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

for the private soldier to ask whether his sovereign has gone to war justly or unjustly. It is his business to obey commands--to kill, if need be--according to his oath."

"Why, you are taking the thing as a matter of course," Lord Evelyn cried, indignantly. "I cannot believe if possible yet! And--and if it were possible--consider how I should upbraid myself: it was I who led you into this affair, Brand."

"Oh no," said the other, absently.

He was staring into the smouldering fire; and for a second or two he sat in silence. Then he said, slowly and thoughtfully,

"I am afraid I have led a very selfish life. Natalie would not say so; she is generous. But it is true. Well, this will make some atonement. She will know that I kept my word to her. She gave me that ring, Evelyn."

He held out his hand for a moment

"It was a pledge that I should never draw back from my allegiance to the Society. Well, neither she nor I then fancied this thing could happen; but now I am not going to turn coward. You saw me show the white feather, Evelyn, for a minute or two: I don't think it was about myself; it was about her--and--and one or two others. You see our talking together has sent off all that nervous excitement; now we can speak about business--"

"I will not--I will not!" Evelyn said, still greatly moved. "I will go to Lind himself. I will tell him that no duty of this kind was ever contemplated by any one joining here. It may be all very well for Naples or Sicily; it won't do for the people on this side the Channel: it will ruin his work: he must appeal--I will drive him to it!"

"My dear fellow," Brand said, quietly, "I told you Lind has accepted the execution of this affair with reluctance. He knows it will do our work--well, my share in it will be soon over--no good. But in this business there in no appeal. You are only a companion; you don't know what stringent vows you have to undertake when you get into the other grades. Moreover, I must tell you this thing to his credit. He is not bound to take the risk of the ballot himself, but he did to-night. It is all over and settled, Evelyn. What is one man's life, more or less? People go to throw away hundreds of thousands of lives 'with a light heart.' And even if this affair should give a slight shock to some of our friends here, the effect will not be permanent. The organization is too big, too strong, too eager, to be really injured by such a trifle. I want to talk about business matters now."

"I won't hear you--I will not allow this," Lord Evelyn protested, trembling with excitement.

"You must hear me; the time is short," Brand said, with decision. "When this thing has to be done I don't know; I shall probably hear to-morrow; but I must at once take steps to prevent shame falling on the few relatives I have. I shall pretend to set out on some hunting-expedition or other--Africa is a good big place for one to lose one's self in--and if I do not return, what then? I shall leave you my executor, Evelyn; or, rather, it will be safer to do the whole thing by deed of gift. I shall give my eldest sister's son the Buckinghamshire place; then I must leave the other one something. Five hundred pounds at four per cent, would pay that poor devil Kirski's rent for him, and help him on a bit. Then I am going to make you a present, Evelyn; so you see you shall benefit too. Then as for Natalie--or rather, her mother--"

"Her mother!" Evelyn stared at him.

"Natalie's mother is in London: you will learn her story from herself," Brand continued, briefly. "In the mean time, do not tell Lind until she permits you. I have taken rooms for her in Hans Place, and Natalie will no doubt go to see her each day; but I am afraid the poor lady is not very well off, for the family has always been in political troubles. Well, you see, Evelyn, I could leave you a certain sum, the interest of which you could manage to convey to her in some roundabout and delicate way that would not hurt her pride. You could do this, of course."

"But you are talking as if your death was certain!" Lord Evelyn exclaimed, rather wildly. "Even if it is all true, you might escape."

Brand turned away his head as he spoke.

"Do you think, then," he said, slowly, "that, even if that were possible, I should care to live red-handed? The Council cannot demand that of me too. If there is one bullet for him, the next one will be for myself; and if I miss the first shot I shall make sure about the second. There will be no examination of the prisoner, as far as I am concerned. I shall leave a paper stating the object and cause of my attempt; but I shall go into it nameless, and the happiest thing I can hope for is that forgetfulness will gather round it and me as speedily as may be."

Lord Evelyn was deeply distressed. He could no longer refuse to believe; and inadvertently he bethought himself of the time when he had besought and entreated this old friend of his to join the great movement that was to regenerate Europe. Was this the end, then--a vulgar crime?--the strong, manly, generous life to be thrown away, and Natalie left broken-hearted?

"What about her?" he asked, timidly.

"About Natalie, do you mean?" said Brand, starting somewhat. "Curiously enough, I was thinking about her also. I was wondering whether it could be concealed from her--whether it would not be better to let her imagine with the others that I had got drowned or killed somewhere. But I could not do that. The uncertainty would hang over her for years. Better the sharp pain, at once--of parting; then her mother must take charge of her and console her, and be kind to her. What I fear most is that she may blame herself--she may fancy that she is some how responsible--"

"It is I, surely, who must take, that blame on myself," said Lord Evelyn, sadly. "But for me, how could you have been led into joining the Society?"

"Neither she nor you have anything to reproach yourselves with. What was my life worth to me when I joined? Then for a time I saw a vision of what may yet be in the world--of what will be, please God; and what does it matter if one here or one there falls out of the ranks?--the great army is moving on: and for a time there were others visions. Poor Natalie!--I am glad her mother has come to her at last."

He rose.

"I wish I could offer you a bed here," Lord Evelyn said.

"I have a great many things to arrange to-night," he answered, simply. "Perhaps I may not be able to get to bed at all."

Lord Evelyn hesitated.

"When can I see you to-morrow?" he said at length. "You know I am going to Lind the first thing in the morning."

Brand stopped abruptly.

"I must absolutely forbid your doing anything of the kind," said he, firmly. "This is a matter of the greatest secrecy; there is to be no talking about it; I have given you some hint, and the same I shall give to Natalie, and there an end." He added, "Your interference would be quite useless, Evelyn. The matter is not in Lind's hands."

He bade his friend good-night.

"Thank you for letting me bore you so long. You see, I expected talking over the thing would drive off that first shock of nervousness. Now I am going to play the part of Karl Sand with indifference. When you hear of me, you will think I must have been brought up by the Tugendbund or the Carbonari, or some of those societies."

This cheerfulness did not quite deceive Lord Evelyn. He bade his friend good-night with some sadness; his mind was not at ease about the share he attributed to himself in this calamity.

When Brand reached his chambers in Buckingham Street there was a small parcel awaiting him. He opened it, and found a box with, inside, a tiny nosegay of sweet-smelling flowers. These were not half as splendid as those he had got the previous afternoon for the rooms in Hans Place, but there was something accompanying them that gave them sufficient value. It was a strip of paper, and on it was written--"From Natalie and from Natalushka, with more than thanks."

"I will carry them with me," he thought to himself, "until the day of my death. Perhaps they may not have quite withered by then."


CHAPTER XLII.


A COMMUNICATION.

Now, he said to himself, he would think no more; he would act. The long talk with Lord Evelyn had enabled him to pull himself together; there would be no repetition of that half-hysterical collapse. More than one of his officer-friends had confessed to him that they had spent the night before their first battle in abject terror, but that that had all gone off as soon as they were called into action. And as for himself, he had many things to arrange before starting on this hunting-expedition, which was to serve as a cloak for another enterprise. He would have to write at once, for example, to his sister--an invalid widow, who passed her life alternately on the Riviera and in Switzerland--informing her of his intended travels. He would have to see that a sufficient sum was left for Natalie's mother, and put into discreet hands. The money for the man Kirski would have to be properly tied up, lest it should prove a temptation. Why, those two pieces of Italian embroidery lying there, he had bought them months ago, intending to present them to Natalie, but from time to time the opportunity had been missed. And so forth, and so forth.

But despite all this fortitude, and these commonplace and practical considerations, his eyes would wander to that little handful of flowers lying on the table, and his thoughts would wander farther still. As he pictured to himself his going to the young Hungarian girl, and taking her hand, and telling her that now it was no longer a parting for a couple of years, but a parting forever, his heart grew cold and sick. He thought of her terrified eyes, of her self-reproaches, of her entreaties, perhaps.

"I wish Evelyn would tell her," he murmured aloud, and he went to the window. "Surely it would be better if I were never to see her again."

It was a long and agonizing night, despite all his resolutions. The gray morning, appearing palely over the river and the bridges, found him still pacing up and down there, with nothing settled at all, no letter written, no memoranda made. All that the night had done was to increase a hundred-fold his dread of meeting Natalie. And now the daylight only told him that that interview was coming nearer. It had become a question of hours.

At last, worn out with fatigue and despair, he threw himself on a couch hard by, and presently sunk into a broken and troubled sleep. For now the mind, emancipated from the control of the will, ran riot; and the quick-changing pictures that were presented to