The Eye of Dread Part 37

"Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d'elle: 'Quelle est donc cette femme?' et ne comprendra pas."

Without pause she pa.s.sed into a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. "This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general Kosciuszko, yes? My father loved well to speak of him and also of one very high officer under him,--I speak his name for you, Julian Niemcewicz. This high officer, I do not know how to say in English his rank, but that is no matter. He was writer, and poet, and soldier--all. At last he was exiled and sorrowful, like my father,--sorrowful most of all because he might no more serve his country. It is to this poet's own words which he wrote for his grave that my father have put in music the cry of his sorrow. In Polish is it more beautiful, but I sing it for you in English for your comprehending."

"O, ye exiles, who so long wander over the world, Where will ye find a resting place for your weary steps?

The wild dove has its nest, and the worm a clod of earth, Each man a country, but the Pole a grave!"

It was indeed a cry of sorrow, the wail of a dying nation, and as Amalia played and sang she became oblivious of all else a being inspired by lofty emotion, while the two men sat in silence, wondering and fascinated. The mother's eyes glowed upon her out of the obscurity of her corner, and her voice alone broke the silence.

"I have heard my Paul in the night of the desert where he made that music, I have heard him so play and sing it, that it would seem the stars must fall down out of the heavens with sorrow for it."

Amalia smiled and caught up her violin again. "We will have no more of this sad music this night. I will sing the wild song of the Ukraine, most beautiful of all our country, alas, ours no more--Like that other, the music is my father's, but the poem is written by a son of the Ukraine--Zaliski."

A melody clear and sweet dominated, mounting to a note of triumph.

Slender and tall she stood in the middle of the room. The firelight played on the folds of her gown, bringing out its color in brilliant flashes. She seemed to Harry, with her rich complexion and glowing eyes, absorbed thus in her music, a type of human splendor, vigorous, vivid, adorable. Mostly in Polish, but sometimes in English, she again half sang, half chanted, now playing with the voice, and again dropping to accompaniment only, while they listened, the mother in the shadows, Larry gazing in the fire, and Harry upon her.

"Me also has my mother, the Ukraine, Me her son Cradled on her bosom, The enchantress."

She ceased, and with a sigh dropped at her mother's feet and rested her head on her mother's knee.

"Tell us now, mamma, a poem. It is time we finish now our fete with one good, long poem from you."

"You will understand me?" Madam Manovska turned to Harry. "You do well understand what once you have heard--" She always spoke slowly and with difficulty when she undertook English, and now she continued speaking rapidly to Amalia in her own tongue, and her daughter explained.

"Mamma says she will tell you a poem composed by a great poet, French, who is now, for patriotism to his country, in exile. His name is Victor Hugo. You have surely heard of him? Yes. She says she will repeat this which she have by head, and because that it is not familiar to you she asks will I tell it in English--if you so desire?"

Again Madam Manovska addressed her daughter, and Amalia said: "She thinks this high mountain and the plain below, and that we are exile from our own land, makes her think of this; only that the conscience has never for her brought terror, like for Cain, but only to those who have so long persecuted my father with imprisonment, and drive him so far to terrible places. She thinks they must always, with never stopping, see the 'Eye' that regards forever. This also must Victor Hugo know well, since for his country he also is driven in exile--and can see the terrible 'Eye' go to punish his enemies."

Then Madam Manovska began repeating in her strong, deep tones the lines:--

"Lorsque avec ses enfants vetus de peaux de betes, Echevele, livide au milieu des tempetes, Cain se fut enfui de devant Jehovah,

"Comme le soir tombait, l'homme sombre arriva Au bas d'une montagne en une grande plaine; Sa femme fatiguee et ses fils hors d'haleine; Lui dire: 'Couchons-nous sur la terre et dormons.'"

"Oh, mamma, that is so sad, that poem,--but continue--I will make it in English so well as I can, and for the mistakes--errors--of my telling you will forgive?

"This is the story of the terrible man, Cain, how he go with his children all in the skins of animals dressed. His hairs so wild, his face pale,--he runs in the midst of the storms to hide himself from G.o.d,--and, at last, in the night to the foot of a mountain on a great plain he arrive, and his wife and sons, with no breath and very tired, say to him, let us here on the earth lie down and sleep." Thus, as Madam Manovska recited, Amalia told the story in her own words, and Harry King listened rapt and tense to the very end, while the fire burned low and the shadows closed around them.

"But Cain did not sleep, lying there by the mountain, for he saw always in the far shadows the fearful Eye of the condemning power fixed with great sorrow upon him. Then he cried, 'I am too near!' and with trembling he awoke his children and his wife, and began to run furiously into s.p.a.ce. So for thirty days and thirty nights he walked, always pale and silent, trembling, and never to see behind him, without rest or sleeping, until they came to the sh.o.r.e of a far country, named a.s.sur.

"'Now rest we here, for we are come to the end of the world and are safe,' but, as he seated himself and looked, there in the same place on the far horizon he saw, in the sorrowful heavens, the Eye. Then Cain called on the darkness to hide him, and Jabal, his son, parent of those who live in tents, extended about him on that side the cloth of his tent, and Tsilla, the little daughter of his son, asked him, 'You see now nothing?' and Cain replied, 'I see the Eye, encore!'

"Then Jubal, his son, father of those who live in towns and blow upon clarions and strike upon tambours, cried, 'I will make one barrier, I will make one wall of bronze and put Cain behind it.' But even still, Cain said, 'The Eye regards me always!'

"Then Henoch said: 'I will make a place of towers so terrible that no one dare approach to him. Build we a city of citadels. Build we a city and there fasten--shut--close.'

"Then Tubal Cain, father of men who make of iron, constructed one city--enormous--superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who pa.s.sed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of tents were not, and in their place were walls of granite, every block immense, fastened with great nails of iron, and the city seemed a city of iron, and the shadow of its towers made night upon the plain, and about the city were walls more high than mountains, and when all was done, they graved upon the door, 'Defense a Dieu d'entrer,' and they put the old father Cain in a tower of stone in the midst of this city, and he sat there somber and haggard.

"'Oh, my father, the Eye has now disappeared?' asked the child, Tsilla, and Cain replied: 'No, it is always there! I will go and live under the earth, as in his sepulcher, a man alone. There nothing can see me more, and I no more can see anything.'

"Then made they for him one--cavern. And Cain said, 'This is well,'

and he descended alone under this somber vault and sat upon a seat in the shadows, and when they had shut down the door of the cave, the Eye was there in the tombs regarding him."

Thus, seated at her mother's feet, Amalia rendered the poem as her mother recited, while the firelight played over her face and flashed in the silken folds of her dress. When she had finished, the fire was low and the cabin almost in darkness. No one spoke. Larry still gazed in the dying embers, and Harry still sat with his eyes fixed on Amalia's face.

"Victor Hugo, he is a very great man, as my 'usband have say," said the mother at last.

"Ah, mamma. For Cain,--maybe,--yes, the Eye never closed, but now have man hope or why was the Christ and the Holy Virgin? It is the forgiving of G.o.d they bring--for--for love of the poor human,--and who is sorrowful for his wrong--he is forgive with peace in his heart, is not?"

CHAPTER XXV

HARRY KING LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN

When the two men bade Amalia and her mother good night and took their way to the fodder shed, the snow was whirling and drifting around the cabin, and the pathway was obliterated.

"This'll be the last storm of the year, I'm thinking," said Larry. But the younger man strode on without making a reply. He bent forward, leaning against the wind, and in silence trod a path for his friend through the drifted heaps. At the door of the shed he stood back to let Larry pa.s.s.

"I'll not go in yet. I'll tramp about in the snow a bit until--Don't sit up for me--" He turned swiftly away into the night, but Larry caught him by the arm and brought him back.

"Come in with me, lad; I'm lonely. We'll smoke together, then we'll sleep well enough."

Then Harry went in and built up the fire, throwing on logs until the shed was flooded with light and the bare rock wall seemed to leap forward in the brilliance, but he did not smoke; he paced restlessly about and at last crept into his bunk and lay with his face to the wall. Larry sat long before the fire. "It's the music that's got in my blood," he said. "Katherine could sing and lilt the Scotch airs like a bird. She had a touch for the instrument, too."

But Harry could not respond to his friend's attempted confidence in the rare mention of his wife's name. He lay staring at the rough stone wall close to his face, and it seemed to him that his future was bounded by a barrier as implacable and terrible as that. All through the night he heard the deep tones of Madam Manovska's voice, and the visions of the poem pa.s.sed through his mind. He saw the strange old man, the murderer, Cain, seated in the tomb, bowed and remorseful, and in the darkness still the Eye. But side by side with this somber vision he saw the interior of the cabin, and Amalia, glowing and warm and splendid in her rich gown, with the red firelight playing over her, leaning toward him, her wonderful eyes fixed on his with a regard at once inscrutable and sympathetic. It was as if she were looking into his heart, but did not wish him to know that she saw so deeply.

Towards morning the snow clouds were swept from the sky, and a late moon shone out clear and cold upon a world carved crisply out of molten silver. Unable longer to bear that waking torture, Harry King rose and went out into the night, leaving his friend quietly sleeping.

He stood a moment listening to Larry's long, calm breathing; then b.u.t.toning his coat warmly across his chest, he closed the shed door softly behind him and floundered off into the drifts, without heeding the direction he was taking, until he found himself on the brink of the chasm where the river, sliding smoothly over the rocks high above his head, was forever tumbling.

There he stood, trembling, but not with cold, nor with cowardice, nor with fatigue. Sanity had come upon him. He would do no untoward act to hurt the three people who would grieve for him. He would bear the hurt of forever loving in silence, and continue to wait for the open road that would lead him to prison and disgrace, or maybe a death of shame.

He considered, as often before, all the arguments that continually fretted him and tore his spirit; and, as before, he knew the only course to follow was the hard one which took him back to Amalia, until spring and the melting of the snows released him--to live near her, to see her and hear her voice, even touch her hand, and feel his body grow tense and hard, suffering restraint. If only for one moment he might let himself go! If but once again he might touch her lips with his! Ah, G.o.d! If he might say one word of love--only once before leaving her forever!

Standing there looking out upon the world beneath him and above him bathed in the immaculate whiteness of the snow, and the moonlight over all, he perceived how small an atom in the universe is one lone man, yet how overwhelmingly great in his power to love. It seemed to him that his love overtopped the hills and swept to the very throne of G.o.d. He was exalted by it, and in this exaltation it was that he trembled. Would it lift him up to triumph over remorse and death?

He turned and plodded back the inevitable way. It was still night--cold and silver-white. He was filled with energy born of great renunciation and despair, and could only calm himself by work. If he could only work until he dropped, or fight with the elements, it would help him. He began clearing the snow from the ground around the cabin and cut the path through to the shed; then he quietly entered and found Larry still calmly sleeping as if but a moment had pa.s.sed.

Finally, he secured one of the torches and made his way through the tunnel to the place where Larry and he had found the quartz which they had smelted in the evening.

There he fastened the torch securely in a crevice, and began to swing his pick and batter recklessly at the overhanging ledge. Never had he worked so furiously, and the earth and stone lay all about him and heaped at his feet. Deeper and deeper he fought and cut into the solid wall, until, grimed with sweat and dirt, he sank exhausted upon the pile of quartz he had loosened. Then he shoveled it to one side and began again dealing erratic blows with his spent strength, until the ledge hung dangerously over him. As it was, he reeled and swayed and struck again, and staggered back to gather strength for another blow, leaning on his pick, and this saved him from death; for, during the instant's pause, the whole ma.s.s fell cras.h.i.+ng in front of him, and he went down with it, stunned and bleeding, but not crushed.

Larry Kildene breakfasted and worked about the cabin and the shed half the day before he began to wonder at the young man's absence. He fell to grumbling that Harry had not fed and groomed his horse, and did the work himself. Noon came, and Amalia looked in his face anxiously as he entered and Harry not with him.

"How is it that Mr. 'Arry have not arrive all this day?"

"Oh, he's mooning somewhere. Off on a tramp I suppose."

"Has he then his gun? No?"