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,
Thy brave brows lightening through the gray wet air,
Thou, lulled with sea-sounds of a thousand caves,
And lit with sea-shine to thy inland lair,
Whose freedom clothed the naked souls of slaves
And stripped the muffled souls of tyrants bare,
Oh, by the centuries of thy glorious graves,
By the live light of the earth that was thy care,
Live, thou must not be dead,
Live; let thy armed head
Lift itself up to sunward and the fair
Daylight of time and man,
Thine head republican,
With the same splendor on thine helmless hair
That in his eyes kept up a light
Who on thy glory gazed away their sacred sight."
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."