The Prophet's Mantle. Hubert Bland
looked up at him brightly. 'Oh, but their hearts ought not to be heavy, you know,' she said. 'The Revolution is of no country—I thought banishment from one country ought merely to mean work in another for an exile for freedom. Surely there is a fight to be fought here in England, for instance, too. I don't know much about it; I've scarcely seen anything, but it seems to me there is much to be put straight here—many wrongs to be redressed, much misery to be swept away.'
The Count's bold eyes fixed themselves on her with a new interest in them.
'Yes, yes,' he returned with a little backward wave of his hand. 'Exiles here do what they can, I think; but the wronged and miserable will not have long to wait, if there are many Miss Stanleys to champion their cause. Still it does make one's heart heavy to know that horrors unspeakable, worse than anything here, take place daily in one's own country, which one is powerless to prevent. One feels helpless, shut out. Ah, heaven! death itself is less hard to bear.'
'You speak as if you had felt it all yourself,' said Clare, a little surprised at the earnestness of his tone.
'I did not mean to speak otherwise than generally. I believe in England it is considered "bad form" to show feeling of any sort—and you English hate sentiment, don't you?'
'I don't think we hate sincere feeling of any kind; but forgive me for asking—are you really an exile?'
Count Litvinoff bowed. 'I have that misfortune—or that honour, as, in spite of all, I suppose it is. But won't you sing something else?' he added, with a complete change of manner, which made any return on her part to the subject of his exile impossible.
'I really think I've done my duty to-night,' she answered, rising. 'Don't you sing?'
'Yes, sometimes. Music is a consolation. And one is driven to make music for oneself when one lives a very lonely life.'
'Won't you make music for us?' she asked, ignoring the fact that her father was still snoring with vigour.
'Yes, if you wish it.'
He took her place at the piano, and, in a low voice, sang a Hungarian air, wild and melancholy, with a despairing minor refrain.
While her thanks were being spoken his fingers strayed over the keys, and, almost insensibly as it seemed, fell into a few chords that suggested the air of the Marseillaise.
'Oh, do sing that! I've never heard anyone but a schoolgirl attempt it, and I long so to hear it really sung. I think it's glorious.'
Without a word he obeyed her, and launched into the famous battle song of Liberty. His singing of the other song had been a whisper, but in this he gave his voice full play, and sang it with a fire, a fervour, a splendid earnestness and enthusiasm, that made the air vibrate, and thrilled Clare through and through with an utterly new emotion.
She understood now how this song had been able to stir men to such deeds as she had read of—had nerved ragged, half-starved, untrained battalions to scatter like chaff the veteran armies of Europe. She understood it all as she listened to the mingled pathos, defiance, confidence of victory, vengeance and passionate patriotism, which Rouget de Lisle alone of all men has been able to concentrate and to embody in one immortal song, in every note of which breathes the very soul of Liberty.
As the last note was struck and Litvinoff turned round from the piano, he almost smiled at the contrasts in the picture before him—a girl leaning forward, her face lighted up with sympathetic fire, and her eyes glowing with sympathetic enthusiasm, and an old gentleman standing on the hearthrug, very red in the face, very wide awake, and unutterably astonished. The girl was certainly very lovely, and if the exile thought so, as he glanced somewhat deprecatingly at the old gentleman, who shall blame him?
'How splendid!' said Clare.
'Very fine, very fine,' said her father; 'but—er—for the moment I didn't know where I was.'
This reduced the situation to the absurd—and they all laughed.
'I hope I haven't brought down the suspicions of the waiters upon you, Mr. Stanley, by my boisterous singing; but it's almost impossible to sing that song as one would sing a ballad. I evidently have alarmed someone,' he added, as a tap at the door punctuated his remark.
But the waiter, whatever his feelings may have been, gave them no expression. He merely announced—
'Mr. Roland Ferrier,' and disappeared.
'I'm very glad to see you, my dear boy,' said Mr. Stanley, as Roland came forward; 'though it's about the last thing I expected. Mr. Litvinoff—Mr. Ferrier.'
Both bowed. Roland did not look particularly delighted.
'We've come to London on business,' said he.
'We? Then where is your brother?' questioned Clare.
'Well,' said Roland, 'it is rather absurd, but I can't tell you where he is; he's lost, stolen, or strayed. We came up together, dined together, and started to come here together. We were walking through a not particularly choice neighbourhood between here and St. Pancras, when I suddenly missed him. I waited and looked about for something like a quarter of an hour, but as it wasn't the sort of street where men are garrotted, and as he's about able to take care of himself, I thought I'd better come on. I expect he'll be here presently.'
But the evening wore on, and no Richard Ferrier appeared. Clare felt a little annoyed—and Roland more than a little surprised. Perhaps, in spite of his sang froid, he was a trifle anxious when at eleven o'clock Litvinoff and he rose to go, and still his brother had not come.
CHAPTER V.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
As he walked through the streets with Roland all his thoughts were with the girl he was going to see—all his longing was to hasten as much as might be the moment of their meeting. In his mind just then she was the only woman in the world; and yet it was a woman's face in the crowd that made him start so suddenly—a woman's figure that he turned to follow with so immediate a decision as to give his brother no time to notice his going until he had gone.
The street was one of those long, straight, melancholy streets, the deadly monotony and general seediness of which no amount of traffic can relieve—which bear the same relation to Regent Street and Oxford Street as the seamy side of a stage court suit does to the glitter and gaudiness that charm the pit, and stir the æsthetic emotions of the gallery. There are always plenty of people moving about in these streets whom one never sees anywhere else—and you may pass up and down them a dozen times a day without meeting anyone whose dress does not bear tokens, more or less pronounced, of a hand-to-hand struggle with hard-upness. It is a peculiarity of this struggle that in it those who struggle hardest appear to get least, or at any rate those who get least have to struggle hardest. This Society recognises with unconscious candour—and when it sees a man or woman shabbily dressed and with dirty hands, it at once decides that he or she must belong to the 'working' classes; thus naïvely accepting the fact that those whose work produces the wealth are not usually those who secure it.
The face which had attracted Dick's notice was as careworn as any other in that crowd—the figure as shabbily clad as the majority. But the young man turned and followed with an interest independent of fair features or becoming raiment—an interest which had its rise in a determination to solve a problem, or at any rate to silence a doubt.
Yet it was a young woman he was following—more than that, a pretty young women; and the very evident fact that this handsome, well-dressed young man was openly following this shabby girl with a parcel inspired some of the loafers whom they passed to the utterance of comments, the simple directness of which would perhaps not have pleased the young man had he heard them. He heard nothing.