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Sunrise, a novel by William Black |
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Chapter 8. A Discovery |
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_ CHAPTER VIII. A DISCOVERY "And you are going over too? And to London also? Oh, that will be very nice." It seemed so strange to hear this voice, that had for days sounded to him as if it were far away, now quite close, and talking in this friendly and familiar fashion. Then she had brought the first of the spring with her. The air had grown quite mild: the day was clear and shining; even the little harbor there seemed bright and picturesque in the sun. He had never before considered Calais a very beautiful place. And as for her; well, she appeared pleased to have met with this unexpected companion; and she was very cheerful and talkative as they went down to the quay, these two together. And whether it was that she was glad to be relieved from the cramped position of the carriage, or whether it was that his being taller than she gave countenance to her height, or whether it was merely that she rejoiced in the sweet air and the exhilaration of the sunlight, she seemed to walk with even more than her usual proudness of gait. This circumstance did not escape the eye of her father, who was immediately behind. "Natalie," said he, peevishly, "you are walking as if you wore a sword by your side." She did not seem sorely hurt. "'Du Schwert an meiner Linken!'" she said, with a laugh. "It is my military cloak that makes you think so, papa." Why, even this cockle-shell of a steamer looked quite inviting on so pleasant a morning. And there before them stretched the blue expanse of the sea, with every wave, and every ripple on every wave, flashing a line of silver in the sunlight. No sooner were they out of the yellow-green waters of the harbor than Mr. Brand had his companions conducted on to the bridge between the paddle-boxes; and the little crop-haired French boy brought them camp-stools, and their faces were turned toward England. "Ah!" said Natalie, "many a poor wretch has breathed more freely when at last he found himself looking out for the English shore. Do you remember old Anton Pepczinski and his solemn toast, papa?" She turned to George Brand. "He was an old Polish gentleman, who used to come to our house in the evening, he and a few others of his countrymen, to smoke and play chess. But always, some time during the evening, he would say, 'Gentlemen, a Pole is never ungrateful. I call on you to drink this toast: _To the white chalk-line beyond the sea_!'" And then she added, quickly, "If I were English, how proud I should be of England!" "But why?" he said. "Because she has kept liberty alive in Europe," said the girl, proudly; "because she offers an exile to the oppressed, no matter from whence they come; because she says to the tyrant, 'No, you cannot follow.' Why, when even your beer-men your dray-men know how to treat a Haynau, what must the spirit of the country be? If only those fine fellows could have caught Windischgratz too!" Her father laughed at her vehemence; Brand did not. That strange vibration in the girl's voice penetrated him to the heart. "But then," said he, after a second or two, "I have been amusing myself for some days back by reading a good deal of political writing, mostly by foreigners; and if I were to believe what they say, I should take it that England was the most superstitious, corrupt, enslaved nation on the face of the earth! What with its reverence for rank, its worship of the priesthood--oh, I cannot tell you what a frightful country it is!" "Who were the writers?" Mr. Lind asked. Brand named two or three, and instantly the attention of the others seemed arrested. "Oh, that is the sort of literature you have been reading?" he said, with a quick glance. "I have had some days' idleness." "Excuse me," said the other, with a smile; "but I think you might have spent it better. That kind of literature only leads to disorder and anarchy. It may have been useful at one time; it is useful no longer. Enough of ploughing has been done: we want sowing done now--we want writers who will build up instead of pulling down. Those Nihilists," he added, almost with a sigh, "are becoming more and more impracticable. They aim at scarcely anything beyond destruction." Here Natalie changed the conversation. This was too bright and beautiful a day to admit of despondency. "I suppose you love the sea, Mr. Brand?" she said. "All Englishmen do. And yachting--I suppose you go yachting?" "I have tried it; but it is too tedious for me," said Brand. "The sort of yachting I like is in a vessel of five thousand tons, going three hundred and eighty miles a day. With half a gale of wind in your teeth in the 'rolling Forties,' then there is some fun." "I must go over to the States very soon," Mr. Lind said. "Papa!" "The worst of it is," her father said, without heeding that exclamation of protest, "that I have so much to do that can only be done by word of mouth." "I wish I could take the message for you," Brand said, lightly. "When the weather looks decent, I very often take a run across to New York, put up for a few days at the Brevoort House, and take the next ship home. It is very enjoyable, especially if you know the officers. Then the bagman--I have acquired a positive love for the bagman." "The what?" said Natalie. "The bagman. The 'commy' his friends call him. The commercial traveller, don't you know? He is a most capital fellow--full of life and fun, desperately facetious, delighting in practical jokes: altogether a wonderful creature. You begin to think you are in another generation--before England became melancholy--the generation, for example, that roared over the adventures of Tom and Jerry." Natalie did not know who Tom and Jerry were; but that was of little consequence; for at this moment they began to descry "the white chalk-line beyond the sea"--the white line of the English coast. And they went on chatting cheerfully; and the sunlight flashed its diamonds on the blue waters around them, and the white chalk cliffs became more distinct. "And yet it seems so heartless for one to be going back to idleness," Natalie Lind said, absently. "Papa works as hard in England as anywhere else; but what can I do? To think of one going back to peaceful days, and comfort, and pleasant friends, when others have to go through such misery, and to fight against such persecution! When Vjera Sassulitch offered me her hand--" She stopped abruptly, with a quick, frightened look, first at George Brand, then at her father. "You need not hesitate, Natalie," her father said, calmly. "Mr. Brand has given me his word of honor he will reveal nothing he may hear from us." "I do not think you need be afraid," said Brand; but all the same he was conscious of a keen pang of mortification. He, too, had noticed that quick look of fright and distrust. What did it mean, then? "_You are beside us, you are near to us; but you are not of us, you are not with us._" He was silent, and she was silent too. She seemed ashamed of her indiscretion, and would say nothing further about Vjera Sassulitch. "Don't imagine, Mr. Brand," said her father, to break this awkward silence, "that what Natalie says is true. She is not going to be so idle as all that. No; she has plenty of hard work before her--at least, I think it hard work--translating from the German into Polish." "I wish I could help," Brand said, in a low voice. "I do not know a word of Polish." "You help?" she said, regarding him with the beautiful dark eyes, that had a sudden wonder in them. "Would you, if you knew Polish?" He met that straight, fearless glance without flinching; and he said "Yes," while they still looked at each other. Then her eyes fell; and perhaps there was the slightest flush of embarrassment, or pleasure, on the pale, handsome face. But how quickly her spirits rose! There was no more talk of politics as they neared England. He described the successive ships to her; he called her attention to the strings of wild-duck flying up Channel; he named the various headlands to her. Then, as they got nearer and nearer, the little Anneli had to be sought out, and the various travelling impedimenta got together. It did not occur to Mr. Lind or his daughter as strange that George Brand should be travelling without any luggage whatever. But surely it must have occurred to them as remarkable that a bachelor should have had a saloon-carriage reserved for himself--unless, indeed, they reflected that a rich Englishman was capable of any whimsical extravagance. Then, no sooner had Miss Lind entered this carriage, than it seemed as though everything she could think of was being brought for her. Such flowers did not grow in railway-stations--especially in the month of March. Had the fruit dropped from the telegraph-poles? Cakes, wine, tea, magazines and newspapers appeared to come without being asked for. "Mr. Brand," said Natalie, "you must be an English Monte Cristo: do you clap your hands, and the things appear?" But a Monte Cristo should never explain. The conjuror who reveals his mechanism is no longer a conjuror. George Brand only laughed, and said he hoped Miss Lind would always find people ready to welcome her when she reached English shores. As they rattled along through those shining valleys--the woods and fields and homesteads all glowing in the afternoon sun--she had put aside her travelling-cloak and hood, for the air was quite mild. Was it the drawing off of the hood, or the stir of wind on board the steamer, that had somewhat disarranged her hair?--at all events, here and there about her small ear or the shapely neck there was an escaped curl of raven-black. She had taken off her gloves, too: her hands, somewhat large, were of a beautiful shape, and transparently white. The magazines and newspapers received not much attention--except from Mr. Lind, who said that at last he should see some news neither a week old nor fictitious. As for these other two, they seemed to find a wonderful lot to talk about, and all of a profoundly interesting character. With a sudden shock of disappointment George Brand found that they were almost into London. His hand-bag was at once passed by the custom-house people; and he had nothing to do but say good-bye. His face was not over-cheerful. "Well, it was a lucky meeting," Mr. Lind said. "Natalie ought to thank you for being so kind to her." "Yes; but not here," said the girl, and she turned to him. "Mr. Brand, people who have travelled so far together should not part so quickly: it is miserable. Will you not come and spend the evening with us?" "Natalie will give us something in the way of an early dinner," said Mr. Lind, "and then you can make her play the zither for you." Well, there was not much hesitation about his accepting. That drawing-room, with its rose-and-green-shaded candles, was not as other drawing-rooms in the evening. In that room you could hear the fountains plashing in the Villa Reale, and the Capri fishermen singing afar, and the cattle-bells chiming on the Campagna, and the gondolas sending their soft chorus across the lagoon. When Brand left his bag in the cloak-room at the station he gave the porter half a crown for carrying thither, which was unnecessary. Nor was there any hopeless apathy on his face as he drove away with these two friends through the darkening afternoon, in the little hired brougham. When they arrived in Curzon Street, he was even good enough to assist the timid little Anneli to descend from the box; but this was in order that he might slip a tip into the hand of the coachman. The coachman scarcely said "Thank you." It was not until afterward that he discovered he had put half a sovereign into his breeches-pocket as if it were an ordinary sixpence. Natalie Lind came down to dinner in a dress of black velvet, with a mob-cap of rose-red silk. Round her neck she wore a band of Venetian silver-work, from the centre of which was suspended the little old-fashioned locket she had received in Hyde Park. George Brand remembered the story, and perhaps was a trifle surprised that she should wear so conspicuously the gift of a stranger. She was very friendly, and very cheerful. She did not seem at all fatigued with her travelling; on the contrary, it was probably the sea-air and the sunlight that had lent to her cheek a faint flush of color. But at the end of dinner her father said. "Natalushka, if we go into the drawing-room, and listen to music, after so long a day, we shall all go to sleep. You must come into the smoking-room with us." "Very well, papa." "But, Miss Lind," the other gentleman remonstrated, "a velvet dress--tobacco-smoke--" "My dresses must take their chance," said Miss Lind. "I wear them to please my friends, not to please chance acquaintances who may call during the day." And so they retired to the little den at the end of the passage; and Natalie handed Mr. Brand a box of cigars to choose from, and got down from the rack her father's long-stemmed, red-bowled pipe. Then she took a seat in the corner by the fire, and listened. The talk was all about that anarchical literature that Brand had been devouring down at Dover; and he was surprised to find how little sympathy Lind had with writing of that kind, though he had to confess that certain of the writers were personal friends of his own. Natalie sat silent, listening intently, and staring into the fire. At last Brand said, "Of course, I had other books. For example, one I see on your shelves there." He rose, and took down the "Songs before Sunrise." "Miss Lind," he said, "I am afraid you will laugh at me; but I have been haunted with the notion that you have been teaching Lord Evelyn how to read poetry, or that he has been unconsciously imitating you. I heard him repeat some passages from 'The Pilgrims,' and I was convinced he was reproducing something he had heard from you. Well--I am almost ashamed to ask you--" A touch of embarrassment appeared on the girl's face, and she glanced at her father. "Yes, certainly, Natalie; why not?" "Well," she said, lightly, "I cannot read if I am stared at. You must remain as you are." She took the book from him, and passed to the other side of the room, so that she was behind them both. There was silence for an instant or two as she turned over the leaves. Then the silence was broken; and if Brand was instantly assured that his surmise was correct, he also knew that here was a more pathetic cadence--a prouder ring--than any that Lord Evelyn had thrown into the lines. She read at random--a passage here, a passage there--but always it seemed to him that the voice was the voice of a herald proclaiming the new awakening of the world--the evil terrors of the night departing--the sunlight of liberty and right and justice beginning to shine over the sea. And these appeals to England! "Oh thou, clothed round with raiment of white waves, The cry there was in this voice! Surely his heart answered, "Oh Milton's land, what ails thee to be dead!" Was it in this very room, he wondered, that the old Polish refugee was used to lift up his trembling hand and bid his compatriots drink to "the white chalk-line beyond the sea?" How could he forget, as he and she sat together that morning, and gazed across the blue waters to the far and sunlit line of coast, the light that shone on her face as she said, "If I were English, how proud I should be of England!" And this England of her veneration and her love--did it not contain some, at least, who would answer to her appeal? Presently Natalie Lind shut the book and gently laid it down, and stole out of the room. She was gone only for a few seconds. When she returned, she had in her hand a volume of sketches, of which she had been speaking during dinner. He did not open this volume at once. On the contrary, he was silent for a little while; and then he looked up, and addressed Natalie, with a strange grave smile on his face. "I was about to tell your father, Miss Lind, when you came in, that if I could not translate for you, or carry a message across the Atlantic for him, he might at least find something else that I can do. At all events, may I say that I am willing to join you, if I can be of any help at all?" Ferdinand Lind regarded him for a second, and said, quite calmly, "It is unnecessary. You have already joined us." _ |
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