself. A woman may have her feelings and fancies, and cry over them when she is afraid or alone; that is nothing; it is the way of the world. It is a man's fate that is of importance."

"You must not talk like that, Natalie," said he gravely. "Our fate is one. Without you, I don't value my life more than this bit of geranium-leaf; with you, life would be worth having."

"And you must not talk like that either," she said. "Your life is valuable to others. Ah, my dear friend, that is what I have been trying to console myself with of late. I said, 'Well, if he goes away and does not see me again, will he not be freer? He has a great work to do; he may have to go away from England for many years; why should he be encumbered with a wife?"

"It was your father, I presume, who made those suggestions to you?" said Brand, regarding her.

"Yes; papa said something like that," she answered, quite innocently. "That is what would naturally occur to him; his work has always the first place in his thoughts. And with you, too; is it not so?"

"No."

She looked up quickly.

"I will be quite frank with you, Natalie. You have the first place in my thoughts; I hope you ever will have, while I am a living man. But cannot I give the Society all the work that is in me equally well, whether I love you or whether I don't, whether you become my wife or whether you do not? I have no doubt your father has been talking to you as he has been talking to me."

She placed her disengaged hand on the top of his, and said, gently,

"My father perhaps does not quite understand you; perhaps he is too anxious. I, for one, am not anxious--about that. Do you know how I trust you, my dearest of friends? Sometimes I have said to myself, 'I will ask him for a pledge. I will say to him that he must promise, that he must swear to me, that whatever happens as between him and me, nothing, nothing, nothing in all the world will induce him to give up what he has undertaken;' but then again I have said to myself, 'No, I can trust him for that.'"

"I think you may, Natalie," said he, rather absently. "And yet what could have led me to join such a movement but your own noble spirit--the glamour of your voice--the thanks of your eyes? You put madness into my blood with your singing."

"Do you call it madness?" she said, with a faint flush in the pale olive face. "Is it not rather kindness--is it not justice to others--the desire to help--something that the angels in heaven must feel when they look down and see what a great misery there is in the world?"

"I think you are an angel yourself, Natalie," said he, quite simply, "and that you have come down and got among a lot of people who don't treat you too well. However, we must come to the present moment. You spoke of America; now what do you know about that?"

The abrupt question startled her. She had been so overjoyed to see him--her whole soul was so buoyant and radiant with happiness--that she had quite forgotten or dismissed the vague fears that had been of late besetting her. But she proceeded to tell him, with a little hesitation here and there, and with a considerable smoothing down of phrases, what her father had said to her. She tried to make it appear quite reasonable. And all she prayed for was that, if he were sent to America, if they had to part for many years, or forever, she should be permitted to say good-bye to him.

"We are not parted yet," said Brand, briefly.

The fact was, he had just got a new key to the situation. So that threat about America could serve a double purpose? He was now more than ever convinced that Ferdinand Lind was merely playing off and on with him until this money question should be settled; and that he had been resolved all the time that his daughter should not marry. He was beginning to understand.

"Natalie," said he, slowly, "I told you I had something to say to you. You know your father wrote to me in the North, asking me neither to see you nor write to you until some matter between him and me was settled. Well, I respected his wish until I should know what the thing was. Now that I do know, it seems to me that you are as much concerned as any one; and that it is not reasonable, it is not possible, I should refrain from seeing you and consulting you."

"No one shall prevent your seeing me, when it is your wish," said the girl, in a low voice.

"This, then, is the point: you know enough about the Society to understand, and there is no particular secret. Your father wishes me to enter the higher grade of officers, under the Council; and the first condition is that one surrenders up every farthing of one's property."

"Yes?"

He stared at her. Her "Yes?"--with its affectionate interest and its absolute absence of surprise--was almost the exact equivalent of Lord Evelyn's "Well?"

"Perhaps you would advise me to consent?" he said, almost in the way of a challenge.

"Ah, no," she said, with a smile. "It is not for me to advise on such things. What you decide for yourself, that will be right."

"But you don't understand, my darling. Supposing I were ambitious of getting higher office, which I am not; supposing I were myself willing to sell my property to swell the funds of the Society--and I don't think I should be willing in any case--do you think I would part with what ought to belong to my wife--to you, Natalie? Do you think I would have you marry a beggar--one dependent on the indulgence of people unknown to him?"

And now there was a look of real alarm on the girl's face.

"Ah!" she said, quickly. "Is not that what my father feared? You are thinking of me when you should think of others. Already I--I--interfere with your duty; I tempt you--"

"My darling, be calm, be reasonable. There is no duty in the matter; your father acknowledges that himself. It is a proposal I am free to accept or reject, as I please; and now I promise you that, as you won't give me any advice, I shall decide without thinking of you at all. Will that satisfy you?"

She remained silent for a second or two, and then she said thoughtfully,

"Perhaps you could decide just as if there were no possibility of my ever being your wife?"

"To please you, I will assume that too."

Then she said, after a bit,

"One word more, dearest; you must grant me this--that I may always be able to think of it when I am alone and far from you, and be able to reassure myself: it is the promise I thought I could do so well without. Now you will give it me?"

"What promise?"

"That whatever happens to you or to me, whatever my father demands of me, and wherever you may have to go, you will never withdraw from what you have undertaken."

He met the earnest, pleading look of those beautiful eyes without flinching. His heart was light enough, so far as such a promise was concerned. Heavier oaths than that lay on him.

"That is simple enough, Natalie," said he. "I promise you distinctly that nothing shall cause me to swerve from my allegiance to the Society; I will give absolute and implicit obedience, and the best of such work as I can do. But they must not ask me to forget my Natalie."

She rose, still holding his hand, and stood by him, so that he could not quite see her face. Then she said, in a very low voice indeed,

"Dearest, may I give you a ring?--you do not wear one at all--"

"But surely, Natalie, it is for me to choose a ring for you?"

"Ah, it is not that I mean," she said, quickly, and with her face flushing. "It is a ring that will remind you of the promise you have given me to-day--when we may not be able to see each other."


CHAPTER XXVII.


KIRSKI.

To this pale student from the Reading-room of the British Museum, as he stands on a bridge crossing one of the smaller canals, surely the scene around him must seem one fitted to gladden the heart; for it is Venice at mid-day, in glowing sunlight: the warm cream-white fronts of the marble palaces and casemented houses, the tall campanili with their golden tips, the vast and glittering domes of the churches, all rising fair and dream-like into the intense dark-blue of a cloudless sky. How the hot sunlight brings out all the beautiful color of the place--the richly laden fruit-stalls in the Riva dei Schiavoni; the russet and saffron sails of the vessels; the canal-boats coming in to the steps with huge open tuns of purple wine to be ladled out with copper buckets; and then all around the shining, twinkling plain of the green-hued sea, catching here and there a reflection from the softly red walls of San Giorgio and the steel-gray gleaming domes of Santa Maria della Salute.

Then the passers-by: these are not like the dusky ghosts that wander through the pale-blue mists of Bloomsbury. Here comes a buxom water-carrier, in her orange petticoat and sage-green shawl, who has the two copper cans at the end of the long piece of wood poised on her shoulders, pretty nearly filled to the brim. Then a couple of the gayer gondoliers in white and blue, with fancy waist-belts, and rings in their ears. A procession of black-garbed monks wends slowly along; they have come from the silence of the Armenian convent over there at the horizon. Some wandering minstrels shoot their gondola into the mouth of the canal, and strike up a gay waltz, while they watch the shaded balconies above. Here is a Lascar ashore from the big steamer that is to start for Alexandria on the morrow. A company of soldiers, with blue coats, canvas trousers, and white gaiters, half march and half trot along to the quick, crackling music of the buglers. A swarthy-visaged maiden, with the calm brow of a Madonna, appears in the twilight of a balcony, with a packet of maize in her hand, and in a minute or two she is surrounded with a cloud of pigeons. Then this beggar--a child of eight or ten--red-haired and blue-eyed: surely she has stepped out of one of Titian's pictures? She whines and whimpers her prayers to him; but there is something in her look that he has seen elsewhere. It belongs to another century.

From these reveries Mr. Gathorne Edwards was aroused by some one tapping him on the shoulder. It