Success and How He Won It Part 37

"Don't do it, my lady," said the driver, speaking to some one inside the carriage.

"You had far better turn back with me as I begged you to do at the last station; I heard of it there, and the peasants we just met on the road told us of it again. There are battle and murder up on the works to-day. Quite early this morning the men were pouring in from all the villages around, and there is the devil to pay now out yonder. With the best will in the world, I can't take you up to the house. I should be risking my horses and the chaise too. When these fellows are once in revolt, they spare neither friend nor foe. Must you go up there just to-day? Could you not wait until to-morrow?"

The young lady, who was the sole occupant of the carriage, made no reply, but opened the door and stepped out.

"I cannot wait," said she gravely, "but I will not endanger you or your property. It is not more than a mile, I can easily go there on foot.

You can turn back."

The driver renewed his warnings and remonstrances. It seemed very strange to him that this unknown and elegant lady, who had paid him so liberally, urging him at the same time to use the utmost speed, should now venture alone into the tumult. He obtained nothing from her, however, by his entreaties. She impatiently signed to him to turn back, and at last, shrugging his shoulders at her persistency, he made up his mind to obey.

Eugenie took a footpath which did not lead direct to the works, but ran across the meadows towards the upper entrance to the park, and where she would in all probability be safe. If it came to the worst, she would, at all events, find protection and an escort in one of the officials' dwelling-houses, which lay in that direction. How necessary both might be, she certainly had not known when, yielding to a sudden impulse, she had set out on this journey alone, and even now she did not understand the full extent of the peril to which her present expedition exposed her.

It was not the possibility of danger which brought that heightened colour to her cheeks, that restless sparkle to her eye, which made her heart beat so violently that she was forced to stop every now and then to take breath. It was the fear she felt of the coming decision. That heavy dream-like feeling, which had come upon her on leaving her husband's home, had hung about her during all the weeks of the separation.

Neither the old home, nor her people's love, nor the bright and happy prospects opening out before them all, had sufficed to rouse her. That dreamy sense of unreality had clung to her with painful oppressiveness and with many a vague longing. Now the awakening had come, and all her thoughts were bent on the one question.

"How would he receive her?"

She had just reached a small solitary house, forming, as it were, the extreme outposts of the works, when she saw a man hurrying towards her.

He started with a look of terror as he recognised her.

"My lady! For Heaven's sake, how did you come here, and to-day of all days?"

"Oh, Manager Hartmann, is it you?" said Eugenie, going up to him.

"Thank G.o.d I have met you! Troubles have broken out on the works, I hear. I had to leave my carriage out yonder, the driver dared not bring me on. I am going on foot up to the house."

The Manager shook his head, and replied hastily:

"You cannot, my lady, you cannot go up now. To-morrow perhaps, or perhaps towards evening, but not now."

"Why not?" cried Eugenie, turning very pale. "Is our house threatened?

Is my husband" ...

"No, no, Herr Berkow is not mixed up in it today. He is up at the house with all the officials. This time the trouble is among themselves.

Some of the men wanted to take to their work again this morning, and my son" ....

Here the old man's face worked with agitation.

"Well! you must know it before long! My son was furious about it. He and his party have driven them back, and set a guard round the shafts.

The others won't put up with that, and now they are banding themselves together. The whole works are in revolt, every man against his neighbour. Merciful goodness! what will happen next?" cried the Manager, as, in spite of the distance, rumours of the wild clamour and uproar were borne distinctly over to them.

"But I intended to avoid the works," urged Eugenie. "I was going to try and gain the park by the path across the meadows, and so on to" ....

"For Heaven's sake, don't go there!" interrupted the old man. "Ulric and all his followers are holding a meeting out in the meadow yonder. I was on my way to try once more if I could not make him listen to reason, and induce him, at all events, to set the shafts free. We are going against our own flesh and blood now, but he has neither eyes nor ears for anything in his fury. Not that way, my lady, it is the most dangerous of all."

"I must go up to the house," Eugenie declared resolutely. "I must go, cost what it may. Come with me, Hartmann, only as far as the houses. In case of the worst, I can stay there until the road is clear again. At your side I shall be secure at least from open violence."

The old man shook his head sadly.

"I cannot help you, my lady. Now that we are all in arms, one against the other, my own life is hardly safe in the midst of this strife and turmoil, and if once they get to know who you are, my being at your side would be of very little use. There is only one man now they feel any respect for, who can make himself obeyed in case of need, and that is my Ulric. But he hates Herr Berkow mortally, and he hates you too because you are the master's wife. Good G.o.d!" broke off the old man suddenly, "here he comes! There has been mischief doing again, I can see it in his face. Go out of his sight just for the present, I implore you."

He pushed her through the half-opened door of the little cottage, and he had hardly done so, when steps and loud voices were heard approaching. Ulric was coming up the road followed by Lawrence and several other miners. His face was crimson, and on his brow lay a thunder-cloud ready at any moment to explode. He was talking excitedly as he came along, and he did not notice his father's presence.

"If they are our mates and our brothers, no matter! Down with them directly they turn traitors to us. We gave our word to stand by each other, and now they crawl up to the old collar like cowards and desert us and our cause. They shall be made to pay for it. Are the shafts well guarded?"

"Yes, but" ...

"I'll have no buts," cried the leader imperiously to the man who would have ventured to hazard an objection. "That was about the one thing wanting, treason in our own camp, just as we are on the eve of victory.

They shall be driven back by force, I tell you, if they make the least attempt to go below. We will teach them their duty and their proper place, if they have to learn it at the cost of a few broken heads."

"But there are two hundred of them," said Lawrence gravely, "and to-morrow there may be four--and, if once the master steps in and begins to talk to them--you know how that tells! We have seen it often enough of late."

"If there were four hundred," shouted Ulric, "if half our people were on their side, we would fight them with the other half and beat them too. I'll see if I can't make myself obeyed! But now, forward, lads.

Karl, you go over to the works and bring me word if Berkow is meddling in the matter and talking to the men in that cursed way of his, getting hundreds to desert from us again. You others, back to the shafts. See that the way to them is thoroughly blocked, I will come myself presently. Off with you!"

His command was at once obeyed. The miners hurried off in the prescribed directions, and Ulric, seeing now for the first time that his father was standing by, hurried up to him and said,

"You here, father? Why, you ought to be"----all at once he stopped, rooted to the ground; his face grew deadly white, every drop of blood slowly receding from it, and his eyes were fixed and dilated as though he had seen a ghost. Eugenie had come out of the house and was standing before him.

A sudden thought had flashed into the young wife's mind, and instantly she acted on it without staying to reflect on the boldness and the peril of her venture. She was bent on going to her husband at any cost, and now she must overcome the horror with which this man had inspired her ever since she had discovered the true reason of her power over him. She had often put this power to the proof; now the time had come to turn it to account.

"It is I, Hartmann," said she, mastering an involuntary shudder and appearing before him calm and composed. "Your father was just warning me not to go on my way alone, and yet I must go on."

At the sound of her voice, Ulric seemed first to realise that it was actually Eugenie Berkow who stood before him, and no mere vision of his heated fancy. He would have rushed up to her, but that look and tone still kept their old influence over him. As he listened, a calmer and milder expression came over his face.

"What are you doing here, my lady?" he asked uneasily, his rough imperious manner softening into one that was almost gentle. "There is ill work among us to-day, which is not for women to see, least of all for you. You must not stay here."

"I want to go to my husband," said Eugenie quickly.

Formerly she had almost invariably spoken of Arthur as "Heir Berkow;"

now she called him her husband, in a tone which seemed to make Ulric understand all that was implied in that one word.

In the first moment of his surprise he had not reflected how or why she had come there so suddenly; now he glanced quickly, first at her travelling dress, and then around, as though in quest of her carriage and attendants.

"I am alone," said Eugenie, catching this glance, "and it is that which prevents my going on. I am not afraid of any actual danger, but of the insults I might be exposed to. You offered me your escort and protection once, Hartmann, when I did not need them. Now I mean to make a claim on both. Lead me over to the house. You can, if you will."

The Manager had stood by, anxiously looking on, expecting that at any moment his son might attack the wife of a master he so hated, and ready to rush in between them. He could not understand Eugenie's tone of quiet a.s.surance towards a man whom she, like every one else, must know to be the real instigator of the whole rebellion. Now as she made this request wis.h.i.+ng to entrust herself to the rebel leader's safe keeping, the old man's bewilderment knew no bounds. He looked at her in horrified amazement.

As to Ulric, he was roused to violent anger by the demand made upon him. That milder gleam had vanished, and the old imperious defiance had come back to him.

"I am to lead you over?" he said in a low hoa.r.s.e voice. "And you ask that of me, my lady, of me?"

"I ask it of you." Eugenie kept her eyes steadily fixed on his face, feeling that so her power over him would be greater. It seemed now, however, to have reached its limits. He burst out like a madman.

"Never, never! I would rather see the house stormed, see it pulled to the ground, than take you there again. What? he up yonder is to have you at his side again, so that he shall take courage and resist to the last? He is to have the triumph of knowing that you have come away from the city by yourself and made your way through the whole place in revolt, just that he should not be left alone? But you may look for another guide for that, and if you find one"--with a threatening look at his father--"he shall not go far with you, I'll take care of that."

"Ulric, control yourself, you are speaking to a lady!" cried the Manager, stepping between them in mortal fear. He naturally saw nothing in this scene but an outbreak of that unrestrained enmity which his son had long cherished towards the whole Berkow family, and he took up a position before his master's wife, determined, come what might, to protect and s.h.i.+eld her. She pressed by him, however, gently but resolutely.

"So you will not go with me, Hartmann?"