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

private lodging-house. He took a half-crown in his hand to bribe the maid-servant, and walked boldly up to the door and knocked. It was not a maid-servant who answered, however; it was a man who looked something like an English butler, and yet there was a foreign touch about his dress--probably, Brand thought, the landlord. Brand pulled out a card-case, and pretended to have some difficulty in getting a card from it.

"The lady who came in just now--" he said, still looking at the cards.

"Madame Berezolyi? Yes, sir."

His heart jumped. But he calmly took out a pencil, and wrote on one of the cards, in French, "One who knows your daughter would like to see you."

"Will you be so kind as to take up that card to Madame Berezolyi? I think she will see me. I will wait here till you come down."

The man returned in a couple of minutes.

"Madame Berezolyi will be pleased to see you, sir; will you step this way?"


CHAPTER XXXV.


THE MOTHER.

This beautiful, pale, trembling mother: she stood there, dark against the light of the window; but even in the shadow how singularly like she was to Natalie, in the tall, slender, elegant figure, the proud set of the head, the calm, intellectual brows, and the large, tender, dark eyes, as soft and pathetic as those of a doe--only this woman's face was worn and sad, and her hair was silver-gray.

She was greatly agitated, and for a second or two incapable of speech. But when he began in French to apologize for his intrusion, she eagerly interrupted him.

"Ah, no, no!" she said, in the same tongue. "Do not waste words in apology. You have come to tell me about my child, my Natalie: Heaven bless you for it; it is a great kindness. To-day I saw you walking with her--listening to her voice--ah, how I envied you!--and once or twice I thought of going to her and taking her hand, and saying only one word--'Natalushka!'"

"That would have been a great imprudence," said he gravely. "If you wish to speak to your daughter--"

"If I wish to speak to her!--if I wish to speak to her!" she exclaimed; and there were tears in her voice, if there were none in the sad eyes.

"You forget, madame, that your daughter has been brought up in the belief that you died when she was a mere infant. Consider the effect of any sudden disclosure."

"But has she never suspected? I have passed her; she has seen me. I gave her a locket: what did she think?"

"She was puzzled, yes; but how would it occur to the girl that any one could be so cruel as to conceal from her all those years the fact that her mother was alive?"

"Then you yourself, monsieur--"

"I knew it from Calabressa."

"Ah, my old friend Calabressa! And he was here, in London, and he saw my Natalie. Perhaps--"

She paused for a second.

"Perhaps it was he who sent the message. I heard--it was only a word or two--that my daughter had found a lover."

She regarded him. She had the same calm fearlessness of look that dwelt in Natalie's eyes.

"You will pardon me, monsieur. Do I guess right? It is to you that my child has given her love?"

"That is my happiness," said he. "I wish I were better worthy of it."

She still regarded him very earnestly, and in silence.

"When I heard," she said, at length, in a low voice, "that my Natalie had given her love to a stranger, my heart sunk. I said, 'More than ever is she away from me now;' and I wondered what the stranger might be like, and whether he would be kind to her. Now that I see you, I am not so sad. There is something in your voice, in your look, that tells me to have confidence in you: you will be kind to Natalie."

She seemed to be thinking aloud: and yet he was not embarrassed by this confession, nor yet by her earnest look; he perceived how all her thoughts were really concentrated on her daughter.

"Her father approves?" said this sad-faced, gray-haired woman.

"Oh no; quite the contrary."

"But he is kind to her?" she said, quickly, and anxiously.

"Oh yes," he answered. "No doubt he is kind to her. Who could be otherwise?"

She had been so agitated at the beginning of this interview that she had allowed her visitor to remain standing. She now asked him to be seated, and took a chair opposite to him. Her nervousness had in a measure disappeared; though at times she clasped the fingers of both hands together, as if to force herself to be composed.

"You will tell me all about it, monsieur; that I may know what to say when I speak to my child at last. Ah, heavens, if you could understand how full my heart is: sixteen years of silence! Think what a mother has to say to her only child after that time! It was cruel--cruel--cruel!"

A little convulsive sob was the only sign of her emotion, and the lingers were clasped together.

"Pardon me, madame," said he, with some hesitation; "but, you see, I do not know the circumstances--"

"You do not know why I dared not speak to my own daughter?" she said, looking up in surprise. "Calabressa did not tell you?"

"No. There were some hints I did not understand."

"Nor of the reasons that forced me to comply with such an inhuman demand? Alas! these reasons exist no longer. I have done my duty to one whose life was sacred to me; now his death has released me from fear; I come to my daughter now. Ah, when I fold her to my heart, what shall I say to her--what but this?--'Natalushka, if your mother has remained away from you all these years, it was not because she did not love you.'"

He drew his chair nearer, and took her hand.

"I perceive that you have suffered, and deeply. But your daughter will make amends to you. She loves you now; you are a saint to her; your portrait is her dearest possession--"

"My portrait?" she said, looking rather bewildered. "Her father has not forbidden her that, then?"

"It was Calabressa who gave it to her quite recently."

She gently withdrew her hand, and glanced at the table, on which two books lay, and sighed.

"The English tongue is so difficult," she said. "And I have so much--so much--to say! I have written out many things that I wish to tell her; and have repeated them, and repeated them; but the sound is not right--the sound is not like what my heart wishes to say to her."

"Reassure yourself, madame, on that point," said he, cheerfully: "I should imagine there is scarcely any language in Europe that your daughter does not know something of. You will not have to speak English to her at all."

She looked up with bright eagerness in her eyes.

"But not Magyar?"

"I do not know for certain," he said, "for I don't know Magyar myself; but I am almost convinced she must know it. She has told me so much about her countrymen that used to come about the house; yes, surely they would speak Magyar."

A strange happy light came into the woman's face; she was communing with herself--perhaps going over mentally some tender phrases, full of the soft vowel sounds of the Magyar tongue.

"That," said she, presently, and in a low voice, "would be my crowning joy. I have thought of what I should say to her in many languages; but always 'My daughter, I love you,' did not have the right sound. In our own tongue it goes to the heart. I am no longer afraid: my girl will understand me."

"I should think," said he, "you will not have to speak much to assure her of your love."

She seemed to become a great deal more cheerful; this matter had evidently been weighing on her mind.

"Meanwhile," she said, "you promised to tell me all about Natalie and yourself. Her father does not approve of your marrying. Well, his reasons?"

"If he has any, he is careful to keep them to himself," he said. "But I can guess at some of them. No doubt he would rather not have Natalie marry; it would deprive him of an excellent house-keeper. Then again--and this is the only reason he does give--he seems to consider it would be inexpedient as regards the work we are all engaged in--"

"You!" she said, with a sudden start. "Are you in the Society also?"

"Certainly, madame."

"What grade?"

He told her.

"Then you are helpless if he forbids your marriage."

"On the contrary, madame, my marriage or non-marriage has nothing whatever to do with my obedience to the Society."

"He has control over Natalie--"

"Until she is twenty-one," he answered promptly.

"But," she said, regarding him with some apprehension in her eyes, "you do not say--you do not suggest--that the child is opposed to her father--that she thinks of marrying you, when she may legally do so, against his wish?"

"My dear madame," said he, "it will be difficult for you to understand how all this affair rests until you get to know something more about Natalie herself. She is not like other girls. She has courage; she has opinions of her own: when she thinks that such and such a thing is right, she is not afraid to do it, whatever it may be. Now, she believes her father's opposition to be unjust; and--and perhaps there is something else that has influenced her: well, the fact is, I am ordered off to America, and--and the girl has a quick and generous nature, and she at once offered to share what she calls my banishment."

"To leave her father's house!" said the mother, with increasing alarm.

Brand looked at her. He could not understand this expression of anxious concern. If, as he was beginning to assure himself, Lind was the cause of that long and cruel separation between mother and daughter, why should this woman be aghast at the notion of Natalie leaving such a guardian? Or was it merely a superstitious fear of him, similar to that which seemed to possess Calabressa?

"In dealing with your daughter, madame," he continued, "one has to be careful not to take advantage of her forgetfulness of herself. She is too willing to sacrifice herself for others. Now to-day we were talking--as she is not free to marry until she is twenty-one--about her perhaps going over to America under the guardianship of Madame Potecki--"

"Madame Potecki."

"She is a friend of your daughter's--almost a mother to her; and I am not sure but that Natalie would willingly do that--more especially under your guardianship, in preference to that of Madame Potecki--"

"Oh no, no!" she exclaimed, instantly. "She must not dare her father like that. Oh, it would be terrible! I hope you will not allow her."

"It is not a question of daring; the girl has courage enough for anything," he said coolly. "The thing is that it would involve too great a sacrifice on her part; and I was exceedingly selfish to think of it for a moment. No; let her remain in her father's house until she is free to act as her own mistress; then, if she