Sunrise | Page 4

do you know that, after a time, the first wounds heal, and your fingers become like stumps of iron--"
He held out his two hands; the ends of the fingers were seamed and corrugated, as if they had been violently scalded. But he could not hold them steady--they were trembling with the suppressed passion that made his whole frame tremble.
"Relay after relay, night after night, week after week, month after month, until those poor devils of rabbits had actually burrowed a passage out into the freedom of God's world again. And some said the Czar himself had heard of it, and would not interfere, for the prisons were choked; and some said the wife of the governor was Polish, and had a kind heart; but what did it matter when the time was drawing near? And always this clever fellow--do you know, sir, his name was Verdt too?--encouraging, helping, goading these poor people on. Then the last night--how the miserable rabbits of creatures kept huddled together, shivering in the dark, till the hour arrived! and then the death-like stillness they found outside; and the wild wonder and fear of it; and the old men and the women crying like children to find themselves in the free air again. Marie Falevitch--that was my sister-in-law--she kissed me, and was laughing when she whispered, 'Eljen a haza!' I think she was a little off her head with the long, sleepless nights."
He stopped for a second; his throat seemed choked.
"Did I tell you they had all got out?--the poor devils all wondering there, and scarcely knowing where to go. And now suppose, sir--ah! you don't know anything about these things, you happy English people--suppose you found the black night around you all at once turned to a blaze of fire--red hell opened on all sides of you, and the bullets plowing your comrades down; the old men crying for mercy, the young ones falling only with a groan; the women--my God! Did you ever hear a woman shriek when she was struck through the heart with a bullet? Marie Falevitch fell at my feet, but I could not raise her--I was struck down too. It was a week after that I came to my senses. I was in the prison, but the prison was not quite so full. Czars and governors have a fine way of thinning prisons when they get too crowded."
These last words were spoken in a calm, contemptuous way; the man was evidently trying hard to control the fierce passion that these memories had stirred up. He had clinched one hand, and put it firmly on the desk before him, so that it should not tremble.
"Well, now, Mr. Brand," he continued, slowly, "let us suppose that when you come to yourself again, you hear the rumors that are about: you hear, for example, that Count Verdt--that exceedingly clever man--has been graciously pardoned by the Czar for revealing the villanous conspiracy of his fellow-prisoners; and that he has gone off to the South with a bag of money. Do you not think that you would remember the name of that clever person? Do you not think you would say to yourself, 'Well, it may not be to-day, or to-morrow, or the next day: _but some day_?'"
Again the dark eyes glowed; but he had a wonderful self-control.
"You would remember the name, would you not, if you had your sister-in-law, and your only brother, and six or seven of your old friends and comrades all shot on the one night?"
"This was the same Count Verdt?" Brand asked, eagerly.
"Yes," said the other, after a considerable pause. Then he added, with an involuntary sigh, "I had been following his movements for some time; but the Camorra stepped in. They are foolish people, those Camorristi--foolish and ignorant. They punish for very trifling offences, and they do not make sufficient warning of their punishments. Then they are quite imbecile in the way they attempt to regulate labor."
He was now talking in quite a matter-of-fact way. The clinched hand was relaxed.
"Besides," continued Ferdinand Lind, with the cool air of a critic, "their conduct is too scandalous. The outer world believes they are nothing but an association of thieves and cut-throats; that is because they do not discountenance vulgar and useless crime; because there is not enough authority, nor any proper selection of members. In the affairs of the world, one has sometimes to make use of queer agents--that is admitted; and you cannot have any large body of people without finding a few scoundrels among them. I suppose one might even say that about your very respectable Church of England. But you only bring a society into disrepute--you rob it of much usefulness--you put the law and society against it--when you make it the refuge of common murderers and thieves."
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