The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day

by Max Pemberton

The Earl did not wince at the threat, nor did his habitual self-control desert him. His insight would have been shallow indeed if he had not perceived that he was face to face with a dangerous enemy, and one with whom he might not trifle.

"Put your question to me and I will answer it," he said doggedly. "Remember that we are not in Roumania, Count. A word from me and my men would set you where questions would help you little. Speak freely while I have the patience to hear you."

"As freely as you could desire, my lord. A wise man would not utter a threat at such a time. Do you think that I, Georges Odin's son, do you think that I come to England alone? Ah, my lord, how little you know me! Open one of your windows and listen for the message my friends will deliver to you. I come to you with white gloves upon my hands. It is to ask you, my lord, in what prison my poor father is lying at this moment. Tell me that, help me to open the gates for him, and we are friends. It will be time to utter threats when you refuse."

The Earl's face blanched at the words, but he did not immediately reply to them. The story which the young man told was too astonishing that he should easily understand it.

"You father died in the fortress of Krajova," he said at length. "I remember that it was in the month of November in the year 1874. Why do you speak of the gates of his prison! It is incredible that you should bring such a story to me."

"As little incredible as your own ignorance, my lord. I thought as you did until the day, five years ago, which released Zallony's brother from Krajova. He brought the news to us. My father lives. But he is at Krajova no longer. The Russian Government never forgets, my lord. It remembers the day when Georges Odin was its enemy. My own people fear that my father's liberty would awaken old affairs that had better sleep. He is the victim of them. Yours is the one hand in all Europe that could set him free. My lord, the world must know his story and you shall write it. And if not you—then my Lady Evelyn, your daughter. Do you think I am so blind that I do not read the truth? The blood that ran in the mother's veins runs in the daughter's. Open the doors of this house to her and she will go to the hills as her mother went. The desire of life throbs in her veins. When I speak to her, I witness the struggle between the old and the new; faith and joy; the convent and the theatre; love and the prison. Your pride, your fear, have made a captive of her—but I, my lord, may yet cut her pretty bonds. As God is in heaven, I will not spare her one hour of shame if you do not give my father back to me. Think of that before you answer me. The girl or the man. Your shame or her freedom. My lord, you have not many hours in which to choose."

Such an alternative the Earl carried with him to his own room; such an alternative spoke to him from every page of the diaries his hand turned so painfully. It was as though the dead had risen to accuse him. Yonder, in a great clamped drawer of the bureau, were the letters he had received from his dead wife in the days when he contended with Georges Odin for the love of that mad, wild girl of the Carpathians. How ardently he had loved her! What mad hours they had lived amid the gypsy children of Roumania! And yet in heart and will she was another's. He had long known she loved the prisoner at Krajova. And the one supremely cowardly thing he had done in the course of his life had been done at the dictation of an uncontrollable passion which would sacrifice even honor for her sake. Georges Odin, the Count's father, had met him in fair fight—the better swordsman had won. Never would he forget the day—the snow-capped hills, the white glen in which they fought; the keen sword lightly engaging his own; then the swift attack, the masterly reposte and that sensation as of red-hot iron passing to his very heart. No shame here, it is true; but there were days of shame afterward when the story came out and King Charles himself asked the question, was it so? A word from Robert Forrester would have saved his enemy from the mines. He never spoke it. The man disappeared from his ken, and he believed that he was dead. He could scarcely deny the justice of the retribution which now overtook him.

Georges Odin alive and a prisoner still in some unknown fortress citadel. How the very name could awaken forgotten sensations! It seemed to the Earl as though the madness of his youth struggled once more for mastery with the finer impulses and desires which a later day had inspired. Yesterday he had been a country gentleman, seeking to cast behind finally that cloak of unconventionally he had worn with such pleasure in his youth. He had meant to whitewash the sepulchre; to take his seat in the Lords; to equip himself for the great honors thrust upon him; to marry Evelyn sedately to a son of a noble house and then, as it were, to convince himself that the abnormal had been purged out of him and would afflict him no more. These ambitions, however, were powerless now to combat the more natural instincts which the story of his youth could recreate for him. Once more in imagination he rode the hills of Roumania as a free adventurer, submitting to the laws neither of God nor of man. Once more the sensuous voluptuousness of the Earl dominated him, and the spirit within him rebelled at its captivity. He must escape convention, he thought, become a wanderer once more. And Evelyn! Had he not feared to read in her acts this very inheritance his own nature cried out for. He shuddered when he thought of Evelyn. Who would save her in the hour of cataclysm?

Such were the thoughts of that night long drawn and terrible. In moments of revulsion against those who had thus brought him to bay, there were mad whisperings which reminded him that Georges Odin's son was the prisoner of his house and that, as he would, he might readily be detained there until some understanding had been come to. This was a thought the Earl could recall again and again. The man was alone and helpless in his hands. It would be folly to open the doors and to say, "Go out and tell the story to the world." Melbourne Hall had harbored greater secrets before that day, and might witness them again. Why should he stand irresolute; what forbade him to save Evelyn from all that revelation must mean to her? He knew not—it remained for the house to answer him, silently and finally, with the answer of one who has set out upon no idle mission but is well aware of the danger he must face.

This was at the hour of dawn. Unable to sleep, the Earl sat by his open window watching the chill gray light creeping over the dew-laden grass and disclosing the trees one by one as though an unseen hand drew back the curtain of the night from the stately branches. A thrush with a sweet note heralded the day—the deer began to browse beneath the great avenue of yews. Anon, a sweet fresh air, invigorating as a very draught of life itself, came down from the hills and sent the ripples leaping and splashing beneath the arches of the old bridge, as though the river also had awakened from a lover's dreams. And now all stood revealed as in a picture of a forest land; the vast spaces of ripe green grass, delicious vistas of wood and thicket; home scenes, and scenes of Nature untrammelled. Upon other days, often at such an hour as this, the Earl had looked down upon them and said, "Mine—mine ... all these are mine." To-day he viewed them with heavy eyes. Something unfamiliar in the landscape attracted his attention and roused him from his musings.