"There has been nothing like it," said he, "in all the history of what men have done for a political cause. You may say they are fanatics, madmen, murderers; that they only provoke further tyranny and oppression; that their efforts are wholly and solely mischievous. It may be so; but I speak of the individual and what he is ready to do. The sacrifice of their own life is taken almost as a matter of course. Each man knows that for him the end will almost certainly be Siberia or a public execution; and he accepts it. You will find young men, well-born, well-educated, who go away from their friends and their native place, who go into a remote village, and offer to work at the commonest trade, at apprentices' wages. They settle there; they marry; they preach nothing but the value of honest work, and extreme sobriety, and respect for superiors. Then, after some years, when they are regarded as beyond all suspicion, they begin, cautiously and slowly, to spread abroad their propaganda—to teach respect rather for human liberty, for justice, for self-sacrifice, for those passions that prompt a nation to adventure everything for its freedom. Well, you know the end. The man may be found out—banished or executed; but the association remains. The Russians at this moment have no notion how wide-spread and powerful it is."
"The head-quarters, are they in Russia itself?" asked Brand, on the watch for any admission.
"Who knows?" said the other, absently. "Perhaps there are none."
"None? Surely there must be some power to say what is to be done, to enforce obedience?"
"What if each man finds that in himself?" said Lind, with something of the air of a dreamer coming over the firm and thoughtful and rugged face. "It may be a brotherhood. All associations do not need to be controlled by kings and priests and standing armies."
"And the end of all this devotion, you say is Siberia or death?"
"For the man, perhaps; for his work, not. It is not personal gain or personal safety that a man must have in view if he goes to do battle against the oppression that has crushed the world for centuries and centuries. Do you not remember the answer given to the Czar by Michael Bestoujif when he was condemned? It was only the saying of a peasant; but it is one of the noblest ever heard in the world. 'I have the power to pardon you,' said the Czar to him, 'and I would do so if I thought you would become a faithful subject.' What was the answer? 'Sire,' said Michael Bestoujif, 'that is our great misfortune, that the Emperor can do everything, and that there is no law.'"
"Ah, the brave man!" said Natalie Lind, quickly and passionately, with a flash of pride in her eyes. "The brave man! If I had a brother, I would ask him, 'When will you show the courage of Michael Bestoujif?'"
Lord Evelyn glanced at her with a strange, admiring, proud look. "If she had a brother!" What else, even with all his admiration and affection for her, could he hope to be?
Presently they wandered back into other and lighter subjects; and Brand, at least, did not notice how the time was flying. When Natalie Lind rose, and asked her father whether he would have coffee sent into the smoking-room, or have tea in the drawing-room, Brand was quite astonished and disappointed to find it so late. He proposed they should at once go up to the drawing-room; and this was done.
They had been speaking of musical instruments at dinner; and their host now brought them some venerable lutes to examine—curiosities only, for most of the metal strings were broken. Beautiful objects, however, they were, in inlaid ivory or tortoise-shell and ebony; made, as the various inscriptions revealed, at Bologna, or Padua, or Venice; and dating, some of them, as far back as 1474. But in the midst of all this, Brand espied another instrument on one of the small tables.
"Miss Lind," said he, with some surprise, "do you play the zither?"
"Oh yes, Natalie will play you something," her father said, carelessly; and forthwith the girl sat down to the small table.
George Brand retired into a corner of the room. He was passionately fond of zither music. He thought no more about that examination of the lutes.
"Do you know one who can play the zither well?" says the proverb. "If so, rejoice, for there are not two in the world." However that might be, Natalie Lind could play the zither, as one eager listener soon discovered. He, in that far corner, could only see the profile of the girl (just touched with a faint red from the shade of the nearest candle, as she leaned over the instrument), and the shapely wrists and fingers as they moved on the metallic strings. But was that what he really did see when the first low tremulous notes struck the prelude to one of the old pathetic Volkslieder that many a time he had heard in the morning, when the fresh wind blew in from the pines; that many a time he had heard in the evening, when the little blue-eyed Kathchen and her mother sung together as they sat and knitted on the bench in front of the inn? Suddenly the air changes. What is this louder tramp? Is it not the joyous chorus of the home-returning huntsmen; the lads with the slain roedeer slung round their necks; that stalwart Bavarian keeper hauling at his mighty black hound; old father Keinitz, with his three beagles and his ancient breech-loader, hurrying forward to get the first cool, vast, splendid bath of the clear, white wine? How the young fellows come swinging along through the dust, their faces ablaze against the sunset! Listen to the far, hoarse chorus!—
"Dann kehr ich von der Haide,
Zur hauslich stillen Freude,
Ein frommer Jagersmann!
Ein frommer Jagersmann!
Halli, hallo! halli, hallo!
Ein frommer Jagersmann!"
White wine now, and likewise the richer red!—for there is a great hand-shaking because of the Mr. Englishman's good fortune in having shot three bucks: and the little Kathchen's eyes grow full, because they have brought home a gentle-faced hind, likewise cruelly slain. And Kathchen's mother has whisked inside, and here are the tall schoppen on the table; and speedily the long, low room is filled with the tobacco-smoke. What! another song, you thirsty old Keinitz, with the quavering voice? But there is a lusty chorus to that too; and a great clinking of glasses; and the Englishman laughs and does his part too, and he has called for six more schoppen of red. … But hush, now! Have we come out from the din and the smoke to the cool evening air? What is that one hears afar in the garden? Surely it is the little Kathchen and her mother singing together, in beautiful harmony, the old, familiar, tender Lorelei! The zither is a strange instrument—it speaks. And when Natalie Lind, coming to this air, sung in a low contralto voice an only half-suggested second, it seemed to those in the room that two women were singing—the one with a voice low and rich and penetrating, the other voice clear and sweet like the singing of a young girl. "Die Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt, und ruhig fliesset der Rhein." Was it, indeed, Kathchen and her mother? Were they far away in the beautiful pine-land, with the quiet evening shining red over the green woods, and darkness coming over the pale streams in the hollows? When Natalie Lind ceased, the elder of the two guests murmured to himself, "Wonderful! wonderful!" The other did not speak at all.
She rested her hands for a moment on the table.
"Natalushka," said her father, "is that all?"
"I will not be called Natalushka, papa," said she; but again she bent her hands over the silver strings.
And these brighter and gayer airs now—surely they are from the laughing and light-hearted South? Have we not heard them under the cool shade of the olive-trees, with the hot sun blazing on the garden-paths of the Villa Reale; and the children playing; and the band busy with its dancing canzoni, the gay notes drowning the murmur and plash of the fountains near? Look now!—far beneath the gray shadow of the olive-trees—the deep blue band of the sea; and there the double-sailed barca, like a yellow butterfly hovering on the water; and there the large martingallo, bound for the cloud-like island on the horizon. Are they singing, then, as they speed over the glancing waves? … "O dolce Napoli! O suol beato!" … for what can they sing at all, as they leave us, if they do not sing the pretty, tender, tinkling "Santa Lucia?"
"Venite