The day which had begun so stormily for the Berkow colony ended in
comparative quiet, such as could hardly have been looked for after the
scenes of the morning. Any one unacquainted with the situation might
have taken the calm, which towards evening fell upon the works and
their neighbourhood, for the most peaceful repose. But it was only a
truce, and, after this pause of a moment, the storm would break forth
again with redoubled fury.
In the Manager's dwelling there reigned a brooding, oppressive silence,
covering so much that was disastrous. The old man sat dumb in his
arm-chair by the stove. Martha went about the room, making work for
herself and casting an occasional glance at Ulric, who, with folded
arms, paced gloomily and silently up and down the little space. No one
spoke to him, and he spoke to no one.
The old confidential footing, which, owing to the young Deputy's
unmanageable conduct, had, it is true, often enough led to violent
quarrels, but as often to reconciliation afterwards, had long ago
ceased. Ulric ruled at home as absolutely as he ruled abroad among his
partisans; even his father ventured no longer to oppose him, but, here
as there, he governed only through fear. There was no talk now of love
or confidence.
The silence had lasted long, and would probably have lasted longer if
Lawrence had not come in. Martha, looking through the window, saw him
approach and went to open the door for him.
The relations between these young engaged people seemed strangely cold.
In spite of that day's grave work, which had little in common with
tender passages, the girl's welcome might have been warmer; perhaps at
so troubled a moment it ought to have been warmer, or so the young
miner seemed to feel, for he looked hurt, and broke off in the middle
of his cordial little speech. Martha did not notice it, however, and he
turned hastily from her towards Ulric.
"Well?" asked the latter, pausing in his walk.
Lawrence shrugged his shoulders.
"Just as I told you. To-morrow four hundred of them will report
themselves for work, and as many more are hesitating and balancing what
to do. You are hardly sure of half now."
This time Ulric did not exclaim violently as was his custom on such
occasions. The savage irritation he had shown in the morning about the
desertion of a comparatively small number of his followers contrasted
oddly with his present almost unnatural calm.
"Hardly half now," he repeated. "And how long will they hold out?"
Lawrence evaded an answer.
"All the younger men are with you. They have been on your side from the
first, and they will stand by you still even if there should be trouble
at the shafts again to-morrow. Ulric, will you really go such lengths
as that?"
"He will go all lengths," said the Manager, standing up. "He will go on
until they all drop off from him one by one and he remains quite alone.
I told you before, you will never succeed with your senseless demands
and your senseless hatred. It was fitting enough towards the father;
but in truth and conscience the son has not deserved it. What he
offered you was sufficient; I ought to know after all, for I have
worked in the mines in my time, and I can feel for my fellows as well
as another.
"Most of them would have gladly accepted it too, but they were cried
down and threatened, until not a man among them dared move a finger,
just because Ulric had set his mind on getting more than was possible.
Now it has been going on for weeks, with all the misery and care and
want, and it has all been in vain. There comes a day at last when the
starving wife and children at home have to be thought of before
everything, and that day we have reached now. You have brought us to
it, Ulric, and nobody but you; now let there be an end of it." The old
man had risen; as he spoke, he fixed on his son a look which had
something of menace in it, but even this reproach, which at another
time would have aroused Ulric to angry defiance, now failed to ruffle
his gloomy composure.
"There is no arguing with you, father," he said coldly. "I have known
that a long while. You are satisfied if you can eat your bit of dry
bread in peace, and anything beyond that seems foolishness or a crime
to you. I have staked everything on a throw. I thought to succeed, and
I should have succeeded if that Berkow had not stood up all at once and
shown us a front of iron. If we fail--well, Karl says, I am sure still
of half the men, and with them I will let him see what it costs to get
the better of us. He shall pay dearly enough for his victory."
The Manager looked at Lawrence, who was standing by with bowed head
taking no part in the discussion, and then again at his son.
"Look to it first whether the half will remain true to you, if the
master interferes in the matter again as he did this morning. That lost
you the other half, Ulric. Do you think it has no effect upon them that
he should behave as he has from the very first day you began to
threaten him? Do you think they don't feel, all of them, that he is
their match and yours too, and that he is able to hold them in hand
himself, if ever it should chance that you cease to be their master?
The first set took to work again this morning; they would have done it
three weeks ago if they had dared. Now that they have made a beginning,
there will be no stopping them any more."
"You may be right, father," said Ulric in a low hollow voice, "there
may be no stopping them now. I have built on them as on a rock, and
they are but thin sand running through my fingers. Berkow has learnt
how to draw the cowards to him with his fine speeches and cursed way of
stepping in among them, as if there were no stones to fly at his head
and no mallets to be used, if necessary, on the person of our respected
lord and master. That is just why they dare not attack him. I know why
he carried his head so high to-day all of a sudden, why he came into
the midst of all the uproar, looking as if success and happiness could
never fail him more, and I know too that they are coming back to him. I
myself guided them to his arms this morning."
The last words were lost in the banging to of the door which he had
opened while speaking, and no one present understood them. Ulric
stepped out into the open air and threw himself down on a bench.
The unnatural calm, which to-day pervaded his whole being, was almost
alarming in a man accustomed to give the reins to his wild passionate
nature. Whether the defection of his comrades had wounded him to the
core, or whether some other feeling had been at work within him since
the morning, it seemed that the proud certainty of victory, which he
had shown even in those hours, was paralysed now, if not destroyed.
Past the little garden flowed the broad brook which, farther on in its
course, served to turn the wheels now standing idle. It was a
mischievous ill-regulated stream, this brook, it had nothing of the
murmuring and silver-clear twinkling of its companions up in the hills,
yet it too came from out of the mountain depths, close to where the
shafts were situated. How often had it tried to draw harmless little
children at play into its eddying course, so as, at least, to frighten
and torment, though it dared not injure or kill, and so to revenge
itself for having been made to lend its aid to man's machinery and
labour.
The dark rapid flood looked weird in the last glimmer of the evening
light, and still more uncanny was the brawling of its waters as it
flowed by, hissing at times and babbling, full of scoff and of
mischief, as though down below in the depths of the mountains it had
learnt the tricks of the earth-gnome, how he weaves his toils round the
men who are ever trying to drag his treasures from him, and how he has
claimed as his due many a young warm life and buried it down in the
regions of endless night.
There was nothing holy in its murmuring flow, and this was no holy hour
in which its sound ascended to the young miner's ear as he sat there
motionless, staring down before him as though harkening to some
mysterious voice.
He had sat there for some time when he heard a step approaching, and
directly afterwards Martha stood before him.
"What do you want?" asked Ulric, never turning his eyes from the
stream.
"I wanted to see where you were staying all this while, Ulric," said
she with repressed anxiety in her tone.
"Where I was staying? Your sweetheart is there within, keep your care
for him. Let me be where I am."
"Karl has gone again," said Martha hastily, "and he knows well enough
that it can do him no harm if I talk a bit with you."
Ulric turned round and looked at her. He seemed glad to tear himself
from the thoughts which that brawling voice below had awakened in him.
"Listen, Martha; Karl puts up with more from you than any one else
would stand. I would not suffer you to meet me in that manner. You
should not have said 'yes,' if you had no heart for him."
The girl turned away almost angrily.
"He knows I have no heart for him. I told him so when we gave each
other our word. He would have me consent. I can't alter it, at least
not now; perhaps I shall learn to after the wedding."
"Perhaps!" said Ulric, with a sarcasm so deep and cutting as to seem
inapplicable to the words he spoke. "Perhaps! So much is learnt after
the wedding, with others at least, and why not with you?"
He looked down again at the dark flowing water, as if he could not tear
himself away from it. There below was the same low plash and murmur,
whispering to him only evil, evil thoughts.
Martha still stood a few paces off. That shyness and dread of him
which, since the "accident," had been felt by all about him, had
fettered her also. For weeks she had avoided every meeting, all contact
with him, but to-day the old inclination had sprung up again strong
within her, and had drawn her forcibly to the spot where he was. She
was not deceived by that strange calm, she guessed what lay behind it.
"You cannot get over the desertion of the men?" she asked gently. "But
half of them are with you still, and Karl will stand by you to the last
minute."
Ulric smiled contemptuously.
"To-day there are still half, to-morrow there will be a quarter, and
the day after---- Don't talk of it, Martha! As for Lawrence, he has
never had more than half a heart for it. He has stood by me and not by
the cause; by me, because I was his friend, and there will soon be an
end of his friendship too. He cares far too much for you to have any
very honest liking for me now."
The girl turned to him with a hasty gesture.
"Ulric!"
"Well, there is nothing in that to hurt your feelings. You would not
have me when I asked you to be my wife. If you had, it would have been
better in many ways."
"It would not have been better," said the girl decidedly. "I am not
made of stuff to endure all that Karl puts up with so patiently from
day to day, and things would have been between you and me much as they
are now between me and him, only I should have been the one who had all
to bear. I never had the least bit of your heart, your love was given
elsewhere, in quite a different place."
There was bitter reproach in her words, but even this allusion could
not rouse Ulric to-day. He was standing up now and gazing over towards
the park as it lay shadowy in the distance, searching, as it were, for
something between the trees.
"You mean I might have done better nearer at home, if I had sought for
it, and you are right; but this is not a thing to be sought after,
Martha. It seizes you all at once, and never looses you again while
there is breath in your body. I have learnt to know it I have given you
pain, my girl; now for the first time I know how much. But, believe me,
no blessing comes with such love; it gives one more to suffer than the
bitterest hate."
Words like these, nearly approaching to a prayer for forgiveness,
sounded strangely from Ulric Hartmann's lips; he was little used to ask
whether he gave pain or not. There was about him a sort of dull
resignation quite foreign to his nature, and the grief which moved him
now was all the more profound that it showed itself by no passionate
outburst. Martha forgot her repugnance and her fear, and went close up
to his side.
"What ails you, Ulric? You are so strange to-day. I have never seen you
like this. What is the matter?"
He pushed the curly hair from his brow, and leaned up against the
wooden gate.
"I don't know. Something has been weighing on me all day long. I
can't shake it off, and it takes my strength from me. I want it for
to-morrow, but directly I try to think, all grows black and dark before
me, as if there lay nothing more beyond, as if to-morrow all would be
at an end--all!"
Ulric started up suddenly with a dash of his old spirit.
"Absurd nonsense! I think the water down there has bewitched me with
its confounded brawl. I have so much time just now to be listening to
it, really! Good-bye."
He turned to go, but the girl held him back anxiously.
"Where are you going? To see the men?"
"No, I am going first on an errand of my own. Good-bye."
"Ulric, I implore you, stay!"
But the young miner's short-lived softened mood was over already. He
tore himself free impatiently.
"Let me go. I have no time for talk--another time!"
He pushed open the garden gate, and, setting off in the direction of
the park, soon disappeared in the growing darkness.
Martha stood with folded hands, looking after him. Wounded feeling and
bitter pain strove together in her countenance, but the pain gained the
upper hand.
"No blessing comes with such a love."
The words found an echo in her heart. She felt that there was no
blessing on hers either.
Meanwhile Eugenie Berkow sat alone in her husband's study. There had
been little opportunity as yet for these two to enjoy their newly-won
felicity. Twice had Arthur been compelled to leave her; in the morning
when he had thrown himself into the thick of the tumult and quelled it
for the time being, and now again when he had been called away to a
conference with the officials.
But, in spite of her anxiety about him and of the dangerous situation
in which they were placed, the young wife's face beamed with a
reflection of that deep inward happiness which, gained at the cost of
many an arduous struggle, was no longer at the mercy of outward storms.
She was with her husband, at his side, under his protection, and Arthur
was, it seemed, a man able to make his wife forget all else in that one
fact.
Suddenly a door was opened, and steps resounded in the adjoining room.
Eugenie rose to meet the newcomer, whom she naturally took for her
husband, but her first feeling of surprise at seeing a stranger gave
way to one of terror as she recognised Ulric Hartmann.
He was startled too at seeing her, and stood still in some
embarrassment.
"Ah, it is you, my lady! I was looking for Herr Berkow."
"He is not here, I am expecting him," she answered quickly, in a
trembling voice.
She knew what a source of danger this man had been to Arthur, what a
part he had played here on the works, yet she had not hesitated to
trust herself to his protection, when that morning it had seemed her
only chance of reaching the house. Between the morning and evening,
however, had come the hour in which she had stood by and listened to
the accusations brought against him by the chief-engineer.
They were based on suspicion alone, but even the suspicion of so
dastardly and perfidious an act as the assassination of a defenceless
man is something terrible, and she had shuddered with horror at the
thought of it. She could trust herself to the openly-declared and
ruthless enemy of her husband, but she shrank back from the hand which
was possibly dyed with the blood of her husband's father.
Ulric noticed the movement only too plainly. He still stood on the
threshold, but in his voice there was a tone of unmistakable scorn.
"I have alarmed you by coming. It was not my fault that I had not
myself announced. You are ill served, my lady. Neither on the stairs
nor in the corridors did I meet with one of your lacqueys. I should
very likely have thrust them out of my way, if they had refused me
admittance, but the noise of it would have been a sort of announcement
in itself."
Eugenie knew that he could have come in without hindrance. The two
servants were, by Arthur's express command, stationed in the ante-room
leading to her own apartments. In the excited state of men's minds, now
that every restraint was loosed and all order overthrown, it might be
that some would so far profit by the general license, as to attack, or
at least to force their way into, the house.
Anxiety and an uneasy restlessness had driven Eugenie over to her
husband's rooms. They were situated in another wing, and from their
windows she would see him come, but the entrance to them was unguarded
and she was there quite alone.
"What do you want, Hartmann?" she asked, summoning up her courage.
"After all that has happened, I did not think you would attempt to
enter our house again and to gain access to Herr Berkow's private
rooms. You know that he cannot receive you now."
"It was just on that account I was looking for him. I have a few words
to say to him. I thought I should find him alone. It was not you I was
seeking, my lady."
He stepped a little nearer to her as he said these words. Eugenie
retreated involuntarily; he laughed out with a bitter laugh.
"What a change a few hours may make! This morning you were begging for
my protection and leaning on my arm as I led you through all the noise
out there. Now, you fly from me as if your life were not safe when I am
by. Herr Berkow has used his time well, he has painted me in the
colours of a robber and a murderer, has he not?"
The young wife's delicate eyebrows contracted angrily, as, mastering
her agitation, she replied shortly and sternly,
"Leave me! my husband is not here, you see yourself, and if he were to
come now, I should hardly leave you alone with him."
"Why not?" asked Ulric slowly, but lowering darkly at her. "Why not?"
he repeated more vehemently as she remained silent.
Eugenie's fearless nature had often led her into acts of imprudence.
She did not reflect now on the possible consequences of her words, as,
returning his gaze steadfastly, she hazarded the dangerous answer,
"Because your company has been fatal to one Berkow already."
Hartmann started, and turned very pale. For one moment it seemed that
he would break out with all his old violence, but no! his features
still wore that rigid calm, and he spoke in the same dull under-tone he
had used throughout the interview.
"So that was it? Truly, I might have known it would find its way to you
at last."
Eugenie looked on in surprise. She had not expected such calmness as
this, it struck her as unnatural, yet she was stimulated by it to a
still greater venture. She had that morning tested her power and found
it to be great.
If it were only for Arthur's sake she longed for a certainty as to this
man who stood opposed to him in the fight, and she felt that though the
truth should be denied to all the world beside, it would not be so to
her.
"You know what I mean then?" she began again. "You understand to what I
allude? Hartmann, can you solemnly declare the reports connected with
that unhappy hour to be false?"
He crossed his arms on his breast, and looked moodily to the ground.
"If I were to do so would you believe me?"
Eugenie was silent
"Would you believe me?" he asked again, in a tone as though life or
death hung on her answer.
She let her eyes rest for a moment on his face. It was fully turned
towards her now, and she saw that it was ashy pale, and, like his
voice, betrayed an agonised tension of feeling.
"You might be capable of a crime, I think, if you were stung to
passion. I do not think you are capable of a lie."
Ulric's mighty chest heaved with a deep sigh of relief. As though
completely to re-assure her, he stepped back again away from her.
"Ask me what you please, my lady, I will answer you."
She trembled a little and leaned against the back of the sofa. It was a
dangerous colloquy, she felt, to hold with such a man, but still she
put the all important question.
"They tell my husband that it was not by mere accident the ropes broke
on that fatal day. How was it, Hartmann?"
"It was accident or something better, if you will, justice perhaps.
Our employer had caused alterations to be made in the pumps and
lifting-machine, just what was indispensable to keep them working, but
nothing to ensure safety. It was the same in this as in everything
else. What did it matter if a few hundred miners, constantly going up
and down, were every day brought in danger of their lives? Double and
treble the loads were lifted, the most outrageous weights were raised,
and at last the weights did their work, only this time the victim was
not one of the men, but the master himself. It was no man's hand, my
lady, which severed the ropes just at the moment when they were bearing
him up, and mine least of all. I saw the danger coming, we had just
reached the last stage but one. I risked the leap and"----
"You thrust him?" said Eugenie breathlessly, as he paused.
"No, I only let him go. I could have saved him if I would. Half a
minute would have been sufficient. I must have risked my own life, it
is true; he might have dragged me down with him, but for any one among
the men, for any of the officials even, I should have risked it; for
that man I could not! In that instant the thought rushed through my
head of all the evil he had done us, that the fate now threatening him
was only what he had exposed us to, day by day, for nothing but to save
money, and that I would not meddle in the matter if for once Providence
chose to be just. I did not move a hand, in spite of his cries. Next
minute it was too late; the cage had been dashed below and he with it."
Hartmann was silent. Eugenie looked up at him half in pity, half in
horror. She knew well enough that the accusations he had heaped on the
dead man were merited. Even she, however, would, in a moment of peril,
have stretched forth her hand to save the hated Berkow, but the man
opposite her had learnt neither to forgive nor forget. He stood quietly
by, and saw his enemy perish before his eyes.
"You have told me the whole truth, Hartmann? On your word of honour?"
"On my word of honour."
His eyes met hers without flinching. There was no doubt now in her
mind, and she answered reproachfully.
"And why did you not clear up the error? Why did you not speak to the
others as you have done to me?"
A scornful look passed over his face.
"Because not one of them would have believed me. Not a single one, not
even my own father. He is right. I have been wild and reckless all my
life, flinging down everything that stood in my way, and not caring for
what others said to me. I have had to pay for it now. They all knew
that I hated the man, and the accident happened when I was by, so I
must have been the cause of it, there could be no doubt as to that. My
own father told me so to my face, just because I could not say 'yes' at
once, when he asked me if I was in no way to blame for Berkow's death.
"I should only have had to stretch out my arm to save him and I had not
done it--because I could not say yes at once, he would not listen to me
any more. He would not have believed me, if I had sworn it to him. Then
I tried here and there among my mates. They did not contradict me, but
I saw in their faces that they took me for a liar. I was not going to
beg and pray them to believe me, so I let the thing go as it would. I
had had enough of their friendship and companionship. If I had been
brought into court and had found that matters were going against me, I
should have spoken out, but it is a question if any one there would
have believed what I said."
Eugenie shook her head.
"You should have made them believe you, Hartmann; you could have done
it, if you had tried in earnest, but your pride would not suffer it.
You met suspicion with contempt, and that was the very way to
strengthen it. Now you have an ill name on all the works, with the
officials and with my husband."
"What do I care for Herr Berkow?" he broke in roughly, "what do I care
for any of them? It is all the same to me whether they condemn me or
not, but I could not bear that you should turn from me in loathing, and
you believe me now, I see it in your eyes. The rest is all one to me."
"I do believe you," said Eugenie earnestly, "and my husband's mind, at
least, shall be cleared of those worst suspicions. If you failed to
save, where rescue was possible, it is not for us to judge you. You
must answer for it to your own conscience, but Arthur shall not think
that it is his father's murderer who stands opposed to him. It is too
late now for a reconciliation, you have gone too far for that. It is
only within the last few hours that I have learnt all that has
happened, all that yet may happen, if the attack on the shafts is
renewed to-morrow. Hartmann," she was imprudent enough to go right up
to him and to lay her hand on his arm. "Hartmann, we are on the verge
of a frightful catastrophe. You have compelled my husband to protect
himself and those belonging to him, to prepare himself for whatever may
befall, and he is determined to do it. If blood is shed, must needs be
shed, to-morrow, think on whose head it will be?"
Her close vicinity, the touch of her hand on his arm, were not without
effect on Ulric, but this time they worked no good. The dull quiet tone
in which he had spoken hitherto was changed now; his voice grew sharper
and louder, as he replied:
"On mine, you mean? Take care, my lady, you may have to suffer too, if
for instance, some one you are very fond of should be made to answer
for it. Herr Berkow will not stay securely here at home when there is
fighting going on outside. I know that, and I know too whom I shall
seek out first when once the battle is fairly on."
Eugenie had long ago withdrawn her hand, now she moved away from him,
warned by that tone and look. He was still but as a half-tamed tiger,
obeying her voice one minute, but ready perhaps the next to rise up
against her with all the old fury of his savage nature. That minute
seemed to be at hand. His look had menace in it even to her.
"Hartmann, you are speaking to your employer's wife," she said, making
a vain attempt to recall him to his senses.
"My employer!" cried he in scorn. "There is no question of my employer
here. I have only to do with him when I am at the head of my men. It is
Arthur Berkow I hate, because you are his wife, because you love him,
and I ... I love you, Eugenie more than any one in the whole wide
world. Do not shrink from me so in horror. You must have known it long
ago.
"It has mastered me each time I have come near you. I have kept it down
and tried to crush it by force, but it was of no use. It is of no use
now either, though to-day again I have had to learn the old lesson that
like cleaves to like, and that nothing is left for such as we are but
disdain and just a haughty shrug of contempt, even though we should
have risked our lives in your service. But next time there is a life to
be lost, I shall not be the one to offer myself up madly, as I did on
the day of your home-coming, by rushing under your horses' hoofs. Next
time the peril shall be another's, not mine. I have hated one Berkow to
the death already; it seemed to me then I never could hate any one
worse, but I know better now. He did not make a murderer of me; but
there is one man, and only one in the world, who could! I did the
father no hurt, but, if ever I find myself so, man to man, with the
son, then it shall be he or I ... or, if it must be, both!"
It was a terrible moment. The man's frenzied passion had burst all
bounds and broken loose in a wild torrent which nothing now could stem
or stay. Eugenie saw that no words would avail her at the present
crisis, she understood that her power was at an end. She could not
escape, he had placed himself between her and the door, but she ran to
the bell and pulled it with all the force at her command. The servants
were upstairs at the other side of the house, still it was just
possible the sound might reach their ears.
Hartmann had followed her; seizing her hand, he would have dragged it
from the bell rope, but at that moment he was himself thrust back by an
arm to which indignation lent such strength that it flung his giant
form aside as though he had been a child. Arthur stood between them.
With a cry of joy and yet of mortal fear, Eugenie rushed to her
husband; she knew what would come now.
Ulric recovered himself quickly and no sound passed his lips, but his
face was so distorted by rage as to be hardly recognisable. There came
a look in his eye, as he turned and faced his enemy, which foreboded
that enemy's immediate destruction; but Arthur, with quick presence of
mind, tore down one of the pistols which hung over his writing-table,
and throwing his left arm round his wife, he levelled the weapon at the
intruder.
"Back, Hartmann! Do not dare to come nearer. One step forwards towards
my wife, one single step, and I stretch you on the ground."
The threat took effect. Almost blinded by passion as he was, Ulric saw
the barrel pointed at him with a firm and sure aim, saw too that the
hand which held it did not tremble; at the second step he took forward
the bullet would strike him, and his foe would remain victor. He
clenched his fist and gnashed his teeth in his rage that a like weapon
was wanting to him.
"I have no pistols," said he, "or we should meet here on equal terms,
as we never have met yet. You are better provided than I. I have
nothing but my fists to set against your bullets, it is easy to see who
would get the best of it."
Arthur kept his eyes steadily fixed upon him. "You have taken care,
Hartmann, that we should always have at hand arms ready for use. I
shall protect my house and my wife even at the cost of a bullet. Back,
I repeat."
For one second the two looked each other full in the face, as on that
first occasion, so pregnant with consequences, when they had measured
each other's strength: now, as then, victory declared itself for the
young master, though, in the pass they had now reached, other means of
coercion had been needed than the look of his undaunted eyes. He stood
motionless, his finger ready to press the trigger, following every
movement of his foe, until the latter receded.
"I have never set much store by my life," said Ulric. "I should have
thought you both might have known that, but I am not going to let
myself be shot down at your door. I have accounts to settle with you.
You need not tremble so, my lady, you are in his arms, and he is safe,
for the present at least, though we have not finished with each other
yet. You stand there together as if nothing could tear you apart, as if
you were bound one to the other for ever and ever; but my time will
come yet, and then you shall have cause to remember me."
So saying, he went; his departing steps echoing through the adjoining
room, then more faintly in the ante-chamber, until at last they died
away outside.
Eugenie nestled more closely in her husband's arms; she had learned to
know now how well they could protect her.
"You came at the right moment, Arthur," said she, trembling still. "I
had left my rooms in spite of your warning. It was very imprudent, I
know, but I wanted to wait for you here, and I thought in the house I
should be sure to be safe."
Arthur lowered the pistol, and drew her nearer to him.
"But you were not, we have gained that experience. What was Hartmann
doing here in my study?"
"I do not know. He was looking for you, and certainly with no good
intent."
"I am prepared for anything from that quarter," he answered quietly, as
he laid the pistol on the table. "You see, I had provided for any such
emergency, but I greatly fear it was only the prelude to what will take
place to-morrow, when the real drama begins. Does it frighten you,
Eugenie? The help we have sent for cannot be here before evening; we
shall have to hold out alone all day against the rebels."
"Nothing frightens me when I am with you. But, Arthur," she pleaded
anxiously, "do not go out by yourself again into the midst of all that
tumult, as you did this morning. He will be there, and he has sworn to
take your life."
He raised her head gently and looked into her eyes.
"Life and death are not in Hartmann's hands alone; their decision rests
with another. Make your mind easy, Eugenie; I will do my duty, but I
will do it in a different way than in the days gone by. I know now that
my wife is anxious about me; that is not a thing one forgets so
easily!"
On the terrace outside stood Ulric Hartmann. Darkness had fallen now,
and the expression of his features was no longer discernible as he
gazed up at the windows of the house he had just left, but his voice
was low and hoarse with emotion as he repeated the threat he had before
used with reference to Arthur Berkow,
"He or I, or, if it must be, both!"