"You should not have done it," interrupted the other almost pa.s.sionately. "Held out your hand to that man! But I had forgotten, you know nothing as yet."

"I should not?" repeated Arthur sharply. "May I ask what you mean, sir?

Be satisfied that I am well able to maintain the dignity of my position even on such an occasion as that."

The chief-engineer had already regained his composure.

"Excuse me, Herr Berkow, I intended in no way to criticise your conduct as master of the works, it was in your position as the son that I----but you are ignorant of the reports connected with your father's last moments. We agreed not to mention them before you; it was done with the best intention, but now I see that we were wrong, that you must be told. You would have offered Hartmann your hand, and that, I repeat, ought not to have been."

Arthur looked at him fixedly. His face had grown colourless and his lips quivered.

"You speak of Hartmann and of my father's death. Is there any connection between the two?"

"I fear so, we all fear so. General suspicion rests upon the Deputy, not among us alone, but among his fellow-miners."

"Down there in the shaft," cried Arthur terribly agitated. "A murderous a.s.sault on a defenceless man! I do not believe that of Hartmann."

"He hated the deceased," said the chief-engineer emphatically, "and he has never denied his hatred of him. Herr Berkow may have exasperated him by some word, some command. Whether the ropes really broke, and he seized the moment of danger to save himself and hurl the other down into the depths below, or whether the whole thing were premeditated, is all a dark mystery, but innocent he is not, that I'll answer for."

Arthur was evidently deeply moved by this disclosure; he leaned heavily on the table.

"At the inquest it was proved to be an accident," said he in an unsteady voice.

"Nothing at all was proved at the inquest, so they concluded it was an accident and let it pa.s.s as such. No one dared make an open accusation, proofs were wholly wanting, and there would have been endless conflicts with the miners if their leader had been taken up on suspicion and then discharged, as he, no doubt, would have been. We knew, Herr Berkow, that, under existing circ.u.mstances, a struggle was inevitable between you and him, and we wished to spare you the bitterness of knowing your adversary for what he is. That was why we kept silence."

Arthur pa.s.sed his hand across his brow.

"I never dreamt of that, never! Even though it be nothing more than a suspicion, you are right, I should not offer that man my hand."

"That man," broke in the official, speaking with much energy, "that man, as leader of the rest, has brought the whole misfortune on us, that man has constantly heaped coals on the fire and kept up the strife, and now that he sees his power is on the decline he is doing all he can to make the breach irreparable, and a reconciliation impossible. Can you, will you, spare him still?"

"I spare him? No! I had done with him when he so roughly repulsed the overture I made him, but I cannot spare the others either after what has happened to-day. I am driven to take extreme measures. There were two hundred this morning who wanted to return to work, and they certainly have the right to require protection at their labour. The shafts must be secured at any cost, and I cannot do it alone, so"----

"So ...? We are waiting your orders, Herr Berkow?"

There was a pause of a minute, then the struggle visible in Arthur's face yielded to an expression of pained but firm resolve.

"I will write to M----. The letter shall go today. It must be."

"At last!" murmured the chief-engineer, half reproachfully. "It was high time!"

Arthur turned to his writing-table.

"Go over now and see that the Director and the other gentlemen remain at the posts I a.s.signed them when I was at the works. It would have been useless to interfere in all the clamour this morning; perhaps now it may be possible. In half-an-hour I shall be with you. Should anything particular occur before send me word over at once."

Before leaving the room the official stepped up to his side again.

"I know what the resolution has cost you, Herr Berkow," he said earnestly, "and we none of us take the thing lightly, believe me, but we must not look on the dark side. Perhaps it may be settled without bloodshed after all."

He bowed and left the room, much too hurried and too preoccupied to notice Eugenie, who, at his approach, retreated still farther behind the sheltering curtain. Without looking to the right or the left, he pa.s.sed rapidly through the adjoining room and closed the door after him. Husband and wife were alone together.

Arthur had only replied by a bitter smile to the chief-engineer's parting words.

"Too late!" he said to himself, "they will not yield until blood is shed. I must reap what my father has sown."

He threw himself down on a chair and leaned his head on his hands. Now that he had not to meet the eyes of strangers, now that he need no longer play the leader on whose resolution all depended, the look of energy faded from his face, and, in its place, came one of exhaustion, such as may overcome the strongest man when, for weeks at a stretch, his powers of mind and body have been overwrought and strained to the uttermost.

It was a moment of despairing dejection, coming naturally enough to one who had striven on and on, and all in vain, against the curse of a past in which he himself had not been to blame, except in so far as he had held himself aloof from the duties of it. Now the fatal inheritance was his alone, and the weight of it almost crushed him to the earth.

The accusing words against his father, which had escaped his lips, had been silenced in the self-same moment by the terrible suggestions he had listened to respecting the manner of that father's death. Yet to his predecessor was it solely due that he, the son, was now driven to the last terrible necessity, that, with ruin staring him in the face, deserted by his wife, forsaken by all his former friends, he was forced to resort to the only means which might yet save himself and all that he could still call his own from an enmity sown and nourished for many a long year, and whose fruits he was now compelled to taste. Arthur closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the arm-chair. He was worn out.

Eugenie had noiselessly left her hiding-place and had stepped on to the threshold. Forgotten now the peril she had pa.s.sed through, forgotten the accusations she had heard with such feelings of horror, forgotten even the man on whom they rested and all that had reference to him.

Now that she was so near her husband, she saw and thought of nothing but him. The veil, which had so long divided them, would now be torn away. All would be made clear, and yet she hesitated and trembled at the coming decision as though sentence of death were about to be pa.s.sed on her.

If she had been mistaken, if she were not received as she had hoped to be, as, after the sacrifice she had wrung from her pride, she felt she must be received .... The blood rushed violently to the young wife's heart, and it throbbed in an agony of suspense. Everything for her hung on the next minute.

"Arthur!" she said very softly.

He started up, as though he had heard a voice from the dead, and looked around him. There in the doorway, close to the spot where she had bade him farewell for ever, stood his wife.

In that first moment of recognition all consideration and reflection vanished; he rushed towards her and the cry of joy which was wrung from his lips, the radiant brightness of his eyes, revealed all that up to this hour had been disavowed by the self-restraint of months.

"Eugenie!"

She breathed freely, as though a mountain load had been lifted from her heart. The look, the tone with which he spoke her name gave her at last the long questioned certainty, and even though he stopped short in his hasty advance towards her, trying, as a protection against himself, it seemed, to take up the old mask once more and veiling that tell-tale glance, it was too late, she had seen too much!

"Where do you come from?" he asked at length, recovering himself with difficulty, "so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and how did you get up to the house? The works are in open revolt, you cannot possibly have pa.s.sed by them."

Eugenie drew nearer slowly.

"I only arrived a few minutes ago. I had indeed to force my way through. Do not ask me how, at present, enough that I forced it. I wanted to be with you before danger reached you."

Arthur tried to turn from her.

"What does this mean, Eugenie? Why do you speak in that tone? Conrad has been making you anxious, though I entreated him not, though I expressly forbade him to do so. I want no sacrifice made from generosity or from a sense of duty. You know it."

"Yes, I know it," she returned steadily. "You sent me from you once before with those words. You could not forgive me that I had once done you a wrong, and in revenging yourself for it, you nearly sacrificed both yourself and me. Arthur, who was the hardest, the unkindest, of us two?"

"It was not revenge," he said in a low voice. "I set you free, you wished it yourself."

Eugenie was standing quite close to him now. The word, which once no consideration on earth would ever have forced from her lips, was so easy to speak now that she knew herself to be beloved. She raised full upon him her dark eyes, all dewy with tears.

"And if I tell my husband that I will have no freedom away from him, that I have come back to share with him whatever may befall us both, that I--that I have learnt to love him, will he once more tell me to go?"

She received no answer, at least not in words, but already she was in his arms, and they held her in an embrace so close and warm, it seemed as though they would never again give up the prize they had won at last.

As she lay there and felt the pa.s.sionate caresses he showered upon her, she knew how cruel a blow her loss must have been, and all that her return was to him at a moment like the present. She saw a radiance in those great brown eyes, such as she had never before seen there, not even during those old bright lightning-like flashes.