Sunrise eBook

William Black
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 672 pages of information about Sunrise.

Sunrise eBook

William Black
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 672 pages of information about Sunrise.

“You understand?”

“Yes, yes,” Calabressa answered.  “And I will go on to Naples, Brother Granaglia; for I have with me one who I think will carry out the wishes of the Council effectively, so far as his Eminence the Cardinal is concerned.”

“Who is he?” said the other, but with no great interest.

“Yakov Kirski.  He is a Russian.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A CLIMAX.

It was a momentous decision that George Brand had to arrive at; and yet he scarcely seemed to be aware of it.  The man had changed so much during these past six months.

“Do you know, Evelyn,” he was saying to his friend, on the very evening on which his answer was to be given to Ferdinand Lind, “I am beginning to look on that notion of my going to America with anything but dislike.  Rather the opposite, indeed.  I should like to get rid of a lot of old associations, and start in a new and wider field.  With another life to lead, don’t you want another sort of world to live it in?”

Lord Evelyn regarded him.  No one had observed with a closer interest the gradual change that had come over this old friend of his.  And he was proud of it, too; for had it not been partly of his doing?

“One does not breathe free air here,” Brand continued, rather absently—­as if his mental vision was fixed on the greater spaces beyond the seas.  “With a new sort of life beginning, wouldn’t it be better to start it under new conditions—­feeling yourself unhampered—­with nothing around to disturb even the foolishness of your dreams and hopes?  Then you could work away at your best, leaving the result to time.”

“I know perfectly what all that means,” Lord Evelyn said.  “You are anxious to get away from Lind.  You believe in your work, but you don’t like to be associated with him.”

“Perhaps I know a little more than you, Evelyn,” said Brand, gently, “of Lind’s relation to the society.  He does not represent it to me at all.  He is only one of its servants, like ourselves.  But don’t let us talk about him.”

“You must talk about him,” Lord Evelyn said, as he pulled out his watch.  “It is now seven.  At eight you go to the initiation of Molyneux, and you have promised to give Lind his answer to-night.  Well?”

Brand was playing idly with a pocket-pencil.  After a minute or two, he said,

“I promised Natalie to consider this thing without any reference to her whatever—­that I would decide just as if there was no possibility of her becoming my wife.  I promised that; but it is hard to do, Evelyn.  I have tried to imagine my never having seen her, and that I had been led into this affair solely through you.  Then I do think that if you had come to me and said that my giving up every penny I possess would forward a good work—­would do indirect benefit to a large number of people, and so forth—­I do think I could have said, ‘All right, Evelyn; take it.’  I never cared much for money; I fancy I could get on pretty well on a sovereign a week.  I say that if you had come to me with this request—­”

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Project Gutenberg
Sunrise from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.