LOVE AND DUTY.
An hour later he walked back to the settlement, looking five years
older than he had done a couple of hours before, but with his nerves
steady and with the light of a solemn resolve burning in his eyes. He
went straight to the _Ithuriel_, and made a minute personal
inspection of the whole vessel, inside and out. He saw that every
cylinder was charged, and that there was an ample supply of spare
ones and ammunition on board, including a number of his new
fire-shells. Then he went to Lieutenant Marston's quarters, and told
him to have the crew in their places by half-past eleven; and this
done, he paid a formal visit to the Master to report all ready.
Natas received him as usual, just as though nothing out of the common
had happened; and if he noticed the change that had come over him, he
made no sign that he did so. When Arnold had made his report, he
merely said--
"Very good. You will start at twelve. The Chief has told you the
nature and purpose of the voyage you are about to make, I presume?"
He bowed a silent affirmative, and Natas went on--
"The Chief and Anna Ornovski will go with you as witnesses for
Michael Roburoff and Natasha, and the Chief will be provided with my
sealed orders for your guidance in the immediate future. The
rendezvous is a house on one of the spurs of the Alleghany Mountains.
What time will it take to reach there?"
"The distance is about seven thousand miles. That will be from thirty
to thirty-five hours' flight according to the wind. With a fair wind
we shall reach the Alleghanies a little before sunrise on the 18th."
"Then to make sure of that, if possible, you had better start an hour
earlier. Natasha is making her preparations, and will be on board at
eleven."
"Very well; I will be ready to start then," replied Arnold, speaking
as calmly and formally as Natas had done. Then he saluted and walked
out.
When he got into the open air he drew a deep breath. His teeth came
together with a sharp snap, and his hands clenched. So it was true,
then, this horrible thing, this sacrilege, this ruin, that had fallen
upon his life and hers. Natas had spoken of giving her to this man as
quietly as though it had been the most natural proceeding possible,
an understood arrangement about which there could be no question.
Well, he had sworn, and he would obey, but there would be a heavy
price to pay for his obedience.
He did not see Natasha again that night. When the _Ithuriel_ rose
into the air she was in her cabin with the Princess, and did not
appear during the voyage save at meals, when all the others were
present, and then she joined in the conversation with a composure
which showed that, externally at least, she had quite regained her
habitual self-control.
Arnold spent the greater part of the voyage in the deck-saloon with
Tremayne, talking over the events of the war, and arranging plans of
future action. By mutual consent the object of their present voyage
was not mentioned. As Arnold was more than two months and a half
behind the news, he found not a little relief in hearing from
Tremayne of all that had taken place since the recapture of the
_Lucifer_.
The two men, who were now to be the active leaders of the Revolution
which, as they hoped, was soon to overturn the whole fabric of
Society, and introduce a new social order of things, conversed in
this fashion, quietly discussing the terrific tragedy in which they
were to play the leading parts, and arranging all the details of
their joint action, until well into the night of the 17th.
About eleven Tremayne went to his cabin, and Arnold, going to the
conning-tower, told the man on the look-out to go below until he was
called. Then he took his place, and remained alone with his thoughts
as the _Ithuriel_ sped on her way a thousand feet above the deserted
waters of the Atlantic, until the dark mass of the American Continent
loomed up in front of him to the westward.
As soon as he sighted land he went aft to the wheel-house, and
slightly inclined the air-planes, causing the _Ithuriel_ to soar
upwards until the barometer marked a height of 6000 feet. At this
elevation he passed over the mouth of the Chesapeake, and across
Virginia; and a little more than an hour before sunrise the
_Ithuriel_ sank to the earth on one of the spurs of the Alleghanies,
in sight of a lonely weather-board house, in one of the windows of
which three lights were burning in the form of a triangle.
This building was used ostensibly as a shooting and hunting-box by
Michael Roburoff and a couple of his friends, and in reality as a
meeting-place for the Inner Circle or Executive Council of the
American Section of the Brotherhood. This Section was, numerically
speaking, the most important of the four branches into which the
Outer Circle of the Brotherhood was divided--that is to say, the
British, Continental, American, and Colonial Sections.
All told, the Terrorists had rather more than five million adherents
in America and Canada, of whom more than four millions were men in
the prime of life, and nearly all of Anglo-Saxon blood and English
speech. All these men were not only armed, but trained in the use of
firearms to a high degree of skill; their organisation, which had
gradually grown up with the Brotherhood for twenty years, was known
to the world only under the guise of the different forms of
industrial unionism, but behind these there was a perfect system of
discipline and command which the outer world had never even
suspected.
The Section was divided first into squads of ten under the command of
an eleventh, who alone knew the leaders of the other squads in his
neighbourhood. Ten of these squads made a company, commanded by one
man, who was only known to the squad-captains, and who alone knew the
captain of the regiment, which was composed of ten companies.
The next step in the organisation was the brigade, consisting of ten
regiments, the captains of which alone knew the commander of the
brigade, while the commanders of the brigades were alone acquainted
with the members of the Inner Circle or Executive Council which
managed the affairs of the whole Section, and whose Chief was the
only man in the Section who could hold any communication with the
Inner Circle of the Brotherhood itself, which, under the immediate
command of Natas, governed the whole organisation throughout the
world.
This description will serve for all the Sections, as all were
modelled upon exactly the same plan. The advantages of such an
organisation will at once be obvious. In the first place, no member
of the rank and file could possibly betray more than ten of his
fellows, including his captain; while his treachery could, if
necessary, be made known in a few hours to ten thousand others, not
one of whom he knew, and thus it would be impossible for him to
escape the invariable death penalty. The same is, of course, equally
true of the captains and the commanders.
On the other hand, the system was equally convenient for the
transmission of orders from headquarters. An order given to ten
commanders of brigades could, in a single night, be transmitted
individually to the whole of the Section, and yet those in command of
the various divisions would not know whence the orders came, save as
regards their immediate superiors.
It will be necessary for the reader to bear these few particulars in
mind in order to understand future developments, which, without them,
might seem to border on the impossible. It is only necessary to add
that the full fighting strength of the four Sections of the
Brotherhood amounted to about twelve millions of men, a considerable
proportion of whom were serving as soldiers in the armies of the
League and the Alliance, and that in its cosmopolitan aspect it was
known to the rank and file as the Red International, whose members
knew each other only by the possession of a little knot of red ribbon
tied into the button-hole in a peculiar fashion on occasions of
meetings for instruction or drill.
The three lights burning in the form of a triangle in the window of
the house were a prearranged signal to avoid mistake on the part of
those on board the air-ship. When they reached the earth, Arnold,
acting under the instructions of Tremayne, who was his superior on
land though his voluntary subordinate when afloat, left the
_Ithuriel_ and her crew in charge of Lieutenant Marston and Andrew
Smith, the coxswain.
The remainder disembarked, and then the air-ship rose from the ground
and ascended out of sight through a layer of clouds that hung some
eight hundred feet above the high ground of the hills. Lieutenant
Marston's orders were to remain out of sight for an hour and then
return.
Arnold had not seen Natasha for several hours previous to the
landing, and he noticed with wonder, by no means unmixed with
something very like anger, that she looked a great deal more cheerful
than she had done during the voyage. She had preserved her composure
all through, but the effort of restraint had been visible. Now this
had vanished, although the supreme hour of the sacrifice that her
father had commanded her to make was actually at hand. When her feet
touched the earth she looked round with a smile on her lips and a
flush on her cheeks, and said, in a voice in which there was no
perceptible trace of anxiety or suffering--
"So this is the place of my bridal, is it? Well, I must say that a
more cheerful one might have been selected; yet perhaps, after all,
such a gloomy spot is more suitable to the ceremony. Come along; I
suppose the bridegroom will be anxiously waiting the coming of the
bride. I wonder what sort of a reception I shall have. Come, my Lord
of Alanmere, your arm; and you, Captain Arnold, bring the Princess.
We have a good deal to do before it gets light."
These were strange words to be uttered by a girl who but a few hours
before had voluntarily confessed her love for one man, and was on the
eve of compulsorily giving herself up to another one. Had it been any
one else but Natasha, Arnold could have felt only disgust; but his
love made it impossible for him to believe her guilty of such
unworthy lightness as her words bespoke, even on the plain evidence
before him, so he simply choked back his anger as best he might, and
followed towards the house, speechless with astonishment at the
marvellous change that had come over the daughter of Natas.
Tremayne knocked in a peculiar fashion on the window, and then
repeated the knock on the door, which was opened almost immediately.
"Who stands there?" asked a voice in French.
"Those who bring the expected bride," replied Tremayne in German.
"And by whose authority?" This time the question was in Spanish.
"In the Master's name," said Tremayne in English.
"Enter! you are welcome."
A second door was now opened inside the house, and through it a light
shone into the passage. The four visitors entered, and, passing
through the second door, found themselves in a plainly-furnished
room, down the centre of which ran a long table, flanked by five
chairs on each side, in each of which, save one, sat a masked and
shrouded figure exactly similar to those which Arnold had seen when
he was first introduced to the Council-chamber in the house on
Clapham Common. In a chair at one end of the table sat another figure
similarly draped.
The door was closed as they entered, and the member of the Circle who
had let them in returned to his seat. No word was spoken until this
was done. Then Natasha, leaving her three companions by the door,
advanced alone to the lower end of the table.
As she did so, Arnold for the first time noticed that she carried her
magazine pistol in a sheath at her belt. He and Tremayne were, as a
matter of course, armed with a brace of these weapons, but this was
the first time that he had ever seen Natasha carry her pistol openly.
Wondering greatly what this strange sight might mean, he waited with
breathless anxiety for the drama to begin.
As Natasha took her stand at the opposite end of the table, the
figure in the chair at the top rose and unmasked, displaying the
pallid countenance of the Chief of the American Section. He looked to
Arnold anything but a bridegroom awaiting his bride, and the ceremony
which was to unite him to her for ever. His cheeks and lips were
bloodless, and his eyes wandered restlessly from Natasha to Tremayne
and back again. He glanced to and fro in silence for several moments,
and when he at last found his voice he said, in half-choked, broken
accents--
"What is this? Why am I honoured by the presence of the Chief and the
Admiral of the Air? I asked only that if the Master consented to
grant my humble petition in reward for my services, the daughter of
Natas should come attended simply by a sister of the Brotherhood and
the messenger that I sent."
They let him finish, although it was with manifest difficulty that he
stammered to the end of his speech. Arnold, still wondering at the
strange turn events had taken, saw Tremayne's lips tighten and his
brows contract in the effort to repress a smile. The other masked
figures at the table moved restlessly in their seats, and glanced
from one to another. Seeing this, Tremayne stepped quickly forward to
Natasha's side, and said in a stern, commanding tone--
"I am the Chief of the Central Council, and I order every one here to
keep his seat and remain silent until the daughter of Natas has
spoken."
The ten masked and hooded heads instantly bowed consent. Then
Tremayne stepped back again, and Natasha spoke. There was a keen,
angry light in her eyes, and a bright flush upon her cheek, but her
voice was smooth and silvery, and in strange contrast to the words
that she used, almost to the end.
"Did you think, Michael Roburoff, that the Master of the Terror would
send his daughter to her bridal so poorly escorted as you say? Surely
that would have been almost as much of a slight as you put upon me
when, instead of coming to woo me as a true lover should have done,
you contented yourself with sending a messenger as though you were
some Eastern potentate despatching an envoy to demand the hand of the
daughter of a vassal.
"It would seem that this sudden love which you do me the honour to
profess for me has destroyed your manners as well as your reason. But
since you have assumed so high a dignity, it is not seemly that you
should stand to hear what I have to say; sit down, for it looks as
though standing were a trouble to you."
Michael Roburoff, who by this time could scarcely support himself on
his trembling limbs, sank suddenly back into his chair and covered
his face with his hands.
"That is not very lover-like to cover your eyes when the bride that
you have asked for is standing in front of you; but as long as you
don't cover your ears as well, I will forgive you the slight. Now,
listen.
"I have come, as you see, and I have brought with me the answer of
the Master to your request. Until an hour ago I did not know what it
was myself, for, like the rest of the faithful members of the
Brotherhood, I obey the word of the Master blindly.
"You, as it would appear, maddened by what you are pleased to call
your love for me, have dared to attempt to make terms where you swore
to obey blindly to the death. You have dared to place me, the
daughter of Natas, in the balance against the allegiance of the
American Section on the eve of the supreme crisis of its work, thus
imperilling the results of twenty years of labour.
"If you had not been mad you would have foreseen the results of such
treachery. As it is you must learn them now. What I have said has
been proved by your own hand, and the proof is here in the hand of
the Chief. This is the answer of Natas to the servant who would have
betrayed him in the hour of trial."
She took a folded paper from her belt as she spoke, and, unfolding
it, read in clear, deliberate tones--
Michael Roburoff, late chief of the American Section of the
Brotherhood. When you joined the Order, you took an oath to obey
the directions of its chiefs to the death, and you acknowledged
that death would be the just penalty of perjury. My orders to you
were to complete the arrangements for bringing the American
Section into action when you received the signal to do so.
Instead of doing that, you have sought to bargain with me for the
price of its allegiance. That is treachery, and the penalty of
treachery is death.
NATAS.
"Those are the words of the Master," continued Natasha, throwing the
paper down upon the table with one hand, and drawing her pistol with
the other. "It rests with the Chief to say when and where the
sentence of the Master shall be carried out."
[Illustration: "He dropped back into his chair with a bullet in his
brain."
_See page 275._]
"Let it be carried out here, and now," said Tremayne, "and let him
who has anything to say against it speak now, or for ever hold his
peace."
The ten heads bowed once more in silence, and Natasha went on still
addressing the trembling wretch who sat huddled in the chair in front
of her.
"You have asked for a bride, Michael Roburoff, and she has come to
you, and I can promise you that you shall sleep soundly in her
embrace. Your bride is Death, and I have chosen to bring her to you
with my own hand, that all here may see how the daughter of Natas can
avenge an insult to her womanhood.
"You have been guilty of treachery to the Brotherhood, and for that
you might have been punished by any hand; but you would also have
condemned me to the infamy of a loveless marriage, and that is an
insult that no one shall punish but myself. Look up, and, if you can,
die like a man."
Roburoff took his hands from his face, and with an inarticulate cry
started to his feet. The same instant Natasha's hand went up, her
pistol flashed, and he dropped back again into his chair with a
bullet in his brain. Then she replaced the pistol in her belt, and
going up to Arnold held out both her hands and said, as he clasped
them in his own--
"If the Master's reply had been different, that bullet would by this
time have been in my own heart."