Part 51 (1/2)
When at length Lady Muriel got out of the arms of her future lord, she at once ran to Natasha with both her hands outstretched, a very picture of grace and health and blus.h.i.+ng loveliness.
She was Natasha's other self, saving only for the incomparable brilliance of colouring and contrast which the daughter of Natas derived from her union of Eastern and Western blood. Yet no fairer type of purely English beauty than Muriel Penarth could have been found between the Border and the Land's End, and what she lacked of Natasha's half Oriental brilliance and fire she atoned for by an added measure of that indescribable blend of dignity and gentleness which makes the English gentlewoman perhaps the most truly lovable of all women on earth.
”I could not have believed that the world held two such lovely women,” said Arnold to Tremayne, as the two girls met and embraced.
”How marvellously alike they are, too! They might be sisters. Surely they must be some relation.”
”Yes, I am sure they are,” replied Tremayne; ”such a resemblance cannot be accidental. I remember in that queer double life of mine, when I was your unconscious rival, I used to interchange them until they almost seemed to be the same ident.i.ty to me. There is some little mystery behind the likeness which we shall have cleared up before very long now. Natas told me to take Lord Marazion to him in the saloon, and said he would not enter the Castle till he had spoken with him alone. There he is at the door! You go and make Muriel's acquaintance, and I will take him on board at once.”
So saying, Tremayne ran up the terrace steps, shook hands heartily with the old n.o.bleman, and then came down with him towards the air-s.h.i.+p. As they met Lady Muriel coming up with Arnold on one side of her and Natasha on the other, Lord Marazion stopped suddenly with an exclamation of wonder. He took his arm out of Tremayne's, strode rapidly to Natasha, and, before his daughter could say a word of introduction, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her lovely upturned face through a sudden mist of tears that rose unbidden to his eyes.
”It is a miracle!” he said, in a low voice that trembled with emotion. ”If you are the daughter of Natas, there is no need to tell me who he is, for you are Sylvia Penarth's daughter too. Is not that so, Sylvia di Murska--for I know you bear your mother's name?”
”Yes, I bear her name--and my father's. He is waiting for you in the air-s.h.i.+p, and he has much to say to you. You will bring him back to the Castle with you, will you not?”
Natasha spoke with a seriousness that had more weight than her words, but Lord Marazion understood her meaning. He stooped down and kissed her on the brow, saying--
”Yes, yes; the past is the past. I will go to him, and you shall see us come back together.”
”And so we are cousins!” exclaimed Lady Muriel, slipping her arm round Natasha's waist as she spoke. ”I was sure we must be some relation to each other; for, though I am not so beautiful”--
”Don't talk nonsense, or I shall call you 'Your Ladys.h.i.+p' for the rest of the day. Yes, of course we are alike, since our mothers were twin-sisters, and the very image of each other, according to their portraits.”
While the girls were talking of their new-found relations.h.i.+p, Arnold had dropped behind to wait for Tremayne, who, after he had taken Lord Marazion into the saloon of the _Ithuriel_, had left him with Natas and returned to the Castle alone.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE STORY OF THE MASTER.
That evening, when the lamps were lit and the curtains drawn in the library at Alanmere, in the same room in which Tremayne had seen the Vision of Armageddon, Natas told the story of Israel di Murska, the Jewish Hungarian merchant, and of Sylvia Penarth, the beautiful English wife whom he had loved better than his own faith and people, and how she had been taken from him to suffer a fate which had now been avenged as no human wrongs had ever been before.
”Twenty-five years ago,” he began, gazing dreamily into the great fire of pine-logs, round the hearth of which he and his listeners were sitting, ”I, who am now an almost helpless, half-mutilated cripple, was a strong, active man, in the early vigour of manhood, rich, respected, happy, and prosperous even beyond the average of earthly good fortune.
”I was a merchant in London, and I had inherited a large fortune from my father, which I had more than doubled by successful trading. I was married to an English wife, a woman whose grace and beauty are faithfully reflected in her daughter”--
As Natas said this, the fierce light that had begun to s.h.i.+ne in his eyes softened, and the hard ring left his voice, and for a little s.p.a.ce he spoke in gentler tones, until sterner memories came and hardened them again.
”I will not deny that I bought her with my gold and fair promises of a life of ease and luxury. But that is done every day in the world in which I then lived, and I only did as my Christian neighbours about me did. Yet I loved my beautiful Christian wife very dearly,--more dearly even than my people and my ancient faith,--or I should not have married her.
”When Natasha was two years old the black pall of desolation fell suddenly on our lives, and blasted our great happiness with a misery so utter and complete that we, who were wont to count ourselves among the fortunate ones of the earth, were cast down so low that the beggar at our doors might have looked down upon us.
”It was through no fault of mine or hers, nor through any circ.u.mstance over which either of us had any control, that we fell from our serene estate. On the contrary, it was through a work of pure mercy, intended for the relief of those of our people who were groaning under the pitiless despotism of Russian officialism and superst.i.tion, that I fell, as so many thousands of my race have fallen, into that abyss of nameless misery and degradation that Russian hands have dug for the innocent in the ghastly solitudes of Siberia, and, without knowing it, dragged my sweet and loving wife into it after me.
”It came about in this wise.
”I had a large business connection in Russia, and at a time when all Europe was ringing with the story of the persecution of the Russian Jews, I, at the earnest request of a committee of the leading Jews in London, undertook a mission to St. Petersburg, to bring their sufferings, if possible, under the direct notice of the Tsar, and to obtain his consent to a scheme for the payment of a general indemnity, subscribed to by all the wealthy Jews of the world, which should secure them against persecution and official tyranny until they could be gradually and completely removed from Russia.
”I, of course, found myself thwarted at every turn by the heartless and corrupt officialism that stands between the Russian people and the man whom they still regard as the vicegerent of G.o.d upon earth.
”Upon one pretext and another I was kept from the presence of the Tsar for weeks, until he left his dominions on a visit to Denmark.